Working Abroad

OneNote Makes Working Without WiFi Do-able

By Kelly Cronin

I just started my next semester working remotely part-time while studying abroad in Marseille, France. Although my journey has just begun, I have already met many obstacles for working while abroad.  Finding time, energy, and motivation to work when you first arrive in a new country is painfully difficult. Taking it slow the first few days is key, so after that you can pick rainy days or gloomy nights to cozy up in your apartment and buckle down for a few hours.  Perhaps the biggest challenge so far has to be finding good WiFi.  When traveling, reliable wi-fi is hard to find, and even harder to ask for if you don't speak the language.  The good news is OneNote has come to my rescue!

Here's how to use OneNote without connecting to wifi:

Prepare

If you know you are going to be without wifi for a while, but you still need to get some work done, make sure you set up your OneNote ahead of time. Download documents you need from Outlook or SharePoint and add them to your OneNote.  There is nothing worse than trying to get some work done and then realizing you don't have everything you need. Think of what you can do without wifi, such as writing posts, preparing topics for presentations, and editing images.

Organize

Make a To-Do List of things you need to get done with OneNote's check boxes.  You can even set certain tasks as priorities. As I sat on the plane from Boston to Paris, I came up with a quick list of everything I can get done while traveling to and from anywhere:

Work - from literally anywhere!

Working without wifi might not be ideal, but hey a seven hour train ride is not ideal either.  So make the most of both of them by using OneNote to start on any projects available to you. Even when I am sitting on the bus from school to go downtown or grocery shopping, I can use my OneNote mobile app to access everything my desktop OneNote has to offer.  So if I'm on-the-go (without any data of course), I can instantly jot down blog ideas.  And sometimes people watching on the bus is where I get the best inspiration.

Now I must go catch my train to Nice - au revoir!