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Have you actually tried working on a laptop on an airplane? At least for me, it's a horrible experience - there's not enough space to use my laptop functionally.

Instead, if I want to feel productive, I'll focus on reading saved books & articles about relevant topics. They can easily be downloaded/cached to your kindle or phone before flying.

I'll also have a notebook (or recently, paper + clipboard) to brainstorm and take notes - help organize my next actions, thoughts, plans, and software designs.

4 comments

Ergonomically, it's not the best. But the lack of distractions from the internet, and being stuck in one place, is a huge productivity boost for me. When flying alone, I can often knock out a side project prototype in one flight.

I actually find plane flights are a great opportunity to read longer form writing or otherwise do unplugged things. (OK, I often have some downloaded videos as well.)

I find even writing text isn't worth it. Partly because of the experience using a laptop and partly because doing so requires me to make all sorts of notes about things I need to verify once I'm back online. Unless I have a real time crunch it's just not worth it.

For a few years I did most of my side-project programming on the commuter bus. Ergonomics is horrible of course but it helps to turn of the trackpad and embrace the keyboard shortcuts.

Internet was spotty so I pretended to be competely offline... Devdocs.io + saved pdf prints of various pages for offline docs.

Even though it was only 2x30 minutes 5 days a week, quite a lot got done.

This is true. Got a couple books with me, luckily.