A guide to lead, build, and deliver from anywhere
By Derek Lutz, Chief Executive Officer, Lean Six Search
The world is your office... But only if you know how to work it. This is a brutally honest guide to staying productive while working from anywhere.
I watched a Harvard professor Prithwiraj Choudhury speak at GCUC - Global Coworking Unconference Community this week in Boston. He was polished, thoughtful, calm. The kind of guy who drops data like gospel. His new book? The World is Your Office. His thesis? We’ve evolved beyond “work from home.” The next wave? Work from anywhere.
It hit me.
He was describing the world I already live in. But where his version was case studies and curve trends, mine’s more duct tape, coffee stains, and strategy calls from airport lounges in countries with rolling blackouts. I’ve been running two companies, Lean Six Search | Supply Chain Recruitment & Bottle Rocket Search | Coworking & Flex Space Recruitment from over 150 countries. Out of a carry-on. Out of rental cars. Out of coworking spaces, ferry terminals, and once, memorably, a gas station parking lot in Albania.
So, when someone talks about the future of work-from-anywhere?
I’m not speculating. I’m field-testing it in real time. And this isn’t a vision. It’s a manual. Here’s my take on how to actually stay productive (not just busy) when your office is a moving target and your team is spread across five continents.
1. You don’t need a desk... You need a system
The biggest myth about remote work is that productivity depends on the environment. Nice lighting. Quiet room. Dual monitors. Latte nearby. That’s not work. That’s theater. Forget the picture-perfect work setup. You know the one... ergonomic chair, standing desk, second monitor, fern in the corner. That’s nice. But it’s not what gets things done.
What you need is a process that works whether you’re in a five-star hotel or sitting on the curb outside a bus terminal stealing wifi from a nearby cafe. I’ve done both. The output was the same, because the system doesn’t change.
Mine looks like this:
Morning Ritual = Control in Chaos
Coffee. Notebook. Silence. No screens. No notifications. No dopamine roulette. Just pen on paper and a moment to ask: What actually matters today?
I do this everywhere—on balconies in Morocco, rooftops in Medellín, and airport gates in Singapore. It’s my reset. My mental checkpoint. Because if you don’t define your day, the world will gladly do it for you.
Three Priorities. No More.
Not ten. Not fifty. Not a list you’ll ignore by 11 a.m. Just three things. Written by hand. Because your brain processes differently when it’s ink, not pixels.
What will move the business forward today?
What will unblock the team?
What’s been avoided for too long?
If I get through all three, I’ve won the day. If I don’t? I carry the weight, and adjust.
Everything Else? Triage or Trash It. Here’s the truth: most of your task list is noise. It feels important. But it’s often just motion disguised as work.
I look at everything else and ask:
Can I delegate it?
Can I automate it?
Can I kill it?
You start doing that consistently, and your calendar clears. Your brain frees up. Your company gets sharper. I’ve built entire longlists on layovers. Sent our value proposition from the back of a motorbike. Closed deals from tents in the desert. Not because I had the perfect setup. But because the process was locked in.
That’s the magic: A system that doesn’t care where you are... only that you showed up.
2. Work with the world, not against it
One of the most powerful productivity hacks I’ve ever discovered has nothing to do with tech. No apps, no tools, no timers. It’s this:
Leverage your time zone.
Wherever I am in the world, I don’t fight the clock... I dance with it. I build my schedule around my geography, not in spite of it. Time zones aren’t a barrier. They’re a secret weapon.
When I was in Japan, I was 13 hours ahead of most of my clients in North America. That meant I had full control of my mornings and afternoons. I’d use that time for strategy... thinking big, planning clearly, making the kind of decisions that don’t happen when you’re buried in Slack and Zoom. I’d use the afternoons for delivery, leisure, workouts, exploring the city, writing, building documents. By the time the West woke up, I had already won the day. Inbox cleared by midnight. No stress. No noise. Just rhythm. The occasional 2am call, but hey, you can't win them all.
When I’m in Europe, the flow flips. I wake up early, get outside, hit the beach, and soak up some saltwater clarity. Then I dive into calls, meetings, and deep work while the rest of the world is catching up. There’s no better way to start the day than with a walk on the sand, a shot of espresso, and a team sync under the sun. It’s not a , just smart scheduling.
This is where most people mess it up. They try to copy and paste a 9-to-5 across time zones like it’s gospel. But you don’t need a static schedule. You need a rhythm. One that adapts.
Think like a DJ. Read the room. Control the energy. Drop the beat when it makes sense, not when the clock says so. Work when your mind is sharp. Rest when the world’s asleep. Structure your life so your location becomes a feature, not a friction point.
That’s how you stay productive anywhere. Not by grinding. But by gliding.
3. The team makes or breaks it
You can’t be everywhere. But your systems can.
I’ve built teams across time zones, continents, and cultures... London, Bogotá, Dubai, Cape Town, San Diego, Bangkok, Toronto, Hong Kong... and guess what?
We don’t babysit. We don’t micromanage. We don’t wait for people to “check in.” We hire for ownership, not obedience. Everyone knows their lane. Everyone owns their outcomes. No one’s waiting for permission. That’s how you scale when you’re not in the same room (or even the same hemisphere).
We run:
Weekly forecast check-ins (short, sharp, and honest)
Pipeline reviews (because revenue doesn’t lie)
Loxo dashboards (real-time clarity on every search)
Slack wins, voice notes, and fast updates (asynchronous doesn’t mean out of touch)
No corporate fluff. No “alignment meetings” that could’ve been a line in a CRM. Just clean systems. Clear expectations. And a culture of getting sh*t done.
Remote teams don’t fail because of distance. They fail because of confusion. So we killed confusion. With systems. With rhythm. With radical clarity.
And here’s the kicker: we don’t track hours. We track outcomes. Because autonomy beats attendance—every single time. This isn’t a tech stack. It’s a trust stack. Built piece by piece. Process by process. Person by person. We’re not just building a company. We’re building a machine that runs from anywhere.
4. Burnout wears a disguise
Burnout isn’t always a breakdown. It doesn’t kick in the door and announce itself. It’s a thief. Quiet. Subtle. Disguised as diligence. It shows up when you forget why you walked into a room. When every Slack ping feels like a demand. When your fuse gets shorter but your to-do list keeps growing.
You think you’re being productive. You’re not. You’re just spinning.
I hit that wall somewhere between Nairobi and Athens on my way to a retreat (a lucky time to hit the wall if I am honest). Too many projects. No real pause. Every message felt like life or death. I was caffeinated, connected, and completely cooked.
Then I dropped three small but critical balls. Nothing massive. But enough to shake me. That’s when I knew: I’m not in control. The wheel’s spinning, but no one’s driving.
So I hit stop.
Disappeared for a few days on a retreat. No email. No updates. No phone. Three days offline.
And when I came back?
Sharper. Stronger. Clearer than I’d been in weeks. Most people think recovery is a luxury. It’s not. It’s a performance strategy. You wouldn’t train your legs seven days a week. Why treat your mind any differently? Build rest into your system, or burnout will make its own space. And it won’t ask for permission.
5. Paper over pixels
I’ve downloaded every productivity app. Todoist. Notion. Trello. Monday. You name it, I’ve tried it. You know what works better than all of them?
A damn notebook.
Pen. Paper. Silence. Every morning, I write one page wherever I am in Bogotá or Bangkok. I started with the five-minute journal as it was a gift when I lived in Singapore... But I find empty pages are just as good or better... Three questions:
What moves the needle?
What gets me paid?
What builds the brand?
If it’s not one of those, it’s a distraction. Analog clarity in a digital storm.
I do it on planes. On beaches. On balconies. It grounds me. Slows me down just enough to think before the chaos kicks in. And here’s the truth: Typing feels efficient. But writing forces you to focus. There’s no tab to switch. No ping to pull you out. Just you and your thoughts.
The act of writing something down, physically, is a neurological anchor. It tells your brain: “This matters.”
Forget the tech stack for a second. Find a cheap notebook. Use it every day. The ROI will embarrass your favorite app.
6. Travel isn’t the distraction... It’s the advantage
People think travel kills productivity. I think travel creates clarity. You want to know what’s essential? Try working with two hours of Wi-Fi and a dying laptop battery. You stop tweaking fonts. You start executing. You want creative ideas? Go walk in a city where you don’t speak the language. Watch how your mind starts solving problems differently.
I’ve restructured more of my business in cafés and courtyards than in boardrooms.
In Laos, it was a bowl of steaming noodle soup, a cracked plastic chair, and the soft chaos of a back alley market. No whiteboards. No conference calls. Just a pen, a napkin, and the kind of quiet that only comes when no one knows your name. I sat there for two hours, rewriting our entire hiring framework... streamlining briefs, defining ownership, simplifying what we’d overcomplicated. It didn’t feel profound in the moment. It felt like lunch. But it became one of the most effective pivots we’ve ever made.
In Senegal, it was the beach. Low tide. Feet in the sand. A warm breeze. I wasn’t planning to work that day, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how many old clients I hadn't connected with in a while. So I pulled out my phone, recorded a 12-minute voice memo outlining a new playbook: better planning, more proactive outreach from our researchers, and me just reconnecting with old friends. It was the most relaxed I’ve ever been while rebuilding a client list. And it worked.
In South Africa, I trained a new hire over beers and a borrowed whiteboard at a rooftop bar in Cape Tow. We laughed. We talked about sourcing techniques. I drew diagrams with a half-dried marker while Table Mountain stood in the distance. That hire ramped faster than anyone I’ve onboarded in a formal setting. Not because I followed a curriculum. But because we were present, both of us locked in, distraction-free, beer in hand, ideas flying.
None of that was in a productivity manual. No one tells you the best work might come when you least expect it. No one tells you that soup, sunlight, and silence might beat strategy decks and sterile offices. But that’s where real clarity comes from... contrast.
You get out of your routine, out of your habits, and suddenly the truth shows up. Raw. Obvious. Undeniable. That’s what travel does. It forces you to simplify. It strips away the fluff. It hands you the question: What actually matters?
And if you’re paying attention, the answer is usually right in front of you...steaming in a bowl, drifting on a breeze, or scrawled in dry ink under a flickering rooftop light.
7. Don't confuse busyness with progress
This is where most remote workers drown.
They confuse being busy with being productive. Their calendars are full, their Slack is buzzing, their inboxes are overflowing, and they think that means they’re moving forward. But in reality? They’re just treading water.
Meetings. Emails. Loxo updates. Google Docs. Everyone’s playing office. Few are actually building.
Movement ≠ progress.
In fact, the more reactive you are, the less control you really have.
That’s why I keep my system stupid simple. I don’t overengineer. I don’t chase dopamine. I run lean because distraction is everywhere, and I’m not in the business of being overwhelmed.
Here’s the structure that keeps me grounded:
3 critical tasks a day. Not four. Not ten. Just three that actually matter. Revenue. Delivery. Strategy.
1 non-negotiable priority per week. A must-win. Something that moves the business.
1 quarterly focus. The theme. The compass. The thing that keeps me from chasing shiny objects when I’m tired or distracted.
If something doesn’t serve one of those? It’s either support or distraction. And I treat distractions like liabilities. Because they are.
Namibia taught me that.
I was in the middle of nowhere. Literally. No service. No wifi. No hot water. No chance to log in. At first, I panicked. My fingers itched. My brain raced. What am I missing? Who needs me? What fires are burning? But after a few hours of silence, something shifted.
I grabbed my notebook. I started writing... Mapped out our entire team org. Sketched out a new playbook. Rebuilt some of the onboarding process from scratch, by hand, page by page. By the time I got a signal again, I had something real. Something scalable.
That playbook.... It’s still the foundation of how we train new team members today. It's now something I send every single new hire. And it didn’t come from a meeting. It came from being stuck, from slowness, silence, and being forced to actually think.
The biggest productivity myth? That speed is always good. It’s not. Sometimes speed is just urgency dressed as importance. I’ve learned the hard way: Slowness isn’t the enemy. Distraction is. Noise is the killer. Complexity is the con. So now? I move slow when I need to. I step back often. I work with intention, not intensity (well, sometimes intensity, haha).
And I build like every minute actually counts... because it does.
The world can be your office… But only if you show up
Raj’s book title nailed it: The world is your office. But here’s the part no one tells you...That only works if you earn it.
It only works if you build systems that travel, create rituals that anchor you, and lead teams that trust you, no matter where the hell your feet land. It’s not about lounging on a beach with a laptop staged for Instagram. It’s not about calling yourself a “digital nomad” and answering emails in Bali between acai bowls.
This isn’t fantasy. This isn’t escapism. This is real work. Real results. Real revenue. Built from carry-ons, coffee shops, cargo boats, and coworking spaces.
You don’t get to live like this unless you show up like a damn professional. Consistently. Intentionally. Clearly. If your systems fall apart every time you change time zones, if your team goes dark the moment you’re off wifi, if your output depends on perfect conditions, you’re not working remotely. You’re just running.
The world is your office only if you treat it like one. With discipline. With clarity. With purpose. Our global teams have written proposals on night trains through Vietnam. Closed deals from the back of a tuk-tuk in Sri Lanka. Trained new hires in Luanda, Medellínin, and Vilnius, on the move. Because we built the systems that let us do that.
So yeah, the world can be your office. But only if you show up.
Every. Single. Day.
Your office might be the Sahara. It might be a WeWork in Tokyo. It might be a fold-out tray table somewhere over the Pacific. But the same rule applies no matter where you are:
Put in the work. Don’t hide behind the lifestyle. Earn your freedom.
The world is your office. Now act like it.
I’ll see you out there. Suitcase in hand. Inbox clean. Work done.
You coming?
