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 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 and Bottle Rocket Search — 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.
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 11am. 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?
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. 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. By the time the West woke up, I had already won the day.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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 — 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.
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 favourite app.
6. Travel isn't the distraction — it's the advantage
People think travel kills productivity. I think travel creates clarity.
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 became one of the most effective pivots we've ever made.
In Senegal, it was the beach. Low tide. Feet in the sand. 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. 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 Town. 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.
None of that was in a productivity manual. No one tells you the best work might come when you least expect it. That's what travel does. It forces you to simplify. It strips away the fluff. It hands you the question: What actually matters?
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.
Movement ≠ progress.
That's why I keep my system stupid simple:
- 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.
Namibia taught me that. No service. No wifi. No hot water. At first I panicked. But after a few hours of silence, something shifted. I grabbed my notebook and rebuilt the onboarding process from scratch — by hand, page by page. That playbook is still the foundation of how we train new team members today. 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. Slowness isn't the enemy. Distraction is.
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.
So yeah, the world can be your office. But only if you show up.
Every. Single. Day.
Put in the work. Don't hide behind the lifestyle. Earn your freedom.
I'll see you out there. Suitcase in hand. Inbox clean. Work done.
You coming?
