Travel Details #8: Realistically, that spreadsheet's not happening

Tip #8: Don't expect to get anything done on the flight - you probably won't, and that's OK.

This advice is more along the lines of something my mother told me a long time ago, and it seems to ring true for traveling with children. In essence, if you set your sights so high that the goal is impossible to reach, it only leads to frustration. When it comes to travel+productivity+children, you will greatly reduce your stress if you think ahead a little and give yourself a break. Build a different strategy to get that TPS report written than your old stand-by: the hours of quiet time on a plane. Instead, spend the time enjoying your kids - read, talk, play, or just hang out. Think of it as that quality time you are always trying to find with her.

Flights are great for productivity (if you are sans-kids) for one big reason: Legitimate isolation. Your cel phone does not work, your Blackberry is turned off for once, and you probably won't have access to the Internet (although that is changing). Its just you, your laptop, and a $5.00 cocktail. That all changes of course when you are flying with kids. The, "child card" trumps the others; you are no longer isolated, which means your children have the floor.

Yes, gone are the days when a flight meant a few uninterrupted hours of precious time to catch up on reading, checking out the newest junk in the inflight magazine, or sleeping to make up for the party last night. Bye bye now sleep and productivity. Thanks for flying Southwest.