Meeting planners are frequent travelers: They spend many hours waiting in airports, sitting on planes and driving -- or standing -- in traffic. They often find themselves living in hotels for days at a time. These "interruptions in routine" are routine; the successful planner cannot let them slow him down.

"You have to be totally organized," says Bonnie Pearce, the planner president of Bonnie Pearce Associates, Albany, N.Y. "You are always going to be negotiating with time, and you always have to accomplish something."

How, then, can planners keep ontop of their workloads while traveling? How can they take time that could be a dead loss and make it work for them?  For one thing, they can take the advice of other planners and time mananement experts. The latter, often speakers who travel extensively themselves, have given the problems of roadtime particularly careful consideration.

"You need to be organized to travel, and most aren't," says Merrill Douglass, preseident and founder of the Time Management Center, Atlanta.

"You have to develop good habits. I "Don't leave home without it." So says Jerry Teplitz of Jerry Teplitz Enterprises about his ever-present, easy-to-use luggage cart.

Larry Baker, president of the Time Management Center, also of St. Louis, takes the cautious approach a step further. "I reconfirm airline, hotel and car rental reservations," he says. "I once was set to speak at a meting 12 miles away from the airport, and the car rental company couldn't find my reservation. And they had no cars. That only has happen once. It won't happen again."

Baker ships out speaking materials in advance and makes sure they are there before he is. "Sometimes we've even had a double shipment, nothing to chance," he says.
Arranging communication with the office is another part of Baker's pre-trip routine. "I check arrangements with the staff to make sure we have everything coordinated," he explains. "Then I know any decisions that have to be made, and they know where I am, when I'll be there and how to get in touch with me."
Baker puts together a folder of things he needs to do when he gets back and leaves it at the office and packs a stack of work he can do once he's finished a seminar. He also carries a list of clients he'll be seeing on the road. It includes their address, telephone numbers and, if he needs them, maps to their offices.

Merrill Douglass, who for the past two decades has spent 160 days a year on the road, has taken this kind of organized packing to its limits. He has designed and had made a special leather insert for his briefcase. It has pockets to hold his calculator, dictating machine, pencils, post-its, stamped postcards, writing pads, stationery for writing his children, his passport and color-coded file folders -- green for finished work, red for unfinished work, etc. Everything is in its place and is easy to locate.
Douglass can even remove the leather insert from his briefcase, put it into a larger attache case, add a shirt and a change of underwear, and he's set for an overnight trip.
Douglass and former partner Larry Baker also have devised an expense envelope for business travelers. The trip information is written on the outside of the envelope, and the receipts are stored inside. Again, there's no fishing around.

BEFORE YOU LEAVE
First, there's the matter of arrangements. To make sure she's on track, meeting planner Frances Marshak, of Consolidated Aluminum Corp., St. Louis, calls the property she'll be using and runs down a list of questions, including the distance from the airport to the hotel and what type of ground transportation is available.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Long drives. Stalled traffic. Airline delays. Layovers. Most people consider these as downtime. But they don't have to be. So-called dead time can be the perfect time to clear up details.

Fred Pryor suggests using a dictating machine in either a car or plane. "Most people don't use dictating equipment proficiently, but it can be very useful."
Pryor has a car phone and says he may return three or four calls on the way to a speech. He thinks cellular phones could reduce stress for planners who spend a lot of time on the road, and he says a phone's cost could be justified to an employer simply by getting the work done.

Larry Baker says that, while cellular phones are becoming popular with people who drive frequently, salespeople use them much more often than meeting planners. "In three or four years, we'll see them more," he says. "Planners will have to look at how many calles they miss and see what the value of those call is."
Baker believes people could accomplish much more while waiting for flight in airports. He particularly advises avoiding the lounge, a real timewaster.

Elam of Great American Reserve Insurance Co., Dallas advises calling to make another reservation before getting on line. That way, the traveler doesn't have to worry that all the available seats will be taken by the time he gets to the counter. He can be assured his reservation is in the computer. Also, Elam always carries an air flight guide to check altenative flights.

Teplitz says he saves minutes and stress by not checking luggage. If his connection is tight, he can run for a plane with luggage cart in tow. "I can get easily from one terminal to another," he says. "I think the luggage cart is a wonderful thing."

As for the time spent on airplanes, Sandy Bohl, president of Professional Conferences, Sharon, Conn., says it makes her dream of buying a portable computer. "I've wasted a lot of hours on planes, especially on the long flights. I could be getting a lot of work done. A computer also would be great when I get ideas or for conununicating with the office," she says.

Fred Pryor agrees on the usefulness of laptop computers. He spends his time on the plane writing speeches and updating files and schedules on his laptop. (Tepliz warns anyone taking a computer out of the country to have it registered with U.S. Customs before boarding. He adds that, if a computer is company owned, it must be accompanied by a validated export license.)

Working on a plane does not, however, necessarily mean lugging a computer. Time Management's Douglass, for example, often uses flying time to correspond with clients. Rather than dictate for later transcription, he writes on prestamped cards. "I'd rather do it by hand, and just drop it in the mailbox," he says.

ONCE YOU GET THERE
Time-management experts say that because people drop many of their normal work activities while traveling, they often complain of spending personal time working. The solution, they say, is for the traveler to consider the hotel room the office and to act as if travel time is work time. "Every time we decide to do something we're deciding not to do something else. We have to learn to prioritize," says Baker. "One way to spend more time with the family when you get home is to work at the hotel in the evening. I have a principle that the work of a trip, including travel expenses and travel report forms, be completed before the trip ends."

Many planners have devised ways to keep on schedule when traveling. Consoliated Aluminum's Marshak says she does most of her planning for future meetings while she's on the road visiting sites. "I have individual folders for each person I'm going to meet: the sales staff, the reservations manager, convention services, etc. I have questions prepared for each, which is time saving for them and for myself. I keep notes on our meetings, which include ideas and details that have been discussed."

Professional Conferences' Sandy Bohl keeps a diary in which she records the details of each meeting. It includes the attendance list, an outline with an agenda, airline information, schedules and contracts. "Every meeting has its own section, and every meeting is in it," she says. "I keep the entries up to date. Although I feel like a walking office, the diary shows me what I should be doing when."

Planner Bonnie Pearce also feels that the only way to keep everything running smoothly is to touch every file --present meetings and future meetings --every day. "Even if the meeting is three months down the road, I have a 'to do' list on the front of the file. I follow up on everything," she says. "I never go to bed at night before I make my agenda for the next day. Then when I get up I review it."

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE OFFICE
Of long distance office management, time-management expert Douglass says: "You have to delegate a tremendous amount in order to keep things running smoothly. Of course, you have to have a superb staff, which means they must be trained."
Delegating, Douglass adds, doesn't mean abdicating responsibility. Instead, it means avoiding that common trap: trying to do everything yourself.

Pearce points out that the staff must be trained in the field to do the most effective job. "I have two others in my office who know how I work. They think for me. It's a marriage. They are treated as partners and feel they have ownership."

Greg Elam agrees that an office that runs smoothly starts with people who understand you and your priorities. His basic rule is: "If anything goes wrong I want to know before anyone else so I can solve it and figure out how we can avoid the problem in the future."

Pryor gets specific. He says that when a planner phones the office, he or she should talk to the staff in terms of expectations. "Hold them accountable for their results. Find out their level of progress."

MAKING TIME FOR YOURSELF
Meeting planners on the road are constantly running, and many are on call 24 hours a day. But all agree that anyone can pack for eight days using one carry-on. It has taken years of skill and development."

Being organized comes down to having the ability to set goals, which in turn leads to setting priorities, according to Fred Pryor, author of The Energetic Manager and chairman of the Board of Pryor Resources, Shawnee Mission, Kan. "You have to generate energy and excitement in what you are doing," he says. "It comes down to romanticizing everything you do. You can either sit there and think of work as an obligation, or turn everything up and get into it. It is a constant mental shift. The scientific definition of energy is the ability to do work. You have to think the journey is the destination rather than only being satisfied when you get the job done."