How this Professor Designs A Workflow For Travel

For Jean-Philippe (J-P) Laurenceau, productivity is not about chasing novelty. It is about recreating familiarity with a tried and tested model that takes years to refine.

A Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Delaware, Laurenceau spends much of his year moving between places: university offices, conference venues, hotel rooms, airport lounges, cafés, and temporary apartments across Europe, North America, and South America. 

His work does not pause when he travels. Grants still need writing. Data still needs analysing. Students still need guidance. Collaborations still need advancing. And, creativity can spark ideas anywhere.

“I can’t afford to not be productive while I’m travelling,” he says. “There are deadlines and you’re trying to juggle multiple things.”

Like many of us, the early days of business travel presented a major productivity challenge. Over time, planning, packing and setting up a workstation becomes easier. For Laurenceau, productive business travel is about shaping an environment with the right tools on hand.

A career built on complexity and care

Laurenceau’s research focuses on how people cope together, not alone.

“I study how couples cope with chronic diseases,” he explains. “In particular breast cancer patients and type 2 diabetes. These are two very common conditions.”

His work looks beyond the patient to the system around them. He’s a quantitative relationship scientist.

“I’m really interested in that dynamic,” he says. “Less about the patient as an individual and more about the patient as part of a complex system of other people that they’re a part of.”

That means studying partners, caregivers, and the often invisible emotional and cognitive labour that surrounds illness.

“Those partners often don’t get acknowledged,” he says. “They’re kind of in the background, and I think they should.”

This research is data-heavy, longitudinal, and methodologically demanding. Laurenceau specialises in quantitative modelling and dyadic data analysis, working with paired individuals over time. This area is often referred to as Intensive Longitudinal Methods. His workflow moves between datasets, statistical outputs, manuscripts, and grant proposals, often simultaneously.

“The doing of science requires screen real estate,” he says. “I know that sounds funny, but it really does.”

Why screen real estate matters

Laurenceau is precise about how screen real estate can help drive a more productive outcome for people like him, dealing with research, data, and conference calls, sometimes all at once!

“As a researcher, I’m often analysing data, looking at datasets, looking at outputs,” he explains. “It’s really helpful to have output on one screen and then either the data that output is reflecting, or the paper where I’m trying to explain the results, on another screen.”

Constantly switching windows breaks focus when working from a single laptop screen.

“Alt-tabbing can kind of break your focus,” he says. “Having two screens helps me stay in it.”

“Most recently, I was working on a grant proposal for the National Cancer Institute,” he recalls. “I was looking at output (data) on one screen and then working on the proposal where I’m drawing numbers and making conclusions from the data.”

He was able to do all of this from the limited space of a European hotel room while attending a conference in Lisbon, Portugal. 

“I was able to use the display in my hotel room to replicate a dual-monitor setup like I have in my office,” he says.

The goal is not to improvise. It is to replicate. This is something we hear so often from espresso Displays customers when it comes to using their portable monitor in the best possible way.

Turning travel into deep work

For Laurenceau, a major shift in the approach to productivity on the go came when he stopped seeing travel as lost time.

“Early on in my career, I saw travel as disconnecting me from being productive,” he says. “And look, sometimes it’s good to be disconnected. I’m not saying you should be working every moment.”

But reality often intervenes in a highly connected world.

“There are times when you have deadlines,” he continues. “Having another screen helps me turn what otherwise is downtime into deeper work time.”

That philosophy applies whether he is in an airport lounge, a café, or a hotel room minutes before a presentation, conference or talk.

“I could set up my command centre 30 minutes before the talk,” he says. “Review my slides, review my talking points, make sure everything is in order. It’s exactly the workflow I’m planning for a conference in Barcelona this May, where I’ll be leading a data analysis workshop.”

“A scientific command centre, that’s what I’m trying to create.”

The physical setup: simple, deliberate, repeatable

Laurenceau’s setup is consistent wherever he goes.

“I usually have my display on top of my laptop, not next to it,” he says. “So I can just look up and down.”

That vertical alignment reduces physical strain and mirrors his office layout.

“These hotel desks are very non-ergonomic,” he says. “If you’re looking down for two or three hours, it hurts your neck. The stand lets me look up at the data output and not be hunched over a laptop.”

“I like having one cable,” he says. “It gives you freedom. It’s less stuff to carry. Less stuff to think about.”

He is explicit about why this matters: “It’s less cognitive load,” he says.

Mood, ritual, and getting into the zone

The workspace, for Laurenceau, is not only functional. It is atmospheric.

“When I was in Europe for a month, I’d get breakfast, then go back to the room,” he recalls. “Sit in front of a window with a nice view. Laptop in front of me, display behind it, cup of coffee.”

He adapts audio to context.

“I’ll use headphones on a plane or in an airport lounge,” he says. “But in my room, I’ll use Bluetooth speakers so I have ambient background noise.”

Then there is the candle.

“I know this is going to sound funny,” he says, laughing. “My wife makes fun of me about this.”

He lights a Palo Santo candle while he works.

“It just creates a mood that allows me to focus,” he explains. “It smells good, it connects to my Ecuadorian heritage, and it signals that it’s time to work.”

These rituals anchor him.

“I’m trying to replicate what I can do more easily at home or in my office,” he says. “The monitor is part of that, but so is the environment.”

Everything has its place

If there is one principle Laurenceau returns to repeatedly, it is order.

“I think it’s really important to have a tech bag,” he says. “A lot of people don’t.”

His bag contains exactly what he needs and nothing more.

“Chargers, cables, a pen, a little notepad,” he lists. “Everything has a place.”

He is strict about returning items to where they belong.

“You’ve got to put the stuff back,” he says. “Otherwise you lose it, and then you’re buying it again at the airport.”

This is not about neatness for its own sake.

“When you’re moving from one place to another, having everything in its place makes transitions easier,” he says. “Less cognitive load. Faster setup.”

That consistency allows him to move fluidly between locations without mental friction.

Working within the limitation of travel

“There’s a limit to how much you can do being a digital nomad,” he says. “I can do it for a couple weeks, maybe three. Then I have to come back and get grounded.”

The lifestyle looks appealing from the outside, but it is taxing.

“There’s a cognitive and psychological load to living like that,” he says. “You have to build tolerance. You can burn out if you jump into it too quickly or for too long.”

He values a home base. This has also been a common thread for many digital nomads we meet at espresso Displays, they work from locations for periods of the year, but still find comfort and stability on having a home to come back to.

Making small spaces work

One of his favourite examples comes from a night near Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.

“The room was tiny,” he recalls. “The desk was literally a piece of wood that folded out from the wall.”

Still, with the laptop and dual-screen setup, it worked.

“The laptop and the display fit perfectly,” he says. “I could still set up a command centre in this tiny space.”

That, for him, is the point.

“I’m always trying to maximise real estate,” he says. “Screen real estate. Desk real estate. Room real estate.”

While the environment may change, the system does not.

Familiarity as a form of focus

Laurenceau now keeps multiple displays in different locations, allowing him to recreate the same setup whether he is at home, or travelling internationally.

“I’m recreating a similar environment in different places,” he says. “That consistency matters.”

It is not about gadgets. It is about continuity.

“I used to think my office was where I needed to be to be productive,” he reflects. “Now I know I can be productive wherever I am, as long as I set it up right.”

And so, wherever he lands, the ritual begins again: desk, screens, coffee, candle, focus.

A familiar command centre, rebuilt from scratch.