Settle in before you settle down to work

The moment you open the door to a hotel room, most of us do the same thing: drop the bag, kick off the shoes, and flop onto the bed. If you are staying for one night, that is perfectly reasonable. If you are working from that room for two days or two weeks, those first ten minutes are worth spending more deliberately. A little reconnaissance now saves you from a stiff neck, a dim desk and a video call that freezes halfway through a sentence.

Start by standing still and looking at the room as a workspace rather than a bedroom. Where is the desk? Is there a socket within reach of it? Does the chair look like something you could sit on for three hours? Is the window letting in enough daylight, or is the only lamp behind you, throwing your own shadow across the keyboard? None of these things are deal-breakers, but all of them are easier to fix on arrival than at nine o'clock the following morning.

Test the Wi-Fi before you unpack

Before you hang a single shirt in the wardrobe, connect to the hotel's network and run a quick speed test. Join a video call with your own camera off, or open a large file and watch how it behaves. It takes two minutes and tells you whether the room you have been given is genuinely workable.

• Test from the desk, not just from the bed. Signal can vary wildly between the two, especially in older buildings with thick walls.
• Test at the time of day you will actually be working. A connection that feels fine at four in the afternoon may struggle at eight in the evening when the whole hotel is streaming.
• If the signal is weak, try near the door or by the window before you give up on it.
• Ask reception whether a booster can be provided, or whether there is a wired connection at the desk. Many hotels keep spare equipment for exactly this reason.

If you discover on arrival that the connection will not hold a call, you have time to rearrange your diary, find a quiet corner of the lobby, or ask to move rooms. Discovering it mid-presentation is considerably less enjoyable.

Ask for the things that make a difference

Hotel staff are used to requests, and a polite one at check-in is almost always met with a smile. The single most useful item to ask for is a desk lamp. Room lighting is designed for atmosphere, not for reading spreadsheets, and a lamp you can angle over your work makes an enormous difference to how tired your eyes feel by the evening.

While you are asking, consider mentioning a few other things:

• A room away from the lift, the ice machine or a main road, if you are sensitive to noise.
• An extension lead or a spare four-way adapter — sockets in hotel rooms are rarely where you need them, and a UK three-pin extension lead in your bag is a small luxury.
• Extra pillows, which double as back support as well as bedding.
• A fan or a heater, if the room runs hot or cold at night.

Ask once, ask clearly, and thank them properly. The person on the front desk has more influence over your week than almost anyone else in the building.

Build a chair you can actually sit in

Hotel desk chairs are often the weakest link: handsome, upright, and unforgiving after an hour. You do not need to accept it. A cushion from the armchair, or a towel folded to about the thickness of a paperback, placed at the small of your back, will support your lower spine and keep you from slumping forward as the afternoon wears on.

If the seat itself is hard or sloping, fold a towel and sit on it to level things out, or use a spare pillow to raise yourself slightly so your hips sit a touch higher than your knees. Feet flat on the floor, screen at eye level — stack a couple of books or a folded blanket underneath a laptop if the desk is low. If you find yourself working from the bed because the chair is unbearable, ask to move rooms. It is a reasonable request and often granted.

Light, warmth and the details that add up

Open the curtains fully each morning and work with daylight where you can, turning the desk lamp on for the task in front of you rather than relying on the ceiling light. Keep the room a degree or two cooler than you would at home; warm, stuffy air is the enemy of concentration. If the heating will not behave, ask for it to be looked at rather than suffering in silence.

Take a proper break away from the desk every hour or so. Walk to the kettle, step outside, stretch your shoulders. Hotel rooms are small, and small rooms have a way of making a long working day feel longer than it is.

Leave the work at the desk

Finally, try to keep the desk as the place where work happens and the bed as the place where it does not. When you finish for the day, close the laptop, tidy the papers, and put the cushion back on the armchair. It sounds fussy, but it is the simplest way to stop a hotel room feeling like a permanent office and start enjoying the break you have actually earned.