It’s a nightmare, a crisis. It’s exactly what you didn’t want to happen.

It’s Friday morning, you’ve got an important project that needs to be finished up this week, and the internet in your office just died.

Luckily, all is not lost. Here are a three things that can get you moving.

Tether to your phone

Got a smartphone? Great, you can use your phone’s mobile internet connection, known as ‘tethering’ to get yourself up and running.

However, this approach does have a few problems.

• If you work in an office with terrible mobile signal, then it’s not going to work
• If you’re lucky enough to get a decent 4G signal, tethering your phone will quickly eat into your data allowance

On the positive side, a decent 4G signal will give you a respectable internet speed, so if you need to get online right now, then tethering can be a quick and easy option.

Find somewhere with free WiFi

If you’re lucky enough to be using laptops, then your team can potentially pack up and move to the nearest coffee shop (or bar) that offers free WiFi.

As well as getting you back online, this approach also provides a refreshing change of setting for your team.

Again however, there are a couple of problems with this approach.

• The speed of free WiFi isn’t always brilliant
• You’ll need to buy multiple coffees in order to be allowed to stay and use the WiFi.
• Things can also escalate to include muffins, brownies, cakes, and pastries

So if you’re not too bothered about having super fast internet speeds, or the potential effects on your waistline, then this could be the option for you.

Just go home

If all else fails, it might be an idea to just pack up and head home for the day.

Far from being an excuse to put your feet up though, depending on what systems your office uses it may be entirely possible to work from home.

For example, at Elastic we use gmail and google calendars to keep in contact and schedule what we’re doing. This gives us the flexibility to work from anywhere with an internet connection.

Getting things done

As you can see, you don’t have to be at the mercy of your internet provider in order to get things done. In fact, embracing an alternative approach can lead to greater flexibility in the way you work.

If you fancy finding a new way to get things done, please get in touch.