Optimising Laptop w External HDD setup

This isn't how I normally choose to edit serious jobs. But I'm doing a lot more work on the road at the moment.

I have a *decent* laptop:

i7-8750h
16gb Ram   

GTX 1050i

500gb internal SSD

How can I make this set up most efficient and reliable? I could run two external HDDs, but unsure if that'll actually mean anything. I have usb3 ports and a thunderbolt port.