Hey, fellow Leader đ,
I am Artur, and welcome to my weekly newsletter. I am focusing on topics like Project Management, Innovation, Leadership, and a bit of Entrepreneurship. I am always open to suggestions for new topics. Feel free to reach out to me and share my newsletter if it helps you in any way.
If you like traveling as a hobby, you might think it would be enjoyable to have a job that sends you off to different cities and countries all the time. While this is indeed a nice perk, it can quickly make a 180-degree turn when done too often.
Unless youâre traveling by private jet and staying in 5-star hotels, this article might not be for you. However, for the rest of us mortals who take commercial planes for work, this endeavor can have some disadvantages.
So, whatâs so bad about traveling to different cities and countries for work? What is eroding that fantastic view of an international career? Well, letâs just go through the reasons one by one, shall we?
If Done Too Many Times, It Becomes Routine
While it is fun to get on a plane and meet a new city for the first time, believe me when I say it gets dull the more times you do it. The first time, itâs okay to get out of bed at 6 a.m. to catch a flight and endure the airportâs security measures without your first coffee of the day. You do all that, only to realize that your plane is late, even though you made the effort to be on time. But itâs okay, due the excitement of visiting City X, a place youâve never visited before and have heard so many good things about.
Well, letâs just say that by the time you visit the same city for the fifth time in a short period, the plane starts to feel like a bus with wings, and the excitement that made the airportâs overpriced coffee bearable is long gone.
On top of that, when we travel for work, we tend not to do the touristy. We might walk around the city to get to know it a little better, but we donât actually have time for museums or whatever else ticks your fancy while traveling because we are working during office hours. We might go to restaurants and enjoy some of the local food though. However, when this happens multiple times over a short two-to-three-month period, a city, even a cool one, just becomes a place for you to work and enjoy a bit during the evening.
It Messes It Your Plans
If you have a hobby, letâs say pottery classes (not judging, just an example), itâs okay if you need to travel for three days and miss a class or two. However, if youâre constantly traveling for two or three days at a time over several weeks, those business trips start to mess with your progress. Youâll begin to fall behind on techniques or notice other negative impacts on your hobbies and routines. If you just sit on the couch watching Netflix all evening, I guess youâre okay. Hotels typically have good WiFi.
In my particular case, business trips steal time from my gym activities, and I often fall behind on my training plan. The âhotels have gymsâ argument isnât that great because those gyms are typically bad. Very bad. This is especially true when a business trip falls in the middle of a specific weightlifting cycle or when I miss my window for setting a new PR. Whenever you have something consistent going on in your life (let's say, family and kids included), going away for days in rapid succession really messes with your personal life.
Planes Are Always Late
We all try to be on time for the airport, especially to get through security, only to end up at a gate where the plane is half an hour, or even hours, late due to <insert whatever circumstance here>. More often than not, planes are late. All the time. Depending on the destination, the impact might vary. An evening delay might mean arriving after public transportation has shut down for the night (Paris Orly train, looking at you quite angrily). Or, if your plane takes off late, the destination airport might close while youâre mid-flight (Swiss airports are particularly dangerous in this regard).
The consequences of a plane delay can really affect your arrival, and itâs not always a one-to-one relationship. That 30-minute delay might cost you hours, depending on whatâs happening at your destination. When a plane is late in the morning, it can mean arriving late to meetings or having to skip them entirely. If youâre traveling for only three or four days, this has a significant impact. And these situations get exponentially worse when connecting flights are involved⊠(smiling nervously).
Sometimes, you just want to arrive on time. Thatâs a luxury in this day and age.
It Fatigues More Than Anything
When youâre traveling for work, the agenda is set, and the goal is to accomplish a specific set of things before your time runs out. Itâs not like a normal trip to the office. To be sure, these trips have clear objectives you need to meet, and they are not normal workdays. Itâs common for them to be more intense than usual, especially when you probably didnât get a good nightâs rest from traveling the day before.
Everything about the trip drains your energy. Even if the hotel is nice, the bed is never quite your own. You never know what annoying sounds will come through the walls. Iâve stayed in 4-star hotels where I could clearly hear the drainage pipes from the floor above me. Those pipes were working much more than I wanted to hear at 4 a.m.
If youâre âluckyâ, youâll also have evening events with colleagues. Yes, itâs great to go to a bar and have dinner with the big boss. However, imagine doing this after a poor nightâs sleep and an intense workday, with more activity planned for the evening. You do all that, only to go back to the hotel for another night of too-little sleep before jumping right back into another intense day. Coffee is your best friend.
There Are Cities More Interesting Than Others
Before I first traveled to Milan, everybody told me, based on their tourist experience, that it was a very boring city. They said it only had the cathedral, and there was nothing else to see. I knew Italy very well (Rome, Florence, Naples, and other cities in the south), but I had never been to Milan before. My experience there, however, turned out to be very different. Yes, the cathedral was the only major tourist attraction, but I wasnât there to be a tourist. I was there to work. On a business trip, what matters is the quality of the hotel and how easy it is to find good places to eat and drink. On that front, Milan turned out to be great!
However, visiting certain northern European cities (I wonât mention any, so as not to anger any Danish readers - evil laugh) can be a totally different story. There are cities that seem to shut down by 8 p.m. In those cases, your trip basically consists of going back to the hotel to use the WiFi until you find the end of the internet.
Depending on the destination, some cities are simply more enjoyable than others. This is especially important because if you had stayed home, you could at least be doing things on your own terms.
Thatâs it. If you find this post useful, please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic. If you would like to see a different angle, suggest it in the comments or send me a message.
Cheers,
Artur