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EP 57 - 3 Tips For Evading Travel Exhaustion
11 Plays8 months ago
I recently completed a trip out to the west coast. The trip involved long flights, time changes, a lot of meetings, traffic jams, catching up with friends & family, before ending with a red-eye flight. On today’s episode, I talk about the decisions and mentality that went into my crazy schedule. And I provide 3 tips that helped maximize my trip while managing its physical and mental demands.
For more info and to download a free PDF of today's episode notes, visit: www.chriskreuter.com/CDWI
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Transcript
Overcoming Obstacles
00:00:08
Speaker
On Chris deals with it, I talk about the frameworks and methods I use to clear personal, creative, and professional roadblocks. My goal is to help others bridge the gap between where they're at now and what they want to achieve. If you're new to the show, I'm an engineer, writer, parent, game designer, leader, and reader who leverages that experience to develop creative solutions to problems. An AI statement that all elements of this episode are products of the author, Chris Croyder, and made without the use of any AI tools.
Avoiding Travel Fatigue
00:00:38
Speaker
Welcome to episode 57 of Chris deals with it. Three tips for evading travel exhaustion. I recently completed a trip out to the West coast. The trip involved long flights, time changes, a lot of meetings, traffic jams, catching up with friends and family before ending with a red eye flight.
Trip Planning and Scheduling
00:00:56
Speaker
On today's episode, I'm going to talk about the decisions and mentality that went into my crazy schedule and provide three tips that helped maximize my trip while managing its physical and mental demands.
00:01:08
Speaker
So preparing the circuit, my business trip involved meeting with clients in and around the Los Angeles region, with meetings that needed to remain somewhat flexible since they typically have an indefinite length of time. I maintained a detailed plan in the weeks leading up to the trip, confirming with clients up until the week I departed. I also reached out to old friends who had settled in the area and was fortunate that the timing worked for two dinners to catch up with both of them.
00:01:33
Speaker
I'd also planned to extend my trip by an extra day by driving out to Phoenix to see my brother and catching a red eye home from there. And all of this had to be crammed into a four-day, four-night schedule to minimize the impact on my family back home. So I intentionally planned my easternmost meetings for Friday morning so I could work my way out towards Phoenix, reducing the total miles driven over the three days in LA.
00:01:56
Speaker
And in preparing for the trip, I knew my first meeting was going to be a few hours after landing at LAX, so I needed to avoid checked baggage.
Efficient Packing Strategies
00:02:04
Speaker
So here's the first tip, the pick-pack list. To ensure I travel as light as possible, I maintain a pick-pack checklist template within Notion. Fans of the show are going to have heard me talk about Notion probably every other episode. So a few days to a week before each trip, I make a copy of this template and tailor it to that specific journey. Now this pick-pack serves a few functions.
00:02:25
Speaker
it gets me to walk through the trip considering what's absolutely necessary, which ensures that I don't overpack, plus it reduces any anxiety about forgetting anything. And I do have different pick-pack templates for family vacations versus solo work trips. So for this trip, reviewing the pick-pack helped me realize I was going to need to bring a lot of documents, which meant keeping the other contents of my messenger bag leaner than usual.
Managing Energy and Stress
00:02:50
Speaker
So let's talk about powering circuits. I want to revisit this notion of a circuit. Every circuit requires a power source, and in this case it's me. And it's important to right size your battery to the task at hand. I wouldn't power my kids talking stuffed animal with a deep cycle marine battery, just like I can't start a boat motor with a AAA.
00:03:09
Speaker
And in the case of this trip, I knew my battery was going to have to contend with being awake for 24 plus straight hours on the first day of the trip. This was due to a 5 a.m. flight, West Coast time change, multiple meetings and dinner plans for that first evening with no chance of a nap in between and lots of driving. So for me, the biggest energy waste was worry and anxiety that leads to frantic movement, increased heart rate and unnecessary exhaustion, both mentally and physically.
00:03:36
Speaker
Which leads me to tip number two, get places early. 15 minutes early is too late. It may seem counterintuitive to sacrifice an extra hour of sleep by waking up at 2 a.m. when 3 a.m. might be fine. But I always get to the airport an hour earlier than normal. It helps alleviate the stress of minor delays in the drive there and getting through airport security. This lack of time stress allows me to better go with the flow and start the day in a slow, steady, relaxed pace that I can carry through the day.
00:04:06
Speaker
Now that's not to say I did things slowly, the key here is efficiency. I reduced the variables, paying attention for opportunities. It's being alert rather than having my head buried in my phone, like seeing the TSA agents preparing to open another security line and moving over. It's having all of my travel info available quickly on my phone in case plans need to be altered on the fly.
Maintaining Connections on the Road
00:04:28
Speaker
And a quick note on jet lag, it really is overhyped, especially when you're not going over an ocean. Three hours is easy. Just get right on the local time and don't give yourself the excuse. Owning the ask. There's so much joy in catching up with old friends. It's easy to take for granted how growing older impacts our ability to keep in close contact with friends. We see them less because of all of our additional responsibilities. And in many cases, physical distance.
00:04:55
Speaker
So, whenever I'm traveling, regardless of the reason, one of the first things I do is I check in with any friends in the area to gauge their schedules. I put my trip on their radar. And I feel like it's important to only ask. And this is a phrase I picked up from a recent episode of John Akoff's newsletter.
00:05:12
Speaker
I'll do whatever I can to make meeting up as easy as possible for whoever I'm seeing, even if that means commuting out of my way to their part of the city or creating that 24-hour day at the start of my trip. Those sacrifices? They're always worth it. There's no problem in balancing work and play even on a business trip.
00:05:30
Speaker
although you never want to lose sight of who's paying the bill. I'll never expense a meal taken when visiting with a friend. In the case of visiting family by tacking on an additional day of the trip, I make sure to credit back that percentage of time against the larger fixed receipts in my expense report, which would be a car rental, gas, airport parking, for example.
Optimizing Travel with Technology
00:05:49
Speaker
So let's talk about the third tip, mapping it out. When a trip has me cover a wide enough area, I'll actually create a special Google map for the trip. You can create a Google map layer, and that allows you to drop pins for each of your meetings, as well as key locations such as the airport, car rental counters, etc.
00:06:08
Speaker
Once that's done, I'll start timing out the journey between each location to help ensure I don't pack things too tightly. This was especially helpful in a city with horrible traffic like LA, where every single trip had me slowing to a crawl for some part of it, regardless of what time it was.
00:06:25
Speaker
So back on my Google map, I'm gonna then zoom in along the path between destinations, marking down any opportunities for maybe sightseeing, picking up souvenirs for the family. And in this case, it was fitting in a quick stop off at Downtown Disneyland right as it opened, earning me some bonus points when I got home.
00:06:43
Speaker
Mapping out the trip also helps identify opportunities for better routes between clients and to adjust my itinerary when a client rescheduled one of my meetings the day before the trip. And it also allows me to identify stretch goals, which were smaller potential clients and vendors that if time allowed, I could attempt to drop in and say hi. Because of my planning, I actually was able to fit in two of these drop ins along the trip.
00:07:08
Speaker
I also like to pin coffee shops or good restaurants that are near my destinations. Since I always plan on being very early for each meeting, it's important to have a place identified. This saves me having to waste too much time running around neighborhoods I don't know, and allows me to recharge, catch up on messages, and review my notes for the meeting ahead.
Benefits of Red-Eye Flights
00:07:27
Speaker
Lastly, let's talk about this red eye.
00:07:29
Speaker
When going from west coast to east, I don't mind the red eye. Your choice of return flight is effectively you leave early afternoon and get home late at night local time, or leave late at night and get home early in the next morning local time. Either choice has a bad side to it, but I'll almost always choose the latter since it gives me a few more hours to enjoy a full day on the west coast without too much impact on what's going on back home.
00:07:52
Speaker
This decision meant an extra eight hours of family in Phoenix who I don't get to visit often. And yeah, dealing with crappy sleep on a redeye is a lot easier when I keep the reasons for it top of mind. I went into the flight thankful it existed, giving me a fun full day with my family. I also find that the late night flight out of a West Coast airport tends to be lower stress, as there's a lot less of a crowd at the airport, and most of that crowd is likely on one of the same redeyes that I am.
00:08:17
Speaker
I'm going to end episode 57 with a quote that covers Jack Shafer's friendship formula, which I actually learned about from the podcaster Jordan Harbinger's We Bit Wiser newsletter.
The Friendship Formula
00:08:27
Speaker
It's his comments that follow the formula. Friendship equals proximity plus frequency plus duration plus intensity.
00:08:35
Speaker
When we're young, these elements are built into our lives at school, on athletic teams, and often even inside of our families. But as adults, the formula is much more difficult to apply, but just as important. And with that, have a great day.
00:08:58
Speaker
If you feel that Chris dealt with it, I'd appreciate your support of the show by sharing it with someone who might benefit. Ratings on your favorite podcast player are also helpful in growing the audience. Visit chriscroiter.com for free downloadable PDFs with notes and resources from today's episode, sign up for the CDWY mailing list, or to send in your problems or requests for future shows. That's C-H-R-I-S-K-R-E-U-T-E-R.com, or use the link in the show notes.