Hi Travel! Remember Me?

Last week was offi­cial­ly one year since my last major trip. I have fond mem­o­ries of a con­fer­ence keynote in Las Vegas fol­lowed by a work­shop in St. Louis.

I’ve been inspired by how com­pa­nies have piv­ot­ed their strate­gies. Even more impres­sive is how humans have adapt­ed to find new ways to thrive with­out being close to each other.

And I real­ized how much I miss trav­el. As I was dri­ving by the Van­cou­ver air­port recent­ly, I had the need to go to The Fair­mont Hotel. I just want­ed to sit in the lounge, have a meal, and look at the airplanes.

No doubt that I love air­ports. And I love trav­el — expe­ri­enc­ing new envi­ron­ments and new peo­ple, new beliefs and new challenges.

So, when peo­ple ask me if I’m glad I don’t have to trav­el any­more, I answer with hes­i­ta­tion. While I did trav­el most weeks in the year — and my body has thanked me for not being jet lagged so much — I know that my mind and spir­it real­ly enjoyed the adven­tures. And, time in an air­port and on a plane is time to myself: time to think, to focus and be high­ly pro­duc­tive. It’s where I do some of my best strate­gic think­ing and plan­ning, writ­ing and reflecting.

They were part of my resilience rit­u­als which I’ve had to rebuild in dif­fer­ent ways.

I miss you, trav­el. And, in the future, I like­ly won’t trav­el as much as I did before and sus­pect — based on how well we’ve learned to run vir­tu­al meet­ings — that half to three quar­ters of the meet­ings, we used to do in per­son, will prob­a­bly stay that way. They’re incred­i­bly pro­duc­tive and save notable amounts of time and money.

And when we do meet face-to-face, those expe­ri­ences will be rich­er than before — won­der­ful for deep­en­ing rela­tion­ships, for cama­raderie and the excite­ment of cel­e­brat­ing vic­to­ries togeth­er. Pop­ping a bot­tle of cham­pagne by your­self is just not as much fun!

Oh trav­el, I miss you!

The Chal­lenge

• When the world opens up, again, how do you envi­sion it look­ing for you and your company?
• Is there any­thing, out of this last year’s expe­ri­ence, that you would change or take with you?

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