Over the last years, I gave up on having an apartment and started traveling the world with 64 things. Today´s episode is about how and why I travel so often.
Video Transcript
One way I try to make the most out of my time at the airport is by arriving early. It might sound counterintuitive but because I fly so much, with most carriers I have access to their lounges, independently from what I’m flying – economy or business.
I like to arrive early because I just don’t like the stress of being late for a flight and it’s hard to predict how long it’s going to take me to go through security at airports. I like to come in early, often two hours or even more before my flight.
After being in Europe for roughly forty hours, I’m already on my way back to North America. This time I’m flying to Toronto for an EO conference.
Why I travel so often
Last year it’s been pretty insane. In total, I was on roughly 120 flights. So barely two days in the same place. And that brings up the question – why do I travel so much?
1) Traveling for business
Over the past two years, I’ve been involved in three different businesses and they happen to be in very different places. One of them being in Miami, the other one between Zurich and Zug, and the third one – Sendtask – not really having any given location where we have an office but we fly into different locations every now and then for our team retreats.
2) Meeting new people and experiencing their culture
There’s a second aspect which I like about traveling – being exposed to new culture. All this change also led to a bunch of uncomfortable situations where I was tired. And so my goal for this quarter is to travel less frequently. I’ll try to stick to the same place for at least seven days. Right now it’s a bit of an exception because I was just in San Francisco for DFINITY, came back here for two days to be with Elena for her birthday and now I’m going to Toronto for a conference.
I’m only going to be there, I think, for four days. But then, after coming back to Zurich, I’m going to be in Asia for two weeks. So while it still happens that I travel too frequently and I get jet lag, I get to meet lots of very interesting and amazing people. With that, I’ll now go and pack my stuff and head to my gate for my flight to Toronto.
Surprise, surprise – it’s cold in Canada!
I’m going to get ready for this 8-hour flight to Toronto. It looks like Lufthansa is making good progress rolling out their new delivery. My plane still has the old one. There’s an MD – 11 Lufthansa cargo plane right in front of us. There goes the Air China plane. Then next up is probably the Lufthansa cargo plane and then it should be us.
***
I’m currently at the gate and you can see the snow trucks working on the tracks. Pretty icy out here, about 4:00 p.m. local time. And the first thing I’m going to do is head over to an Apple store. For the last two days, the space bar on my MacBook Pro has been broken. I can’t really use my MacBook at the time. So we’ll go over to an Apple store and see if they can fix it.
***
Two surprises. One is my international roaming card doesn’t seem to work here. So I had to buy a data package which hasn’t happened in a while. I tried to buy a local SIM but it was more expensive than just roaming with my Swiss SIM card. I usually use a UK SIM card that gives me free roaming almost anywhere in the world.
And second is they don’t seem to have Uber. Now, I think that’s connected to the weather or to the fact that we’re at the airport. Just trying to figure out whether I want to use – a taxi or there’s a train. Just stacking options up right now.
The digital nomad combo: Uber+AirBnB+MacBook Pro
Just left my cab and this is definitely winter, even the streets are covered in snow. Couldn’t take the train because it would have taken 40 minutes of waiting so I took a cab. I also realized with the amount that I travel very often I just use Uber. I just think it’s so convenient. Also, the fact that I can just rent off of AirBnB without checking any other rental sites, makes it usually my first priority.
***
I’m just realizing how rare it is for me to be inside of shopping centers. I do all of my shopping online. It’s all so unorganized, I wish I could search for the Apple Store. Just found someone who was able to give me directions. The Apple store closes at 7 and now it’s 6:00. Hopefully, they still have people working at the Genius Bar.
I’m so dependent on my MacBook. By far the easiest way for me to write long-form text, kind of the hub for all my communication and Slack, and everything that I do. And here’s the Apple store.
You never know what’s around the corner (or the globe)
Ok, I’m back outside. This reminds me just how easy travel has become. I can travel 1/3 around the globe without even checking the weather report which is pretty amazing, I mean…
***
I hope I’m going to be fine walking over to my AirBnB. It’s also these little surprises – going somewhere and realizing that it’s still winter when you were just starting summer. That makes travel so much fun. I’ll switch this off, see that I’m going to make it to the AirBnB, dry my shoes somehow.
The EO Global Leadership Conference
Probably just going to work tonight if no one’s up for dinner, call it an early night, get up early tomorrow morning, get stuff done and then be ready for GLC.
GLC is a great conference, pretty amazing what they put together for these few days. My first experience was two years ago when we had it in Bangkok. I think 1,600 members came together, I’ve never even been to an event that was organized for that amount of people. They organized beautiful dinners and social events in the evening. During the day, I can just never get enough of meeting people. All these entrepreneurs, they all have such an amazing story that I could probably talk to.
So super excited for tomorrow, today not so excited. I’m just going to make it back to the AirBnB, get some work done, upload this and then talk to you guys soon!
You can listen to the audio version here:
