If we live truly, we shall see truly. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Not everyone wants to travel the world, but most people can identify at least one place in the world they’d like to visit before they die. Where is that place for you, and what will you do to make sure you get there? Author: Chris Guillebeau)
When I read this prompt my first thought was that I don’t want to go anywhere! Twenty-four hours later I still think that is my answer. I can think of some exotic (and not so exotic) places that I haven’t been that I might want to see but they do not seem sufficiently interesting for the effort necessary to get there.
My attitude is likely the result of spending at least 25 years traveling for business, much of which was done a city a day. Actually, the more foreign reality for me is the experience of staying home day after day, sleeping in my own bed and preparing my own meals. I remember my sense of wonder during the first few years after I stopped traveling intensively. I would marvel at daily life, mumbling “So this is what people do who come home from work every day at the same time.” It was during that time that I became aware of how strange my adult life had been or how far removed it has been from mainstream experience.
I belong to that strange nomadic, subculture that George Clooney modeled in “Up in the Air”. Our job duties were different but the lifestyle was the same. I see now that it was a very unique subculture with its own rituals, ceremonies, membership badges, uniforms and status tokens. I was privileged to be allowed to join “the club” in the early 1970s when very few women traveled for business. As a matter of fact, it was a time when very few women had fulltime professional careers, other than in nursing and education. This reality was brought home to me when I questioned how it was that the Hertz car rental personnel at the Detroit airport (DTW) remembered my name from week to week.Their reply was, “Do you know how few women rent cars?”
Early on I observed that this nomadic life style was either a good fit for a person or very toxic—with little middle ground. I watched men leave the company who were very talented and competent at the consulting work we did but who could not adapt to the traveling lifestyle. The organizational culture, lifestyle and working conditions became a more important factor in job fit and job satisfaction that professional qualifications, aptitudes or skills. Observing this difference in job fit, I began to reflect on how and why the nomadic lifestyle of the business consultant worked well for some but not for others.
There is a wonderful simplicity to a life that is contained in one suitcase, four walls and briefcase. The simplicity facilitates a single-minded focus on work that makes high levels of productivity possible. This was especially true in the world before universal connectivity—before cell phones, laptops, WI-FI, streaming video, streaming audio, Skype and all the other low cost ways that we can stay in touch with our personal world. I also got a lot of reading done during those years. My metric for flight lengths was the number of books I could read during air time—one-book flights, two-book flights and the rare 2+ flights. My idea of extreme deprivation was being stuck at 30,000 feet with nothing to read but the inflight magazine! Occasionally, I would have an interesting seat mate but usually my flight followed 8 hours of speaking and was my only regeneration time before another 8 hours of speaking the next day. So I didn’t want to talk with anyone—no matter how interesting!
Some of the other characteristics that I think contribute to a successful nomadic life as a business traveler are high need for novelty, the ability to adapt rapidly to changing conditions, comfort with unpredictability, openness to new experience, curiosity, and an ability to survive periods of depersonalization. I’ve often observed that being self-employed as an itinerant consultant has been the best way for me to utilize personality traits, character strengths and talents/abilities that were often found to be problematical in a traditional corporate position. The same factors that were identified as “what’s wrong with Pamela” performance appraisals soon became “the reason Pamela is successful is…” simply by changing my work environment.
