🏃 Working on the Go

One of the most routinely challenging parts of my job is also one of the parts that I enjoy the most: travel.

I fly over 30 times a year. I'm getting close to a level of travel confidence (arrogance?) that's sure to get me in trouble one of these days. A few weeks ago, I got to my gate seven seconds before my boarding group was called, which felt like a rare, precious accomplishment. You haven't lived until you just walk up to your gate and...walk right onto the plane.

I travel a lot because it's required for my job. I feel good at what I do when I'm on the road, in part because a central part of my role as a nonprofit CEO is cultivating relationships. In a very real sense, the only thing I actually do is build relationships. Everything else is scaffolding.

I'm an unabashed remote work enthusiast, but there are certain things that are fundamentally more successful in person, with cups of coffee steaming on the table in front of you and caffeinated ideas flowing. Relationships with donors, with students, with stakeholders...some echelon of the community building with each constituency just requires face-to-face interaction.

In-Flight Productivity

And so, I travel, and it should surprise exactly no one to learn that I think regularly about the nature of productivity as I do.

Flights are a good example. There's a special type of creative thinking that can happen at 30,000 feet, where movements and potential distractions are definitionally limited. Of course, ubiquitous wifi has pierced a 787-sized hole in that precious space, with an expectation that travelers are always online, save perhaps the moments of takeoff and landing.

But even with connectivity to the ground below more or less sustained, I find flights to be semi-magical for productivity. I listen to the same music (a two-hour Essential Mix by Flux Pavilion—thanksforasking), drink the same things (black coffee and a seltzer), and use the in-flight interval for a specific, often pre-selected set of tasks that require some modicum of deep thought.

With hundreds of thousands of miles under my belt, it's hard to tell whether this is more nature or nurture. Is there something about the very structure of travel that leads me towards more creative and exciting thinking, or is it a learned behavior?

A recent conversation with a teammate sheds a bit of light. She mentioned that she finds herself working long hours on the road without minding at all that she's doing so. At home, the kids are demanding and the creature comforts abound. On the road, what's another email or call after "working hours?" Implicitly or explicitly, that time has already been given away towards non-routine. Why not lean in and just embrace the tasks that need to get done while the routine is on pause?

Saved by Habits

There are, of course, challenges to trying to keep up with everything while you are on the go. The emails, Slacks, and texts can stack up while you are immersed in whatever conversations the trip has manifested. This is where deeply rooted habits can keep things from slipping through the cracks. For all my faults, I am quite good at closing loops, in no small part because I've been honing that practice for quite some time now.

If I see an email come through that I don't have time to respond to but that necessitates a response, I know that I will flag it and I know that I will come back to it later to respond. If I think of something that has to get done, I know that I will automatically add it to my to-do list with a date and priority assigned. I know these things because I have been building them for years, so I don't even have to consider whether or not they should be done.

It's an imperfect system, but it's functional. It makes it so that even in the cycle of activities and engagements that come with being on the move, I don't lose sight of the things that actually have to get done when I get home.

Grace in Travel

I've written in these pages before about the role of grace, which is not my strong suit. I struggle when I'm behind. I struggle with accruing tasks that I don't have the time to get to. I struggle when I lose motivation while I'm in the middle of chaotic but lovely work travel, and I have to admit to myself that I don't have it in me to cross off more things from the to-do list when I have a few minutes on the train.

Then again, sometimes it's just necessary to not do anything "productive." On my last flight home, I watched 2 1/2 episodes of Pluribus. It was delightful (because I allowed myself to not work) yet haunting (because Pluribus).

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Part of the mindfulness practice I've been building over the years is learning to acknowledge that sometimes, something just is. You don't always have to judge it or break it down into component pieces; you just acknowledge it and take the next breath.

Work travel—with all its creativity, insanity, and imbalance—falls squarely into that category. I don't pretend to fully understand it, but I've learned to just embrace it, nonetheless.

Here's to the next trip and whatever I make along the way.

Movingly Yours,

—Rye