Against travel
I have been traveling quite a bit this year, and I am sick of it. So sick, that I want to organize my thoughts on why I am against travel.
Not that all travel is bad, mind you. Some travel is unavoidable, such as for medical treatment, to deliver goods, or to visit close relatives. What I am talking about is discretionary travel, and, in particular, discretionary business travel. This is for meetings, conferences, and retreats, where the purpose is to go somewhere, meet a bunch of people, talk until late at night, sleep little, and then go home tired. This sort of travel is not strictly necessary, and, as I argue below, can actually be bad. There is also the entire category of leisure travel, which I am not discussing at all, though I suspect this category is dying a natural death, with the restrictions on air travel, the high cost of fuel, and the growing trend of cocooning.
Before I launch into my reasons why travel is bad, let me first say why travel is good. Travel, as the cliche goes, expands the mind. It lets people see new ways of doing things, and, the juxtaposition of the new with the old often stimulates thinking. Moreover, there is much to be said for face-to-face contact. Even computer networking researchers, who are more cyber-linked than most, get something out of a face-to-face conversation that email and voice communication do not provide.
Yet, despite these positives, one aspect of the world has changed, which makes the negatives, which I will describe next, outweigh the positives. And this is the rise of the Internet. With the web, videoconferencing, webcams, and collaborative tools like blogs and wikis, communicating with others around the world, and even working with them, has become far simpler. Perhaps this will obviate travel?
But why bother? Whats wrong with travel in the first place?
In short, the main problem with travel is that it disrupts your routine. By removing you from the context in which you're most productive, it diminishes productivity, and, worse, when you return, you have to work extra hard to make up. As a rule of thumb, for every day of travel, you can expect to spend a day-and-a-half to two days making up. So, a week's trip really means that you are not back to your routine for two-and-a-half to three weeks. One trip a month, and you can see that your equilibrium state is indeed disequilibrium!
Don't believe me? Look at the pocketful of business cards you got on your last trip out. Remember all the things you said you were going to follow up on? Chances are pretty good that you never found the time to folow up. Worse, for many of these cards, you aren't quite sure why you have them in the first place.
Once in a while, when I am in a fit of diligence, I go over my cards and contact the people I said I would and follow up. Nineteen times out of twenty, I get no reply. Why? The other person was busy - traveling! This is symptomatic of a disequilibrium equilibrium.
Besides this mental disruption, which is hardly conducive to thought, let alone productivity, a second problem with travel is that it causes real harm to the environment. Airplanes fly on jet fuel, which is just a high-class way of saying kerosene. And that causes a lot of pollution. When the planes were grounded after 9/11, people found that the skies were bluer, and pollution was much reduced! Airplane travel has consequences, and thats a fact.
So, where does this leave me? Should I stay home and not attend any conferences ever? Or plant trees for every trip I take, to balance the carbon load?
I think that the answer is to set the bar on travel very high. There has to be a solid, justifiable reason. And, even with a good reason, one ought not to travel more than, say, five or six times a year. Certainly, I am planning to stick to this. Since I made my resolution in July, I have traveled only twice. I think that this has tremendously improved my groundedness and productivity: I can highly recommend it.
Has anyone else tried this? Do let me know your comments.
Not that all travel is bad, mind you. Some travel is unavoidable, such as for medical treatment, to deliver goods, or to visit close relatives. What I am talking about is discretionary travel, and, in particular, discretionary business travel. This is for meetings, conferences, and retreats, where the purpose is to go somewhere, meet a bunch of people, talk until late at night, sleep little, and then go home tired. This sort of travel is not strictly necessary, and, as I argue below, can actually be bad. There is also the entire category of leisure travel, which I am not discussing at all, though I suspect this category is dying a natural death, with the restrictions on air travel, the high cost of fuel, and the growing trend of cocooning.
Before I launch into my reasons why travel is bad, let me first say why travel is good. Travel, as the cliche goes, expands the mind. It lets people see new ways of doing things, and, the juxtaposition of the new with the old often stimulates thinking. Moreover, there is much to be said for face-to-face contact. Even computer networking researchers, who are more cyber-linked than most, get something out of a face-to-face conversation that email and voice communication do not provide.
Yet, despite these positives, one aspect of the world has changed, which makes the negatives, which I will describe next, outweigh the positives. And this is the rise of the Internet. With the web, videoconferencing, webcams, and collaborative tools like blogs and wikis, communicating with others around the world, and even working with them, has become far simpler. Perhaps this will obviate travel?
But why bother? Whats wrong with travel in the first place?
In short, the main problem with travel is that it disrupts your routine. By removing you from the context in which you're most productive, it diminishes productivity, and, worse, when you return, you have to work extra hard to make up. As a rule of thumb, for every day of travel, you can expect to spend a day-and-a-half to two days making up. So, a week's trip really means that you are not back to your routine for two-and-a-half to three weeks. One trip a month, and you can see that your equilibrium state is indeed disequilibrium!
Don't believe me? Look at the pocketful of business cards you got on your last trip out. Remember all the things you said you were going to follow up on? Chances are pretty good that you never found the time to folow up. Worse, for many of these cards, you aren't quite sure why you have them in the first place.
Once in a while, when I am in a fit of diligence, I go over my cards and contact the people I said I would and follow up. Nineteen times out of twenty, I get no reply. Why? The other person was busy - traveling! This is symptomatic of a disequilibrium equilibrium.
Besides this mental disruption, which is hardly conducive to thought, let alone productivity, a second problem with travel is that it causes real harm to the environment. Airplanes fly on jet fuel, which is just a high-class way of saying kerosene. And that causes a lot of pollution. When the planes were grounded after 9/11, people found that the skies were bluer, and pollution was much reduced! Airplane travel has consequences, and thats a fact.
So, where does this leave me? Should I stay home and not attend any conferences ever? Or plant trees for every trip I take, to balance the carbon load?
I think that the answer is to set the bar on travel very high. There has to be a solid, justifiable reason. And, even with a good reason, one ought not to travel more than, say, five or six times a year. Certainly, I am planning to stick to this. Since I made my resolution in July, I have traveled only twice. I think that this has tremendously improved my groundedness and productivity: I can highly recommend it.
Has anyone else tried this? Do let me know your comments.
posted by S. Keshav at 8:53 PM
2 Comments:
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
I enjoyed reading "Against Travel." Indeed, I think I travel a bit too much, and I don't even travel as much as many others do. The feeling of not being productive during trips is so overwhelming, and the constant battle between tuning into conference talks and revising the most recent paper is quite usual.
I am not sure if the Internet can bridge people very effectively as of now, though. Not too many academics log onto either MSN, google talk, iChat AV or Skype. I sometimes get onto Skype and no colleagues are online. Not too many academic researchers maintain blogs, wikis, and so on, so that one can comment and discuss issues. Not to mention video conferencing over the latest generation of NATs and firewalls. Frequently, everyone depends on emails, so much so that it decreases productivity, not the other way around. In that sense, probably it would be best to travel to the same place and discuss in person.
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