*This was a Diary Entry. I wrote it a couple of months back and I edited it to make it into an article.
I am at my usual table and chair after a long long time. And now I am thinking of how my days have gone by.
Prior to this I traveled the West and the South of the country for around 4 weeks. Sometimes working out of cafes, backpacking hostels, bars, cottages, hilltops and beaches where I met a a multitude of people. A Bartender from Tacoma, Washington, A Cherry Picker working in Canada from the North of Spain, a 50-years-old Frenchman from Basque Country, a vagabond from Mumbai, a French NatGeo photographer of Japanese-Swedish ancestry, a Guatemalan Entrepreneur, a Swiss anthropology student, an old Tamil woman, a Railway Construction Worker from Allahabad working in the Konkan to name a few.
And as I reflect on the travels and people I met, I feel world is so varied and everyone is trying to make some sense out of it. And I don’t have to necessarily understand everything that goes around. I should be increasingly observant and that’s it. No more, no less.
As a startup founder, one doesn’t always need a desk/office to work. You can work if you have a sound internet connection. Sometimes you are looking at the setting sun at the horizon -over a pint of beer- writing an email. Sometimes you get a client call while you are checking in into a backpacking hostel. Sometimes you sit on a hilltop looking at the clear starry night and reading necessary articles on LinkedIn. Sometimes you sit at a cafe and look at people going on with their everyday lives.
Essentially, travel gives me an extra angle to look at things. Same happens when I use everyday commute. Often I look into other people’s phone screen(that is indeed a bad habit) to know how they pass their time. I see how they put the mic of their headset between their lips, and can talk to their loved ones although there are enough people around them(I find it difficult to talk on the phone, if there is anyone around).
For me travel is liberating. I can be whoever I want to be. Wear whatever I want to. Carry my world in a 21L backpack. A solid round neck, shorts, sports shoes and that’s it.
I understand that tangibles like calls, emails, meetings, sales pitch etc are necessary. But what is also necessary is the retrospection of all those little things/efforts as to how can they be made better. People in sales would agree to me. Only one out of 20–50 calls/pitches materializes, and then you are left with an empty feeling, do I work only 20 minutes a day! When the work is only essentially 20 minutes.
I always ask my friends as to how many times in a day, they feel like hitting their head against the wall? Many of them find that a weird question. And many of them open up and say a couple of times everyday. And in close corners, I feel that umpteen times.
And that goes away when I travel. I am cool and composed. Working nevertheless. I have found work like this to be very soothing and often more fruitful. This might not be true for everyone but it is indeed true for me.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.