“It was three months ago when I realized, that I had started to develop sleeping problems. My head was hurting, thoughts were constantly circulating around work, and my eyes couldn’t stay shut. My colleague, ten yearsmy senior, told me he’s been there. The never ending stress of wanting to do a good job, preferably better than anyone else. You want to be ahead of your competition, so you sacrifice all your energy and time and it seems to work just fine in the beginning, it’s years later that your body tells you, you need to slow down.
I figured, the main reason why I was tired all the time was probably the constant business travels I had to do. From Pune to Chennai to Delhi, or across the south Asia to Pune, jet lag got me good. Yet, when I told a few friends of mine about the stress of having to constantly travel through the country, going to meetings or seminars, they thought I was exaggerating. You get to see all those places, they said, whats there to complain?

First I thought, they don’t understand it, for one, I don’t really get to see the places I visit. All I see is my hotel room, conference rooms or exhibition halls filled with other sales people like myself. But after thinking about it some more, they had a point. Maybe I was doing something wrong. What if I turned a regular business trip into a weekend trip?

So I asked my colleague three months ago, what did he do to get his stress relieve, and his answer was simple. He went fishing at sea nearby his house. He said that once a month he would rent a boat, sometimes alone sometimes with his two little girls, and spend time relaxing while fishing. I asked him whether he would catch a lot, but he just laughed and said, “that’s not important anymore”.
Well, that sounded great to me, but since I don’t live nearby the sea and honestly know nothing about fishing, I simply waited for my boss to notify me of my next business trip, and plan something fun this time It was Bangalore, a place I had been to a few times already. The first thing I changed was the place where I was going to stay, instead of a hotel, I booked a room in a bed and breakfast uptown, that made my stay already more comfortable. I was basically surrounded by locals instead of salesmen. After work was done, evening hours, I went downtown to a South-Indian restaurant, the food was fantastic, and the owner of the place was nice enough to give me a bunch of suggestions, where to visit places tourists usually don’t go to I was able to stay an extra day, so in the morning I visited the farmers market, the variety of selection overwhelmed me for a moment. But I never had so much fun on a business trip before.
Three months ago is when I learned the benefits of combining work related travels, with simply traveling. Soon enough it helped me to work more effectively, get less stressed, and of course, no more jet lags.”