The short version
- A dense travel schedule maximises meetings held and minimises meetings that matter. The two are not the same measure.
- Two meetings a day leaves room for the second conversation, which is where most of the value is.
- Constraints imposed from outside are more effective than discipline, because discipline negotiates and a constraint does not.
- The same logic applies to a working week. Most calendars are full for the same reason most travel schedules are.
I went to Tokyo for work and took a baby with me. The schedule I would normally run, five or six things in a day plus dinner, was obviously impossible, so I cut it to two. The trip was better. Not more relaxed, better, in the sense that more useful things came out of it. That is an uncomfortable result to sit with, because it suggests the way I had been travelling for years was optimised for looking productive rather than for being productive.
What does a packed schedule actually cost?
Recovery time, which is where synthesis happens. A meeting produces raw material and the thinking happens afterwards, usually within the hour. If the next meeting starts in ten minutes, that thinking does not happen, and you arrive home with six sets of notes and no conclusions.
It also removes the ability to follow anything. The most valuable outcome of a good meeting is frequently a suggestion to talk to someone else, and a packed calendar makes that impossible to act on until it has gone cold. On this trip the introductions that came out of the first conversations were acted on while they were still warm, because there was room to act on them.
Two trip shapes, and what each is good for.
| Breadth trip | Depth trip | |
|---|---|---|
| Meetings per day | Five or six | Two |
| Objective | Exposure and coverage | Understanding and relationship |
| Best format | Conference, show floor | Client visit, partner visit |
| What produces the value | Volume of contacts | The second hour of a conversation |
| Main failure | Nothing gets followed up | Fewer people met |
Why is an external constraint more effective than discipline?
Because discipline negotiates and a constraint does not. Everyone who has tried to protect calendar time knows that protected time is the first thing that yields when a request arrives, since the cost of yielding is invisible and the cost of refusing is a slightly awkward message. A constraint you cannot argue with removes the negotiation entirely.
This is why the trip worked. I was not being disciplined about my schedule, I was physically unable to run the old one. That is a much more reliable mechanism than intention, and it is worth engineering deliberately rather than waiting for life to impose it.
What did the extra room actually produce?
Longer conversations with fewer people, which is a better trade than it sounds. A ninety-minute conversation is not a thirty-minute conversation with more content in it. Different things get said after the first hour, because the polite phase is over and both people have run out of prepared material.
It also produced observation time. A large part of why I travel is to see how things are done somewhere else, and that requires walking around rather than moving between buildings. A store like the one in this photograph tells you a lot about staffing, packaging and how a return is handled, and none of it is available from a meeting room.
The third thing is that I wrote things down while they were still specific. Notes written the same afternoon contain details. Notes written on the flight home contain themes, and themes are what you already believed before you left.
Does this generalise to a normal working week?
Yes, and for the same reason. Most calendars are full because a full calendar is legible to other people as work, while unstructured thinking time is not. Anyone looking at a schedule with gaps in it assumes availability, so the gaps get filled by whoever asks first rather than by whatever matters most.
The version I now defend is a small number of committed things and a lot of unallocated time, with the understanding that the unallocated time is what the committed things are for. That is a difficult thing to explain and an easy thing to feel the results of.
Notes written the same afternoon contain details. Notes written on the flight home contain themes, and themes are what you already believed before you left.
What is the honest downside?
You meet fewer people, and occasionally that costs something real. A trip with two meetings a day covers less ground than a trip with six, and if the objective is genuinely breadth then density is correct. Conference weeks are the obvious case, where the whole point is volume of exposure.
So the rule I use is about what the trip is for. Breadth trips get packed. Depth trips get two things a day. What I was doing before was running depth trips on a breadth schedule, which is how you end up flying a long way to have six conversations that could have been calls.
Related: when a trip beats a year of calls, what presence is actually made of and the conversation after the agenda.
Frequently asked questions
How many meetings should you schedule on a business trip?
It depends on what the trip is for. Breadth trips aimed at exposure justify a packed schedule. Depth trips aimed at understanding a client or partner work better at about two a day, because the value arrives after the first hour of a conversation.
Why does a packed travel schedule produce less?
Because it removes the recovery time where synthesis happens and makes it impossible to follow up on introductions while they are still warm. You come home with more notes and fewer conclusions.
Why is protected calendar time so hard to keep?
Because the cost of yielding it is invisible and the cost of refusing a request is immediate and social. Discipline negotiates. An external constraint that cannot be argued with is far more reliable than intention.
Is there value in unstructured time during work travel?
Considerable. Walking around a city, a shop or an office tells you things about how work is done that no meeting will, and observation is a large part of why travelling for business is worth the cost at all.
When should you write up a trip?
The same day, before the details evaporate. Notes written later contain themes rather than specifics, and themes tend to be what you already believed before you travelled.
Does this apply to normal working weeks?
Yes. Calendars fill because a full calendar reads as work to everyone else, while thinking time reads as availability. Fewer commitments with genuinely unallocated time between them produces more, and it is harder to explain than it is to feel.
Sources
- Chua Network delivery data across 8 client accounts (internal fact bank)
- Chua Network engagement records, anonymized (internal experience bank)
