Travel Resilience

If the meeting matters, so does how you arrive.

Organisations can spend thousands sending someone across the world to negotiate, lead, present or make high-value decisions. Yet surprisingly little attention is paid to the condition in which their brain and body arrive.

I’ve been a frequent long-haul flyer all my life — growing up in New Zealand, travelling widely and working on global projects. I know both versions of arrival: stepping off an ultra-long-haul flight feeling remarkably good, and being so jet-lagged I could barely lift my head from the pillow.

The problem isn’t simply tiredness. Long-haul travel creates travel fatigue, while rapidly crossing time zones puts our internal body clock (circadian rhythm) out of alignment with the environmental cues around us. That’s jet lag.

Sleep is disrupted, energy can fall, focus declines and decision-making can suffer.

And then we ask people to think clearly, communicate well, regulate emotions and make high-value decisions.

That’s a performance risk.

I’ve developed individual jet-lag adaptation plans for Facebook engineers, CEOs, journalists and frequent long-haul travellers, alongside my wider work helping organisations build travel resilience.

The good news is that we can manage adaptation — but there is no universal jet-lag hack. The science is in getting the body into the best possible shape before travel, then knowing which lever to pull, and when, to help the body clock adjust.

That’s why travel resilience needs to be personal. It’s about anticipating the physiological challenge, adapting effectively and protecting the capacity to perform.

The goal is to help the traveller arrive with the capacity to perform at their best when it matters.

If international travel is part of how your people do business, connect with me.

And if you’d like to learn more, join me for my 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐛𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐫: 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞: 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐄𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐀𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐙𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬 — 18 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫, 11𝐚𝐦 𝐂𝐄𝐓 / 10𝐚𝐦 𝐔𝐊.

#travelresilience
#jetlag
#performancewithcare