2021-08-26_How_to_Lower_the_Stress_of_Travel
00:00:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:03.520 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while
00:00:08.280 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:11.440 | My name is Josh Ruchites.
00:00:12.440 | I am your host.
00:00:13.440 | Today on the show, I want to share with you how to make travel less exhausting.
00:00:22.080 | Now that's the title that I'm choosing to go with, but frankly, I could expand this
00:00:27.600 | title in a number of different directions.
00:00:29.220 | How to make life less exhausting.
00:00:32.200 | Let me begin with a story as to what stimulated me to think about this.
00:00:39.340 | My family and I, my wife and our four young children, ages seven and under, are currently
00:00:47.320 | on a tour de monde.
00:00:49.360 | We're traveling the world.
00:00:51.280 | We have been traveling for several months now.
00:00:54.120 | We started in Mexico.
00:00:56.620 | From Mexico, we moved to Costa Rica.
00:00:59.480 | From Costa Rica, we moved to the United States for a few weeks, then from the United States
00:01:02.620 | to Europe.
00:01:03.620 | We spent some time in Portugal.
00:01:06.280 | Then we flew to Malta, spent several weeks on Malta, then back to Portugal.
00:01:11.920 | In Portugal, I bought a car, and we have since traveled across the Iberian Peninsula into
00:01:20.400 | France with some time in Spain, also in Andorra along the way.
00:01:26.400 | We are now currently in France.
00:01:32.080 | Over the past few weeks, I have enjoyed our travels.
00:01:36.480 | It has been neat to take my children to some new destinations, show them some new things.
00:01:43.000 | I keep a track, and so far this is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
00:01:48.280 | We're now in our eighth country on this trip.
00:01:52.000 | It's been really fun to see my children learn new things, do the world-schooling thing quite
00:01:57.080 | a bit.
00:01:58.080 | It's been really neat.
00:01:59.080 | We're driving across Spain.
00:02:00.440 | Look, there's a castle.
00:02:01.440 | Look, there's a castle.
00:02:02.440 | Look, there's a castle.
00:02:03.440 | It was really neat.
00:02:04.440 | It was neat to be in Andorra and get a chance to show them the little alpine wonderland
00:02:09.600 | that is the little microstate of Andorra.
00:02:14.440 | Now being here in France, it's been really fun.
00:02:18.560 | It's also been very, very tiring.
00:02:21.520 | And a few days ago, I was just kind of done.
00:02:26.280 | I was sitting and talking with my wife, and I was feeling exhausted.
00:02:29.800 | And I don't usually get exhausted.
00:02:31.800 | I'm one who enjoys a pretty good reserve of energy.
00:02:35.240 | Consider myself to be fairly indomitable and not to pay much attention to how I feel.
00:02:43.920 | Just press forward.
00:02:44.920 | I have good stores of energy, et cetera.
00:02:46.560 | I'm in good health.
00:02:48.240 | And I was just done.
00:02:49.240 | And I started thinking and talking with her about why.
00:02:53.200 | Why do I feel this way?
00:02:54.200 | And what I finally realized was that I was just worn out with making decisions.
00:02:59.360 | I was worn out, completely and totally worn out with making decisions.
00:03:05.760 | Let me describe this to you so you understand why.
00:03:10.320 | In the style of travel that we have currently chosen, we are traveling in a very open-ended
00:03:16.480 | way.
00:03:17.480 | We started our trip, and we have no fixed dates on anything.
00:03:21.520 | I have a list of a dozen or so destinations to which I'm trying to get for a dozen or
00:03:26.120 | so different reasons.
00:03:28.200 | And I'm hoping to get to those.
00:03:29.480 | But if I don't get to them all, it's okay.
00:03:31.720 | And if I get something different, I'm sure I'll find something interesting about that.
00:03:35.240 | We have put all of our stuff in storage.
00:03:37.280 | So we got some suitcases, and that's it.
00:03:39.560 | Everything else is sitting in a storage locker.
00:03:42.840 | And that's great.
00:03:45.320 | We don't have any fixed location.
00:03:46.960 | I honestly don't know where I'm going to be from day to day.
00:03:50.040 | And our style of travel has been no forward tickets purchased, flying basically on one-way
00:03:56.360 | tickets into each place, choosing a hotel a few nights at a time, possibly as much as
00:04:01.920 | a week at a time.
00:04:03.880 | But really no plans beyond a week at a time.
00:04:07.600 | And I love many things about this style of travel.
00:04:10.920 | I enjoy the spontaneity.
00:04:12.360 | I enjoy the sense of freedom.
00:04:13.880 | I enjoy knowing that if things get bad here, I can go somewhere on the exact opposite side
00:04:19.520 | of the world and be there in less than 24 hours.
00:04:22.480 | That's exciting to me.
00:04:23.920 | I don't recommend this for novice travelers because there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty
00:04:28.840 | and you have to learn to be okay with that.
00:04:30.920 | But I've gotten pretty good, I thought, I think, at handling that sense of uncertainty.
00:04:38.440 | But what is part of this travel lifestyle is you are continually making fresh decisions.
00:04:48.240 | Let me describe a fairly typical day.
00:04:51.440 | I wake up in the morning.
00:04:52.480 | Usually I wake up early before my children.
00:04:54.400 | My children all wake up at different times.
00:04:57.040 | My wife usually sleeps a little bit later, but I usually wake up early in the morning
00:05:00.360 | and I spend time in the morning reading, thinking, writing, et cetera.
00:05:04.800 | So where do I do that?
00:05:06.200 | Well, I like to get up and if we're in a hotel, go to the hotel lobby.
00:05:09.720 | I like to find some beautiful place to be.
00:05:13.440 | But then on a daily basis, what about the children?
00:05:17.520 | Do I stay in the hotel room so that I can engage them and keep them quiet and have more
00:05:21.360 | time for the others to sleep?
00:05:23.840 | Or do I just go and let my wife deal with it?
00:05:26.960 | Either works, but every day it's a new, fresh decision.
00:05:29.480 | Where do I go this morning?
00:05:30.480 | How much longer are they going to sleep?
00:05:31.640 | What time do they go to bed, et cetera?
00:05:33.480 | Then breakfast.
00:05:34.480 | Where are we going to have breakfast?
00:05:35.480 | We're a breakfasting family.
00:05:37.480 | Maybe in the future we'll be able to be a fasting family, an intermittent fasting family,
00:05:42.040 | but at the moment it doesn't seem to be the right decision for my children.
00:05:46.160 | So where are we going to have breakfast?
00:05:47.160 | Are we going to have breakfast in the hotel?
00:05:48.160 | Are we going to have breakfast out?
00:05:50.280 | Well what breakfast is offered at the hotel?
00:05:51.880 | Is it a good deal?
00:05:52.880 | How much are they going to charge me for four little children?
00:05:55.120 | Are they going to charge me adult prices times six or are they going to give me a deal?
00:05:58.940 | And then what's available?
00:05:59.940 | Usually I don't know.
00:06:01.000 | So do we just walk down the street or do we go and do I look in an app?
00:06:04.440 | Do I pull up Yelp?
00:06:05.440 | Do I try to find out what's there?
00:06:07.480 | What do we do?
00:06:09.220 | Do we eat in the hotel room?
00:06:10.220 | Are we in the hotel room where we're going to have the children sit?
00:06:12.320 | There's not enough, it just goes on.
00:06:14.640 | What are we going to do this morning?
00:06:15.800 | Well I've got work, we've got school, we've got sightseeing.
00:06:21.720 | What seems to be the best for today based upon where we are, based upon how much time
00:06:25.640 | we have, based upon the energy, based upon what's available?
00:06:28.560 | Then all of a sudden lunchtime rolls around and children need some food in their bellies.
00:06:32.320 | So what's the best way to handle that?
00:06:34.120 | And then naps, are we going to do naps or are we going to not?
00:06:36.160 | And then the afternoon, same exact thing again.
00:06:38.320 | Where are we going to go out?
00:06:39.320 | Are we going to stay in?
00:06:40.320 | What are we going to do and why?
00:06:41.320 | And then dinner, are we going to eat, etc.
00:06:43.280 | And then where are we going to be tomorrow?
00:06:44.280 | And then at night everyone gets in bed and then I've got to think where we're going
00:06:47.040 | to be two days from now and why.
00:06:49.160 | Now you can see when I articulate it in this way, there's a lot of decisions.
00:06:54.060 | And it's basically at every step a new decision.
00:06:58.560 | Sometimes it's a lot easier if your decisions are made for you.
00:07:00.720 | For example, it would be in some cases easier if I were a totally bare bones budget traveler.
00:07:08.800 | Well then I would just always stay in the cheapest hotel.
00:07:12.040 | But I'm not a totally bare bones budget traveler.
00:07:14.520 | I enjoy some luxury in my life and I enjoy some comfort for my family.
00:07:19.760 | And so I usually try to choose a place that's kind of middle of the road, mixing some luxury
00:07:24.680 | exotic experiences with some low end experiences.
00:07:27.720 | But then what's the right place for here?
00:07:30.020 | And so even just continually choosing a new hotel, it's exhausting.
00:07:34.040 | Because I make that fresh decision of how fancy versus how simple, how big, should we
00:07:39.760 | go with a full house, do they have suites here, how do we know we're getting a good
00:07:44.080 | deal, should we get a small hotel?
00:07:46.200 | It just goes on and on and on.
00:07:50.280 | On the food, same thing.
00:07:51.520 | I like to enjoy the gastronomical, the local gastronomical scene.
00:07:58.200 | Well, it's kind of annoying, you don't want to eat every meal in that way.
00:08:02.960 | So you're continually making these decisions as the point.
00:08:06.640 | Do I work today?
00:08:07.640 | Do I not work today?
00:08:08.640 | If I work today, I can get something done.
00:08:09.640 | But where am I going to go to work?
00:08:10.640 | Where am I going to get something done?
00:08:13.760 | It's really tiring.
00:08:15.200 | It's really tiring.
00:08:17.120 | And so what can you do?
00:08:20.080 | Well, first of all, you can solve this.
00:08:22.560 | So once I realized what was happening, I very quickly I said, "Okay, this is why I'm really
00:08:28.880 | tired.
00:08:29.960 | We're going to stop some of the decisions for a while."
00:08:31.960 | And it had been at that time a particularly heavy period of decisions.
00:08:34.880 | I just bought a car and there's everything associated with that.
00:08:38.280 | Choosing a car, am I going to get this done?
00:08:39.640 | And what's the right thing for me?
00:08:40.760 | And how big and how small?
00:08:41.920 | And how much should I spend?
00:08:43.480 | And just how long am I going to use it?
00:08:44.880 | I don't know.
00:08:46.320 | And so that was a whole extra set of decisions that were piled on.
00:08:50.000 | So choosing a car was one thing.
00:08:52.800 | But I quickly said, "Okay, what we need is we need some time."
00:08:55.920 | Now we've done some longer term rentals on this trip so far, but it had been a while,
00:09:02.800 | right?
00:09:03.800 | Because we've been traveling quite a lot and keep getting worried about new COVID restrictions.
00:09:08.160 | And so finally I said, "That's it.
00:09:09.160 | We're just going to book a house."
00:09:10.960 | So I went and I booked a house for a month in France.
00:09:14.040 | I chose a house, big house, plenty of room, plenty of beds, plenty of space outside for
00:09:19.360 | the children to run and said, "Okay, that's it."
00:09:22.320 | And immediately once I made the decision, there was a significant sense of peace.
00:09:26.120 | I don't have to choose a hotel for a while.
00:09:30.440 | I have it done for a month.
00:09:34.840 | In addition, of course, I chose a house and the house means that you can buy groceries.
00:09:40.360 | And instead of making do with your own food in a hotel room, you can buy groceries.
00:09:45.680 | I don't just like to eat at home for some financial reason.
00:09:52.240 | I find it just a genuinely better experience.
00:09:55.600 | I don't enjoy going out to restaurants all the time.
00:09:58.080 | I enjoy restaurants as, okay, an occasional thing, but it's just not fun.
00:10:02.440 | I don't enjoy going out to restaurants all the time.
00:10:04.480 | And then also here in Europe where sometimes the service is different than what you get
00:10:08.120 | in some other places, it's just a little bit annoying.
00:10:12.120 | And so I prefer to be at home and so chose a house or it could be simple.
00:10:16.240 | There was also a significant improvement once I picked a car.
00:10:19.120 | Okay, done.
00:10:20.120 | Got a car, done.
00:10:22.000 | So we're going to change.
00:10:23.000 | We're not going to spend so much time on airplanes.
00:10:24.680 | We're going to drive and we're going to have a house for a long time.
00:10:27.680 | And that made everything improved.
00:10:29.800 | So I've solved a significant amount of that stress.
00:10:34.160 | I do think frequently, in fact, on an almost daily basis, I think about the long-term decisions.
00:10:39.360 | I wonder, I ask myself, is this the best solution?
00:10:44.960 | And I would tell you, if you're thinking about long-term travels, long-term family travel,
00:10:49.440 | I want to try to describe accurately what it's like.
00:10:53.640 | I'm not going to do that at all in today's show, but I want to describe accurately what
00:10:58.000 | it's like so that you can have some sense of whether it might be for you.
00:11:02.400 | I like to go and test things myself and get a good sense of whether it is for me or not
00:11:07.560 | for me based upon trying stuff.
00:11:10.080 | So I like to go and test things.
00:11:13.040 | And I enjoy family travel.
00:11:15.280 | I enjoy long-term family travel.
00:11:17.360 | But I also see the value of not living this way as a lifestyle.
00:11:23.200 | There are many times where I think about all the good things, about living a more conventional
00:11:27.800 | lifestyle, buying a house in the suburbs, settling down.
00:11:32.240 | It doesn't feel like it when I was younger, probably would have felt like a failure.
00:11:35.600 | Settling down is a failure.
00:11:37.160 | I'm not living my principles of radical going for it.
00:11:41.880 | But at this point, it doesn't feel that way.
00:11:43.360 | It feels like that would be really nice.
00:11:44.760 | That would be a really nice lifestyle.
00:11:47.200 | It would be really enjoyable.
00:11:49.000 | I understand more why so many people like it.
00:11:52.320 | Not everybody living in a house in the suburbs is there because they're forced to be there.
00:11:56.120 | It's a really nice lifestyle.
00:12:01.800 | There's a very good chance that I'll end up doing that at some point in the future, perhaps
00:12:06.480 | even not too distant future.
00:12:08.400 | Nothing is decided.
00:12:09.400 | At the moment, I have no idea where I'm going to be two months from now.
00:12:12.240 | But I see the benefits of a stable, steady lifestyle.
00:12:18.040 | By the way, this is not original with me.
00:12:20.600 | For example, this is usually called decision fatigue.
00:12:23.200 | There's this idea in success circles that if you can minimize the number of decisions
00:12:32.080 | that you make on small trivial things, then you can maximize the amount of energy that
00:12:36.800 | you have for larger, more important things.
00:12:40.080 | Based upon my personal experience, I think there's some truth to it.
00:12:42.640 | The common examples are usually, "Here's why so-and-so eats the same thing for breakfast
00:12:47.120 | seven days a week," or "Here's why Mark Zuckerberg wears a gray t-shirt and a pair of jeans and
00:12:52.880 | a hoodie every single day."
00:12:54.640 | The idea is he's only got so much reserves of decision-making power.
00:12:59.400 | Willpower is often how it's talked about as well.
00:13:01.960 | So by minimizing the need to choose what you're going to eat for breakfast, by minimizing
00:13:05.920 | the need to choose what you're going to wear, you have more time available for that really
00:13:09.640 | big important business decision or investment decision later in the day.
00:13:13.720 | Maybe it's true.
00:13:14.920 | I believe there's some truth to it, especially based upon my personal experience.
00:13:19.280 | I'm not trying to go that far, but what I'll point out to you is that this lifestyle, this
00:13:24.880 | travel lifestyle, long-term travel lifestyle, is indeed, has a lot of decisions.
00:13:30.720 | And I don't want to say it's stressful because I really feel like that word is overused.
00:13:37.360 | I don't care to say, "Oh, this is stressful."
00:13:39.280 | I prefer not to say, "I'm stressing me out."
00:13:41.440 | I don't like that terminology.
00:13:42.800 | I feel like it's weak and that most of the stuff is just not true, right?
00:13:48.080 | This is not stressing me out.
00:13:49.720 | I don't mind saying I feel stressed about this, but this cannot have any impact on me
00:13:55.480 | because I have full control over my mind and I'm never going to surrender the sovereignty
00:13:59.880 | that I have over my mind and give away my ability to think and to decide and to choose
00:14:06.080 | how I enter life to some external source.
00:14:11.000 | That's a ridiculous thing to do, to give some external thing, often an inanimate thing,
00:14:18.000 | power over you.
00:14:20.320 | The fact that my tire blew out is stressing me out.
00:14:22.560 | Nonsense, right?
00:14:23.560 | The fact that your tire blew out was a simple fact that your rubber encountered some kind
00:14:28.600 | of object and now you have a flat tire and how you respond to that is entirely within
00:14:33.200 | your control.
00:14:34.200 | There's no reason why it needs to stress you out.
00:14:36.200 | So I hate to use that term stressing me out.
00:14:38.720 | Sorry, personal rant there.
00:14:41.600 | But there is a real truth to the fact that a continual travel lifestyle will generally
00:14:47.920 | involve a lot of decisions about things that you may not have to—a lot of decisions you
00:14:52.520 | may not have to make in other approaches to life.
00:14:56.280 | And that is something that can be very tiring.
00:15:00.280 | Again, I want to be careful.
00:15:02.440 | Not totally tiring.
00:15:04.320 | I find there's a sense in which it's energizing.
00:15:07.800 | There is a sense in which it's energizing.
00:15:09.280 | It can also be quite tiring, as I have experienced recently.
00:15:13.940 | This also clarified to me why I like certain forms of travel more than others.
00:15:20.120 | I think with tremendous fondness back on my time of traveling in an RV, especially with
00:15:28.520 | my children, we go through and look at pictures of the trip, try to help cement those memories
00:15:33.240 | so they're not totally lost.
00:15:34.960 | 90% of them are lost, but we try to cement some of them with 10% by going back and showing
00:15:40.000 | the children videos and photos of our trips.
00:15:44.240 | And I think with tremendous fondness on RV travel around the United States, like we did
00:15:50.400 | in 2018.
00:15:53.000 | And I realized that this is one of the reasons why I love RV travel so much.
00:15:59.920 | That when traveling in an RV, there are far fewer necessary decisions on a daily basis.
00:16:06.560 | If you travel in an RV, although you are traveling, you always know where you're going to sleep.
00:16:13.380 | You always know what bed you're going to sleep in.
00:16:15.960 | And the cool thing about an RV is, in the majority of cases, it really makes no difference
00:16:21.440 | whether that bed happens to be parked on the side of a road somewhere, or in a friend's
00:16:26.280 | driveway somewhere, or in a beautiful National Park campground somewhere.
00:16:30.280 | It's just a bed.
00:16:31.840 | Once you close your eyes, it all looks the same.
00:16:34.440 | And I sleep just as well in a Walmart parking lot as I do in a beautiful private campground.
00:16:40.880 | Now I enjoy my morning coffee differently in a beautiful National Park Service campground
00:16:47.480 | than I do in a Walmart parking lot, but my sleep is no different.
00:16:52.600 | I don't have to make a fresh decision about what bed I'm going to sleep in.
00:16:56.640 | Similarly, I don't have to decide what level of comfort is adequate for my family, because
00:16:59.960 | I've already made that decision.
00:17:01.560 | I've already chosen, this is how large of a rig we want.
00:17:04.160 | This is what level of comfort we want.
00:17:05.800 | It's already done.
00:17:07.680 | The only decision involved with RV travel is, where are we going to be tonight?
00:17:11.840 | And that's a very low stress decision when you know, no matter where we wind up, we have
00:17:16.800 | an option.
00:17:17.800 | In fact, this is something I love so much about RV travel.
00:17:21.640 | There were several times on our trips that, for various reasons, we couldn't get where
00:17:25.440 | we wanted to go, and we just quite literally parked on the side of the road.
00:17:30.200 | Found a spot that was safe, meaning away from the flow of traffic, no danger of being driven
00:17:35.560 | into in the middle of the night, safe in terms of any surroundings were appropriate, and
00:17:41.040 | then pulled over, parked, and went to sleep.
00:17:43.960 | And that's such an awesome thing about RV travel.
00:17:46.240 | It removes all of the stress for me from picking.
00:17:51.360 | That's different than choosing hotels every couple of nights.
00:17:55.760 | The other day, we were in Barcelona, and we were planning to be there.
00:18:00.320 | I wanted to extend our stay slightly.
00:18:02.560 | And so I went down, and usually in most hotels, I'll book, usually start with two nights,
00:18:07.960 | and then if I want to stay there longer, I'll usually go ahead and extend it.
00:18:13.040 | But you always know they might not be able to.
00:18:14.560 | In this case, I booked two nights, decided I wanted to extend for two more, went down
00:18:19.080 | to reception, asked to extend.
00:18:21.460 | They didn't have any rooms available.
00:18:23.600 | And so it was no problem.
00:18:26.640 | I went up to the room, told my wife, "We got to go.
00:18:28.720 | We got to check out."
00:18:30.240 | And we changed the whole plan.
00:18:31.480 | I sat down on my bed and made some new reservations and moved on.
00:18:35.200 | So it wasn't that bad.
00:18:36.200 | But you know, especially being a father with children, you know there's this continual
00:18:40.040 | pressure.
00:18:41.040 | I'm not going to sleep in a bus station.
00:18:42.040 | I can't sleep on the street.
00:18:43.320 | I need a hotel.
00:18:44.320 | And if one is not available, I'm okay.
00:18:46.640 | Whereas with an RV, everything is available.
00:18:49.560 | You always know I have a bed.
00:18:52.340 | And a bed is fine wherever I do.
00:18:53.560 | If I can make it to Tucson, great, we'll go to Tucson.
00:18:56.080 | If I can't make it to Tucson, no problem.
00:18:58.280 | We'll just park short of Tucson.
00:19:00.040 | And there's always a place to park.
00:19:01.760 | And then we'll press on to Tucson tomorrow.
00:19:03.720 | No problem.
00:19:04.720 | Same thing with food.
00:19:05.720 | That's the other thing is those continual decisions of where are we going to eat and
00:19:09.800 | how much are we going to eat.
00:19:11.360 | And you never know.
00:19:12.360 | You're always in a new restaurant.
00:19:13.360 | So you can't know reliably how much you need to order.
00:19:15.880 | My general ordering principle with my children is I order a few dishes and then we share
00:19:21.560 | them around.
00:19:22.560 | I can't abide children's menus.
00:19:24.920 | So I always order a few entrees and we share them around.
00:19:27.460 | But when you're always in a new restaurant, you don't know the size of the entree and
00:19:31.400 | you're trying to dance this delicate dance between choosing an entree of a certain size
00:19:37.240 | and gauging the size of your children's stomachs.
00:19:40.800 | And it's a little annoying and fine to do on occasion.
00:19:44.520 | But when you do it three times a day, it's a little bit annoying, I find.
00:19:48.240 | Whereas with the RV, you can always have food with you, which means that most of your meals
00:19:51.560 | you can prepare yourself, which means that you have more freedom to enjoy the dining
00:19:56.760 | experience as a dining experience rather than as a calorie ingestion experience.
00:20:06.760 | And so it was really clarifying for me that I really, really like RV travel.
00:20:12.080 | And I think the fundamental reason why I like RV travel is simply this.
00:20:18.160 | It's having to make fewer decisions.
00:20:22.840 | I have a hard time seeing how any family would want to do this kind of busy, busy, move,
00:20:31.680 | move travel without some changes on an ongoing basis.
00:20:39.720 | It's fine on vacation, right?
00:20:41.040 | It's fine for a week or two, although you're going to get home from the vacation pretty
00:20:44.080 | tired, I think.
00:20:46.820 | It's fine and enjoyable in that situation.
00:20:49.200 | And there are many places that I would love to see in that way.
00:20:52.160 | But if you've been thinking about a travel lifestyle, I don't think that you want to
00:20:55.600 | move a lot.
00:20:57.120 | So kind of from good to great.
00:20:59.680 | I think the best thing is spend a little bit more time and book things probably a little
00:21:04.240 | bit farther ahead.
00:21:05.600 | I think the strategy of choosing an Airbnb for two weeks and then having a few days of
00:21:10.120 | buffer and then having another one lined up for two weeks or however long, I think this
00:21:14.140 | is a really good strategy.
00:21:15.360 | So you know you have those two weeks, you know where you're going to be at least for
00:21:18.440 | that significant time.
00:21:21.440 | I like, I mean when I got to the house here, just felt totally relaxed.
00:21:25.800 | All the decisions made, don't need to worry about a lot of the stuff going forward.
00:21:29.140 | So I think that's kind of stage one.
00:21:30.640 | I think stage two is better, is to have your own accommodation.
00:21:36.520 | Whether that's a vehicle-based travel, right?
00:21:39.440 | An overlanding truck, an RV, a rooftop tent, something where you know you're going to be
00:21:45.080 | sleeping in the same place every day and having the ability to carry food or a sailboat also
00:21:49.960 | would work.
00:21:50.960 | I think these are far simpler and better models for probably all travelers, virtually all
00:21:58.200 | travelers.
00:21:59.200 | Again, not someone who needs to jet around the world continually, but for family, definitely
00:22:04.880 | the way to go.
00:22:06.040 | And or the third thing is having bases, right?
00:22:09.460 | Your own house, your own house in a few different places that you return from and doing kind
00:22:13.720 | of a surge approach.
00:22:15.080 | I think these are just much more appropriate styles of travel.
00:22:19.920 | I do think that you can expand this concept beyond simply travel or even family travel.
00:22:28.800 | I think that having a lifestyle in which most of your decisions are made, especially if
00:22:35.040 | those decisions become habits, habits that create and promote the kind of lifestyle that
00:22:39.200 | you want to have, really has tremendous benefits for many of us.
00:22:46.040 | To have a place that you live that's stable, having good routines, frees up your creative
00:22:52.240 | mind in some cases.
00:22:54.200 | This may be a delicate balance for some of us.
00:22:56.160 | I personally, personality wise, I often get a little bored with that, without some fun
00:23:03.080 | and exciting challenges, changes, et cetera.
00:23:06.760 | But I think for a lot of people, that's the best approach is just simply live in a fairly
00:23:11.080 | structured situation so that you don't have to make so many decisions and that frees up
00:23:16.020 | your creative energies for in a little bit more of a productive way.
00:23:20.400 | I have not been as productive as I have wanted to be.
00:23:23.360 | Part of it is infrastructure, right?
00:23:24.820 | You never know where am I going to be on a certain time.
00:23:28.560 | The single thing I've solved most of the technology challenges.
00:23:32.000 | I can work most places.
00:23:34.940 | I can do that.
00:23:36.080 | The thing I can't solve is simply the needs of my family.
00:23:42.040 | And it's not like a, they're relatively, they're just normal, right?
00:23:46.840 | And so if I have a phone call scheduled at three o'clock, but we get an hour delayed
00:23:49.920 | schedule and I'm not sure where I'm going to be, I can't say, just sit here in your
00:23:54.000 | seat and do nothing for an hour while I step outside of the car and take a phone call.
00:23:57.680 | And so when we're actually actively moving, I can barely take a phone call.
00:24:01.080 | I can barely keep to a schedule, which is why I've tried to eliminate as much of that
00:24:04.360 | stuff from my schedule as possible.
00:24:06.480 | But the point is that if you minimize the number of decisions you have to make on a
00:24:12.840 | regular basis, then I think that it really can free up a lot of mental bandwidth.
00:24:18.280 | And it's provided me a clarifying theme to understand why it is that I personally like
00:24:24.520 | vehicle-based travel so much better than non-vehicle-based travel.
00:24:30.080 | It's decision fatigue.
00:24:32.480 | It's having the big decisions made.
00:24:34.320 | Once I bought a car and we moved to car-based travel, much more relaxed.
00:24:38.920 | Again, hotel, right?
00:24:39.920 | Because you always know, "Well, if the one in the middle of town is full, I'll go on
00:24:44.200 | to the next town.
00:24:45.200 | No big deal.
00:24:46.200 | I'll go outside of town."
00:24:47.200 | If you don't have your own car, that's a different proposition.
00:24:51.400 | And so my stress level went down with the vehicle, bought a house, stress level went
00:24:55.680 | down, and here I am feeling good, ready to share this with you.
00:25:02.640 | Hope that you enjoy this and look forward to talking to you in future days.