title: Keeping Habits while Traveling comments: true

snippet: Something I always struggle with is maintaining habits while I’m traveling or some other really disruptive moment in life. Here’s how I am working it out.

I don’t travel as much as I’d like to, but that’s a common complaint. I love to travel. I love to see new things. What I don’t like is the disruption to my habits and continuous goals that I try to maintain.

It’s important for me to take breaks and regenerate. One thing that really surprises me is how exhausting it can be to maintain a product. It’s exhausting in the most wonderful of senses.

Breaks are good.

When I take a break and travel or change up my routine, I’m usually changing focus as a by-product. If I’m driving the family to the beach, I can’t be working on some new killer feature.

However, my mind is still very active. That’s the great thing about traveling. My mind is usually disengaged from being in a role of expectation.

The only expectation is for me to arrive at my destination. For this, traveling to a destination remains one of my most productive moments.

Breaks in habits are good, too. If done right.

It’s not productive for my habits, though. I can’t do my daily pushup goals in a car (I dislocated a shoulder, “pushups” are my morning physical therapy). I can’t write something (not while driving, anyway).

I know this going into any situation where I’m traveling. This arms me for success. I always want to be equipped to succeed. It’s one of my rules in life, and as a maxim I say, “Do not act without a victory condition”.

Always be set up for success.

Before I travel or encounter any disruption, I must know my victory conditions. I must know what successes I want. Sometimes this means putting a goal on pause. Sometimes it means changing focus.

Every day I work on TDP. This doesn’t have to be on the product. Maybe I can write some content for the FAQ. Maybe it’s just writing out a list of 10 new features to add in. Sometimes it’s just sitting down and thinking.

If I can adapt the goal and change the focus so that I can succeed, I will. If I can’t, I pause the goal until I return. It’s very simple.

Picking up where I leave off.

The hardest part is picking it back up. Last week I was traveling, I still did most of my goals but I didn’t write and my morning exercises were diminished. 3 days later, my shoulder still feels week. 3 days of atrophy kills me. It’s hard to get back on the horse.

If I could figure out how to eagerly get back into the groove, then I’d have this whole system down. I’ll have to tackle that problem next, because right now I have no good answers.

Maybe someone out there does.