Travel is stress testing my cognitive processes.
I've done this to myself. A confluence of opportunities emerged that has led me on a six-week journey circumnavigating the northern hemisphere. It has already included multiple long-distance flights; trains -- short and long distance -- buses, subways, and numerous ride shares. I'm writing this from my third living situation -- a short-term studio apartment rental, after three hotels in the two cities left behind. I have to book one more, likely an airport-adjacent hotel in a city a continent away.
My associative process is exhilarated. My own Associative preference is one of the highest we've measured. My preferred engagement with the outer world is through context and experience. I started in Menlo Park, California, part of the San Francisco Bay area, and solidly within Silicon Valley. Two posts ago, I wrote about attending a conference on agentic AI, updating my long experience with AI with the fast moving content of autonomous agents. I stayed in a hotel that was essentially an AI agent itself, in that it had no visible staff. I booked it online, got an access code with instruction; received an email update when my room was ready; entered the building and then my room with digital credentials. After I accessed my room, I got an email asking if everything was satisfactory, and an offer to connect with a digital agent for support.
Pause.
Getting to this room was preceded by what I experienced was a massive amount of taxing Sequential processing. These tax my ability to track time, estimating the amount of time things. take, predicting how I will experience the various commuting times, time in aircraft, time transiting between hotels and work sites, making time for meals, sleep, personal care.
Next, I get fatigued planning for passport security during travel, stockpiling medications, obtaining out of country health care waiver, checking international phone-service plan, purchasing wi-fi access for Japan, communicating with credit card services and banks for personal access out of the country plus business access for two companies.
Then making the reservations for transportation and accommodation for four separate destinations on three continents.
Timing all that with business and personal appointments no longer just initiated from US eastern time, but from time zones on three continents.
Preview the implications for tax preparation season
Make sure home affairs are taken care of during a six-week absence. Property taxes will be due during that period. Home security needs to be readied. Neighbors need to know.
Since following rules, processes, and sequential steps is not intuitive for me, I can lapse on any of these. Can you think of anything else?
Oh yeah, I need clothing and personal-care items for six weeks and late winter/early spring weather on three continents and for various levels of social and business engagements. I want all of that to fit in a single checked bag and one carry on.
Anything else?
Oh yeah. Making sure everything in each current living situation gets in the travel baggage and into the next living situation.
Anything else?
What could possibly go wrong?
I'm now halfway through. Notwithstanding the significant stress of the sequencing, checklists generated by lots of travel experience have proven reliable. Moving fast while sleep deprived remains my biggest personal risk.
Will war and a government shut down impede my ability to land at Boston's Logan in two weeks? Not things I can control. Nonetheless, I carry my resilience with me
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Warm regards,
Francis Sopper