My Inc.com story today, “On the Road Too Much? How Travel Warps Your Values and What To Do About It” begins

On the Road Too Much? How Travel Warps Your Values and What To Do About It

Everyone cares about the environment until they get on a plane

Would you mind someone burning your house down if they gave you a dollar for your troubles?

Would you do an activity that led you to lose perspective so much that you couldn’t tell the difference?

This article is about values, the most important foundation of leadership, business, and relationships, or close to it. It’s about you doing things you would fire your CFO for.

Travel leads to confusing values this much by nearly everyone who travels a lot. I’ll write about its effects on the environment, but it similarly distorts our views on time, relationships, distance, and more. We business people travel more than most, meaning you’re susceptible to your values becoming corrupted.

For example, The New York Times’ 10 Ways to Be a Greener Traveler, Even if You Love to Fly confuses values so much it suggests closing your laptop lid compares to how much traveling pollutes. Hint to the Times: laptops use so much less power than a jet taking off that they are qualitatively different–in other words, negligible. Besides, you can close the lid without traveling, so it’s irrelevant.

Read the rest at On the Road Too Much? How Travel Warps Your Values and What To Do About It

• ← In honor of the author of one of the great books of science of the twenty-first century
• How not to be afraid to be yourself, Italian style →