Travel to meetings? I feel your pain…and highlight mine

Last Wednesday morning I left home at 6.45am and returned at 7.12pm.

I’m not whinging about the fact I was out 12 and a half hours as most of the adult working population is busy with their jobs and pushing themselves ever closer to the limits in order to get though these difficult economic times.

What I’m looking closely at is why we bother to travel to and from meetings so often when there are simple alternatives, and ones that give us our life back.

On any normal day I travel a few miles (10 minutes in the car) to my office. I’ll arrive 8.30 and work through to midday, where I’ll make another short journey to the gym and burn off some of the days frustrations and adrenalin. I’ll return at about 1.30pm and work through to about 6pm.

Arriving home the first job is to say hi to everyone and then a quick turnaround for a walk in the fields with my eldest son and the dogs.

All sounds pretty good doesn’t it. Nice mix of work, rest and play.

But then the meeting days come along. Don’t get me wrong. I’m more than aware of how important it is to meet and sit with clients etc. This is n’t the problem. It’s the amount of times we do it and when analyse it find that some of these moments were a great opportunity for us to take a step back and look at the alternatives.

Last week I played out my day across the social networks. This included 5 audioboos, tweets, Facebook updates, Video upload and Foursquare. Across the whole day I updated how my travel to two meetings was progressing. This included the car, train, tube and walking.

My Paddington station… (link)

Listen and watch. The point is there is an alternative.

You can use Dropbox, Google Apps, Conference Calling tools, Basecamp, Skype, Social Networks et al. I could go on and on. The point is is that collaboration tools exist that let us  use our time more effectively.

This week instead of travelling in the a meeting in the same location (London) I used tools from my desktop. This saved my about 5 hours and allowed me to walk the dogs in the fields ( click for the picture…  The good bit at the end of the day with my son ) , go to the gym and spend more time with my family.

The collaboration tools allow remote working from home or the office rather than the travelling long distances and unnecessary associated costs. With video calling you can see each other, share files and screens, co-produce documents. When the session has finished it’s on to other things instead of hours of travelling frustration and quite frankly conditions unfit for a decent society.

Which option do you prefer?

Please leave your comments.

Anyway, here’s some of my day across the networks.

Audioboo’s click here

Here’s the first

By the way, this whole debate is going on at www.lovehatetravel.co.uk if you want to see what others think too.