The Principle
You are the power source for everyone around you on a trip. If your phone dies, your work dies. If your laptop dies, the meeting dies. If the person next to you is panicking because their battery hit 3%, you are either the one who saves them or the one who shrugs.
Bring the surplus. Then go spend it on what actually matters.
Stay Charged
The electronics stack exists to serve one rule: stay charged.
On any trip I carry:
- Multiple portable chargers, including at least one that plugs directly into the wall so it doubles as a regular charger. The 20,000mAh ones are worth the weight. (This one and this one are both solid.)
- A fast-charging MacBook Pro brick. Not the cheap one from 2019.
- Extra cables for every phone variant. Old iPhones, new iPhones, USB-C Android. You will meet someone whose phone is dying and whose cable is wrong. Be the one who has the right cable.
Charge opportunistically. In a car, plug into the car. In a meeting, plug into the wall. Hosts expect competent guests to manage their own power. Every minute near an outlet is a minute topping off.
I have lost count of the times I have handed someone a portable charger and told them to keep it. There is an extra in the suitcase. Be the person who can give one away.
AI-Assisted Packing
The custom packing list used to require discipline. Now it requires externalization.
Give your Jarvis your inventory (once) and your trip details (every time): agenda, weather, formality level, duration, who you are meeting. It produces a specific list. If you are not swimming, it does not recommend swim trunks. If you have no business-casual meetings, it does not recommend the blazer.
Custom packing is free now. The people still defaulting to a generic mental checklist are choosing to be worse at this than they have to be.
Signature Items
A few things I never skip:
- Portable steamer. Lighter than an iron, works on everything, makes any plain shirt presentable.
- Lint roller. Three seconds of effort, 10x better presentation.
- Plain, neutral, rollable clothing as the default layer. Jeans, khakis, plain shirts, a belt. Rolled, not folded. Fits in less space and looks better when unpacked.
Rolled shirts plus a steamer beat a garment bag. The unsexy items are the difference between looking put together and looking like you just got off a plane.
One Clear Outcome Per Trip
This is the part most people skip. It is the most expensive mistake.
You are leaving your home base, flying somewhere, paying for a hotel, burning a week of attention budget. What is the one outcome that makes this trip worth it? One, named in a sentence.
If you cannot name it, you have not picked it. And if you have not picked it, you will default to filling the time with friends, dinners, side quests, and ambient fun. You will come home vaguely satisfied and materially behind. This is the 100x choice applied to travel: one sharp yes makes every ancillary no easy.
Ancillary outcomes are fine. Name those too, in priority order. They serve the main outcome. They do not compete with it.
Leave Margin for God
The one clear outcome justifies the trip. What happens once you are there is often an order of magnitude bigger.
Every time I have traveled on mission while walking with Christ, what actually unfolded exceeded anything I could have planned. Conversations I did not schedule. People I did not know were in the city. Invitations I did not see coming. The trip I justified on a single meeting turned into a week of fruit I could not have engineered.
This only works if there is margin. An over-scheduled trip has no room for the Holy Spirit to move. Pick the one outcome, book the meetings that serve it, then leave big open blocks. See stop blocking the Holy Spirit.
Pick one. Let God pick the rest.
The Impact Report
After the trip, write the impact report. Write it for yourself.
- Did the main outcome land? If not, why not?
- Which ancillary outcomes actually happened?
- What did I learn about the city, the network, the opportunity?
- Would I make this trip again, knowing what I know now?
A trip without an impact report is a trip you cannot learn from. The reps compound only if you log them.
Overprepared in logistics. Singular in purpose. Ready to pivot on God's nudging. The upside was never yours to plan anyway.