When I went full-time remote in 2017 I used to travel back to the Bay Area pretty frequently. (In retrospect it was entirely too frequently, but that’s a story for another time.) The first couple of times I came out, I loaded up my calendar with meetings and 1:1s and face time with a (fairly large) number of people I wanted to see. I was sensitive to the fact that being remote would mean a substantial investment in maintaining relationships - an investment that I would’ ve gotten “for free” had I remained in situ and been able to interact with all of these folks as a part of my regular day-to-day. After the first few trips I came to realize a few things:

  1. When I was traveling on business, my “day job” basically fell by the wayside. I think this is actually okay. What I mean is: I don’t think my productivity on the whole took a hit, it’s just that the time I spent catching up with people was concentrated into a week on site rather than being amortized over a longer period of time.

  2. It was exhausting. The entire experience of going remote taught me just how much of an extrovert I am…but even extroverts have limits. I found that after an entire week of doing nothing but taking people to the face I was peopled right the fuck out by the end of the week.

  3. Taken in the limit, this approach actually decreased my ability to effectively keep in touch with people.This one might seem a bit counterintuitive, but consider #2 above; are you giving the same energy to the first person you talk to in a day as you are the thirtieth person? Also, a common occurrence would be bumping into someone in the hallway and having to say “Oh! Hey! We should really catch up about the Thing and the Stuff, but right now I’ve gotta haul-ass it down the Blue Line to get to the coffee bar for the next 7 people I need to talk to…”

And so, I stopped doing it. Or rather, I started being a whole lot more intentional about leaving empty slots on my calendar - a little breathing room, some “space for serendipity” if you will. In addition to being better for my sanity, this actually proved to be an entirely more effective approach to maintaining connections than trying to pack everyone in back-to-back was.

I just got back home from my first trip to campus since February 2020, and while I was a bit rusty at travel planning after all that time I at least remembered to follow this approach. Monday and Tuesday were an “onsite offsite” for my org (the primary reason for the trip) so those days were pretty much wholly accounted for…but Wednesday/Thursday? I just cleared my calendar entirely, and “come what may”.

I got to meet almost my entire team in person for the first time. I got to catch up with some old colleagues and friends. I got to hug people I haven’t had the opportunity to hug in nearly 4 years. After all this time there were certainly some people I woulda/coulda/shoulda liked to have spent some more time with, but on the whole? I’d say it went swimmingly.

Happy Community inDay, folks. …and if I didn’t catch you this time around: Next Time. (I suspect I’ll be returning more frequently than once every 4 years

going forward…)