3 LITTLE THINGS: To help survive a work 'offsite'

I use these tactics to mitigate the health havoc accompanying business travel — and particularly short-term team-building gatherings.

Photo Credit: https://www.vecteezy.com/members/armmypicca

Warmup

Back in July, I wrote about 3 Little Things: To make traveling less hellish on your body.

Today’s newsletter is a followup, designed to take aim at what can be a particularly hellish-on-your-health travel destination:

The company work “offsite.”

An offsite event by nature is designed to get employees out of their comfort zones and into a new environment to plan strategy, socialize and engage in the slightly ambiguous activity of “team-building.”

But without advance planning, an offsite — and business travel in general — can lead to a lot of activities that at best, make your body feel bad and at worst can lead you to get sick. Source.

Sitting. Screens. Unhealthy or higher caloric food. Lack of movement. Boozy dinners with colleagues. Sleeping in a noisy hotel or in an Airbnb with an uncomfortable mattress or bad heating system.

Today we’re NOT going to talk about how to plan a productive offsite.

Instead, we’re going to drill down on three survival mechanisms that can help in any away-from-home work environment — including if you’re simply someone who travels a lot for business.

We’re skipping the summary and getting right to the tactics. Let’s get it done.

Post

I first considered writing about this topic when my 30-something colleague told me last year that he had back-to-back offsite events coming up and was “preparing his body to go into survival mode.”

If such gatherings are hard for him in his 30s, for those of us in middle age the pain is more potent.

At this point in my life, I am only able to do the things I love — with regularity, without getting sick and without getting hurt — because I follow certain rules consistently, including monitoring:

• What I eat

• How much alcohol I drink

• How much I move each day

• How much I sit each day

• How much I look at screens

This means being able to control my environment, which has become easier post-pandemic since I have the privilege of mostly working from home.

But when I do go to an office, or when we gather as a company in smaller groups for two to three days at an offsite, that environment disappears.

So I try to re-create it as best I can with these three things that I can control anywhere:

Thing 1: Bring my own snacks (I like these) — and have a breakfast backup plan

At an offsite, you don’t have a lot of control over meals because the company often brings in breakfast, lunches, and snacks. This can amount to a lot of muffins, donuts, fruit yogurts, sandwiches, chips, candy, soda and other food high on carbohydrates and sugar and low on protein.

While I’m always grateful to be fed by someone else, this isn’t food that I normally eat. And it’s not a good way to make sure my mind is alert and focused on the day. Here’s what I do instead:

1. Find a protein-filled breakfast somewhere. At my last offsite, the only available hotel breakfast foods were croissants and vanilla or fruit yogurt loaded with sugar. I got up earlier and just walked over to a local bodega for 3 scrambled eggs with cheese and turkey. It was cheap, and I did this every day for three days.

2. Bring my own snacks. No matter where I’ve worked throughout my career, the snacks at offsites tend to careen into the lane of not-so-healthy food. Candy, cookies, chips, soda, pizza, etc. Now, I love Cool Ranch Doritos — I mean, really love them — even knowing Doritos can be used in lieu of lighter fluid to start a fire. And if Doritos are around, and I don’t have a substitute, I’m going down a bad rabbit hole. Here’s what’s in my backpack instead:

   1. Maui Nui Venison sticks. High protein, portable, individually wrapped. Sometimes I’ll share if people are curious.

   2. Nuts w/ dark chocolate chips. Before leaving home, I pack a big Ziploc bag of walnuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds and dark chocolate chips. The dark chocolate reduces the Doritos temptation and has less sugar than milk chocolate. Source.

   3. Catalina Crunch Cereal. It’s low carb, zero sugar, high in protein and tastes fantastic. I eat it as a snack or as a back-up breakfast if for some reason I can’t get eggs or plain Greek yogurt. There are also other snacks and cookies made by the same company using the same nutritional philosophy.

   4. Water bottle with Nuun electrolyte tablets. This keeps me from being tempted by soda or wasting a bunch of plastic bottles drinking water.

Yes, by doing this I subject myself to being “that person” among my colleagues. That’s cool. Pass me another venison stick.

Thing 2: Stand for 30 minutes of each hour

This one is pretty simple. For every hour that we are having a meeting, I’m trying to stand for half of it. It doesn’t matter what the setting is — couches, conference room with chairs, auditorium.

Why? Sitting for long periods of time is bad for you. If you can avoid it — and I realize this isn’t possible for everyone due to personal circumstances — you should.

A study of 8,000 adults showed an association between prolonged sitting and a risk of early death from any cause. But people who sat for no more than 30 minutes at a time had the lowest risk in that study. Source.

I figure out my seat at any offsite based on the ease of:

A/ Getting up and standing somewhere I can still see any screen where information is being projected.

B/ Being near a wall or chair or table where I can lean for a moment, if necessary, or sneak in some simple quad or calf stretches.

Thing 3: Follow the "First Drink, Last Drink” rule

If you don’t drink alcohol, you can skip this one.

Socializing with colleagues is a natural and important part of offsites — particularly if you work in different offices or remotely. Often that can involve cocktail hours and dinners with alcohol.

My mitigation strategy is twofold:

1. Don’t have the first drink. I go to the gym and arrive late. Or I drink a glass of seltzer with lime first before ordering anything with alcohol. This has the benefit of hydration and lessening the amount of alcohol consumed.

2. Don’t have the last drink. Whenever people go out for one last nightcap before heading back to the hotel, I generally take a pass. I’ll be the boring person who goes to my room and does feet exercises, preps for the next day’s meetings, reads a book or works on this newsletter. I’ve never regretted that decision in the morning.

Cooldown

In a couple of weeks, my East Coast SmartNews colleagues are taking the train up to the Hudson Valley near where I live. We’re going to spend the day together and try a new offsite plan:

• Eat a late healthy breakfast together.

• Hike for 2-3 hours. (I’ll bring snacks for everyone.)

• Walk about town for a little while when we’re done.

• Eat an early dinner together.

• Go home and sleep in our own beds.

We’ll talk about work. We’ll make some decisions. And we’ll spend time together socially. There just won’t be much sitting. Or screens. Or late night “last drinks.” (Unless they do that without me when they get back to NYC!)

Short Read: A good reality check on the impact of frequent business travel on our bodies and minds from Harvard Business Review — and counsel on how companies can work to offset it.

Medium Read: The science behind why sitting actually is bad for you — and more tactics on how to dial back that badness from Yale Medicine.

Thanks for reading. Let me know some of your work trip and offsite survival strategies. And as always, find something you love. Dig in. Stick with it when things get hard.

Wendy