Lean Travel: Travel Light With a Full Heart

By Paul A. Akers

As you start this book, I want you to understand the two main parts of my Lean Travel philosophy. First, what you give in the travel experience will have a profound impact on how much you enjoy it. Second, the less you bring and the lighter you travel, the more you will be able to feel and adapt to the fantastic trade winds of the travel experience. So travel with a full heart and a light suitcase!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9780990601074

Book preview

paulakers.net/lt-intro

Lean travel is remarkable travel. Why? It is easy, rewarding, and (almost always) stress-free. Lean Travel helps you create the kind of travel experience that when people look at the way you do things, they say, Wow, that’s cool! How do you do that? I tell them it’s not complicated. All you have to do is continuously improve everything you do and apply Lean principles to the way you travel.

Look how easy it is for me to manage charging my electronic devices everytime I walk into a hotel room

One thing to plug in and all electronic devices are ready to be charged

Quick, easy, and simple to set up and to take down. Nothing to manage except a great process.

As a Lean thinker, I have greatly improved my life with one very simple idea, one that even a four year-old could understand: Everything in life is a process. Think about it—making your bed, brushing your teeth, managing your e-mails, paying your bills, shopping for groceries, washing your clothes, cutting the grass, traveling—all are processes. Each one of these activities has a starting point and a completion point, with several steps in between. When doing any of them, you encounter waste that doesn’t add value to what you’re trying to accomplish. (Go to the link at the end of this chapter to see how Paul organizes his electrical cords.)

For example, let’s say it’s laundry day at your house and it is your turn to wash the clothes. As you start a load, you reach down in a cabinet to pick up the detergent bottle, screw off the cap, set it on the edge of the machine, pour a little in, replace the cap (dribbling a little on the machine in the process), put the bottle back in the cabinet, and close the door. You reach up, adjust the load settings, and finally, start the machine. You’re not done yet, though. You still must wipe up the spilled soap with a towel and toss it into the laundry to be washed with the next