“What’s one thing you wish you had started earlier in your life?”

For me, the answer is simple.

Travelling.

But if I’m being completely honest, it’s not really about travelling.

It’s about learning to live in the present.

And I wish I had learned that much earlier.

For seven years, I was always somewhere else

For a long time, work was everything.

Not just something I did.

Something that followed me everywhere.

My phone was always with me.

Emails were always waiting.

Customers needed something.

There was always another problem to solve, another deadline to worry about, another reason why I couldn’t completely switch off.

Even when I wasn’t working, a part of my brain was.

Seven years went by like that.

Looking back, I realise how rarely I was actually present.

I was physically wherever I happened to be.

But mentally?

I was usually at work.

Then came 2017.

I decided to do something that, at the time, felt almost ridiculous.

I dropped everything and went to Europe with my friends.

No laptop.

No work.

No constantly checking my phone.

No customer calls.

No emails waiting for a response.

For the first time in about seven years, I had created a situation where there was nothing I could do about work.

And something strange happened.

The world didn’t fall apart.

The customers were fine.

The work could wait.

And, more importantly…

I was finally living.

I remember the feeling more than the places

That’s what makes that trip so special to me.

I don’t remember every street.

I don’t remember every restaurant.

I probably couldn’t even recreate the exact itinerary today.

But I remember the feeling.

Waking up and thinking:

“What are we doing today?”

Not:

“What emails do I need to answer?”

Not:

“What problem needs fixing?”

Not:

“What does the customer need?”

Just:

“What do I want to do today?”

It was such a simple question.

But after years of putting work, responsibilities and everyone else’s needs ahead of my own, it felt incredibly liberating.

For once, I wasn’t optimising my day for someone else.

I was simply enjoying it.

That trip changed something in me

I came back from Europe with a different understanding of what a break actually meant.

A holiday wasn’t just a reward for working hard.

Travel wasn’t something you did after you had achieved everything you wanted.

And your personal life wasn’t something you squeezed into whatever time remained after work.

Life was happening now.

That realisation stayed with me.

It didn’t mean I suddenly stopped caring about work.

I didn’t.

I still love building things.
I still care about customers.
I still get deeply involved in what I do.

But I started understanding the importance of having something that belonged entirely to me.

Something that wasn’t about productivity.

Something that didn’t have a KPI.

Something that didn’t need to make money.

Experiences.

And then travelling became part of our life

Today, my wife and I travel frequently.

And the funny thing is, we’re not necessarily chasing the biggest destinations.

We love discovering the places in between.

A tiny European town.

A lake hidden behind the mountains.

A village we had never heard of.

A beautiful train journey.

A Christmas market in a town that isn’t on everyone’s list.

Sometimes we have a plan.

Sometimes we don’t.

And sometimes the best memories come from the days when we simply decide:

“Let’s go there and see what happens.”

Travelling gave me something I didn’t know I needed

Calm.

Not the kind of calm you get from sitting on the sofa after a long day.

A deeper kind.

The kind that comes from having absolutely nothing you need to solve for a few hours.

Walking through an unfamiliar town.

Sitting beside a lake.

Having coffee with my wife.

Looking at a mountain.

Getting on a train without thinking about the next meeting.

Those moments have become incredibly valuable to me.

Because somewhere between the work, responsibilities and endless notifications, I had forgotten what it felt like to simply exist without needing to achieve something.

Travel brought that back.

And perhaps that’s why I regret not starting earlier

I don’t regret the career.

I don’t regret working hard.

I don’t regret caring about customers.

Those things have given me a lot.

What I regret is believing, for too long, that I had to earn the right to enjoy my own life.

I wish I had travelled more in my 20s.

I wish I had taken more spontaneous trips.

I wish I had put the phone away more often.

I wish I had understood that saying “I can’t, I have work” every single time isn’t a badge of honour.

Because work will always give you another reason to stay.

There will always be another email.

Another deadline.

Another customer.

Another project.

Another Monday.

But some experiences don’t come back.

If I could tell my younger self one thing…

I’d say:

Don’t wait.

You don’t need to have everything figured out.

You don’t need to have unlimited money.

You don’t need three weeks of annual leave.

You don’t even need to go very far.

Take the weekend.

Get on the train.

Go somewhere you’ve never been.

Leave the laptop at home.

Put your phone away.

And for once, don’t ask:

“What do I need to get done?”

Ask:

“What do I want to experience?”

Because that’s the question I wish I had started asking much earlier.

And perhaps that’s what travelling has really given me.

Not a collection of countries.

Not a passport full of stamps.

Not photographs.

It gave me back the present.

And now, whenever my wife and I discover another beautiful little corner of Europe, I can’t help thinking about that trip in 2017.

The trip where I finally switched off.

The trip where I realised that the world could wait for a few days.

The trip where, after seven years of constantly thinking about tomorrow…

I finally learned how to enjoy today.