Week 03 (2026-W03): Tested, Not Just Motivated

Keeping a Wellness System on a Work Trip

There’s a big difference between being motivated and being tested.

Motivation is easy when life is smooth.

Testing happens when life is loud: airports, meetings, hotel beds, and the weird combination of “busy” and “tired” that makes everything feel slightly harder than it should.

This week, I traveled to Valence, France for a sales team kickoff (Monday–Tuesday) and returned home on Wednesday. On paper, it’s just a business trip.

In practice, it’s a perfect stress-test for any wellness routine—because travel doesn’t care about your habits.

Travel asks: How real is your system, really?

The pre-trip mistake most people make

Here’s the classic pattern:

• You travel → routine breaks
• You get home → you “reset” aggressively
• You repeat this cycle until you start believing consistency is impossible

The problem isn’t you. It’s the design.

Most routines are built for ideal days. Work travel is not an ideal day generator.

So instead of trying to keep my “home routine” intact in Valence, I focused on one idea:

I’m not trying to be perfect. I’m trying to be portable.

The portable version of consistency

On a trip week, the question becomes:

What are the smallest habits that still move the needle?

For me, that’s usually a short list:

• Movement: something daily, even if it’s small
• Food rhythm: a simple structure, not perfection
• Sleep protection: not “8 hours,” but minimizing damage
• Nervous system reset: a few minutes of quiet, breathing, or walking

Because the biggest danger during work travel isn’t a missed workout.

It’s the “all-or-nothing” mindset that turns one imperfect day into a full week drift.

Valence reality: meetings, people, pressure

Kickoff meetings have their own energy.

They’re a mix of collaboration, performance, social dynamics, and a packed agenda. You’re “on” all day, which sounds fine until you realize being “on” has a cost.

The cost isn’t just energy. It’s recovery.

And recovery is where busy professionals get trapped—because we treat recovery like something we’ll do later, when things calm down.

But “later” doesn’t show up unless you schedule it.

So this week I tried something simple:

Treat recovery like a meeting that can’t be canceled.

Not a big ritual. A small one.

A walk. A decompression moment. A bedtime trigger. Anything that signals to your body: we’re safe now, you can downshift.

The mindset shift: from discipline to design

Here’s what I’m learning as I build this project:

The goal is not to become a robot with iron discipline.

The goal is to build a system that works when you’re human.

A system that survives:

• travel
• deadlines
• social meals
• fatigue
• disruption

That’s why I keep returning to this phrase:

Data is a flashlight, not a whip.

And routine is a tool, not a prison.

If a routine can’t flex, it’s going to break.

The week’s lesson: “tested” is a good thing

This trip was a reminder that being tested isn’t evidence that you’re failing.

Being tested is evidence that you’re actually living.

And if you can keep even a small version of your system alive during a trip, you’re building something strong.

The most important part isn’t whether you trained “enough.”

The most important part is that you didn’t drop the identity:

“I’m someone who keeps moving forward.”

Tiny experiment for next week (under 2 minutes to start)

Before every work trip, I’ll write a 3-line travel plan:

1. Minimum viable movement: ____
2. One food anchor: ____
3. One sleep/recovery anchor: ____

That’s it. No complicated program. Just portable consistency.