It is a proven fact that business travel causes stress. It is not hard to figure out why it causes stress for anyone who has experienced airport delays, long travel hours on crowded planes with minimum personal space, and that awful sensation of anxiety when arriving late to an important meeting.

In this post, We are going to try to understand stress from a logical point of view and analyze i’s relation with business plane travelling. And last, suggesting possible workarounds.

Stress has four ways of manifesting – emotional, cognitive, behavioural and physical- and two types of cause factors – external and internal. Let’s analyze this.

Manifestations

Emotional:

Emotional manifestations are very common: feeling depressed, lonely, hopeless, apathetic, excessive worrying, etc.

Cognitive:

Stress causes a form of mental tunnel vision. This is when we loose perspective of things, and start having difficulties on concentrating and efficiently relating ideas or concepts. We can only “see” one thing at a time and the whole picture fades. This is related with a lack of judgement and becomes really undesirable when undertaking business related tasks.

Behavioural:

The way we behave gets really affected when suffering from stress. Our ability to communicate with others and the way we express ourselves becomes impoverished. Some manifest difficulties to speak fluently or nervous ticks.

Physical:

Depending on the degree stress the body can suffer from various pains, nausea and even cause severe illnesses like ulcers or cardiovascular problems.

So it’s clear how stress is very inconvenient for business efficiency and how it really puts the one who suffers from it in physical and psychological danger.

Causes

Internal:

The nature of internal causes is very varied. Family issues or personal insecurities can really affect us and lead to stress states really easily. Even if the things or events that surround us are not particularly bad. We are not going to extend further on this subject as we feel it is beyond the boundaries of this Blog. Though, we can give you one good advice, everything can be solved easier if you relax, breath properly and take a good time to properly and logically establish relations between the events and situations that you go through.

External:

As we mentioned above. The conditions of modern mass transport systems can be really inconvenient for the modern-world businessman. Airline planes are subject to a lot of factors – meteorological, human, etc.- that makes each trip highly error prone. The fact of travelling with so many people opens the possibility of many unexpected situations – people getting sick, screaming kids,

Recommended solutions for businessmen:

Like we always say: “Wisely use available technology”

1) Try to fly only when really it’s really necessary. Getting a good video-conference system could save you considerable time and money as you may be able to perform some of the meetings this way. Here you can learn some more about video-conference systems: http://www.phones.com/business_phones/video-conference-systems/

2) If you can afford it, seriously consider hiring air charter services. This way of travelling eliminates all the external reasons to get stressed: no delays, luxury, comfortable and quiet environment, etc. It is expensive. But it may be a good investment. Take some time to find out it different companies prices. Here you can see some reviews on the main US based companies: http://test.planes.com/private_jet_brokers_reviews/

3) If you HAVE to fly on an regular airline seat, try taking some time for relaxing on the plane. Don’t force yourself to work or think about what you will do when you arrive your destination, this makes things worse. Try wearing noise-cancellation headsets, and even carry some entertainment objects with you. Acknowledge that you are in a rather unpleasant situation but try to make it as good as possible. You might even end up having a good time.

So that is pretty much there is about business stress and planes.  We really hope it helps or at lest has been instructive!