Cancelling Inflight WiFi for More Me-Time

I just got back from my last work-related trip of the year. It has been a long year with a lot of travel and most of it on planes. One of the issues with air travel has always been connectivity, or rather lack thereof.

There have countless hours on end in at 30,000ft+ or in airports or on my way to or from airports. And for some reason, I thought that I should somehow always at least try to be accessible as much as possible. Of course, on the ground, it’s not a problem. The phone can easily handle that. But in the air, it’s a different story.

Inflight wifi to the rescue! It’s an expensive solution. Even a monthly subscription is expensive, but I thought it was worth it. And sure, there were situations where I ended tending to urgent fires from some middle seat somewhere over America. And yes, I have replied to tons of emails while en route to some city.

Was it worth it, though? Nope! Why? There are a few reasons: first, the service itself is usually awful. Connectivity is often slow and intermittent. But the real problem is that it takes away a few hours that I could spend relaxing, sleeping, reading, whatever. What’s the point of always trying to work? How effective am I really while sitting on a plane? I’m already trying to fly early mornings or late evenings to maximize time in the office. Why not take the travel time to just not work?

So … I canceled my monthly subscription to inflight wifi. How will I survive? Easy. I’m fairly certain that the world can do without me for a few hours. And I know that I can do without the world for a few hours. And I also know that whatever urgently needs my attention while I’m traveling will still be there when I land. And if it isn’t, well, I guess that means it didn’t really need my help to resolve it 😊

I’m looking forward to less travel for work in 2020, and more quiet time while traveling. I’m clawing back more me-time!