Business Travel and the Rule of Twos

I’ve been really lucky in my career to have travelled the world on business, giving speeches in Romania, Melbourne, London, Berlin, Stockholm, on a cruise ship, and more. Like everyone who does a lot of business travel, I've developed a set of little "rituals" to keep myself safe and and (relatively) sane.  I realized the other day that my most best tips all seem to come in pairs, and I thought I'd pass them along. The Taxi Two-Step Whenever I step out of a taxi, I now do two things: First, I look back at where I was sitting to make sure something didn't slip out of my pocket (I've lost two cell phones this way over the years), and second I look on the outside of the cab for its taxi number, which I try to remember. I almost never have a need to be able to identify the taxi afterwards, but in the rare case when you need to, knowing the specific cab you were in can help. (In Las Vegas once, I left my MacBook Pro in the backseat. I didn't know the specific cab I was in, so all I could do was hope that the cabbie was honest and returned it to the cab company's lost and found; he did. As I was a flagged cash fare, he could have easily made off with it without any record of me being in his cab.) Two Keys When I check into a hotel which uses those magnetic-stripe cards as keys (don't they all now?), I always ask for two keys, even though I'm the only person checking in. I stuff one card in my wallet right away as a backup. I can't tell you how many times I've left the room ...

Channel: YouTube Video Length: 3m 18s Date Found: Thu, Jul 01 2010 10:52 AM Category: Travel Date Produced: Wed, Jun 30 2010 8:31 PM View Count: 0