Get Out of Office to Gain Perspective

Caroline in Vietnam, 2025

Over the past year, the Rocket Camp team has been quite the globe-trotting bunch, with trips to Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Japan, & Vietnam. While any kind of trip has its benefits, whether it takes 30 minutes or 24 hours to get there, there’s something to be said about really getting away. And to work at a place with a flexible and supportive environment that allows you to do so. 

Anytime you get out of your normal routine, comfort zone, or bubble of life, you end up learning something. This is amplified when you travel internationally, and it makes you a better employee, teammate, and citizen of the world. 

Here are some ways that travel can have a positive impact on your work: 

• You get time away from your team. Even if you have great working relationships, a break from seeing the same people in meetings every day is healthy and necessary. You come back with more energy, patience, and appreciation for your similarities and differences. 

  
  

• You gain new perspectives. Zooming out is crucial to our sanity, empathy, and understanding of what’s going on in the world. All of the sudden, the timeline you had to redo five times, the zipped file you forgot to attach, or the social media post you have yet to create feel a little less significant. Yes, the work we do matters, but it is not the only thing going on.  

  
  

• You get better at dealing with things that are out of your control. As a person who loves a solid project management process, this can be a challenge, because try as I might, I can’t control everything. Maybe the weather forecast you checked obsessively turned out to be wrong, or your flight was delayed, or almost all the ATMs in Hanoi required scanning QR codes with instructions in Vietnamese and you just wanted to have a few million Vietnamese dong handy (1M dong = ~$40 USD for reference). Trips are a great opportunity to problem solve and make peace with what you can and cannot control.

  
  

• You have a newfound appreciation for the importance of clear, thoughtful communication. Even when you’re speaking the same language, things can get lost in translation. It’s easy to get caught up in over-explaining things or assuming everyone has the same context as you, but you can also communicate a lot by using simple words, making eye contact, and meeting people where they are. 

  
  

• Plus there’s the fun stuff. You come back with crazy stories, random facts, food recommendations, and photos to share with your team. 

And on that note, here’s some travel inspiration from the Rocket Camp team!