What 15 years of entrepreneurship taught me about travel

Par Gabriel Goldberg 13 January 2026 4 min read

A few weeks ago, I found myself sitting in a hotel lobby in Copenhagen at 6 AM, unable to sleep. It wasn't jet lag. It was my body refusing to stop, even when I asked it to. At that precise moment, I understood that something had to change. Yet another flight. The tarmac as routine, the airport as mobile office. The myth of travel as a reward For the first ten years of my entrepreneurial life, I treated travel as a carrot at the end of a stick. "When this project is finished, I'll go somewhere." "When we've raised funding, I'll take a vacation." "When the team is stable, I'll give myself some time." These promises I made constantly. And I broke them just as constantly. The problem wasn't lack of time. It was how I had conditioned my mind to see rest as weakness, a loss of productivity, a luxury I hadn't yet earned. Every hour spent away from my computer felt stolen from my company. Decision fatigue: an invisible enemy Nobody prepares you for decision fatigue. Not business books, not mentors, not podcasts. You learn to manage meetings, fundraising, hiring. But nobody tells you that after 500 micro-decisions per day for several years, your brain starts to fail in subtle but profound ways. I remember a dinner in Amsterdam with potential investors. The waiter asked me what I wanted to drink. I stared at the menu for thirty seconds, unable to choose between a glass of wine and sparkling water. My brain was emptied. Not from the pitch I had just made, but from the thousands of…