I love to travel. And I love to travel for business.

Last fall, my job took me to 11 different cities over the course of about 8 weeks.  I loved nearly every minute of it.  And now that there’s word of a similar project ramping up – I can’t wait to once again be let out of the starting gate.

Here (in no particular order) is what I love about business travel:

1)       Clean Hotel Rooms

Whenever possible I stay at a Hampton Inn.  They have that whole “faux homey” thing down pat – the free cookies and/or popcorn at night is just icing on the cake.  The great thing about traveling is that everything is clean (clean sheets, clean bathrooms, clean rooms) all without any effort on my part.

2)      No Worries About Shopping for Groceries

Eating at restaurants has its advantages. When you travel you don’t have to worry on your drive home if you have enough milk or ketchup or bread or noodles to make whatever it is you’re planning for dinner. You show up at the restaurant, look at the menu and the rest is taken care of for you.  The same is true of all of the other household items like paper towels, dish detergent and toilet paper.

3)      New Stimuli

Airport bookstores, in-flight magazines, out-of-town newspapers, new shopping centers/malls and restaurants, finding my way around a strange town – all of these things help keep the neural pathways open and stimulated. Nothing boosts my creativity quite like going out of town for a trip.

4)      New People

Restaurants, security lines, hotels, clients, etc. are all full of new people. As George Clooney said in Up in the Air: “Isolated? I’m surrounded!”. If I’m so inclined I can always find someone worthwhile to talk to when I’m on the road.

5)      It Forces You to Focus on the More Important Things

This is all about the power of less. You learn to get done what absolutely needs to be done during the short times that you’re home. If it’s not important, it won’t make it to your to-do list. You learn to appreciate the limits of time even more when you have even less of it from week to week.

6)      It Forces You to Live and Work More Virtually

This includes delegating. This is strongly related to #5. You learn to take on less when you know you can’t be there to get it done. So you’re left relying heavily on delegating most things out. I’m rarely more productive than I am when I have to delegate out all of the important stuff and reduce my own role in how things get done.  I’m at my best when I’m forced into the position of being the person to allocate resources and effort, while managing everything via e-mail, text and phone calls.  My sole job at that point is to remove any hurdles my team runs into.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/simon_and_you/

Highest and Best Use (HABU) is a principle in real estate and business appraisals that means the true value of a property is whatever value the property would have if it was to be put to its highest and best use.

So for instance, your grandmother might be selling her old house.  As a house, the property is ok.  It’s a little run-down and dated and the bedrooms might be a little small.  As a house it’s probably worth slightly less than similar houses that are a little more modern.

But the house sits on 3 acres of land and this land is zoned for high density residential units (townhouses, apartments, condos).  As raw sub-dividable acreage the property could be worth many times what the house might otherwise sell for.

The actual value of the property isn’t the house itself.  It’s in the land.

In fact, the house itself might be in the way of the highest and best use of property.

Individuals aren’t any different.  You also  have a highest and best use.  It is the true value of your time if you were to work doing the activity that brings you the most money.

And just like Nana’s house, most likely there are activities that you are doing right now that get in the way of your highest and best use.

How to Find Your Highest and Best Use:

1.  Think of all of the activities you can do to make money.

If you work for someone else this would obviously include your day job – your full-time employment – yet, it could also include any freelance work you do on the side, or a part-time job.  It could be something you do right now as a hobby or as volunteer work that you could make money doing if you decided to charge people for your work.

If you’re self-employed it gets a little more fuzzy.

Let’s say you run a small e-publishing operation, or you’re a freelance web developer.  As part of this job you’re engaged in some activities where you make money (sales, delivering goods, providing services, etc.) and some activities where you aren’t making money (accounting, marketing, clerical duties, etc.).

Now, you might think that your highest and best use is the activities you do to make money.  But it’s actually probably only ONE of those activities.  Maybe you’re better at writing e-books than you are at sales.  Or maybe you’re better at sales than building websites. Maybe your having to build the websites gets in the way of you making the most money by selling the web development work in the first place.

You might also want to list all of the activities you are qualified to do, but aren’t yet doing at all.  You might be an accountant at a regional construction company, but you were once a teacher and you’re qualified to be the principle of a suburban high school.  For the purposes of this activity you should list the job of principal in your money making activities.

2.   After making a list of all of the money making activities you’re capable of doing, you need to assign an hourly dollar amount.

There are a few ways to figure this out if you don’t already have a figure in mind.  The best way is to take a look in the marketplace to figure out what people are paying.  Figure out what you’d pay for someone to do the particular activity, and then figure out how much money someone would pay you to do it for someone else.

If you make a product, just multiply the profit you make per product by the amount of products you can make in a day.

3.   Once you have an hourly wage, simply multiply it by your monthly or annual hours worked.

Even if you don’t currently work that many hours in a month for that particular activity, it’s ok.  The point of the exercise is to determine the most valuable use of your time.  We’re making a basic assumption that you are able to work at full capacity.  That the demand for your highest and best use is high enough and constant enough for you to work doing it full time – even if its not right now, or ever.

Whatever activity provides the highest amount of money is your highest and best use.

You might find that even though you make a good living working independently, you might be better put to use working as a sales manager for an international conglomerate.  Or, you could find the opposite to be true.

Passion is greater than Highest and Best Use

So what if you don’t like my highest and best use?

You might absolutely love working independently and the idea of working for a big conglomerate depresses you.

That’s ok.  This is an exercise in possibility – about exploring all options from every angle.

This is an exercise about figuring out if your current activities are in the way of your highest and best use.

If you don’t like your highest and best use activity, then don’t do it. Go down to the activity you absolutely love to do and use that as your highest and best use.  And work to get all of the other activities out of the way by elimination, automation or delegation.  Then figure out how to get to full capacity.

And don’t fret that you aren’t maximizing your working hours to making the most money you can make.  Do what you love.

There isn’t anything wrong with Nana’s house staying secluded on her 3 acres of land.

Photo above: My Nana’s house and the place of so many childhood and adult memories.  Currently for sale to the highest bidder.

If you’re prepared (good credit and an abundance of cash) a recession is a good time for some bargain hunting of investments (stock, land, real estate, talent, etc.).  And maybe even some refinancing of old debts.

Otherwise a recession is just about juggling your income and obligations and waiting for better times.

Because of a misjudgment a couple of years ago, compounded by a small run of bad luck in mid-2008 – I’ve been mostly doing the latter.

I had hoped to get in a good enough position to capitalize on the opportunities brought about by the reduced prices in real estate, but that hasn’t been the case.  And I think its too late.

Disclaimer: I’m not a trained economist, so everything I say should be taken with a grain of salt.  And none of this should be construed as investment advice.

So with all of those disclaimers out of the way, here I go:

We’ve hit the bottom of this recession.

First, let me say what I am not saying.  I am not saying that things will be “better” in 6, 9 or even 12 months from now.  I am not saying that unemployment won’t continue to be high.  And I am not saying that further stimulus isn’t needed to get us going again.

What I am saying is that things are not going to get much worse than they are right now.

We may bounce around the bottom for a while, and getting out of this hole may take a while.  But we’ve hit the bottom.

To back this up, here are a few observations I’ve made in the last few weeks:

• The past two weekends I’ve been to Annapolis Mall, it’s been packed.  The parking lots are full of cars and the mall is full of people.  And the people have been carrying around shopping bags.  Shopping bags from places like Macy’s and Nordstrom’s.  People are spending money again.

• A few Saturdays back I went to Best Buy and when I pulled up to the front of the store there were two pick-up trucks with two different sets of people loading up huge 52” flat-panel TVs.  As my brother might say, people are optimistic enough to spend money they don’t have.

• Following my trip to Best Buy I drove by a subdivision in my little town.  This particular subdivision is really nothing more than a cul-de-sac of 5 or 6 lots.  For most of the last three years this subdivision has been nothing more than a model home and the other finished lots.  I’ve rarely seen any more than just the salesperson’s car sitting out front of the model.  On this particular Saturday (a very nice weather day) there happened to be 9 cars parked out front.

Now, let me say that the greater DC-Baltimore metropolitan region is notoriously recession-resistant.  The biggest part of our local economy is the military and federal government (and associated contractors).  So we tend to be one of the last regions in the nation to feel the effects of a recession and we tend to be one of the first regions to recover from those effects when the recession is over.

So your mileage and observations may vary.

Finally, I also want to say I know there are a lot of individuals and families that are under a lot of financial stress right now.  Even if we have seen the bottom, I think there are going to be continued foreclosures, layoffs, etc.  I think it will be months, years or even a decade or more before some people have finally put their own individual worst behind them.

But be assured: the very faint light you see ahead – is the one at the end of the tunnel.

Now all we have to do is start restocking the cupboards for the next recession so we can take advantage of the opportunities.

View points from all sides (some subscriptions required):

Baltimore Sun: Sales of previously occupied homes rise unexpectedly in February by the largest percentage increase in nearly six years

Inman: California home-sales rate outpaces 2008 (paid subscription required)

WSJ: Foreclosure Rate Outpaces Bank Sales

USA Today Poll: Outlook Improving on the Economy

Yahoo News: Economy Shows Positive Signs But It May Not Last

Inman: New Home Sales Climb From Record Low

As I write this there is breaking news:

Washington Post: Consumer Spending Up for 2nd Straight Month (registration may be required)

Only somewhat related but interesting:

Americans are moving on up to smaller homes (I like this trend)