** I travel a lot. Like, over-100-flights-a-year-a-lot. So I have learnt a thing or two about surviving the travel-for-work syndrome. For those of you who travel a lot also, these are the best pieces of advice I can give you……… I hope they help.

I don’t know if you’re like me… I am going to guess that at least some of you are. Or you wouldn’t be reading this.

But I am often in my hotel room, awake at ungodly hours of the morning. And in need of coffee.

This happens especially when I travel from Brisbane or Sydney on the east cost of Australia to the Perth in the west. They are inconveniently 2-3 hours behind depending on the time of year. So that means that my stupid body clock has me up at 3am with nothing to do. I’m not going to waste the time, so if I can go the gym I will, but then I will find myself catching up on some work and in need of coffee.

So I do the unspeakable. I make instant coffee in the room. *wince*

I know I could probably order one from room service, but if there’s a tray charge (don’t get me started on that!), then I just refuse to pay, like, ten dollars for a coffee. That’s ludicrous - even if I’m spending someone else’s money. 

But I have found a solution. Starbucks’ own instant coffee sachets.

Now hear me out! Because I know a bunch of you just heard ‘Starbucks’ and ‘instant coffee’ in the one sentence and almost threw up. You coffee snobs. But really - you have to try these things. They are way better than the Nescafe packets that are in that little receptacle on your mini bar.

This is straight from the Starbucks website:

The magic is in a proprietary, all-natural process that we spent years perfecting. We microgrind the 100% arabica coffee in a way that preserves all of their essential oils and flavour, and it makes all the difference

I have no idea what that means. But I love coffee, and this is the best of all the instant coffee I have ever had. I now always travel with these little gems.

Try them out!

** Tony Wilson is a Workplace Performance Expert. His insights into performance science and it's application in the workplace will make you re-think the way that you approach leadership, culture change, high performance and productivity. Tony has an MBA and a BSc majoring in physiology and delivers workshops and keynote presentations around the globe.