Book Review: Lean Travel

Paul Akers is the founder and president of FastCap, a product development company specializing in woodworking tools and hardware for the professional builder. Paul is an energetic speaker whose core passion is helping people discover their full potential and showing others how to implement Lean in their business and personal life.

Paul learned to embrace adventure and pursue excellence from his father when he earned the rank of Eagle Scout at the young age of 14. About 10 years ago, Paul decided that he wanted to become a world-class giver. From experience in order to have a great travel experience, you must approach it from the standpoint that you are going to treat all the people you encounter with dignity and respect, understanding that they are working hard to help you have a great trip. If you regularly give them your respect, your smile, your encouragement, and your gratitude, your travel will be a blessing!

In addition to being grateful, another way to make your travel experience more fulfilling is to live by the adage that "less is more". In a Lean Travel context, this means travel light. simple two-second improvement can make travel more effective and enjoyable.

Paul is now an avid traveler and shares his advice and tips for making travel easy and efficient in his book “Lean Travel”. He ties everything back to lean concepts and the 8 forms of waste.

To make it easier for readers, Paul includes a section that explicitly summarizes it into just one simple concept. For example, in his first book, 2 Second Lean, the goal was to teach the reader to “learn to see waste.” In his second book, Lean Health, he said he wanted you to “treat your body like you would treat a Ferrari.” With Lean Travel, he wanted to show you how to “travel light and with a grateful heart.”

As you start this book, there are two main parts of his philosophy understand. First, what you give in the travel experience will have a profound impact on how much you enjoy it. Second, the less you bring and the lighter you travel, the more you will be able to feel and adapt to the fantastic trade winds of the travel experience. So travel with a full heart and a light suitcase!

This book teaches you how he applied Lean principals in an edgy way to improve every aspect of the way he travels. If you love travel and adventure you’ll enjoy the stories and tips to make your next trip better. If you are Lean enthusiast like Paul and myself they’ll enjoy the application of lean thinking in a personal way.

Paul offers the book for free online with many resources and videos to support his teachings. If you have a chance to listen to the audio you’ll enjoy the many off script additions that show his personality and make it an adventure.