Three Days in Dubai: How I Use Travel to Reset and Realign

I'm writing this from an Airbnb in Dubai. I landed yesterday at 6am. I leave tomorrow at 10pm. Three days, two sleeps, and a deliberate pause between two very different chapters.

This trip follows a reunion in Bali - four old friends from my teenage years, scattered across the globe, who rarely find themselves in the same place anymore. One lives in Mexico. Another splits time between Spain and Bali. A third has lived in India, Turkey, and Syria before settling (for now) in Bali. And me - based in the UK, running businesses, but increasingly drawn to the clarity that comes from movement.

The Bali trip was about reconnection. This Dubai trip is about realignment.

The Strategic Pause

There's a rhythm to how I work now. Intense focus, then deliberate breaks, then a reset to recalibrate. Dubai sits at that reset point.

After any trip - especially one involving late nights, flexible wake-up times, and the kind of unstructured days that reunions demand - I need a buffer. Not to recover from exhaustion, but to consciously shift gears. Holiday mode serves its purpose. Business mode requires intention to re-enter.

Three days might seem brief. But when you land early and leave late, you can pack genuine focus into that window. The Airbnb becomes a temporary office. The unfamiliar environment removes the usual distractions. The city itself provides energy without demanding attention.

This is not a holiday. This is the space between.

What Travel Reveals

One thing strikes me every time I move through different parts of the world: we are all the same people.

We look different. We speak different languages. We follow different customs and hold different beliefs. But underneath it all, we share the same fundamental machinery - two eyes, two arms, two legs for most of us. The same emotions. The same needs. The same fears and hopes and desires.

We're remarkably protective of our origins, our stories, our people. We draw lines and build identities around geography and culture. But sit in a café in Bali, then a restaurant in Dubai, then a pub in Southampton, and you see the same human behaviours playing out in different costumes.

Language fascinates me particularly. In Bali, I noticed how Indonesian carries sounds that remind you of Spanish, Thai, and Chinese all at once. Spanish itself fractures beautifully across geography - the Castilian of Spain, the melodic flow of South American variants, the US-influenced rhythms of Mexican Spanish, the distinctive accents of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Even within the UK, you can trace a person's origin through their accent - Scottish, Welsh, Northern, Southern, Eastern.

Language evolution is a map of human movement. It shows how we adapt to our environment, how isolation shapes pronunciation, how contact with neighbours blends sounds and syntax. We are all products of where we are. Yet somehow, we convince ourselves we're fundamentally different from people a few hundred miles away.

Travel dissolves that illusion. Not by erasing differences - they're real and worth celebrating - but by revealing the shared foundation beneath them.

Three Goals in Focus

Dubai serves another purpose for this trip: clarity on what matters right now.

I've crystallised my current priorities into three goals. Not vague aspirations, but specific outcomes I'm actively building towards.

First: Establish a personal brand system. Not long ago, I didn't understand what a personal brand was. Then I noticed how much I'd learned from people I follow online - founders, operators, thinkers who share their perspectives publicly. I feel like I know them through their content, even though we've never met. I want to offer something similar. Not for vanity, but because sharing ideas publicly creates connection, attracts like-minded people, and positions you as someone worth listening to in your field.

The practical challenge is creating content efficiently. My approach: start with a brain dump - me talking into a microphone about whatever's on my mind. Then use systems and style guides to transform that raw material into blog posts, YouTube videos, social content. One input, multiple outputs, distributed across a week. This very post started as a voice recording.

Second: Launch and productise my software. I have a company in Dubai - Minimal - that holds the IP for all the software we're building. We have We UC nearly ready for production, Evalua in development, more products in the pipeline. The challenge isn't building - we can build. The challenge is marketing.

Modern marketing isn't what it used to be. The old playbook - an advert here, some SEO there, a few emails to your contact list - still works, but the game has evolved. AI-powered targeting, advanced filtering, narrow audience identification. I need to learn this properly. The personal brand work ties into this - being known makes selling easier. But the go-to-market strategy needs its own attention.

Third: Physical homeostasis. Health, weight, energy, sleep - all the physical inputs that determine how well everything else runs. I've talked about this before. Life moves in cycles. I'll have a stretch of excellent habits - clean eating, consistent sleep, regular exercise. Then a few days where things slip. Then back to the good habits.

The goal isn't perfection. It's narrowing the variance. Shorter dips, faster recoveries, a higher baseline. I'm chasing the last 10kg of weight loss, building more muscle, finding the sustainable rhythm that keeps me performing well. Physical wellbeing drives mental wellbeing. This isn't secondary to the business goals - it's foundational.

The Privilege of Movement

I'm aware this lifestyle isn't available to everyone. Running a business that can operate without my constant presence is a privilege that took years to build.

My core business, circle.cloud now has over 100 employees, a capable board of directors, and an executive team that executes strategy while I focus on these other priorities. I remain actively involved, but the machine runs without me standing over it. That took a decade to construct. The freedom I have now was earned through years of doing everything myself - telemarketing, sales, installations, billing, support, all of it.

Some people find peace in staying put. They live their entire lives in one place and are genuinely content. That's perfectly valid. Happiness doesn't require movement.

But for me, staying still creates restlessness. Travel provides something I can't find at home - a sense of internal calm, a clearer perspective, a feeling of exploring what's out there. Some part of my brain needs novelty, needs to see how other humans live, needs the disruption of unfamiliar surroundings.

I'm happy in the UK. I'm happier when I'm roaming.

Back to Business

Tomorrow night I fly out of Dubai. The Bali reunion fades into memory. The three goals sharpen into focus. The cycles continue.

This is what founder life looks like for me right now. Not constant hustle, not perpetual motion, but deliberate alternation between immersion and distance. Work, then space, then recalibration, then work again. Travel as a tool, not an escape.

Three days, two sleeps, and a clear head. That's all I needed.