It seems hyperbolic, but go to any practically and hostel in a developed city worldwide and you'll find a group of Americans doing just that (not to mention other debaucheries).

Traveling actively is basically the exact opposite of that. It takes research, bravery, spontaneity, social skill, and a boat load of curiosity. When you travel like this though you can paint yourself into entirely new environments and see the ways you expand, you can look back into the ways you live normally and then pick and choose the parts you like the most. In this way you can actively change your own world and certainly put yourself in a better place to continue making positive changes.

Most immediately: you'll soften your bias and become aware of the biases of others, you'll understand the traditions of your culture and be better able to interpret their necessity or value, you'll become experienced in some other culture able to interpret things through a slightly different point of view. Together these things can be used to vastly improve your home or can become skills to help you change the world.

Of course, if you want to travel and at that very moment do some active changing, you may want to try something like Peace Corps, Doctors/Engineers Without Borders, or other world health initiatives. You should be careful though because if you don't have the experience which can let you isolate your own cultural biases a little then you may get connected with some group which will inhibit your ability to learn. In my opinion, this is the trap which things like mission trips fall into and, as an effect, they may become some kind of mixture of harm and benefit.

Volunteers spend a long time in their host country, and really get to see things in depth (not just the tourist view).

Volunteers also get a chance to "change the world". Usually not in a particularly grand way, but a little education and inspiration can have a lot of ripple effects.

Of course, being based overseas, and having a fair amount of vacation time, volunteers also have opportunities to visit other interesting places and countries near their host sites.

Getting a reasonable living allowance and government-sponsored benefits sweetens the deal, but of course it doesn't offer nearly as much freedom as simply quitting your job and hopping on a plane.

I certainly agree that it is worthwhile to experience another culture at least once. I am not so sure about more than once, though.

In college my internships took me all across Canada, staying in each place 4 months at a time. All of those experiences have been invaluable to me, and taught me far more than any sort of vacation I've ever taken.

Flexibility, adaptability, and dealing with uncertainty - Things never go as planned when long-term traveling to the point that sometimes it is better not to have a plan, but rather pick a general direction and adapt. Same goes for your business plan, especially when developing new technologies in unproven markets. You don’t know enough to be able to plan out the details. A lot of times the random unplanned things end up being the best. Run with random even if you don’t understand it.

Dealing with the highs and the lows – One day you’re on top of the world feeling accomplished after you hike up a mountain. I’m queen of world! The next day it is raining, your feet are covered in blisters, you’re feeling run down, you have a cold coming on, your tent has a leak, and you are alone in the middle of nowhere eating yet another granola bar. But eventually the sun while shine again, your cold will go away, and you’ll be on your next exciting adventure. Kind of like – One day you are full of enthusiasm for your new feature that is going to change the world! The next day (make that weeks) you are dealing with bugs, angry customers, anxious investors, getting no sleep and living in a dump eating yet another bowl of beans and rice. Fortunately something good will happen eventually to balance it out if you can ride out the storm. Life is cyclical.

*Going solo is crazy hard at times...you need to build a team that compliments and balances – I solo road tripped and camped most of the time. I totally recommend solo travel because it will stretch you way beyond your limits and you’ll experience tremendous amounts of personal growth because it is crazy hard at times. But eventually you’ll get sick of going it alone - worn out from shouldering all the work and having no one to celebrate with except some strangers you just met. You need a team (travel companions or founders/partners/employees) that compliments each other. My typical group travel adventure goes something like this - I’ll lead a kayak expedition in the Everglades, get everyone there and paddling through the mangroves with alligators, but I’ll forget to pack lunch. As cool as it would be to have another rockstar kayaker along what I really need is someone who can make sandwiches. And not just the crappy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I would throw together. Like fancy sandwiches with Dijon mustard made by a rockstar sandwich maker.

Those are just a few things I learned (or at least reinforced) through traveling around the country that can be applied to entrepreneurship. I could write more but that is all I have time for right now and all the talk of Dijon mustard sandwiches is making me hungry for lunch.

That right there is the way to find useful experiences. It sounds like your thing isn't "Go see the Grand Canyon" or "Go to the Eiffel Tower". Instead, you're the kind of person who would "Go to Chaos Communication Congress" or "Go to Hacking at Random".

Traveling doesn't just mean going to see touristy places. Try contacting a few people in the industry you like, see if you can arrange for them to show you around their business, and just show up there.

I guess it's that you experience new cultures. You talk to people, you learn. You see how and why stuff is done differently, you learn. You also learn from your mistakes, you learn to adopt to current conditions with whatever resources you have for your disposal, you discover new tricks, etc.

By planting seeds that you have no other way of getting into your brain. You can reap the (currently unknown) harvest later.

Is traveling better than working on a startup?

I disagree with the author that you shouldn't just travel, but you should actually live in different places. You hardly learn anything from staying in a place for a few days but you learn much more if you stay in a place for at least a few months.

Living abroad challenges you in ways that are very hard to find at home. Everyday things like buying groceries or ordering food in a restaurant become challenging (as long as you don't go to an English speaking country). You start to discover beliefs that you didn't even know you had because the local people believe and act in totally different ways. You're always questioning 'why?' Why do people push to the front here and not line up properly? Why do people shake your your hand again when they see you even though you've met them a bunch of times before? Why do people not understand sarcasm like in North America? Why do the people sit around drinking coffee all day? Why is this person giving me a gift? What are the reasons behind this? Why did that person say they would do something when it was obvious they weren't going to do it? Is this representative of the whole culture or just this one person? Why do so many people believe in superstitions and tradition? and so on...

You start to recognize your own culture and, especially upon returning home, start to see things that you don't really like about your own culture - things that you weren't even aware about before.

Living in another country is a great opportunity to learn more about yourself, about others and have a rewarding experience consisting of ups and downs.

Totally agree. Once you've done a job interview in another language, or worked with foreign colleagues, you'll have new insights into the way companies work in your home country and confidence to tackle things you wouldn't have dreamed of doing before.

One downside to living abroad: In some industries you lose some networking juice and connections that you would have otherwise built had you stayed at home. That's mainly a concern for people who work in industries which don't value overseas experience or connections.

True. On the other hand, who can honestly say that he has exhausted all possible ways to challenge oneself at home?

Stop comparing. Do both, do neither. During the dotcom craze, I "traveled" to a foreign country and worked at a startup. The experiences were very rewarding. Your mileage may vary.

Advising people to travel is a bit like giving advice to learn Lisp. And, I know that hearing "well you just don't get it unless you do it" is not very helpful. But, I am learning Lisp anyways.

As Krishnamurti says, "Don't do what I do."

Great question. I don't know. I have done both, but a lot more working than travelling.

Building stuff is as much creative as it is scientific or task oriented. That creativity has to be fed somehow. For me, putting myself into a situation I'm normally unaccustomed to really gets the juices flowing. Travel is great for that.

I have done very little international travel, but I have done a lot of RVing. Although I never actually did much work while out on the road, I was never more relaxed and introspective. Often couldn't wait to get back to work to try something out.

Reading, surfing, and watching video are all good methods of feeding your brain. But nothing comes close to actually being there.