Plan plan plan plan plan. You love doing it. I love doing it. We all love planning. It’s in our Project Manager’s DNA to plan. Making checklists of items to buy for tailgating. Running down friends to follow-up on when and where and even if they’re meeting up. Sketching out your weekend schedule so as to maximize your drive time efficiently.
But I’ll tell you what I don’t plan that heavily. Vacations. I plan the airline route if I’m flying. I plan where I’m staying. And if it’s international, I buy a Lonely Planet book and read up on things to do. But once I’m there, nothing must be done that I don’t really want to do at that moment.
Case in point – a trip I took to Barcelona several years ago. I was living in London at the time so airline flights are really cheap there. I bought a ticket, booked a hostel and that was it. I hopped on the plane, took a taxi to my hostel, checked in and started walking around. I had a vague recollection of things I wanted to see but nothing was set in stone.
Barcelona – La Sagrada Familia
Sasha VanHoven over at 99U makes the same point in an article about how to make your next vacation count:
Make a flexible itinerary a priority.
[E]ffective vacations give you the choice and freedom to choose what you want to do. That means two things: Try to avoid structuring your vacation around an unbreakable schedule, and plan on going somewhere that has multiple options to pick from depending on the weather, your level of energy, or your budget.
If you’re in Barcelona, you probably should go see La Sagrada Família and Casa Batlló and La Rambla. But if you miss one, so what? I once spent 4 hours sitting on the beach in Rabat, Morocco watching the ocean crash against the breakers. It’s hard to explain how peaceful it is to watch the sun set over the ocean, knowing that your cares don’t matter (for now). I probably missed something incredible in Rabat or Casablanca because I spent most of my time walking and walking and walking. But I have such fond memories of those places.
Vacations are a time to recharge, to unplug and enjoy yourself. Have an outline for what you want to do; don’t follow it to the letter. Talk to random strangers. Walk around. Breathe and stop.
Rabat, Morocco. 2007.