“Figure it out when you get there.”

A friend of mine once told me this before I first had a chance to visit Japan, and it turned me into a believer in spontaneous travel.

The first trip we made, I planned a portion of the trip, the first leg. Everything after that was as we went.

It was stressful, I made mistakes, we got on the wrong train multiple times and lost a lot of time, but I had more fun on this trip than any single trip I had ever been on.

I enjoyed it so much, when my wife and I visited Japan a second time, I booked our hotel after we landed.

We figured out what to do sometimes the day of, but usually the night before.

What We Learned

We never felt like we missed out on anything. We got things done extremely efficiently, but also, it felt as if we were exploring the world, rather than following a maze we set for ourselves.

I know there are people out there who feel like they need to have control over everything that they do — fine — but I believe a lot of people are missing out.

Some might say, “Well, it was Japan.” But the second trip was better than the first, and we planned nothing.

I enacted this same plan when we visited Europe and toured around. Now, whenever we go anywhere, we don’t plan anything except the flight.

Take from what I am saying whatever you please, but this advice has never failed me, and has amazingly upgraded every single one of my trips since then.

I will never plan another trip before I arrive. I enjoy exploration, and I enjoy figuring out what to do while doing it.

I’ll leave you with one last image: imagine being in Italy and telling your family, “Tomorrow we are heading to Venice for a single day trip.”

It was weird, but I bought our tickets that night, we flew out that morning, we even took a gondola ride, we ate and shopped, and we flew back to Rome. We followed that up by going back to Paris, and then back to London.

Amazingly fun, stressful, but both my daughter and wife enjoyed it, and we got to see the Olympic decorations in Paris.

Try it, that’s all I would say.

| https://www.psypost.org/study-finds-scheduling-leisure-activities-makes-less-fun/ – PsyPost/Ohio State |