It’s About Time

Adventure is a State of Mind

Much of travel is about time. Obviously, it takes time to get to and from locations, and it’s important that you add that time into your agenda when planning your trip. Even before you begin planning your trip, however, time is an important consideration.

What If There’s Not Enough Time?

One of the most common excuses people make for not going on the travel adventure they want to take is that they don’t have enough time. The reality, however, is that we all have the same amount of time each day. Some of us may require more sleep, and some work longer hours depending on our professions, but this rarely is the problem. What gets in the way of doing the things we say we want to do is usually a problem of priorities, intention, and initiative.

Priorities

As Laura Vanderkam points out in her book, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, we all have the same number of hours available to us each week. (It’s 168, just in case you didn’t catch that in the title.) She makes the point that the key to doing what makes you happy is to prioritize the things that are important to you.

The extra hours needed to plan a trip can be found by reducing the time spent doing things that might be enjoyable but aren’t as interesting or adventurous. An easy (and common) example of this is reducing the amount of time spent watching television or scrolling through social media. Such activities might be enjoyable in the moment, but if you repeatedly tell yourself that you aren’t taking that trip you want to take because you don’t have the time to plan it, this might be the easiest place to reclaim some time.

Making Intentional Choices with Your Time

This brings us to the importance of intention when we are trying to align our use of our time with our priorities. Technology and its built-in algorithms have gotten increasingly effective at hijacking our attention. Much of our social media and digital entertainment are purposefully designed to suck us in and keep us glued to our screens. That’s why the show you’re watching on Netflix, for example, advances to the next episode without you having to even pick up the remote. And social media, such as Instagram and Tik Tok, provides a constant stream of new content, something our brains are drawn to like bees to nectar.

If we’re trying to spend our time in alignment with our priorities, how can we refrain from losing ourselves in enjoyable but off-track activities? The cure is found in intentionality. Reminding yourself about your goals and what is important to you, and being mindful about whether your choices align with those goals and values, can help you to stay on track… most of the time.

All of us can get side tracked or go down a rabbit hole, even when we are focused on planning an adventure. There are times that I’ve intended to research places to stay as part of a trip and then hours later realized that I’ve strayed far from that goal. It’s amazing (and a little scary) how looking up something on the internet can lead to something that leads to something else… until you’ve spent hours of your time without having accomplished the research you initially started to do. When you have a lot of time on your hands, this can be part of the fun. But if you’re short on time, this is a trap you definitely want to avoid!

Again, being intentional can help you to avoid this time trap. If you’re looking for lodging, remind yourself not to look at any other types of websites, even if they seem tangentially related. Similarly, don’t check your social media or any other apps that are unrelated to your goal during your designated research time.

Some Strategies to Stay on Task

A strategic use of timers can also help you to be intentional in how you are spending your energy. If you do decide to check your email or social media before working on trip planning, set an alarm to remind you to get off so that you don’t look up a few hours later and realize that it’s time to go to bed and you haven’t made any progress with what you had planned to do.

As a different method, timers can also help to intensify intention. The Pomodoro Technique, a common productivity strategy, involves setting a timer for 25 minutes, working intensely on a single task during that time, and then taking a 5 minute break when the time is up. After the break, the timer can be set for another 25 minutes to continue working on the same task or to take on a different task, followed by another 5 minute break, and so on. I’ve used this technique when there is something that I absolutely need to get done but I don’t find it especially enjoyable, such as making plane or car rental reservations. It’s a strategy to keep me from spending hours doing planning that is more enjoyable but not as important at that moment, such as reading about the history of an area or looking at online restaurant menus.

Taking Action

A final aspect to address when you feel that time is the limiting factor is initiative. It is much easier to dream about something than to actually take action to make that dream into reality. Sometimes fear gets in our way. Sometimes it just seems easier to put things off until “someday,” although we’re not very clear as to when that day will be.

If a lack of initiative is getting in the way of creating your adventure, what can you do? First, look at the reason for your lack of initiative. If it’s fear, what can you do to reduce that fear? Do you need more information? Is there a friend who you can invite to travel with you?

Sometimes people can’t get started because they’re not clear on what they want to do or there are too many choices. In that case, sometimes the best thing to do is to just start the process. Even if you’re not sure what you want your entire trip to look like, beginning with what you do know you are interested in will start you down a path of associated interests as you begin to plan and do research.

At times, we all can get into a rut of being a passive participant in our life instead of an active one. If you realize that you’ve been taking the path of least resistance and just letting your life happen to you rather than more actively making decisions about what you want to do, maybe your dreams about travel are the nudge you need to take more initiative. If planning your dream trip seems too big of a goal right now, look for other places in your life where you can actively plan things you want to do and build up the skill of taking initiative.

For myself, I tend toward being passive and procrastinating. Like most of us, sometimes I hope that someone else will make the decisions to get things started. I also know, however, that the best chance I have of making my travel dreams come true is to start the process myself. That doesn’t mean that I have to do all of the planning and decision-making myself (see this post), but if no one is taking the initiative, I know that it might never happen if I just wait.

The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

Lao Tzu

Sometimes a little nudge is all it takes to get everyone excited and involved with the planning. I’ve found that once a date is agreed upon, it’s easier to move on to the rest of the planning. Setting a date also seems to be motivating to almost everyone to start participating in the planning process

A Final Thought for My Fellow Americans

Earlier I commented on everyone having the same amount of time available to them. This is only partially true. According to Business Insider, the US has the fewest paid leave days and the second-lowest number of paid vacation days in the world. So, you could say that Americans do have less time available to travel. Sadly, even with such limited vacation time, Americans are not taking all of the time owed to them by their employers — the same article reports that approximately 50% of Americans are not using all of their leave — which has a negative impact on both their productivity and health.

My opinion is that paid vacation time is part of the benefits package employers owe their employees, so everyone should make the most of it. Part of the reason employers offer vacation time is that taking time off makes their employees more productive in the long run. More important than that, however, it is healthy to spend that time away from work and enjoy your travel adventures. If a lack of time has been your excuse for not planning your dream trip, make sure that you are not missing out on any of the vacation time owed you!

Are issues with time getting in the way of the adventure you want to take? If so, what are you spending your time on? Do you need to be more mindful and intentional with what you are doing so that it aligns with what is important to you? Do you need to be more active in your life and take the initiative to start making plans? How can you find time to make travel plans?