Time flies when you’re having fun, apparently so will your vacation if you over-plan. In an interview with Jenni Avins of Quartz, Marc Whittman, psychologist and author of Felt Time explains the phenomenon of time in relation to travel; an over-booked schedule will make time fly faster than you wanted it to.
I’m guilty of the offense. Once I have my airline tickets booked and my calendar marked, I go into full trip planning mode and make long lists of my ‘must do’s’. I can’t help it- my Type-A tendencies force me to plan out what I want to see and experience. I obsess over making sure that I will make the most out of my trip. Turns out, this could be doing exactly the opposite of what I intended.
According to Whittman, the key is to go into a trip with minimal planning and a flexible schedule. By opening up our travel calendars, the trip might feel longer and a heck of a lot less stressful when it’s time to head home.
If we go into a trip with a set itinerary for every hour of the day, we will be relying on the next step and anticipating the next activity. Basically, you’re planning your vacation away.
In Wittman’s words,
“Planning also speeds up the passage of time. Because there you’re always already in the future. You have this future perspective of your mind, and then you are actually not attending to what is happening right now.”
Have you ever noticed that you recall your emotions more clearly than the events themselves? That’s a big key in memory formation, which makes mindfulness an important practice during travel. Focusing your attention to your surroundings and maintaining a degree of self-awareness can lead to a more memorable trip.
Our gut reaction is to plan heavily for trips, thinking that it’ll reduce our stress upon arrival. However, the takeaway here is that if you want those precious moments away from work to last, less is more.
Bethany en Belgique 