Don’t Plan Your Next Trip Abroad

The anticipation. The excitement. The thrill of your next trip, now just three weeks away! You feel like you’ve been waiting for years, and now it’s just around the corner.

Time to dig into your saved Instagram photos and actually plan out an itinerary on how you’re going to see everything you want to see in this foreign country. If you’re like how I was, you’d open up a Google Sheet and start planning out events:

July 6th

7:30am — Land at airport

8:00am — Get bags and rental car

9:00am — Drive to Airbnb

10:15am — Colosseum tour begins

And you continue to block our your entire trip in this way. I feel like we all do this to some extreme, whether it be writing down a rough schedule in your phone’s notes app or planning every single minute on a massive spreadsheet.

But I challenge you to not plan at all for your next trip. It sounds crazy, but there are actually massive benefits that I have found with not knowing where you’re going to be at every single minute.

You’ll Find New Experiences

You have your cut out itinerary — but there’s one major flaw with it: It was made before you even arrived.

The best experiences are often the ones unplanned for, therefore the less you plan, the more memorable the experiences you’ll encounter.

When I was in Iceland, the only plan I made for myself was to drive the Southern Coast. If I had planned each location in advance, had specific check-in times for hotels, and reservations for restaurants, I wouldn’t have experienced the things I look fondly back on now. I would have never ran into an Australian couple who were also chasing the Northern Lights at 1am in the morning.

When I was in Nassau, I would have never been able to spend two afternoons sailing the Caribbean with a local I just met had I booked tours ahead of time.

Planning ahead takes the fun out of being reactionary. If you have a plan, you’re less likely to try new things — the things you don’t see on blog articles or Instagram posts. Don’t have a plan, and the plan will form on its own and you’ll be able to watch and adapt to it in real time.

Counter Murphy’s Law

Murphy’s Law famously states that “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” Well how can something go wrong if there was no never a “correct” way for it to happen in the first place?

That’s said tongue in cheek, but the message of it stays the same. Not planning allows for less disappointment. You may have a picture perfect idea of how your whole trip will pan out, and when one thing doesn’t go to plan (spoiler: almost nothing does) you’ll be disappointed.

Don’t give yourself any expectations and you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that the raw experiences that aren’t “how you imaged” turn out to be better in real life than of your original idea.

Don’t want any of your plans to be spoiled? Don’t plan.

In Essense

There are times when full planning is necessary. There are times when zero planning is necessary. There are times when just some planning is necessary.

Strive to position your travel planning on the lesser-side of the planning spectrum. You’ll find your adventure becomes more spontaneous, richer, and will have less disappointments. And isn’t that the entire point of your trip?

I’d love to see where you’re off to next — hit me up on Instagram to connect!

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Change Your Life and Travel Solo