Whether it’s a summer road trip, flight to see family across the country, or a full-on all-inclusive resort vacation, it’s the time of year when many people are putting some vacation time on their calendars. While we all enjoy vacations, many of us have also run into frustrations or stress before and during a vacation. Seems to me that stress is exactly what we’re trying to avoid during most vacations (unless it’s positive stress around something adventurous and exciting).
Here are a few tips to help make your vacation and the entire planning process as fun and enjoyable as possible.
The Joy of Vacation Planning
I know that sometimes a great vacation is just an impromptu or spur-of-the-moment decision, but more often than not, we plan them ahead of time – sometimes months ahead. I once had a conversation with someone who worked for a major cruise line who told me that a huge part of their whole communications plan with vacationers that typically lasted for 6 months or more – which was the typical time between when someone booked a trip with them until when the trip happened. According to all their surveys and research, their future guests actually enjoyed that 6-month lead-up process every bit as much as the vacation itself. The company helped foster this enjoyment by helping them plan and anticipate various aspects of their trip, setting up dining plans on the ship, excursions at different destinations along the cruise, numerous onboard activities, etc.
That got me to thinking about how much fun the actual planning of a vacation can be if you let yourself enjoy it. While finding hotels along a long road trip or coordinating a ride to the airport for your family trip may not seem like fun activities unto themselves, if they are considered in the context of the overall vacation, they can become a lot more enjoyable. So, take a page from the vacation pros and enjoy the activities that lead up to leaving on your vacation.
Scheduled Activities vs. Downtime
This might be one of the more polarizing aspects of any vacation for a lot of people. Some folks want nothing more than to kick back in a lounge chair on the beach and read a book while on vacation. Other folks absolutely love to schedule activities every day (or seemingly every minute) of a vacation to maximize the fun. As you can imagine, when these two people go on vacation together, there may be a bit of head-butting. So, which is better – a totally unscheduled go-with-the-flow vacation or a wall-to-wall fun activity trip? Obviously, the answer is in the eye of the vacationer.
Unless your vacation crew is of a very similar mindset, it’s likely a good idea to not only have some conversations about what kind of vacation you are planning but to also find ways to accommodate everyone. For the majority of folks, there is some middle ground where planned activities mesh with total downtime to deliver the best vacation experience. Try by prioritizing the cool activities to make sure you get to take on the ones that some or all of your vacation crew really want to try while providing everyone with the choice to sit a few things out or just have some scheduled chill time by the pool.
Being Able to Unplug
Even if your ideal vacation is go-go-go, from one cool experience to the next, one thing that just about any vacation should provide is time to take a break from work and daily life tasks. Most everyone says they want to unplug when they go on vacation, but in our highly connected world, it is harder than ever to really unplug. I’m guilty of this myself, as I typically bring my laptop on vacation and of course, we all tend to carry our smartphones with us, even when we head off to some tropical resort. Then, when we arrive, connecting to the local wi-fi is usually a top priority.
It’s tough to really unplug when work and daily life are so easily accessible on your mobile device or laptop. For myself, I try to really limit my plugged-in time when I leave on vacation. I struggle not to check email at least once a day or maybe do a little work on some project. So, instead, I focus on limiting those times to first thing in the morning or some other fairly set time and then try to just let go of those things the rest of the time while on vacation. It’s not a perfect solution, but for me, it balances some truly unplugged time, with just enough connectedness that I don’t stress out over what ‘might’ be happening at the office or at home.
