Planning: Doing what you want when you want

I like planning stuff. All kinds of stuff, really. My days, my trips, my routes, how I’m going to say something – it goes on and on. But, lately I’ve been trying to force myself to be spontaneous. It’s not easy when you have spent much of your life being a planner. To me, planning sometimes gives me the feeling that I can maximize my time and effort. This post on “Planning: Doing what you want when you want” gives details on my experiences thus far.

The Background of Doing what you want when you want

It came to me one morning when I was doing my usual routine: having coffee, eating breakfast, scanning through the news for the day. And, writing out in notepad what I thought I had to do for the day. First bullet – laundry; second bullet – updates to website; next bullet – groceries. As I added to my list, I realized: ‘That’s a lot of stuff I have to do’ and I started thinking: ‘Do I really have to do all of that?’ I was looking outside at the weather – a beautiful sunny day.

There were a lot of things I’d rather be doing on a beautiful sunny day. Staying inside and running doing errands weren’t really on that list. One part of me was saying get these things done! The other side of me was saying ‘let’s go for a walk and do some looking around’. Let’s go to Sydney for the day. Let’s go check out that new coffee shop downtown. All of these things sounded like a lot more fun than what I had written on my list.

Doing What You Want…

I did what I wanted to do – I took one of my excursions had a fantastic day. Didn’t think about the website didn’t think about anything except enjoying myself, soaking up the weather and indulging myself. 

…When you Want

At the end of the day, I looked at my notepad list of items I had to do and the list was still there, and I had kind of achieved one of them. I had picked up a few things on my grocery list while I was stopping by a market so that was good and the rest of it would all wait till another day.

Doing What You Want When You Want

I try and do at least one of these spontaneous things every day. I’ve learned through this exercise that sometimes things go away on your list because you’re doing stuff you enjoy and the other things just happen as a part of those activities. They take care of themselves. Another thing I’ve learned is that ‘doing something’ on a list isn’t always the most important thing I should be doing. Sometimes it’s more about what I need to do versus what I have to do or should do.

These activities of spontaneity are also teaching me a little bit more about following my intuition and following my gut. I had been quite plugged into my intuition in my years of project management and consulting. However, following my intuition wasn’t always an option, and not always something I could indulge in within my role.

A lot of the reason why I wanted to move on from consulting was to give myself an opportunity to be more creative. This is a part of me that I have not been indulging (at least, not much) over the last 25+ years. When I severely missed it, I picked up my brushes to paint a bit; I indulged in some website development for clients. Both gave me some creative outlets. As did my vacation planning for friends and family! I knew this wouldn’t be enough at some point. I felt burdened, sad, and daunted by the years that stretched ahead without me being able to explore that part of me.

So, back to the Planning: Doing what you want when you want!

This spontaneity allows me to be less concerned by what must be done or should be done to explore what I want to do, what I’m interested in doing, and, what I feel inspired to do. 

This all ties back in to my planning activities.

Planning for Travel and ‘Doing what you want when you want’

When we first traveled, I was keen to schedule activities for us every day while we were away. Again to maximize our time while traveling. We enjoyed some of those trips a lot and sometimes that’s the best way to see the destination you’re going to. As the years went on, we found that giving ourselves breathing time and doing the research ahead of time to know what were the options before we went, but not booking some of the options meant we had flexibility and what we wanted to do. Yes sometimes that means we miss out because we didn’t book ahead. Live and learn, right?

We have now found the happy medium for us is to book activities that appear to be so popular that we will miss out if we don’t book. For those where it’s not as important we will wait until closer to the date or the day of to decide what we’re going to do. ‘What do we feel like doing today?’ is sometimes the most important question we ask ourselves when traveling.

What Do We Plan for in Our Travels?

We plan and book flights, trains, buses. Any type of transportation that requires a ticket or has a limited availability is important to plan ahead. This way we have the peace of mind of knowing when we’re gonna be somewhere, how we’re getting somewhere. And, that we’re gonna be able to get those transfers, get to the airport, or get to that country. We like knowing when we are going to be where we are ‘supposed to be’.

What We Only Sometimes Plan For

These are the activities that require the most research by us. This is figuring out some of the activities we want to do and whether we want to book them in advance or not.

Sometimes it boils down to ‘…well we think we’ll want to do it because we feel like we would right now but will we want to do it when that’s week three of our trip and will we be tired from the day before travelling or…’ so many questions! Some examples of this are restaurant reservations, museum bookings, wine tours, and food tours. These are all in our wheelhouse, but honestly, so many of them sound really cool we would book a whole bunch of them but then maybe not enjoy every single one of them.

We give ourselves time to let our itinerary plans settle to think about it a bit more. Wait for it to get closer to the departure date. Then make a decision as to which ones we for sure want to put in our itinerary, and which ones we will leave for wait-and-see.

Sometimes for these types of activities, we don’t know what we don’t know. We can do a lot of research online and find out the lay of the land in that city or in that area and how we’re going to do things and what we want to do. But until we get there and are walking around and are in the rain or the incredible heat of our vacation we don’t know whether or not it’s something that makes sense. This is where I have the most struggle because I want to have an itinerary firmed up, but at the same time, I struggle with wanting to ensure we have flexibility and room for rest and being flexible.

What We Absolutely Don’t Plan For (doing what you want when you want)

Alternate accommodations, alternate transfers, grocery acquisition (beyond figuring out where the different grocery stores might be in our area). Also, we don’t plan for walking tours, whether self-guided or with a guide. We don’t plan out our routines while on vacation because that means you have to stick to the plan and that seems a little bit too rigid to me when you’re traveling. (Except for breakfast in our rentals – that’s a non-negotiable!)

We don’t plan alot of activities in the morning. Typically we don’t plan an activity for every day. Sometimes we have two or three days in a row where we haven’t booked or planned anything and we wait until arrival or the day of to figure that out.

How Do We Book Activities the Day of When Traveling? (the ‘…when you want’!)

We make sure we have Wi-Fi connectivity wherever we’re staying. And, a really good data plan in case we need to surf around a-lot to find what we’re looking for, or to translate the websites. We are currently using airalo for our eSim needs – Shop it here! [Affiliate Link]

We keep a laundry list of activities that we are interested in for each of our destinations and match up what we feel like doing to what is locally available.

Sometimes We Chill (fully ‘doing what you want, when you want’)

There is typically one or two days in each of our trips that we take it easy. We relax where we’re staying. We go for a leisurely walk. Maybe pick up a lunch and relax at a park. Watch TV or zone out to a movie on our iPad. Enjoy a good sleep, and wake refreshed and ready to go for the next day.

Summary

This ‘Planning: Doing what you want when you want’ is still a work in progress. I continue to monitor my impulse to plan it all out! We have an upcoming month in Spain, and I’ve purposely left multiple days open for at least another 2-3 months before I ‘finalize’ my itinerary with a few more bookings.

Check out some of our other planning posts here!