DO LESS THINGS: My Best Vacation Advice

The month of May means one thing for many people in North America:

VACATION!

Taking time off from whatever you do in order to decompress, recharge, and leave the familiarity of your surroundings.

"Vacation, all I ever wanted. Vacation, had to get away!"

(Sorry. It had to be done.)

A change of scenery is important every now and then, if for no other reason than to create mental time markers in your life.

See, the brain tends to lump together what it can’t differentiate. Your daily routine — although it may have slight variations — is basically same same to your mind.

Wake up. Drink coffee. Work. Eat. Scroll. Sleep. Repeat until suddenly it’s October and you’re wondering what happened to July.

Without a regular change of scenery, all of that sameness can become an endless chasm of time.

But different experiences create distinct markers in your life. As the saying goes, life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

And a change of scenery is always nice, regardless of how far from home you decide to venture.

A vacation can be as small as a series of day trips to new places close to home, or as big as a few weeks away in an exotic location where you eat food you can’t pronounce and pretend you’re “immersing yourself in the culture” when really you’re just looking for snacks.

Whatever you decide to do, and wherever you decide to go, let me give you some advice, if you’ll allow:

Do less things.

Wait. Do Less?

What does that mean?

What about my previous advice to get out of your comfort zone and all that?

Yes, do that.

Leave your familiar surroundings. Travel. Explore. Try new things. See the sights. Eat the pastry. Take the weird walking tour.

But don’t be overly ambitious with your itinerary.

Before I continue, let me tell you what I’m basing this advice on:

My time working on a cruise ship and observing a very predictable pattern with guests.
My own experience, because apparently I like learning things the hard way.

Cruisin’ Days

I used to work as a social director on a cruise ship. (You can read about some of my experiences here and here.)

And what I would see without fail with every new set of passengers was this: a few of them would be wildly overambitious with their tour schedule.

They wanted to take advantage of every tour in every port of call, so they would book both morning and afternoon sightseeing excursions every single day.

(Except for the one or two sea days, of course. Those were presumably reserved for collapsing dramatically into a lounge chair.)

I never saw any of them manage to do more than two days of this before they exhausted themselves, cancelled the rest of their tours, and spent the rest of the week lying on the deck sipping cocktails and getting sunburned.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that if that’s your jam.

But it was always the same pattern: arrive full of ambition, attack the itinerary like it’s a military operation, then burn out by Wednesday and spend the rest of the trip horizontal.

Photo by Robert Horvick on Unsplash

The Problem With Doing All The Things

I understand the impulse to want to do ALL THE THINGS when you’re somewhere different and special.

You may only be there once. You don’t want to miss anything. You want to make the trip “worth it.”

But here’s a reality check list for your energy levels:

Travelling is exhausting. How tired will you be when you arrive? Will you need time to rest before you start adventuring?
Is there a time difference? Because that can mess you up for at least a few days.
How physically demanding are your excursions? Are you climbing staircases to old temples or ruins? Wandering through museums for six hours? Walking 25,000 steps in sandals clearly designed by someone who hates feet?
How hot or cold will it be? If you’re physically active — even just walking — in extreme temperatures, that can be tiring.
Will your accommodations allow you to get good sleep? Will you be able to wake up every day feeling refreshed, or will you be lying awake listening to a mystery pipe clank in the wall at 2:00 AM?

As I reread the above list, a part of me rolls my eyes so hard they nearly pop out.

This sounds like an old person talking.

And yet...

Maybe I Was Always Tired, I Just Didn’t Know It

Personally, I travelled a lot in my younger years, and I think the only difference between then and now is awareness.

All of those things affected me when I travelled in my 20s and 30s. I just didn’t consciously make the connection.

I didn’t think, “Perhaps I am exhausted because I flew overnight, barely slept, walked 14 kilometres, ate at strange times, drank very little water, and am now trying to appreciate ancient architecture in 34-degree heat.”

No. I just thought, “Why am I cranky? I’m on vacation. I should be having fun.”

Now that I’ve gotten older — and have had a series of rather disappointing vacations over the last handful of years for some or all of the reasons listed above — those things have all come to the forefront of my mind.

I’ve learned that a vacation can be ruined by trying too hard to make it amazing.

My Best Vacation Advice: Do Less Things

So here again is my advice:

Do less things.

Leave time for downtime. Leave time for unexpected adventures. Don’t overschedule your vacation to the point where your itinerary starts looking like a court summons.

You are not a machine. You are a person. A person who may need a nap.

Here’s how I would plan a vacation now.

Step 1: Make a List

If you’re going somewhere new and exciting, write down every single thing you would like to do while you’re there.

Make it comprehensive. Literally include everything.

The restaurants. The museums. The shops. The hikes. The neighbourhoods. The weird little roadside attraction. The bakery with the croissant people keep talking about online like it was personally blessed by angels.

Put it all on the list.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Step 2: Do a Little Math

Now count the number of days you have in this place, and divide your activities by the number of days.

If you’re staying 10 days and have 30 activities listed, that means three activities per day.

Which may sound fine in theory.

In theory, many things sound fine.

(In theory, I am a person who can wear linen pants without looking like I slept in a laundry basket. In theory.)

Step 3: Reality Check Yourself

Can you feasibly do that many activities every day for the duration of your vacation?

Probably not.

That’s where you need to start paring down the list into two categories:

Must See and Would Be Nice.

Your Must See list should be the things you would genuinely regret missing.

Your Would Be Nice list is everything else. Still interesting. Still worthwhile. But not worth turning your vacation into a death march with snacks.

Step 4: Build the Real Schedule

For 80% of the days you’re there, schedule one Must See activity.

If you’re staying 10 days, schedule activities for eight of them. Leave two days free for rest or spontaneity.

Trust me, it really sucks when you discover something interesting to do while you’re there, but you’re so overscheduled you don’t have time to do it.

Or worse, you technically have time, but you’re so tired that the thought of putting on pants feels like an unreasonable demand.

I just cannot. Photo by Tim De Pauw on Unsplash

Step 5: Keep a Bonus List

Organize the remaining Would Be Nice activities from “most want to do” to “least bothered.”

That’s the list you refer to when you have the time and energy on any given day to do more than your Must See activity.

This gives you structure without trapping you.

It also lets you respond to how you actually feel on the trip, not how your pre-vacation fantasy self thought you would feel.

Pre-vacation fantasy self is very ambitious. She believes in sunrise hikes, full-day excursions, late dinners, and “just popping into” one more museum.

Actual vacation self may want a coffee, a pastry, and a bench.

Respect actual vacation self.

A Better Way to Travel

I’ve found this to be a far more rational way of scheduling activities while on vacation.

The last time I was in London, for example, I was there for five days. I booked tickets for two theatre shows, scheduled a museum tour with a friend, and planned a visit to Westminster Abbey.

Two of those activities — the theatre shows — were set in stone. The others were flexible.

I also had an unscheduled day where I had time to shop and explore.

There were SO VERY MANY other things I would have loved to do while I was there, but I only had the time and energy to do so much.

And it was a great trip.

Not because I saw everything.

Because I actually enjoyed what I did see.

The Point of Vacation

The point of vacation is not to complete a checklist.

It is not to return home so exhausted that you need another vacation to recover from the vacation.

It is not to drag yourself through a packed itinerary just because technically, physically, mathematically, it can be done.

The point is to step out of your regular life for a little while. To see something different. To feel time expand a bit. To create memories that don’t blur into the rest of your routine.

So yes, go somewhere. Do something. See the thing. Eat the thing. Take the picture.

But leave space.

Leave space to wander. Leave space to rest. Leave space to discover something you didn’t know you’d love.

Because sometimes the best part of a vacation isn’t the thing you planned six months in advance.

Sometimes it’s the thing you had room for because you finally learned to do less.

Photo by Rafael Cisneros Méndez on Unsplash

You might be asking yourself "How does this topic relate to recovery from binge-eating?" What I found is that - for me - finding new ways of thinking about life and its challenges helped me to stop stress-eating, and has been a very big part of my ability to stop binge-eating.

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