Tips and tricks I’ve used to add more travel and adventure to my life
If you’re like most people, you get about two weeks’ vacation per year, three if you’re lucky. I don’t know about you, but 1-2 vacations a year is definitely not enough. Having a healthy work-life balance is very important to me so I figured out how to travel more.
I make travel a priority so I have always managed to travel quite a lot every year. So much so that I constantly get asked, “How do you travel so much?!” Over my years of working in the corporate world of Marketing and being restricted by vacation days, I have come up with the best ways to utilize days off for maximum travel and adventure. Hopefully, some of these hacks will help you get outside and see more of the world.
Before I get into my hacks on how to travel more, I first want you to reframe your perspective on what you consider a vacation. One of the ways in which I am able to get away so often is that I utilize weekends and explore places that are close to home.
Not every vacation is going to be a week on the beach, or an 8-hour flight away. By shifting your perspective on what a vacation looks like, you will be able to go on more trips and feel like you’re on vacation a lot more often.
Ready to learn how to travel more often? Here are my tips on how I maximize the number of vacations I take every year.
5 Tips for More Frequent Travels
- Take full advantage of long weekends. In Canada, we have a long weekend almost every month. When you maximize these days, it adds up to a lot of mini-vacations a year. Research where you can go that is a short distance away and explore these places. Sure, it may take you a little longer on a long weekend Friday after work. But waking up Saturday morning somewhere new makes it worth the time and effort.
- Add a vacation day here and there to random weekends. Instead of saving all your days for one major vacation, think about using some to extend a weekend or two. This enables you to get away for several smaller trips. This works especially well when you tack on an extra day to a long weekend.
- If you travel for work, add some time off to turn a work trip into a vacation. My last job sent me to both Las Vegas and Orlando. You better believe I added a few days to the end of both trips to turn them into vacations.
- Visit family or friends. It’s true that visiting people doesn’t always feel like a vacation, but if you are in need of an escape and are tight on funds, this is the ultimate way to cut costs and still go somewhere. If you have a free place to stay, you can definitely travel more often!
- And finally, never underestimate the power of a staycation. A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post about the value of staycations. I still firmly believe in them. Often when we get an overwhelming feeling that we need a vacation, all we may need is a true ‘day off’ to unplug and unwind. A spa day or a weekend spent being a tourist in our own towns can actually feel like a vacation. It’s not often we take the time to go out and do the activities that visitors experience.
Remember to always manage your expectations before any trip. By setting intentions for what you want to get out of your trip, you are more likely to have a great time and feel like you had a vacation. Even if it was just a quick weekend get-away. By maintaining the mindset that vacations take on various forms, all of the trips you go on, even staycations, can feel like a true holiday.
Happy exploring! If you learned something new, or have a travel hack of your own, I’d love to hear about it. Share in the comments below.
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