Structure Meets Spontaneity: How to Plan Without Overplanning

Structure Meets Spontaneity: How to Plan Without Overplanning

In this episode of TravelEssary, we're talking about something every traveler deals with, finding the sweet spot between having a plan and just going with the flow. We’re sharing how we keep our trips fun (and not exhausting) by doing things like picking just one main activity each day, building in chill time, and leaving space for unexpected adventures.

Whether you're traveling with kids or sneaking away as a couple, these tips can help you enjoy the journey without burning out before it’s over. Let’s talk pacing, flexibility, and all the ways to make travel feel like a vacation again.

Transcript

  We're the Essary family and we're exploring America one destination at a time. On this episode of TravelEssary, we are going to give you guys some tips of how we plan our vacations without over planning. Let's chat.

Welcome and thank you for joining us on this episode as we talk about how not to over plan. Now, this could be difficult for some people. For us, it's not too difficult because we're kind of more of the laid back, kind of go with the flow. . We look at it at a little different, but there are other people that it's all about the go.

Yeah. I get exhausted sometimes when we travel with other families because they like to hit as many activities in a day as possible. And when you lay your head on the pillow at night, you're exhausted, like you're so tired, you can't even think. And then they do it again the next day and then the next day.

And then when you get back home from your vacation, you're like, man, I need some time off of work so I can rest from my super exhausting vacation. And there are people out there that. This is what they live for. This is how they function, this is why they go on vacation. Mm-hmm. And we're not saying there's anything wrong with that, but like we've said in other podcasts, if you have to take a vacation after your vacation, you did it wrong.

So here's some tips and tricks of kind of slowing down unplanned a few. Hours of, you know, unplanned some few things that will make your life easier and you will actually enjoy your experience that much more. Yeah, I typically do most of our planning. I. When it comes to our trips, I do usually try to get input from Jeremy and the kids.

Majority of the time, they're like, we don't care. Just take us somewhere and let's go do something. We don't care. Well, the reason that we don't care is we know your planning style. We've done this enough. We went on enough vacations together where we know that we're not gonna be overbooked or overstimulated or exhausted at the end of the day.

Mm-hmm. Now, it used to not be that way. And even the first trip to Disneyland. Disney world. Disney World. We've never been to Disneyland. Can't believe you did that. I know Disney fans are gonna get me now.

Mm-hmm. Um, Disney World, it was like that where it was all hustle and bustle, right? We went all the time. We tried to fit as much as we could in the five days we were there, which without realizing we wouldn't even be scratching the surface. Yeah. We shouldn't have done that. And, of course, it's always hindsight 2020.

Mm-hmm. You know, whenever you look back on the trips, you're like, oh man, we should have done this. We shouldn't have done this. And the second time we went to Disney World, it was way better, it was way more relaxed. We actually enjoyed it more. Mm-hmm. As weird as that might sound, where, you know, it's like, wait a minute, you didn't go like full blast into Disney World and do everything in one day?

No, no. We took our time and we actually just kind of went from sexing to sexing and. It just worked out that much better. Yeah. I think one of the reasons, which goes with my first tip, is one of the things that I like to do. Plan one main thing for that day. One main activity, one main event,

and then everything else you kind of, well, we'll get onto that part later, but like for Disney World, for example, we did our, um, our reservations, right? So you're allowed to have so many reservations per day of like. What time specifically you want to ride this ride or you want to see this show, and we would , revolve the rest of the day around that one main thing.

So I knew, hey, we needed to be in this section by this time, and so we would make sure that we revolve the rest of the day around that. I like to choose one, one main thing. In fact, I just did this on , our vacation. We just got back from this weekend. The main thing I like to keep that I know the whole family will enjoy as much as possible.

It's not always possible with a family of five, but I like for the majority of us to enjoy it. And it gives our day a, a purpose and we do for sure get to do something that we like without. Overloading our day with activities, right? It gives us that focal point, that one thing that we're really looking forward to.

The one thing that kind of the rest of the day is gonna revolve around and it doesn't overstimulate, it doesn't over exhaust us as far as trying to get four or five different things all in the same time. And they vary. Some of the focal things have been. An hour, hour and a half. Mm-hmm.

And then some of them have been four or five hours. Yeah. Yeah. Now we really haven't done anything besides Disney World where it was longer than a majority of the day. Mm-hmm. Because we just kind of, every, every place that we would gone, . It has one big focal point that we're focused on that's only gonna take a couple of hours and then it kind of just opens the door after that. Yeah. I mean, we're able to do so much more after that because we're not really worried about trying to, I. Hit four or five huge things and spend two or three hours at each thing.

Or you get into a time crunch where you, you, yeah. One or two things. You overbook yourself, you overbook yourself. One or two things. Ends up taking an hour, an hour and a half longer than what you thought. Mm-hmm. And now you're in a rush. Especially if you have pre-purchase tickets or something like that.

Oh, yes.

I will make sure that I only make reservations for one thing each day if I even make the reservations, but I'm not going to, I. Book more than one thing as far as like prepaying or purchasing tickets in advance, because you just never know what's gonna happen on a vacation, and then you never know how you're gonna feel after your first activity.

So one of my big main tips is. One thing, choose one main thing, and especially if you're pre-purchasing, do not prepurchase more than one ticket or one activity in the same day. Now, I would say that you can kind of get away if you're doing something early in the morning, whenever you're like going for a walk or you're gonna go to a zoo or a park or something like that.

Mm-hmm. And then you can do like dinner reservations or. A theater or a movie that night. But yes, leave yourself a. I as big as a, a gap as you possibly can because you don't know what's gonna happen from one to the other. Yeah. I like to create an empty time, like we purposely plan empty time during each day, during our trips, whether we're gonna use it for resting or whether we're gonna use it for exploring.

I like to leave like two to four hours each day that have like zero activities planned because. A lot of the times, especially when we have a little one that gives us downtime in the middle of the day when it's nap time and when our kids were little, even at Disney World, we would go back in the middle of the day and take advantage of that two to four hour window and put the kids down for a nap and then get them up and that enabled them to stay out later that night for fireworks or something like that.

It's especially helpful when you have kids to have flexibility because you just don't know what's gonna happen. I mean, if you have someone in diapers, you could have blowouts. You never know when kids are gonna get sick. It seems like some kids, everything sets them off and they get nervous stomachs and they throw up easy.

Maybe they get car sickness and you have issues. There's just. An added little factor. When you add in children to any vacation, it's like the unknown factor. And if you don't have extra time for that unknown, that seems inevitable sometimes. Then again, you're just gonna be so crunched and so exhausted if you don't allow yourself gaps to take care of those situations as they arrive.

And that brings up another really good point, because I mean, especially if you've ever had children. Or if you're going through your first child, just be warned that. Uh, whenever they get to an exhaustion point or they get overstimulated, oh, yes. That's literally what I was about to say next. I don't say you, you've ruined your vacation because no vacation has ever ruined.

Um, but you will not have a good experience for the rest of the day or until you take care of that situation, until you get that child. The sleep, the food, um, out of the overstimulated area rested. Nap time, something, because it's just one of those things that happens, especially for children, they don't really know how to cope as well as adults do.

And I know some adults that really don't know how to cope. Mm-hmm. Very well with being overstimulated or being over exhausted. . Yeah. Overstimulating a child. Never, never a good idea. So that little bit of gap time, gap space, whatever you wanna , call it. Even if they're not of napping age or you don't wanna stop and take a full blown nap, or go back to the hotel or Airbnb or wherever you're staying, you can still build in like quiet time.

Like maybe stop for ice cream and take it to the park. You know, just have a little bit of downtime or quiet time. Another tip that I wanna give you, which again, I literally just did this, just this last weekend, is I like to make a list of, could do, not must do. So I will have like, I remember Jeremy asking me something.

Um, well. Are we doing dah, dah, dah, or what are we doing next? I said, I don't know. We might do this. He's like, we might do this. And I'm like, yeah, we might do that. It's on my maybe list. I have a lot of things that I don't even mention to the family, especially if we end up not doing them. I don't wanna talk about it that.

Um, I, I always have backups, like I always have backups. We might do, because like we said before, you don't know how long you're gonna spend. Sometimes at your main event, sometimes you do, maybe sometimes it has like an exact timeframe, but a lot of the times we don't know. And then we don't know how much of that two to four hour gap window we're going to need and we're going to use.

So I have a could do, maybe do my do list. And I really like those because it, it gives you an opportunity to really gauge how everyone is feeling. And then that way if someone needs to, you know, take a break, someone needs a nap, um, you need to get out of the heat and get into somewhere cool, or, you know, you need to get outta the cold and get into somewhere, you know, warm, then it just, it opens up those opportunities and we're all about opportunities and the, the flexibility of being able to go from point A to point B to point C and, you know, continue down the alphabet with all the mites if we're feeling good that day.

But we know that especially if, if we have two or three days, or if it's gonna be a whole week, that you kinda have to pace yourself. Mm-hmm. You know, it's not a sprint. Whenever you go on vacation, on most occasions, it's going to be more of a, a marathon. You're gonna have to last a couple of days. So pacing yourself is definitely, I. One of those big things. Yeah. I will pencil in maybe, um, pit stops that we may or may not stop at.

Mm-hmm. Um, restaurants we may or may not stop at. I think that's what it was that you were asking me about. It was like, we, we may eat here, but I don't know. Um, because like Jeremy said, which is actually one of my tips, um. Gauge everyone's moods, gauge how everyone is feeling. Kind of take a a moment and be like, okay, we just stopped 10 minutes ago because someone needed a bathroom break and we all got out.

Do we really wanna stop again? 10 minutes later at this pit stop that I have penciled in, like, do we really want to get the baby out and put the shoes on and, and then fight him back into his car seat again? Like you have to kind of gauge that. , And you kinda have to be, , and I'm gonna speak a little bit on whoever's driving, or whoever's in charge of the fuel , if someone has to stop because someone needs to go to the restroom or the, the baby is fussing, they just need to get out, then don't put yourself in a situation where 10, 15, even 30 minutes down the road, you're gonna have to stop again.

Just for one specific fuel because now everyone is cramped and stuck in the car. Go ahead. If whenever you make your pit stop or whenever you need to take that break, take that break. Fill up the best that you can. I know some places are a little bit more expensive than other places. Fill up the best that you can.

That way after they've. You know, kind of reset themselves, then you can travel even further without stopping again. And then bring all that back up. I know with Jasper, especially in this last one, um, he got out one time and we started driving and I looked down and I was like, yeah, we're gonna need gas probably in the next 30 to 45 minutes.

And Misty was like, we just got him calmed back down because it was gonna be another thing where he sees someone get outta the car, he wants to get outta the car. Yeah. And then we're fighting that battle again. Oh. Not just that, there have been times that we completely bypassed a pit stop that I had planned or, you know, penciled in because he was asleep and we were not about to wake the sleeping baby.

And so that's kinda like waking the sleeping giant. You just move on, you keep on going. Um, depending on how. Badly. Everyone wants to do it right, then we'll stop. But if everyone's just kind of like, uh, we don't really, it's not that big of a deal, you know? Um, or it's something we could hit maybe on the way back and we, we have other opportunities to do it.

We are not waking up that child because we know once the baby is awake, especially if he's just barely went to sleep, he's gonna be so overstimulated and fussy for like the next hour or two. Yeah. And inside of a car that you can't get away from it.

, There's been many times I know going to Carl's bed or, you know, going towards the New Mexico area. There was many times where we were like, oh, hey, we need to stop at, and when we would look in the rear view mirror, we would look in our little baby. Dash cam or whatever.

Mm-hmm. And we were like, mm-hmm. No, we're just gonna keep on driving. Yeah. And the kids were like, are we gonna stop? And it's like, Nope, he's asleep. And then they were like, gotcha. Yeah. And like we would move on. They wanted the peace and quiet too, so. Yeah. And make sure that you treat your, your might do list as exactly that might do.

Only put things in that you yourself as the planner is not gonna be very disappointed if you don't get to end up doing them. And again, if you're the planner of the family, maybe don't tell everyone what's on that might do list because we do have a child that if you say. You might do something and then you don't do that something, it kind of like makes them anxious.

They want a step by step plan of what you're doing, and I try as much as I can throughout the day to do that for her. But then if I tell her all of these things that we end up not doing, it kind of stresses her out because. She didn't know the plan, like she just kind of needs to know a plan. So I like to give her a rough plan, like with our main stuff, , and she'll ask questions and I always say, I don't know.

We'll see how everyone's feeling, but really I have a whole list of my do's. I'm just not sharing that with her. So another tip is use a priority system. So we talked about your must do options, your one big main activity that has, you know, tickets or reservation times, or specifics added to it.

Then you have your might dos. You know, things that you can stay flexible with. Maybe stop at a beach, maybe stop at a market. Maybe stop at this roadside attraction. Those are want tos might dos. We'll see how everyone's feeling. And then , make a, like an optional list. It sounds like the might dos, but it's a little different.

So this one is a little less specific. . These are the ones you don't have to do like major research in or for until you're actually there. Like for example, restaurants A lot of times, um, here recently, I'm not really looking up restaurants or unique places to eat until we're actually hungry.

Because before I would add those into our stops as Jeremy well knows. Like I was like, okay, we should be here in four hours and if we drive and this takes two hours and then we'll be at this place between this time and this time. And it just did not allow us enough flexibility. And while it was. Okay.

Not idea, but okay. To do that when we just had the two older kids, now that we have the baby, it's just, I can't, I can't do that. I cannot be that rigid. So things like restaurants or even bakeries, those are maybe, I don't look into extensively. I'm just like, well, I know at some point we need to eat and I will research those when the time comes.

And whenever she says, when the time comes, it's usually, Hey, is everyone starting to get hungry? Mm-hmm. Because we're gonna be in a town in like 30 minutes or 45 minutes. So it's not like a last minute. Everyone's hungry and everyone's about to get hangry if you don't find someplace to go like now. But there's also been those occasions where it was

we are gonna be in this city. This is kind of our, our base area in this place. What kind of places are there to eat? Because you could definitely find some really cool places to eat, you know, in whatever town that you're in. Usually there'll be one kind of unique place to go. Like we just went to one in Oklahoma.

Mm-hmm. That was just a unique place to go and. , She already had a plan of going, okay, hey look, if they want a certain type of food, then there's this one unique place that, that we could definitely hit up. Mm-hmm. But some of the other times where she was like, what are you hungry for?

And then that just kind of opens up the door for just different options. 'cause if you've already planned out and then all of a sudden people are like, I'm not hungry for that. Mm-hmm. Then it's like, you know what, what do we do now?

Yeah. Don't, don't lock yourself into a corner. Mm-hmm. Make sure you have the options. Make sure you have availability to kind of be flexible and go wherever the majority or the, the ruling body wants to go. , Other than just restaurants, another good thing to do as an, an optional is shopping. You know, at some point in your vacation, people like to hit up.

Gift shops or something like that, especially if it's a place you've never been before. We like to at least purchase, you know, a handful of postcards for our Patreon subscriptions. , Every time that we go somewhere. So we're gonna hit up some sort of shopping, but. It's never planned. Like I know at some point we're going to do some sort of window shopping or gift shop shopping or something like that, but it's never ever planned.

Like I never pencil it in. I don't even put it down on the, I. Might want to list because it's just like maybe during a downtime or when everyone feels like it, there are times when no one feels like getting out and window shopping. And then there are times where everyone wants to go and do that. So that's another thing that I kind of leave in the, the optional, like don't even jot it down and we'll just kind of play that one by ear.

And it's really cool because there have been so many different occasions where we have just been driving either in between our destinations , just going from , our mites to , our top priority thing that we wanna do. And we see something, we see a store, we see something that catches our eyes.

We see a flea market, or we see some weird tint in the middle of nowhere of going, Hey, what is this? And then it gives us that option. And that flexibility of just going and seeing what it is, taking a little bit of time going over there and be like, oh, hey look, this is cool. Oh, this is what's going on.

Well, it's, we got some time to spare. We can go shopping, get out and go walk around

yeah. And we've talked about, you know, planning downtime essentially, or to leave open space, like leave some gap, leave two to four hours in your day. That's completely and totally unplanned and unaccounted for, . There are even times that I go beyond that and I will plan like purposeful downtime instead of just leaving space open for maybes and what ifs and how we're feeling.

There are a lot of times that maybe not every single day, but at least a handful of times in a vacation, if it's more than like a three day vacation, maybe every other day, I am going to intentionally do ,. Rest periods or recharging periods. Maybe it's going back to the hotel, maybe it's taking a long

scenic drive to get the baby to sleep and just, for example, we kind of did that this last weekend. We were hot, you know, it's. June, the end of June, we were hot. We had just spent most of the morning in, , early afternoon outside, and we got into the air conditioner in the car and we're like, you know what?

We wanna go see this place over here without, , having to continue to be in hot and exhausted. And it was baby's nap time, so why don't we go for a little scenic drive? And it was nice. We had some, some chill time for us, older ones and the baby. I did take a nap, so that made it even more wonderful and we were able to cool off.

And then there are even times where I will intentionally go to a restaurant where I know it's gonna take a fat minute, like we're gonna be there for a while. Again, I just did that on our vacation., It wasn't a pre-planned restaurant, but as soon as I saw it, I was like, this is what we need because we have been in the car for two and a half hours.

, Baby needs a long lunch break so that he'll sleep on the way home. And as soon as I saw it, I was like, this is a perfect place because this will take a while and give us that downtime, that rest period of being out of the car at this time that we really need.

And by doing that, it just kinda lets you reset yourself a little bit by taking that extra downtime. And it also gives you the option that if you want to go do the, mites or the ones that you know, you should go do it. It gives you that option to do that. I know that. And, uh, what, where was it?

It was San San Antonio. Mm-hmm. We had a lot of downtime planned, but it gave us that option of if we wanted to go do this, we could, if everyone was feeling okay and no one was exhausted or no one was, tired , then I mean, we, we ran all over San Antonio. Because it gave us the, the cool down period in the car we went and we did some things.

We got back in the car and did some cool down stuff. And before we even got back to the, the Airbnb that we were at to fully like take downtime. So I mean, it was, I. One of those really nice things, and we definitely learned our lesson after going to Disney World there are some vacations that you like.

You just have to schedule rest. You, you need the rest. Mm-hmm. If you're doing a lot of physical activities and you're not used to it, , you need that rest. You need something to kind of rejuvenate reset you. If you have littles, they need that rest period. They need that rest time because if they're burnt out and you're burnt out, , it absolutely kills the mood.

And , you're killing your spontaneity too because your go, go, go, go, go, plan, plan, plan, plan, plan. And sometimes. The best parts of our trips or the best memories that we make in that vacation were things that were completely and totally unplanned. Not to mention, when you're in an area that you've never been before, you may come across something that you didn't find in your research. Oh, yeah. That you didn't know about, and you're like, wow, I wish I would've known about that. I wish I would've had time to go visit that we didn't even have time to stop and take a picture or something like that.

Like especially if you talk to a local and they're like, oh, you should hit up so and so while you're here, and you're like, oh. I don't even know what that is. Yeah, like a lot of times we'll ask like, what are the best restaurants? Where should we go? What should we do while we're here? And they will tell us things , that you're not gonna find with like a quick Google search

they're gonna be like, oh, you know, go, go look over here and do this. And you're like, oh wow, this was, yeah, this was fantastic. Yeah. , It's not gonna be the first thing that pops up. Yeah, whenever you do a Google search, so it's gonna be kind of hidden where all the locals definitely know it's there.

It, this just happened to us. I was just having a conversation with one of my coworkers the other day, after we got back from a vacation and they were like, oh, you were right here. Did you go do X, Y, and Z? And I was like, uh, no. And they were like, well, it's totally free. You could have gone and you could have seen, taken a scenic , photo or something like that.

Yeah, , if you talk to someone who knows the area, yeah.

They're gonna come up with way more things than you can find on a quick Google search. And being able to have room for that in your itinerary is really nice. , I like having room for curiosity, room for adventure. Sometimes our downtime is completely revolved around the toddler and we let him lead us. Into how much energy he has. Are we gonna take him to the park and let him play, or are we gonna drive around and make him take a nap, like let him lead a little bit?

Because when he's happy, the rest of us are happy. And so you just have to take in number one. What group you're gonna go with, what people are gonna be around you. Mm-hmm. Who's gonna be in your party. Yeah. If you're going with like a bunch of young adults and they're, you know, early twenties that have high energy and you can, , punch out an itinerary and you're all going in with the expectation of absolutely seeing and doing everything that you can, then do that.

Do it. Absolutely. Yeah. Do it. But for those of us that travel. With little ones, or maybe you're like Jeremy and I, and even if it's just the two of us, we still don't like exhausting ourselves and we still like to leave room for curiosity. We still like to leave room for adventure then definitely plan, but don't over plan.

It's always good to go in with a mindset of. This is what we want to do. , This is our big ticket item. , This is the other small stuff that we wanna do. This is what we want to see and try to do as much as possible, but stay within the realm of what you're used to,

you know, you're not gonna climb Mount Everest tomorrow. You have to train mm-hmm. To climb Mount Everest and so on all vacations. Keep that in mind that, you know, don't go above and beyond what you normally do because you're going to exhaust yourself, or worse thing, you're gonna have some type of injury.

Mm-hmm. And you're gonna need that flexibility to kind of recoup, stay within your comfort zone, because you're just gonna enjoy life that much better. . Next week is the one year anniversary for our podcast. Oh, wow. I did not know it was coming up so fast. Yes, and I am very excited about it. . Be sure that you tune in next week to our special anniversary episode.