How to be Stressed AF When You Travel

Traveling can be incredibly exciting and life giving. You get to see new things, expand your experiences, and if done well, rest and recharge. That said, travel can be pretty stressful as well. Sometimes things out of our control happens. I had two major trips cancelled or altered in 2020, and I had no control over those situations. One was a trip to Ireland in April. Of course, with the world-wide lockdown, that didn’t happen. The other was to Canada in the fall. We had to completely replan our entire trip because Canada still had closed borders in the fall of 2020.

Other times, travel stress is self-induced. I want to share five ways in which you can add to your stress when you travel. You do these five things, and I guarantee you will self-induce plenty of stress for your journey.

#1: Don’t Plan Anything

If you have a trip coming up and you don’t plan well, you’re just setting yourself up for stress. It’s that simple. Rather than feel the stress of a lack of plans, why not be proactive and work on the trip a little on the front end? Here’s my checklist (by priority) of what I plan for when I travel.

• Where will I sleep? I plan my lodging before traveling. The only time I do not is if I’m on a long road-trip and I’m not certain how far I’ll make it in a given day. That said, that kind of traveling may be behind me since having kids. I plan my lodging nowadays every. single. time.

• How will I travel? If I’m flying somewhere, I need to figure out how I’m traveling when I get there. Planning a rental car is easy. Or checking into public transportation if it’s available. When we go to Italy, we only use public transportation. But I don’t want the stress of figuring out how I’m getting around when I arrive.

• How will I communicate? This is often a concern when I’m in back country or National Parks. I always check coverage maps before going somewhere new. They’re not always super helpful, but I can get an idea of what to expect. I also travel with long range walkie-talkies if I’m going to be separated from the family in a somewhat reasonable proximity and I need to be able to communicate with them. This is especially true when we are on long drives in separate vehicles, like when we drove across the entire country in 2021.

• What will I do? This is where I try to leave some flexibility, but I mostly have a daily agenda of things to see and do. Since many of my trips are for photography, I come with a shot list and exact location / times to be there. When it comes to our family fun, I leave some flexibility for down time, grouchy kids, or finding fun things to do that we didn’t plan before.

Planning takes a little work on the front end, but it’s so worth it to not deal with the stress of last-minute decision making. Why invite that into what should be a life-giving trip?

#2: Sleep and Be Lazy

A few years ago, I was traveling with someone who I’ll honestly never travel with again. This person was lazy, overslept, and didn’t take the trip seriously. When I travel (like all of us), it’s an investment. Why would I travel somewhere just to sleep in and cut corners on my plans? Think of it like this.

• If your entire trip budget is $1,000 for a 5 day trip, you’ve allotted $200/day for this experience. Let’s say you’re up early to start your day at 630am, and you go to bed at 1030pm. You’ve given 16hrs to the day, spending roughly $12.50/hr to be present and have this experience.

• But now let’s say you slept in until 1030am, and after a slow morning, by the time you got out and about it was 12pm. You still go to bed around 11pm, giving you a 11hr day. Now you’ve spent over $18/hr on your trip. You’ve increased the cost-per-hour of your trip by 45%.

This may be hyperbolic and kind of a ridiculous way to frame up this point, but I think it makes a good case for how you spend your travel time. Why would you want the stress of wishing you did more in the time you had? Get up and make the most of your time. If you need to rest and sleep in for a few days, then don’t travel. You can sleep at home.

#3: Over Spend

I don’t even have to make a big case for this point. If you spend too much money, you’re going to be stressed out. Most people overspend because they do not plan. Planning makes things cheaper. That said, there are a few things to get into the habit of when you travel that will definitely reduce the costs of your trip.

For instance, one of the biggest ways people overspend when they travel is eating. This is especially true in a family, where one budget is feeding multiple people. In 2020, our family of four spent five weeks on the road. We hit seven National Parks during that time: Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier, Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Zion. We covered many miles during this trip. I can tell you the exact number of times we ate out. It was twice. Once was when we arrived in Columbia Falls, MT the night before we went into Glacier. We got to-go burgers at a bar and grill next to the Airbnb. The other was at the halfway point between Glacier and Yosemite, when we stayed the night in Ontario, Oregon. We got a to-go pizza at a pizza place in town.

Every other meal we ate for that entire five week trip was cooked or prepared by us, buying groceries like we normally would at home. We bought a $30 cooler at Cabela’s before we hit the road out of Salt Lake City, and it got the job done for our entire trip. We made breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday while we traveled. It was healthier and so much cheaper.

Another way to overspend is buying stuff that no one needs. We don’t do souvenirs. We don’t do trinkets and toys. We buy our time and experiences. That’s a value we have instilled in our children, too. We don’t stress about overspending, because we plan and stick to our front-end budget.

#4: Complain

Most of the time, traveling is embracing new experiences. Just like humanities volatile relationship with change, our relationship with new experiences can be emotional. Not every travel and new experience is good. There are gross hotels. Bad restaurants. Crowds. There’s also the people you’re traveling with.

This point is more of a heart position than anything else. I can’t articulate exactly why, but complaining and overall dissatisfaction leads to an increase in stress for most people. So I’ve tried to carry myself with a different heart position. In fact, it’s a heart position that is one of our family cultural values. (I talk about another value here.) That value is gratitude. I want to be grateful for things in my life. Grateful for new experiences. Grateful for the people I experience them with.

Gratitude is the opposite of entitlement. And gratitude > complaining. Complaining doesn’t make anything better, it just makes you worse. So carry yourself in a way that finds gratitude in things.

I was once sitting in Los Angeles traffic, which would usually be a stressor for me, and I was actually relaxed. I began to explore this a little, since I had the time sitting in traffic. What I concluded was that I came to LA expecting to sit in traffic, and since my expectations were met, it didn’t bring about any stress in me. It didn’t cause me to shake my head or my fist, and complain about traffic even though it’s a valid complaint.

Align your expectations to realities, and walk into them with gratitude.

#5: Keep Working

I put this one at the end, because honestly it’s the low-hanging fruit. If you’re traveling for yourself, you need to disconnect from work. You’ve literally gone on a trip to leave work and experience a break in your routine - a break that is meant to recharge you and energize you. If you keep connecting to work, you’re just bringing the stress along with you.

I can hear you now justifying why you stay connected to work. I get it, you’re really important and if you don’t respond to that email or phone call, you’re going to lose that client or bid or relationship. Here’s what I’m going to say to you right now in this moment, since you’re clearly reading this not while you’re traveling.

You have created the world you live in. And you get what you tolerate. Right now, start thinking through the systems in your job that would require you to immediately have to plug back in when you’ve intentionally unplugged. Then fix those systems. The more we work on work (not just in the details and routine of the work), the more work works for us. I hope that made sense.

For the sake of your head, heart, and your family - unplug.

No one wants stress when they travel. I hope these five points can help you be strategic about traveling, and enjoy your time more. You deserve it! And you likely earned it. So why not make the most of it?