How to avoid optimising the joy out of your next holiday

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I wasted an entire day on a recent trip to Seoul. I woke up late, strolled the streets until I found a promising patisserie and sat there for far too long reading my book. I browsed shops without buying anything and people-watched in a park.

As the day wore on I felt increasingly … itchy. Shouldn’t I have booked a day tour? Wouldn’t that restaurant my friend recommended have been better than this random ramen place I ended up in? Had I really flown all this way only to spend the whole morning reading a book? Looking back, though, I think that restlessness was the point.

For many of us, half the joy of travel is in the planning. There are mood boards, spreadsheets, colour-coded Google Maps pins and restaurant reservations made with military precision. By the time departure day rolls around, we’ve read every top 10 list and watched enough reels to identify the best croissant in Paris. But in our quest to make the most of every precious day, we can optimise the joy right out of a holiday.

The irony is that no one waxes lyrical about the fact they made their 2.15pm timed entry to the museum. They talk about the tiny wine bar they stumbled into after getting caught in the rain, or the great couple they met after missing a train and having to hitchhike instead.

That doesn’t mean abandoning planning altogether, though. I recently neglected to book a hotel in Tibet and ended up having a rather stressful conversation with Chinese authorities at 9pm because of it. It just means loosening the grip on your colour-coded itinerary.

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Start by resisting the urge to overbook. Just because a city offers 17 museums and three markets doesn’t mean you need to see them all before lunch. Leaving space in your itinerary for lingering over a second coffee can be a much more enjoyable way of spending your time.

If you’re travelling for longer than a few days, schedule buffer days. These are gloriously commitment-free stretches of time with no agenda beyond being in the place you’ve travelled all this way to see.

Sleep in, follow the sound of live music drifting down the street. And when that restless voice pipes up to ask whether you’re making the most of your trip, ignore it and go right back to talking to that stranger you just met.

Meals, too, deserve breathing room. By all means book the restaurant you’ve been dreaming about for months, but leave a few dinners unplanned. Ask your taxi driver where they eat, or follow the locals into that unassuming noodle shop.

Of course, not every unplanned moment will be magical. Sometimes the local recommendation is just average, and sometimes a “wasted” day is exactly that. Occasionally, though, the thing you almost didn’t have time for becomes the highlight of a trip.

That day in Seoul, I kept waiting for the guilt to pass, the nagging sense that I should be seeing or doing more.