How Travel Adventures Can Boost Productivity
No one likes to be cooped up in their office day in and day out. Eventually, even if you’re the most positive person in the world, staying in one place for too long while working becomes stifling and can lead to a serious case of burnout. One of the best ways to give yourself a serious boost to your productivity and shake off any impending burnout is to get out into the world and go on a travel adventure. Whether for a day, a weekend, or a whole week, travel can refuel you and help you get back to your productive self.
Travel And Creativity Are Linked
Humans weren’t meant to spend the majority of their lives inside. When you feel the urge to get outside and soak up some sunshine it isn’t because you’re trying to avoid work, it is your body telling you to take care of itself. Unfortunately, unless you travel often for work, work outside, or are a digital nomad, it is pretty likely that you are working from inside of an office or building for the bulk of the time spent working at your job.
One of the reasons vacations are so great is that they help you to recharge after a long stretch of work. However, you should try to consider your time away from work not just as an escape, but as another tool that will actually help you to become more productive at work. Spending time outside in natural settings has been shown to boost your creativity, critical thinking skills, and even boost your memory, all of which contribute to your overall productivity both in and outside of work.
Nature can inspire you and help you to get past creative blocks like they were never even there in the first place. Realistically, time spent in natural settings doesn’t have to be out in the middle of the wilderness to be effective in giving yourself a productivity boost. Even just a walk through the local park or a night spent out in a field looking up at the stars can be enough to recharge your creative batteries to the point where being productive isn’t something that requires effort and simply comes naturally to you.
Even Deciding Where To Go Can Help
When you head out on your travel adventures, whether you decide to work while on the road or not, you’ve already been engaging in an activity that can help you to be more productive. Setting out a plan for what the coming months will look like at your work can, understandably, be a bit of a slog but planning your own travels can be an exciting event that can get you on a productivity roll.
The simple act of planning your trip, whether you’re flying out of the country to visit Hong Kong or taking a road trip to see the sights in the southern United States, can inspire you to take your planning at work as a fun challenge instead of a dreaded duty. Planning a trip can help you to improve your lateral thinking and time management skills as well as you’ll be running through different situations in your mind trying to get the most out of your time on whatever travel adventure you decide to embark on.
All of this isn’t to say that the planning of a vacation or trip isn’t itself an activity that people can find tiresome or difficult. That being said, once you’ve gone on your vacation and recharged yourself and you’re ready to get back to work, you might find that you are more resilient upon returning. You can leverage that newly found resilience into productivity easily, taking on your workweek with a smile on your face.
Travel Helps Build Organizational Skills
It is also important to note that, beyond simply picking an itinerary for your travel adventure, there is a whole lot of other planning that goes into taking time off from work. Deciding what clothing is appropriate to bring for the weather conditions, what really is and isn’t essential for a weekend trip, and how to get where you’re going safely are all additional ways in which you are teaching yourself to become more productive without even realizing it.
Additionally, depending on what type of trip you’ve planned for yourself, there are a ton of different factors that you’ll need to take into account. If you’re heading out for a week-long hike through a remote mountain range, you’ll need to familiarize yourself and prepare appropriate wilderness medicine supplies and skills. If you have planned a road trip through areas of the country with a sparse population and huge distances between gas stations you’ll have to plan out your route with extreme care. All of this planning and self-education that you engage in during the planning phase of your travel adventure can all directly translate into the ability to boost your productivity afterward.
At the end of the day, vacations are so much more than an opportunity to take a break from work. Planning each and every facet of your journey then executing your well-thought-out plan isn’t just something you should shrug off as part of the experience but instead recognize it for what it is: a great way to help teach yourself how to be productive in just about every facet of your life.
