Travel Keywords

This month, I've been learning how to be a better man.

The Art of Manliness has a 30-day challenge on how to be a better man. Each day, men (and women, should they choose to accept the challenge) are given a task to complete. The tasks vary from shining your shoes, to taking a woman on a date, to writing your own eulogy. Each task is geared to equip males to become better...males.

The task for Day One was Define Your Core Values. What are the values by which you live your life? For example, my core values are Humor, Humility, Honesty, Integrity and Love. With everything I do and say, I try to adhere to these values.

Why not apply this concept of to travel? When we plan a trip, we want to do too much. We pack our itineraries to the brim. Then our trip becomes more about crossing off things on our to-do list, than enjoying our surroundings. That's no fun.

What if we did some thinking before we plan? What if we came up with a short list of Travel Core Values? Core Values may not be a good fit here, so let's say Keywords; What do we think of when we see "travel"? What phrases or images come to mind? Once we define those Keywords, our planning can now be centered around these words. We don't have to plan everything. Just the things that matter to us.

Here are some sample Keywords:

Food
Culture
Music
Fun
Partying
Adventure
Politics
Community
Environment
History
Art
Volunteering

...and there are so many more Keywords out there.

A fun exercise you could do by yourself, or with your travel companions, is to come up with three to five Travel Keywords. From there, when you plan, you can spend your energy researching activities that are centered around those Keywords. Your trip can be a quest to find the perfect Italian gelato, or a week secluded in a Tuscan villa. You get the most out of your vacation, and peace of mind, to boot.

What are your Travel Keywords? I'll put mine up shortly...