Need a holiday after your holiday? Cramming in less on overseas trips can be more fulfilling

HOW TO HAVE A SLOWER-PACED, RESTFUL HOLIDAY

So how do we actually do this in practice?

1. Force yourself to prioritise ruthlessly

For Mr Hendric Tay, co-founder of The Travel Intern, a Singapore-based travel media company, he does so by limiting himself to one or two “anchor” activities a day.

Instead of squeezing five things into a morning, he picks one, leaving everything else as optional.

“If I’m choosing something because I’m afraid of missing out, I drop it. If I’m choosing it because it genuinely excites me or aligns with how I want to feel on this trip, then it stays,” he said.

His advice is to ask yourself if you would genuinely regret not doing a specific activity. If you would, then that activity is your priority and everything else is optional. 

2. Focus on themes, not checklists

Another way to prioritise is to structure your holiday around a particular theme, suggested Mr Tay.

Take for instance the following goals: “I want to understand food culture” or “I want to reconnect with nature”.

Once you’ve decided on the theme, prioritise activities that support that intention, and everything else becomes noise.

3. Schedule some buffer time

Resist the temptation to fill up every block of that spreadsheet. Or, rather, build in what Mr Tay calls “buffer pockets” – actual empty blocks in your itinerary – and let your intuition take you around.

“These are often the moments that we end up discovering something random or cool,” he said.

4. Reframe “missing out” as “saving something for later”

We operate under the anxious belief that we’ll never return to a place, so we must experience everything now. But this sort of mindset robs us of joy.

Why rush through everything in one go when you could have the pleasure of anticipation, of unfinished business, of somewhere to look forward to on a return visit?

As fate would have it, my partner and I are heading to Japan – again – in about a week.

We still have an itinerary of sorts, but they are more loose suggestions than concrete plans.

I also don’t have any videos saved on TikTok, which means I’m more open to finding the proverbial “hidden gem” than relying on an influencer telling me about what is a “must-visit” spot. I think that’s what a holiday should be.

As Mr Tay puts it, a meaningful trip is not necessarily a busy one.

“The goal isn’t to cover the most ground. It’s to leave feeling connected to yourself, to the place, and to the moment,” he said.