Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Broadening your vacation options by putting first things first

     Suppose you were planning to take a vacation.  It's a two-step process.  In the first step, you decide where you will go.  In the next step, you look at a travel guide to tell what you can do at the place you've decided to go.  Or should you take the steps in reverse order, first deciding what you want to do, then deciding where you will do these things?
     Let's look at it logically.
     There are literally hundreds of different things you can do while you're on vacation.  There are tens of thousands of different places you can go on vacation.  Regardless of which step you take first, it reduces your options for the second step by more than 90%.
     If you decide on a vacation destination first, you by default eliminated more than 90% of the things you could have done while on vacation.  If you decide first what you want to do, you automatically eliminate more than 90% of the places you can possibly go.  Which is wiser to automatically eliminate before you proceed to the second step: the places you could have gone or the things you could have done?
     Let's compare the two approaches to vacation planning.
Process A (destination decision first, then activity plans): 
     Imagine that you were making vacation plans and you want to go someplace you've never been before.  Where would you go?  Answer that question before reading further.  Now that you've decided where you would want to go, list the three most enjoyable things you would do there. 
Process B (activity plans first, then destination decision):
     Write a bucket list of three things you've never done before and have always wanted to do.  Remember, the operative word is do, not see or go to, or a synonym for any of those words.   Check the Internet to see where you can do all three things, or at least two of them, and decide on the best place to do them.
Concluding question:
     Compare your answers to A and B.  Which vacation would you rather take, A or B?  
     For some of you, the answer will be B.  Even if your answer is A, you now have two possible strategies for planning your next vacation.  A moment ago, you had no alternative to the only strategy you'd ever known.
     

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