Oct 30, 2019 2 min read Lifestyle Design

Discovering 'Mini Life Travel': A Different Way to Vacation

Is it possible to have your cake and eat it too when you travel? I took the plunge into 'Mini Life Travel' and discovered a whole new way to experience vacation.

Photo by ian dooley / Unsplash

What Is a Mini Life Travel

There is a curious way of spending vacations called "mini life travel" which I first probably heard from David Kadavy.

The idea is that you go on vacation but don't put your life on pause to do classical tourist things all day every day.

You don't take a roofless bus for a city tour, you don't spend 10 hours in a row in a museum, trying to see everything. Don't force yourself into spending time under the sun at the seaside burning your skin.

Instead, you go on vacation and continue living your normal life: do some work, have a meal, walk around, meet people, and have a moderate amount of fun.

Just like you do in your everyday life, but in a new place.

My Experience

I used to go on real vacations in 100% of all my travels. Vacation with no work and colleagues notified me about my unavailability.

This time I decided to give the "mini life travel" a shot. My GF was going on a business trip to Milan, Italy and suddenly I decided to join her.

I didn't pause my job and wanted to let things go as they were while I was on my usual working schedule.

I was thinking that it would be neither work nor travel - a complete failure.
I was afraid that

my work performance would be low.
I wouldn't have time to explore the city and have fun. Would waste a ton of time setting up routine activities in a new place instead.
I would get even angrier because of having to stay at home and work instead of doing tasty things in Italy.

My expectations were destroyed.

I've quickly explored my new neighborhood and found nice places to have a meal, walk, grab a coffee, work, etc.

I track my performance: overall time + focused time. While on the trip, was simply much more efficient than on average. I focused faster to have more free time in the evening.

At the same time, I did get sad at all because of having to stay at home during the daytime. It was a summer and unbearably hot outside anyway.

I've managed to organize myself to focus faster. Start and finish earlier and have time for a good time in the evening. That's exactly what I usually lack while on a common working schedule.