One 2013 survey of 485 adults in the U. S. linked travel to enhanced attention, energy, and focus. Other research suggests that the act of adapting to foreign cultures may also facilitate creativity. But what about the act of planning a trip?
Planning a trip can be almost as enjoyable as going on the trip itself. A 2014 Cornell University study looked into how looking forward to an experience (like a trip) can increase a person's happiness considerably—much more so than the anticipation of buying material goods. An earlier study, published by the University of Surrey in 2002, found that people are at their happiest when they have a vacation planned.
Amit Kumar, one of the co-authors of the Cornell study, explains that the benefits are less about obsessing over the finer points of a journey than they are about connecting with other people. 44 Travelers end up talking to people more about their experiences than they talk about material purchases, " he says. "Compared to possessions, experiences make for better story material. "
Kumar's co-author Matthew Killingsworth, now a senior fellow at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, says trip-planning encourages an optimistic outlook.
"As humans, we spend a lot of our mental lives living in the future," says Killingsworth, whose work centers on understanding the nature and causes of human happiness. "Our future-mindedness can be a source of joy if we know good things are coming, and travel is an especially good thing to look forward to. "
One reason Killingsworth thinks that planning travel can be such a positive experience is the fact that trips arc temporary. "Since we know a trip has a defined start and end, our minds are likely to enjoy it, even before it's started," he says. "Sometimes people even prefer to delay good experiences like a trip so they can extend the period of excitement."
There's another reason why travel planning can produce happiness: We often know enough about a trip to imagine it and look forward to it—but there's also enough novelty and uncertainty lo keep our minds interested.
"In a sense, we start to 'consume' a trip as soon as we start thinking about it, " Killingsworth says." When we imagine eating gelato, the famous ice cream in Rome or going water skiing with friends we don't see as much as we'd like, we get to experience a version of those events in our mind. "
Planning for travel—thinking about it, talking about it, imagining it—may in fact be one of the best things you can do to stay optimistic.
