Checklisting Europe | A Master Plan for Adventure – Loving Spreadsheet and Becoming Czech

Checklisting Europe | A Master Plan for Adventure – Loving Spreadsheet and Becoming Czech

(Read the first part “The Germanized Slavs“)

I found a new love. I loved spread sheets. I loved everything that had columns and rows so I could put bits and pieces of data into cells. By using spreadsheets I was able to dig into the giant blob of the travel industry, organize my research and record my activities. I listed every day and broke it into blocks of time like first half, second half or morning, day and evening. I identified every possible action points including simplest task such as “taking the bus to the airport”, “getting from the train station to the guest house” or “check-in online”. I filled the next columns with details of the places, contact information, reference numbers, etc.

My spreadsheet took Honza and other friends to places. I got better and better at filling up cells. Honza and other Czechs even commended my Excel-inspired organizational ability. Wow! If natural-born planner praised me on my planning skill, I must have done something right in this life.

There more I used spread sheets; the more I realized I couldn’t live without them. Whatever task I had to do, I immediately and religiously put it in the sheet as if I had a spreadsheet OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). This application is a great life-saver for disorganized folks. I could structure and categorize as many things I wanted in a single sheet and related information in a different sheet, but still keep them all in one file. I enjoyed planning, sometimes for the sake of planning. My friends came to visit me; I sent them a spreadsheet of what they could do in the city. They said they didn’t need it. I created one anyway and slipped it through their mailboxes. They didn’t use it. I knew but I sent regardless.

I was on fire. I was on my way of becoming a plan master.

You know what scary? The word “plan” mysteriously crept into my daily vocabulary. It effortlessly slipped out of my mouth in casual conversation. I began to say my top-5 hated phrase not so long ago: “What’s the plan?”

I became Honza.

A simple travel plan for a trip to Italy, San Marino and Malta

Why We Plan

I learned to appreciate planning. I started to get addicted to the secured feeling of knowing that something will happen or likely to happen when and where I expect it to happen.

Check-listing an entire continent with 50 countries without squandering my energy, breaking my bank account and losing my sanity forced me to do a lot of planning.

Occasionally I still traveled on impulse when I found last-minute airfares or travel package deals, or when I went on very short trips and believed that things would be manageable without invoking my spreadsheet magic wand. This spontaneous travel plan however was more of an exception rather than the norm.

Planning is not only to minimize cost, optimize time or to preserve your sanity. As in the words of Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist and professor emeritus at Stanford University, “We plan if we believe in the future, if we believe thing we plan will happen.”

I used to be a sucker for actions which generated immediate results or activities I could do immediately. My attention span lasted about five to ten minutes, probably not long enough to complete an ADHD/ADD (Attention Deficit (Hyperactive) Disorder) online test without clicking on other links.

But I learned to trust the future. I trusted the processes and other factors involved which could influence the outcome that I wanted to happen. I don’t mind time-stamping an action plan to a date far ahead.

Do plan. It works. Just don’t fret about it and develop OCD over it.

If nothing else, planning will help you to sharpen the muscle to believe.

Photos from Italy, San Marino and Malta

Bologna, Italy

Rimini, Italy

Treviso, Italy

San Marino

Sliema, Malta

Valleta, Malta

Popeye village, Malta

Mdina, Malta

[photo credit: imagina, Iguana Jo, efilpera,Evil Panda, mescon, Key Allen, foxypar4 via a Compfight]