There are plenty of things we would like to do that don’t technically need to happen on any particular day. Go somewhere for the afternoon. Try a restaurant we’ve been talking about. Visit a museum. Take a hike. Drive to a town we haven’t explored. Plan a weekend away. That’s part of what makes them easy to postpone.
Work already has a place on the calendar. So do appointments, birthdays, errands that have deadlines, things around the house that need to get done, and whatever else has made itself necessary by the time Saturday arrives. Adventure usually doesn’t come with that kind of claim on our time. It waits. And when we’re busy, it can keep waiting for a surprisingly long time.
One simple way to make more room for those experiences is to give one of them a place on the calendar every month. Not twelve elaborate trips or twelve weekends away. Just twelve dates across an entire year when something gets to be there before everything else fills the space.
The Calendar Changes the Odds
There is a difference between saying, “We should do something in October,” and seeing a Saturday in October already marked for it. If it’s just an idea, there is still plenty of time to decide what to do, which makes it very easy not to decide at all. Once the date is on the calendar, you’ve already made the first decision.
You don’t necessarily have to know what you’re doing yet. You may only know that Saturday afternoon, or that Sunday, or that particular weekend is being kept available for something you want to experience. Instead of getting to the weekend and asking whether there is enough time left to do something, you’ve already decided there will be time. The remaining question is how you want to use it.
Work, appointments, errands and things around the house usually get done because they have to. The things we simply want to do are much easier to put off. Giving one of them a date makes it less likely that another month will go by without us ever getting around to it.
One Date a Month Is Enough to Matter
I like once a month because it isn’t asking very much of the year. There are fifty-two weekends in a year. Setting aside one date each month still leaves the overwhelming majority of them untouched. But twelve experiences is also enough to change what a year contains.
They don’t need to be twelve versions of the same thing. One month might include a hike. Another might be a concert, museum, small-town Saturday, afternoon somewhere new, or a weekend away. A bigger trip may take the place of one month’s adventure without requiring the following month to match it.
You don’t even need to hit twelve perfectly for the idea to work. This isn’t a streak. Some months will be busy. Plans will get moved. Weather will interfere. Money may need to go somewhere else. There may be months when the adventure you imagined isn’t realistic and something much smaller takes its place. The point is to keep making room for it, even when the month doesn’t go exactly as planned.
You Don’t Have to Decide Everything in Advance
Putting the date on the calendar doesn’t mean planning an entire year of adventures in January. That would turn a simple idea into another project. The date and the adventure don’t even have to be chosen at the same time.
You can protect a Saturday in November without knowing yet what you’ll do with it. A month with more time and money might mean a weekend trip. A crowded month might mean dinner somewhere you’ve wanted to try, followed by something you wouldn’t normally do. Summer makes an outdoor day easy; January might send you to a museum, an exhibit, or somewhere warm enough to wander around for a few hours.
Adventure doesn’t have to keep proving itself by getting bigger. And once you’ve protected the time, deciding what to do with a nearby day doesn’t need to become another project. That’s what I work through in The Local Day Trip Formula: A Simple Plan to Pick, Pack, Go. For now, just save the date.
Looking Forward to It Is Part of the Experience
Having something on the calendar also gives you something to look forward to. You start considering where you could go. Someone mentions something and it becomes a possibility for that weekend. You check the weather a few days ahead. You might look at where to eat or what else is happening nearby.
That anticipation is part of the fun. A year filled almost entirely with things that need to be handled feels different when there is regularly something ahead that you chose because it sounded fun or interesting. It doesn’t have to be a vacation. Sometimes a Saturday is enough.
It Also Solves the Saturday-Morning Problem
There is another advantage to making the decision ahead of time: you aren’t starting from zero once the weekend arrives. Tom and I have had plenty of weekends when we said we should go do something and then didn’t. We had ideas, but by the time a simple outing accumulated enough decisions, staying home became easier.
Sometimes staying home is exactly what we want. I want plenty of weekends with nothing planned. But there’s a difference between deliberately leaving a weekend open and getting to Sunday night realizing we never did anything because we never decided what to do.
Having one adventure date already sitting on the calendar removes one decision. You’ve already decided you’re going to use some part of that day differently. What it becomes can stay flexible.
Some Months Can Be Bigger Than Others
I also wouldn’t want “one adventure a month” to quietly turn into twelve attempts to outperform the previous month. Our recent Springfield weekend included caves, an arcade, an enormous aquarium, good food, hotel time and two nights away. That kind of trip can absolutely be one month’s adventure. It doesn’t mean the following month needs to compete with it.
The next month can be a few hours somewhere you’ve never been. Or it can be somewhere familiar that you’ve been meaning to go back to. The point isn’t to accumulate twelve impressive stories. It’s to keep giving experiences some space in a year that will otherwise have no trouble filling itself.
Give the Next One a Date
You could turn this into a complicated annual planning exercise, but I don’t think that’s necessary. Look at the month ahead. Choose one date you can reasonably protect. It might be a whole weekend, a day, or several hours. Put it on the calendar.
You can decide what it becomes now, or you can decide later. Then when the month begins filling up around it, that piece of time is already there. Maybe it gets moved. Maybe the plan changes. Maybe what sounded like a hiking day turns into a museum because it pours all weekend.
The important part happened when you put the date on the calendar. Instead of hoping you’ll find time to do something this month, you’ve already made some.
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