Why counting down to a trip makes you happier

If you’ve ever enjoyed the weeks before a trip more than the trip itself, you’re not imagining it. There’s research on this, and it’s one of the nicer findings in psychology.

What the studies found

In 2010, a team led by Jeroen Nawijn in the Netherlands followed more than 1,500 Dutch adults, some of whom went on holiday during the study and some of whom didn’t. The holidaymakers were happier than everyone else before they left. After they got back, most of them were no happier than the people who’d stayed home. The exception was people who said their holiday had been very relaxing, who kept the glow a bit longer.

The researchers’ suggestion was a practical one. If most of the happiness comes from looking forward to a trip, then several short breaks spread through the year might do more for you than one big one.

Other studies point the same way. Leaf Van Boven and Laurence Ashworth found in 2007 that people feel more emotion thinking about an event that’s coming up than thinking back on the same kind of event once it’s over. And in a 2014 study, Amit Kumar, Matthew Killingsworth and Thomas Gilovich found that waiting for an experience, like a trip or a concert, feels better than waiting for a thing you’ve bought. Waiting for a new phone feels like impatience. Waiting for a holiday feels like excitement.

So the countdown isn’t just the boring bit before the good bit. It’s part of what you paid for.

How to make the wait count

Here’s what I’ve found makes the countdown to a trip better. Most of it costs nothing.

1. Book early, even if it’s small

You can’t look forward to something that’s still a “maybe”. Once it’s booked, the anticipation starts. A weekend away booked three months out gives you three months of something to look forward to, which is a lot of happiness for the price of a train ticket.

2. Put the number where you’ll see it

A countdown you have to go and find doesn’t do much. Put it on your Home Screen or Lock Screen, where you’ll glance at it twenty times a day. “57 days” turns into “49 days” and then, suddenly, “9 days”, and each time you notice it you get a small lift. That’s why I built Days Left around widgets. (Setup guides for iPhone and Android.)

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3. Watch the wait shrink

Something I didn’t expect when I added it: a progress bar for the wait is more satisfying than the number of days. Days Left fills a bar from the day you added the trip to the day you leave. Seeing “48% of the wait done” feels like progress in a way “57 days” doesn’t.

4. Give the wait some milestones

A long countdown can sag in the middle. Break it up with small jobs that are actually fun:

• Around 8 weeks out: check your passport. Plenty of countries want it to be valid for months after your trip, and renewals take time.
• Around 6 weeks out: learn ten words of the local language. “Thank you” goes a long way.
• Around 4 weeks out: cook one dish from where you’re going.
• Around 2 weeks out: plan one special day. Just one. Leave the rest loose.
• The last week: make the playlist for the journey.

Each one is a small dose of the trip before the trip. You can add them as separate countdowns if you like ticking things off.

5. Don’t over-plan

There’s a balance. Looking forward to a trip is great. Building a spreadsheet of every hour of it can turn the anticipation into homework, and it leaves no room for the surprises that make a trip memorable. Plan the bones and leave some days empty.

6. Count down together

If you’re traveling with someone, share the countdown. A “21 days!” message on a dull Tuesday is a nice thing to get. Days Left has a share button on every event for exactly this.

Always have the next one booked

This is the bit I’ve taken most to heart. If the happiness is in the anticipation, then the worst time is the gap after you get home with nothing on the horizon.

So before the post-holiday slump sets in, book the next thing. It doesn’t need to be big. A weekend somewhere, a gig, a day trip. Just something with a date on it, so there’s always a countdown running.

If you want to see how much of this year you’ve got left to fit one in, there’s a live year progress counter here.

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