I Discovered a Travel Motivation Chart for a Mindful Travel
I was recently doing a research for my writing and found an interesting article from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of the concept of flow state.
In the article, Csikszentmihalyi proposes a model for understanding why people travel, which I found exciting as it helped me to understand that my past travel experience was lopsided. Before I explain what I mean, let me introduce the model.
Here it goes (for clarity, I tweaked the names of the axes a bit):
The model is really simple.
It consists of two elements: motivation (horizontal axis) and purpose (vertical axis).
Motivation can be external or internal. External means you go for a business trip, anything work related or because you just follow the desire of your partner. Internal motivation means you go for the sake of travel, because you want to relax.
Purpose can be self-development or pleasure. Self-development has to do with personal growth, say, when you attend a conference, learn new culture, etc. Pleasure…well, pleasure is pleasure! You just have the good time, enjoy the food, and meet new people.
That’s all of it. The rest is simple.
Just place any of your trips (past or future) on the chart based on its purpose and motivation.
For example, below is an example of a trip with external motivation and self-development. This could be a conference or a workshop, or a yoga trip to India organized by your partner:
But if you were to go, say, to a beach holiday because you’re tired, the green dot would appear in the right lower area meaning that there is internal motivation and the purpose is pure pleasure.
You got the idea, right?
So, naturally, when I learned this I thought I need to see what was the motivation for my recent trips.
Here’s what I found:
The first thing that shocked me is all of my recent trips had external motivation (these were either conferences of trips planned by my wife). The only exception was Genoa, which was a two-day trip I planned completely myself and that involved self-development (I learned the history of the city, visited the place where Columbus was born, and saw a great deal of beautiful architecture).
The second shock was that I didn’t made any trips with internal motivation and the purpose of pure pleasure. The right lower part is completely blank! I didn’t go to a beach holiday since forever! I mean, could it be the reason why I was so exhausted throughout the last year?
Of course, you can argue that even a trip with external motivation and the purpose of self-development can be a pleasant one. And I would agree. I did enjoy all of them. However, what’s really important in this model is initial motivation.
In my case, I had not a single trip within the last few years with an initial motivation of pleasure.
I didn’t need Csikszentmihalyi and his model to remind me that I wasn’t on a lazy holiday for ages. However, for me it was like a revelation and I think, in the future, I will use this chart to plan my next trips and reflect on the ones I made.
The reason I’m low on traveling for the sake of traveling is I always tried to kill two birds with one stone (“hell ya, I will go see the city on a free day and then go whale spotting on Saturday”).
But what we all need to do from time to time is to allow ourselves just to enjoy a relaxing holiday. In the end, you can always continue self-development (with a book or an audio course), even on the beach.
At least, that’s what I’m going to do next.
I hope you will find this model useful too and understand your own motivation for the next trip!
