How to be a True Weekend Warrior

Copenhagen was one of my first weekend trips to Europe

In my current job I get three weeks vacation every year, which is pretty generous by American standards. Still, there’s a lot of the world to see and not enough time to do it as quickly as I’d like. As a result I’ve started flying more often on the weekends, sometimes taking off an extra day but other times just leaving Friday night and coming back on Sunday.

Becoming a weekend traveling warrior is not easy, here’s some tips on how to get started:

1. Every year make note of the holiday schedule. Plan most of your trips around the long weekends that you’re getting for free. If you add a day or two of your paid time off you suddenly got a 5 day vacation for the cost of 2 days.
2. Follow the flight deal aggregators. I’ll go anywhere over the course of a weekend if the ticket is under $400, and to get those airfares I rely heavily on sites like The Flight Deal and Secret Flying to let me know what destinations can be had on the cheap.
3. Prepare for your return to work ahead of time. For me the best way to deal with returning to work on Monday after a weekend of flying, touring, and sometimes dancing the night away is to have my tasks for the next week set up before I leave. It means I can relax while I’m away and enjoy whatever new city I’m in and still come back to work on Monday ready to hit the ground running without worrying that I’m missing something when I’m bleary eyed sitting at my desk.

An excerpt of this post has been featured on Forbes and the Level Up by Forbes newsletter