The most cherished journal I own is the one that contains my travel logs from my honeymoon a few years ago. My wife and I spent two weeks travelling across Europe where I recorded everything we did in a list format.

The entries were simple: one or two lines for each activity we did with as much detail as I felt necessary to trigger my memory. The result was a few pages that continue to act as a time machine whenever I revisit that notebook.

It never took me more than a few minutes a day to log our travels–an investment that has returned a priceless artifact.

Yesterday, I returned home from a much needed get away to Mexico City where I recorded our travels again, but with a slight twist and the addition of a proven productivity technique.

Time-block planning is method where you visually plan out your day and block out time for activities.

Most days I will create a time-block plan for the day in my Bullet Journal to visualize when I'll be slotting in things like exercise, obligations, and errands.

A typical time block plan might look something like this:

At a quick glance I can see what's on the agenda as well as the hours that are free to fit in other activities I may want to slot in for the day.

Since learning about time blocking I've started to use it as both a planning and recording tool while traveling.

I like to start the day by drawing up the visual timeline and plotting out all of the scheduled activities for the day. This usually include reservations and time-bound events.

Then as I go about the day I will fill in the white space with the activities that I ended up doing to create the travel log that acts as my memory of the trip.

Here's an entry from our first day in Mexico City:

Every entry is short and specific. It tells me where I was, at what time, what I was doing, and some additional notes to trigger contextual memories.

For instance, "Dinner @ Expendio de Maiz (No cash!)" tells me where I had dinner, that it was from 5:15pm to 8pm, and it triggers my memory that when we went to pay they told us they only accept cash which we didn't have. Embarrassed and not wanting to upset anyone, I ran to an ATM a few blocks away to withdraw money while my wife waited to assure the server that we weren't trying to run out on them.

Confusing as it may look to you, this visual keeps a perfect record of my memories and it doesn't take much effort. Whenever we stopped to take a break at a cafe or back at the hotel room, I would take a few minutes to update the timeline before moving on.

Those few minutes of effort ensure that I won't lose the details of my most cherished memories to time.

Prompt:

What is your favorite part about traveling?