How Do Full-Time Travelers Avoid Travel Fatigue?

Read any digital nomad blog on the internet, and you will almost certainly find a discussion of travel fatigue. We’ve been traveling full-time for nearly a year and are not showing any signs of fatigue.

To explain how we’ve successfully avoided fatigue, it is helpful to look at how we approach full-time travel compared to how we used to approach vacations. On vacation, we moved fast and saw as much as possible. While traveling full-time, we relax and see the sights at a slow pace.

The differences between digital nomads and full-time travelers may also contribute to the former burning out while the latter does not. Significantly, digital nomads are typically single and move more frequently to see more destinations. This combination can lead to loneliness and travel fatigue.

To avoid travel fatigue, you need to have the right mindset. The starting place is appreciating the many differences between vacation travel and full-time travel.

On vacation, we often visited as many destinations and saw as many sights as we could pack into a day. Typically, we stayed in each location for 2 to 3 days before moving on to the next. That was long enough to do almost everything on the “must-see” list – if we moved at a near sprint. When we returned home – and back to work – we needed a vacation to recover from our vacation.

When we decided to travel full-time, we knew the pace would have to change. Otherwise, we would burn out in a month. Now, we stay in each destination for one to two months rather than a few days. This allows us to relax and settle in. After a few weeks, we usually know the local butcher by name, and the bakery owner recognizes us. By the end of our stay, we know quite a bit about the people and the place and feel like we have a connection to the community. More importantly, we are not exhausted but ready to move on to a new and exciting destination.

In short, traveling full-time is nothing like going on vacation. Here are some of the specific differences:

Packing is relatively simple when you go on vacation because you know what to pack. Significantly, the packing occurs pretty close to the time of travel. A glance at your phone will give you a pretty good idea about what the weather will be like. So you can easily pack the appropriate clothes and accessories. Selecting the appropriate clothes for full-time travel is incredibly difficult because you must pack for every season and weather condition. 

Assuming your space and weight limitations are the same, full-time travelers must take significantly fewer of each clothing item than vacationers. For example, vacationers can pack seven (7) pairs of shorts for a summer trip, whereas full-time travelers may have space for only two pairs of shorts.

Clothes are not the only thing on the packing list. Full-time travelers may want to take several items that vacations can live without for a week or two (e.g., wine glasses, kitchen knife, Amazon Firestick, etc.). This leaves even less space and weight for clothes. To further complicate matters, full-time travelers should consider packing less – rather than more – than a vacationer because the weight will become more and more burdensome over time.

We strongly believe full-time travelers’ packing list is one of the most important considerations to avoid travel fatigue.

On vacation, we eat almost every meal at restaurants. Aside from the expense, this requires getting dressed, going out, and finding a place to eat.

When traveling full-time, we eat almost every meal in our apartment. This requires going to the market or grocery store and preparing meals, but that is far less effort than going to a restaurant multiple times daily.

On vacation, we often went to numerous attractions and visited multiple museums every day. We spent the entire day sightseeing. Rain or shine, we had places to go and sights to see!

When traveling full-time, we typically go out for a couple of hours each day. During the summer, we go out in the morning while it’s still cool and before the crowds get bad. During the winter, we go out in the afternoon once it has warmed up a bit. If it’s raining, we may go to a museum, or we may not go out at all. This makes for a less stressful and more enjoyable experience.

Many people enjoy shopping while on vacation. Some people purchase expensive jewelry, and others buy cheap trinkets to remind them of their travel experience.

For better or worse, collecting souvenirs is not possible when traveling full-time. Limited space and weight restrictions eliminate unnecessary purchases. Also, it would be incredibly time-consuming and cost-prohibitive to buy a souvenir in every place you visit when you’re always visiting new places.

We always had a lot we wanted to see on vacation and limited time to do it. We often flew from destination to destination or rented cars and drove from city to city. This was more expensive and often more tiring (it took weeks to recover from our 7-flight trip to Greece)!

When traveling full-time, we have the luxury of time. We’re in no hurry to get anywhere. This allows us to take slower, less expensive, and less stressful (not to mention more environmentally friendly) transportation methods from destination to destination.

Because we worked full-time and only went on vacation a couple of weeks each year, the travel budget was not a significant factor. Vacation was the time we enjoyed spending money we had saved throughout the year.

When traveling full-time, the budget plays a much more significant role in the planning process. After all, you can spend as much as you want when traveling. But very few people can afford to stay at the Ritz all the time! So, you have to create a budget and stick to it.

There are many differences between full-time travel and vacation. In fact, they have very little in common. Full-time travel is more akin to “normal life,” whereas vacation is more like an escape from the normal.

The differences between digital nomads and full-time travelers may contribute to the former’s propensity to experience travel fatigue.

Digital nomads are typically young and single. Although more companies are beginning to allow remote work, many digital nomads are bloggers, influencers, or tech workers. Digital nomads often stay in hostels and work in cafes or on beaches. They are chasing the romance of working while traveling the world on a limited budget. They usually burn out because they move often to experience as much as possible.

The stress of the constant travel and the loneliness of the road eventually catches up with them. Once the burnout cannot be resolved by a few days on the beach, they will often return to a more typical lifestyle and settle into an office job where they can put down roots and have normal relationships with friends and significant others.

While they have one thing in common – a life of travel, the typical full-time traveler is an entirely different animal. Most full-time travelers are older and married. Rather than starting their life and career on the road, they often hit the road after years behind a desk. Because many full-time travelers have decided to leave an office job that may have taken years to develop, they certainly don’t want to return and start over again. Consequently, full-time travelers have to take all precautions against burnout.

To avoid travel fatigue, full-time travelers often stay in destinations for extended periods. They look for more creature comforts, often choosing an Airbnb over a hostel or a transfer over a long bus ride. And as discussed above, full-time travelers live a slower-paced lifestyle than other travelers.

Thus, the lifestyles are very different, and the priorities lie in different places. The first maximizes the experience because they know it won’t last forever. The latter is trying to figure out how to make it last forever.

For more information about the different types of travelers, see our article titled “Digital Nomad vs. Long-Term Traveler vs. Full-Time Traveler vs. Expat: What’s the Difference?”

In short, you have to move at a slow pace to avoid travel fatigue. You can’t move to a new destination every three days like you would on vacation. You will burn out before the end of the first month.

We have stayed in a location for as little as two weeks, but we typically stay for a month and up to two months. This allows us to settle in and get to know the town, but it also allows us to relax and see the sights at a slow pace. We have been traveling for almost a year, and we expect to continue for many years at this pace.