How To Plan Your Own Micro-Adventures - with Victorinox*
[Sponsored content] Over the last month I’ve been undertaking a series of micro-adventures as part of Victorinox’s Modern Pathfinder campaign, and you know what? It’s been one big realisation for me about this whole simple living thing. I’ve written before about how I always feel like I need to be doing more in order to be slow living ‘properly’, and this is something I find very difficult to shake. I think I am someone who needs grand gestures, so if I’m not doing yoga for three hours a day or knitting everything we own I’m doing things somehow wrong. The micro-adventures have taught me the power of doing small things, and how impactful a tiny change or ten minute activity can be. I can’t say I’m fully cured. I think it’s just a part of me, the ambitious, constantly striving part that will always think ‘what else?’.
But in these micro-adventures I’ve found a system that can slow me down when I need it, and a new found acceptance that small and simple is just as valuable, if not more so, than the grand gestures because the micro activities actually happen. So today I’m going to share more about the micro-adventures I’ve had over the last month, some inspiration for your own and a few tips I’ve learned a long the way. Let’s adventure together…
Micro-adventure inspiration
Do something in your routine differently
For me, this was adding a little something to our afternoon dog walk. Rather than plod the same path on autopilot, I took an unphotogenic plastic pot and went on a mission to forage the last of the season’s wild garlic. And, small as it seems, it transformed that little piece of our every day – we walked through trees we never usually do, dug around in the hedgerows on the riverbank, jumped down the little flood defences and generally saw things from a completely different perspective.The key with this kind of micro-adventure is that it doesn’t require you to devote any extra time to it, it happens within your daily routine. Maybe that means taking a different route on your way home from work, taking your lunch outside or somewhere different in the afternoons, swapping your morning coffee at your desk for one at that café you’ve always wanted to try.
Find something you’ve always wanted to do
We all have those things we want to have a go at, the things we intend to do more of and bring into our routines but somehow never quite do. For me, this is generally because of my ‘go big or go home’ tendencies – if it’s going to take me more than half an hour to be amazing at it, I find it hard to start. But using it as the basis of a micro-adventure is the perfect excuse to take your chisel and make the first chip on the stone of progress.
For my micro-adventure, for example, I chose meditation, or generally just being quietly with your thoughts in the present moment. Like many of you, my brain is busyand I’ve always thought that meditation would be a good practise for me but never quite got to the point of actually opening one of the apps I downloaded. But I’ve always felt calm around water, so I went to a local waterfall and sat quietly with the water pounding in my ears and cooling my feet and took just a few minutes to feel connected with the earth and peaceful with my thoughts.I know not everyone has a ‘local waterfall’ (please don’t hate me for my flippant use of that term!), but there will always be a body of water. Even when I was living in a town I’d sit by the canal where the locks were slowly releasing water.
Or if meditation isn’t your thing, do what is. If you want to start walking more then explore one new street in your town every day. If you want to draw, promise yourself twenty minutes sketching at your favourite spot once a week.
Strip back an activity to its bare essentials
We never really go for picnics because I always feel like I have to create a picnic set up that will break the internet. Like it would have to bring Pinterest to its knees, and anything less than that is a bit of a failure. But what if I strip away all the elements that’s holding me back? What if I take away the perfect wicker basket, and the perfect rustic bread, and the perfect blanket, and the perfect strawberries, and the perfect enamelware? If I break it down to what I actually want out of a picnic, it’s me and him, somewhere lovely, with something to eat. And a cuppa and cake in the woods fits that brief, so that’s what we did.
As humans we tend to add layers of complexity to things, that’s something that’s clear to me from the work I do with my coaching clients. So if you’re sat there mentally planning your own micro-adventure, I’d encourage you to think about what’s important to you and hold on to that. Take away the bells and whistles so that you can concentrate wholly on the reason you’re doing it in the first place.
Explore your local environment
The word ‘adventure’ conjures visions of far off places and intrepid travel, but if We’re Going On A Bear Hunttaught us anything it’s that real adventures can happen right outside your front door. So many of us overlook our local environment when we’re pining for travel and adventure, we feel we need to be somewhere elseto get a break. But with a micro-adventure, you can explore your surroundings with a whole new mindset, with the intention of seeing wonder and sprinkles of everyday magic.
Planning your micro-adventures
Company or no company
Is your micro-adventure going to be a solo or group expedition? As I spend a lot of time on my own working, I like to bring Dan along for company but I am also planning some more solo changes. There is no right answer to this, other than what you want your micro-adventures to do for you. If it’s more about appreciating your locality, diversifying your routine or trying something you’ve always wanted to, then perhaps solo is better for you. But if you want to feel connected with loved ones and make memories, you can go along in a group.
Have a comfy bag
I know it might sound inane to say choose a comfortable bag, but only people who haven’t experienced a truly comfortable bag would think that. I always thought it was the norm to carry a rucksack with something or other sticking into your back and that gnawing pull on the shoulders, which is exactly why I made Dan carry the bag on our micro-adventures. Eventually though I picked it up and swung it over my shoulders and then looked at him, eyes wide: “that’s...really comfortable”. “I know,” he said, emphatically, “I know”.Because you don’t want your abiding memory of your micro-adventure to be of you wrestling with an annoying bag or not being able to fit things in pockets and all the frustration that comes with stuff. When you’re paring things down and making it short, the supporting cast of equipment needs to work seamlessly with you so you can just focus on the experience.
Make sure your knives are sharp
I’ve been spoilt having a chef for a boyfriend, the knives in our kitchen are always properly sharp and I always get a shock when I stay somewhere where knife sharpening isn’t quite so much of a priority. But in a micro-adventure context, it makes a difference in terms of experience and time: much quicker and easier to slice right through something rather than hack at a strawberry and bludgeon a tomato.Little things like a lovely sharp knife (like these from the Victorinox Swiss Modern range) means you can maximise your time adventuring, the same as having good socks to stop blisters. You deserve it.
Something to keep an eye on the time
These are micro-adventures after all! While I love an all day romp through the wild as much as the next person, the whole point of a micro-adventure is to inject a little more of that spirit into your everyday work and life – although that does come with the fact that you have to be certain places at certain times. Sure you can use your phone for this, but I try not to take my phone out for walks and micro-adventures so I don’t get distracted from enjoying the moment. And if you can trust your timepiece to keep working even when you’re standing under a waterfall, then all the better 😉*this post happened because it was sponsored by, and includes product placement from, Victorinox, however all words and opinions are my own and from the heart.
