As summer draws to a close, I thought that I would do a weeklong blog series about vacations. Personally, I tend to take my vacations in the fall and winter (since the kids are back in school, things are less crowded), but the summer vacation is still a staple for many people.

The first step in planning better vacations is to evaluate the vacations you have had. Now, you don’t have to go back decades. In fact, let’s make it easy and just look back at your most recent vacation. You don’t have to do anything formal or fancy. Just think about the following questions:

• Did you return from your vacation relaxed, refreshed, and re-energized?
• Did you budget enough to cover your vacation expenses?
• Did you try to do too much? Not enough?
• Did you leave yourself enough travel time?
• How was the balance between alone time and with people time?
• What sort of vacation activities do you enjoy most: pure relaxation, sight-seeing, theme parks, physical activities, visiting cultural and historic landmarks, etc.?
• What did you take that you didn’t need? What didn’t you take that you did need?
• What did you learn about your travel style from this trip?
• What do you need to keep in mind for future trips?

It’s important to learn from experiences to improve things in the future.