10 Things To Do On Your Thanksgiving Plane Ride, Drive, or Train
1. Listen to Podcasts
Whether you’re addicted to them or it’s just a passing affair, downloading a few or a series to your device to listen to during your plane or car ride to Thanksgiving is a great way to pass the time alone or with friends.
And boy do we have something for you. We’ve prepared a series of podcasts that strike our fancy recently, so we’re going to give those to you here:
- The 30 Best Podcast Episodes of All Time
- 7 Best Podcasts of November 2017: The Knowledge Edition
- Top 7 Podcasts of October 2017
- 10 Best Podcasts of September 2017
If you can’t find something worth listening to in there, it might be time to ask for Q Tips in the stocking this year ;)
2. Play Blackjack & Card Games
When’s the last time you bought a deck of playing cards and took turns dealing Blackjack with your travelmate? We did this once on a road trip on the center console of the SUV. Shotgun dealt the cards and called out the ones lying down while the driver chose whether to hit or stay. Of course, it’s more fun if you’re on the way to/from Vegas, but who’s keeping track.
A few other card games you could play on the plane:
- Remember Go Fish?
- What about Skip Bo?
- Or UNO?
If you don’t have the custom decks for those games, take it from the manufacturer itself (Bicycle) and get back up to speed on Slapjack, Crazy Eights, and Pay or Play.
3. Read The Newest Book Releases
There are three great new books out that we’re fairly enamored by:
- Leonardo Da Vinci biography by Walter Isaacson (he’s the same guy who did Steve Jobs and Einstein bios).
- Origin by Dan Brown (the new book by the man who wrote the Da Vinci Code, only this time it’s about the tension between artificial intelligence and religion).
- Principles by Ray Dalio (two books in one about how to make good decisions in life and work, by the guy who built the most successful hedge fund of all time).
If you want something a little bit older, may we recommend A Moveable Feast by Hemingway, pulled together from old notes when he was living in Paris during the Jazz Age. Make sure to get the version linked to above, because it removes the weird editor’s ordering/editing and publishes it as Hemingway wrote it.
Or, may we recommend the original Peter & Wendy: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up novel by J. M. Barrie, which was the precursor to the famous Peter Pan we all know and love. The roots of the original may astound and whisk you away past the second star to the right.
Or you could always just read it out loud, like the ancients.
3. Do Some Writing
Whether it’s your great American novel, a to do list of things at work, or perhaps your New Year’s Resolution, having the space to write whatever you’ve been meaning to, or at least make your start is a good thing. Time and a blank piece of paper is all you need. You don’t even need to have a story in mind or something to say.
Instead, just start typing/writing the thoughts in your head, as they pop in. This stream of consciousness writing is often the habit that you need in order to get into the writing space. You can always edit later. As Hemingway used to say, “Write drunk, edit sober”. Even if he wasn’t ever sober, but that’s a story for a different day (a moveable feast, perhaps).
4. Remove the Noise & Think
The world we live in today is a mass of never-ending noise. 24 hour news cycle. Social media. Pings of text messages. Bombarded by work, personal, and spam email. TV, radio, intercoms, talking people. How often do we cut out sound and interruption from our lives?
Our guess is rarely, if ever. But it’s in that quiet space where real insight and discovery occurs. If you keep pushing thoughts and distractions through the neural connections in your brain, there’s no space for new connections to take place. Only in the absence of thought does the true thinking occur.
Sound dampening headphones can help. Doesn’t really matter the brand or price point as long as you can turn the rest of the world off for a few hours. And the Bose QuietComfort versions are $100 off right now.
5. Transcendental Meditation
Plenty of people over the last few decades have become huge proponents of this form of meditation. It’s not like others where you’re trying to not focus on something. In this case, you focus on a single word, chosen for you based on your time / age in life, and you repeat it in your mind’s voice until everything else melts away and your thoughts drift into your subconscious. There are paid programs but if you’re resourceful enough, you can find out how Transcendental Meditation works by using the trusty ole Google engine.
6. Teach Yourself To Code
Grab a course from Codecademy or Code School and teach yourself. Team Treehouse is also a great resource. And all you need is a wifi connection in the plane or to tether your phone to your computer in the car. Then you can do interactive tutorials in the browser, or watch videos. If you’re really into it, you can always download a text editor like Brackets.io or Coda and get to coding up some front-end websites.
7. Research Something You’re Fascinated By
Is there something you’ve been thinking about for some time but never gotten around to delving deep enough to see if there’s any there there? Maybe it’s learning more about this cryptocurrency/blockchain thing you hear so much about. Or you’ve always wanted to learn how to draw but never taken the time to go through the first steps of learning. Whatever it is, use the time and the space to see if that something in the back of your mind is worth pursuing. You can do it all through your phone and a web browser. Google is your friend. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
8. Sleep
We all know we live in one of the most sleep deprived societies that’s ever existed. A cat nap to catch up before the holiday festivities might be the best thing you do for yourself, and your health, all year.
Read this research from Harvard on the Science of Sleep.
9. Create a New Spotify Playlist
Everyone loves music and did you know you can become quite the influencer by building a playlist that a bunch of people follow? It’s how Rap Caviar got started. A dude who works inside Spotify puts the latests, emerging artists on there and others follow it to find new music. It’s since blown up like fireworks. Quite the little gamification feature that included in their product. Works like magic for engagement.
10. 20 Questions & Forever Story
The old school road trip games never end. 20 questions you likely already know how to play, but just in case you don’t, you have only 20 questions to guess something that the other person is thinking and you can only ask yes / no questions. Such as, “Is it a place?”. You would answer “yes” if the answer was The North Pole, for instance.
The forever story, on the other hand is a bit different. The first person starts a story by giving a few sentences. Then the next person has to keep the story going by adding another few sentences, then on and on forever. You can play it with 2 or 100 people as long as you don’t flinch and play along with whatever the person said before you. If not, you lose. So, for instance you might start with, “Once upon a time, there was a mule who was flying in the air…” and the next person might say “The other passengers began to complain about the smell, even though it was flying in first class”. You get the (mental) picture.
What kind of stuff do you like to do when you travel? Let us know in the comments below! We hope you have a great Turkey Day and enjoy your much needed break :D
