When it comes to travel, I build the plane as I'm flying it.

I am exceptionally bad at planning trips—at least in the "book everything weeks in advance, know every step" sense. I usually only start figuring things out when I have to, or when I've already landed somewhere and need to make the most of being there.

adhd, hyper-focus, and why planning feels impossible

Over the past year or two, I've come to understand myself much more clearly as someone with ADHD.

For a long time, I dismissed ADHD as something that didn't apply to me. Given the way I grew up, I was skeptical of it as a legitimate diagnosis in general. But the more I read, the more I saw myself reflected back—very specifically.

For me, it's not just distractibility. It actually shows up more as hyper-focus.

This created a lot of cognitive dissonance. There are areas of my life where I am excellent at planning and logistics. For example, when I'm making an album, I can orchestrate everything: the musical side, the technical side, the logistics, the timelines. People look at that and say, "There's no way you have ADHD. Look how organized and focused you are."

But that's the thing: there are some tasks I love doing and some I don't. When something locks me into hyper-focus—when there's a strong enough reason, motivation, or fixation—I can absolutely thrive. Making an album sits dead-center in that sweet spot. Even the logistics feel empowering because they are in service of something I deeply care about.

Trip planning does not live in that sweet spot.

why trip planning feels like an insurmountable task

Planning travel, for me, is exhausting and overwhelming—especially when I don't have all the information.

Where should I stay?
How much is reasonable to spend?
What neighborhoods make sense?
What should I see?
What's safe? What's not?

Instead of feeling exciting, it turns into this massive, blurry, undefined task that feels almost insurmountable. And yeah, I get that it might sound silly: "It's just planning a trip." But my honest experience is that my brain treats it like a towering, impossible to-do item.

So I procrastinate. Or I avoid. Or I tell myself I'll do it "tomorrow" until suddenly "tomorrow" is the day before the trip.

It's really hard for me to book hotels more than a week in advance. Part of it is practical: there are so many possibilities that could change, and I don't like committing when my plans still feel fluid. But part of it is just how my mind works: I entertain too many options, and then nothing gets decided.

For a long time, I beat myself up about this. I told myself I should be better at planning ahead. I treated it like a character flaw to fix.

But recently, I've stopped trying to fight this part of myself and started figuring out how to work with it instead.

vietnam: building the plane mid-flight

Case in point: this trip to Vietnam.

I decided to take a week to travel here. I had never been before. I knew almost nothing about the country—its culture, regions, language, safety, or "must-see" spots. I could have studied all of that in advance, but that's just not how my brain wants to work.

I know I absorb so much more when I'm on the ground. Once I'm here, I'm motivated to learn. Reading about a place from afar? It doesn't stick for me the same way.

So: I had the intention to go to Vietnam. Great.

A few days before the trip—maybe Tuesday or Wednesday for a Saturday departure—I started looking at flights. That's when I discovered: oh, I need a visa.

I applied on Wednesday. On Thursday, I got a message saying my name didn't match my passport. So I had to resubmit. Then I learned the visa agency doesn't work on weekends, which meant there was no way my visa would be approved in time for Saturday.

The plan fell apart.

For a bit, I wasn't even sure I'd be able to go to Vietnam at all. I started considering entirely different destinations. Then I learned there were expedited visa services, went for that, shifted my flights, and ended up pushing the whole trip to Monday.

I booked a hotel in Hanoi maybe a day or two before I landed. Just three nights. I figured:
Three nights feels like enough for Hanoi. After that, we'll see.

What about the rest of the week? No idea.

On the ground, I learned that Hạ Long Bay is something you "have to" do. So I started looking into cruises and ended up booking one the day I arrived, for two or three days later. I got lucky—there was still space.

The original idea was to stay on Cát Bà Island afterwards. A friend had suggested it and said it was smoother to get to Hạ Long Bay from there than from Hanoi. You go to the island, chill, then take a boat out to the bay (which isn't really a "stay there" kind of place unless you're literally on a boat).

That was the plan… until I started talking to my hotel staff.

I told them what I wanted to do, and they gently suggested that maybe Cát Bà wasn't the best fit for me. My style is less "lounge at the beach for days" and more "explore, move, learn, keep the stimulation high."

They recommended Ninh Bình instead.

I had barely heard of Ninh Bình. I think a friend might have mentioned it in passing, but with the spelling and everything, it didn't stick in my mind. Suddenly it was on the table as an alternative, and it just made more sense for me.

So I pivoted.

Instead of Cát Bà, I decided on Ninh Bình. I asked the staff from the cruise if they could drop me off there instead of back in Hanoi, and they could. I booked one night, am now thinking about extending to two, and I'm adjusting the rest of my plans around that:

• Getting back to Hanoi early enough to pick up some suits I'm having made (very excited about that).
• Then heading straight to the airport to fly back to Singapore.
• For Singapore, I still don't have a hotel booked.

This is what I mean when I say I build the plane while I'm already in the air. The plan reveals itself one piece at a time.

the stupidity tax and the adhd tax

One of my most significant exes taught me a concept I've held onto: the stupidity tax.

The idea is simple: you are going to make mistakes. That's just part of being alive. Instead of spiraling when something goes wrong, you treat it as a tax—a cost of doing business as a human. You can even literally budget for it.

"Oh well, there's $50. That's the stupidity tax."

I love this framing because it makes mistakes feel survivable and expected instead of catastrophic and shameful.

For me, there's also an ADHD tax.

I might pay more for last-minute flights.
I might not get the "best" hotel.
I might sacrifice some comfort.
I almost never get the certainty of knowing exactly what's going to happen.

And yes, those costs can add up. Sometimes it's a few dollars. Sometimes it's many hundreds, especially with flights.

But that's the tax I pay to be myself.

Because the alternative—forcing myself to plan like someone I'm not—comes with its own cost. It drains my energy and my happiness. It makes everything feel like a grind, and I've realized that cost is actually higher for me than the financial one.

That's not something I accepted easily.

I grew up in an environment where money felt very tight and very scarce—where a lot of things felt like survival. Under that kind of mindset, spending money "frivolously," or paying more than you had to, can feel borderline immoral.

So for me, traveling this way is not careless. It's not "lol I don't care about money." It's a form of self-acceptance and, honestly, self-love.

travel like you

Is this style of travel chaotic? Probably.
Would I necessarily want to put a partner or friend through it? Not always. It can be stressful to be on the receiving end of someone else's ever-shifting, half-formed plans.

But it works for me.

It's an act of self-love, an act of self-acceptance, and also an act of trust—trusting that things will mostly work out, trusting that the downside isn't as big as my fear says it is, trusting that I can handle whatever happens.

Fortunately, I'm in a place right now where money isn't so tight that a lost $100 here or there is devastating. I don't like paying that tax—but I'm willing to, because what it buys me is freedom and the space to be myself.

So when you travel, travel like you.

If "you" means meticulously planning everything in advance, knowing every step, every tour, every reservation—amazing. Do that. I genuinely admire that level of structure and commitment. I wish my brain worked that way.

And if you're more like me—where planning feels like an impossible chore—you can still travel. You can still have fun. You can still make the most of a place in your own way.

The way you travel can be part of your practice:

• the practice of being yourself,
• the practice of accepting yourself,
• the practice of trusting that things will be okay.

When you build the plane as you fly it, you're not just figuring out your itinerary. You're also figuring out how to be you—and letting that be enough.