You have tickets to a concert next month. On the way to work, a song comes on and you remember you’ll be hearing it live. The concert hasn’t happened yet, but you might already be enjoying a small part of it.
Research suggests that anticipating an experience can be enjoyable in its own right. That is a more specific finding than “planning makes you happier”, and the distinction matters. (Association for Psychological Science)
What the research found
In a 2014 paper, Amit Kumar, Matthew Killingsworth and Thomas Gilovich examined how people felt while waiting for experiential purchases, such as trips, compared with material purchases, such as possessions.
Across four studies, anticipating experiential purchases was generally associated with more happiness, pleasantness and excitement than anticipating material purchases. (Sage Journals)
The finding concerns those kinds of purchases and the period before them. It does not establish that adding an event to a calendar improves your overall wellbeing, or that more plans are always better. The researchers did not test Yearpop. (Sage Journals)
It is a useful reason to take the lead-up to an experience seriously, without turning it into a promise about what an app can do.
There is a catch: free time can become too scheduled
A separate 2016 paper by Gabriela Tonietto and Selin Malkoc looked at leisure scheduling. Across 13 studies, scheduling leisure activities could make them feel more like work and reduce both anticipation and enjoyment. Rough scheduling without fixed times avoided that effect in their studies. (Sage Journals)
That doesn’t mean you should abandon restaurant reservations or forget when the train leaves. A practical interpretation is to arrange the details that need arranging, while leaving the rest open.
“Let’s spend Saturday afternoon together” might be enough. There may be no reason to decide where you’ll get coffee at 2:15 and how long you’re allowed to sit there.
Choose something you genuinely want
Before putting a plan in your calendar, ask what appeals to you about it.
Is it seeing a particular person? Getting outside? Trying something unfamiliar? Or does it mainly feel like something you ought to do because other people seem to enjoy it?
Use your own answer. A quiet dinner with an old friend is a perfectly reasonable choice over a much bigger outing.
You can also experiment with inexpensive plans, such as a picnic or an afternoon with a borrowed book. That’s a practical suggestion, not a claim that the purchase studies tested every kind of free activity.
Enjoy the lead-up without making it another task
Try listening to the artist you’re going to see, swapping ideas with your travel companion, or choosing a recipe for a dinner you’re hosting.
Do the parts you find enjoyable. You don’t need a daily ritual, an elaborate mood board or an obligation to feel excited every time you see the date.
A countdown can simply be a way to notice that a plan is getting closer. It isn’t a score for how much you should be looking forward to it.
Let ordinary plans count too
Try choosing something small for the near future alongside anything bigger you already have booked. That could be breakfast with a friend next week while a holiday is still several months away.
There is no ideal number of plans to maintain. Consider your time, money, energy and interest. One event you’re pleased about is a better starting point than a full month you already wish you could cancel.
Leave room for the real experience
Keep expectations flexible. You can look forward to a trip without expecting every meal, conversation and afternoon to be exceptional.
And when a plan stops fitting, change it. Moving a date or choosing a simpler version doesn’t make the original idea a failure.
The next step can be modest: think of one thing you’d like to do, find a workable time, and leave enough space to enjoy it when it arrives.