18. Don’t be afraid to skip landmarks or attractions that don’t interest you, even if it’s something as major as the Great Wall.
Spending all this time traveling has hammered home one truth for me: Forget about FOMO (fear of missing out). If there’s an attraction, landmark, or museum that doesn’t interest you, don’t be afraid to skip it.
There are often too many things to see in the place you are visiting to waste your time on a site that doesn’t interest you — even if it’s something as monumental as the Taj Mahal or the Great Wall of China.
The persistent sense of FOMO is one of the reasons I hate bucket lists. They are a constant pressure to see and do things that other people say you have to do, rather than what you actually want to do.
In the past, that dynamic led me to spend half a day in Bogotá, Colombia at the Museo del Oro, a museum exclusively displaying pre-Columbian gold. In Europe, I visited ornate medieval church after ornate medieval church. In Stockholm, Sweden, I spent a day trudging through the stuffy rooms of the Royal Palace.
Looking back, there were a dozen other activities I would have rather spent that time on. This time around, I turned off the little voice in my head that screams “FOMO.”