• Author Kimberly Wilson was a traveler who always had an itinerary and a long list of to-gos while vacationing.
• During a girls trip with her mom, she decided to not plan anything — for once.
• Wilson found that when she didn't create moments for social media, she could actually rest.

I've always considered myself to be a hustler, since my first lemonade stand, in fact.

Growing up in New York, I was raised on a mentality that in order to live the life you dream, the work ethic has to match. That idea followed me through undergrad, then law school, then a career, mostly in travel writing, that practically runs on coffee and momentum. I constantly live a life on go-mode.

It's probably why when people find out how much I travel for work and in my personal life, they assume I love it. It's my natural way of being. And I do, mostly. I'm the one who scours TikTok, Google Reviews, and travel sites to ensure that I'm able to perfectly curate my itinerary from the moment I step foot off the plane, train, or automobile.

But in this season of life, as I'm navigating personal and professional life changes, I've learned that rest can't be my reward. So I wanted to try something new: see what happens when there's nothing to plan. And so I did just that.

How I created rest during travel

This past Mother's Day, I took my mom to Grenada. There was no spreadsheet, no color-coded schedule with a long list of plans and things to do (my mom hates that anyway), and nowhere for us to be. We had our flights, a hotel, and an intention to show up and figure it out. For someone like me, that last part was harder than it sounds — believe me.

We stayed at The Beach House at Silver Sands, and I think the property did half the work for me. Tucked away on the southwest coast of the island, it doesn't have the sprawling amenities, a packed pool bar or an activity desk of a mega-resort that's trying to curate every second of your trip. Still, it was just what we both needed — quiet, a stretch of beach that felt like it belonged to just us, comfort, and luxury.

The property itself is small by design, and ours was only one of 28 rooms and suites. When we walked into our king room, which featured wide windows and a private canopied terrace, we were stunned. The room sat on Portici Beach, which is framed by a stone bluff and water that shifts between shades of blue depending on the hour.

There's also a main infinity pool that we had access to, a spa (at the sister property, Silversands Grand Anse, which we gladly enjoyed one day), kayaks, and beach yoga if we felt so inclined. The options existed, but we didn't feel pressure to partake in them one way or another.

For the first day, I won't pretend I wasn't restless. I kept reaching for my phone to look something up, to find the "best" local spot, and who I knew on the island. Old habits die hard, is what they say, right?

For example, the woman who sat next to me on the plane — a stranger — informed me that a mutual friend was also on the island celebrating their birthday that weekend. They were hosting a themed party, to which she invited us to join, along with a list of activities to participate in while we would be there. My mom, who has watched me operate at this pace my entire life, just looked at me and said, essentially, stop.

So I did. Spoiler alert: I also skipped the party.

By day two, we were in our groove. We ate when we were hungry. We sat on the beach without a plan to leave it. One afternoon we ventured out to Port Louis Marina for lunch at Chez Louis, which felt like exactly the right amount of outside world. A good meal, a change of scenery, and then back to the quiet that Beach House offered. That ratio ended up being the whole trip in miniature.

I worked out every morning, either at the outdoor gym on the beach or over at the main Silversands property, which has more equipment. I'm training for HYROX, so completely switching off for that was never really on the table, and I didn't try to force it. What I noticed was that the workouts felt different there, less obligatory and more like something I actually wanted to do because they weren't rushed or had to fit within a schedule.

We had dinner one night at Grenadian Grill, where the coastal cuisine matched the unhurried pace we'd finally settled into. But honestly, the food was secondary. My mom lives in New York and I'm in Maryland, so we just enjoyed catching up for girl time with zero distractions because that seems to be what is always the first thing that gets sacrificed when life picks up speed (on my end, not hers as a retiree, of course).

I removed the pressure to perform on vacation

I've taken a lot of trips. I've seen a lot of places, but I can't say I've always allowed myself to fully be where I was. Grenada was different.

We all know the travel industry sells rest as a product. And the products are really good most of the time, really, really good actually: a spa package, a swim-up suite or butler service. I'm not going to say, I don't love all of those things. But what I found was that rest isn't really something a hotel gives you, it's something you have to decide to receive. The hotel's seclusion removed the temptation to keep moving and the simplicity of Grenadian life removed the pressure to perform a vacation for anyone, including myself.

I came back to Maryland without a single TikTok video or restaurant video saved for a future trip to Grenada (I scrolled and moved on, folks). Just some photos of my mom and I laughing having a good time on what I hope is many more girls trips to come.

I'm still a hustler, by all means. That's not going anywhere anytime soon, even despite no longer living in "the concrete jungle." But I understand now that rest isn't the opposite of ambition. You need it as part of the infrastructure. And sometimes all it takes is a secluded beach in Grenada, your mother telling you —sternly, I might add — to put the phone down, and a place that's quiet enough to let you hear yourself think.

• A "worry window" involves scheduling time to worry each day to prevent stress consuming our lives.
• The goal is delaying worrying to stay in the present moment, giving you more control.
• Health reporter Kim Schewitz felt more productive after trying it, but the pay-off wasn't big enough to keep going.

They say the only constant in life is change, but in my case, worry is on the list too.

How will I get my to-do list done in time? What if my alarm doesn't go off in the morning? Did I wish my cousin a happy birthday last month? Do my friends secretly hate me? Besides being relentless, taunting, and stressful, listening to my internal monologue is, frankly, time-consuming.

It feels like it robs hours of my life, draining my energy, and taking me out of the present moment. That's why, when my editor said she was looking for someone to try a technique designed to ease stress called a "worry window," I volunteered.

The technique involves making a note, mental or physical, when worries enter your mind throughout the day, and deferring thinking about them until a designated 15 to 30 minute window in which your only job is to, well, worry.

The aim is to delay worry and redirect attention to the present, over time giving you more control over anxiety.

There is no set way to do the worrying, but psychologists I spoke to recommended writing or typing out worries at around the same time each day in a relatively comfortable spot, but not in bed (you don't want to associate bedtime with worry).

"The muscle to build is to recognize you've written it down, it's going to be saved for your structured worry time, and then to redirect your attention," Dr. Simon Rego, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told me.

In his experience, pretty quickly, people realize that if they defer worrying and stay in the moment, the anxiety starts to die down.

The worry window draws on key strategies used in cognitive behavioural therapy, rooted in the idea that our thoughts and actions impact how we feel, Rego said. Through discussion with a therapist and practical exercises, CBT is "a way of not getting stuck in just how you feel, but learning to see how what you feel is influenced by, and influences, your thoughts and actions," Rego said.

The worry window was created for people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, he added, but can be helpful for anyone experiencing stress.

I had found myself more stressed than usual. Fretting constantly over my seemingly never-ending to-do list and struggling to relax at the end of the day. I was skeptical that the technique would make any difference, but I was willing to give it a shot.

I worried for 10 minutes a day for 2 weeks

For two weeks between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., I sat at my desk with a notebook and pen, and set a timer for ten minutes.

I spent most of the time writing out a list of everything I needed to do, and dividing it into urgent (to be done today) and less pressing (in the coming days). I also noted down approximately how long I thought each task would take, to help me plan.

I spent the rest of the time writing about my stress-related thoughts and feelings.

In retrospect, I probably should have done the suggested 15-minute minimum, since studies testing the efficacy of worry windows used 15 to 30-minute sessions, but that felt unrealistic for me at the time.

As my insurmountable to-do list was a big part of my stress, I didn't set any rules or intentions, to make my worry sessions as stress-free and fluid as possible.

Knowing I would worry later helped me dismiss worries in the moment

Pretty soon after I started using the worry window, I noticed some small but tangible differences in how I coped with stress.

Writing down everything on my mind during the day helped me figure out what to prioritize, and I often realized I was making a mountain out of a molehill. It turned out that remembering to fold laundry or reply to a friend's message did not warrant triggering my fight-or-flight response.

I feel like I got more done during the two weeks than I usually would. Instead of spending time worrying about my to-do list, scheduling tasks reassured me they were taken care of. I was able to identify and do what was urgent, and let go of what wasn't. Similarly, when a pang of stress randomly hit me during the day, I often found that reminding myself I had already worried about this thing, or was scheduled to, helped me to dismiss it.

I also found myself using other CBT techniques I learned in the past, like analyzing thoughts, during the worry window. For example, I would write down the more existential worries I was having or negative self-talk, and that would help me see how mean I was being to myself and notice familiar patterns. That helped me unhook from those thoughts and feel better.

It's wasn't fun

The biggest challenge was sitting down and doing my worry window every day, because it wasn't particularly enjoyable.

It was another daily task and, after a long day, I generally just didn't feel like it. Admittedly, there were a few days when I was in the office and had a social plan after work that I ended up not completing my worry window.

Dr. Sarah Berger, a psychologist based in Bethesda, Maryland, who specializes in CBT and anxiety and often uses worry windows with clients, told me that my experience is common. "The major downside of this technique is getting people to do it," she said, "nobody enjoys this activity. It's not fun. It's not supposed to be fun."

But people who practise regularly typically get great results, she said. She recommended committing to a "short, almost training period of 'let's try this every day for two weeks and see how it works,'" she said.

Next time, I'll follow the rules strictly, for longer

After my two-week experiment, I stopped scheduling time to worry. I felt like I hadn't seen enough of an improvement to muster the discipline required to do a fairly unpleasant activity every day. However, after speaking to experts, my perspective on this changed a little.

As someone with entrenched worrying habits, I would probably need to follow the rules more strictly and continue for longer to see significant, long-lasting results.

Rego said to ask yourself: "How chronically have you worried in your life? Is it new? Does it seem to have emerged in the last few months, or have I been a worrier for my entire life?'

"Some of those factors can influence the amount of time required to really retrain the way you think," he said.

Initially, I thought of the worry window as a potential life hack, but, as with most things good for our health, it's not a quick fix.

"It's a short-term sacrifice, like going to the gym where you're going to feel some pain today for the long-term gain of making progress towards some sort of life balance or worry control," Rego said.

I plan to try again when I'm ready to fully commit.