There was a time when a good holiday seemed to come with a checklist.

See the sights. Visit the beach. Find the best restaurant. Try the water sports. Explore the town. Take the boat trip. Watch the sunset. Get up early. Stay out late. And, naturally, take enough photos to prove you did it all. 

But perhaps we’re beginning to question whether a holiday really needs to be another thing to optimise. 

It’s the increasingly appealing idea that sometimes, the best thing you can do is deliberately decide not to do something. 

To skip the attraction. Ignore the itinerary. Leave the phone in the room. Sit outside with a cup of coffee for an hour, guilt free. Read the same book you’ve been meaning to finish for six months. 

And crucially, to feel completely fine about what you’re missing.

JOMO is essentially the opposite of FOMO - the Fear of Missing Out.

FOMO is that nagging feeling that something better is happening somewhere else. That there might be an experience you’re missing, a place you haven’t visited or a plan you really ought to be a part of. 

JOMO flips the feeling on its head.

Instead of worrying about what you’re missing, you actively enjoy being somewhere else, and being present with it. 

The concept has increasingly appeared in research around social media, digital wellbeing and psychological wellbeing. Research found that JOMO was associated with several measures including life satisfaction and mindfulness, although the researchers stressed that the evidence is mixed and that JOMO may be better understood as a state or mindset than a fixed personality trait.

More recent research has continued to explore the idea. A 2026 study found that framing digital disengagement as something positive and self-chosen, rather than something imposed on us, was associated with greater feelings of authenticity and digital wellbeing, alongside lower social media use. 

In other words, it’s not necessarily about having less. It’s about choosing what you don’t need. And that idea feels particularly relevant to holidays. 

Travel has become remarkably good at giving us more to do.

You can have an itinerary planned down to the hour. Google Maps can tell you exactly where to go. Instagram can show you the restaurant you apparently can’t leave without trying. Review sites can tell you which beach is the prettiest, which viewpoint is most photogenic and which attraction you absolutely shouldn’t miss. 

There’s nothing wrong with any of that. But somewhere along the way, the holiday itself can start to feel like a project. And after spending everyday life surrounded by notifications, calendars, emails and endless choices, perhaps what many of us actually want from a holiday is the opposite. 

Fewer decisions. Fewer expectations. Fewer places to be. 

Research into the pace of travel is beginning to reflect this. A 2025 study published in Annals of Tourism Research found that people who felt busier in everyday life showed a greater willingness to choose slower-paced travel, with the desire for recovery helping to explain the relationship. 

It’s an interesting thought: the busier life becomes, the more attractive doing less can seem.

There’s also something wonderfully familiar about this. Think of the holidays many of us remember from childhood, or stories from previous generations. There wasn’t necessarily an app telling you where to go next. 

You might spend half a day on the same beach. Someone would buy an ice cream. You’d wander back to where you were staying. Perhaps you’d play cards after dinner, sit outside until it got dark or listen to the radio with the windows open. 

Nothing particularly remarkable happened. And that’s exactly what made it memorable.

Our modern obsession with productivity can make doing nothing feel slightly uncomfortable. We’re used to measuring our days by what we achieve, how much we see and how efficiently we use our time. But a holiday doesn’t have to be productive. Maybe that’s the point.

The growing interest in slow travel, digital detoxes, mindful travel and slower-paced breaks all taps into a similar desire: to step outside the usual rhythm of everyday life and experience somewhere without constantly trying to maximise it. 

Perhaps that’s why this idea feels so appealing. Because if a holiday is supposed to help us switch off, why do we so often return to normal life feeling like we need another holiday to recover from the first one?

There is a psychological difference between choosing to miss out and feeling that you’ve missed out. If you arrive home from holiday thinking, We didn’t get around to doing everything, that might feel like a failure. But if you arrive home thinking, We didn’t do everything, and we didn’t care, the story changes completely. 

That’s the essence of JOMO.

It’s not about rejecting experiences. It’s about giving yourself permission not to pursue every possible experience. 

You can have a day where the only plan is breakfast. You can take the long way back. You can sit by the pool without reading, scrolling or listening to anything. You can walk somewhere simply because you feel like it. You can stay in because the weather is a bit grey. You can have an afternoon where absolutely nothing happens. 

And perhaps, ironically, those are the moments when you’re actually most aware that you’re on holiday. 

There’s another reason JOMO fits so naturally with getting away: it creates space for attention. When we’re constantly thinking about what we’re doing next, we’re not necessarily paying much attention to what we’re doing now. A packed itinerary can mean seeing lots of things without really experiencing any of them. JOMO asks us to reverse that. 

Instead of thinking What’s next?, it’s about noticing what’s already happening. 

The sound of the sea. The smell of coffee in the morning. The warmth of the sun on your face. A conversation that lasts longer than expected. Children disappearing off to play and returning an hour later. The particular quiet of a holiday morning. 

None of these things would make much of a bucket list. But they’re often the things we remember.

Not necessarily.

The point of JOMO isn’t that relaxation is better than adventure, or that everyone should spend their holiday lying around doing nothing. Some people love a packed itinerary. Some people want to climb, swim, explore, eat, cycle, visit museums and see as much as possible. The joy comes from choosing rather than feeling obliged. 

Maybe your version of JOMO is spending a whole afternoon on the beach. Maybe it’s leaving your phone in your accommodation while you go for a walk. Maybe it’s saying no to the restaurant everyone recommended because you’d rather cook outside. Maybe it’s cancelling one plan because you’re having too good a time doing nothing. Or maybe it’s simply giving yourself permission to change your mind. 

We’re often told that luxury means having more: more choice, more experiences, more places to visit, more things to own. But perhaps there’s another definition. 

Luxury is having time.  Time to linger over breakfast. Time to watch the sky change. Time to take the scenic route. Time to sit somewhere beautiful without immediately reaching for your phone. Time to have an afternoon that doesn’t need documenting. 

And perhaps that’s why JOMO feels like more than just another internet acronym. It’s part of a bigger cultural shift towards a slower pace of life. One that values presence over productivity and experience over achievement. The question isn’t What am I going to miss? It’s What am I happy to miss? Because sometimes, the best part of the holiday isn’t the thing you managed to fit in. It’s the thing you decided you didn’t need to. 

This week, try a little JOMO. Leave one gap in your plans. One evening, morning or weekend afternoon completely unplanned. Don’t fill it with errands, emails, social plans or another item on the to-do list. Just see what happens when you don’t feel the need to make something happen. 

You might discover that doing less isn’t wasting time after all.