I usually like a plan. Flights, charging stops, places to stay, backup places to stay, and a spreadsheet pretending to be casual. Australia was the trip where I tried to leave most of that behind.
The result was better than the spreadsheet would have been. A loose route gave the trip enough shape to keep moving, but enough space to say yes when something better appeared.
The useful amount of structure
I still booked the first few nights. Complete chaos is not a personality. But after that, I kept the days open: walk until the city made sense, talk to people, take the train, rent the car, change the route.
There is a nice engineering lesson in that. A system needs constraints, but too many constraints stop it from adapting. Travel is the friendlier version of that truth.
What stayed with me
The best parts were not the most optimized parts. They were the extra day somewhere small, the long drive with no agenda, and the moment where not knowing what came next felt like a feature instead of a bug.