The Personal Holiday Cheat Sheet Every Burnt-Out Woman Should Save Immediately

Solo travel has officially shed its “she’s going through something” reputation and become one of the most universal forms of self-care of 2026. 

On Note to Self, host Payton Sartain breaks down her formula for what she calls a personal holiday after taking herself on a two-night reset in Sedona. You don’t need a resort, a plane ticket, or even a full weekend away to pull it off. Sometimes it’s an Airbnb. Sometimes it’s a hotel down the road. Sometimes it’s just a day where nobody asks what’s for dinner.

Here are her tips.

How to Plan the Perfect Solo Weekend, According to Payton Sartain

Actually be alone

“I need to be alone,” Sartain says. “I need to not have responsibility for someone else or something else.” This is the step people tend to underestimate. Coordinating schedules from afar, answering every text within five minutes, checking the dog camera 14 times, or running the household via voice memo all count as still being on the clock. A real solo reset means handing the reins over (to your partner, your sister, a sitter, anyone) and giving yourself genuine permission to be unreachable for 48 hours.

Enter your crafty era

A craft activity is the cheat code for getting out of your head. Sartain did a beading class on her trip, picking stones based on the energy she wanted to call in. Options that work whether you’re traveling or staying home:

• Pottery or air-dry clay
• A painting or watercolor class
• Jewelry making
• Sewing or embroidery
• A YouTube tutorial with a glass of wine

Try something completely random

Solo weekends aren’t the time for your usual Pilates class. Sartain recommends trying something that’s just a little outside your comfort zone—something you might never sign up for during a normal week. For her, that was archery. “I have had a niche love and interest in archery for a weird amount of time,” she says.

Other ideas:

• Aerial yoga
• Pole dancing
• Adult gymnastics open gym
• A trapeze class if you live somewhere that has it

Most of us spend our days running through the same routines, talking to the same people, and thinking about the same things. Trying something completely random has a funny way of snapping you out of autopilot. 

Add one thing that feels indulgent

A personal holiday should include at least one thing that feels completely unnecessary in the best possible way. For Sartain, that was a late-night body scrub and jojoba wrap. For someone else, it might be a massage, a facial, room service, or an overpriced coffee and pastry eaten in a hotel robe.

If a spa isn’t in the budget, she recommends an “intensive everything shower” at home. You know the one. Think hair mask, body scrub, fresh sheets, and finally using the expensive lotion you’ve been rationing like it’s a limited-edition artifact. The goal is giving yourself the kind of care you’d happily book for someone else but rarely prioritize for yourself.

Become your own dinner date

Pick somewhere you’d normally save for a date night, a birthday, or a girls’ dinner and go anyway. “I put on a cute little outfit and just sat in the corner of the restaurant and minded my business and had a really good margarita,” Sartain says. “I asked the waiter what he thought I should get. I got that.”

A few rules to make a solo dinner actually hit:

• No phone scrolling at the table (a book or a journal counts as a perfectly normal accessory)
• Order something you’d never order if you were splitting the table with someone else
• Sit at the bar if the corner table feels too exposed, the bartender will usually become your unofficial dinner companion
• Resist the urge to rush, this is the closest thing to a treat-yourself-experience without actually buying anything

Lean into the discomfort

Sitting alone at a restaurant, walking into a class where you don’t know anyone, eating at the hotel pool by yourself, all of it can feel really awkward at first. According to Sartain, that’s where the magic starts. “Having some level of being a little uncomfortable because you can kind of feel weird when you go do this stuff by yourself, and I think it’s important and it’s made me very confident to consistently confront that feeling of feeling weird and just doing it anyway.”

She’s been intentionally doing things solo for over a decade (posting on the internet in 2015 when nobody else was) and credits it for many of the qualities she values most in herself today.

Her actual rule for any solo weekender having second thoughts: “If you’re nervous about that, you have to do it…if that makes you nervous and scared and you think you’re going to look weird, then you just have to do it.” Worst case scenario? You eat a great meal, take a great nap, and come home a little more chill than you left.

Listen to the full episode on Note to Self, available wherever you listen to podcasts.

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