Introduction

I travel constantly—averaging around 60 flights per year—and know firsthand the complexity of juggling trips across multiple continents, modes of transportation, and consecutive meetings. When you're city hopping this frequently, it helps to have a robust organization system that avoids wasting precious time and energy on the road. From sketching out upcoming itineraries to slotting in the final details as plans firm up, organizing travel requires serious effort. I've organically spent years refining my own tools to handle complex travel. I bring you Standard Travel Notation: a streamlined, human- and machine-readable schedule format that lets you (and anyone helping you) see exactly where you're headed, how you'll get there, and what you'll do when you arrive.

This notation was born out of necessity, iteration, and countless mistakes. In its current form, it has worked like magic for organizing years of travel. By using a minimal and consistent format, anyone—whether it's a colleague, assistant, or AI—can understand trip details at a glance. The collaborative aspect is essential when you have others managing bookings or face last-minute changes.

I have iterated on this approach to compress dense travel schedules into a format that's quick to draft, easy to share, and flexible enough to rearrange as events and demands on my time inevitably shift. If I need to push a meeting by a day or squeeze in a new destination, I can do so without rewriting my entire itinerary. Each Entry clearly shows location, lodging, and transport details, with additional room for events during the trip. The key is making each Entry's components concise, atomic, and information rich—using universal standards for departures and arrivals (e.g. IATA airport codes), consistent 24-hour time formats, and simple keywords to highlight modes of transport.

One word of caution though—with such an easy tool to lay out months of travel, it can be easy overbook and forget that your body still needs downtime to acclimate to each place your journey takes you. This system won't solve jet lag or magically shorten flights, but for trips beyond a week (or truly epic half-year itineraries), adopting this notation can provide real clarity and peace of mind.

Why You Need a Travel Notation System

Have you ever found yourself digging through emails, text messages, and calendar invites just to piece together your travel schedule? I certainly have, and it's consistently frustrating and slow, especially when you're already thousands of miles from home.

Even if you're taking just four trips a year, each with multiple destinations, you're already juggling dozens of details. Now multiply that for frequent travelers who might be on the road weekly. Without a system, you're bound to miss something important or find yourself fumbling for flight numbers in front of an immigration agent at the Chinese border.

What I love most about using a standardized notation is how it grows with you. Starting with a simple outline like June 10 SFO → LAX or June 14 LAX → MNL is enough to begin to structure your plan, before booking anything. Then as details firm up, you add the specific flight times, reservation numbers, and any other relevant information.

And let's be honest—nothing makes you feel more in control than having an entire year of trips laid out in a format you can skim in seconds. It's been a game-changer for me, and I bet it can be for you too.

Syntax Reference

The Standard Travel Notation syntax is based on Markdown, producing a clear list format that is compatible across many kinds of note-taking tools. For these notes, I recommend Reflect, as it makes markdown lists collapsible and very easy to consume.

1. Entries

Let's start with the top level. The primary organizing element, an Entry, shows where you'll be and for how long:

- June 7–10: San Francisco, CA

It's simple but powerful. Entries start with bullets (- in markdown) and use sub bullets to record details about that Entry like where you'll stay when you arrive and how you'll depart. We won't use specific times yet, as those will go in Transport Lines to keep complexity at the top level to a minimum.

Here's what it looks like in practice, building a skeleton of a one month itinerary:

- June 1–4: Los Angeles, CA
- June 4–7: New York, NY
- June 7–10: San Francisco, CA
- June 10–26: Los Angeles, CA
- June 26–30: Montecito, CA

2. Stays & Events

Where are you staying and what are you doing while at that place? Within each Entry block, add these details underneath:

- June 7–10: San Francisco, CA
  - Stay: One Hotel Embarcadero (45943)
  - June 9: Meetings in Palo Alto

Use the Stay: keyword to highlight accommodations in an Entry and include booking reference numbers in parenthesis or other access details for the stay as needed, but otherwise keep it free-form. You can add as much or as little detail as you need.

Events start with the date(s) on which they occur and include a short description of the event and any other access details (e.g. registration numbers, reservation names, or door codes), but are otherwise very free-form as well.

3. Transport Lines

Now for the fun part—how are you getting from place to place? Each Transport Line specifically describes one travel segment, including mode of transport, the places and times you'll depart and arrive, and key details like flight numbers and booking references:

- FLIGHT June 7 11:15 JFK → 15:45 SFO (UA1234 - 5HBG89)

Let's break that down:

• First, name your mode of transport: FLIGHT, TRAIN, CAR, HELICOPTER, etc.
• Then add the date and departure time
• Follow with origin → destination (with that helpful arrow)
• Add arrival time if you know it
• Finish with the flight number and the booking reference in parentheses

Building this into an Entry, a Transport Line will always appear at the end of each Entry tracking the departure from that place.

- June 7–10: San Francisco, CA
  - Stay: One Hotel Embarcadero (45943)
  - June 9: Meetings in Palo Alto
  - FLIGHT June 10 11:15 SFO → 12:45 LAX (UA1234 - 5HBG89)

The Transport Line for the arrival at your next destination Entry is just the departure from the previous destination's Entry:

- June 7–10: San Francisco, CA
  - Stay: One Hotel Embarcadero (45943)
  - June 9: Meetings in Palo Alto
  - FLIGHT June 10 11:15 SFO → 12:45 LAX (UA1234 - 5HBG89)
- June 10–16: Montecito, CA
  - Stay: Miramar (485438)
  - CAR June 16 3:45 Miramar → One Hotel West Hollywood (Uber)

The beauty of this format is its flexibility. You don't need every detail right away. While sketching out a travel itinerary, you can start with:

FLIGHT June 10 SFO → LAX

And fill in the rest later once the booking is made:

FLIGHT June 10 11:15 SFO → 12:45 LAX (UA1234 - 5HBG89)

Let's look at a few more examples:

TRAIN November 11 13:11 BBY → 16:50 NYP (Acela 2167 - B26712)
CAR October 14 14:15 Ōsaka Station → 14:50 KIX (BMW - 大阪 500 さ 34-56)
HELICOPTER April 3 10:45 Yellowstone → 11:15 BZN (HeliAir - HL556)

Now you can see what's happening, when, and where. No more scrolling through endless confirmation emails or fumbling at borders for flight numbers!

4. Detail Lines

Sometimes you'll have day trips or activities that deserve their own notation. Just nest these bullet points under your main entry:

- March 4–7: New York, NY
  - Stay: Crosby Street Hotel
  - March 4: Attending Private Company Conference (383 Madison Ave)

This gives me a complete picture of a given day's movements without breaking my main itinerary structure.

Example Schedule

Let me show you how this all comes together. Here's a minimal working example that illustrates my typical usage:

# 2025 Travel Schedule

- June: 7–10: San Francisco, CA
  - Stay: The Battery San Francisco (439)
  - FLIGHT June 10 11:15 SFO → 12:45 LAX (UA1234 - 5HBG89)
- June 10–14: New York, NY
  - Stay: Crosby Street Hotel (98765)
  - FLIGHT June 14 16:45 JFK → 20:05 LAX (AA567 - ABCD12)
- June 14–21: Los Angeles, CA
  - Stay: One Hotel West Hollywood (123456)
  - Meeting with partners in Malibu
  - FLIGHT June 21 13:30 LAX → 22:05 JFK (AA23 - YGL43K)

Isn't that clean? At a glance, I can see my entire two week-long trip across three cities, including where I'm staying and how I'm getting around. When I'm planning collaboratively with my team, they can easily update the file with booking details as arrangements are confirmed.

I typically start with basic transport outlines to sketch:

- February 8–13: Manila, PH
  - Stay: TBD
  - FLIGHT February 13 MNL → KIX

And can update them as the plan gets booked:

- February 8–13: Manila, PH
  - Stay: Ascott Bonifacio Global City (A434024393)
  - FLIGHT February 13 14:35 MNL → 19:15 KIX (PR408 - ATVY5S)

This graduated approach means I can sketch out my travel months in advance, even before I've locked in specific flights or hotels.

5. Advanced Topics

5.1 Time Zones & 24-Hour Format

I always use 24-Hour Format (e.g., 13:45 instead of 1:45 PM). Why? It's clearer and makes time zone math simple.

When you're crossing time zones, list local times for each location. Need more clarity? You can add UTC offsets or simply use +1 on the time:

FLIGHT June 15 22:00 JFK → 05:00+1 LHR

This might seem like overkill for casual trips, but trust me—when you're zigzagging across continents, this level of detail prevents costly mistakes.

5.2 Multi-Stop Transport

Have a layover or back to back flights? Break each segment into its own line:

FLIGHT 1 June 15 09:00 AMS → 11:00 CDG (KL1234)
FLIGHT 2 June 15 12:30 CDG → 15:00 LHR (KL5678)
CAR June 15 15:45 LHR → 16:50 Ham Yard Hotel (Taxi)

This makes it crystal clear when and where you're connecting, which is crucial information when you're rushing through an unfamiliar airport.

5.3 Entry-Level Day Trips & Complex Excursions

Short trips that don't require overnight stays? List them inline under your main destination:

- March 6: Philadelphia, PA (Day Trip)
  - TRAIN March 6 09:05 NYP → 11:05 PHL (Acela 2151 - B112233)
  - Conference at Pennsylvania Convention Center
  - TRAIN March 6 18:30 PHL → 20:30 NYP (Acela 2174 - B332211)

Final Thoughts

I created Standard Travel Notation because I needed a better way to manage my hectic travel schedule, and it's transformed how I plan my journeys. It cuts through chaos, helps me spot scheduling conflicts before they happen, and keeps everyone involved on the same page.

Ever struggled with organizing and finding details on a multi-stop trip while you're jet lagged? Or found yourself frantically searching for flight details while standing in an airport check-in line? Or realized too late that you booked overlapping commitments in different cities? This system prevents those headaches by giving you a bird's-eye view of your entire travel landscape and all the details in between.

The beauty of this notation is in simplifying inherently detail heavy travel into a format that can be both drafted and skimmed quickly—it takes just minutes to learn but can save so much time and friction before and during a trip. If you travel regularly, having a consistent way to draft and organize that travel can make all the difference.

One final reminder: even once you've found the best organization system for you, you're still a human being who needs rest. Use this notation to help you travel more precisely, not necessarily more frequently. After all, seeing the world should be enjoyable too.