Chris Guillebeau's Blog, page 30

If Plan A Fails, Remember that You Have 25 Letters Left

*My brand-new book, Born for This, is all about helping you find the work you were meant to do. This series explores some of these lessons.

Lesson: Craft backup plans. They will allow you to take more risks and make better choices.

There’s no shame in having a plan B, or even plans C–Z. Use the “if this, then that” method to make a backup plan for every career choice, and then make a backup for the backup. If one strategy doesn’t work, move to the next.

Vanessa Van Edwards had a message to...

If Plan A Fails, Remember that You Have 26 Letters Left

*My brand-new book, Born for This, is all about helping you find the work you were meant to do. This series explores some of these lessons.

Lesson: Craft backup plans. They will allow you to take more risks and make better choices.

There’s no shame in having a plan B, or even plans C–Z. Use the “if this, then that” method to make a backup plan for every career choice, and then make a backup for the backup. If one strategy doesn’t work, move to the next.

Vanessa Van Edwards had a message to...

The Easy Way to Earn Extra Points on Everything You Buy (No Annual Fee!)

Link: Chase Freedom Unlimited

What if you like the idea of travel hacking, but don’t want to pay an annual fee? There’s a new way to earn cash-back orpoints—your choice—on a card that never has a fee.

The new Chase Freedom Unlimited card will give you $150 Cash Back just for getting the card and spending $500 in the first 90 days (remember, there’s no fee). You can “cash in” your free money at any time by applying it to your statement balance.

Alternatively—and often a better choice—you ca...

“Busy Is a Bullshit Word”: How 16 Days Rafting the Grand Canyon Changed a Life

This is a reader profile. ( Read others or nominate a friend or yourself .)

How do you escape the disorienting world of always being busy yet never appreciating your life? For Angie Stegall and her husband Nelson, they took a forced vacation that turned into an epic adventure.

Here’s her story:

We weren’t happy, Nelson and me. With each other, yes—but with our lives, not so much. Our busy lives were lived in a city we felt very “meh” about. So when we had the chance to check off an item on Ne...

Why I Like Giving the Same Talk 30 Times in a Row

Whenever I give a talk for the first time, I’m very nervous. Like a lot of internal struggles, I don’t think the goal is to pretend the nervousness doesn’t exist. It’s a talk, also known as public speaking, also known as the #1 fear for a majority of the population. If you’re not nervous at all, you’re probably not treating it with the attention it deserves. Whenever I have the chance to speak to a group, whether large or small or somewhere in between, I take it seriously.

If it’s a new ta...

Ebook Version of The Happiness of Pursuit is Just $1.99!

Link: The Happiness of Pursuit on Kindle for $1.99

This just in from my publisher: the Amazon Kindle version of The Happiness of Pursuit is on sale for $1.99 during this week only.

Book prices are set by publishers, not authors, so I don’t control when it’s on sale. But I do know that it’s never been offered for anything less than $12.99, so $1.99 is quite a discount.

We recently launched the paperback version and I love the new cover!

If you’re new to my work and aren’t familiar with t...

Revisiting Montana, 25 Years Later

If you didn’t love your childhood, you probably don’t love the place where you grew up. Maybe you tried to get as far away as you could. Years later, maybe you realized it wasn’t the place that was so bad, it was just the experiences you had at the time. Or maybe your beliefs were confirmed: that place really was designed to produce misery, and if you have any say in the matter, you’ll never go back.

These thoughts were on my mind as the Delta Connection plane from Salt Lake City touched do...

Limited Time: Use Southwest Airlines Points to Fly a Companion Free (For an Entire Year)

Link: 50,000 Rapid Rewards Points (Limited Time)

I almost never fly Southwest Airlines. When flying in the U.S., I usually prefer American Airlines (and sometimes Delta). However, Southwest has millions of loyal fans who love their point-to-point service, unassigned seating, and general friendliness.

For those fans—or anyone who appreciates free travel—you may want to take a look at the improved signup offer for the Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Premier card. Instead of just 25,000 poin...

The Resumé of Failures

For every success, there are countless failures. Yet when we look at someone from the outside, especially someone who’s been particularly successful, we may not see the failures right away.

Scientist Melanie Stefan issued a challenge for academics to share their “CV of failures,” a formal listing of all the programs from which they were rejected, the funding they didn’t get, and the journal articles they wrote that weren’t published.

Here’s how she explains the idea:

“My CV does not reflec...

Life & Adventures on Book Tour: Part II

Greetings from Denver! Weeks II and III of the Born for This tour are coming to an end, and it’s been a great experience overall.

For the most part, it’s been a non-stop experience. At one point I did 14 days in a row with only one day off from events or travel or both (usually both, since I typically do an event in the evening and then travel to the next city the following day).

Oddly enough, I only felt tired on the rare days of rest or during the periods of lesser intensity. Maybe the l...