Chris Guillebeau's Blog, page 53

Top 5 Credit Card Signup Bonuses for Miles and Points: May 2015

Every year I earn well over one million Frequent Flyer miles and points. About 250,000 of them come through actual travel, and the rest come through travel hacking: the art of seeing the world on a budget.

One of the easiest ways to earn a lot of miles all at once is through credit card signup bonuses. This post contains the best current card offers as of Tuesday, May 5th. If getting every card from this post, you’d earn 215,000 points or miles. Happy travels!

In this edition:

Chase Sapphir...

The Art of Unplanned Travel: On the Road with Carole Rosenblat

This is a traveler case study. ( Read others or nominate yourself . )

A quester and traveler, Carole Rosenblat decided to take a deep dive into rarely explored territory: the art of unplanned travel. She runs a blog and lets her readers choose where she travels, giving herself only a few days to get from one place to another.

Introduce yourself.

I’m Carole. I was born in Oak Park, Michigan, just outside of Detroit (you’ve probably heard of 8 Mile thanks to Eminem – I’m from 9 Mile).

For seven y...

A Better Approach to “Never Check Email in the Morning”

You’ve heard the conventional wisdom: never check email in the morning.

That sounds great, unless your job involves communicating with people, or if you happen to care about what people have to say to you. In either of those cases, you very well might want (or need!) to see what’s happened overnight just as you sit down to work.

It’s also true, though, that it’s easy to get sucked into replies and never end up creating or building or just working on something that requires long-term focus,...

“Knowledge Is Not Understanding” — The Case of the Backwards Bicycle

I loved this video from Smarter Every Day, where host Destin Sandlin learns to ride a bicycle that has been custom welded to reverse the handlebars.

It sounds easy—all you have to do is think left when you normally think right, and vice versa. Can’t be too hard, right? But it is hard… very hard.

After he learns to ride the reverse bicycle, he then has another big problem: how to switch back to an ordinary bicycle. Turns out that’s really tough, too!

Lesson: “Once you have a rigid way of th...

“Make Your Dream Trip a Reality”: Week 1 Recap (With Photos + Prizes!)

Every day for six weeks, we’re teaching people how to “Make Their Dream Trip a Reality.” You can watch each lesson for free on the day it’s broadcast, or you can purchase the whole course and have access anytime.

This was our first week with the in-studio audience and the thousands of people who participated online.

Whew! We’re wiped out … but we got a lot accomplished, and we’ll be back next week with much more. Here are a few photos of the studio:

Goals for Week 1: “Make Your Plan...

Limited Offer: 50,000 Points Bonus for United MileagePlus Explorer Card

Link: 50,000 Miles for United MileagePlus Explorer Card

Hey everyone,

Over the past four days I’ve been filming (and preparing…) non-stop for our new “Make Your Dream Trip a Reality” course. We kicked off on Tuesday morning with a live broadcast that many of you watched.

More news on that including a full recap of Week 1 is coming tomorrow! I’m behind on posts but will catch up soon.

In the meantime, here’s a special deal that just came out. If you’re jumping into the world of miles and...

Live from Seattle: Today’s “Dream Trip” Kickoff Was Awesome!

Greetings from Seattle! This morning we kicked off the live broadcast for “Make Your Dream Trip a Reality”… and a ton of you were watching!

Creative Live is rebroadcasting the session throughout the day, so tune in over here and you can still catch the whole thing.

(If you’re reading this another day, we may be on to another session—but we have six weeks of them, so there’s still plenty to go.)

What You’ll Learn

Here’s how we describe the course in the official writeup:

***
In short, da...

“Dream Trip” Course Starts Tomorrow: Join Us Live Online at 9am Pacific!

Hey everyone, just a quick reminder: tomorrow morning we kick off our new “Make Your Dream Trip a Reality” course on Creative Live. You can watch for free starting at 9am Pacific time.

Link: RSVP (It’s Free) and Join In Here

Yesterday we went to the studio for a production meeting with the whole team. This is a big undertaking, and a bunch of people have been working on it for weeks (okay, months).

Oh, and we even got a sneak-peek of our awesome set featuring a “travel hacking hot seat” wi...

6 Discoveries from Near and Far: Volume XLII

I. Around the World

Things I found on long walks in foreign cities, or perhaps when someone posted them on Twitter.

10 Travel Hacks The Tourism Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know — Featuring comments from me and several other experts Be a More Productive Writer While Also Achieving Balance — Lots of contrarian advice here. I still like my to-do lists, but I appreciate this perspective Traveling to Cuba? Book one of the 1,000 listings available on Airbnb — While you’re waiting for the Park Hy...

Writing a Three-Line Poem Every Day for a Year: Yvonne Whitelaw’s Quest

This is a quest case study. ( Read others or nominate yourself . )

As I wrote in The Happiness of Pursuit, a quest need not be an athletic struggle or travel adventure. I loved this story of how this former medical resident wrote a haiku every day for a year.

Introduce yourself.

I’m Yvonne Whitelaw. I was born in Britain, but raised in Nigeria and the United States. I’m a stay at home mom and former physician. I decided to tweet a haiku a day for 365 days, even though I barely knew what a haiku...