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May 12 - May 12, 2019
worked with refugees, warlords, and presidents, and bounced around West Africa as I negotiated on behalf of the medical charity that operated the ship.
Same ship as the Charity Water guy, I think.
enjoy taking solo trips around the world, arriving in cities without an agenda or obligations to fulfill.
Credit where credit is due: a few years back, I read the book Wishcraft by Barbara Sher.
She's Quite excellent
I enjoy the process of trying to keep all the plates spinning in the air. For me, if I’m not involved with a bunch of things simultaneously,
I can unequivocally state that this is not true of me. I get very stressed out from having too many things gling on.
When you reach the convergence between getting what you really want while also helping others in a unique way.
He left a dependant clause hanging.
Bo Bartlett, a professional artist who spent 20 years painting for free before his paintings started selling for $50,000 each, put it this way:
How did that happen?
I’m scared since I’m everywhere at once and nowhere all the time I won’t have the opportunity to settle down and have a family. I’m frightened something will happen to a loved one while I’m too far off to reach them and I won’t be there for someone who needs me. But here’s the thing.
See, here's the thing: these are legitimate concerns. It isnt wrong or bad to be available to help your aging parents or stay in one place so your kids can grow up with deep roots. It is eminently possible to make a big contribition in one little nook of the world. Making the local homeschooling co-op great is also a worthy contribution.
don’t mind the stress and logistical hassles that some people are bothered by.
Interesting Because this is the part i dolnt like about travel
A few friends told me they were going to climb Table Mountain later in the week, and they invited me to come along. At first I said, “No, I have a lot of work to do,” knowing that I had a meeting to attend and the other people at the meeting would wonder why I was absent.
This is one thikng that bugs me: there is definitely something to be said folr those who are DEPENDABLE and who do not miss the meeting because they got a bug in their hat and went climbing kinstead. Did he really have to go climb Table Mountain on that particular day, just because it was a possibility? That annoys me because dependable people like me have to pick up the slack for the whim-followers
There are times, for example, when I’ve reconsidered my decision to try to visit every country in the world. I could still travel without such an exhausting goal, but I know that I’d always regret it if I didn’t try to go everywhere.
I find this annoying to. I dont think much of box-checking style of travel.
My philosophy is, hey, use whatever works. I bought a new round-the-world plane ticket when I sold the proposal for this book. Nine months later when I turned in the manuscript, I booked a trip to Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Yeah...hujmble brag
Having been self-employed for almost all of my adult life, I’m admittedly biased toward entrepreneurship.
Yes, clearly you are.
Then I read the message titled “Urgent Update” and saw that it was from my new fulfillment center. The message explained that they were shutting down the company, effective immediately. “No more orders will be shipped,” the owner said, and in fact, no orders had been shipped in three weeks. When I frantically called in on the satellite phone to get more info, the number was disconnected.
This is exactly what "sleepwalkers" like myselg do not want to deal with!
Instead, I learned how to bluff my way through exams, how to quickly memorize (and quickly forget), and how to make myself look good.
Well, love, you were not trying to get anything from it but the piece of paper so its no surprise you didnt.
wondered if I had missed out on something.
Handy hint: you did
I had essentially no higher math skills and had been out of undergraduate school for five years.
Gee...something to be proud of...
Join a gym or health club to keep fit during your rigorous independent studies. (Most universities include access to their fitness centers with the purchase of $32,000 in tuition, so you’ll need to pay for this on your own otherwise.) Cost: $25-$75 a month.
You dont even need to join a gym to be fit.duh
I spent $32,000 for my master’s degree, and virtually no career assistance was included.
Part of that is because je bolted through it and likely formed no relationships with professors or advisors
Several of my friends from graduate school agree that their time in the ivory tower resulted in a poor return-on-investment when compared to the limited gains they received later.
This always bugs me though. People who have degrees who think the degrees are worthless (for other people). They do not realize all the benefits they gain by having that "piece of paper." Whereas people like myself, who went to college relatively late in life, HAVE LIVED without the experience OR the piece of paper. It sucks.
Instead of thinking too much about categorization, it’s more important to spend time on recruiting and maintaining your small army—and then putting them to work.
I think this is disgusting. Its using people.
When I first decided to create a website to chronicle my journey to every country in the world, I showed the initial concept to a few friends. All of them thought it was interesting, but one of them immediately applied the “reason why” thinking. “It sounds fun,” he said. “But what does it do for someone like me?” His question bothered me, because aside from fellow adventure travel junkies, I couldn’t think of a good reason why anyone else would be interested in my goal.
Lol, here's a tip: I dont give two shits about your pointless goal of box-checking every country in the world.
Leo Babauta has done this to near perfection on his popular blog Zen Habits, where he writes about simplicity and goal-setting. In less than a year, Leo built a subscriber base of more than 100,000 avid readers and became a full-time blogger.
Yes but I like Leol Babuta. He is a much more admirable guy than Chris.
When run properly, a small business will attract prospects, customers (fans), and hyper-responsive customers (true fans) over time. Once you have acquired a sufficient base of each group, there are a number of things you can do to leverage the relationship to grow your business.
Its ironic that he is telling all this nonsense to the very people who would presumably become his followers. Maybe some people enjoy instructions on how to sycophantically lap at his boots, but I don’t; I’m non-conformist like that, lol.
Gary Parker, the California surgeon who had been living in Africa for 17 years,
He should absolutely, unequivocally credit DOCTOR Parker with his title in EVERY instance his name is mentioned.
First, understand that it is not easy to get a significant number of followers and true fans.
Particularly when your work is drivel and you discredit their actual credentials.
Unfortunately, avoiding this blunder is harder than it looks. No one starts a campaign to change the world with the idea that they will end up letting people down. The problem usually comes about when the project is succeeding rather than failing. When things are going smoothly and you find you can take shortcuts that no one seems to notice, you may be tempted to take more and more shortcuts. Eventually, everyone notices, but by then it may be too late. If you want to maintain the momentum and keep your followers happy, don’t give in to the temptation.
So ironic. He does exactly what he warns against.
don’t have much choice over paying the electric bill, for example, but I want to make sure I’m not paying a whole set of electric bills each month.
Ummm...what? What is “a whole set of electric bills”? This is such a stupid example. Besides which, people who don’t value paying for electricity go off-grid or install solar panels or whatever. I don’t especially like paying electric bills each month, but since I DO like having heat and air conditioning, washing my clothes by machine, and keeping my perishables cold continuously, I accept the contract of conventional electrical power delivery.
I was hoping he would mention how he has health insurance coverage. This is another thing he does not appear to realize will change if/when he has kids. In my dreams, we pay $400/mth for health insurance, since we actually pay more than four times that for a family of five.
Time is not money. I embrace frugality partially as a means to an end, but it’s also a personal value. Being frugal in some areas allows me to spend freely in others. It’s not always a direct relationship, though—my decision not to pay $2 to ride the bus home from an appointment one day doesn’t allow me to buy a $4,000 round-the-world plane ticket. Under a strict “time is money” perspective, it would be much better for me to ride the bus home (10 minutes) than to walk (30 minutes). The incongruity doesn’t bother me, because it’s not my goal to live the most optimized life possible. The key is
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What the hell is he even saying? Time IS money; money represents a use of time. Maybe if he hadn’t life-hacked his way through Economics 101, he would understand this better.
There is no such thing as good debt. I realize there is a debate over whether some kinds of debt are “good” versus other kinds that are “bad.”
Also wrong. “Good debt” is how we built significant assets, something he seems completely ignorant of.
To get serious about saving, focus on increasing income more than cutting expenses. This is because cutting expenses is essentially a scarcity behavior, whereas increasing income is essentially an abundance behavior.
No. This is craptastic advice. It’s like saying, “Focus on increasing the water pressure in your shower but don’t fix the leak in the main water line to the house.”
Since I never wanted to formally retire, why was it so important for me to accumulate a large amount of capital? It would be better, I realized, to focus on creating financial
Said like a young person who has no clue about the changes in ability and energy that come with aging.
The goal here is not so much to save a big fortune, but to change your sources of revenue to the point where you can regularly obtain enough income without working for an employer.
Ok. Here’s the thing, tiny baby. While I agree it is very important and useful to construct income streams, rather than basing one’s whole financial independence concept on IRA accounts, he still seems myopic about his long-term abilities. What happens when you write a bad book and scores of people turn their backs on you forever, as I am going to do?
He seems to think his current (time of book writing) situation will continue to be his situation indefinitely.
Doctors Without Borders: This organization, known around the world by the French name Medecins Sans Frontieres, brings medical teams to war zones, natural disasters, and countries that lack sufficient health care. Learn more at DoctorsWithout
Made possible by people who got the advanced degrees of which he is so scornful...
Most of the time I prefer to give to trusted organizations because there is greater accountability with the funds, but in the end, what they do with the money is up to them. Once you give, let it go. It’s literally out of your hands at that point, and that’s where it should stay.
I do agree with him on that.
I’d really love to see what Chris’s life is like when he’s too old to work. I hope all his memories of traveling the world and giving his money away comfort him when he’s eating dog food in a shared-living facility for the indigent. I sent that comment out to my family and a few friends. We laughed about it, and someone suggested I print and frame it in my office. As bizarre as it was, the more I thought about it, the more we realized that “dog food man,” as my friends called him, was partially right. I hope my diet will be a bit better than what he suggested, and I hope I get my own room in
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While this commenter was unfortunately ineloquent, his general comment is correct. This author seems so ignorant of the long view. It’s ever so possible, for instance, that Jolie will get ticked off having a husband who is never there because he’s box-checking all the countries in the world for some pointless reason.
People who possess self-confidence and focus are often labeled as arrogant by those who lack both qualities.
Only arrogant people think this.
When I’m not traveling, I try to take a Sabbath day every week from 6 p.m. on Saturday to 6 p.m. on Sunday. During that time I’ll be 90 percent offline, which means I may log on to read the weekend newspapers, but I won’t be hitting my email or working. Otherwise, any time for work or fun is fair game.
This is possibly the sole piece of advice I agree with, though I don’t actually do it.
My kind of travel is not about sightseeing or visiting museums. A lot of the questions I’m asked in travel interviews are rudimentary. What kind of backpack do I use? None. What’s the weirdest thing I’ve eaten? I’m vegetarian, so a lot of the “weird” things are off-limits for me. What’s my favorite country? I don’t have just one, but among others, I really like South Africa, Hong Kong, Macedonia, Jordan, and Chile. Instead of obsessing over luggage, I like exploring, reading on park benches, and being spontaneous. I don’t claim to be an expert on every place I visit, and I wouldn’t make a good
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What the hell?? This is a repeated few paragraphs!
Glory days are dangerous, and while I wish I was immune, I know I’m not. When I came back from Africa in 2006, I made sure everyone knew where I’d been for the past four years. If I met you that summer as I began my new life in Seattle, you’d hear about it within a few minutes of our introduction. Yes, I knew the president of Liberia, and did I mention that Desmond Tutu and I had coffee together one afternoon in Cape Town, South Africa? If not, I’d make sure you heard about it before too long.
Uhh...you’re still doing this!
believe this mind-set is too limited. Instead of waiting, the time to begin thinking about legacy is well before you come to the end of any particular role or life in general. By the time you come to the end, you don’t have the chance to change anything that happened long ago. That’s why I think it’s better to begin thinking about your legacy right now,
Well, what does he think his legacy is? That he visited all the countries in the world before age 35? It’s so meaningless!
I hope this doesn’t contradict everything I just said (Amazon .com reviewers, here is your chance to nail me),
Lol, does he think this is the first opportunity?
“Unreasonable,” “unrealistic,” and “impractical” are all words used to marginalize a person or idea that fails to conform with conventionally expected standards. My response is that the world needs more people who fail to conform and refuse to settle.
But refuse to settle for *what*? He’s traveling to every country in the world - what does that do to benefit humanity? It’s just a pretty much pointless bucket list checklist item.
Students could revolt and change universities, shifting the balance of power toward the group that enables the institution to exist in the first place. In no other institution in the world does a large majority willingly give over so much power to a tiny minority. Grading could be abolished or modified, and curriculums rewritten to reward trial and error more than rote memorization.
This would be an absolute catastrophe.
