<p><pre><code> More money will NEVER solve your problems
</code></pre>
That just isn't true - the problem is that people realised that being rich isn't the same as being happy, and it was a good point. But then people took it too far, and it stops making sense.<p>Sure, for some people, having more money wouldn't improve things, but for many people, it definitely could. And I'm not just talking about people who are starving or homeless. You don't need a car to be happy, but if it means you waste far less time every week driving wherever you need to get to, it certainly has the potential to make you happier.<p>Can a really happy life be built entirely on having money? No (well, maybe for some people, I don't know), but that doesn't mean money can't or doesn't help to improve people's lives.
Most of these life lessons have nothing to do with travelling. Most people I know (especially in their late 20's) would come up with a similar list even if they've barely travelled.<p>I think this is just merely the blog poster's world view articulated into 29 points, and incidentally he has travelled the world instead of living in one place.
As I've been saying to others regarding startup advice and lessons, it's much more helpful and interesting to read stories. You may think you are extracting out wisdom from your experiences, but really, more often than not, these "life lessons" don't mean much without context. I certainly can't take them for a rule and apply them to my life. It may turn out to be the wrong advice for me and even if it doesn't, I'll always have the nagging doubt that I took the wrong decision based on someone else's experiences.<p>It would be nearly impossible to read these "N lessons" posts if they were not in the form of lists, which points to the fact that they don't flow very well. They are written in bite-sized chunks for information-hungry internet nerds like us.<p>Writers, please tell stories. We don't need more advice.
> 2. Deferring your happiness to the future is a terrible idea<p>Every time I see this, I ask myself, how is this advice reconciled with the famous Marshmallow experiment? <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment</a><p>There surely must come a point where enough deferred future marshmallow gratification makes deferred gratification a recommended life strategy.<p>If I were always to choose not to delay my happiness, I'd eat unhealthy foods, not force myself to do exercise and never work hard to achieve anything.<p>As I heard a comic say, "I decided to live every day as if it were my last. Now I have really bad credit."
I've spent almost 10 years not having a stable place/work relationships. I also travelled a lot and came to almost same conclusions. But.<p>Looking back at it now I think that's everything should be limited. Including TV, including reading books alone and including travelling around the world. But.<p>The only thing that shouldn't be limited - is the pursue of your own unique excellence.<p>ADD:<p>So, if you want to be an excellent traveller - travel,
if you want to be an excellent writer - write even not seeing others,
if you want to be anything you like - do want you like.
And try to be excellent.<p>That's the only life advice I have!<p>ADD 2:
Naturally, if you don't want to be excellent, try to be excellent to be non-excellent !!!
but what if i ENJOY watching tv? or being on the internet for hours? why is outdoors better by definition?<p>this fits nicely into the "what white people like" stereotype. go outside! why? maybe i want to read a book and be left alone. maybe i don't like dancing and singing.<p>how about:
do whatever you like, but please, don't preach.
we are different.<p>/white, like travel and outdoors, but love to consume art
<i></i>Sigh<i></i>. Someone needs to write:<p>"41 Life Lessons Learned by Marrying, Moving to Suburbia, and Raising a Family".<p>That's what I did and I'm a happy guy.
A few points I got from this:<p>- Possessions do own you. I have made an effort in the past year to minimize my stuff. One of my long term goals is to be able to shrink the majority of my life into a travel-able size. It allows me to cherish the essentials and not bloat the rest of my life.<p>- Money does allow for happiness, just to a certain extent. Money opens up many opportunities and comforts. It also adds security. If my car gets totalled tomorrow, I know that I have enough money saved up to be able to handle it, rather than suddenly be put in a dire situation that could jeopardize my job.<p>- Major goals are important, but not everything. People work towards things, its natural of humanity. Everyone sets goals and works towards them (or sometimes waits for them) and it is a strong driving force in our lives. But sacrificing your happiness now for the sake of those goals is counterproductive. You need to enjoy the time used to achieve that goal. You shouldn't look back on the year(s) taken to get to the point and see a lot of unhappiness and pain, enjoy some of the time instead.<p>- In regards to the internet/tv posts, I would say that the biggest thing anyone can do is read. The Internet provides an incredibly accessible portal of information and using it to learn new things (and an incredibly breadth of things) is a tool everyone should use and abuse.<p>... Just my random thoughts after reading the post.
As someone who is currently taking a gap year to travel and work on my startup, a lot of this rings true. Especially the part about speaking other languages rather than English. There are interesting conversations that I just can't participate in because I don't understand what people are saying. However, there are several hacks for this that I've found.<p>- Don't stay at hotels, use airbnb. The hosts are almost always locals that speak decent English and want to get to know you, so that's enriched my experience tremendously. Disclaimer: I do NOT work for airbnb, but after seeing how it has enriched my travels it's definitely at the top of my list if I ever wanted to apply for a job again.<p>- Go out of your way to meet other travelers. Usually, travelers like to keep to themselves. But there are districts in any city that are especially frequented by foreigners. Why restrict yourself to locals? Foreigners from a different country who are traveling are just as interesting for cultural exchange as the locals. They usually speak English fairly well and it's not uncommon to be engaged in an English conversation with a German, a Russian, a Chinese, and a French person at a bar. It's quite fascinating.<p>While it is definitely less expensive to travel than one would think, it still does cost quite a bit if you want to travel to major cities and have a living standard which is at least close to western-standard. Staying with friends and using airbnb instead of hostel/hotel is the best way to keep costs down. After 3 months of traveling (Australia, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and now Spain) I've spent an average of $4300/mo. I'm traveling with my wife so the per person cost is actually less. Could I get by with less by teaching English and staying in one place longer, etc? Yes, but as with everything, there is a tradeoff between time and money.
Nice article. I have myself lived in Latin America and China for about 12 years now, however I prefer to stay at the same place for some years, to make it become "normal" life.<p>And while I agree with many of the articles points, I completely disagree with #16. The "easy going" may look charming and smart on the surface, but when reality suddenly shows up (illness, accident, any sort of emergency, etc) then its suddenly not so charming anymore.<p>I believe a big reason for the "easy going" attitude lays in the available Social Capital in a given society. In societies with low Social Capital, its often no use to be "less easy going" and work hard, since careers are not build by knowledge or good work, but by "Guanxi" and Amigos (because Social Capital is low these relationships become more important than actual professional knowledge). I am pretty sure that, having a real choice, most people would opt for the "less easy going" way, where products and services, houses and medical care are available and reliable.
These are pretty simple, not so preachy, and generally expected observations from someone working in a location independent profession while travelling the world and picking up new languages. This is also advice aimed almost directly at people in similar positions - those with higher education and almost zero financial or emotional attachment (ex. children, sick family memebers) to their original home. What I'm more interested in though is when the author realizes that being in different places every three months, no matter how much you "hack your experience" there only allows you access to a certain level of experiential depth. Love, trust, deep friendships, community - you just cant cultivate these things every three months while planning your next destination and as much friendliness, and kindness people in these places show you, its not the same as if you are someone planning to be a part of that place permanently.
I disagree that the desire to own stuff all boils down to wanting recognition and validation from others. In my experience there are a range of reasons that people want to own things, and validation is just one of the more base reasons.
IMHO, different world travellers come up with different life lessons. It all depends on the person's own prejudices. <i>Lessons are not in the world, they're within you.</i> World and societies are just tools to discover our own selves.
Have an up-vote for being from Cavan!<p>Languages should be always acquired wherever possible. On my travels I've picked up Irish, French, Chinese and attempting to learn Nepalese to placate the in-laws for my future wedding speech.
I don't like the way this article, and many others like it, disregard peoples ability to be malicious. They portray all humans as good-natured, kind and helpful, and while this is true for the overwhelming majority, the small percentage to who this does not apply do exist.<p>I personally would love to read some good advice on how to deal with people who actively try to harm you, as most advice available focusses on how to make friends and acquaintances.
Amazing blog, thanks for posting it. Been living in Paris for two weeks now and not really even tried to speak French, my aim by the end of my internship was to become conversationally fluent. Definitely starting this soon: <a href="http://www.fluentin3months.com/the-smartest-decision-you-will-ever-make-to-achieve-fluency/" rel="nofollow">http://www.fluentin3months.com/the-smartest-decision-you-wil...</a>
Well, it is good to have rich parents, no one argues. You can discover basics of the life in 8 years rather than in one year of visiting a public library. ^_^<p>Disclaimer: I have seen so many Enlightened Tourists after two weeks in Lhasa or a Hindu/Yogi Gurus after one months in Varanasi and especially Teachers Of Humanity with an obvious Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Excellent read. As someone who has (hopefully) just taken up the travelling+programming lifestyle myself I was really inspired by the website. There's a lot of interesting articles on there.
I met a guy once who, at the time, had benen travelling for 7 years. His main advice was: Don't get married. You don't want to know how much people cheat on their sopouses.
Point #1 is why we shouldn't be at war, why people in power shouldn't be always trying to control the populace, and why there shouldn't be so much poverty
I have a strong desire to do something like this. I've been saving for the day that I can quit my job, and work on a start-up. At the same time I also want to move to somewhere like Costa Rica with exciting rain forests, and a lower cost of living. Unfortunately I feel tied down, I'm more than willing to sell most of my stuff, I basically stopped buying "things" a few years ago. However I could never move away from my girlfriend, and she could never move away from her life here in Boston.