Timothy Ferriss once worked the corporate grind, then stumbled upon a business selling supplements and set himself
up with a nice income stream. After he let go of the day-to-day work and put most of it on autopilot that
is. He wrote a book advising others how to do it: The 4-Hour Workweek. He took some time out to talk about the importance of travel and the need to let go of the chains of being a job
slave and a pack rat.
You coined a great phrase I love--the "too weak vacation." In an environment where some people say they can't
even manage to get away for more than an extended weekend, what do people need to do to find more time to travel?
Ferriss: There are a few steps The first is realizing that you have more leverage as an employee or
entrepreneur than you assume. If a productive person can get a key project done in less time, can streamline the company,
or streamline a process, it's easy to find 3-4 weeks of travel time. Your ability to negotiate that is often overlooked.
Also, if you can also propose concrete business reasons for travel, you can combine business and personal travel. Millions
of people do this every month, tacking a personal trip onto the end of a business one. Work out an overseas conference or
a visiting apprenticeship. I have seen many teachers doing that effectively, even though people assume teaching is one of
those careers that is tied to the physical classroom. Some teachers find a way to take students overseas. Others say "I want
to look at how this teacher over there is doing curriculum development. They will teach me what they know for two weeks."
Set that up on your own, working out how it would take place and what the benefits are, then propose it. Frame it in a way
that's good for both you and your boss or organization: "This is an opportunity for us to learn x, y, and z."
For office workers or business owners, it is incredibly easy to conduct business from somewhere else. A software tool
like GotoMyPC even allows you to work remotely from your regular computer, so you can use all the software you would sitting
at your desk. You can also use a USB drive to bring many applications with you as an executable file. You can fit a load of
data onto a USB thumb drive-they even make ones that fit in your wallet!
If you are an entrepreneur, one of the first steps is to apply an 80/20 filter to your time and your business. Take a
good look at what actions are really producing the bulk of your results and develop a "not to do list."
I'm always amazed at how many people get laid off from a job, with a nice severance package, but don't take advantage
of the golden opportunity to have some real travel time.
That's a perfect opportunity--what are you sitting at home for?! Take advantage of this gift of time! I wouldn't necessarily
advise this, but I have a friend who makes it a point to get fired from or laid off from his job every year. He mostly works
for start-ups and ends up changing jobs each year, taking 6-12 months in between, where he travels really well on what would
only last him a few months at home. He's in Vietnam now. The money that would last him three months here will let him live
like a king for close to a year there.
It drives me nuts when people say they don't travel because it's too expensive, like the only places to go are
the Caribbean or Western Europe. What did you find when you decided to leave Silicon Valley and live in different places around
the world?
Most people just can't believe it. You can go to Argentina and live very comfortably for $500 to $1,000 a month at an
address that's the equivalent of 5th Avenue in Manhattan, eating great meals and drinking good wine. This is definitely true
in Panama too where I lived. You can have a great time for a fraction of what you spend at home.
Also, many people postpone once-in-a-lifetime activities because they think they are expensive. Often the great experiences
are a bargain. I took a private hot air balloon trip over the Andes and the wine country near Mendoza, Argentina for $150.
I took guided tours of the best dive spots on islands in Panama for a week for around $250-diving, housing, food, and transportation.
These destinations are deals, but in my book I put Berlin and Buenos Aires side by side because it is possible to live
very well in what we think of as expensive countries like Germany if you do your homework. Even Tokyo won't break you if you
know what you are doing. If you share an apartment with a family or become someone's roommate, you can live quite inexpensively.
A lot of travelers wish they could live overseas somewhere, but they can't figure out how they would really
support themselves in a foreign country. What would you advise?
First of all, the more inexpensive a place is, the wider the range of jobs you can pursue to support yourself. It
doesn't take all that much money in some places.
If you've ever had a job, you have skills of some kind. Ideally, you figure out how to apply those skills to something
that can be done over the phone or through a computer. If you worked in HR, maybe you can create a training program that streamlines
a specific HR project. Maybe you sell a product, maybe you bill yourself out as a consultant. A friend of mine who was a freelance
editor moved away and did his job virtually from Argentina. He only had to work about three hours a week to pay his expenses.
If you focus on doing instead of having, you can live very well without a lot of money.
Of course if you are an entrepreneur, or have the skills or mindset to become one, there are almost endless possibilities
no matter where you live.
You mention "doing versus having" and one thing I loved about your book was the thought-provoking questions
that make the reader figure out what they really want out of their life besides more money. It seems like a lot of people
are afraid of long-term travel or living abroad because they are so enslaved by their possessions.
You can forgive people for being so focused on acquisition and possession because it's not really their fault. If you
don't have any time, you keep score by looking at what you have and what you can buy. When you free up more time though, even
working just four days a week instead of five, or making it a point to stop working at 5:00 on the dot, you are forced to
answer the question, "What do I do with my time?" That makes you focus more on doing instead of having.
Most people need to take a good hard look at their possessions using the that 80/20 principle again. What stuff do you
really care about? Even if you have a huge walk-in closet full of clothes, you probably only wear 10 percent of it at most
on a regular basis. Probably 20 percent is a stretch. So do you really need more? Clothes are a good place to start when it
comes to letting go and there are people in need who can really use what you cast off as donations.
Then go from there and keep eliminating. The burden you cast off from getting rid of that clutter is really liberating
and you find you don't get as much pleasure from all that baggage as you thought. Sell or donate most of it and take off.
Put that money in the bank for later and you can get repurchase the things you really missed when you get back from your travels.
I don't plan for every contingency when I travel, even when I'm going to go live somewhere. I take the essentials and
then allocate money to a settling fund. I'll buy what I really need when I get there if I don't have it. Besides, buying necessities
in a new country is a fun part of the adventure anyway.
