When you are alone

You will remember the people more than the place.

Talking to randos is the norm. I’ll never forget the conversation with the aquarium fisherman, forest ranger, and women at the Thai market. It’s refreshing to compare notes on life with people from vastly different backgrounds. When you are alone for days or weeks at a time, you eventually become drawn to people.

When you meet fellow travelers, you’ll find they are also filled with a similar sense of adventure and curiosity about the world. Five days of friendship on the road is like five months of friendship at home. It’s the experiences that bond you together, not the place. A rule I followed that worked well: be the first to initiate conversation. I met some incredible people by simply being the first to talk.

Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.

Travel can be affordable.

Long term travel is different than a luxury vacation. The point is to see the world, not stay in a 5-star hotel. During the trip, I stayed on a strict budget. The goal was to spend no more than $33 per day on accommodations. After a year, I was able to spend only $26.15 per day by booking through HostelWorld and Airbnb. When I wanted to meet people, I’d stay in a shared room at a hostel. When I wanted to be alone, I’d book a private room with Airbnb.

Take the cost of your rent or mortgage + food per month and divide it by 30. This is how much it costs per day to live at home. You will find that it’s possible to travel the world for roughly the same amount. Or, if you live in an expensive city like San Francisco, far less.

English is a universal language.

I was surprised how many people spoke English (apparently 1.8 billion people worldwide). Places where English was less prevalent, I made an effort to learn a handful of words and phrases in the local language. Even though it’s passable, I do desire to learn another language fluently. You can only take the conversation so far when all you can say is: “¿Esto contiene gluten?”

It’s possible to communicate a lot without saying a word. For instance, I left my phone at a restaurant in Chile. I pointed at the table where I was sitting, put my hand to my ear like a phone, then shrugged — 2 minutes later, my phone had been retrieved.

Trust your intuition.

I learned to trust that tiny voice in my head a bit more. When you are alone in a foreign country and your phone is dead, you are forced to trust your intuition. Is this neighborhood safe to walk around? Is this person someone I should interact with? Am I heading the right direction? Intuition is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes. It’s feels like a sixth sense when you’re able to read between the lines of a situation.

The world is endless. The world’s a tiny neighborhood. My fav people are the ones who can hold two impossible ideas in their heads.

The new brand identity

I stumbled upon the concept of margin while reading a post by Michael Hyatt, which led me to design my ideal week. Richard Swenson, M.D. (who wrote the book: Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives) describes margin like this:

Margin is the space between our load and our limits. It is the amount allowed beyond that which is needed. It is something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations. Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating.

Last year I wrote about why booking too far in advance can be dangerous for your business, and this concept of margin so eloquently captures what I had recognized had been my problem: I was so booked up with clients that I wasn’t leaving any margin for error, growth, planning, or reflection. I wasn’t really growing my business in a sustainable way; I was just booking one client after the next. At the time this seemed like a good thing: doesn’t growing my business mean getting more clients?

A long redesign.

What if instead of booking up to 100% capacity (which more often than not ends up being closer to 120%), we only booked up to an 80% capacity?
What if we left more room for growth (personal or professional) and stopped being one with “busy-ness”?
I spent nearly a year turning down every new project (and even getting rid of old ones) so that I could reduce my workload, build in more margin, and create what is now Digital Strategy School. It takes time to build margin into your schedule.Write a book. Create a program. Update your contracts and proposals (which has been on your to-do list for how long..?) Spend more time with your family. Go above and beyond for a client. Learn something new. Actually follow through on the things that have been nagging at you for a long time.

When you design your ideal week, you start to see that the time you think you have is often not in alignment with how much time you actually have.

After designing my ideal week, I had a much clearer idea of how to create a framework for my week that would empower me to feel more focused by theming days of the week, and even parts of the day. SO simple, I know. Some of you have been doing this for ages and you’re already a pro, and some of you who saw my schedule said “woah, that’s so rigid, I need more flexibility!”

Structure enables flexibility.

If you’re not sure how much time you are actually spending on various tasks, use a tool like Rescue Time (their free version is excellent!) which runs in the background and tracks where your time is being spent. It can even send you weekly reports so you know exactly how much time you wasted on Facebook, or spent in your email inbox! You can assign different websites or programs/applications on a scale of very distracting to very productive, so you can see at a glance things like: which days of the week you’re most productive, which times of the day you’re most productive, and the sites on which you’re spending the most distracting time. Turns out I’m consistently “in the zone” around 3pm in the afternoon; so instead of trying to tackle highly creative work first thing in the morning (when my brain is barely functioning), I handle it in the afternoon, when I know I’m at my peak!

Creating more margin has been game-changing for my business.
What would be possible for yours?

Some amazing buildings

Minimalism and geometric.

When you are alone for days or weeks at a time, you eventually become drawn to people. Talking to randos is the norm. I’ll never forget the conversation with the aquarium fisherman, forest ranger, and women at the Thai market. It’s refreshing to compare notes on life with people from vastly different backgrounds.

When you meet fellow travelers, you’ll find they are also filled with a similar sense of adventure and curiosity about the world. Five days of friendship on the road is like five months of friendship at home. It’s the experiences that bond you together, not the place. A rule I followed that worked well: be the first to initiate conversation. I met some incredible people by simply being the first to talk.

Long term travel is different than a luxury vacation. The point is to see the world, not stay in a 5-star hotel. During the trip, I stayed on a strict budget. The goal was to spend no more than $33 per day on accommodations. After a year, I was able to spend only $26.15 per day by booking through HostelWorld and Airbnb. When I wanted to meet people, I’d stay in a shared room at a hostel. When I wanted to be alone, I’d book a private room with Airbnb.

Take the cost of your rent or mortgage + food per month and divide it by 30. This is how much it costs per day to live at home. You will find that it’s possible to travel the world for roughly the same amount. Or, if you live in an expensive city like San Francisco, far less.

An universal language.

I was surprised how many people spoke English (apparently 1.8 billion people worldwide). Places where English was less prevalent, I made an effort to learn a handful of words and phrases in the local language. Even though it’s passable, I do desire to learn another language fluently. You can only take the conversation so far when all you can say is: “¿Esto contiene gluten?”

It’s possible to communicate a lot without saying a word. For instance, I left my phone at a restaurant in Chile. I pointed at the table where I was sitting, put my hand to my ear like a phone, then shrugged — 2 minutes later, my phone had been retrieved.

I was recently quoted as saying, I don’t care if Instagram has more users than Twitter. If you read the article you’ll note there’s a big “if” before my not giving of said thing.
Of course, I am trivializing what Instagram is to many people. It’s a beautifully executed app that enables the creation and enjoyment of art, as well as human connection, which is often a good thing. But my rant had very little to do with it (or with Twitter). My rant was the result of increasing frustration with the one-dimensionality that those who report on, invest in, and build consumer Internet services talk about success.

Numbers are important. Number of users is important. So are lots of other things. Different services create value in different ways. Trust your gut as much (or more) than the numbers. Figure out what matters and build something good.

Awwwards best websites

Social networks: taking the law into your own hands

“The idea was to provide assistance on a broad scale and in record time to the police forces who were working to defend us,” says Yannick Meylan. The suspects’ description was rapidly shared by thousands of social network users and led to their arrest: just five hours after the attempted robbery, the pair were located and arrested.

3D scanning makes choosing lingerie easier, says Hong Kong store

A high-end lingerie shop in Hong Kong is promising clients a whole new shopping experience thanks to its 3D-assisted made-to-measure service. A 3D scanning mirror at Rigby and Peller’s takes accurate measurements of a client’s bust in less than a minute, supplementing the tape measurements taken by the lingerie stylist, who can then recommend the most suitable styles and colours for each figure and shape.

Frankfurt Motor Show: the coolest and craziest cars of tomorrow

Getting a lot of attention at the Frankfurt auto show was the Porsche Mission E, a futuristic, sleek, fully electric sports car from the German luxury car maker. Unlike anything on the road at the moment, it has no rear view mirrors, but instead relies on cameras to cover the blind spots. Capable of travelling 500 km on a single charge, it can replenish its batteries within minutes.

A taste of the car of the future according to its maker: “Since with a concept car you would like to really give a glimpse of the future, you have as a designer much more freedom. You can dare to do things that at least nowadays are not yet legal, but you hope that they will become legal in the future. So we have more freedom,” says chief designer Michael Mauer.

Australian technology transforms how farmers will manage fields

Synth irony butcher meggings. Austin selfies gastropub, sartorial street art tilde occupy post-ironic Kickstarter YOLO whatever ennui yr letterpress butcher. Polaroid put a bird on it mumblecore keffiyeh banh mi scenester. Banjo swag slow-carb squid Banksy chambray, drinking vinegar cray. Street art raw denim pug art party, mlkshk food truck master cleanse cardigan Portland cornhole XOXO bitters mumblecore. Paleo vinyl chillwave Austin, viral meh cray sustainable kogi retro Etsy. Vegan butcher banh mi aesthetic skateboard.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque quis eros lobortis, vestibulum turpis ac, pulvinar odio. Praesent vulputate a elit ac mollis. In sit amet ipsum turpis. Pellentesque venenatis, libero vel euismod lobortis, mi metus luctus augue, eget dapibus elit nisi eu massa. Phasellus sollicitudin nisl posuere nibh ultricies, et fringilla dui gravida. Donec iaculis adipiscing neque, non congue massa euismod quis. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Continue reading

Standard Blog Post

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque quis eros lobortis, vestibulum turpis ac, pulvinar odio. Praesent vulputate a elit ac mollis. In sit amet ipsum turpis. Pellentesque venenatis, libero vel euismod lobortis, mi metus luctus augue, eget dapibus elit nisi eu massa. Phasellus sollicitudin nisl posuere nibh ultricies, et fringilla dui gravida. Donec iaculis adipiscing neque, non congue massa euismod quis. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.