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Monthly Archives: August 2013

Defining Success in Life: the Dreamline Exercise

Rapa Nui SpartanTraveler

Without concrete goals you’ll never develop concrete plans to achieve them.

Above: One of my all-time dream destinations, Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

Last week Dan and Ian revisited a favorite topic: the Dreamline exercise. Despite having read the 4-hour Workweek at least 5 times, it was listening to the LBP#91 (Are you A Hustler or an Entrepreneur?) back in March that finally inspired me to sit down and go through the motions. (I wrote most of this post then, but this recent podcast inspired me to finish it).

Dreamlining can profoundly change your life. You just have to sit down and do the work.

Like a chess master, you want to see the end-game.

A chess master knows exactly what the end-game is and they’ve already thought through the next 20 moves to get there. When variables change they make small course adjustments, but ultimately check-mate is inevitable, if not in this game then in the next.

What’s surprising about my own life is how often I’ve been operating without a plan. A lot of us drift through life with general goals, like ‘get in better shape’ or ‘travel more’, but without more substance behind them these are just day-dreams.

One of the most effective ways I’ve found to define success in a concrete and action-oriented way is the Dreamlining exercise from the 4-hour Workweek.
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How I saved $15,000 in 15 months on a $29k Salary

spartantraveler-patagonia-mt-tronador

You don’t have to make a ton of money to save for long-term travel.

“Don’t wait around. Don’t get old and make excuses. Save a couple thousand dollars… get a world atlas. Start looking at every page and tell yourself that you can go there…Are there sacrifices to be made? Of course? Is it worth it? Absolutely. The only way you’ll find out is to get on the plane and go.”
-Jason Gaspero in Vagabonding

One of the biggest mistakes would-be travelers make is assuming that long-term travel requires a great deal of money, and that you’ll never be able to save enough to afford it. This is the ‘deferred life-plan’ concept in a nutshell:  I won’t have enough money to travel until later in life when I retire, or maybe when I win the lottery, or sell a company for $10 million.

This is a bogus framework. You don’t need a lot of money to travel, and as a result you can save enough very quickly.

It’s just a matter of priorities.Continue reading >>