5 Reasons You Should Quit Your Job to Travel Now

There are a million great reasons to quit your job to travel the world, but here are five things that matter right now. There’s never been a better time to get out and experience the world.

#1 The US Dollar-Euro Exchange Rate is at a 10-year best.

Source: Xe.com

While traveling in Europe is the quintessential trip–and much cheaper than most Americans tend to think–the catch has always been the 25-30% ‘tax’ on travelers coming from the US in the form of the Euro-Dollar exchange rate.

But things have changed in the last 6 months, and dollar is now as close to the Euro as I’ve ever seen it. As I write this a dollar is worth about 0.94 Euro.

That means your USD are going a lot further, not just in Europe but everywhere.Continue reading >>

Last year I Booked $30,000 in Flights for less than $1,000

Editor’s Note: This post is brought to you by my good friend Scott Mueller who quit his job to travel the world back in late 2013. The post’s title is not hyperbole. What follows is an extremely detailed breakdown of how to fly around the world for a fraction of the listed cost. If you’re overwhelmed, check out the short FAQ on credit cards and airline miles or see my previous post on how I flew around the world for $220.

Whether you want to leave your cubicle for a short escape, attend a friend’s far-away wedding, or embark on a multi-country, globe hopping year of exploration – having a solid airline mileage strategy can enable your travel plans. Add to that a set of easy to follow tactics for accruing and redeeming miles and you’ll wonder why you waited so long to get started!

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How to Work at a Computer without Destroying your Body

Standup desks are all the rage right now, and for good reason: we’re finally realizing that sitting all day is one of the worst things you can do for your health.

If you’ve somehow missed the trend, here’s some background:

• Stand-up desks gaining favor in the workplace (NYTimes)
• Too much sitting linked to early death. (Harvard Medical School)
• Is Sitting Killing me? (Time)
• In Silicon Valley, Sitting is the New Smoking (Wired)
• Humor: I Switched to a Standing Desk, So Now You Should, Too (NewYorker)

Human performance guru Kelly Starrett has gone so far as to write a book on the topic. He’s mentioned the single biggest thing we could do for public health is to eliminate sitting from schools by replacing school desks with stand-up tables.

And even during the short conversation we had in January at San Francisco CrossFit he threw in the suggestion: “dude, you have to stop sitting.” (more: How I broke my body and then fixed it.)Continue reading >>

5 Things I’d do Differently if I Left the USA Today

Leaving on your first big trip? Congratulations.

I get a lot of emails from people who are gearing up for a big adventure, and the most common question is: how do you prepare for this?

While this isn’t the full checklist (I’ll post that at some point), here are a few big things I wish I’d done before I left in 2011.

If you’re only making a short trip this may not be worth the effort, but if you’re in this for the long-haul these 5 things are worth considering.

#1 Sell everything you can.

[Ahem. Ok, maybe not everything]

I did this in 2011: a massive Craigslist sale, re-gifting to friends, taking a few trips to Goodwill. But every time I visit the US I’m appalled by how much is still left. Thousands of dollars in vehicles, equipment, clothes–mostly useless, replaceable, and only losing more value or becoming completely worthless over time.Continue reading >>

Morning Scripts: Wake up, Kick Ass Every Single Day

Summary: Below you’ll find an explanation of how priming myself with a scripted morning routine has been a major positive change this year. I’ve also included the exact morning routine I’m using now.

Is it possible to make yourself location-agnostic, bulletproof to circumstance, resilient in a way that ensures marching down the road to high-level outcomes every damn day until they happen?

I consider myself extremely motivated, but plenty of mornings I wake up and don’t want to move. It’s not that the obstacles are too big or that I don’t enjoy what I do, but some kind of meta-level inertia has clogged the gears. Writers would call it writer’s block. Motivational speakers would call it “needing a state change.”

It can be caused by almost anything: lack of sleep, overtraining, burning out on work. No matter how motivated I was yesterday, sometimes the muse just left the building over night.

But what if you could reboot your brain–in 10-30 minutes–and get into a state of focus and effortless output regardless of your current mental/physical/emotional crisis?  Continue reading >>

The Best Books I Read in 2014

I’ve always tried to read as much as possible.

While making time for it doesn’t always happen, I know that I’m only limited by the information in front of me.

As I’ve heard human performance expert Kelly Starrett quip (paraphrased): ‘In the past we didn’t know. Now we know: the best way to eat, the best way to train–all the information is available. If you’re not awesome now, it’s your own damn fault.’

So inhaling large amounts of information and integrating it always has to be part of the schedule. The only problem is that with limited time we have to make sure we’re focusing on the right information. That’s why I rely so heavily on recommendations, and why I thought this list might be useful.

A caveat: “best” is totally subjective and ignores the importance of timing and experience. The right message at the right time can change your life, and while most of the “best” books are important just for getting the same message in a slightly different way, they won’t blow the doors off your imagination if it isn’t new stuff.

That being said, here are the books that made a big impression on me last year (I’ve also included a few favorites from 2013 at the bottom.)Continue reading >>

The Myth of the 4-Hour Workweek

This year I re-read the The 4-Hour Workweek. For the 8th time.

“Freedom is like a new sport.”
-Tim Ferris in the 4-hour Workweek

Back in mid-2007 a co-worker told me to read Tim Ferriss‘ book.

“You will love it” she said.

A week later I requested all remaining vacation hours and took a 3-week surf trip to Costa Rica.

I returned home sunburnt and happy, and the next day I promptly quit my job, started work as a professional blogger, and left on an indefinite sojourn to S. America that started with an expedition over the Chilean Andes.

Such is the power of the book to inspire action.

Over 7 years later I find myself waking up in Budapest, Hungary, pursuing wilder goals than I could have imagined at the time.

If you’ve read the 4-hour Workweek (4HWW) you might expect me to say all this was easy–all I had to do was start a website, hire a virtual assistant, and get on a plane to Europe–where I would occasionally check to make sure money kept flowing into my bank account.

For those of you who haven’t read Tim’s palm-tree studded Bible of lifestyle-design, or for those who didn’t really get it, here’s the punchline: it’s not really about working 4 hours a week.Continue reading >>

How to Wear the Same Clothes for a Year

[Photo: Most of the kit in Da Lat, Vietnam]

Since I began traveling full-time in mid-2011 I’ve had a simple goal: find the simplest, most functional, and lightest travel gear possible.

I figured after 2 years I had the technology part wired (more on that below), but my biggest question for this trip was clothing. Would it be possible, I wondered, to wear the same clothes for a year?

After more than 12 months outside the USA  I have some answers: my wardrobe looks nearly identical to when I left. The surprising thing is how little I had to supplement the original travel kit I left with on September 7, 2013.

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SE Asia is a Playground for Outdoor Sports

[Photo Credit: Wet Frames Photography]

Pack your gear duffels and get to SE Asia.

Most people have heard about good surf in Indonesia or epic rock climbing in S. Thailand. But until you’ve been it’s hard to imagine the extent of the options, the incredibly low cost of living and traveling in the region, and the top-tier quality available for each sport.

I just completed 9 months traipsing around SE Asia, and I was initially stunned to find out how easy it is to set up a base of operations with a small amount of gear and tour the entire region.

You can fly just about anywhere for less than $200 (even booked 24h in advance), and virtually every sport is on tap: surfing, rock climbing, scuba diving, mountaineering, kiteboarding, sailing. The list goes on.

It’s an outdoor-sport junkie’s paradise. Below is a regional overview.

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The 6 Phases of Lifestyle Design

You quit your job. You buy a plane ticket. You leave to travel around the world. Then you figure out a way to make some money.

Most people go through a predictable series of steps on the road to a location-independent lifestyle. While the six phases listed here aren’t definitive or exactly linear, they sum up the lifestyle progression I’ve seen from dozens of travelers and veteran laptop nomads.Continue reading >>