[Photo Credit: Tony George]

The New Year’s celebration, like other holidays, has its peculiar traditions; fire-works, Auld Lang Syne and blog posts telling you how to stick to your resolutions. Not here though. For a start I still think of the year as following the academic timetable. In my mind the new year still starts in the late Summer or early Autumn. The Winter period is only the half way point while the time of transition and reflection is the Summer. Anyone else still have this years after they left education?

I can’t remember ever making any serious New Year’s resolutions. I try to continually steer myself in the right direction (though I’d like myself to evaluate an adjust course in a shorter time than up until now). Don’t get me wrong, I have goals that are written down in the SMART format; Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. But I’m not going to share those goals with you today.

I realized a while ago that in order to do the things I want to do I need to be a certain kind of person. I need to live by certain values that can guide me to whatever goal I’m working towards. Below are some of the values that I want to align myself with. Although some of these could be described as traits or abilities I’ve decided to name them values because they are more like compass directions that I want to follow rather than some skill that I can eventually measure myself as having a 10 out 10 score in.

Authenticity: I’ve come to believe that this is the most powerful value I can live by. Being authentic seems to be the easiest and most rewarding way of being congruent in my thoughts and actions. This has real implications for how I carry myself, my presence and how I communicate with other people. I would say that at this point in time it’s the guiding value in my life.

Discipline: I think this is a something a lot of people can identify with wanting more of. With more discipline I can get more out of each day, each action, each moment. My current strategy for having more discipline is to make sure I keep my promises to myself even if it’s in very small ways.

Pushing myself / Living on the edge: Closely linked to discipline, but I feel it needs to be mentioned separately. This is the ability to do my very best right till the end. I find this very difficult because I find it hard to distinguish between merely being uncomfortable and genuinely not being able to do any more. I also find it difficult when to determine whether I’ve done ‘enough / what’s necessary / what’s productive’ and when I’m just spinning wheels just to fool my ego into thinking I’m doing something worthwhile. Any suggestions on how to get better at this would be appreciated.

Honesty: Be honest with myself and others. Not to the point that I hurt people, but I think there is room for me to be more assertive in some ways. I think assertiveness comes when I am more honest with myself and others about what I want and expect.

Do you have any values or traits that you want to align yourself with? Feel free to share them in the comments.

Stay cool.

I know a lot of people are having a hard a time at the moment, people losing jobs, money being tight etc. Not a great situation, though in the greater scheme of things necessary and long overdue. I just wanted to put one idea out there today.

If you are reading this blog post then you are one of the luckiest people to have ever lived in the history of the humanity. Staying alive and prospering was a real challenge for the majority of our history and it is still the case for most people alive today. We have all the knowledge of the world within easy reach through the internet, can travel almost everywhere in the world within 24 hours and are pretty much free to do whatever we want with our lives. A heavy thought but one I need to remind myself of once in a while. Let’s not squander this opportunity.

If you do celebrate Christmas in your part of the world, have a great day! Otherwise just have an awesome time for no reason at all.

Stay cool.

Woohoo! I just finished my last day at work. Now for phase 2 of my plan for ‘World Domination’ tm. On one hand I’m really excited about the upcoming months. It won’t be like my previous trips which were long holidays interspersed with periods of work. I’ll be staying in one place for weeks, if not months at a time, and my main focus will be to build up my location independent income.

On the other hand this doesn’t seem like such a huge transition at all. Just another part of the ‘2 steps forward, 1 step back, 2 steps forward’ process I’ve been following over the past couple of years. In a couple of areas of my life I’ve decided that I’m going to walk a certain path and have decided not to attach too much meaning to whether I’m right where I want to be at any particular moment. I know I’m doing the right thing as long as I’m doing something that is helping me move forward. I accept this does leave room for the bare minimum of concrete action. That’s definitely something I want to improve on.

At the moment I think of myself as Neo just after he was freed from the Matrix. His body was free but he still needed to go through a process in order to free his mind as well. In order to succeed I’m going to have to have to ‘free my mind’. I need better beliefs, a more empowered sense of identity and more productive habits.

My plan for the coming week besides the usual pre-trip preparations (packing my things, making sure my mail will get forwarded, buying sun-screen etc.) is to start ingraining some habits. These will include 15 minutes of meditation in the morning, physical exercise and voice exercises. I’m going to try to stay away from my computer as much as possible because I’ve been experiencing some pains in my neck and shoulders as well as tingling feelings in my thumbs and little fingers. Those are the signs of a repetitive strain injury and I’ve experience it before. Not good!

But before all that I’m going to go out and party, then sleep for 10 or 12 hours.

Warning! This post contains a lot of swearing.

I always wonder how much of our lives is driven by emotions and rationalizations rather than strict rationality. I think we’re a lot more emotion driven than we think, in fact I think for many people only a small percentage of their decision making is rational. With that in mind I think it’s only fair to give you the emotional / irrational version of how I came to my decision to quit my job and go to Thailand in order to build up online income sources.

I think it was in the Autumn of 2008, I was sitting at work, watching TV (we always have Sky News or BBC News 24 on). There was a report on about the collapse of Lehman brothers and how everyone was so shocked an nobody saw this crisis coming, blah blah blah, same old, same old. And then it happened. I thought:

Fuck em.
Fuck em all.
Fuck the no-nothing journalists.
Fuck the bankers for leeching off the economic ecology to the point of systemic failure, yet again.
Fuck the economists who think they can predict things with their ‘models’, again.
Fuck the government for letting it all happen, again.

Fuck my commute to work.
Fuck reports
Fuck meetings
Fuck corporate gobble-de-gook.
Fuck corporate ‘mission statements’ and ‘values’.
Fuck wearing a suit.
Fuck my job.
Fuck how it will look on my CV / Resume.
Fuck having a career.
Fuck the economy.
Fuck feeling guilty over the fact that the vast majority of people in this world struggle to stay alive and would swap places with me in a heartbeat.

Fuck being scared.
Fuck not being confident in my abilities.
Fuck not knowing what’s going to happen.
Fuck my insecurities.
Fuck not feeling that I’m good enough yet.
Fuck people that feel sorry for me.
Fuck the people that think I’m crazy.

Fuck responsibility.
Fuck guilt.
Fuck Plan B.

Fuck people with their morning fix of coffee.
Fuck the people that need to sit on the outside seat and won’t budge over.
Fuck the people that complain and whine.
Fuck people’s naivety.
Fuck the people that are offended by this.

Fuck the past.
Fuck the future.
Fuck it all

…and breathe…

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve always had other aspirations than the standard ‘deferred life plan’, even before reading the 4HWW. But I haven’t always lived that way. I still had (and have) fear, anxiety and scarcity ruling my decision making.

What’s interesting is that a few weeks after I had this ‘fuck it’ stream I noticed a book called ‘F**k it : The Ultimate spiritual way’. It’s a great example of how being in a certain frame of mind influences what you see and notice in the world. It’s a book that advocates saying ‘fuck it’ to everything that bothers us or is holding us back. In a way it’s Buddhist non-attachment and acceptance over resistance updated for the modern age.

I haven’t yet decided if saying ‘fuck it’ to everything is always a good place to come from. It could be coming from a negative place and cultivate negative energy. On the other hand you need to say ‘no’ to some things in order to be positive and say ‘yes’ to others. I guess it balances out that way.

If there’s anything you want to say ‘Fuck it / F**k it’ to then feel free to do so in the comments section. (Click on the ‘Comments’ link at the top of the post under the title).

8 months ago I decided that I was going to save up some money and quit my job to focus 100% on making a location independent income. Today I told my supervisor that I was handing in my notice. Only a couple of weeks and I’ll be a free man again. It still doesn’t feel real but I’m sure that will change over the coming weeks.

I didn’t really explain why I was leaving, just said that it was for personal reasons. I guess I’m just tired of trying to explain to people what I’m doing. People either look at me with pity or incredulity. Most just seem think I want to be a lazy bum and that I’m not thinking ahead, or maybe I’m projecting that on to them. The truth is most people are more preoccupied with what they are going to eat for dinner later that night than with what you’re deciding to do with your life.

In the beginning I used to tell me people exactly what I wanted to do, then I switched to joking about it. ‘I’m going to sit on a beach all day and play guitar’, ‘meditate in the jungle’ or ‘I’m going on quest for fortune and glory’ (funny how all of those have an element of truth in them). Now I just say I’m going on holiday / travelling for a while. In Europe it’s quite a common thing to do so it’s not such a big deal. Funny how it seems more reasonable to people to go on an extended trip than it is to try and set up an on-line business. To be honest I think that’s down to not many people being aware of the potential of internet marketing and other online income generating methods. To most it still sounds like a scam.

A part of me is still a little worried about the state of the economy and specifically the volatility of the $, £ and Euro. My plan depends to a certain extent on those three staying relatively strong over the coming 6 months and that’s far from certain. All my favourite economic guru’s are still bearish. But at the end of the day there will always be something to worry about, so I’m just going to get on with it and take things as they come. It’s part of how the story goes, heroes often feel apprehensive and a little scared at the beginning of their quest.

I had been living in London for a year when the economic problems started to hit mainstream consciousness in the Autumn of 2008. I was shocked, not at what was happening with banks, stock-markets and house prices, but rather that so many people were acting surprised. Most ‘experts’, journalists and politicians were saying the same thing: ‘No one saw it coming’. Now the scope of this blog isn’t economics so I won’t go into details, but the basic fact is that many people had been warning for years that you couldn’t build an economy on the idea of never ending house price rises, mountains of debt and trade deficits.

I guess I had always thought of myself as slightly anti-authoritarian, clued up on how the world really works (not what you’re taught in school or on TV) and quick to question those that presume to be experts and to know what is best for other people. But it turns out I was still quite naïve and that a part of me still put too much trust in the opinions of others. The last remnants of this naivety was blown out of the water by the sheer incompetence and idiocy displayed by media, politicians, economists and other self-proclaimed experts (although I’m sure a good portion of them knew exactly what was going on and just chose to ignore it for their own short term gain).

So what do you do in the face of what might be the 3^rd Great Depression of the industrial age and the precursor to resource wars, WWIII, and a full on Mad-Max scenario? Curl up in a ball and start crying? Roam the streets with a sign saying ‘The end is nigh’, warning people of the doom awaiting us all? These and other options were tempting to say the least.

However ignoring my emotional-monkey-brain’s flight or fight response momentarily, and looking back at history, I realised that despite how bad things may seem now, we (in the developed world at least) are still living the best life humans have ever had. For most humans in history life was a 30 to 50 year struggle where all they thought about was where their next meal was coming from and how they could avoid being killed in some horrible war or by some lethal disease.

Whereas in the last depression people went hungry this time round they will probably have to do without buying a new iPod or new car this year. And if we do have something like the last depression, wars, and we start competing against each other for food and water in a post-apocalyptic nightmare then there’s nothing much I can do about it right now and I should stop worrying about it.

So lets just assume that the current economic climate is going to cause hardship for many, the balance of economic power will shift to Asia but other than that things will continue on fairly normally. Could the western currencies be devalued and thus derail my plan? It could happen, but if it does I won’t be any better of having stuck around here.

So assuming the non-apocalypse scenario will transpire I went through the following thought process.

1. I will die. No one cares what I get up to and it won’t matter because we’re just a bunch of slightly-more-advanced-monkeys hanging out on a rock on the edge of the galaxy. This is the existential argument to do whatever I want to do.

2. I decided that I’ll do lots of fun things or work towards maximizing my ability to do fun things, this means having maximum control over how I spend my time and where I spend it.

3. If research has shown that the law of diminishing returns applies to the relationship between happiness and how much money you earn, and I am already above the threshold for which that law applies, then there is no point in working to earn more money and I should in stead focus on how I earn an income. In addition, the way that pensions are supposedly provided for (based on the idea that a shrinking working class should support a growing retired class or betting on continual growth in the stock market) is unsustainable. I should operate from the assumption that either I work till I die or I save and invest enough for myself to live on.

4. Since I might work till I die I might as well do something I enjoy or choose something where I can spend a minimal amount of time earning an income. I have several friends that make their income online which potentially maximises the control they have over their time and location. These friends can serve as mentors and teachers.

5. Since I have little to lose and a lot to gain I should be engaging in (relatively) high risk, high reward behaviour. Play to win big, not to lose what little I have or perceive to have. This applies to every aspect of life. It puts me in the category of a Diversity Generator as opposed to a Conformity Enforcer (See ‘Global Brain’ by Howard Bloom), which is a good category to be in for my personal life as well.

6. In the worst case scenario, I ‘fail’, learn a lot and grow as a person. I come back to Europe and get a job, I start working as an English teacher in China or go work for multi-nationals in the Czech Republic. I could do all kinds of things.

7. If things do continue to detoriorate economically speaking (as a lot of people I respect think it will) then I will at least have had a good time before it all goes down.

So this is the rationale for choosing to go to South East Asia for a while to work on my online income. South East Asia is cheap and currently I can take advantage of strong UK, US and EU currencies (Not guaranteed for ever I know). I’ll be able to direct 100% of my focus on working for myself. I won’t have to worry about shopping for groceries, commuting to work or dealing with strikes. I’ve already been to South East Asia so I know what to expect and won’t be a distracted tourist.

So there it is, an entirely logical plan. Or maybe just dumb rationalizations covering up a decision already made on an emotional level. What do you think?

In this blog I’m going to share my journey from being tied to one job and location to earning the majority of my income over the internet and so giving me the freedom to live, work and play where I choose.

In 2005 I went backpacking around the world and spent 18 months working and travelling through South-East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada. Along the way I realised that living that life was a lot less expensive than I had previously thought. Two friends of mine were earning an income over the internet and pointed out that they could live and work anywhere that had a decent internet connection. The idea was planted in my head but I decided to move to London in order to help a friend with a business idea. It turned out that we weren’t really suited as business partners so I decided to get a job.

Before I knew it another year had passed and I didn’t feel like I was moving towards my goals or desired life-style so I decided to again focus on earning money online. At the same time I started saving money and came up with my escape plan which consists of:

1. Start working on making money online

2. Save up enough money to last me a year without any additional income

3. Move to a cheap country and dedicate myself full time to making money online

That’s about it. I’m coming up to stage 3 of the plan and over the next couple of months I’m going to document the process here.