Source: notsogoodphotography at flickr
From Horace’s poem, Odes:
Don’t ask (it’s forbidden to know) what end
the gods will grant to me or you, Leuconoe. Don’t play with Babylonian
fortune-telling either. It is better to endure whatever will be.
Whether Jupiter has allotted to you many more winters or this final one
which even now wears out the Tyrrhenian sea on the rocks placed opposite
— be wise, strain the wine, and scale back your long hopes
to a short period. While we speak, envious time will have {already} fled
Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the next.
Source: Marco Bellucci at flickr
There is a gentleman named Raam Dev who is currently managing to live 6 months, in 3 countries, for $3,000. Oh, and he’s counting the plane ticket to get there, so his all inclusive budget for seeing the world is $250 a month over a 6 month period, or $1500.
Of course, my gut instinct is to say, it can’t be done. To eat and sleep for a month requires more than $250 almost anywhere in the world. Well, anywhere I’d want to go I think.
Raam is oblivious, as he should be, to me calling this impossible, and is doing it successfully anyways.
That’s a mind blowing revelation to me. I am a guy who withdraws $200 from the cash machine once a week for lunches and dinners that week. And here’s Raam who will live an entire month on that including hotels. At the risk of sounding like an ass, $250 is such a small amount to me.
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Source: Tulane Public Relations at flickr
I am currently listening to an audio book (from audible.com) called “Talent is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin. I started off disagreeing with the author on some of his key points, but giving the book a chance and listening to it all the way through has changed my mind somewhat. How does it relate to sabbaticals? It does, and I’ll address that at the end. (Without purchasing the book, you can get a good understanding of the topic by reading this Fortune Magazine article “Secrets of Greatness” by the same author.)
First the premise: there is no such thing as natural born talent. You are not born to be a great golfer, artist, singer, actor, or computer programmer. All 1-day old babies have equal abilities in this regard.
But somewhere along the way, Picasso picked up a brush, Tiger Woods picked up a golf club (or more specifically was given one), and Mozart started composing music.
This might sound outrageous at first. Tiger Woods is naturally talented right? If I had a baby tomorrow, I could not hope to turn him into as good a golfer as Tiger Woods, no matter what I did, except if I got extremely lucky right? It turns out, anyone can craft their child to be the next Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods was born with nothing special that you and I were not born with.
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Source: euart at flickr
If you are thinking about taking significant time away from work (or at least away from your usual work), it may be interesting to step back a little and see if you’re also thinking about making other changes to your life. Perhaps they’re related. Perhaps a trip is not just a trip, but a change in attitude.
The traditional way to live your life – as taught to us as children by our parents and by 1960′s TV shows – is that you go to school, meet a nice girl or boy, graduate, marry, have three kids, live in a nice white picket fence home, and work for 40 years until the age of 65, after which you promptly take up golf or knitting. Then you die, and people will remember you as… well, they will call you charming and sweet.
Anything that deviates from that plan, including taking one or more significant breaks from work to go backpack through Europe or live in the Australian outback, is considered a radical departure from the way you are supposed to do it. You get 3 weeks of vacation a year, and that’s the end of that. If you will stay 20 years, we will up it to 5 weeks. All subject to approval by your boss as long as no one else in your department has booked that time off already.
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Source: G0SUB at flickr
OK, everyone’s heard of Twitter, and some people are sick of hearing about it. This isn’t a raving fanboy post about how great Twitter is, so bear with me.
I had a conversation today with a friend about the site, and I expressed the opinion that there are not a lot of business uses for Twitter. Companies are basically using it in one of two ways:
- Customer Service - monitoring what people are saying about them and in some cases joining in the conversation
- Advertising – pushing out a marketing message in a one-way direction
Big multi-billion dollar brands have established strategies for advertising and customer service, and they don’t include Twitter just yet. So you don’t see a lot of billion-dollar companies jumping on Twitter like it’s the next hot thing. It’s not.
Twitter is however a great place for personal brand management. Celebrities know this. Ashton Kutcher, and Sean P Diddy Combs, and even Larry King are on there interacting with fans in a safe, controlled fashion. (There are some recent stories of celebrities leaving Twitter, so we will see how long this lasts.) In fact, there’s an expectation that anyone who cares about marketing their personal brand will be on Twitter.
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Source: kevindooley at flickr
Some people have antiquated views of what a sabbatical is. Take for example this question, to which someone defined a sabbatical as:
“A sabbatical is a period of paid leave granted to a college teacher/professor for study or travel. Traditionally, this is done once every 7 years. This only applies to college teachers/professors, and not anyone else besides.”
Oh, sorry about that. Only teachers can take a sabbatical and the term doesn’t apply to anyone else. Nothing to see here folks, most of you should head over to the My Vacation website instead.
Even the Wiktionary entry is not very supportive of the concept of sabbatical being for everyone:
“An extended period of leave, often one year long, taken by an employee in order to carry out projects not otherwise associated with the employee’s job. During the sabbatical, the employer may pay some or all of the wages that would have been otherwise earned or some or all of the expenses incurred. University lecturers, for example, may be granted a one-year paid sabbatical once every seven years.”
OK, so a sabbatical used to be associated with paid time off work to do project not directly related to your job. Maybe I really should just shut this site down and apply my time elsewhere.
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Source: Leo Reynolds at flickr
From time-to-time I read about some of my business heroes: people such as Donald Trump, Brad Lamb, Richard Li, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Martha Stewart, Dave Ramsey and Kevin Rose. Donald Trump has a series of best-selling business books, Brad Lamb has a popular show on HGTV called Big City Broker, Dave Ramsey has a daily radio show, and Kevin Rose through his blog posts and video podcasts.
These people cover different industries from real estate, to technology, to investing, to information products. Most of them have developed and actively cultivate their own personal brand. None of them have traditionally had any problem sharing their knowledge about what they do as well. It seems when you’re a leader in a particular category, you tend to focus more on what you do and less on what the competition is doing.
The other quality they all seem to have is how hard they work. Donald Trump and Martha Stewart in particular are known for how little sleep they need. Trump has claimed he gets around 4 hours of sleep a night. He wakes up at some ungodly hour (4am I think) and does some reading before he starts to get ready for the day. I’m sure he arrives in his office at 6am.
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