The peculiar thing about programmers is that they’re the one profession that can easily work remotely and travel, and yet they’re the one profession that doesn’t. Of course there are exceptions, but on my travels I didn’t meet another programmer doing anything similar; a sad state of affairs. My message to fellow programmers is stop making excuses, man up and do it. You only live once, and I guarantee that you will have the time of your life.

Sigh. I should do this. I write book, I program, I love to travel. I should do it all.

Related posts:

1. Traveling in an Economic Crisis

Source: Giorgio Montersino at flickr

As a thank you to those that visit sabbatical.me, I’ve decided to run a little contest to give away an Amazon.com gift card to one lucky person.

Either leave a comment to this post, answering the question “Where in the world would you like to spend 6 months if you can choose anywhere?”, OR like this post on Facebook, OR like this site on Facebook (OR all 3), and at the end of July I will choose one lucky person to receive a $20 gift card from Amazon.com. Make sure to leave your email address on the comment (not displayed) or I will contact you through Facebook to arrange the prize.

Related posts:

1. The Difference Between a Sabbatical and a Vacation
2. Top 10 Things to Consider When Choosing a Sabbatical Destination

Source: jurvetson at flickr

Last year, I wrote an article on the book Talent Is Overrated, and specifically how deliberate practice is required in order to be great at anything.

I recently read about a guy named Dan McLaughlin who bought into this philosophy, and has got a goal to obtain his PGA Tour Card in the next 5 years. He had never played golf before, and he quit his job to do this. Almost a year after he started practicing (1500 hours of practice), he still had not played 18 holes of golf. That is exactly what deliberate practice is – not playing the game, just practicing the components in isolation.

An inspiring story of just waking up one day and deciding you want to do something, and not letting anyone say “you can’t”.

Related posts:

1. Deliberate Practice and the Art of Getting Better

Source: moriza at flickr

I recently spent a couple of weeks traipsing through China by myself, which was the first time I had travelled so far for so long by myself. A friend of mine commented, “I could never do that.” And not many people would consider a long trip alone. Heck, some people can’t go to dinner or a movie by themselves. So travelling alone has some challenges. Here are a few that I encountered.

1. Psychologically Being Alone

Travelling by yourself, versus going with a partner or group of friends are totally different experiences. There is a lot of quiet time. Alone on the plane, alone in the hotel room, alone at dinner. Depending on the location, you can go an entire day without talking to anyone. Unless you’re the type of person who can make friends on the flight over and stick with those people for the entire trip, you have to be comfortable doing things by yourself.

To combat this, I suggest booking a tour – either a tour for the entire trip, or a short day-trip at your destination. You’ll get a chance to socialize with other solo travellers, and who knows – you can easily meet someone you’d want to meet up with for dinner or at a later date for another adventure. There are a lot of other solo travellers out there, and if you meet one of them along the way, it’s a good chance for you to make a new friend and do things together.

2. It Costs More

You know those spectacular $299 fares for 1 week of all inclusive fun in Mexico? Well, solo travellers don’t pay that. Most prices for travel are advertised as “per person double occupancy” which means the cost of shared things (like the hotel room) is split between two people.  Depending where you are going, this could add several hundred dollars to the advertised price of the trip.

3. Experiences You Can’t Have

When I was in China, I heard about this restaurant that claims to be the original inventor of Peking Duck. I wanted to check it out. But I also did not want to order Peking Duck for one (it’s a lot of food). Now, I could have done that, but without a few people to go with, it’s an experience I never got to have.

Similarly, I could have rented a private car and driver for a day to go see the Terra Cotta Warriors for about the same price as taking the government-run bus tour company (with all the forced shopping trips they add in), if only had a couple of other people to split the cost with. It would have been a much better experience to have a private car and driver.

4. Reduced Safety

It’s a bit of a cliche that there is safety in numbers, but often times there are. Unless you are confident you can defend yourself, you might not want to travel to some places of the world alone. (It’s sad to say, but this probably affects women more than men.)

But even single young men can be in some danger travelling alone. I have heard stories, but not experienced first hand, about tourists being robbed or swindled. Having more people might not prevent some robberies, but they would definitely have prevented others.

5. Peopleless Photography

Have you ever seen the pictures taken by someone travelling alone. There’s a lot of landmarks there. Not a lot of people. Having someone to take your picture is something you miss when you travel alone. Sure, you can flag down a passerby to help you, and many locals are more than happy to help tourists taking vacation photos. But in my trip to China, I probably have 4 total pictures of me taken by another person, many more of myself taken by myself, and many many more of landmarks with no one in them.

6. No Shared Memories

Lastly, you’ll miss the chance to reminisce about a trip many years after the fact. You’ll have no one to turn to and say, hey remember that guy we saw who would climb a tree with just his hands and feet to get you a fresh coconut off the tree? You’ll have memories yes. But it’s a different experience to have shared memories.

Related posts:

1. The Pros and Cons of Booking Travel Online

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.

No related posts.

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.

Here’s what $250 currently gets me:

- one week of lunches/dinners;

- one month of car insurance/home insurance;

- one month of cable/home phone/cell phone service;

- 5 nights rent in my apartment; or

- 1 month of gasoline for my car.

No, $250 doesn’t buy all that. Each of the above is costing me $250. So you can see how my mind is blown by what Raam Dev is doing. Hats off to him.

I am starting to form in my head a list of countries I would like to visit, that could comprise a six month trip. Surprisingly, I am now downgrading my total budget for such a trip from the tens of thousands, into the single digit thousands. Six months in a warm locale, on as little as $5,000. Can it be done?

It’s surprising how many good places to stay there are in India and Asia for the $7-$10 range per night. Budgeting $10 per night for accommodation averages $300 in lodging costs per month. You’ll notice right away that my $300 per month for hotels exceeds Raam’s entire monthly budget. (His secret, then, is to stay with people for free whenever possible.) $10 per night allows me to stay two weeks at $7 per night, and then splurge for a $13 place for two weeks at the next destination.

It’s also important to try to get deals whenever possible. If a place is nice enough to stay a couple of weeks, negotiate with the owner for a cheaper rate for that two week stay. Or for the month even. Always negotiate whenever possible. Only tourists don’t negotiate.

Once the sleeping arrangements have been taken care of, the second priority is food and drink. Food can be surprisingly cheap when you eat where the locals do. This might be where North Americans are ripped off more than any other place in the world. Even with wine or beer, a good meal can cost as little as $1. Especially if you are willing to buy food off a street vendor or in a food market. Even eating in a restaurant might only increase the price to $3. In my mind’s eye, 6 months in a warm locale will include a beer or two most nights. But this also includes buying food from markets, making my own food at home, and in general eating good cheap food whenever possible, I think I can get by on $4 a day average. That’s $120 a month budget for food and drink.

The third biggest expense might just be “getting around”. Taxis, buses, traveling between cities and countries. My feet might be my most used mode of transport, and most hotels have bikes that guests can borrow for free. But you just can’t avoid the occasional taxi or bus ride. These often cost just pennies – 25 cents or less to go from one end of town to the other. In order to see as much as possible in that time, I have to budget for travel. Let’s say $25 a month for all bus, taxi and other costs, plus $50 to travel any big distance between cities. That’s $75 a month for travel.

Lastly, I will need access to the Internet. I suppose I can travel 6 months without such access, but Internet access is so cheap it seems silly to exclude it. It is common now to be able to make international phone calls (over the internet), check emails, update facebook and twitter, and write blog entries. Setting aside $1 a day for this, that’s $30 a month for communications.

So what does that add up to?

Lodging – $300
Food – $120
Travel – $75
Internet/Phone – $30
TOTAL – $525 per month reasonable budget

SUBTOTAL FOR SIX MONTHS – $3,150

Plus plan ticket to get there – $1,250

TOTAL FOR SIX MONTHS – $4,400

If I budgeted $5,000 for the 6 months, that would give me $600 extra above the basic budget. That’s $100 a month that I can go over on lodging, food or travel. So if there’s a museum or culturally significant place that I want to see, that can come from there. Or even buying clothes to replace worn out ones (socks), or one night at a luxury hotel ($20) to take a hot shower and soak my bones in a jacuzzi. There’s flexibility there. It can be done.

$5,000 for six months. It can be done.

Related posts:

1. See the World For Even Less
2. Visiting Every Country in the World – In One Trip
3. See the World by Teaching It English

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.

I happened to believe, before I started listening to this book, that there is a combination of factors that make any athlete or artist (or anyone else) great. You have some natural ability, you have opportunity to develop it, you are dedicated to developing it, throw in some luck, and then you become great.

But it turns out, there may be no such thing as natural ability. Tiger was watching his dad swing the golf club in his high chair, his dad had him swinging his first club at 18 months, from before he could walk he could hit a ball, and magically 17 years later (which is a LONG time to practice), he becomes the youngest winner of the Junior Championship. But Tiger Woods probably played more golf before he was 4 years old than I have in my entire life. What if my father made me practice golf many hours a day? Would I be pretty good by now? Geoff Colvin thinks I would, and I now agree.

Its more than working hard though. After all the PGA tour is made up of many golfers, but most of them will never win The Masters, yet Tiger does it year after year. It is not just the number of hours or number of years spent practicing apparently. Colvin suggests that what the high performers in any profession have in common is deliberate practice. It’s not 1 million swings of the golf club that make you great. You have to work on specific things, with a specific purpose.

You have to work the 3-iron specifically for hours, in real tall grass, aiming at a target, correcting your swing if you miss, adjusting it slightly, trying to get it perfect. Video tape yourself, have a teacher examine your swing. After every bad shot, go over it in your mind and deconstruct what happened. When the ball leaves the tee, you should instinctively know how the shot is going to go, since you know if you executed your swing perfectly. Did your hips rotate? Hitting balls blindly is not helpful in and of itself. Deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice should not be fun. Think about the violinist that spends days practicing moving their hand (transitioning) from low on the violin neck to high. Working on the smoothness. Trying to do it quickly and smoothly without any interruption in play. They do this over and over and over. It’s no fun. They’re not playing any specific piece of music. Not part of an orchestra at that moment. They’re practicing alone. And they’re working on their transitions today. Or this week. Or this month.

How does that apply to me and my goal?

Well, what this means is that any level of performance in anything is attainable by anyone. So let’s say I want to travel, and need some income coming in to do that. There are people out there who do quite well with their online web sites. Is that out of reach for me? No. Given time, and practicing in the right way, I can achieve that too.

The people currently doing what I want to be doing have no God-given talents that I cannot acquire. I simply need to identify the skills, and work on them deliberately. Things need to be measured. When I publish an article, does it get commented on? What articles do and do not? Are my tweets being retweeted? What if I change the headline slightly, does that change my success? What if I tweaked this? I need to be able to predict in advance the outcome before I hit the publish key.

I think in one month I should be able to get some type of online income coming in. Even $3 a month. In 3 months, that should be high enough so that checks reach my mail box every month. In six, it should be a reasonable amount. And in 12 months of intentional, deliberate practice, there’s no reason why I can’t reach my goal. Anything is possible.

Related posts:

1. The Dan Plan and Deliberate Practice

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.

So the people that tend to take sabbaticals away from that traditional model, for instance by taking 2 years to travel from Alaska to Argentina by bicycle as a family, also tend to have other areas of their life they prefer to do differently that the norm too. Those people tend to be self-employed – sometimes through necessity, but mostly through the dislike of being told what to do and when. Six months in the south of Spain fades quickly away (to the point of disappearing from view) when you head back to work, and are working under intense deadlines, stress, working til midnight every night, working weekends, and generally counting the seconds to the next time you can go away.

Now there are people who like their regular jobs, who don’t feel it is such a burden or overly stressful, and that’s fine too. But consider this appropriate warning. My view is that there are three type of rats in the world: rats in a cage who don’t know they are in a cage, rats in a cage who know they are, and free rats. The worst off of the three is the second rat: being in a cage and knowing it. Once you spent a year being a free rat, you don’t want to go back in the cage. Another way to look at it, with less rat metaphors, is the movie The Matrix. Once you take the red pill, you are forever altered.

My view is that people who conciously choose to live life differently in this way – outside the traditional 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, 50 weeks a year, 40 years model – also are conscious about other things they do. They eat better, are a bit healthier than the general population. I’d love to see some research to back this up, and I am sure there are a fair number of people who do nothing but sit on a couch all day eating ice cream while they are off work. But to make this a conscious choice implies doing something other than nothing. Most workers don’t do anything during the week. They work, they go home and watch TV, they sleep. On the weekends, they go to the mall to buy stuff their kids don’t need.

Time away from work also implies free time to improve the other areas of your life. I have heard people say they have more time for family (parents, siblings, other relatives) when they are away then when they are at home. Certainly I called my own mother every week when we were in Spain last year, and sad to say only speak to her monthly when I am in the same city as her. I sent more catching up emails to friends too. Was more interactive online. Hopefully I was more interesting to them too!

It goes without saying having more time for your spouse and children strengthens that bond (for most, haha). And if you have room in your life for more friends, travelling can definitely broaden your friendship circle from your “school and work friends”, to “worldwide”. Which is a pretty big circle to draw from.

So once you start down this path, expect some unintended benefits. You may improve your work and career with a way to make as much as you did before with less work. You may improve your own budgeting and handling of money instead of wasting it. You may lose weight and get in better shape by eating better and being more active. You may strengthen your family ties and friendships since you are able to devote a bit more time to that.

So you may think all you are doing is planning your next long trip, but what you may be doing is changing your life.

No related posts.

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: 

1. Customer Service - monitoring what people are saying about them and in some cases joining in the conversation
2. 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.

For me, I enjoy following a lot of diverse people. But there are a handful of people who’s tweets I don’t want to miss. I’m starting to have tiers of people I follow – the large unwashed masses and a small handful of must reads. (No offense to the unwashed masses.)

Here are some of my must reads – who I consider in some ways thought leaders in the personal brand management space.

@Jason – Jason Calacanis – Web Business Thought Leader

Now Jason is a bit of a controversial fellow sometimes, and some people see him as a bit egotistical. But if you can get past all that, he’s actually got some pretty sharp business acumen. His podcast, This Week in Startups, should be required listening for anyone who is in the early stages of starting a business. If I ever got to a stage where I had a business and received an offer to buy it, I would fly down to California and seek out Jason’s advice. He’s knows a good deal from a bad one, and is one of the few people publicly helping entrepreneurs get themselves to a place of independence.

@timferriss – Tim Ferriss – Nothing Is Impossible Thought Leader

Most people know Tim from his New York Times bestselling book, The Four Hour Workweek. And beyond the ideas in the book, Tim’s message is one of ongoing personal improvement through experiments. He’s the guy who no goal is impossible. Tim has never set a loftly goal without then going and getting it done. If he woke up tomorrow and decided he wanted to climb Mount Everest, he would then research the hell out of the topic, talk with a dozen people who have done it, hire a trainer, and book the plane tickets for the trip. Tim follows his dreams with intensity, and is a good model to follow to get your dreams done.

@keithferrazzi – Keith Ferrazzi – Network Building Thought Leader

Keith recently had a fascinating book called Who’s Got Your Back. The premise of which is every successful person has at least 2 or 3 people who they can be completely open and honest with, and who will be open and honest with you. These are your consigliere who you can trust completely and want to see you succeed. These are not your #1 fans, and these are not people you only know over the Internet. These are real true-blue friends who you will presumably be friends with for the next 50 years.

@leawoodward – Lea Woodward – Location Independent Thought Leader

Lea has lived and worked in various parts of this big place we call the Earth, and she blogs and podcasts about it to teach others how to do the same. Location independence is definitely something I am striving to achieve, so I watch her tweets and often find some very interesting things in there. In addition, she’s actively building a business and I am watching with great interest to how that goes. Other thought leaders in this area already have a thriving online-only business and so there is less to learn in real-time from them.

@chrisguillebeau - Chris Guillebeau – World Traveller Thought Leader

I’ve written about Chris before on this blog. He’s actually supporting himself through blogging, and living his dream of travelling the world to boot. Chris doesn’t travel to far off locations to work (like Lea does), he travels there as a tourist. He takes photographs and writes about his trip.

Not all thought leaders are on Twitter. And not everyone on Twitter is a thought leader. Have any more to add? Put them in the comments. If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m http://twitter.com/scottjduffy. If you only want to follow this blog on Twitter, and I sometimes tweet things having to do with sabbaticals, travel and location independence, please follow http://twitter.com/mysabbatical.

No related posts.

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.

Of course, that’s silly. A vacation is something people do for a week or two. They run off to Florida or up to the cottage or even to Hawaii. And 7 days later they are back at their desks telling everyone how great their trip was. Most people in their life that they don’t talk to on a daily basis (family, parents, co-workers, dog) hardly noticed they were away.

Wikipedia might say it best:

“In recent times, “sabbatical” has come to mean any extended absence in the career of an individual in order to achieve something. In the modern sense, one takes sabbatical typically to fulfill some goal, e.g., writing a book or traveling extensively for research.”

I like the idea that a sabbatical is a break from work with a higher purpose or goal. Yes, perhaps you want to go study Spanish in Spain, or live amongst the people of Macchu Pichu for a couple of months. It’s not just staying at home eating bon-bons and watching Oprah (as the saying goes). Perhaps you have a story to tell and want to write a book.

Any extended period of time away from your normal work to do something special. I like that.

Related posts:

1. The Sabbatical.Me Contest