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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Source: Robin J Psychic at flickr
Chris Guillebeau, who I hope to meet one day in some exotic foreign locale, runs a very successful blog called The Art of Nonconfomity. He has a very ambitious personal goal – to visit every country in the world in the next four years. He’s well on his way, having already visited 117 countries out of a total of 197. Of course some places are going to be very difficult to visit – such as Cuba, North Korea and Iran. So my personal opinion is that he’ll easily come very close to his goal – say 190 countries – but be stopped from attaining the whole thing by political and military unrest in some places. He’ll do the whole list eventually. It’s fascinating to watch.
Chris makes me want to dream big though. Bigger than I have been dreaming. My goal is to be able to spend 6 months a year in a warm country such as Spain, and still live a comfortable life back in Canada for the other 6 months. That’s not exactly reaching for the stars when compared to “visit every country in the world in 4 years”.
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Source: Heart of Oak at flickr
I don’t know if this has happened to you, but it’s happening to me.
In order to achieve my goal of 6 months a year in a warm locale, I’ve decided the biggest hurdle to me doing that is financial. To many others, it may be family relationships, or career, or health, or a multitude of other hurdles. But for me, the biggest hurdle is financial and so that’s what I’m focusing on fixing.
I’ve downsized my life, significantly reduced my monthly expenses, and as discussed in the last post am finally conscious about what I spend my money on. It is a lot harder (I hope!) for me to needlessly waste money than it once was. I feel like I am awake after not paying much attention to it before.
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Source: (nutmeg) at flickr
It is sometimes said that the difference between someone who has a goal but doesn’t achieve it, and someone who has a goal and achieves it, is focus. Being consciously aware of everything you do, everything you spend your time and money on, and not just letting it slip through your fingers like sand.
Even a goal like mine – spending 6 months a year in a warm locale – requires daily focus to make sure what I am doing is allowing me to stay on track to the goal.
When I find myself with the opportunity to buy a new sexy gadget, before I pull my wallet out I ask myself how is buying this going to help me achieve my goal? If not, will not buying this help me achieve my goal? More often than not, not buying something is more likely to help me achieve my goal in the form of saving money.
Does this mean I don’t buy anything? No. Today I bought a soft drink and potato chips from the variety store that cost me $4. But I did that consciously. Is it going to help me achieve my goal? No. Is it going to hurt me in achieving my goal? No. It’s not about removing all personal pleasures from your life, although some people do that.
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