“The waiting is the hardest part.” -Tom Petty
Sometimes there’s nothing you can do but wait. You’re waiting on a phone call. You're waiting on a shift in your environment or for someone else to do something. You’re waiting on the world to change.
Waiting is uncomfortable and unpleasant. Even if there's a chance that the news you're waiting on could be bad, you'd much rather know for sure.
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Dear Readers and Amazing People,
Greetings from Austin, Texas. I had a fun time yesterday with many SXSW attendees and residents of this great city. Special thanks to BookPeople for hosting, to Betty Jean for coordinating a large amount of beer and cupcakes, and to everyone who showed up.
Life is good and I'll be going for some of Austin's famous breakfast tacos right after publishing this post.
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How can you help people?
What can you offer the world, or at least to someone you know?
Think about this. Think about something specific. Think about something that can actually happen soon.
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The problem is that you want a new life, or at least some kind of substantive change.
You look at what you have, what you do, or who you are, and you long for something else.
It may be a problem of the fortunate, in the sense that you don't have to worry about what you'll eat tomorrow, but nevertheless, it's a problem.
So that's where you're at. What do you do?
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Someone wrote in to say he had earned more than 400,000 Frequent Flyer Miles from learning about travel hacking in the past few months.
"That's amazing!" I said. "Great work!"
He had a question on how to earn even more miles and points.
Well, we can talk about that, I told him. There are always new strategies to practice, new opportunities to pursue.
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I'm home and writing this week and next. From the research files -->
"What advice would you give to someone else who wants to pursue a big dream but feels hesitant or uncertain?"
"Do it. Just do it. You will feel inadequate. You will feel you can't do it, but you owe it to yourself to try. You might only have a 50/50 chance of making it, but you're looking at a 100% chance of failure if you don't even try."Read More
"It was true: the entire ball game was what you gave attention to vs. what you willed yourself to not." -David Foster Wallace There are many things on the typical daily list of tasks and appointments that can be ignored or mindlessly plodded through. For best results, don't just make a to-do list; make a to-stop-doing list. I wrote about to-stop-doing lists in the original AONC book.
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I'm back on the road, talking with interesting people every night. Many of them ask questions about "changing the system.” Everyone agrees it's broken and frustration is expressed all around. But what is this system, why isn't it working, and how can we change it?
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This month I've been talking to people from all over the world, beginning the outlining and research for a new book. It's a long process and I have a long way to go. Nevertheless, a few observations are slowly coming through.
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It's been nice to be home for another two week stretch. I ran Mount Tabor (pictured) several times, I did some overdue work on planning the year, and I began outlining a book ...
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I came back from Tuvalu and my gym was packed with dozens of people I had never seen before—an influx of New Year's Resolutions. "How many of them will still be here in February?" I wondered. Whether you're pro- or anti-resolution, there's nothing inherently special about a new calendar year. If you don't like the western calendar, there are plenty of others.
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I did it. I made it to Tuvalu, the penultimate country! It took a while to get here, but that's to be expected.
Someone said they spent 20 minutes reading the Tuvalu Wikipedia page the other day. I said I was surprised it took 20 minutes—that's the same amount of time it took me to run the length of the entire island of Funafuti last night.
Anyway, 192 countries down. File under your choice of: Wow, WTF, tired, or awesome.
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Greetings! Every year I devote an entire week—and usually several weeks of blog posts—to an Annual Review, where I look back on the previous year and make plans for the coming year. Many of our readers now do the same thing, some by following the same structure I use and others by modifying it to suit their own needs. This year the review is considerably abridged, mostly due to my recent tour of India. When the option came to decide about the trip, it was a tough call. I don't think it would always be the right decision to shorten the important Annual Review process, but in this case I was so excited to visit India that I decided to switch it up a little.
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Soon I'll begin an abbreviated version of my Annual Review, where I look back on the events of this year and make plans for the next. In recent years, many of our readers have completed this process in their own way, and everyone is welcome to join in. This year my own review will be a bit shorter than previous years due to a lot of things being stacked up—the India tour finished a few days ago, and then I went to Singapore and Hong Kong for meetings. Now I'm heading to Africa via Heathrow and Lisbon. Blah, blah.
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To wake in the morning full of life and energy, awaiting the day with anticipation and purpose.
To step out into the world ready to accomplish a significant task.
To engage and initiate instead of merely responding. To take the active choice that you will make something happen.
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