Update: This post contains outdated offers and should only be used for reference. Click the following link for the most up-to-date offers on my favorite travel hacking cards. -cg — Last week I flew to one of my favorite countries. Ever since I first got stuck in Australia after being denied boarding for Nauru, it…
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Somewhere in my constant travels I learned an important lesson: you can be at peace wherever you are, or you can be anxious wherever you are. Circumstances aren’t completely irrelevant, and a comfortable environment certainly helps. But circumstances only go so far—feeling good or bad doesn’t depend on what’s happening around you. I remember shivering…
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I was flying to Sydney via Los Angeles and Brisbane, but at the moment it didn’t matter. What mattered was: I was heading out to see the world. I touched down in LAX via the Greyhound of the West Coast skies, otherwise known as Alaska Airlines. Heading outside, I blinked at the flashing lights of…
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Being between things is tough. There’s a bright future ahead! You can picture it, just out of reach in the near distance. But there’s a muddied present in front of you. Things are messy and take longer than you think. You experience setbacks as you proceed toward the goal. What can you do? You could…
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I didn't begin travel hacking until long after I began traveling. At first, I did what everyone else did—I had a couple of Frequent Flyer accounts, I looked online when buying tickets, I tried to comparison shop and get the best deal I could, but I didn't know much about the tricks of the trade.
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Over the course of ten years, I visited every country in the world, many of them several times. When I first started writing about the quest, the most common question I received was, “But how do you pay for that?” Since then I've tried to be very clear on how much it costs to travel—not just for me, but for anyone else. In this post, and in the follow-up on Thursday, I'll outline my general response to travel and money.
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If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away." -Jeff Bezos. I don't run an operation the size of Amazon.com, and you probably don't either. But all of us have responsibilities. We have commitments, goals, hopes, and dreams.
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“If you really want to be happy, no one can stop you.” -Anonymous As I was editing a new book manuscript, one story caught my attention. A man makes a lot of changes in his life. He adopts a new lifestyle, sells his possessions, and spends his time on intentional experiences. So far, so good.…
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I did an interview about Liberia with the people behind Maptia, and I liked the introspective questions they asked. You can read the full article here, or check out an excerpt below.
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“The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future.” -Peter Benchley Back in the days when I still had hobbies, a few friends used to come over to the house for weekly gaming sessions.…
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On Sunday I went down to San Francisco, met up with my friend Stephanie and began preparing for the day-long CreativeLIVE workshop on travel hacking. The session was fun and intense! Comments and questions for the #travelhackLIVE hashtag were so numerous that the course began a trending topic on Twitter. Viewers crashed Stephanie’s website at…
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Tomorrow I'll be teaHappy Thanksgiving to everyone in Canada!
Tomorrow I'll be teaching a day-long workshop on Travel Hacking. You can enroll here and watch for FREE from anywhere in the world.
In preparation for teaching the course tomorrow, I thought I'd compile a few—okay, many—notes on the best current travel hacking opportunities. If you'd like to see the world, or at least travel without spending a lot of money, perhaps something in this extended post will be helpful to you. Enjoy!
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The sun came out over Portland on Saturday morning in what felt like the first time in weeks. It was a beautiful fall day, and I decided to ride my bike to lunch. Except for one problem: when I walked into the garage, my bike wasn’t there. Dolt! Where had I last left it? I…
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You've been here before. The weeks and months have gone by, and now you find yourself at the point where something big is due. The deadline you've been ignoring is now staring you in the face.
Sup, the deadline says. Did you forget about me?
You didn't forget, of course. But you didn't entirely take it seriously either. It was hiding out in the background, and now the background has planted itself directly in front of your desk.
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*** “Don’t settle: Don’t finish bad books. If you don’t like the menu, leave the restaurant. If you’re not on the right path, get off it.” –Chris Brogan I used to feel obligated to finish bad books or stay in restaurants I didn’t like. Then I adopted Chris’s rule, which I’ve used for years but…
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