At the Caribbean coast of Colombia, festivities take place on the streets. The weather is always great, you can catch a nice breeze, and the neighbors are friendly. So instead of locking yourself in, you put a bunch of plastic chairs in front of your house and create a spontaneous road block to celebrate your party.

Family and friends, some neighbors, and the occasional freeloading loafer will get together, have a few beers and lots of rum, listen to extremely loud tropical music, and dance. Some snacks might be offered, but real food is generally saved up for later at night.

This leads to an interesting constellation, where the butifarra vendor comes into play.

…

Butifarra is originally a Catalan specialty that at some point made it to the American colonies. It’s a type of pork sausage, the Colombian variant being round and small and very greasy.

I have asked plenty of locals about the details – but as it turns out, most people don’t really know how butifarra’s made. Nor what’s exactly inside it.

This and the fact that the butifarra that arrives at the party might already have been carried around for a whole day (or two) in the merciless tropical sun gives them a dubious fame. I wouldn’t go overboard saying that they aren’t a natural-born bestseller.

Consequently, whenever the butifarra vendor gets to a party, he’s treated like Jehova’s Witnesses knocking at the door of Richard Dawkins.

To be sure, the vendors are generally nice guys. They carry their merchandise in huge iron sheet pans in front of their bellies, whose hefty weight leads to their signature hollow-back. They also bring a knife to cut the sausages, and you’ll always know that a butifarrero has arrived when you hear the “knock-knock” they make, hitting their knife against the pan to attract attention.

Their prospective customers, though, are generally critical. Joking at best, condescending at the worst, most of them frown upon the poor vendors and their offer. In the end, who would want to buy a sausage of such questionable origins?

The answer to this rhetorical question isn’t such an obvious “Nobody” as you might expect, though.

Actually, it’s much more of an “It depends.”

And the butifarra vendor knows that, of course!

Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler Enters The Stage

The fact that butifarra vendors are able to make a living might be perplexing to many of us – unless we’ve read Terry Pratchett’s (excellent) Discworld book series. One of the inhabitants of this fantasy world is Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, a sausage salesman in the metropolis Ankh-Morpork. He’s “Discworld’s most enterprisingly unsuccessful entrepreneur, a ‘merchant venturer’ in Ankh-Morpork, […] most famous for selling meat by-products to unsuspecting souls,” as Wikipedia knows.

We could say, then, that the butifarra vendor is the “Globeworld’s” equivalent to Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler. With the small difference that most of his clients aren’t “unsuspecting”, but drunk and hungry.

…

It goes like this: As the party continues, more and more rum and beer flows down dozens of thirsty throats. The snacks – if there were any – are long gone, and with the increasing drunkenness, hunger becomes an issue. There’s nothing else to eat, and the only food source around is the butifarra vendor, drumming his pan.

But we’ll resist!

We wouldn’t want to get butifarra, would we?

Until the first person breaks.

Sooner or later, the first brave guy among the party attendants puts on a strongman act and gets some butifarra. It’ll be a small sale for the vendor, but it’ll have huge consequences: Suddenly, all the hungry, drunk people around will be watching. They won’t be joking anymore. They’ll just sit and observe. And as the guy starts to eat, he’ll move his head in a deliberative manner and render his judgement pretty fast: “Not too bad!”

This is when the butifarra vendor wins.

Suddenly, other guys will approach him, and the ladies will ask their company to get them a serving. From one moment to the next, the vendor will be surrounded by dozens of people. And he’ll sell his merchandise just like hot cakes.

Lessons Learnt

So here are the lessons we can learn from the butifarrero:

• Have time.
• Look for your audience.
• Be there early.
• Ignore the laughs.
• But most importantly: Stay pacient. You’ll get them sooner or later.

Original image taken from the Wikimedia Commons. CC-BY by Jdvillalobos.

Last week I rambled about workplaces beyond rules. But when it came to naming my favorite workplace of all, I noticed how dependent it is on the work I want to do or the mood I’m in. But, as I said, if I’d have to choose one single place, it would probably be on board of a train somewhere in Germany.

The Marvels of Working on Trains

Why a train, of all things? As with the other places, vibe is a major factor. The atmosphere on a train is leisurely yet overall somehow concentrated: People are reading, watching a movie on their laptops or engaged in a relaxed conversation. Depending on the train, they might be talking some pretty weird (and often inspiring!) stuff – but if it gets too much, I simply put up some music and gone they are. (Ear plugs might work if you need silence to focus.)

There’s no dreadful radio music (as in many coffeeshops!) and, most of all, no wi-fi! I know that many people hate that and prefer taking one of the newer trains or routes that provide internet access for their passengers, but I personally hope that most trains continue to be offline territory. It’s precisely what seems to help to create the atmosphere that I enjoy so much.

On trains, dead time can easily be transformed into creative time. Watching out of the window and seeing the landscape pass by helps me more than anything to find the right words when crafting a new article or book chapter. You can get a coffee or some simple food in the dining car, but apart from that, distractions are low. You can walk around a bit whenever you feel like it, but it isn’t really incentivized. Preferably, you just remain seated and do some work. (And keep watching the landscape, of course!)

Talking of seats: Even the second class in the German train system is nowhere near as cramped as economy class on airplanes. Seats are bigger, there is sufficient space to use a laptop, and more often than not you’ll be lucky to have another free seat right next to you, allowing you to use two tables to have more space for your documents and paperwork.

Best of all, working time on a train comes with a hard deadline. As a regular reader, you might know already how important I deem these to be for higher productivity. A train ride might last 30 minutes, four hours, or maybe even a whole day. But when embarking, you know already that by 8.26pm you will reach your destination. That’s the time you’ve got, so there is no excuse not to use it.

The Cons

How about the downsides? Screaming children account for some of the negative experiences I have had. They simply aren’t helpful if you want to focus on your work. Overcrowded cars are worse. (Expect them during rushhour on commuter trains and before important holidays, like Christmas.) Overcrowded cars with lots of crying children… well, you get the idea!

The worst thing to encounter on a train, to be honest? Drunken football fans (that’s soccer in the US). They mostly ride regional trains (because they are incredibly cheap, especially for larger groups) and if they are in a bad mood, they will not only make work impossible, but life on trains in general. Fortunately, these guys are easy to avoid by simply not traveling during their peak hours. (Saturday afternoons, mostly. Sundays aren’t that bad, probably because most of them have to work the next day or face their spouses at night.)

One other major downside of working on trains might be the price! While competetive in comparison with airline prices, travel on German trains isn’t cheap – especially if you are a spontaneous traveler that doesn’t book his trips weeks ahead. A regular ticket from Hamburg to Munich, for example, will set you back 135 euros.

There are several discount cards available, though, that normally pay off over the year: Buy them once and get 25 to 50% discount on any ticket you buy later. The biggest temptation for me is the “BahnCard 100″: For about 4000 euros ($5200 USD, give or take) you get to travel as much as you want during a whole year. Just think of the possibilities!

Given my addiction to working on trains, I’m pretty sure that if I ever have that much spare, I might as well just get one of those cards and become a full-time train writer exploring every single city in the country. Until then, I’ll probably continue to work on the cheap regional trains, as long as there aren’t any football fans around!

Appendix

On December 25th, I embarked on an 8-hour train trip to Cologne, in order to join a big Christmas dinner on December 26th. That train trip wasn’t work-related, to be sure: One of my best friends and a good bottle of red wine accompanied me on that unconventional Holiday celebration on the road, and made 8 hours seem like 20 minutes. Conclusion: As a nice office, trains lend themselves for much more than just work!

Yes! I managed to do the impossible: I got Chris Guillebeau, probably the most productive traveler on this planet, to admit that he could relate to the concept of idleness as described here on TFA!

Idlers, rejoice: Even productivity mavens know the value of disconnecting, relaxing, and letting the idle brain do its job!

Of course, this is only part of the story! Because the real lesson from talking to Chris was that being productive isn’t just a matter of the right tools and tricks. Ultimately, it’s about doing the right work: Work that matters, work that you love, and work that helps other people.

All in all, I can honestly say that my Productive Anywhere interview with Chris was amazing! I was happy to talk to someone so smart and inspiring, and he was a perfect fit for the great line of interviewees I was lucky to talk to during the creation of the guide.

As a special treat for you and for the benefit of working travelers everywhere, Chris and I decided to give this interview away to you for free! Just listen in right here or feel free to download the MP3!

Productive Anywhere Interview – Chris Guillebeau

Additionally, a full PDF transcript is also available!

Enjoy!

The photo is CC-BY-NC directly from Chris’ Flickr account.

“Remember, Remember, the 5th of November…”

Yes, it’s true! That day! Here it is… again! This means: The Friendly Anarchist is now two years old! What an exciting time it was! We went from zero to more than 3000 monthly visitors on this site, all by writing extremely long (and some surprisingly short) posts on idleness, action, and living an interesting life!

Thank you all for being here!

This second year has been especially interesting, as it was the year I wrote my first book, Beyond Rules, and then created my first e-guide, Productive Anywhere.

Productive Anywhere was released in a special “founding buyers” edition back in September, in order to gather some feedback before releasing the full edition.

And thankfully, the feedback was very positive! As it turned out, people not only called it insane and ridiculous, they told me it was insanely useful and ridiculously cheap!

Some of them begged me to raise the price. (Well, one of them did. True story!) Some of them told me the Toolbox alone was worth the money. (That’s probably exaggerated. But the toolbox is pretty cool, I think.) And all of them who read it certainly became much more productive!

Not one of them told me it sucked!

Which is probably a good sign.

And now, Productive Anywhere got even better!

Apart from the 28.000 (or 180-page!) Core Guide, the Toolbox, and the four expert interviews in MP3 format, I just finished to create a pretty nice update:

• I developed an Anti-Overwhelm Guide to get you started easier than ever!
• All the interviews come with transcripts now for those of you who don’t like to listen to MP3s.
• The (Mighty!) Toolbox was enhanced and now features all the best applications for productivity and GTD, communication, travel-booking and much, much more.

I really believe this is a very nice piece of work!

Get it now!

So, without any further ado, here it is – just in time for TFA’s second birthday: The full edition of Productive Anywhere.¹)

For the sake of simpleness, you can buy it right here, blindly. Just because you trust me that it’s cool stuff and worth your 39 bucks. (It is!)

Alternatively, you can go here to read the sales page in which I relentlessly use all the shady marketing tricks I could find in order to persuade you to buy it. That will probably be more fun for you, but it will also take some of your precious time that could be used to read the guide. And to start implementing some of the useful tips right away!

Anyway, your choice.

But whatever you do, buy it!

(Ehem. Or don’t. I will still like you if you don’t, as long as you are a nice person. But I would appreciate it!)

For now, a happy 5th of November, wherever you are!

We are living in interesting times. If there ever was a great moment to take life back into our own hands, adapt a mobile lifestyle, and become productive anywhere, it’s now!

Thanks for being a part of this!

1. I hesitate to keep calling it the “final” edition, because this is a living product: As I learn new stuff, encounter new and useful tools, or interview more people, the guide will continue to receive updates. (Those updates will be free for every buyer, just in case you wondered.

After last weeks post, a couple of people asked me to see some impressions of the wonderful city of Vienna, Austria. Obviously, I’m more than happy to share a couple of photos with you! As always, they are showing my personal vision (my “passion for light”) rather than the side of the city a marketing department would probably want to sell you. I hope you’ll enjoy them anyway!

In other news, the full edition of Productive Anywhere is almost finished! It will be released on Saturday, TFA’s second birthday! Of course, I will publish all the details here over the weekend, so if you’re interested in working from the road, stay tuned!

But now, let’s dive into some pieces of Vienna!