The Friendly Anarchist

9 Things I Learned as a Frugal Traveler

1. Consider Your Options

People want us to believe that time is money. This is nonsense, of course. Time is not money. Time is life. That said, there are whole industries based on this false assumption, and you’ll necessarily meet people involved in them during your travels. You can be the most relaxed person on earth, but there will be pushy sellers playing the “time is money” card to convert you into a customer.

So, this is the first lesson I learned as a frugal traveler: Never let anyone press you into a deal that involves exaggerated time constraints. Don’t get on a tour just because someone tells you that it’s “your last chance”, don’t reserve a hostel room just because someone tells you it will be “impossible to find something later”. If someone tries to sell you anything under pressure, it’s most likely a bad deal that easily could be exposed if you just took your time to consider your options.

2 .There is Always Cheap Transportation

Whenever you arrive at a new city, especially at night, the situation can be a little awkward. You are tired, you want to find a place to sleep, you long for a meal and a shower, you want to feel safe. You look around and there seem to be some transport options, but the bus or train system is complicated or, worse, there doesn’t seem to be any cheap transportation around. So you decide to grab a cab and leave, paying the driver money worth three nights of single-room accomodation in a decent hostel.

My experience is that, especially when arriving at a new place, it’s helpful to relax first, and follow lesson number one: Consider your options. The good news is that there are always cheap alternatives for transport at any larger airport or bus station around the planet. The advertised shuttle bus is the most obvious, but often, even normal cabs will offer cheaper deals on a per pessenger basis. In other countries, there might be motorcycle taxis that are even less expensive.

If there doesn’t seem to be any affordable transportation available, try to talk to any local that isn’t affiliated with the taxi drivers. Often, by just leaving the airport or station by foot and taking a bus or cab outside, you can save a lot of money, as they won’t charge any special entry fees.

3. All Plane Tickets Are Changeable

I learned this from Chris Guillebeau, and could test it a couple of times already. I applied it the last time only a few weeks ago, when noticing an error on a ticket issued for my wife. While the call center agents would tell us it was “unchangeable”, we were later told it could be changed for a ridiculously expensive fee of $400. In the end, we managed to change it for free – just by talking face to face to some friendly airline employees.

If you want to fly earlier than planned, you may also risk appearing spontaneously for your desired flight at check-in. Just hand over your ticket and ask if there’s any space available on the earlier flight. If there is, airlines will often be happy to change your tickets for free.

4. Bring Your Own Booze

In many parts of the world, it’s not expensive to go out for a few drinks. Things change if you want to go somewhere nice in the touristy areas: Suddenly, you are charged six euros for a lukewarm cappuccino, just because you are sitting in front of the Pantheon. Even here in Cartagena, you are forced to pay an exaggerated 4 dollars for a beer that’s worth 50 cents, if you manage to go the wrong places. The solution? Stay outside the tourist traps and bring your own booze (or whatever you like to drink).

The point is that you don’t have to enter restaurants or bars, just to be sitting at one of the magical places, next to a nice fountain or some impressive sight. Atmosphere still comes for free and will often be nicer outdoors anyway.

Also, BYOB in this case doesn’t mean that you have to suffer embarrassing and tiresome walks with a cold box. All you do is to avoid the uncomfortable aluminium chairs of the cafés and bars around the plazas and instead get a cold beer from the local corner shop. If you are not sure where to find one, just ask the students that generally hang out at these places. They’ll know for sure! You get the same view, probably more fun, and a better atmosphere for about 1/6 of the price.

5. Guidebooks Suck

Guidebooks. I don’t really understand why they still exist. Okay, maybe you want to prepare your trip a little and read a nice atmospheric introduction to your destination before you leave. Although I personally prefer novels for that (they are generally not only more entertaining and better written, but also cheaper), you could use a guidebook for practical reasons. But that’s when you’re still at home – bring them along on the trip? Why?!?

Guidebooks weigh a ton. Guidebooks are outdated by the day they get to the shelves of your book store. Guidebooks limit your vision. Guidebooks, like in the case of Lonely Planet Colombia a few years ago, may even be made up. And, from a frugal perspective, guidebooks are way too expensive.

Newsflash: There’s this nice little thing called the Internet nowadays, and it works pretty much like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Only that it’s better. There is practically no question that Google refuses to answer, and if you really manage to contrive one, just ask it at an active forum. Apart from that, locals will generally help you out if you need anything. And if you don’t speak their language, just ask other travelers you met on the road. You’ll save money and weight, and might even get some real insider information.

6. Ebooks = ♥

It’s not just guidebooks, to be honest. Books in general suck. Don’t get me wrong, please. I love reading them, and I read a lot; generally one or two a week. But that’s a lot of paper, and a lot of cash invested. Now, as long as you’re still at home, you can just access your library. Weight doesn’t matter here, and it’s incredibly cheap, if not free.

On the road, things are different, though. Although here in Colombia you have a useful library system that allows you to lend a book in one city and return it in another, you won’t have that everywhere around. Also, the catalogue is very limited, and it doesn’t work once you cross the border. At the same time, book stores are rare, have a very mainstream offer, and are extortionately expensive.

Thankfully, the solution for all these problems is right here: Ebooks!
By now, I am reading probably a 70% of all my texts electronically, and this number would be even higher if there was a decent e-reading device. (The Kindle hasn’t got a touch screen and thus doesn’t allow me to write directly into my books, a thing I do all the time. The backlit iPad screen will kill the last percentage of eyesight I still got. I can as well use my laptop. And Sony readers… well, I better don’t even start to talk about them. Apart from this, all of these devices are kind of expensive.)

As for money, the prices for newer ebooks will often be exaggerated. At the Kindle store, $9,99 seems to be an accepted price for most customers, but publishers and authors alike would prefer to raise this number. The good thing about ebooks, though, is that there is a huge amount of content available for free. Just have a look at Project Gutenberg, or dive into the vast amount of free ebooks published by independent authors around the web.

7. Cooking for Yourself Isn’t Always Cheaper

There seems to be a frugal rule in the US to always cook for yourself, as you’ll save a lot of money compared to eating out. While this is probably true, it doesn’t always apply when you’re on the road.

First, a disclaimer: Generally, it’s better for your health to cook something tasty and wholesome on your own. You decide about the ingredients, and you avoid a lot of the chemical and greasy stuff cheap restaurants like to use for their meals. That said, a decent and not too unhealthy lunch with meat of your choice, rice, beans, plantain, soup, fresh juice, and a small dessert goes for as little as 2 dollars here in Colombia. Meals in countries like Bolivia, Peru or Thailand can be even cheaper.

If I were to cook for myself all the time, I’d have a hard time. Simple ingredients in the supermarket are way overpriced. Buying small quantities at the farmer’s market isn’t a good deal, neither: If you only need a handful of mangos or potatoes, most vendors will rip you off. What’s more, if I wanted to cook for myself while traveling, I would have to rent a place that not only comes with a fully equipped kitchen, but also with storage space for the ingredients. I would also have to take care for spices, and then be attentive that nothing of the fresh stuff goes to seed.

Thus, it’s useful to check out local meal prices when traveling on a budget. If you are staying longer than a few weeks in a place, try to get a room or apartment where you can cook. If not, skip American chain restaurants and go out eating where the locals go – fresh, tasty, and often cheaper!

8. Ad Hoc Travel Alliances

Sometimes, traveling alone can get boring. It can also be more expensive than traveling in a group. The solution: Create an ad hoc alliance with some fellow travelers you met on the road.

With three or four nice people, you can share taxis, negotiate bus and accomodation prices, and also book tours together.
Traveling in a group during some parts of your journey can also be safer and less stressful: If you have to pass a night at a shady bus terminal in some small town at the Orinoco, you can take turns watching your luggage. (Yes, the night bus you see in the photo never left. After eight hours or so, a new one arrived to finally take us to Barinas.) Best of all, while traveling in an ad hoc group, you get to exchange thoughts with some friendly and interesting people, but you are still free to decide upon where to go next!

9. Money Doesn’t Matter

Money is so overrated when it comes to travel. While I don’t want you to get into debt, be aware that it’s totally possible for you to travel on a (very) tight budget, as long as you are a little flexible and not looking for five-star hotels. There are cheap places everywhere: Be it in the Caribbean, in Hawaii, or in the major cities of the world, thanks to communities like Couchsurfing.

Floreta from Solidary Panda made a great point in a recent post when she recommended to have confidence in the kindness of strangers. While you don’t want to exploit them, strangers often can give you a ride or will happily invite you to sleep or eat in their houses. Do your part as a friendly traveler and give something back: Prepare a meal or clean up the kitchen. Tell great stories. Show a selection of your travel photos, or take some and send the prints later. In the end, traveling is not about money, but about making new experiences, seeing the world beyond your own nose, and being open to the cultural differences that make this world an interesting place.

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Faces of Resistance: Drama

So the other day I was woken up at 5am by a bunch of neighbors who wanted to kill each other. As they had been drinking all night long, this came not really to my surprise. It’s always the same game: Sooner or later, someone has a shot of rum too much and starts freaking out. It’s probably one of Murphy’s Laws, if only the group is large enough and there’s enough alcohol available. So a few dozen people staggered around, gathering next to the main adversaries, screaming at each other, hitting members of the opposing group with what they had at their fingertips: Bottles, fists, motorcycle helmets. Minutes later, even the police arrived and took a smoke to observe the developing story.

The result? Some lightly injured guys on both sides, a bunch of crying women, and an unfortunately large group of disturbed children. A puzzled group of neighbors, including your friendly anarchist next door. Also, a broken fridge, some bottles of spilled rum, and a big fat drama making everybody feel quite uncomfortable.

During the following days, the quarrel became a main topic of discussion among the barrio. Everybody had some new rumors about what really happened, everybody was “shocked”, everybody was wondering if this city would ever become as peaceful again as it once was. People were worried about leaving their doors open and their dogs on the streets, just in case one of the rivals would hire a hitman.

What do we learn from this? First of all, in this case, there was a reason for concern. Many people, but especially Colombian males, can get really pissed off if they feel their diginity was violated. Overreactions are a daily occurance. The good thing that morning was that nobody had a gun. It’s much harder to kill somebody with a knife or a broken bottle, and even the dullest drunk feels a little awkward once he notices that he is about to kill his brother-in-law, and his whole family plus a few dozen neighbors are watching him.

Secondly, humans love drama. We love drama so much that we will not be satisfied until blood is flowing, the family is shattered, and the situation becomes really complicated. But what’s more, if things aren’t bad enough for themselves already, we’ll make something up. We’ll enjoy the grapevine and the rumors, and participate actively in them, just to keep the ball running. Why? Who knows. There’s certainly some evolutionary explanation for it. But what seems to be sure is that at least half of the drama we create has it’s deeper roots in resistance. What I was reminded of, when seeing not only this incident, but the long tail of buzz that followed, was a passage of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield: “The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work.”

It was one of (many) statements in the book that really opened my mind. What Pressfield says, in other words, is this: The working artist does not care about the drama that’s created around her as long as it’s nothing more than drama. She will leave the grapevine alone, turn around, and do her work. Because the working artist knows that these kinds of occurances happen on a daily basis, even in our closest surroundings. Today it’s our neighbor that claims he wants to kill his brother-in-law – and the whole neighborhood is raving about it. Tomorrow it’s our cousin who just lost a year at school. The day after that it’s our mother breaking our favorite coffee cup, or our spouse getting a bad haircut from that bitch that always attended her badly at the coiffeur. And if we really don’t manage to find enough drama in our own life, we will happily jump on the bandwagon of telenovelas, reality shows, or sporting events.

Coincidentally, Germany today lost a football world cup game against Serbia. Millions of fellow countrymen were devastated and could hardly motivate themselves to switch off the TV afterwards. As for me, it didn’t hold me back from writing this post even for a second. And it’s not as if I were an especially focused worker. But: The relevance of these things is practially zero. If we start to take them too seriously, we are just giving into resistance, allowing it to take power. Instead of having any practical use, exaggerated drama in our personal life only sucks our energy and prevents us from doing our thing.

Yesterday, the adversaries from the fight that morning were sitting together in the corner-shop, having a few beers, laughing. Trouble, it seems, had vanished. Instead of killing each other, they had just decided to leave drama aside and behave like adults again. I suppose they also stopped drinking early enough yesterday. The next time drama is going to take over your life, be prepared to take control. Be the director. Stopping the drama in its first act and moving on with your life is overcoming resistance and getting your stuff done.

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Consistency and Your Creative Work

Do you know how many pages a day Norman Mailer wrote when working on his novel The Naked and the Dead? Seven. Double-spaced. Assuming that he could fit an average of 250 words on a page, that sums up to about 1750 words. 1750 words a day. And these 1750 words per day were reached during Mailer’s time of flow. When working on his third novel, The Deer Park, he would only manage to write four or five pages a day.

Now, do you know how many days a week Mailer worked when writing The Naked and the Dead? Four. He worked on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. (I absolutely love how he took Wednesdays off, probably to have a small “mid-week weekend”.) While working on The Deer Park, he only would sit down to write three days a week.

When I read about this in Paris Review (PDF), I was like: Hmm. I don’t now about you, but one or two thousand words a day, three to four days a week doesn’t sound like much to me. There are some blog posts you’ll be reading this week that are longer. (Though, unfortunately, they’ll be rarely as good as what Mailer wrote.) And yet, it was enough for Mailer to write a total of 40 books, 11 of them novels, over a span of 59 years in his life. Apart from that, he co-founded The Village Voice, published other articles and essays, engaged in political causes, and even created a few movies.

What’s the secret of his success, then? Many people believe that, in order to get somewhere, you have to work off your ass, constantly putting in 12 or 14 hours a day. Just to be able to succeed. But Mailer wasn’t the only author who made it, even though he didn’t write all day long. John Grisham wrote his first novel an hour a day in the morning, over a timespan of three years. Haruki Murakami wrote his first two books in the middle of the night, after closing and cleaning the jazz club he was running to make a living. But even as a professional writer, he wouldn’t write more than five hours a day, as he explains in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Steven Pressfield is interesting in that he’ll sit down and do one large session to get his work for the day done. This session generally will be around four hours long, as he points out in The War of Art.

Of course, most authors will have some other stuff to do during the day, just as everybody else. But they won’t spend their whole time trying to write. You can see a pattern here. Of course, there are exceptions, and it is possible to become a writing workaholic. Balzac claimed to once have spent 45 out of 48 hours writing – and he died at 51 years of age, probably a victim to excessive strain and too much coffee.

But the real essence to succeed, be it in writing or arts or during the creation of your business, is to be consistent. You don’t have to stress yourself out. You just have to get going, as often as you can. If you write 1.500 words a day, four days a week, you end up having more than 300.000 written words at the end of the year. More than enough for not one, but a whole bunch of novels. If you go for a camera walk three times a week and take at least three great shots, you won’t find a gallery big enough to expose your resulting 468 masterpieces at the end of the year. (Hint: Try Flickr.)

Inspired by this post by Michael Nobbs, I signed up on the wonderful 750words.com a few days ago. The main idea of this small web application is to sit down to write 750 words first thing in the morning. The goal is to get all the stuff out of your head that may have accumulated during the night.

750 words. That’s a daily output of Mailer on a bad day. Of course, these 750 words are more like a journal and thus not comparable with quality content written for publication. But really, writing them is a piece of cake. It takes me about 15 to 20 minutes, and as I don’t have to focus on the content too much, procrastination doesn’t get a chance. The 750 words really get me moving and make it easy to switch to more serious things later on: If I am able to write 750 words without any trouble, writing another 1.000 or 2.000 of higher quality during the day proves to be a lot easier.

So success in your field of work, in the end, is about consistency. It’s about showing up. Not even every day. Just as often as you possibly can – let’s say, at least a couple of times during the week. As explained in Mighty Micro Productivity, you don’t need a whole day to get your important work done. You can do it right now, taking advantage of these ephemeral 20 minutes you might otherwise use to hang out on Twitter. Do this 200 or 300 days a year, and you will see the difference.

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How to Fix the Web

Web browsing has become increasingly uncomfortable. Google and Facebook want to know each of your steps out there to create better ad profiles. And while they may not be entirely evil, it still feels weird. Content publishers do their part with unsolicited flash commercials, ugly site designs, way too small fonts and way too wide paragraphs to read comfortable. Even on decently designed pages, sidebars will distract you with other headlines, comments, and whatnot.
You will also lose the overview of your surfing sessions easily, because even if you are using a bookmarking tool, you don’t often know what exactly was the reason you saved a specific page months ago.

All this not only leads to an uncomfortable feeling, but also to unproductivity – in a bad way. Because it’s not about unproductivity in the relaxing-at-the-beach-having-an-ice-cold-Margarita sense of the word. It’s about having to fight with one’s concentration when you really want to work, because there are so many distractions on the site you are interested in. And it’s almost impossible to write a great post referring to other sites if you don’t find them when you need them.

Why doesn’t somebody fix the web? Make it beautiful, make it productive, with decent typography, with the ability to organize what you encounter, and without tracking down all your data? Good news is, you can do this on your own. Here’s how.

1) Reduce Data Tracking

Wondering about what Google know about you? Get an overview on their Dashboard.
If you don’t like what you see, think about deactivating some services, like Google Buzz. Also, you might want to opt out from Google’s web cookies that identify you while traveling around the web. This will not reduce the amount of ads you see, but they won’t be targetted to your personal profile anymore.

For search, you can easily avoid cookies and ads altogether by using Scroogle. Not only do they offer a safe connection and eat the cookies for you, they also show you up to 100 hits on their first results page. No need to click through ten pages anymore!

You may also want to opt out from Google Analytics. This tool is used by many webmasters – myself included – to learn more about their visitors, and saves information on your IP address (allowing conclusions on your geographical location), browser and OS version. Only a few days ago, Google themselves released a browser add-on allowing their users to prevent data collection through Analytics. It is currently available for Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox.

After talking so long about Google, let’s be fair and note that there are other companies that like to track you, too. Since the introduction of the Facebook “Like” buttons and similar social features, the company happily collects information on which websites you visit. According to this article, you don’t even have to click the button itself, as long as you are visiting a participating site while still being logged into Facebook. So, if you missed Quit Facebook Day on May 31st, there’s still time to do act today. Here’s how to do it.

2) Say Good Bye to Advertising

I have nothing against simple text or static image ads and understand that they are necessary to finance much of the great content out there. But what really gets on my nerves are flash ads that sometimes even play music or overlay the site you’re currently visiting. Get rid of them by installing the Adblock plugin for Firefox. No ads anymore, nowhere.

There are similar add-ons available for Chrome, Safari and (as a paid program!) Internet Explorer, but I have not tested them. Feel free to share your feedback on them in the comments.

3) Enhance Readability

Even if you managed to get rid of the ads, readability on many pages remains a big issue. There are still people out there who like to use blue letters on a black background, or extremely wide columns that make reading their texts a difficult task. The solution comes with Readability, a tool I called the “Best. Browser-Add-On. Ever” in a recent tweet. Readability is a small bookmarklet and will basically strip a website from all useless design information and present you the text in a nicely configurable way of your choice by the click of a button. What’s more, you may even print the result through this. A must-have.

4) Annotate the Web

Like Delicious? Then you’ll love Diigo. Not only will Diigo let you save and tag your favorite websites, keeping your bookmarks saved privately or publicly on their servers. It will also let you annotate the web, just as if it was a PDF or a Word document. No more searching for the useful bits of information on a web site you bookmarked a long time ago: Everything of relevance is right there, highlighted and commented as you saw fit.

How about You?

Implementing these hacks will help you make the web a little nicer, getting rid of some of its distractions. But I am sure there are some other tricks I didn’t cover. So have you found other ways to fix the web? Feel free to share your thoughts, tricks, and techniques in the comments!

The End of Fake Productivity: Review of The Dojo by Jonathan Mead and Charlie Gilkey

When Japanese martial artists want to deepen their knowledge, learn new techniques, and advance their skills, they gather in a training center, the dojo. Both avid martial artists themselves, Jonathan Mead from Illuminated Mind and Charlie Gilkey from Productive Flourishing, joined forces to transfer this image of the dojo into the world of productivity.

The Dojo Guide (affliate link) is basically an ebook of 38 pages in PDF format, accompanied by seven audio sessions of a length between 8 and 13 minutes. For people who prefer the written word, a transcript of the audio files is provided.

For an info product, the Dojo is not cheap, selling currently at a price of $67. If you have the choice between buying it or better going for 67 scoops of ice cream, you may start to think about it. (At least I did, but I’m a sucker for desserts.)

Honestly, though, 67 scoops would probably be a bit too much even for the trained stomach. The Dojo, on the other hand, is a great tool for productivity nerds and newbies alike. Compared to a personal coaching session with just one of the authors, the price gets put into perspective, too. What’s more, early buyers were surprised by a scheduled group call with both Charlie and Jonathan, allowing everybody to ask questions and discuss the content. A little bird told me that there will be another call in June, so that might be a good opportunity for you to get directly in touch with the guys.

What’s it all about, then?

In short words, the Dojo is about escaping the fake productivity we all find us in from time to time. Instead of doing the important stuff, we’re busy getting our email inbox down to zero and responding to secondary tasks other people throw at us. Thankfully, the Dojo does not want to impose a new system on us. Rather, the guide is about building your own approach to productivity, nurturing it from the personal energy and power you already have. In the end, this is about doing things at your own rules, and at your own pace. You can imagine that this chimes with my approach to life. Jonathan and Charlie challenge the usual productivity industry by putting an emphasize not on doing more and more stuff, but on doing what matters – a fine but important distinction, especially if you are a person who likes to preserve some free time while building your business or doing whatever work you have got at hand.

If you are looking for worksheets and lists, the Dojo is not for you. If you are a number cruncher and like to track down statistical data of every aspect of your life, the guide is not for you, either. If, on the other hand, you are wondering why you don’t fit into the usual productivity schemes or miss a deeper meaning and a place for the “important few” when working with them, the guide might be your thing.

The Dojo is short and precise, directly to the point. There is no drivel and no comfortable, yet superfluous fluff. If you grab the guide, there’s no need to get into a comfortable reading position on your couch, waiting for inspiration. Much the contrary, the Dojo is about creating a specific and personal mindset that leads towards not only more, but higher-quality output.

The ebook and the audio sessions do reinforce each other neatly. For each chapter of the book, the authors recorded their personal takes on the content. While the text is denser, the audio helps you to really integrate the information into your life, as do the questions at the end of each chapter that provide you with lots of food for thought.

The design of the ebook is beautiful. Contrary to many info products out there, this is a great example of how design can complement the content. Unfortunately, the quality of the audio files could be better. While it does the job, the sessions sound like recordings from a telephone call (and, probably, they are), and thus have a little echo that might disturb you. It’s still good enough to understand everything, and there are no lacks or recording errors. As I personally enjoy reading this kind of information a lot more than only hearing it, I was happy to see the audio transcripts released a few days after the product launch. Since then, I would listen, read, and take notes of the content at the same time.

Overview

Name: The Dojo – A Guide to Doing What Matters
Content: 38 pages ebook in PDF format, 7 accompanying MP3 audio files of 8-13 minutes each
Price: $67
Where to get it: Feel free to get it here or through any of the affiliate links on this page, helping me with a sales-based commission. The price for you remains the same.

Whom it’s not for:

Number crunchers
People looking for pure entertainment and long reads
People looking for a new GTD system to buy into with lists, weekly reviews, etc.
Hi-fi experts

Whom it’s for:

People who want to do more of what matters
People who want to tap the energies they already have inside
Especially creative people of all colors: Writers, artists, starting entrepreneurs
Open-minded people: The Dojo will probably lead you to question your beliefs

Conclusion

When a fighter enters a dojo, he is ready to learn something. But he’s also ready to take action and begin to fight. The Dojo Guide, much in line with this tradition, is not inviting you to remain seated for hours and hours, listening to the wisdom of a master. It invites you to join the teachers, hear their instructions, and then let them step back as you unleash the powers you always had inside but did not know how to tap into. This is at the same time the most uncomfortable and the best thing about this guide: It comes with no excuses to delay your personal fight to creating your own way of productivity.

Go check out The Dojo Guide here.