The Friendly Anarchist

Towards Ethical Lifestyle Design

“People who avoid all criticism fail. It’s destructive criticism we need to avoid, not criticism in all forms.” (Timothy Ferriss)

Should lifestyle designers be better people? When reading the recent discussion on the topic over at Beyond Growth (1, 2), one could reach the conclusion that this indeed should be the case. And, honestly, why not? Why limit our niche to the creation of muse businesses, travels, and vain endeavors?

On the other hand, when looking for a better approach to lifestyle design, one should also have in mind that pretty much everything one could wish for in the niche does already exist in another one. Searching for a well-elaborated critique of consumerism? Call Adbusters. Looking for people engaged in fixing our financial system? Ask Attac. Miss an environmental stance? Join Greenpeace or Earth First. Now, you might ask, what do these institutions and the individuals behind them have to do with lifestyle design?

The answer: It depends on your definition of the word. It’s a triteness, but following the broadest and simplest definition, lifestyle design is about nothing more or less than designing your lifestyle. Or, as JD Bentley put it a few months ago in a similar discussion: “Judging by the requirements of the term itself without any concepts applied by the zealots who promote it, everyone who has ever lived is a lifestyle designer.”

But probably, in a widespread use along the web, there’s something more to it, limiting lifestyle design to a much smaller group of people: The niche is then about being an entrepreneur and creating “muse businesses”, automatizing and outsourcing as many tasks of them as possible – in an attempt to create a stream of passive income and obtain free time for the more interesting things in life.

Understood as such, lifestyle design is indeed hyper-individualistic. It strikes me as an “American Dream 2.0”, and that’s probably no coincidence. Tim Ferriss & Co. certainly are deeply influenced by this traditional approach to life, preached over decades in the US.
Maybe, this influence isn’t even a bad thing. Community activism has its place in the world, and hopefully it will grow. But as activists rarely see paychecks for their work, taking care of their funding by creating their own businesses probably isn’t a bad idea at all. As Cody McKibben, an Asia-based lifestyle designer writes in the comments of Eric Schiller’s original post: “[A] big part of my motivation for building my business and my influence IS in fact so that I can use it in the future to make an impact in situations where I currently feel powerless, to open people’s eyes to injustice that is built into the “systems”, and to direct people’s actions to make a positive difference in others’ lives. Right now though, yes I am focused on ways to increase my own income—first have to look out for oneself and then look out for others.” While this may not please most people that want a better planet now, it’s just a call for rationality: If we die of hunger, we won’t change anything.

Unfortunately, not every person on earth is interested in social work. Actually, most people are not. The same is true for aspiring lifestyle designers. In a funny misunderstanding of Darwinism, some of them might even be mislead to think they could exist outside of any community at all. But as I don’t hold it for a good idea to force people into social activism, let’s forget about them for the moment.
Concerning everybody else, we may be on to something when asking about how to create solidary forms of living together on this planet in times of the internet. But the answer to this certainly isn’t anymore about lifestyle design as we know it. Following our definition of the term, it would be either about life in general, or about something new altogether: Terms like “Community Design” or, as proposed in the comments to Klint Finley’s post by Uriah Zebadiah, “Culture Building” seem to be more appropriate. If we want to maintain the term, it’s probably useful to expand it a little, in order to differentiate it from the niche that solely focuses on earning money. As for this article, I will go with “Ethical Lifestyle Design“.

Now, the question is what role the muse business side of Lifestyle Design could play, when it comes to integrating it to a life of social responsibility and activism. And here comes the problem: It won’t play any role at all, if we deny the possibility of using it to hack our working-life in order to create free time and a certain amount of passive income. This is something that was at least implied in Klint’s response, when he stated concerning muse businesses, that “most people, no matter how pure their positive thoughts, will never actually succeed in this.” If this is true, we won’t have to worry and complain about the whole lifestyle design phenomenon anymore, as it then would be nothing but a science-fiction concept created by a bunch of marketing pros.

But is it really true? Admittedly, lifestyle design as a way to dramatically reduce our working hours still has to prove itself. Will it help a larger part of the labor force to break free from 9 to 5, maybe not reaching the four-hour work week, but at least a twenty-hour one? Just by posting a bunch of case studies on his blog, Ferriss won’t silence his critics.

On the other hand, it’s not only since the recent financial crisis of 2008 that people start to challenge their relationship with money, and embrace the advantages of freedom from debt and frugality in order to create a lifestyle that personally fulfills them. Though most of them don’t have nor intend to create muse businesses, this phenomenon could become part of a broader wave of (ethical) lifestyle design. But let’s look a little further into my argument first.

My assumptions are the following: While it is still a small minority, there is a growing group among Western people that questions the usual “get into debt quick” scheme as advertised by our parents and credit card companies. Instead, people consciously decide upon their own on the importance of money in their lives. This reality, in combination with recent developments in internet technology, micro-entrepreneurship and the lessons learned from “The Four Hour Work Week” indeed could be a model benefiting a larger group of the populace. I have no proof for this, and I know that lifestyle design – even after the creditable success of Ferriss’ book – is still nothing but a niche of a niche. Thus, the future will have to prove if I am right or wrong with this.

But if we accept these assumptions, an interesting argument could be made concerning ethical lifestyle design and social activism. My point is this: Counterculture and social movements so far have failed on a broader level, because most activists did not have any relationship to money at all. At one point in their lives, they became so broke that they accepted a 9 to 5 job, forgot their ideals, and became part of the system. Geoarbitrage and modern nomadism exist at least since the hippie trail of the 1960s, but the hippies didn’t prevail. They failed because they didn’t have a business plan.

And this is where ethical lifestyle design could make a difference. Nowadays, “anything goes”. We have twenty-somethings making millions as hedge fund managers in airconditioned offices and peers from their classrooms throwing stones at their windows while marching as part of an anti-G8 manifestation. Ethical lifestyle design could provide a third way between extreme capitalist and extreme anti-capitalist forces, funding individuals that engage in social causes around the planet. It could include entrepreneurs, but also people that manage to reduce their cost of living, staying employed but on a part-time basis. Freelancers and hobby jobbers would be welcome, too. The movement probably would not be centralized nor socialized, but of course there would exist avid exchange of thought around the web – just as we see it right now. Every individual could consciously decide about which movement to follow or create one by their own, and every individual could decide about how much money he or she needs to pursue their causes.

While this individualism won’t please many current leftist activists and theorizers, it is probably helpful to accept it in a certain way. This doesn’t have to stop them from working on their own causes! But let’s acknowledge this: While we are here discussing these matters, people around the globe are creating the very movement they want, both on the streets and behind their computers – and we can be a part of it only if we join them. Reality does not wait for theoretical approval. Lifestyle design will only be as good what we make it.

P.S. Eric Normand makes a somewhat similar point concerning the money question in a new post over at Beyond Growth. Please go over and have a look.

How to Live Life at Your Own Pace (Part 4): Travel

We tend to think that all we deserve is two weeks of vacation in a nice hotel complex down South each year. No matter if we’re entrepreneurs, regular employees, or pro-bloggers. Actually, most pro-bloggers don’t even think they deserve that.
And when it comes to business trips or location independence, many of us stress out, heading from meeting to meeting, from event to event, unable to find some time to enjoy the voyage and get to know the place we traveled to in the first place.

As so often, things don’t have do be like this. Life isn’t about working 50 weeks a year, just to be able to travel during the remaining two. It’s about integrating your own kind of travel into your own kind of life. If you want to travel happily and sanely, with as much adventure, business and idleness as you like, the answer is to travel at your own pace. In this part of the Tempo Giusto Series, I want to share some strategies with you on how to travel the way you want.

1) Get Out

The first mistake people even marginally interested in travel make, is to stay at home. This is a triteness, sure. But, as so often, it’s here where trouble starts. People think there’s not enough time, not enough money, not enough security. Food will be different, the culture will be different, and – God forbid – people might even speak a different language.

Now, there are some people who are really really comfortable at home, and enjoy life to the fullest having barbecues in their backyard and bowling with their pals in the neighborhood. A good friend of mine lives like that and there’s obviously nothing wrong with it. If you’re like him, I would suggest you to stay at home and be happy. You can still see the world on Discovery Channel.

But for the rest of you, these are just bad excuses to miss out on life. Those of you who secretly want to “[see] Istanbul, Port Said, Nairobi, Budapest. Write a book. Smoke too many cigarettes. Fall off a cliff but get caught in a tree halfway down. Get shot a few times in a dark alley on a Moroccan Midnight. Love a beautiful woman”, please pack a bag of clothes, take your savings, and get on a bus to the airport.

2) Avoid Package Deals

Ever wanted to prepare a vacation and the clerk at your travel agency offered you a great package deal, including airport shuttle, return flights, six nights of chain hotel accomodation, three warm meals a day, guided tours, and animator entertainment?

Don’t take out your credit card!

While these deals sometimes can be low-priced, most often they aren’t. An all-inclusive resort in Cancún might be cheaper than the same thing in the US, but it is still way more expensive than the beautiful local-owned guesthouses a few miles down the road. What’s more, package-deals like that certainly won’t allow you to travel at your own pace! There will be no adventure, no time to explore the world, and you will probably have to suffer under the ugly and unhealthy hotel food. You would be better off staying at home and join the barbecue party at your neighbors.

3) Use Slower Transport

If we only have a few weeks of vacations each year, we will try to get to our destination as fast as possible. Depending on the distance, this is normally achieved through traveling by airplane. But if you are able to free up some more time – for example, by leaving for a longer sabbatical – challenge this practice by traveling as slow as you can: by local trains, chicken buses, by bike or even by foot. This way, you can start with your vacations at the moment you leave your house, instead of waiting until the hotel animators tell you to.

I consciously don’t propose traveling by car, even if this allows you to decide upon your pace. That’s because I don’t like cars. They make noise, they smell bad, they kill people, they stress you out. Sure, driving them can be fun, but honestly it’s one of the worst ideas of mankind to build huge engines into two tons of steel to move around a person that weighs 160lbs. Thus, I do not own a car, nor do I want one.

As for transoceanic voyages, you might consider taking the boat. While freighter voyages are expensive and don’t really have too many ecological advantages (CO2 emissions will be lower, but nitrogen output and other factors pretty much mess things up), they certainly provide an opportunity to slow down and relax. You may also travel practically emission-free by boat: Take adventure a step further and become a crew member on a sailboat. There are several sites where you can find boat owners looking for crews, like 7Knots and Cruiser.

4) Stay Longer

A few weeks ago, I interviewed a Franciscanian nun that had lived for several decades in South America. At one point, we came to talk about her experiences with European travelers she met after her return to Austria. “When they hear where I lived in America, they say to me, ‘Oh, I know Ecuador'”, she commented to me. “But then I have to ask them: ‘So you know Ecuador? That’s great. Did you ride the donkey for hours and days to get to the remote villages in the Andes? Did you cross the wild rivers, almost freezing to death when leaving the water? Did you sleep on the floor of the shacks up in the mountains, and did you eat nothing but plantains, with no cutlery but with your hands? Did you go to the feasts with the Indians, and did you dance all night long, having eaten nothing but coca for days? You never did anything like that? Then why do you say that you know Ecuador?'”

I think there is a lesson in this story. Some people don’t have the time to travel for months a year. Others enjoy airport hopping and day trips. But my experience is that you only really get to know a place if you stay there for several weeks or, even better, months. This way, traveling becomes less a matter of ticking off a list of “1000 places to see before you die”, or similar nonsense. You can see these 1000 places for free by browsing Flickr, but if you really want to experience them, you’ll need to take your time.

5) Go Where the Locals Go

When at a new place, don’t get tangled up in sightseeing. Sure, if you come to Rome, you’ll probably want to see the Colosseum and the Pantheon, but there’s more to the city than just the tourist attractions. I personally spent my greatest nights there drinking in an obscure bar near Termini station, and kicking off a spontaneous rave party at an ice cream parlor (!). By pure coincidence, we found out that the owners were huge fans of German techno music, and a friend of mine had brought a tape with a few DJ sets from a Love Parade of the 90s. Honestly, I never saw Italians dance like that before…

The lesson: Go where the locals go. This gelateria wasn’t too far from Fontana di Trevi, but the employees didn’t even speak much English. As always, this didn’t turn out to be a problem – being mostly ignorant of Italian, we just communicated through gestures and smiles. I made similar experiences on many travels through Europe and Latin America.

6) Get Lost, Get Uncomfortable

Related to the former tip is never to bring a map, nor a Lonely Planet, and consciously get lost while walking the city. While you don’t have to exaggerate this, getting lost is one of the greatest ways to really experience a city or even a whole country.

Remember, most people on earth are friendly. Take this fact to your advantage, allay your fears, and practice traveling in a manner that at first might feel slightly uncomfortable. I repeat, you need not to exaggerate this and give papaya, as people in Colombia say, walking with your shiny new DSLR camera through the poorest neighborhoods in Southern Bogotá. Try to follow your instincts, but if you’re intrigued to get on that bus, or walk through that market, just go for it. If things turn out to be ugly, you can always hail a taxi.

7) Do Nothing

Exhausted from your trip, exhausted from wandering around, exhausted from getting uncomfortable? Remember that traveling is not a performance review. It’s about you, feeling good. So whenever you feel it’s enough, just sit down and relax. Breathe. Look at the sky, if you like. Don’t buy a beer. Don’t take a picture. Don’t make a call. Just sit around, wondering, and let your mind wander until it likes to come back. This is the essence of tempo giusto travel.

Comments? Questions? Feel free to contact me at any time! Did you enjoy this post? Please help me spread the word by recommending it on Twitter or posting a link on your blog. Thanks!

Other posts in this series:
How to Live Life at Your Own Pace: An Introduction
How to Live Life at Your Own Pace (Part 1): Your Speed of Mind
How to Live Life at Your Own Pace (Part 2): Communication and Media
How to Live Life at Your Own Pace (Part 3): Work and Study

How to Live Life at Your Own Pace (Part 3): Work and Study

When it comes to living life at our own pace, work is a major issue. Most of us will spend half of our waking hours working, and often enough, we won’t really enjoy it. And while it is inevitable to deal with some unpleasant tasks to survive, we often tend to exaggerate. In a perfectionist manner, we do not let go even of the minutiae, questioning our own capacities to handle them all. As everybody in the office does overtime, we join them because of our fears to look lazy. We create pages and pages of to-do lists full of unimportant trivia instead of focusing on those few things that would really have a positive impact on our life and work.

We shouldn’t continue like this forever. As far as I know, we only have one life to live – wasting it with boring jobs, choleric bosses and negligible tasks just doesn’t seem the way to go. It’s time to work at your own pace, and in this part of the tempo giusto series I want to share some strategies with you on how to do it.

1. Love Your Job

This is probably the single most important thing to do, and there are a whole bunch of writers emphasizing it: Love your job and you will lose your worries.
The short version of their blog posts and books is: If you’re still doing a job you hate, you’re losing your time. If you’re losing too much time, you’ll eventuallly lose your life.
Read these sentences again, because it’s important. If you spend your life doing something you don’t enjoy, you are really, really on the wrong track.

You may call this useless positive thinking that doesn’t change anything in real life. Beware, though. Your mindset matters, if you want to accept it or not. This includes your feelings towards your job. And, certainly, in an empirical and measurable sense, the context and the surroundings of your job and workplace. While I am writing this, I am sitting on a terrace in a beautifully restored colonial house that serves as a lodge, with a look over a small valley in the Colombian coffee triangle. We have about 25 degrees Celsius, and the hostel owners are listening to some classic Abba tracks downstairs. Every minute or so, a horse comes running down the street, people greet each other friendly. Eagles are flying in the blue sky, and there’s a delicious smell of freshly brewn coffee in my nose. Damn, I love my job. Do you, too?

2. If You Gotta Do It, Do It Right

But what about the unpleasant, yet inevitable tasks then, that really get on your nerves? First of all, remember that you are the person who decides what you really want (and have) to do. But the moment you decide to do a thing, whatever it is, just try to do it right, and do it right the first time.
This is particularly important for many students. They decide to visit as many classes as possible, but then they cannot cope with the quantity of materials they need to prepare, and fail to pass their exams. But it also is a common issue in many work settings. People will participate in too many projects without having the time or energy to really put the necessary effort into them.

Many business coaches advise you to overdeliver. While this is certainly a good strategy if you’ve got the means, it can easily burn you out. Also, to be honest, “overdelivering” seems to be just another superfluous buzzword – in most contexts, doing exactly what’s necessary is exactly enough. Or, in other words, there’s no need to overdeliver, as long as you don’t underdeliver. Just ask yourself: If you were your boss, professor or client, how and how fast would you like to see a certain task done?
Be realistic when doing this, as most superiors will be. And do your best from the start, so the first time you hand it in, it’s as good as it gets, and as good as it needs to be. By applying this strategy in everything you do, you will not only satisfy your bosses (or, I hope so, your blog readers), but also save a lot of time that otherwise would be lost correcting and enhancing what you didn’t do right the first time.

3. Embrace Simple Tasks

Many tasks are not unpleasant because they are difficult, but because they are too simple, repetitive, and boring. When I was working for a political science professor in Germany, at the beginning I was the copy guy. If someone had a book he wanted to copy, he would just drop it off in my shelf with a small note and I would have to do it. As you can imagine, this job wasn’t fun – but it wasn’t too tiring, neither. As many simple and repetitive tasks, the time doing it could easily be used for entertainment or mental activity. When copying entire books, I would just let my mind wander, and think about things, tasks and voyages to come. I would talk to my colleagues passing by. Or I would put some music on and relax. The book was finished within no time, and I got even paid to do this.

Of course, there are more mindful approaches to boring tasks than the friendly anarchistic one. Buddhist monk and zen master Thich Nhat Hanh puts an emphasize on this, for example when washing the dishes: “Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred. In this light, no boundary exists between the sacred and the profane. I must confess it takes me a bit longer to do the dishes, but I live fully in every moment, and I am happy.”

On the other hand, you probably wouldn’t want to engage in these kind of tasks permanently. As Corbett Barr writes, while somebody needs to collect the trash (or make those copies, for that matter), it doesn’t have to be you or me. In the office, my tasks got more interesting after a few months, and the copy work was handed down to the next office newbie. While I didn’t miss the job at all, I certainly learned something from it. Even apparently boring tasks can become a joy if you know how to take them – be it making copies, washing dishes, vacuum-cleaning a room, or weeding in the garden.

4. Limit Your Working Hours

You work too much. I work too little. Maybe we should meet in the middle. Of course, we have to use a part of our time to get our stuff done. But it’s also a good idea to consciously reduce the available hours to finish any task at hand. Even if you love your job, you still might want to free some time to spend with your family or friends, or to dive into dilettantic endeavors and nurture your rose growing hobby.
Just remember Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Most of you will know this from last minute work on papers and reports you had to deliver or slideshows and speeches you had to prepare. If you have to finish it, you finish it.
Make use of this fact in your daily life and limit your working hours. Instead of freeing up a whole day for any task at hand, set up a meeting with a friend in the afternoon and you’ll be done by lunch.

Also, take advantage of the tiny chunks of time that free up during your day and use them to work on nagging tasks that don’t allow you to relax or on any important project you want to bring forward. I wrote about this approach in my post on micro productivity, and there is a lot of inspiration on this concept over at the blog of Michael Nobbs.

5. Embrace Dilettantism

As you might know, I am deliberately dilettante. I’m a trained political scientist with a focus on political philosophy and Latin America. I love to write, paint, and photograph. But I’ll also program the occasional website, translate texts and speeches, work as a tour guide, or build a tiny pig farm in a village in Northern Colombia.
Of course, people are different, and there are the go-to experts in underwater polo who don’t want to do anyhing else in their lives. But then, there are other people, who like to experiment. Although you only have one life, you still might want to do more than one thing with it. Deliberate Dilettantism is the answer.

6. Leave Things Undone

Many of us have become GTD nerds. Day after day we pursue strategies to get more done, filling up our schedules with more unneccessary appointments and out to do lists with more boring tasks. In times when you are important and attractive if you are busy, GTD became a lifestyle. At the same time, we were losing time for the important things in life beyond work.

In my opinion, the solution to this problem is really easy, and can equally be summarized in three words: Leave Things Undone. LTU instead of GTD.

If you want to live life at your own pace, decide upon which tasks you’ll do and which you won’t. While some tasks cannot be avoided (as described in points 2 and 3), there are a lot of others that you can just skip or cancel without fearing negative consequences. Also, many of the ugly, but unavoidable tasks can be outsourced. Try companies like Get Friday to learn more about that, and be sure to read A.J. Jacobs’ entertaining article “My Outsourced Life“.

Remember: By leaving things undone, there will be less stress, less wars, less fights, less murders. At the same time, there will be more idling, relaxation, and happiness for sure.

7. Make Appointments Your Way

The above-mentioned professor of mine had a rule: No more than two appointments a day. I find this number very agreeable, as it allows me to schedule several important meetings over the week, but at the same time leaves space for the unplanned meetings that come up – and to work alone.

Of course, your mileage may vary, even depending on the day. Paul Graham has a theory that creative people generally need a whole day to get work done, while managers will encounter no problems segmenting their day into hourly chunks. While I agree with him that it doesn’t really work to become creative on a fixed schedule (“8-9 am: Write a novel”), I cannot confirm Graham’s opinion in its entirety. As mentioned in point 3, I get a lot of creative work done in smaller chunks of time that spontaneously open up during the day. Generally, I enjoy variety during each and every day. Instead of spending a whole day with clients and the next day with closed doors behind my desk, I enjoy a combination of solitary work, appointments with friends or colleagues, time at my desk and time at the beach, work in coffeeshops and work at friend’s houses, and so on.

The most important thing, then, is to find out your personal style of appointment management and integrate it as good as you can into your working time.

8. Take a (Long!) Break

Call it gap year or sabbatical, but fact is, if you are bored by your job or have some time after your graduation, you should get out and change perspectives. And even if you love your job, taking a long break can be quite helpful.

Don’t trust an idler’s word? There are way more productive advocates for this: New York based designer Stefan Sagmeister, working with clients like Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones, will close down his whole company every seven years to dedicate himself to fun projects that call his attention. Afterwards, he comes back with renewed energies and lots of inspiration for the next years of work.

By changing places and disconnecting from the usual grind, old ideas can come up again, and new ones can be imagined. By taking more time than the typical two weeks of vacation, you can also take steps to turn these ideas into something tangible. A sabbatical year will also serve you to find back to your real pace of life, without the need to perform in front of your teachers or bosses.

9. Fire Your Boss. And Get a Hobby Job

So you’re afraid of getting sacked by your boss when implementing tempo giusto strategies in your working life? You’d better be! This lifestyle is certainly not easily explicable to many superiors, and some of them might react a little annoyed once you get started. Be it as it may, remember that you’re living your own life, not that of your boss. Over the long run, adapting yourself to the pace of your company may cause more damage than the regular paychecks can fix.

Robert Wringham over at New Escapologist has the right mindset when it comes to jobs: “Treat your job as you would treat cross-stitch or stamp collecting: an enthusiastically-pursued folly that you only do in your spare time”, Robert writes, and it’s certainly valuable to remember that even as a simple employee you’ve got a lot of power. While it is true that your boss can fire you, you can do the same with your company. Got bored? Hand in your resignation and never look back. If you see your job as a hobby that accompanies and finances you as long as you wish, you can truly intregrate it into your tempo giusto lifestyle.

10. Frugality = Freedom

The other day, I read an enjoyable guest post titled “Why I decide to live off pennies” by David Damron over at Corbett Barr’s excellent blog Free Pursuits. While David works far more than I would like to (you notice it when having a look at his output on his minimalist blog), he is doing exactly what he wants to, at his own pace – and he embraces a frugal lifestyle in order to allow him to continue like this.

I myself have been living a good part of the last year on a $200 budget. Miserable, you think? I disagree. On this budget, I traveled through Venezuela and the Amazon, stayed two months in Bogotá, and hung out at beautiful beaches in the Caribbean and the Pacific while visiting Central America. The trick? Cook your own food, go to local (as opposed to over-priced tourist and hipster) bars, have a bunch of great people helping you to get cheap accomodation: Friends and family, couchsurfers and hostels.

David has the goal to have a bigger income and live on a higher budget. So do I. And so may you. The thing with this tip is that you can decide on what you need and what you don’t need – and your decision won’t be the same during your whole life. Stuff often enough converts into clutter and stress, so if you limit yourself to what you really need, you have to spend less time doing unenjoyable work, and got more of it to live the life you want, at your own pace.

Comments? Questions? Feel free to contact me at any time! Did you enjoy this post? Please help me spread the word by recommending it on Twitter or posting a link on your blog. Thanks!

How to Live Life at Your Own Pace (Part 2): Communication and Media

Just when you thought that the Tempo Giusto series was dead, here we go again. :)

For many of us internet people, finding a comfortable level of communication and media consumption is one of the major challenges on the way of reaching our personal tempo giusto lifestyle. While we enjoy the advantages and luxuries of broadband internet access, fancy smartphones and social networks in work and leisure, these same tools sometimes become timesinks and prevent us from using our time as we would like to. As a part of the Tempo Giusto series, here are some ideas on how to use communication platforms and the media at your own pace.

1) Ignore everybody

I’m amazed about how many people get stressed out because they fear they don’t use social media “effectively” and don’t have a million followers. While that indeed might be the case, the big question is: Why worry? Do you kick yourself for not running 100 metres in under 10 seconds? You probably don’t. (Unless you’re Usain Bolt, that is.) So why do you want to compare yourself to the full-time social media pros out there? The life of Chris Brogan or Gary Vaynerchuk certainly may be interesting, but do you really want to write a thousand e-mails a day? Honestly, that just doesn’t sound like fun. It may be fun to meet the people, it may be fun to do some interviews, it may be fun to cash the checks – but that’s about it.

Instead of having to film yourself when drinking a glass of wine (like Gary does), you can just sit back and relax, without a camera pointing at you. Instead of having to mail, tweet and chat with a million people, you can just meet your friends and cook dinner together. Read a good book. Edit some photographs. Paint a nice picture for your mum’s birthday. Or you just can take a hike through the forest. (Yes, you notice I’m not in the Caribbean at the moment of writing this. There’s actually snow in front of my window, and I’m not talking about cocaine.)
At the same time, you can still use the communication tools at hand the way you want to – and create a nice and small business, if that’s your thing. Remember: All you really need are a thousand true fans. And maybe, you can even start out with just a dozen.

So here’s the number 1 hint for communication, tempo giusto style: Remember Hugh MacLeod and ignore everybody. Ignore how other people do it. And yes, this includes me. It’s about your pace, not mine! I might be too slow for you, just as much as Chris Brogan might be too fast. Don’t compare yourself and get freaked out, but use the tools to your advantage, just the way you like. The whole internet thing is too young anyway for anybody to really know about how to use it in a perfect way.

2) Don’t be noise

Noise isn’t a receiver problem. It wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a sender – and in times where we all send more than ever before, we should be sure about what we’re doing.

Granted, we live in a culture where people get more attention if they blog more, tweet more, chat more. But we also live in a culture where people complain about information overload. The truth is, we are all resposible for it, and we are able to change it. Only speak after you have thought. Don’t pass on that chain letter. (You won’t mess with your karma or die of cancer, I promise.) Don’t retweet a mediocre article if it isn’t worth it. Don’t blog about hot air just to keep your schedules. Schedules can be a nice thing and I admire people like Trent Hamm who manage to produce lots of quality content each and every day. But honestly, schedules can also become a pain in the ass not only for you as the writer, but also for your readers. If it ain’t worth it, don’t blog it. If you ain’t got nothing to say, just enjoy the silence. You may even hear a bird singing.

3) Disconnect

This one is easy. This one is logical. This one is the most obvious of all hints in this post. It’s nothing new. It’s boring. It’s absolutely not innovative. Oh, and it’s the hardest thing to do in this world right after getting away with murder.
The problem is, even if we and some others reduce the noise a little, we still drown in information. What’s worse, we act as if we didn’t know how to swim. Hell, we act as if we didn’t know how to pull the plug and empty the tub we’re drowning in. The answer is simple: Disconnect.

Let me tell you a secret: You won’t miss a thing. You’ll probably miss some nice people you like to be in contact with, but that’s it. On the other hand, with every minute you disconnect, you will start to feel more and more at ease with yourself. And you will manage to get more things done than you ever imagined.

So: Disconnect. And do it at your own pace.
Do it for an hour a day. Or just for ten minutes. Or for one day each week, or – as I did recently, I’m sorry – for weeks at a time. (If you do the latter as a blogger, you will lose subscribers. If your site is your business, that’s probably not the way to go. On the other hand, why not give it some time for organic growth? If Chris Guillebeau needed 279 days for overnight success, I’m okay with doing it in 558.)

A simple rule to follow: If you want to work, don’t check your emails. Don’t browse the web. Don’t make phone calls, nor receive them. If you don’t really need to do research online for the task at hand, switch off your internet router or disconnect your ethernet cable. Don’t just mute your phone, turn it off. And focus on what you’re about to do.

Of course, this is even more important during leisure hours. While you may have some geeky friends, even the ultimate gadget nerd won’t be happy to see you writing e-mails on your Blackberry while he’s having a beer with you. Ask your date if he or she is cool about you checking the facts of your conversation in Wikipedia on your iPhone, and you’ll pass the night alone in a cold, cold bed. Stuff like that may be cool the first time you do it, but after that, it becomes just annoying.

Two tools that may help you to disconnect from your personal timesink websites and get a job done on your computer: SelfControl and Concentrate. The former will block traffic to whatever domains you tell it to. And there’s no undo button. Once you activate it, you’re out. No email. No Twitter. No Google. Nothin’. Even if you reboot, even if you log in as an admin, the moment it’s on, it’s on. And then you have plenty of time for doing whatever you want to do, 100% interruption free. (This totally should be a part of Mac OS X, in my opinion.)
Concentrate is a little fancier. It’s got a nice interface, it will also open the applications necessary for whatever task you’re up to – a word processor, Photoshop, you name it – and it costs a few bucks. Give it a free trial, if SelfControl looks too shabby for you.

4) Skip the news

Not long ago, I was a news addict. I would read two or three papers a day, watch the evening news and political talk shows, and in addition to that get RSS updates and news alerts from a bunch of interesting news sites from all over the world. Only slowly did I notice that the news in reality don’t matter. There are days without newsworthy occurances – but as the papers and websites have to be filled, journalists will just make up stories out of thin air.

The problem with news is twofold. First, they take your time. Second, they cause unneccessary anxiety, even if they don’t really affect you. Reading about crackbrained terrorists all day long will get you worried, even if you live thousands of miles away from them. Now, this ain’t a call to ignorance. Everybody has to decide for himself how informed he really wants to be. But consuming this information several times a day – without acting on it – probably isn’t the best appproch to achieve a tempo giusto lifestyle. My personal solution? I ditched daily newspapers and web alerts and subscribed to the Economist RSS feed. Once a week, the current issue will get posted there. It contains articles on pretty much everything that’s happening on the planet, but it doesn’t have the space to ramble about the unimportant trivia. And if I feel the need to know more about local issues (wherever I am at the moment), there are always other weekly journals available.

Another thing to consider is that what’s most important for your life is happening right in front of your house, anyway. But there probably won’t be news about it, unless somebody gets killed. The easiest way, then, to be informed, is to walk around with a friendly smile and your eyes wide open, and talk to your neighbors. Only by doing this will you get the relevant information for your environment that may even lead to action and a positive change right outside your front door.

5) Ask “why”

This is probably one of the easiest and at the same time most effective things to do when you find yourself spending too much time with impersonal communicaton and media consumption. Whenever you open a new website or your RSS reader, whenever you start up Outlook or switch on your iPhone, ask yourself: Why? And try to find a plausible answer.

Your answer to this question doesn’t have to be good for anybody, but for you. If you take a moment to think about it and if you have a reason – even if it’s just something like “I achieved what I wanted today and will now relax while surfing the web” – that’s fine. But if you don’t, look at hint no. 3 and disconnect. Get off that computer, phone, iPad, whatever, leave your house, and do something useful.

The psychology behind this is similar to a personal finance approach of not buying anything without thinking about it for a certain amount of time. Just as many people find themselves entrenched in a lifestyle of material consumerism, others are dependent on the web. By creating a moment of reflection before continuing, you can change behavioral patterns you adopted many years ago.

If you like this idea, but have trouble to implement it, setting up a timer might be helpful. Program it to ring every 30 minutes – and when it chimes, ask yourself why you are doing the thing you’re doing. After a few days, the question will become pretty much automatic.

The reason why I recommend this questioning to you is because tempo giusto is all about you. You decide. But if your mind has become open for manipulation through marketing departments and media outlets, you will find yourself spending more time and money on these matters than you initially wanted. This is not your fault. We human beings just work like that, and the marketers know how to use this fact to their advantage. By questioning your actions, you become once again the gatekeeper of your own mind, and can take conscious decisions about what to spend your time on.

6) Experiment with information diets

The first habit I created in 2010 was an information diet. I reduced checking mails to one or two times a day, and prioritized my RSS feeds into the categories of Essentials, Maybe, News, Inspiration (mainly for photo and art blogs), and On Review (where everything new would go). I would only read the important ones every day, while leaving the others for times when I had nothing else I wanted to do. This worked so well that during March I didn’t read any feeds at all. (Actually, I didn’t even read my emails most days, which sometimes can lead to uncomfortable situations. Not sure about recommending this, then.) I may get back to it soon, though, but from now on a lot more limited than before.

Instead of only reducing the information you consume, you may even consider getting rid of one or more of the channels that blast at you. Think about it as information fasting, instead of only going on a diet. For example, I never had a TV since moving out of my parent’s house ten years ago, and I have been living for more than a year without a cellphone in Colombia. The latter will reduce costs and permit me to get lost, while the former will save a lot of time. Of course, you might also consider to drop other media and communication channels temporarily or permanently, like the web, email, Twitter or your newspaper.

7) Embrace slower communication channels

When did you receive your last hand-written letter or a handmade illustration? Probably some time ago. How did you feel then? Probably good.
Letters nowadays are an ugly thing, because they mainly consist of bills and advertising. Let’s reverse this trend and start to write beautiful letters again. Much more enjoyable than email or calls, not too expensive, and certainly a good use of the time you free by watching less TV. If you’re a lazy writer, you could also just send some photos or one of Jeb’s postcards.

Also, direct personal communication may need a revival for some of us. I got the impression that many people nowdays have hundreds of Facebook friends but seldomly talk to someone face to face – and this is truly a pity!
People tend to think that face to face communication is slower, but I’m not sure about that. Concerning emails containing jokes and humor, researchers found that more than 50% of them are misunderstood by the receiver. But even with serious mails, similar things tend to happen. Your colleague doesn’t get what you want, so you have to write him again and again, clarifying your point, and at the end you may still be at cross-purposes. It may be hard to do with your friends and acquaintances living in another country, but the next time you consider writing an email or a text message, why not talk to the receiver face to face? By talking to him directly, the clues given through non-verbal communication will make things a lot easier.

Other posts in this series:
How to Live Life at Your Own Pace: An Introduction
How to Live Life at Your Own Pace (Part 1): Your Speed of Mind

Written in four countries on two continents, this post still isn’t complete, but I decided to post it anyway and invite you to propose further additions. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, or drop me a mail at fabian (at) friendlyanarchist (dot) com!

Pirate Girl

She was a normal girl like all the others, the only difference was that this girl was obsessed with pirates. She had pirate swords, a pirate bed, and everything for her was pirates. Her parents were worried because she didn’t play with the girls but with boys. She played pirate war games. One night, when there was a big rainfall coming down, it knocked at the door: Knock, knock, knock. The girl went to look and it was the pirate Barba Roja. He asked her if she wanted to navigate with him, and the girl enthusiastically said yes.

The next day, the parents called the police to find the girl, but she never turned up again. After a few years, the girl was the capitan on a pirate ship they used to rob, fight and destroy other ships.

One night they wanted to attack a ship, but it didn’t go well and her whole crew got killed. She knew that she would die, but she continued to fight nonetheless. She got killed eventually, but she died satisfied because she died like she had always wanted to. So she stayed in history forever.

This was a short story by 13 year old Julián Rivera who lives in Ciudad Bolívar, a neighborhood in the south of Bogotá. It was originally published in the book Letras del Sur by the Bella Flor Foundation. I found it too good to miss, translated it, and decided to put it up here as an Idle Musing. Ship ahoy, pirates! Photo (cc) by Janine.