The Art of Non-Conformity: Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work, and Travel

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U.S. Passport by GravityWave

This post is relevant for readers with U.S. passports who travel frequently. If you don’t fit in that group, feel free to skip this one – or just read it for the entertainment value.

I’ve mentioned a few times that I have two U.S. passports, and each time at least one person asks me how that works. Well, I’ll you exactly how I got the second passport, and what you need to do if this would help you as well.

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New Year’s in Seattle - Image by Sea Turtle

Happy New Year’s!

I hope you enjoyed the festivities. Now, it’s time to start the year. Everyone else is taking three more days off, so if you get started today, you’ll be way ahead.

Here’s a couple of short notes in the context of good news / bad news:

1. It doesn’t matter what happened last year.

If 2008 was terrible for you, good news — it’s all over. You can walk away from the accident and start all over with a new life.

Likewise, if 2008 was incredible for you, well, the year is still over. Put it in the scrapbook. You now have to be remarkable all over again.

2. Every year, people make resolutions, some of which are actually kept.

I have nothing against resolutions, but before you decide to quit smoking, exercise more, or anything else, I recommend answering the following questions:

• How will my life be different 364 days from now?
• Will I have accomplished my significant goals?
• How will these goals be measured?
• Will I have radically helped others?

You could spend some time on that, or you could chill out for the weekend and start the New Year with everyone else on January 5th. It’s up to you, but one thing’s for sure: ready or not, a new chance has arrived this weekend.

Happy New Year’s, everyone.

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A Brief Guide To World Domination

Unconventional Guides:

Working for Yourself: Creating Personal Freedom
Discount Airfare: Surviving Stress and Maximizing Fun

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Courtesy of the Great Fail Blog

In the Annual Review outline, I wrote about a couple of the objections I hear from people who don’t like goal-setting:

Won’t something else come along and change my plan? and What if I end up hating the plan I’ve made?

The short answer to those questions is that neither possibility is likely to occur, but if it does, that’s OK – you simply adapt the plan to something else due to the changing circumstances. No problem.

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How to Manage Your Money by Austin Kleon

Here’s a good question: how much money is enough? What do we need to have in order to meet our needs and help us be happy?

As I completed my Annual Review recently, I finalized a choice I had been pondering for a while. The choice was whether I should continue scrambling to earn a good living as an entrepreneur while writing on the side, or to go “all in” with the project I believed in more – writing full-time.

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