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

If you're new here, you may want to learn what this site is about. I encourage you to subscribe to my RSS feed or sign up for free email updates. Thanks for visiting!

Image: VirginAtlantic.com

Why are most airport departure lounges so terrible? In short, it’s because the airlines want to ensure that premium flyers receive better treatment than the regular people. If everyone were allowed “amenities” like friendly staff and clean restrooms, then no one would want to pay more money to upgrade to a higher class of service.

Tim Harford has a nice essay about this in his Underground Economist book, and persuasively argues that airlines even go out of their way to provide bad service to Economy travelers so that their Premium travelers receive “better” service. In other words, says Harford, a lot of Premium flyers travel in First Class not because it’s wonderful (especially on domestic flights; it’s usually not), but out of fear of being mistreated so badly in Coach. This process naturally extends to the way that travelers are treated in airports, including access to the lounges.

Read the rest of this entry »

Entrepreneurs are a diverse bunch of people, but when you ask them to tell you the greatest benefit of being self-employed, you’ll usually hear the same answer over and over. That answer is FREEDOM, and rightly so. When you work for yourself, no one tells you what to do—at least not in the same way a boss would.

Even if you freelance or have clients or customers, those people don’t usually set your hours for you, tell you what to wear, approve your vacations, or any of the other hassles you deal with at a “real” job.There’s no time sheet to fill out, and no H.R. department hounding you for staff reviews. Presumably, there are a lot less useless meetings too. (If you set your own useless meetings with staff, suppliers, or clients, that’s your fault!)

Read the rest of this entry »

Public Domain Image

As part of your independent-minded journey, many people will oppose you along the way. Some will oppose you by saying that you “can’t” do the things you’ve planned. Others will try to impose their own arbitrary rules on you. Others will be jealous of your success and try to bring you down to the level of average.

Having a strategy to deal with all of these critics is critical.

Without a strategy, you’ll have a lot more stress and doubt. The critics may even succeed in bringing you down. With the right strategy, you’ll rest easy knowing that you won’t be taken out so easily. Possible options for your own strategy include ignoring, confronting, presenting yourself as above the level of discussion, diffusing the argument… or something else, but whatever you choose, you do need a strategy.

Read the rest of this entry »

In 2007 I visited 26 countries, including 15 that were new to me. This year I hope to be on track for at least that many, although as the years go by it will become more and more difficult to get to the “new” places.

For the past two years, almost all of my overseas travel has been by myself. Once I get to a starting point, I sometimes travel with others that I meet along the way, but most of the time, it’s just me. One of the things I realized along the way, whether through my 100 Countries or an SUV experience, one of my many overnight flights from Africa, or somewhere else, is that the actual process of traveling is critical to appreciating travel itself.

Read the rest of this entry »

I read a lot of personal development books—probably at least two a month. Like most books of any kind, each one usually has some things worth learning and some things that aren’t valuable to me.

If there is one common theme to most of these books, it is that “following your passion” – or doing what you love to do—is the most important work we can focus on in life. According to this thinking, work should involve a number of things you really like to do and are really good at, not simply a series of tasks you do to make a living.

So far, so good, right? But sometimes the thinking goes even further. Not only will you feel better about yourself and provide more value to others, you’ll also end up making more money.

Read the rest of this entry »