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

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When you first head off to places in the world that are a lot different from where you live, a number of things change. You have to learn to adapt.

I still make a lot of mistakes everywhere I go, but I try to learn from each of them. Here’s a short list of things I wish I knew before I started my routine of extensive overseas travel, especially in countries in Africa, South Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America that are not part of the tourist circuit.

Healthcare

1. You can legally buy safe medicine, including prescription drugs, for very little money overseas. When in Africa or Asia, I stock up on anti-malarials that cost $5 a day in Seattle. On location, it’s more like $1 for a 10-day supply.

2. The best healthcare is not in the U.S., Canada, or the U.K. The best healthcare is in places like Thailand and Costa Rica; that’s why the practice of medical tourism will continue to surge as both travel and overseas healthcare become more accessible.

Money

3. Take a lot of cash with you, and make sure the bills are new and have no writing on them. If you go to a place that accepts credit cards, then you can just redeposit the cash when you get home. It is far worse to end up short of cash with no credit card option.

4. If you do use your credit card, check the online statement at least once a week while traveling to make sure there are no fraudulent charges. Keep all your receipts, especially for large purchases such as hotel stays, and compare the amounts charged when you get back.

5. When you exchange money, hang on to the receipt you get until you’ve left the country. Once in a great while, someone at the airport will want to see proof of all your foreign exchanges.

6. The U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s currency. (In fact, some currency exchange shops will no longer accept dollars!) Travel with a stock of Euros to complement your dollars. The exceptions to this rule include some countries in Africa and Latin America that still use the dollar as their primary currency, and any country that has had a recent war.

Taxis

7. Hire a taxi outside the airport, not from the guys who approach you inside as you’re walking out. Even better, walk further outside the airport to where the taxis pull in, and you’ll get a better deal because the driver won’t have to pay the entrance fee.

8. Never assume that your taxi driver knows where your destination is. Double-check and get him to ask someone before you go if there’s any doubt.

9. The universal rule of taxi haggling, for both driver and passenger, is that once both sides agree on a fare before setting off, neither side can reopen negotiations once you’re en route. You should not try to get a better deal nor should you accept any increase in the fare from the driver after the journey has started.

10. If you have a dispute with a taxi driver and you think you are being taken advantage of, offer to call the police and have them settle it. Many taxi drivers are scared of the police, and often for good reason (see below). If they are being dishonest and you mention the police, they will quickly back down. On the other hand, if they continue to press their claim, they may be right and you’ll need to pay more.

Safety

11. The police are not always your friends. Sad but true—in a lot of places in the world, the services of the police are sold to the highest bidder. Therefore, if you can pay them, they may turn out to be your friends… but in other cases, they may actually be the least trustworthy people in the country. Don’t be afraid, just be aware.

12. When you feel pressured beyond your comfort level by someone who tries to follow you, be polite but increasingly firm. Don’t string anyone along out of guilt—tell them you don’t want their help, and move on. If they keep following you, tell them to stop.

13. When it comes to visas (and all immigration issues), your experience will vary from place to place. The rules are flexible in most places, and sometimes they will work in your favor and sometimes they will work against you.

Planes, Trains, and Buses

14. All plane tickets are changeable no matter what is written on them, and any fees for changing can be waived with the right airline agent. You have a few options for making this happen: a) Hang up and call back to try with someone else, b) Call the Premium Traveler line or ask at an airline lounge, or c) Offer a “tip” at the airline counter (do this at your own risk).

15. Round-the-World tickets are the best bargains for extensive international travel. I use and recommend both the Star Alliance and the OneWorld products. Each have their advantages. SkyTeam also has a Round-the-World product, but it’s not nearly as good as the other two.

16. Most people flying Business Class are not paying full-fare. A high percentage of them on most flights are using awards tickets, special tickets, or have upgraded from Economy. Flying in premium cabins can help you in more ways than just being comfortable on long flights, because the tickets can almost always be changed or refunded without penalty. You’ll also get to hang out in airline lounges and get priority treatment, which may become very useful when you need to get in or out of somewhere fast. First Class is nice too, but the difference between First and Business is rarely as great as the difference between Business and Economy.

17. In some places, buses are better than trains for overland travel… in other places, trains are better than buses. Check out the options before you go to make the best decision for each place.

Culture

18. The concept of personal space means very different things in different countries. You kind of have to get used to that.

19. Like it or not, you have to be somewhat tolerant of smoking. There are lots of places in the world that haven’t picked up on the Western anti-smoking crusade. If this is hard for you to accept, you’ll likely be frustrated.

20. Unless you can be very discreet, never take photos of people without asking. Don’t be surprised if they say no, because many cultures are not comfortable with strangers taking photos of them all the time. If they do say yes, you may find yourselves indebted to them for a gift or other favor.

21. Never touch members of the opposite sex. This includes sitting next to them on buses and trains—you’ll often be shuffled around to ensure that you only sit next to people of the same sex, although you’ll also usually be given the best seat.

22. Don’t point your feet at people or touch anyone on the head. In several cultures, this is disrespectful or otherwise inappropriate.

23. Be careful with all hand gestures, including the “thumbs-up” sign and the “a-OK” sign. Both of these are highly provocative in some places.

24. Never make promises you don’t intend to keep. Don’t tell vendors you’ll buy from them tomorrow, don’t offer to help anyone visit your country, don’t say you’ll write to someone later if you won’t really do it, and so on.

25. Most important: don’t be a colonialist. Be careful about calling people “locals.” Don’t assume that your culture is superior. People are not stupid just because they don’t speak English or think like you do.

Politics

26. Be prepared to represent your country, whether you care about politics or not. For better or worse, many people will expect you to know a lot about politics in your home country and how governmental decisions in one country affect the lives of people thousands of miles away. Don’t say you’re from Canada unless you really are.

27. Always point out that a government’s actions and the beliefs of an individual (e.g., yourself) are not always the same. Most people understand this and some will even say the same thing without prompting, but it’s usually a good reminder to put forward.

28. No matter who you are talking to, never say anything negative about the government of the country you are in. Many rogue states, from Zimbabwe to Iran to North Korea, employ English-speaking spies who will deliberately try to incite foreign visitors into saying something incriminating. (I’m not making this up. In Guinea I was followed by the Secret Service everywhere I went. A friend of mine went to North Korea and found an extensive tape recording system in his hotel room.)

***

Lastly, remember that there are not many “undiscovered” places left in the world. Focus on the places that are undiscovered to you and you won’t go wrong.

Obviously, each place you go to will offer unique challenges, but following this list will get you off to a good start. Above all, don’t forget the cardinal rule of traveling—pack light. You really don’t need all the extra stuff.

Feel free to add your own advice or tips in the comments section.

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Photo credit: Elbeardo

This is a lesson on how to look absolutely ridiculous in front of a crowd of strangers, and how to recover as gracefully as possible. Well, let’s clarify that a bit: the first part is easy, since I am constantly making stupid mistakes all over the world and trying to minimize the embarrassment. I have no shortage of experience in the dumb-things-I’ve-done-in-random-countries department.

The second part of the lesson is more important: how to recover from your own Most Embarrassing Moment. Anyone can do stupid things, as I tell myself pretty much every time I travel and get lost somewhere. It’s the brave ones who are able to recover.

I decided to tell this story because I was talking to a friend the other day who recently had her own Most Embarrassing Moment. I told her this story, and she smiled a little. You know who you are.

So, enough procrastinating. Here you have it – how to look like a complete idiot in a foreign setting.

The setting for my Most Embarrassing Moment was Singapore.

I arrived in the city state of Singapore from Bangkok after visiting Burma (Myanmar) for several days. The trip to Burma was good—I’ll write about it at some point later.

It terms of price, Singapore is a mid-ranged city; it’s not super-expensive like Tokyo, but it’s not as cheap as Hong Kong either. I had booked a room at the local YMCA, which in Singapore is more like a hotel than a hostel. It was a nice room with my own shower, internet access, and free breakfast in the mornings. I spent the days wandering the city like I always do, and just as in Hong Kong, a lot of the wandering in Singapore takes place in malls and connected shopping centers.

One of these shopping centers was on Orchard Road, right outside the YMCA. I ended up there in the afternoon after taking the metro to various places around the city. I don’t always eat lunch when I’m traveling, but I almost never miss my afternoon coffee break.

There are a lot of Starbucks in Singapore—this guy can tell you exactly how many and where they are. They’re just like “home” in most places, but also serve local items. Thus I ended up at the Orchard Road Starbucks, where I looked forward to taking my coffee back over to the YMCA for an hour of reading.

I went inside, thankful for the a/c since Singapore is usually very hot. I ordered a café au lait, which for some reason is called something different in each country in the world (what’s with that, Starbucks?), and picked it up from the counter.

Then, a funny thing happened to me on the way out of the building. A glass door came out of the middle of nowhere and walked right into me.

Some of the many observers who witnessed this attack might say that I walked into the glass, but I’ll always know better. It was a fully-transparent glass door, and I swear it just appeared there all of a sudden. One moment I’m walking out of the Starbucks into the warm sunny day, and in the next moment, I’m staring at a coffee-covered glass door that came out of the sky to block my exit. My head hurt, and I dropped my bag.

At first I was in shock. What had just happened?

Then I looked down and saw my coffee on the floor, and looked up to see a glass door that wasn’t there before. I also saw a door handle, which apparently I was supposed to pull to open instead of attempting to magically walk through. Who knew?

I swear if there was someone there with a video camera that day, this incident would be all over YouTube. Thankfully, it was just me and a bunch of surprised Singaporeans. I could hear all kinds of people talking about me as I backed away from the wall of glass that had just come out of nowhere to block my exit.

“Did that guy just walk into the door?” someone said. “Oh my God,” said someone else.

Yes, it was that bad. When people could tell I was okay, they started to laugh. I looked up at them and tried to smile as I was cleaning my coffee off the floor and the brand-new glass door. As quick as I could, and as gracefully as I could—which wasn’t saying much by then—I got out of the building and walked away.

I went back across the street to the YMCA, where I drank the remaining half of my coffee that survived the accident. This café au lait is very well mixed now, I thought.

Later that night, I went back outside, and looked at my nemesis across the street. The evil glass door. Okay, I thought. It’s over now. What can I possibly learn from this?

The 5-Step Recovery Process

It goes like this. First, admit you have a problem… no, not that list.

Okay, try this one:

1. Put yourself together as quickly as possible. I had a few napkins in my hand, so I used one to wipe up some of the coffee and milk that was all over the door and the floor.

2. Laugh at yourself even though it’s not funny at all. It’s really not funny when it happens to you, but if you laugh, other people will feel more free to laugh. And then it’s like they’re laughing with you, although of course they’re not.

3. Never go back to the same Starbucks. OR, you can do it this way:

4. Force yourself to go back to the same place in an effort to break the jinx. Just remember to watch out for the door!

5. Use your embarrassing moment to help someone else, such as I’m doing here. I hope it’s helpful to you on your next visit to a glass-doored coffee shop somewhere in the world.

***

I won’t be so cruel as to ask you to think about your own embarrassing moments. Instead, I’ll ask you to think about your goals for world domination (or whatever they are). Recovering from stupid mistakes is crucial to living a life of adventure, because if you set out to do great things, you’ll probably have a few big falls as well.

I tried to forget about that afternoon on Orchard Road for as long as I could. But when I heard my friend’s embarrassing story the other day, it came right back into my mind.

I expect to be back in Singapore sometime in the summer, and I’ll probably stay in the YMCA again. It does a great free breakfast. But as to whether I’ll visit the Starbucks across the street or not, I’m really not sure.

If you ever go there yourself, watch out for the glass door. And when you fall down somewhere else, brush it off and keep going.

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Two weeks ago, I wrote about the financial payoff of following your passion. If you deliberately take steps to do the work you love instead of the work you don’t enjoy, most of us would agree that you’ll feel a lot better about yourself.

But will you also make more money?

This is a controversial issue, so I asked some of the writers I read on a regular basis to chime in with their thoughts. The list of respondents includes:

• Leo Babuata, writer at ZenHabits.net
• Tim Clark, founder and writer at Soul Shelter
• Naomi Dunford, small business owner and writer at IttyBiz.com
• Mignon Fogarty, host of the very cool Grammar Girl podcast (#1 on iTunes for Educational Podcasts)
• J.D. Roth, finance guy at GetRichSlowly.org
• Darren Rowse, professional blogger
• Gretchen Rubin, author, attorney, and happiness blogger
• John Wesley, founder and writer at PicktheBrain.com

First of all, I follow what each of these people have to say on a regular basis, and I have learned a lot from them… so if you are interested in any of their topics, go and check out their sites.

I asked each writer what they thought about the original essay, and also about the concept of “following your passion” in general.

Here’s what they had to say about each subject:

Mignon Fogarty, AKA Grammar Girl:

On financial success following you-

I think it is much harder to be successful if you aren’t doing something you love because success takes time and commitment, and those are easier to give if you’re happy and engaged in your job.

On following your passion to the bank-

I think it’s a myth. There are all kinds of people who follow their passion and don’t make a lot of money. Some even go bankrupt. Having passion and loving something don’t guarantee that you’re good at it or that it will make a successful business.

A personal story-

Before I launched the successful Grammar Girl podcast, I was the host of a science podcast called Absolute Science. I loved doing that show and I was passionate about it. I actually put more effort into promoting that show than I did for the Grammar Girl podcast, and although Absolute Science was well-received, after doing it for nearly a year it was clear that the show was never going to make enough money to make it worth the time required to produce it.

***

Darren Rowse, ProBlogger Extraordinaire:

On financial success following you-

It’s a tough one - I’d like to answer that it’s a secret to financial success to do something you love but I can think of plenty of people who are financially successful who hate what they do. For me it’s certainly true - I can’t believe that I get paid to do what I’d do (and what I did for ages) for free but there’s plenty of people making good money by doing work that they don’t enjoy.

On following your passion to the bank-

I think it can be true - but what if you love doing something that there is just no economic sense in?

(Update: Darren’s book about problogging is now available on Amazon)

***

John Wesley, self-improvement guru:

On financial success following you-

I think it makes perfect sense, but it took me a while to realize why. The better you are at what you do, the more financial success you’ll achieve. For example, the world’s best artist makes much more money than a mediocre banker, although on average, banking is a much more lucrative profession.

The key to financial success is being absolutely great at what you do, and you’ll never be great at something you don’t love.

On following your passion to the bank-

I think there is truth to it, but it’s also a bit dangerous. Simply following a passion won’t help you build income unless you develop it as a business. You need to actively look for opportunities to create value with your passions. You need to use them to help others, instead of just indulging yourself.

A personal story-

With PickTheBrain there was definitely a turning point where it went from being about what I wanted to what the readers wanted. This attitude has been a big part of our success in growing the site.

***

Gretchen Rubin, Happiness Scholar:

On financial success following you-

Studies show us that perhaps the KEY to true mastery is the will to practice and to persist. In other words, if you want to be good at something, it helps a lot if you enjoy it and want to stick to it! I started out my work life as a lawyer, and I was successful. I was editor-in-chief of Yale Law School’s law review, and I clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.  But in my free time, though, I was writing books “for fun,” not studying caselaw. Finally it hit me: I should do as my JOB what I did for FUN, because I’d be willing to put in the enormous amount of hours necessary to achieve the greatest mastery I could.

On following your passion to the bank-

The problem with pursuing a job for the money is that in most cases, the big money comes only if you achieve a certain stature or goal. If you don’t hit that target, you don’t get the money – and you haven’t much enjoyed the time you’ve spent in pursuit. If you follow a passion, you’ll enjoy your life as you’re working to achieve your goal, so if you don’t hit it, you won’t have spent all that time in vain.

Also, I’ve noticed something. When people are doing something they enjoy, they figure things out more easily. They challenge themselves more. They’re more curious. They remember information better. They make social connections more easily. These things tend to make success more likely, and therefore, they make money more likely.

***

Naomi Dunford from IttyBiz:

On financial success following you-

I believe that passion and money belong in the same sentence, but not quite so close together. Do what you love, do it very well, be prepared to accept appropriate payment for it, let people know what you’re doing and that you’re excellent at it, and then — at the very least — a sustenance level of money will follow.

On following your passion to the bank-

This might make me the bad guy, but I don’t believe that passion inherently begets money. I believe that passion makes it far easier to navigate the hurdles that come between you and money. The mountain standing in your way is a lot easier to climb when you’re passionate. If you’re not passionate you look at the mountain, realize how big it is, say “Screw it, I don’t give a shit anymore,” and then tell your friends and family that the mountain was too high. Uh, no.

A personal story-

I got into marketing because I can’t not be in marketing — I’m totally unemployable in every other capacity. Long before I even considered consulting I read marketing books on the bus, in the bath, in bed. I would rant and rage and scream about lousy marketing and bad copy and how I could have done it better myself. Then I read some more books. Lo and behold, if you read every marketing book in print, you tend to get pretty good at it. When I got good people started paying me. Now I make far more than my husband and I made combined when we were out in day jobs. So yeah, in my case, B followed A.

***

Leo Babuata from Zen Habits:

On financial success following you-

Well, it’s definitely possible to gain financial success without doing what you love. Many people have. However, I think your odds go up greatly if you do love what you do — you’re more likely to do it with passion, to put all of your energy into it, to stick to it longer than you would doing something you don’t enjoy. So if I were to put odds on financial success, I’d pick the guy who loves what he does and works with great passion.

On following your passion to the bank-

It sounds a bit too much like a guaranteed statement. I don’t agree that it’s a sure thing, but as I said, you have better odds if you follow your passion. I’d change it to something like, “Follow your passion, and don’t worry about the money. You’ll be happier, and you’ll give yourself a better chance at the money.” It’s not as catchy, though.

A personal story-

My blogging is an example. I didn’t start blogging so that I could make money. I thought that would be nice, but I did it because I love it. And I still do, and I still blog with passion. However, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to make a living doing what I love–I did it for passion, and the money did follow.

J.D. Roth from Get Rich Slowly:

On financial success following you-

Well, I’m not convinced there’s a strong correlation. I think that financial success can be related to doing what you love, but it’s not always the case. I have friends who love to teach, but they’re never going to get rich at it. I have friends who hate their jobs but make a killing.

I think it’s more apt to say that happiness is related to doing what you love. My friends who teach are happy; my friends who hate their high-paying jobs are not. I’m a strong proponent of “following your bliss,” but it does take some creativity to make it pay off sometimes.

On following your passion to the bank-

‘Do what you love and the money will follow’ sounds good, and I certainly encourage people to give it a shot, but I don’t think it’s a given. If I hadn’t done what I loved with Get Rich Slowly (and my other blogs), I would never have known if there were money there or not. I’m glad I gave it a shot. I think other people should pursue their dreams, too.

A personal story-

Get Rich Slowly is a perfect example of the principle in action. I’ve always loved writing. I’ve been blogging regularly for seven years (and writing on the web for more than that). I’ve kept at it with passion, and now I make enough to support myself full-time. Blogging is no way to get rich — slowly or otherwise — but it is a way for me to live a fulfilling life.

Tim Clark from Soul Shelter:

Financial success is related to passion, and passion derives from doing what we love. But the world isn’t entirely under our control, so we’ll do well to modify our definition of “financial success” as we pursue what we love.

I choose to believe it, with the eyes-open caveat that the amount of money that comes may be quite modest!

(Update: Tim’s post on Opting Out of the Deferred Life Plan will go up later today. Good stuff there.)

***

And here’s some final thoughts from Naomi at IttyBiz:

“I am thoroughly convinced of one thing — if you do what you love, happiness and a better life will follow. You will have financial security, but it might not come in the flavor you’re used to.

Maybe you’ll sell paintings for a hundred grand a pop. Maybe you’ll rustle yourself up a patroness. Maybe you’ll spend the morning in your loft teaching three-year-olds how to finger paint, enabling yourself to spend the next 10 hours channeling your inner Pollock and not worrying about selling out. Maybe you’ll be happy eating brown rice on your brother’s couch because it’s better than working for The Man. Whatever. It all gets figured out in the end.”

That’s a great wrap-up—thank you, Naomi. I had my own ending ready to go, but I like yours better.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the roundup! Participants and readers, I welcome your further comments below.

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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!)

It is absolutely true that freedom is the greatest thing about self-employment. Make no mistake—I personally wouldn’t trade this benefit for just about anything.

However—you’ve probably guessed this was coming—there is another side to the freedom that successful self-employment brings. Here are several problems many entrepreneurs encounter as they step out of traditional employment and into their own vision of work.

• Your friends and family members who work at traditional jobs won’t understand. They see only the benefits of your entrepreneurial life and none of the costs and risks.They may expect you to be available all the time. If you don’t take personal calls or use Instant Messenger during the day so you can focus on your work, they may get annoyed and wonder “what else you could be doing.”

• Once you achieve initial success, it’s tempting to coast for a while. If you freelance and just had a big project last month, you may feel worn down and need to take it easy for a while. The key lesson is not to let this down time go on forever. Business markets, especially markets dependent on Internet services, can often change rapidly. You need to find a way to keep advancing, even if the pace is slow.

• There’s no time sheet, but there’s also no IT department to fix your computer problems. When the network stops working, it’s your problem. If your emails aren’t being sent or the web site goes down, at the very least you have to get the process in motion to fix it. In fact, virtually none of the support structure you are used to at a traditional job will not be there when you are on your own. You have to figure out health insurance, which is no small problem. Even if an accountant prepares your tax return, you usually have to think about taxes more than you would probably like to.

• The crises are all yours for the managing. Ideally, you should minimize the crisis management and focus on important work that builds your business, but this is easier said than done. When you are responsible, there is no one else to turn to. If you’re not careful and don’t build good systems for your business, you can easily become a full-time crisis manager. Even if you’re a great crisis manager, crises don’t usually pay very well compared to the normal activities of a business. When no one else is doing the sales and marketing and you spend your time putting out fires, income will go down and stress will go up.

• Too much flexibility in scheduling will kill your productivity. Some entrepreneurs are uncomfortable with the idea of structure because they are naturally opposed to traditional models of work. But structure that enables you to excel is a good thing. Figure out what this is—when do you do your best work, and what do you need to do it?—and set up your own time schedule. You can always adjust it to meet changing needs, but don’t throw it out entirely.

Thankfully, there are several ongoing steps you can take to offset these challenges. A few of them that I have focused on in my life and work, to varying degrees of success, are below.

1. Simply decide to stop doing stuff. It seems paradoxical, but if you keep putting something off, you may be better off to just decide not to do it at all. The mental energy you use to keep looking at it all the time will take away from other activities that may be more important. Do yourself a big favor when confronting an activity that stresses you out: either deal with it and get it done, or make an active decision not to. You may be surprised how often this works. Ask yourself, “What is the worst thing that can happen if I don’t do this?”

2. Understand what motivates you, and structure your work around those motivations. If you are doing work you are passionate about, which is usually pretty important, this should be easy. Be aware of “why” you are working each day instead of doing something else. One warning: be careful about choosing money as a primary motivation. There’s nothing wrong with earning money, but it’s more important to understand what you really want and how your work contributes to or takes away from the path to achieving your goals.

3. Improve your personal productivity skills, including planning and implementation. Both of these skill sets are critical when you are self-employed. Planning skills include both short- and long-term goal setting. What do you want to accomplish this year? How will you make divide the progress toward those goals each month, each week, and then each day? Implementation skills are often known as “getting things done” tactics, and you need these to know how you will move closer to your goals in the midst of many competing demands on your time. Making improvements in these areas will usually make a measurable difference on your work.

4. Delegate or outsource. Find others to help you and pay them for it.There’s no good excuse not to, although there are lots of bad excuses that I have used before. Delegation is the art of assigning tasks or projects to a subordinate. Outsourcing is the practice of assigning entire responsibilities to an outside contractor. Both of these practices can make self-employment life a lot easier. (There is also a flip side to outsourcing, however, and we’ll look at that later.)

5. Take a vacation. When I’m in the U.S., I usually work at least six days a week, although I don’t work the whole day on Saturday, and I include time during the week for activities that help me relax. However, from time to time I feel my energy and focus slipping, and I find that I need a longer time away from work. I travel to more than 20 countries a year, and not all of my travel is for vacation, but I do try to take at least one week of “real vacation” every year, usually in December. This also serves as a natural time of reflection on the past year and planning for the next one.

6. Build a better working environment. If you’re working from home, you need a personal, comfortable workspace. It should not be shared with anyone else whenever possible. You need a good computer, a good chair, a good printer, good lighting, and anything else that you know you need for your business. You are the best judge of what you need, so figure it out and get it.

***

Freedom is truly the greatest benefit of being self-employed, but don’t forget to address the challenges that go with it.

I get up at 6:00 a.m. most days, but last night I was out with some friends and didn’t get to bed until after 11:00. I slept a bit later than I had planned, and didn’t make it in to my office until 8:30. No one was waiting for me and I had no explanation to give.

At 2:00 p.m. most days this week, I’ll probably stop working and go to a coffee shop to read and journal until 4:00. This is the normal routine for me, and not a nice exception in a week of full-time work. Later in the week I’ll take off a whole day to help a friend with moving. It’s no problem at all, and as long as I structure my projects well, my income should not suffer as a result.

But to create this ideal world, I have to watch out for the flip side to self-employment freedom. The flip side involves all kinds of distractions that threaten to hinder our efficiency and effectiveness. If you’re self-employed or interested in being self-employed in the future, take care that you do the same. The rewards are too great to lose.

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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.

The strategy is best separated between the outward response (how you respond to your critics) and the inward response (what you decide to actually do, and how you deal with being criticized).

The Outward Response

Most of the times you respond to critics, you should be reasonably polite. Force yourself to smile, and thank the person for sharing their opinion with you. It’s not always their fault—just remember that most people are threatened by revolutionary ideas. Once in a while they may even be right, so be sure you consider whether that is a possibility before writing it off.

Other times, you should fight back. Your response shouldn’t usually be that strong, because negative thinkers can only rarely be persuaded to change their minds. Rather, your goal is just to stand your ground, making it clear that you believe in your goals and worldview, and won’t be taken down so easily. Tell them why they’re wrong, but do it in a subtle way.

You can also choose more direct confrontation, but realize that you may be crucified for this strategy. Remember Martin Luther, the original one, when he was on trial for his life in the year 1520. Luther was asked if he would recant his unconventional writing. He took the question seriously and asked for a day to think about it. The next day he returned to the stand. His famous response, before being sentenced to death, made it clear that he wouldn’t back down:

I can and will not retract, for it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.”

The Inward Response

Regardless of whether you shake the dust off your feet or strike back, your inward response to negativity should be the same. You IGNORE the critics, and do EXACTLY what you had planned. That’s it.

Okay, there are a couple of other things. First, you have to deal with the inner stress of being alone. You’re not actually alone most of the time—lots of other people are dealing with the same kinds of challenges—but it certainly feels that way when you’re under attack.

Secondly, you need a way to monitor your progress. When you’re working towards something important and facing opposition along the way, you need to know you’re on the way track. You do that with setting sub-goals—smaller accomplishments that lead to your big goal—and having regular times of reviewing how things are going.

You can do this with a spreadsheet (I track my annual goals that way and use a quarterly review system), a journal, another master document, or whatever project management system works best for you. The point is you need to check in fairly often to maintain your own motivation when the going gets tough.

Excuses, excuses…

The funny thing about critics is that they aren’t usually persuaded by experience. You’d think that as time goes by and you prove yourself to be right, they would acknowledge this. But it rarely happens that way. More often than not, the critics will find new things to criticize. All of a sudden, they’ll say your accomplishments don’t mean anything—even though earlier they implied otherwise by saying it couldn’t be done. They’ll say you didn’t follow the rules, so therefore your accomplishments are invalid.

In short, you’ll usually hear a lot of excuses even when you succeed. It’s the classic sign of a critic, and rare is the person who calls you up and says, “You know, I was wrong about that. Good job.” Instead, you’ll usually have more of the same complaints, except then you’ll know that recognition from the critics is not a reward worth seeking. Just let it go, and live the life you want.

If you want to change the world, excuses have no place in your life. Leave them to the critics, because they will need them when you’re finished. Now get to work! The world is waiting.

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