* "I like staying at home." - This is another way of saying,
"I'm afraid of change and different experiences."*
Bullshit. I find travel very stressful, and none of it is due to fear of change and different experiences. It comes from living out of a suitcase, having to re-buy all the toiletries and crap I have at home but forgot to bring, and being away from my wife and dogs who I enjoy spending time with.
Just remember: don't like != am afraid of I don't like buttermilk biscuits. That doesn't mean I wake up sweating in the night screaming that they're coming to get me.
Every trip abroad has one week of suck at the beginning and one week of suck at the end. You need to acclimate & buy toothbrushes when you get there, and you need to stress a bit about the real world before you come back. That's a given.
So given that, if all you ever do is little 2-3 week trips then pretty much all your time abroad is smack in the middle of that suck zone.
Imagine, however, that you went away for 9 months. Now that little bit of suck that you describe is relegated to a noise at the ends. In the middle lies the good part. And it really is that good.
Sounds like you've never actually committed, so you've never reaped the rewards. Give it a try sometime and report back!
Travel is stressful, no doubt. But the stress of travel can be minimized with some planning. For example, use a checklist to make sure you pack your toiletries. Print out all your travel related information and keep it in a folder. Dress in such a way that streamlines your way through security.
As for the wife and dog, I'm of no help. :) It sounds as though your travel is work-related, though, so maybe there's some added stress by association.
Meh. Travel is overrated. The chances of you actually learning anything of substance by running around from one exotic country to another are very slim indeed.
Staying in another country for a substantial amount of time, on the other hand, is of course an entirely different matter but travelling for the sake of travelling, while pleasurable in and of itself, does not teach you anything you couldn't have learned from a brochure about the places you're visiting.
"...does not teach you anything you couldn't have learned from a brochure about the places you're visiting."
Sorry, That's not right. It's funny that you say it, specially when you have no stories to support. Perhaps, you confuse travel with being a tourist. Travelling is a different ball game than being a tourist - going by the brochures, paying the entry fee to the biggest shoe in the world and then hitting the bar in the evening and catching the flight back home. Travelling is not going to Disney-world. Travelling is even living at a place for an unplanned amount of time.
context- i met many 'travellers' in the past week - during a visit to a remote part of china. me and wife didn't go to the touristy parts of the area. Infact spent a day just sitting and listening to nature. Among them, I met this european couple (with kids) who are living there to save enough money to make to the next goal - RVing across Americas. I met this couple who travelled all around and found their funds depleted in Malaysia and so they have been working there to save money..until the next step. There was this one guy from Norway who worked super hard last year to just travel 6 months (mostly by land). Travellers don't go by brochure, they go by recommendations by other travellers. And mostly all 'travellers' try to avoid flights to the extreme (even taking a van across the Gobi desert)
I actually asked blunt questions(with prior permission) about their learning/philosophy/future plans..etc(even their kids)..too long to post here. But I will say this - they do learn - actually continuous learning, learning from cultures, respecting people, not being judgemental(do you the see the homeless man and the bentley salesman in the same way, talk the same way?)..many more things.
Apologies, but I am surprised that many people 'agree' with you without your giving your 'proofs'.
How much you learn is dependent on how willing you are to put yourself out there, even if only for a brief period of time. While I prefer to travel for longer periods of time, I certainly will not knock a two week trip through Europe. You can learn and experience a lot with the right attitude and outlook.
To attempt an analogy fitting for this forum, saying that it "does not teach you anything you couldn't have learned from a brochure" is like saying there is no sense in starting your own company when you could simply work for one that already exists. Creating a company is much different than working for a company. Much like being in a place is a lot different that reading a brochure about it. All the things that make creating a company a valuable experience are the same things that make traveling a valuable experience: all the little details, the hurdles, the hassles, taking a leap, getting there.
Double Meh. Traveling is definitely overrated. Nonconformity != Traveling. The perks of travelling just to "see" new places is novel, but gets old fast. If you've travelled a lot, you get to see the hoards of backpackers and tourists that swarm to the usual (and usual unusual) destinations, and it starts to get lame, fast.
And I'd agree mtts that you don't "learn" much about just visiting a country. Sure, you may "see" what a town or city is like, but you're just reading the cover, not the book.
I moved to New Zealand just for the heck of it with my family, and lived there for almost 3 years. Everyone that visits there gives the same 'ol schpiel... "Oh, it's so beautiful there. It's where the Lord of the Rings was filmed! It's the greenest place I've ever been, and is so environmentally friendly". Everytime I heard that, I could only let out a hugh sigh. They visited and didn't "learn" anything. New Zealand dust crops their entire countryside with poison (1080, which is illegal in the US) quite often, and is "not" very environmentally progressive. Their marketing department, however, is quite progressive!
Why should you learn something of substance for it to be worthwhile? You dismiss the diverse life experiences you'll gain, even as a tourist. Not everything has to have an educational or financial pay off. Sometimes just being somewhere else is its own reward.
The chances of you actually learning anything of substance by running around from one exotic country to another are very slim indeed.
Compared to, say, sitting in a cubicle for the same amount of time? I'd put my money on Travel.
Being on the road accelerates your life. Things happen faster, and more things happen. You'll need half an hour to explain to somebody what you did yesterday. When I'm living in the 'states, saving up for the next trip, I can often sum up an entire month in about 5 minutes.
It's just night and day. I'd suggest you try spending a year on the road & let us know if you learn anything.
certainly longer is better but every trip offers a chance to learn something - and not the trivia that can be found in brochures. traveling supplies a nearly complete change of context for your brain and if it is turned on change will certainly occur (i.e. growth). differences in customs, architecture and language are extremely inspiring.; many of the best lessons are indirect and stem from thought provoking experiences akin to brainstorming rather than the accumulation of data.
Every time I travel I come home incredibly thankful for the opportunities I've had in my life. Certainly my perspective on those opportunities is relative, but the gratitude presents itself nonetheless. Feel free to claim travel is "overrated" and lacking of "substance". I will gladly continue to travel and I will be delighted to know I will be meeting one less ungrateful tourist along my way.
Indeed. As it relates to hacking and productivity (which, I realise, is hardly the focus of the post), I shared my thoughts in a submission previously:
I am not a big traveler, so I am probably wrong, but in a way, traveling seems kind of passive to me. Sure, you get to see lots of things, but seeing (and learning) is passive. How am I going to change the world doing that? I would need some kind of spin to it, like at least being a successful travel writer or something. Otherwise, what are the USEFUL experiences to make?
Would be great if some travelers could share what useful experiences they made?
Although one thing in the article made me think: I'd really like to visit Sillicon Valley, experiencing the culture there might actually be useful to me.
Traveling, like most other activities, really is contingent on how much work you put into it. Traveling passively is easy to do and essentially useless. You go somewhere else, rapidly seek out the things that make you comfortable, and then sit there bothered by how these approximations don't quite make you as comfortable as you would have been if you never left. You might go try the tourist gig a little, snap some pictures to prove to your friends and family you were wherever, and then go and hide some more.
It seems hyperbolic, but go to any practically and hostel in a developed city worldwide and you'll find a group of Americans doing just that (not to mention other debaucheries).
Traveling actively is basically the exact opposite of that. It takes research, bravery, spontaneity, social skill, and a boat load of curiosity. When you travel like this though you can paint yourself into entirely new environments and see the ways you expand, you can look back into the ways you live normally and then pick and choose the parts you like the most. In this way you can actively change your own world and certainly put yourself in a better place to continue making positive changes.
Most immediately: you'll soften your bias and become aware of the biases of others, you'll understand the traditions of your culture and be better able to interpret their necessity or value, you'll become experienced in some other culture able to interpret things through a slightly different point of view. Together these things can be used to vastly improve your home or can become skills to help you change the world.
Of course, if you want to travel and at that very moment do some active changing, you may want to try something like Peace Corps, Doctors/Engineers Without Borders, or other world health initiatives. You should be careful though because if you don't have the experience which can let you isolate your own cultural biases a little then you may get connected with some group which will inhibit your ability to learn. In my opinion, this is the trap which things like mission trips fall into and, as an effect, they may become some kind of mixture of harm and benefit.
For US citizens, Peace Corps is one way to meet both of those goals. For people from other countries, there are similar organizations in many countries, and some that accept volunteers from almost anywhere (such as VSO and UN Volunteers).
Volunteers spend a long time in their host country, and really get to see things in depth (not just the tourist view).
Volunteers also get a chance to "change the world". Usually not in a particularly grand way, but a little education and inspiration can have a lot of ripple effects.
Of course, being based overseas, and having a fair amount of vacation time, volunteers also have opportunities to visit other interesting places and countries near their host sites.
Getting a reasonable living allowance and government-sponsored benefits sweetens the deal, but of course it doesn't offer nearly as much freedom as simply quitting your job and hopping on a plane.
I solo road tripped the lower 48 and it was one of the best learning experiences of my life. A few of the lessons that can be applied to entrepreneurship that had nothing to do with what I saw but rather the journey:
Flexibility, adaptability, and dealing with uncertainty -
Things never go as planned when long-term traveling to the point that sometimes it is better not to have a plan, but rather pick a general direction and adapt. Same goes for your business plan, especially when developing new technologies in unproven markets. You don’t know enough to be able to plan out the details. A lot of times the random unplanned things end up being the best. Run with random even if you don’t understand it.
Dealing with the highs and the lows –
One day you’re on top of the world feeling accomplished after you hike up a mountain. I’m queen of world! The next day it is raining, your feet are covered in blisters, you’re feeling run down, you have a cold coming on, your tent has a leak, and you are alone in the middle of nowhere eating yet another granola bar. But eventually the sun while shine again, your cold will go away, and you’ll be on your next exciting adventure. Kind of like – One day you are full of enthusiasm for your new feature that is going to change the world! The next day (make that weeks) you are dealing with bugs, angry customers, anxious investors, getting no sleep and living in a dump eating yet another bowl of beans and rice. Fortunately something good will happen eventually to balance it out if you can ride out the storm. Life is cyclical.
*Going solo is crazy hard at times...you need to build a team that compliments and balances –
I solo road tripped and camped most of the time. I totally recommend solo travel because it will stretch you way beyond your limits and you’ll experience tremendous amounts of personal growth because it is crazy hard at times. But eventually you’ll get sick of going it alone - worn out from shouldering all the work and having no one to celebrate with except some strangers you just met. You need a team (travel companions or founders/partners/employees) that compliments each other. My typical group travel adventure goes something like this - I’ll lead a kayak expedition in the Everglades, get everyone there and paddling through the mangroves with alligators, but I’ll forget to pack lunch. As cool as it would be to have another rockstar kayaker along what I really need is someone who can make sandwiches. And not just the crappy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I would throw together. Like fancy sandwiches with Dijon mustard made by a rockstar sandwich maker.
Those are just a few things I learned (or at least reinforced) through traveling around the country that can be applied to entrepreneurship. I could write more but that is all I have time for right now and all the talk of Dijon mustard sandwiches is making me hungry for lunch.
I'd really like to visit Sillicon Valley, experiencing the culture there might actually be useful to me.
That right there is the way to find useful experiences. It sounds like your thing isn't "Go see the Grand Canyon" or "Go to the Eiffel Tower". Instead, you're the kind of person who would "Go to Chaos Communication Congress" or "Go to Hacking at Random".
Traveling doesn't just mean going to see touristy places. Try contacting a few people in the industry you like, see if you can arrange for them to show you around their business, and just show up there.
Travelling is anything but passive. I can't really explain why, but travelling along with reading are in my opinion best ways to learn.
I guess it's that you experience new cultures. You talk to people, you learn. You see how and why stuff is done differently, you learn. You also learn from your mistakes, you learn to adopt to current conditions with whatever resources you have for your disposal, you discover new tricks, etc.
For me, what I get out of travelling (which I don't do often enough) is experiencing a foreign culture. I don't enjoy travelling from place to place and seeing the sights - it's always been a hollow experience to me, except perhaps for those momentous sights that have an impact a picture really can't convey - think the Grand Canyon of Niagara Falls. It seems such a waste to me when people visit somewhere, and make little attempt to truly experience the culture.
I have plans in place to do exactly this beginning of next year. But let me clarify: I plan to backpack, living on the bare minimum and traveling mostly by foot and train and using a plane only when absolutely necessary (like when I visit my parents).
It's possible to travel and live in many countries around the world for <$300USD a month -- at least that's what I've gathered from my initial research. I don't have a family to support or a girlfriend so once I quite my job I'll be quite free of responsibilities.
How will I pay for it? Well, the little on-the-side web hosting company I started 5 years ago, which I haven't put any effort into growing, is already close to providing me enough monthly income to live comfortably in many third-world countries.
But I won't be a tourist. I want spend anywhere from 3 - 12 months in an area, learning the culture, the language, the local customs, and meeting and making new friends. I want share my knowledge (mostly technical) and use my skills (technical and carpentry) to help the community where I can. Since I enjoy writing, I plan to maintain a blog about my experiences with the hope that it will help others gain new insights and see that the world is a much bigger place than the 1500sq mile box that most of us live in.
Why? Because I just feel it's what I need to do next in my life to continue growing. I've been living in the same area (Northeastern United States, Boston, MA area) for the past 27 years. Science has proven that the best way to stimulate new growth in the brain is to expose it to new and unfamiliar things. My brain is entering the age where many brains begin to settle into a rut... and it feels like my brain is beginning to atrophy.
FYI, my monthly expenses while living in a city outside Shanghai was about $400 per month. I think $300 would be pushing it in a lot of places. I would budget $500 just to be safe and to not have to restrict your lifestyle that much.
His fiscal argument, that we could afford it if we reshuffled our priorities to buy fewer iPods and more plane tickets, is wrong because buying iPods doesn't require us to quit our job.
No. Buying fewer iPods allows you to quit your job.
If you live like a college student for just a few years after leaving college (keep the shit car, live in a cheap studio, don't buy stuff you can't afford) you'll soon find you've got $50,000 sitting in the bank. I mean look at it, they're giving you $5,000 every week now to work at this job, when they used to be charging you money to go to school. If you can't find the willpower to save a few pennies at that point, there's something seriously amiss.
Anyway, you'll find that your tolerance for a crap job goes way down when you have $50k sitting around and no car payments or mortgage. Spending $10k of it hitching across Africa for a year starts to seem like a good idea.
So yes, by reshuffling our fiscal priorities, we can definitely make travel more doable. I know this because I've done it.
I did this recently. Just got back last month. I quit my job and went traveling for over 7 months, through South America, across by freighter to South Africa, and by land up through Africa to Egypt.
It was the best experience of my life.
I was hugely nervous about doing it, but it was something I had always thought about doing. Naively I didn't expect to learn much, just that I'd have an interesting time, but I ended up learning a lot about myself (on top of everything that I learned about the countries I traveled through.) Long term travel gives you the luxury of distance and time to think clearly, something you do not have very often in life. On returning I've readjusted my priorities and I think I know better now what really makes me happy. I hope that everyone gets a chance to do something like this. It is a luxury (although it really doesn't cost as much as you'd think), but an amazing one that is well worth it.
I also have some excellent stories :) Let me tell you about the desert in North Sudan...
Fair enough if it’s true, but for many people who say this, it would be better to say, “I’ve chosen to spend money on a lot of other things, so now I don’t have money to travel.”
Shall we never forget the lovely Victorian ethic that the poor have only themselves to blame.
I don't see how this Victorian ethic applies. He's not talking about the poor, but rather those who have "chosen to spend money on a lot of other things", i.e. the middle-class.
By prioritising it higher than any other non-essential cost you have. I know people who have saved up for 6 month round the world trips while working in various menial low paying jobs. The question is, like for most things, is how badly do you want it.
Of course it helps if you don't have a family to support.
Travel is basically free if you're doing it for any length of time.
In Africa, Southeast Asia, or Central America, you can live on $5-$20/day depending on where you go. Hitching through Malawi will run you $3/day tops. Assuming you've ditched your rent/car payments/etc. back home, you're going to be living an order of magnitude cheaper than you would if you simply stayed in the USA.
For short trips, your flight will be the dominant cost. For long trips, you're just not going to spend that much.
If you can put away a measly ten grand, you can stay gone for a long time. How much did you make this year? More to the point, why didn't you manage to save at least $10k of it?
I quit my great developer job in January to be a ski bum in Wyoming. I just got back from West Africa. It will be worth it if I don't end up living out of my car. Timing.
I know someone doing this. He worked for a software company in SF and quit a year ago. He's been an extra in a bollywood film, stayed with monks in some temple, volunteered at an orphanage outside of Kathmandu, etc. His pics and stories show up on facebook every couple weeks. For the record, he has no idea what he's going to do for money when he gets back. But maybe he won't come back.
Money is overrated, it is pretty easy to survive in the world. Consider that coming from a western country, you have command over the English language, an education more than half the world doesn't have, and a passport.
60% of the people the world alone would kill just to have your passport.
That's awesome your friend is doing that, I traveled through India myself. Money is easy.
Another option is getting a job (or inventing one) where you get to travel a lot. Traveling as a tourist can often feel uncomfortable and give you a wrong sense of the places you visit. Traveling in order to collaborate with people is a more complete experience, and you don't have to put life on hold to do it.
Doesn't really sound like fun. What exactly am I supposed to do at theses places? Yay, I'm sitting alone in my hotel room in Shanghai, now what? Walk around mindlessly and take a look at the surroundings? Gets boring fast I guess. Go into a bar and try to talk to strangers in english? Hmmm.. don't know, maybe I am too uncreative for that.
I guess I agree minus the quit your job part. Why not travel around the world several times a year without quitting your job? Or wait until you're between jobs anyway. Unless you have a crappy job you want to quit anyway, I see little reason to quit a job in order to travel.
One problem with traveling he fails to address is the interruption to your career. What if leaving your job for a while means you miss
promotion opportunities? What if by the time you get back
someone else has picked up on your startup idea?
If interruption to your career is important to you, don't take a vacation at all. Spend all your time working so you'll get ahead and get promotion.
I used to worry about my career a lot and I ended up burning out easily. Traveling for me was a good way to take a break and get a new perspective on things.
I take a few months off to travel every 2-3 years and then I get re-energized and ready to get back to work.
Yes, when you travel, your career will be interrupted. But what is the trade off? For me, it was experiencing other cultures. Being in unfamiliar places took me out of my element and I believe has made me tougher. Adjusting to different social environments is not easy.
Many people get a sense of purpose from doing things that are done more easily by staying in one place: write a book, build a house, educate yourself, create a company, raise children, withdraw from society...
i think the main excuse I use to not travel is that I have a very stable job currently (federal govt). Its a risk that I would have to accept that when I return I would have difficulty finding employment.
I prefer to live and work for at-least 6 months instead of continuous travel. This way I can empathize with local culture, socio-economical and political conditions.
[+] [-] MicahWedemeyer|16 years ago|reply
Bullshit. I find travel very stressful, and none of it is due to fear of change and different experiences. It comes from living out of a suitcase, having to re-buy all the toiletries and crap I have at home but forgot to bring, and being away from my wife and dogs who I enjoy spending time with.
Just remember: don't like != am afraid of I don't like buttermilk biscuits. That doesn't mean I wake up sweating in the night screaming that they're coming to get me.
[+] [-] minsight|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonkester|16 years ago|reply
Every trip abroad has one week of suck at the beginning and one week of suck at the end. You need to acclimate & buy toothbrushes when you get there, and you need to stress a bit about the real world before you come back. That's a given.
So given that, if all you ever do is little 2-3 week trips then pretty much all your time abroad is smack in the middle of that suck zone.
Imagine, however, that you went away for 9 months. Now that little bit of suck that you describe is relegated to a noise at the ends. In the middle lies the good part. And it really is that good.
Sounds like you've never actually committed, so you've never reaped the rewards. Give it a try sometime and report back!
[+] [-] yef|16 years ago|reply
As for the wife and dog, I'm of no help. :) It sounds as though your travel is work-related, though, so maybe there's some added stress by association.
[+] [-] mtts|16 years ago|reply
Staying in another country for a substantial amount of time, on the other hand, is of course an entirely different matter but travelling for the sake of travelling, while pleasurable in and of itself, does not teach you anything you couldn't have learned from a brochure about the places you're visiting.
[+] [-] justlearning|16 years ago|reply
Sorry, That's not right. It's funny that you say it, specially when you have no stories to support. Perhaps, you confuse travel with being a tourist. Travelling is a different ball game than being a tourist - going by the brochures, paying the entry fee to the biggest shoe in the world and then hitting the bar in the evening and catching the flight back home. Travelling is not going to Disney-world. Travelling is even living at a place for an unplanned amount of time.
context- i met many 'travellers' in the past week - during a visit to a remote part of china. me and wife didn't go to the touristy parts of the area. Infact spent a day just sitting and listening to nature. Among them, I met this european couple (with kids) who are living there to save enough money to make to the next goal - RVing across Americas. I met this couple who travelled all around and found their funds depleted in Malaysia and so they have been working there to save money..until the next step. There was this one guy from Norway who worked super hard last year to just travel 6 months (mostly by land). Travellers don't go by brochure, they go by recommendations by other travellers. And mostly all 'travellers' try to avoid flights to the extreme (even taking a van across the Gobi desert)
I actually asked blunt questions(with prior permission) about their learning/philosophy/future plans..etc(even their kids)..too long to post here. But I will say this - they do learn - actually continuous learning, learning from cultures, respecting people, not being judgemental(do you the see the homeless man and the bentley salesman in the same way, talk the same way?)..many more things.
Apologies, but I am surprised that many people 'agree' with you without your giving your 'proofs'.
[+] [-] jklubnik|16 years ago|reply
How much you learn is dependent on how willing you are to put yourself out there, even if only for a brief period of time. While I prefer to travel for longer periods of time, I certainly will not knock a two week trip through Europe. You can learn and experience a lot with the right attitude and outlook.
To attempt an analogy fitting for this forum, saying that it "does not teach you anything you couldn't have learned from a brochure" is like saying there is no sense in starting your own company when you could simply work for one that already exists. Creating a company is much different than working for a company. Much like being in a place is a lot different that reading a brochure about it. All the things that make creating a company a valuable experience are the same things that make traveling a valuable experience: all the little details, the hurdles, the hassles, taking a leap, getting there.
I also recommend the following essay by Pico Iyer: http://www.worldhum.com/features/travel-stories/why-we-trave...
[+] [-] dylanz|16 years ago|reply
And I'd agree mtts that you don't "learn" much about just visiting a country. Sure, you may "see" what a town or city is like, but you're just reading the cover, not the book.
I moved to New Zealand just for the heck of it with my family, and lived there for almost 3 years. Everyone that visits there gives the same 'ol schpiel... "Oh, it's so beautiful there. It's where the Lord of the Rings was filmed! It's the greenest place I've ever been, and is so environmentally friendly". Everytime I heard that, I could only let out a hugh sigh. They visited and didn't "learn" anything. New Zealand dust crops their entire countryside with poison (1080, which is illegal in the US) quite often, and is "not" very environmentally progressive. Their marketing department, however, is quite progressive!
[+] [-] justinhj|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonkester|16 years ago|reply
Compared to, say, sitting in a cubicle for the same amount of time? I'd put my money on Travel.
Being on the road accelerates your life. Things happen faster, and more things happen. You'll need half an hour to explain to somebody what you did yesterday. When I'm living in the 'states, saving up for the next trip, I can often sum up an entire month in about 5 minutes.
It's just night and day. I'd suggest you try spending a year on the road & let us know if you learn anything.
[+] [-] fredBuddemeyer|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] n8agrin|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abalashov|16 years ago|reply
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=757407
[+] [-] Tichy|16 years ago|reply
I am not a big traveler, so I am probably wrong, but in a way, traveling seems kind of passive to me. Sure, you get to see lots of things, but seeing (and learning) is passive. How am I going to change the world doing that? I would need some kind of spin to it, like at least being a successful travel writer or something. Otherwise, what are the USEFUL experiences to make?
Would be great if some travelers could share what useful experiences they made?
Although one thing in the article made me think: I'd really like to visit Sillicon Valley, experiencing the culture there might actually be useful to me.
[+] [-] tel|16 years ago|reply
It seems hyperbolic, but go to any practically and hostel in a developed city worldwide and you'll find a group of Americans doing just that (not to mention other debaucheries).
Traveling actively is basically the exact opposite of that. It takes research, bravery, spontaneity, social skill, and a boat load of curiosity. When you travel like this though you can paint yourself into entirely new environments and see the ways you expand, you can look back into the ways you live normally and then pick and choose the parts you like the most. In this way you can actively change your own world and certainly put yourself in a better place to continue making positive changes.
Most immediately: you'll soften your bias and become aware of the biases of others, you'll understand the traditions of your culture and be better able to interpret their necessity or value, you'll become experienced in some other culture able to interpret things through a slightly different point of view. Together these things can be used to vastly improve your home or can become skills to help you change the world.
Of course, if you want to travel and at that very moment do some active changing, you may want to try something like Peace Corps, Doctors/Engineers Without Borders, or other world health initiatives. You should be careful though because if you don't have the experience which can let you isolate your own cultural biases a little then you may get connected with some group which will inhibit your ability to learn. In my opinion, this is the trap which things like mission trips fall into and, as an effect, they may become some kind of mixture of harm and benefit.
[+] [-] phicou|16 years ago|reply
Volunteers spend a long time in their host country, and really get to see things in depth (not just the tourist view).
Volunteers also get a chance to "change the world". Usually not in a particularly grand way, but a little education and inspiration can have a lot of ripple effects.
Of course, being based overseas, and having a fair amount of vacation time, volunteers also have opportunities to visit other interesting places and countries near their host sites.
Getting a reasonable living allowance and government-sponsored benefits sweetens the deal, but of course it doesn't offer nearly as much freedom as simply quitting your job and hopping on a plane.
[+] [-] ryk|16 years ago|reply
Flexibility, adaptability, and dealing with uncertainty - Things never go as planned when long-term traveling to the point that sometimes it is better not to have a plan, but rather pick a general direction and adapt. Same goes for your business plan, especially when developing new technologies in unproven markets. You don’t know enough to be able to plan out the details. A lot of times the random unplanned things end up being the best. Run with random even if you don’t understand it.
Dealing with the highs and the lows – One day you’re on top of the world feeling accomplished after you hike up a mountain. I’m queen of world! The next day it is raining, your feet are covered in blisters, you’re feeling run down, you have a cold coming on, your tent has a leak, and you are alone in the middle of nowhere eating yet another granola bar. But eventually the sun while shine again, your cold will go away, and you’ll be on your next exciting adventure. Kind of like – One day you are full of enthusiasm for your new feature that is going to change the world! The next day (make that weeks) you are dealing with bugs, angry customers, anxious investors, getting no sleep and living in a dump eating yet another bowl of beans and rice. Fortunately something good will happen eventually to balance it out if you can ride out the storm. Life is cyclical.
*Going solo is crazy hard at times...you need to build a team that compliments and balances – I solo road tripped and camped most of the time. I totally recommend solo travel because it will stretch you way beyond your limits and you’ll experience tremendous amounts of personal growth because it is crazy hard at times. But eventually you’ll get sick of going it alone - worn out from shouldering all the work and having no one to celebrate with except some strangers you just met. You need a team (travel companions or founders/partners/employees) that compliments each other. My typical group travel adventure goes something like this - I’ll lead a kayak expedition in the Everglades, get everyone there and paddling through the mangroves with alligators, but I’ll forget to pack lunch. As cool as it would be to have another rockstar kayaker along what I really need is someone who can make sandwiches. And not just the crappy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I would throw together. Like fancy sandwiches with Dijon mustard made by a rockstar sandwich maker.
Those are just a few things I learned (or at least reinforced) through traveling around the country that can be applied to entrepreneurship. I could write more but that is all I have time for right now and all the talk of Dijon mustard sandwiches is making me hungry for lunch.
[+] [-] skolor|16 years ago|reply
That right there is the way to find useful experiences. It sounds like your thing isn't "Go see the Grand Canyon" or "Go to the Eiffel Tower". Instead, you're the kind of person who would "Go to Chaos Communication Congress" or "Go to Hacking at Random".
Traveling doesn't just mean going to see touristy places. Try contacting a few people in the industry you like, see if you can arrange for them to show you around their business, and just show up there.
[+] [-] mcxx|16 years ago|reply
I guess it's that you experience new cultures. You talk to people, you learn. You see how and why stuff is done differently, you learn. You also learn from your mistakes, you learn to adopt to current conditions with whatever resources you have for your disposal, you discover new tricks, etc.
[+] [-] edw519|16 years ago|reply
By planting seeds that you have no other way of getting into your brain. You can reap the (currently unknown) harvest later.
[+] [-] AlisdairO|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raamdev|16 years ago|reply
It's possible to travel and live in many countries around the world for <$300USD a month -- at least that's what I've gathered from my initial research. I don't have a family to support or a girlfriend so once I quite my job I'll be quite free of responsibilities.
How will I pay for it? Well, the little on-the-side web hosting company I started 5 years ago, which I haven't put any effort into growing, is already close to providing me enough monthly income to live comfortably in many third-world countries.
But I won't be a tourist. I want spend anywhere from 3 - 12 months in an area, learning the culture, the language, the local customs, and meeting and making new friends. I want share my knowledge (mostly technical) and use my skills (technical and carpentry) to help the community where I can. Since I enjoy writing, I plan to maintain a blog about my experiences with the hope that it will help others gain new insights and see that the world is a much bigger place than the 1500sq mile box that most of us live in.
Why? Because I just feel it's what I need to do next in my life to continue growing. I've been living in the same area (Northeastern United States, Boston, MA area) for the past 27 years. Science has proven that the best way to stimulate new growth in the brain is to expose it to new and unfamiliar things. My brain is entering the age where many brains begin to settle into a rut... and it feels like my brain is beginning to atrophy.
[+] [-] mattm|16 years ago|reply
FYI, my monthly expenses while living in a city outside Shanghai was about $400 per month. I think $300 would be pushing it in a lot of places. I would budget $500 just to be safe and to not have to restrict your lifestyle that much.
[+] [-] mattmaroon|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonkester|16 years ago|reply
If you live like a college student for just a few years after leaving college (keep the shit car, live in a cheap studio, don't buy stuff you can't afford) you'll soon find you've got $50,000 sitting in the bank. I mean look at it, they're giving you $5,000 every week now to work at this job, when they used to be charging you money to go to school. If you can't find the willpower to save a few pennies at that point, there's something seriously amiss.
Anyway, you'll find that your tolerance for a crap job goes way down when you have $50k sitting around and no car payments or mortgage. Spending $10k of it hitching across Africa for a year starts to seem like a good idea.
So yes, by reshuffling our fiscal priorities, we can definitely make travel more doable. I know this because I've done it.
[+] [-] conorh|16 years ago|reply
It was the best experience of my life.
I was hugely nervous about doing it, but it was something I had always thought about doing. Naively I didn't expect to learn much, just that I'd have an interesting time, but I ended up learning a lot about myself (on top of everything that I learned about the countries I traveled through.) Long term travel gives you the luxury of distance and time to think clearly, something you do not have very often in life. On returning I've readjusted my priorities and I think I know better now what really makes me happy. I hope that everyone gets a chance to do something like this. It is a luxury (although it really doesn't cost as much as you'd think), but an amazing one that is well worth it.
I also have some excellent stories :) Let me tell you about the desert in North Sudan...
[+] [-] jamesjyu|16 years ago|reply
Appears when you scroll down past the article to the comments area.
[+] [-] oink|16 years ago|reply
Fair enough if it’s true, but for many people who say this, it would be better to say, “I’ve chosen to spend money on a lot of other things, so now I don’t have money to travel.”
Shall we never forget the lovely Victorian ethic that the poor have only themselves to blame.
[+] [-] cubix|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mziulu|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaph0d|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dagw|16 years ago|reply
Of course it helps if you don't have a family to support.
[+] [-] sirrocco|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GHFigs|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonkester|16 years ago|reply
In Africa, Southeast Asia, or Central America, you can live on $5-$20/day depending on where you go. Hitching through Malawi will run you $3/day tops. Assuming you've ditched your rent/car payments/etc. back home, you're going to be living an order of magnitude cheaper than you would if you simply stayed in the USA.
For short trips, your flight will be the dominant cost. For long trips, you're just not going to spend that much.
If you can put away a measly ten grand, you can stay gone for a long time. How much did you make this year? More to the point, why didn't you manage to save at least $10k of it?
[+] [-] djb_hackernews|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idlewords|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vicaya|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antidaily|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ixiaus|16 years ago|reply
60% of the people the world alone would kill just to have your passport.
That's awesome your friend is doing that, I traveled through India myself. Money is easy.
[+] [-] intellectronica|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zyb09|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkasper|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonymousDan|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dannyr|16 years ago|reply
I used to worry about my career a lot and I ended up burning out easily. Traveling for me was a good way to take a break and get a new perspective on things.
I take a few months off to travel every 2-3 years and then I get re-energized and ready to get back to work.
Yes, when you travel, your career will be interrupted. But what is the trade off? For me, it was experiencing other cultures. Being in unfamiliar places took me out of my element and I believe has made me tougher. Adjusting to different social environments is not easy.
[+] [-] Guatejon|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zupatol|16 years ago|reply
Many people get a sense of purpose from doing things that are done more easily by staying in one place: write a book, build a house, educate yourself, create a company, raise children, withdraw from society...
[+] [-] jdbeast00|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] known|16 years ago|reply