Surfing around on the internet the other day, I came across a discussion on advice for college freshman moving into dorms for the first time. I’ve been out of college for about seven years now, but I still found it enjoyable to read since it brought back some memories of my years living in dorms.

I noticed that two pieces of advice were brought up over and over again:

• Leave your door open as much as you can. The feeling is that this makes you more accessible and that people will stop in to say hi.
• Say yes to as much as you can, especially at first. You’ll get invites to events or to hang out- say yes to as many as possible.

I came to realize that this advice can actually apply to any time in your life, not just your college years. Now, I don’t mean you should literally leave your door open all the time if you don’t live in a dorm, because if you do this at your home or apartment you would probably get burglarized.

I think it is more about the general attitude of being open to new things. This is also where saying yes to as much as you can ties in as well. If life is pretty ordinary for you right now, you are likely fairly closed off. I’m not suggesting you may be a shut-in, but take an honest look at how you may be cutting yourself off from new experiences.

For example, when you are a freshman in college, no one knows anyone else at first. People are likely to receive invites to hang out with folks or to go on campus events that they maybe would not have had an interest in otherwise. But if they end up saying yes to the invite, they may find out that actually enjoyed themselves. If they didn’t, they still had a new experience and tried something different. Either way, they probably met some new people and made some new acquaintances or even friends.

But why does this have to be any different outside of college?

How many invites do you turn down because you think you wouldn’t enjoy it or because you don’t really know any else that will be there? This isn’t to say that you are always going to end up liking these new things, but what is there to lose, really?

So how open are you to new experiences?

Are you closing yourself off to them, or are you willing to be open and try new things? If you’re always doing the same things or only saying yes to the same old experiences then you’re just going to keep getting the same old results.

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Image: Doug Wallick

Overall this media consumption diet has been great. I am amazed at the benefits so far.

I think the most noticeable thing is that time has become fairly unimportant to me. I hardly ever look at the clock now. I just don’t feel a need to. The first night we did this C.C. and I went to a bookstore to look at journals, and we were both amazed at how we felt like we had all the time in the world. There wasn’t that slight pulling feeling that you normally have to get back home (the odd thing is that you feel that feeling even when there isn’t anything you need to do when you get back!). We took it our time and it all felt much more relaxing then it usually feels when you are out and about.

I really do feel like I have all the time in the world. I don’t feel (the self-imposed) feeling of being rushed or that time is running out. The only time I do feel the pull a little is if there really is something I have to do- like go to work. Though, even this isn’t as bad as before.

I also feel it a little in watching the clock at work (the real job) and waiting for it to be lunch time or time to go home. But I feel that is understandable considering I am at, you know, work. But I feel like if I were working for myself full-time I could really get into a groove of working when inspired and for how long I feel inspired to, and not feel so bound by time.

I imagine that we will ending up continuing our reduction in media consumption even after our trial here. Obviously will we let stuff back in, but not to the same degree as before. We’re already giving serious thought to ditching our cable TV subscription entirely because we really haven’t missed it all that much. I definitely think we are going to keep this up. We’ll keep filling you in on how things are going as the trial goes on.

img by: Lil’ El

The other day, C.C. and I had a bit of a State of the Union discussion on how our big Escape from the Ordinary is going. A lot was discussed over a few hours, but I think the main theme was that we feel like we can do better. We’ve realized that we’ve become pretty set in our routines and haven’t been pushing ourselves to really take all of this to the next level.

The biggest problem, we came to realize, is our lack of focus. Way too much of our time gets eaten up by distractions that can fall under the broad category of “media”. Our media consumption includes things like internet browsing, television, video games, reading for pleasure, etc. Now, all of those things are good in moderation, but they have become distractions in our lives because we haven’t kept them in check.

It can feel like a real addiction in this day and age. We live in a society where we seem to constantly need to be stimulated with the latest news, latest updates on Facebook and Twitter, the latest games, and the newest shows on TV.

How are the Media Distractions Are Affecting our Lives?

We noticed that the media distractions are affecting us in two ways. The first is that we aren’t spending as much time as we should on our work. Our big goal is to work for ourselves fulltime one day, but lately we’ve been doing just enough to fill in the gap between our day jobs. If we ever want to make our work at home stuff our main source of income then we need to step it up. Work lately has become doing just enough and then moving on to browsing the internet or watching TV.

The other way the media distractions affect us is that they take time away from trying new things or even re-kindling old interests. It has become way too easy just to grab the remote or mindlessly surf the internet instead of seeing what else is out there. There are tons of things we’ve been meaning try for years that we’ve just never gotten around to.

The Media Consumption Diet

Basically, we are in a bit of a rut and we know that we need something to shake things up and make us refocus. So we’ve decided that we’re going on a media consumption diet. We are making it a 30-day challenge where our media distractions will be almost none. The idea is that we will break the addictions now and at the end of the 30 days we will see how much we will let back in. I don’t envision us getting rid of internet surfing or TV for the rest of our lives, so it is really more about relearning what is an acceptable level to let back in.

The rules of this challenge are fairly simple at first glance. There will be no television. There will be no using the internet for anything but work, answering emails, or for research (i.e. informational, if we need a question answered- things like that). There will be no video games. Really, it is just about identifying what is a distraction and avoiding it.

We can already foresee that there will be some gray areas. For example, what if we are over a friend’s house and everyone is watching TV or playing a game? We feel like a situation like that would be OK because we would be sharing an experience with other people, which seems to have more value than vegging out in front of the TV at home. This won’t be an exact science.

The bottom line is that there are certain things that we all do that are just to pass time and have little value; those are the things we are trying to avoid right now. I think we have a good feel for what is a distraction and what is not.

We’ve been at this a few days and are already noticing lots of positive changes. We’ll make some follow up posts about the changes and about how things are going so as to not make this introductory post too long. So be on the lookout for them over the coming weeks.

 
 
 
Image by dailyinvention

I think I’ve been annoying C.C. the last two days by going around saying “tent event” (try saying it out loud, it’s fun). Anyway, we purchased a tent recently with the idea of adding camping to our excursions. With being as money conscious as we need to be lately, we figured it is not a bad way to get out there and take some trips in a new way, but also save a little bit of money as well.

I have been camping before many times when I was younger, but C.C. has never done it. I’ve been naming off all of the cool things we can do, and she has been considering what protection to bring to ward off the inevitable psycho axe-murder that will be lurking the woods. But fortunately she is pretty excited overall about trying camping and we should be heading out on our first trip soon.

We’re going to start someplace local to get a feel for camping and exactly what we will need. Since it has been so long since I have been, I am sure that I will forget to bring along some vital piece of gear that we’ll need. But we’ll get by and have some fun too.

We’re looking forward to adding camping to our travels because it will be a (mostly) new experience for us. It seems like it will save us some money (camp sites are often a fraction of the cost of hotels), especially during the summer months now where prices on lodging really go up. Mixing in some camping with our travels will hopefully allow us get out more for less.

We realize that we will lose some of the comforts of hotels and aren’t writing them off completely (especially when the weather gets cold). Camping will hopefully just give us some more versatility and some new fun experiences.

Do any of you go camping? What kinds of experiences have you had?

Image by happy via

I justed wanted to make a quick post to share with you something we’ve come across. If you have an account with Bank of America (credit card, checking, savings, etc), they are running a promotion called Museums on Us. For one weekend out of each month you can get into participating museums for free by showing them your credit or ATM card. It seems like a pretty good deal if you already have an account with Bank of America. The free weekend for June is this weekend, June 5th and 6th. You can get more information here http://museums.bankofamerica.com/ It seems like a great way to try something different on a weekend.

I am the type of person that can easily get stuck in routines.

I don’t know why and it is not something that I try to do. Every now and then it dawns on me that I do a lot of things at the same time or in the same way every day. Drive the same way to work, eat lunch at the same time (usually eating mostly the same things), eat dinner at the same time, go to bed at the same time, etc.

Are you like me? Do you tend to get stuck in routines? It actually happens very easily when you are caught up in the work/life cycle. You know how it is- wake up, go to work, work all day, come home, eat dinner, relax, go to sleep… then repeat the whole thing the next day. Even your weekends can turn routine as you have to get all the things done then that you weren’t able to do during the week. It all doesn’t leave much room for spontaneity.

With escaping the ordinary, we tend to think of big events like quitting our jobs, traveling the world, hiking Mount Everest, skydiving, or whatever you can dream of. Those are all part of what we preach, but escaping the ordinary is also about the very ordinary things.

This means breaking your small routines. Drive a different route to work. Eat at a restaurant you’ve never been to before. Try going to bed earlier (more sleep can’t hurt) or try going to bed later (remember when you used to be able to stay up nearly all night?). Try having an actual conversation with those people that you normally only say hi to in passing. Do your grocery shopping or laundry on a different day then you normally do.

Really, the point is just to mix things up. When you get into routines and do the same things all the time, you are going to get the same results. Try changing some of the small things in your life and see what happens. Escaping the ordinary isn’t always about the big dramatic stuff. It is also about changing those small everyday things in your life that keep you caught in the ordinary.

Photo by Colinthedog

I find that a lot of times, whenever I try something new, I always jump forward and plan on it being a huge success.  I can’t simply do something just because I enjoy it. It always has to be the next big thing—the idea that’s going to be the making of me.  I guess a little optimism doesn’t hurt, but it kind of takes away some of the enjoyment when I’m always looking at things from the perspective of how successful will it be.  There’s so much pressure to be successful that I get overwhelmed even before I start.  I find once this happens, my drive and inspiration go out the window and I don’t even feel like trying anymore.

That’s why I’m switching it up and doing things a little differently now.  I’m going to just do things now for the pure enjoyment of it, and I’m not going to put pressure on myself to make it a success. For instance, Jay and I recently talked about brewing our own beer.  It’s something we’ve always been interested in.  Now, the old me would jump from that idea, to selling our beer, to starting our own beer brewery, to distributing it all over the world.  You see how I did that?  I took one idea, and turned it into global domination.  Well, it’s kind of difficult to dominate the beer market when you haven’t even brewed your first batch yet.  And who knows if it will even be good.  So instead of looking at it from that perspective, I’m just going to try it out and see if I like it.  If it never turns into anything, that’s perfectly fine with me.  My main goal now is just to enjoy the experience.  If it turns out horribly, at least I can say I tried it.

Photo by Pink Sherbert

Inspiration hits. You want to make changes in your life, and follow the typical process of having a sit down with your self and either mentally or on paper coming up with a list of all the problems you feel you want to work on. At this point you feel motivated and excited about making wholesale changes.

The tendency then is to try and tackle all of those issues and changes all at once. But this can lead to burn out and/or feeling overwhelmed- both of which eventually lead to you likely not making any significant changes at all and falling back into your old patterns.

Scott Young mentions in his is piece on escaping your comfort zones:

Break it Down – Don’t try to tackle your biggest fears all at once. My approach is to pick a decision and try it out. If it was too difficult, break it into something more manageable and try again. If it was too easy, ramp up the difficulty and go at it. If you can’t get up to speak at a conference, try Toastmasters. If speaking at meetings isn’t stimulating enough, try to get engagements at larger events.

AgentSully also had some good advice in a guest post for Zen Habits:

Rank your goals in order of importance. This may be hard, but just do your best and then don’t look back. Starting with your number one, identify the action steps you need to take over the next week to start on this goal. Then begin.

I’ve taken on this approach with some good success so far. I know that I am the type of person that can get overwhelmed if I have too much on my plate, and when I do get overwhelmed I usually close up and stop moving all together. I’ve tried focusing on one thing at a time and it really helps keep me motivated.

How about you? Do you get burned out or overwhelmed by trying to take on too many changes at once? What have you done to combat this?

Photo by = xAv = ()

Since I last wrote about trying to make money online with writing, there have been a couple of developments. First, I recently applied and was accepted to be a writer for an online content company.  They pay per article, and the pay is not horrible compared to some of the other companies out there.  The next development is that I applied for and was accepted to work at an internet company from home.

This is great news because I have the potential to make more working from home than I do at my part time call center job.  This also brings me that much closer to being able to earn money online, forgoing the daily grind of working at a company. I’m still going to keep my call center job just until I get a better idea of how this will all work out, and then hopefully I can quit and just work from home.

I would also like to improve my writing speed so I can make more money.  I find I agonize over the articles, and end up spending hours on them, which really cuts down on my potential income.  There’s a part of me that feels a little bad for succumbing to a writers mill but the majority of me feels like I need to make money!  It’s not like I’m William Shakespeare here.  This is just a job and a means for me to make money, and it’s a lot more preferable to getting yelled at on the phone all day.

I’m very pleased with the progress I’m making. It really goes to show that once you get the ball going, it makes it that much easier to do it, and keep doing it.  I remember a few months ago feeling bad because I still hadn’t made any changes or really put much effort into applying myself and really going for what I wanted, which is essentially to quit my job and make money from home, and travelling.  Now I feel like I’m making progress, and am just that much closer to achieving that.  There’s still a long way to go, but it feels good to know that I’m moving in the right direction.

I figured I would provide a small update on how our escape from the ordinary is going. Things are going pretty well right now, certainly much better then a few months ago. We’ve made a lot of changes to how we are approaching things and have been making steady progress.

So what have we changed?

Weekly Schedule

It may sound simple, but I think one of the best things we ended up doing was creating a weekly schedule.

I won’t get into the details now because I think we’ll make a post about it in the near future. But basically we have a white board hanging between our computer desks that has a day by day breakdown of goals we each want to accomplish each day. C.C. and I have a “meeting” every Monday morning to A) Review last week’s schedule to see how we did, and B) Come up with the current week’s schedule for ourselves.

We find that the schedule is really helping us. It keeps us focused on the goals and more time is spent actually doing because we know exactly what we want to accomplish each day.

Shifting Focus

Another thing we’ve done is shift our focus a bit. Through our weekly reviews of our schedule, we noticed that while we were getting more done, we still had been avoiding one area- alternative ways of making money.

I think we had been avoiding it because it seemed to be the most difficult. We are both currently employed in regular jobs and while we are working towards striking out on our own, right now those jobs are a comfort zone for us. It is a lot more fun to work on things like getting out more, exploring hobbies, writing, and all that. Looking for work just isn’t much fun, especially if you already have a job and the need for a new one is not imminent.

As I said, we came to realize that we were ignoring the whole job thing. In fact, we came to the conclusion that finding alternative ways to make money is actually our top goal right now. Our plan has always been to do the whole digital nomad thing, working for ourselves and travel around. But you can’t really do that without actually making some money at something.

So we’ve shifted our focus to finding different ways to make money for ourselves and we’ve had good results so far. C.C. has even come across some opportunities were she could possibly make more money then she is making at her current job.

Overall, we’ve made some changes that have us moving in the right direction, but there are some things we still need to work on.

What’s Not Going So Well

We felt it was important to shift our focus currently to making money, but that also means less time to focus elsewhere. Some of our goals, like finding something new to do each weekend, have been on the back burner a bit.

I think that we can do a better job of balancing things. I think it is good for us to have a main focus at all times, but we also can’t let the other goals languish in the meantime. We need to also make time to work on the other stuff.

The other thing not going so well right now are our travel plans. We really wanted to start traveling a lot more, even if just at first we had to go cheap and stay close to home. Unfortunately, we haven’t even really been able to do that. Money is really tight right now. We’re getting by, but it gets hard justifying any travel expense when we really don’t have much extra to spend. We’ve cut back on a lot of expenses but it is still hard to get that travel fund together.

I think that at some point in the near future, C.C. and I will sit and have a discussion on this. I’ve done enough reading on other travel blogs to know that travel is possible for almost anyone if you make enough sacrifices in what you chose to spend your money on (i.e. selling your home to get rid of mortgage payments, selling a car cutting out all extra expenses that aren’t absolutely necessary).

I think we need to determine if we are truly willing to do whatever it takes to have the lifestyle we want right now- basically the “jump in with both feet and throw caution to the wind” approach. Or do we want to keep building things slowly until we feel we have enough money or security to take the full leap.

All told, I think we are doing pretty well right now. We’ve made a lot of progress since we decided to get more serious about this. We’ve still got a lot to work through, but that’s half the fun.