
Life lessons learned in travelling the world for 8 years straight - fezzl
http://www.fluentin3months.com/life-lessons/
======
corin_

      More money will NEVER solve your problems
    

That just isn't true - the problem is that people realised that being rich
isn't the same as being happy, and it was a good point. But then people took
it too far, and it stops making sense.

Sure, for some people, having more money wouldn't improve things, but for many
people, it definitely could. And I'm not just talking about people who are
starving or homeless. You don't need a car to be happy, but if it means you
waste far less time every week driving wherever you need to get to, it
certainly has the potential to make you happier.

Can a really happy life be built entirely on having money? No (well, maybe for
some people, I don't know), but that doesn't mean money can't or doesn't help
to improve people's lives.

~~~
lhnz
You can't spend 8 years traveling the world without quite a bit of money. The
author should look at his own life before telling others that they don't need
money; it sounds like luxury to me.

~~~
sanswork
Sure you can. Travel needs not be expensive. If you don't stay in expensive
hotels and eat out all the time, don't go drinking/partying every night its
not difficult to travel on very little money. Move to a new country with a
work permit, get a short term job, maybe working in your hostel, or at a bar,
or even as general labour and save up enough to make your next hop.

~~~
lhnz
I am being downvoted above but isn't travel expensive? It has to be simply
because of the fuel costs involved.

In my eyes, 8 years of constant travel would be expensive. Compare that to 8
years of working on the same spot.

~~~
sanswork
Travel can be very expensive. It can also be very cheap. It might be nicer to
fly from point A to B but odds are there is a cheaper bus ticket available. A
4 star hotel is very nice to stay at but a 0 star hostel will often cost you
less than $15 a day. Working in a bar will easily cover that, your food(buying
cheap from local sources and cooking for yourself), and allow you to save for
your next bus/boat ticket or where absolutely needed a short haul flight.

~~~
lhnz
You see, that's my point, as soon as you have to cut the costs of other parts
of your life you've clearly started doing something which requires large
amount of money...

~~~
matthewlyle
What costs are you cutting? No, vacationing in 5-star hotels for 8 years would
not be cheap but that's not a necessity for travelling. You probably don't
rent a 5-star apartment at home.

~~~
lhnz
People are talking about buying less stuff, and going out for drinks and nice
food less often.

These are costs that would be decreased.

My thought was that: you have to make concessions beyond what you would
normally have in your life and that, to me, is proof that you are undertaking
in a luxury which you can not easily afford.

Which brings me to my original point: when it's clear that the ability to
travel requires money can somebody then genuinely advise others that more
money doesn't solve a problem?

~~~
sanswork
You're also often lowering your level of income by getting rid of steady
employment which is where the cutting down on things comes from.

------
mburney
Most of these life lessons have nothing to do with travelling. Most people I
know (especially in their late 20's) would come up with a similar list even if
they've barely travelled.

I think this is just merely the blog poster's world view articulated into 29
points, and incidentally he has travelled the world instead of living in one
place.

~~~
stayjin
However it is amazing what an impact does living at a place away from were one
grew up in have in the perception of the world.

I had already traveled a lot ( as a tourist ) before I left Greece to come and
live in Japan, when I started to make a life here, I practically had to
rediscover myself. It is not so much the big things, it's the small ones :
habits that I took for granted, jokes that do not sound funny, if you can ask
someone's phone number... Like a very thin safety net of supporting culture I
never new was there just disappeared underneath me.

I also had a fresh view of Greece , and my life before

I think traveling gives you a change of perspective difficult to grasp at home

~~~
ristretto
Travelling is different than _living abroad_ though, right?

~~~
Tomek_
Depends how your travels looks like, you can travel living in luxury hotels,
spend most of the time with people from your country either by the hotel
swimming pool or guided tours or in the museums - or you can be less savy and
go a bit "guerilla" with your travels: go a bit off from the typical tourists'
paths, see the real local culture (not the one from museums) and real local
people - this should be enough to "open up your mind" for different cultures
(of course living abroad adds more of that but you can get some essence even
if you stay somewhere for only a couple of days.

~~~
stayjin
This is so true.

My current work as a system engineer implementing ERP systems for overseas
affiliates, takes me often to work abroad (from Japan, that is) for a few
weeks a time. Although I don't have time to do almost any sight-seeing at all,
and although they will usually have me stay in more or less high grade hotels
(that narrow one's vision, because they are the same, everywhere), it is
working together with the local operators and managers, eating together,
understanding their work ethic and habits, getting their feedback, pushing it
together through the transition period, so when I go back I feel I understand
a little bit more about the country from these interactions than from whatever
I saw during my limited time off work.

------
revorad
As I've been saying to others regarding startup advice and lessons, it's much
more helpful and interesting to read stories. You may think you are extracting
out wisdom from your experiences, but really, more often than not, these "life
lessons" don't mean much without context. I certainly can't take them for a
rule and apply them to my life. It may turn out to be the wrong advice for me
and even if it doesn't, I'll always have the nagging doubt that I took the
wrong decision based on someone else's experiences.

It would be nearly impossible to read these "N lessons" posts if they were not
in the form of lists, which points to the fact that they don't flow very well.
They are written in bite-sized chunks for information-hungry internet nerds
like us.

Writers, please tell stories. We don't need more advice.

~~~
lhnz
A life lesson with context wouldn't be a life lesson. The context is life, if
the context is more specific and not fully applicable to life then it is no
longer a life lesson.

~~~
kd0amg
A "life lesson" may still have a non-universal set of (common) situations to
which it applies.

~~~
lhnz
You don't agree that the more specific a situation is, the less applicable to
'life' it is?

~~~
kd0amg
I disagree with the conflation of "applies to life in general" with "applies
to every situation you could be in." I would say it is, for example, a mistake
to interpret lesson #2 as "never choose delayed gratification," but it is very
important not to overvalue it.

------
srgseg
> 2\. Deferring your happiness to the future is a terrible idea

Every time I see this, I ask myself, how is this advice reconciled with the
famous Marshmallow experiment?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment>

There surely must come a point where enough deferred future marshmallow
gratification makes deferred gratification a recommended life strategy.

If I were always to choose not to delay my happiness, I'd eat unhealthy foods,
not force myself to do exercise and never work hard to achieve anything.

As I heard a comic say, "I decided to live every day as if it were my last.
Now I have really bad credit."

~~~
radu_floricica
They're different things. Marshmellow isn't about deferring satisfaction, but
about using metacognitive skills to reach an outcome you _know_ beforehand is
favorable (i.e. two marshmellows instead of one). If you just find a
marshmellow on a plate somewhere, by all means, the best strategy is to eat
it.

~~~
mcantor
And then let me know where you were when you found it. I'm all about finding
random marshmallows while I'm just ambling around.

------
alexro
I've spent almost 10 years not having a stable place/work relationships. I
also travelled a lot and came to almost same conclusions. But.

Looking back at it now I think that's everything should be limited. Including
TV, including reading books alone and including travelling around the world.
But.

The only thing that shouldn't be limited - is the pursue of your own unique
excellence.

ADD:

So, if you want to be an excellent traveller - travel, if you want to be an
excellent writer - write even not seeing others, if you want to be anything
you like - do want you like. And try to be excellent.

That's the only life advice I have!

ADD 2: Naturally, if you don't want to be excellent, try to be excellent to be
non-excellent !!!

------
pinaceae
but what if i ENJOY watching tv? or being on the internet for hours? why is
outdoors better by definition?

this fits nicely into the "what white people like" stereotype. go outside!
why? maybe i want to read a book and be left alone. maybe i don't like dancing
and singing.

how about: do whatever you like, but please, don't preach. we are different.

/white, like travel and outdoors, but love to consume art

~~~
irishpolyglot
If after spending many hours watching TV you feel your life has been enhanced
in some way, then by all means keep it up. In my opinion people don't feel
this way (I certainly never did and grew up glued to my TV) and would have
spent their time better in other activities rather than following hours of
reality TV shows etc.

Doing "whatever you like" doesn't necessarily enrich your life. It's just
immediate pleasure. Sometimes doing whatever is BEST for you (which you should
of course decide) is way more important. If people really sat down and thought
about it, a lot of them would realise that, as much as they like it, TV is NOT
best for them.

~~~
speckledjim
I feel my life is infinitely enriched by watching TV and movies. (In UK, we
have extremely high quality programming).

You wouldn't say "all books are bad" would you... Sadly people seem to take
the worst TV (reality TV) and assume it's all like that.

Watch some good movies, comedies or documentaries. Heck watch "How it's made"
for a few days.

~~~
java_ec_t
I have lived in the UK and tv there is just as bad as anywhere else (I
particularly remember gardening shows ad nauseum). If you think your life is
infinitely enriched by tv, wait till you get out there (and garden for
example).

------
wmat
__Sigh __. Someone needs to write:

"41 Life Lessons Learned by Marrying, Moving to Suburbia, and Raising a
Family".

That's what I did and I'm a happy guy.

~~~
ido

        Someone needs to write
    

Why not you?

------
jdost
A few points I got from this:

\- Possessions do own you. I have made an effort in the past year to minimize
my stuff. One of my long term goals is to be able to shrink the majority of my
life into a travel-able size. It allows me to cherish the essentials and not
bloat the rest of my life.

\- Money does allow for happiness, just to a certain extent. Money opens up
many opportunities and comforts. It also adds security. If my car gets
totalled tomorrow, I know that I have enough money saved up to be able to
handle it, rather than suddenly be put in a dire situation that could
jeopardize my job.

\- Major goals are important, but not everything. People work towards things,
its natural of humanity. Everyone sets goals and works towards them (or
sometimes waits for them) and it is a strong driving force in our lives. But
sacrificing your happiness now for the sake of those goals is
counterproductive. You need to enjoy the time used to achieve that goal. You
shouldn't look back on the year(s) taken to get to the point and see a lot of
unhappiness and pain, enjoy some of the time instead.

\- In regards to the internet/tv posts, I would say that the biggest thing
anyone can do is read. The Internet provides an incredibly accessible portal
of information and using it to learn new things (and an incredibly breadth of
things) is a tool everyone should use and abuse.

... Just my random thoughts after reading the post.

~~~
munin
possessions don't own you. attachment owns you. the difference is subtle.

------
bignoggins
As someone who is currently taking a gap year to travel and work on my
startup, a lot of this rings true. Especially the part about speaking other
languages rather than English. There are interesting conversations that I just
can't participate in because I don't understand what people are saying.
However, there are several hacks for this that I've found.

\- Don't stay at hotels, use airbnb. The hosts are almost always locals that
speak decent English and want to get to know you, so that's enriched my
experience tremendously. Disclaimer: I do NOT work for airbnb, but after
seeing how it has enriched my travels it's definitely at the top of my list if
I ever wanted to apply for a job again.

\- Go out of your way to meet other travelers. Usually, travelers like to keep
to themselves. But there are districts in any city that are especially
frequented by foreigners. Why restrict yourself to locals? Foreigners from a
different country who are traveling are just as interesting for cultural
exchange as the locals. They usually speak English fairly well and it's not
uncommon to be engaged in an English conversation with a German, a Russian, a
Chinese, and a French person at a bar. It's quite fascinating.

While it is definitely less expensive to travel than one would think, it still
does cost quite a bit if you want to travel to major cities and have a living
standard which is at least close to western-standard. Staying with friends and
using airbnb instead of hostel/hotel is the best way to keep costs down. After
3 months of traveling (Australia, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and
now Spain) I've spent an average of $4300/mo. I'm traveling with my wife so
the per person cost is actually less. Could I get by with less by teaching
English and staying in one place longer, etc? Yes, but as with everything,
there is a tradeoff between time and money.

------
yaix
Nice article. I have myself lived in Latin America and China for about 12
years now, however I prefer to stay at the same place for some years, to make
it become "normal" life.

And while I agree with many of the articles points, I completely disagree with
#16. The "easy going" may look charming and smart on the surface, but when
reality suddenly shows up (illness, accident, any sort of emergency, etc) then
its suddenly not so charming anymore.

I believe a big reason for the "easy going" attitude lays in the available
Social Capital in a given society. In societies with low Social Capital, its
often no use to be "less easy going" and work hard, since careers are not
build by knowledge or good work, but by "Guanxi" and Amigos (because Social
Capital is low these relationships become more important than actual
professional knowledge). I am pretty sure that, having a real choice, most
people would opt for the "less easy going" way, where products and services,
houses and medical care are available and reliable.

------
dts
These are pretty simple, not so preachy, and generally expected observations
from someone working in a location independent profession while travelling the
world and picking up new languages. This is also advice aimed almost directly
at people in similar positions - those with higher education and almost zero
financial or emotional attachment (ex. children, sick family memebers) to
their original home. What I'm more interested in though is when the author
realizes that being in different places every three months, no matter how much
you "hack your experience" there only allows you access to a certain level of
experiential depth. Love, trust, deep friendships, community - you just cant
cultivate these things every three months while planning your next destination
and as much friendliness, and kindness people in these places show you, its
not the same as if you are someone planning to be a part of that place
permanently.

------
mberning
I disagree that the desire to own stuff all boils down to wanting recognition
and validation from others. In my experience there are a range of reasons that
people want to own things, and validation is just one of the more base
reasons.

------
dimmuborgir
IMHO, different world travellers come up with different life lessons. It all
depends on the person's own prejudices. _Lessons are not in the world, they're
within you._ World and societies are just tools to discover our own selves.

~~~
alexro
I can't really think of any written example of any traveler who came up with
different conclusions about the world.

~~~
dimmuborgir
_Conclusions about the world_ can be same. Like, _everyone wants the same in
life_ is a popular conclusion seen in several travel blogs. But we're talking
about _life lessons_ here, which I think, are not absolutes but drawn
differently by different people.

------
beilabs
Have an up-vote for being from Cavan!

Languages should be always acquired wherever possible. On my travels I've
picked up Irish, French, Chinese and attempting to learn Nepalese to placate
the in-laws for my future wedding speech.

~~~
irishpolyglot
Wa hey! Fellow Cyavan-man? I'll be back for the Fleadh in a month :)

~~~
beilabs
The aul fellah is from Cavan, being a mongrel with Kerry blood in me I had the
misfortune of living in the Faithful county for many a year.

Out in Sydney now.

------
trb
I don't like the way this article, and many others like it, disregard peoples
ability to be malicious. They portray all humans as good-natured, kind and
helpful, and while this is true for the overwhelming majority, the small
percentage to who this does not apply do exist.

I personally would love to read some good advice on how to deal with people
who actively try to harm you, as most advice available focusses on how to make
friends and acquaintances.

------
44Aman
Amazing blog, thanks for posting it. Been living in Paris for two weeks now
and not really even tried to speak French, my aim by the end of my internship
was to become conversationally fluent. Definitely starting this soon:
[http://www.fluentin3months.com/the-smartest-decision-you-
wil...](http://www.fluentin3months.com/the-smartest-decision-you-will-ever-
make-to-achieve-fluency/)

~~~
irishpolyglot
Another post that you may find more relevant to Paris is my experience in
finally learning how to get along with Parisians:
<http://www.fluentin3months.com/closed-minded/> This is important to keep in
mind as it's the only place in the world that my speak-the-language-from-day-
one approach needed some tweaking ;) Enjoy the city - my favourite activity
there is to stand over the bridge to the Cité and wave at a boat passing
underneath and have 200 Japanese tourists wave back. Fun times!

~~~
glimcat
The concept of closed-mindedness is also heavily cultural; it doesn't always
translate or map to local values.

~~~
irishpolyglot
As I said in the post, closed-mindedness is something that people have to
realise lies within themselves. This post wasn't calling Parisians closed
minded.

~~~
glimcat
I assumed you were calling yourself closed-minded.

But my point was that the whole open-minded versus closed-minded conversation
hinges upon cultural values which are by no means universal. There are many
cases where the reverse is seen as important (e.g. resisting outside
influences) or where the entire topic is not seen as meaningful or important.

~~~
irishpolyglot
Thanks for explaining!

------
schiptsov
Well, it is good to have rich parents, no one argues. You can discover basics
of the life in 8 years rather than in one year of visiting a public library.
^_^

Disclaimer: I have seen so many Enlightened Tourists after two weeks in Lhasa
or a Hindu/Yogi Gurus after one months in Varanasi and especially Teachers Of
Humanity with an obvious Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

------
rheide
Excellent read. As someone who has (hopefully) just taken up the
travelling+programming lifestyle myself I was really inspired by the website.
There's a lot of interesting articles on there.

------
rivo
I met a guy once who, at the time, had benen travelling for 7 years. His main
advice was: Don't get married. You don't want to know how much people cheat on
their sopouses.

------
glimcat
A little John Lennon here, a little Miguel de Cervantes there.

------
Andys
Point #1 is why we shouldn't be at war, why people in power shouldn't be
always trying to control the populace, and why there shouldn't be so much
poverty

------
clistctrl
I have a strong desire to do something like this. I've been saving for the day
that I can quit my job, and work on a start-up. At the same time I also want
to move to somewhere like Costa Rica with exciting rain forests, and a lower
cost of living. Unfortunately I feel tied down, I'm more than willing to sell
most of my stuff, I basically stopped buying "things" a few years ago. However
I could never move away from my girlfriend, and she could never move away from
her life here in Boston.

~~~
randomdrake
I'll just leave this here for you then: [http://www.amazon.com/Vagabonding-
Uncommon-Guide-Long-Term-T...](http://www.amazon.com/Vagabonding-Uncommon-
Guide-Long-Term-Travel/dp/0812992180)

~~~
danneu
And I'll even cut to the chase: <http://www.vagabonding.net/excerpt/>

------
klbarry
It's easy to be single with this lifestyle, as a professional who can work
remotely anywhere. You can't have pets, as well.

