Toluu : The Art of Nonconformity

The Art of Nonconformity

Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work, and Travel

As per the usual protocol, today’s essay is about travel — but it’s also about choices, because your choices will take you where you want to go.

Last week I asked about Your One Place. This site attracts a lot of diverse people, including some who don’t travel much at all. But my theory was that even the non-travelers have somewhere in the world they’d like to see before they die.

I think I was on to something. Here are some of the answers readers shared:

Matthew: Island hopping on a sailboat
Daniel: The moon (or Ladakh in northern India)
Dwight: Bicycle tour of North America for a year
Coral: Macchu Pichu, Peru
Reese: Tuscany
Mike: England, Tuscany and Sitges (Spain)
Justin: Tuva
Tee: Any of the northern fjords of Iceland
Kazari: Kenya
PizzaDream: Greece on a Mediterranean cruise
Kiri: somewhere in Asia, maybe southern China
Jen: South America, or may

In Defense of MultitaskingNovember 19

Image of Mac Multitasking by WilliamHartz

Question: Are you the kind of person who works on more than one thing at a time? If so, you’re a multitasker, and depending on who you talk to, you may get the sense that you should feel guilty for a bad habit.

It’s hard to find defenders of multitasking these days. I asked about it on Twitter last week and heard mostly negative comments. “Multitasking is a myth… it slows down your productivity… drains your focus” and so on. It all leads me to wonder –

Am I the only one who enjoys multitasking? Should I feel guilty for doing a lot of things at the same time?

The interwebs are bursting with multitasking critiques. Most of these entries contain a similar argument: when we try to multitask, we’re not able to focus on more than one thing at once, so we continually shift back and forth between different tasks. Every time we switch between tasks, we lose the time it takes us to change gears and refocus. Then, before we get fully immersed in the new task, anothe

What to Do When It’s Not Working OutNovember 17

Image by SladeGibbs

From countless encounters with failure, I can tell you that not everything works out the way you hope it will. If you keep trying, you’ll get where you want to go in the end, but there will undoubtedly be many stops along the way where you encounter a dead-end.

First, how do you know when it’s not working out?

Here are a few signs:

You approach the project with neither excitement nor dread. You just don’t care.

If it’s a group project, discussions and planning become circular. People say the same things they said last time, and the time before that. There is plenty of conflict, but little resolution.

You feed off crisis. The crisis drowns out everything else. When you have no crisis, you invent one or just wait for another to arrive.

Most importantly, NOTHING EVER CHANGES. This kind of thing doesn’t usually get better on its own.

That’s pretty much how you know it’s not working out. So what do you do? The good news

Your One PlaceNovember 14

Fields to Mount Fuji, Japan by jlhopes

Here’s a fun game to play: think about one place in the world that you’d like to visit someday. You don’t have to make a long list, just think of one single place.

Even including people who don’t travel that much, most of us can think of somewhere we’d like to see before we die.

There are a couple of easy rules for this game:

1) You only get one place

2) It has to be somewhere you haven’t been yet

Those are the only rules; the rest is up to you. It can be a city, a country, an island, a continent, or just one big mountain.

You may already have an idea of where you’d like to go, but if not, there are plenty of options out there. Look at a globe or a good map if you need help deciding.

Once you have your one place, it’s time to bring it closer to you, and bring you closer to it. You didn’t think this would be strictly theoretical, d

Now Open for Business (A Limited Consulting Service)November 12

Image by Mag3737

By popular request, I’ve decided to begin a limited consulting service to help those who want help from me. The key phrase for this is limited, because I want to keep my focus on the free writing I do for everyone.

It will not be cheap, and I can only help with specific things – so if this doesn’t apply to you, feel free to skip it. On Friday we’ll do Travel Hacking part II, next week more on Doing What You Want, and so on. Stay tuned.

For those who are interested, here’s more info.

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