The first question that I would usually get from people when I initially started telling them about Exile Lifestyle was “When will you be coming back?” The second question was invariably “Is your girlfriend coming along with you?”
As I write this, I’m waiting for a half-dozen people to show up at my apartment so they can cart off my furniture. One lady wants my bedroom set, a younger gentleman is interested in one of my three office desks, and a couple of college students want to take a look at my one remaining bookcase.
Today I woke up in Mesa, Arizona, went for a quick swim, ate remarkably-accurate New York-style pizza in a Southwestern town with a population of around 200, drove to the Grand Canyon, slipped on my Vibram Five Fingers and hiked a bit, slowly made my way to a Route 66 town called Williams where I downed a Blue Moon, listened to some live, twangy oldies music (sung by a mountain man), then watched Jurassic Park while relaxing in a cheapish hotel room with too many beds.
Weve all been in situations that have been less than ideal. Your job might suck or your roommates might be a burden on your mind and your wallet. You may feel stuck in a mire of crummy college classes or weighed down by your sycophantic ‘friends.’
As someone who reads a whole lot, I’m constantly discovering that there are very few new ideas, and most of the ones that claim to be are really just derivative of old ones with a new label slapped on them.
File this under ‘weird things that Colin does for fun at parties.’
In addition to playing the Meet New People game (which I’ll cover in the near future), I make it a point to learn at least one completely new fact from each person I talk to when I’m out networking (also: at a friend’s birthday party, attending a museum opening or really anything else where I come into contact with people).
The facts don’t have to relate to anything in particular and can run the gamut from something you’d learn in a textbook to something you’d learn on prime time television to something you’d learn on the streets.
One of my favorite assignments in design school involved going through my old class work and re-appropriating something I had done before into something new. I took old photographs and turned them into new album covers. A once-glorious illustration became a newly-glorious social poster. A really-quite-bad infographic became a really-quite-funny t-shirt.
The idea of reaching back into your near- or distant-past for inspiration can be taken beyond scrapping old projects for new raw materials. Case in point: I’m in the process of selling off everything I own, and my trusty old guitar is sitting in the middle of my living room (which has become Purgatory for my items in transition).
If you’re anything at all like me, your time is very valuable to you. You only have 24 hours in a day and ostensibly only a portion of those hours are yours to use for productive things, so you do your best to make the most of them, cut out the chaff and increase your output the best you can.
Needless to say, this kind of mindset is not conducive to breaks, naps, lollygagging or friends (just kidding on that last one….or am I!?).
But despite my own and your propensity for productivity, I want to propose a non-intuitive method for increasing effectiveness, alertness and mental health. I call it Your 20 Minutes of Awesome, and I want to tell you why you should utilize this method every single day.