Weekly Digest: September 2, 2016

Cześć (hi in Polish)! Here is your weekly dose of my best tips for how to travel the world while your grow your career and make a difference.

Travel the world

I watched Jason Silva’s clip on Why We Travel this week and loved it. In his usual passion (and immense vocabulary), he philosophizes about the altered state of consciousness you feel during travel. You are hurled into the present when the rules and framework of your normal world are upended and you experience the “de-familiarization and sense of first sight unencumbered by knowingness.” Travel puts you into a state of flow and openness. “You don’t carry around that screen of preconceptions. The ‘been theres’ and ‘done that’s’ of the adult mind.” I have talked about many similar benefits in my Non-Cliche Life Lessons I Learned from Travel post, but he does it much more articulately, so I recommend watching the short video if you would like a reminder of how productive it can actually be to go on a trip.

Grow your career

If you are or aspire to be a creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, filmmaker, writer, designer, performer, or craftsperson, then you must read the 1,000 True Fans blog post by Kevin Kelly. He explains an option besides poverty or stardom for most creators – a path that will make you a great living doing what you love and is more feasible than you might expect. It requires only 1,000 True Fans. He explains the methods and economics behind this approach in the post, but I find this perspective inspiring and a clear path forward. 1,000 is doable. You can get there with methods that are not scalable. You can avoid gatekeepers. After all, you only need to add 1 True Fan a day for 3 years to get there. It is a great perspective for startups to have as well.

Make a difference

I recently watched Salam Neighbor on Netflix, where two American filmmakers spent a month in Zaatari, the largest camp in Jordan for Syrian refugees. The heartbreaking and inspiring stories of the families hit me hard. Approximately 400,000 people have been killed by the conflict and 600,000 are currently refugees. I recommend watching this documentary to get a more human perspective of the conflict’s victims and consider supporting refugees yourself as most governments around the world continue to waffle over what to do. As the son of refugees, I have been a longtime supporter of the work done by the UN Refugee Agency (which manages refugee camps among many other initiatives). There is also Rescue.org (which helps refugees outside of camps) and, over a cup of coffee in Cairo, this Forbes writer convinced of the surprisingly simple economic case for giving refugees cash, not stuff.

Fun updates:

Thanks for reading and have an awesome weekend!

Konrad

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