Weekly Digest: September 23, 2016
God dag (good day in Swedish)! Here is your weekly dose of my best tips for how to travel the world while you grow your career and make a difference.
Travel the world
I have always wanted to run a marathon, but it never sounded like much fun. However, I decided to do my first one this week and change the rules to make it fun! I covered the required 26.2 miles, but I took the entire day and did it while exploring Stockholm, Sweden. I refueled along the way with delicious local food (checked out 4 different restaurants), artisan coffee (went to 2 of the city’s best coffee shops), and local beer (tried 4 beers from the top Swedish breweries). Doing a “marathon” this way was much more enjoyable (for me) than restricting myself to water and gel packs. I did not train, wear numbers, or get a finisher’s medal, but I covered 26.2 miles of ground, so it counts in my book. It was a fun, goal-fulfilling way to combine fitness and deeply explore a new city. Consider trying this idea on your next trip! Here is the original post.
Grow your career
Treat the improvement of your professional skills as a professional athlete would treat theirs. With deliberate practice, push your skills just beyond your current capacity every day. If you want to be a better writer, communicator, designer, analyst, or anything else, push your abilities and mental muscles just beyond failure like an athlete would do with their workout and track your progress like you would in a workout log. You build muscle by exercising to failure and training your brain is not any different. This works with any craft – or even less tangible skills like focus, communication, and critical thinking. As Elon Musk describes when asked how people can become like him, simply “think until your brain hurts.”
Make a difference
Are you a nonprofit? Do you know any nonprofits? If so, check out (or share) Good360. They receive corporate donations for used critical business items (e.g., computers, tablets) from Fortune 500 companies, refurbish the products, and sell them to 501c3 nonprofits at a ridiculously low cost. They supported us in building a computer lab in Honduras and I can’t wait to work with them again. Check them out to get discounted technology products for your cause or have your company donate old technology products in order to get a tax write off while helping those that are fighting to make the world a better place.
Fun updates:
- Most popular post on Instagram – The marathon I did my way… (mentioned above)
- Featured article – Business Insider featured me in this article about my favorite travel hacking technique.
- Quote of the week – “A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.” – John le Carre
Thanks for reading and have an awesome weekend!
Konrad
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