The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Update - Timothy Ferriss [120]
Here is a good sequence for getting started that dozens of NR have used with success.
1. Revisit ground zero: Do nothing.
Before we can escape the goblins of the mind, we need to face them. Principal among them is speed addiction. It is hard to recalibrate your internal clock without taking a break from constant overstimulation. Travel and the impulse to see a million things can exacerbate this.
Slowing down doesn’t mean accomplishing less; it means cutting out counterproductive distractions and the perception of being rushed. Consider attending a short silence retreat of 3–7 days during which all media and speaking is prohibited.
Learn to turn down the static of the mind so you can appreciate more before doing more:
The Art of Living Foundation (Course II)—International—(www.artofliving.org)
Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California (http://www.spiritrock.org)
Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Massachusetts (http://www.kripalu.org)
Sky Lake Lodge in New York (http://www.sky-lake.org)
2. Make an anonymous donation to the service organization of your choice.
This helps to get the juices flowing and disassociate feeling good about service with getting credit for it. It feels even better when it’s pure. Here are some good sites to get started:
Charity Navigator (www.charitynavigator.org)
This independent service ranks more than 5,000 charities using criteria you select. Create a personalized page of favorites and compare them side by side, all free of charge.
Firstgiving (www.firstgiving.com)
Firstgiving.com allows you to create an online fund-raising page. Donations can be made through your personal URL. I have used Firstgiving in coordination with a nonprofit called Room to Read to build schools in both Nepal and Vietnam, with more countries pending: www.firstgiving.com/timferriss and www.firstgiving.com/timferriss2. If you specifically want to help animals, for example, you can click on a related link and access websites for hundreds of different animal charities, and then decide which one you want to donate to. The UK version of the website is http://www.justgiving.com.
Network for Good (www.networkforgood.org)
Visitors to this website will find links to charities in need of donations as well as opportunities to do volunteer work. They can also set up an automated credit card donation online.
3. Take a learning mini-retirement in combination with local volunteering.
Take a mini-retirement—six months or more if possible—to focus on learning and serving. The longer duration will permit a language focus, which in turn enables more meaningful interaction and contribution through volunteering.
For the duration of this trip, note self-criticisms and negative self-talk in a journal. Whenever upset or anxious, ask “why” at least three times and put the answers down on paper. Describing these doubts in writing reduces their impact twofold. First, it’s often the ambiguous nature of self-doubt that hurts most. Defining and exploring it in writing—just as with forcing colleagues to e-mail—demands clarity of thought, after which most concerns are found to be baseless. Second, recording these concerns seems to somehow remove them from your head.
But where to go and what to do? There is no one right answer to either. Use the following questions and resources to brainstorm:
What makes you most angry about the state of the world?
What are you most afraid of for the next generation, whether you have children or not?
What makes you happiest in your life? How can you help others have the same?
There is no need to limit yourself to one location. Remember Robin, who traveled through South America for a year with her husband and seven-year-old son? The three of them spent one to two months doing volunteer work in each location, including building wheelchairs in Banos, Ecuador, rehabilitating