The Happiness Of Pursuit Part 13

"To go anywhere, save $2 a day"-this was the headline for a group project I hosted on my blog. The concept is that there is nowhere in the world you can't visit if you save even a small amount of money over time.

You can apply the concept to any quest, adventure, or project (not just a trip!). Start by answering a few questions: * What is the cost of my proposed quest or project?

* How long will it take me to save this amount of money?

* Is there any other way to get the money (crowdfunding, selling something, extra work, robbing banks)?

* Do I need to wait to start until I have all the money?

* If getting the money will be difficult, is there a way to reduce the cost?

Example: Visit Antarctica Getting to Antarctica is fairly expensive, at around $5,000 to $10,000 per person depending on the specific trip. But even that somewhat imposing cost can drop radically if you're willing to be flexible. Every week during the main season of visiting Antarctica (November to March), s.h.i.+ps leave from the south of Argentina with a few extra berths. If you don't need to know exactly when you'll be back, the cost can be as much as 40 percent less.

Solution Number One: Save a lot of money and pay full fare.

Solution Number Two: Save less money and hang out in Argentina, waiting to pounce on a berth.

SELECTED SAVINGS RATES.

If you can save even more than $2 a day, you can probably get wherever you need to go sooner.

$25/day = $9,125/year $10/day = $3,650/year $5/day = $1,825/year $2/day = $730/year

The Fake Marathon

As I read up on other people's experiences with quests and journeys, I found one story that was truly bizarre. Kip Litton, a middle-aged dentist from Michigan, was also a dedicated marathon runner who set out on a quest to run fifty marathons. He trained every day before treating patients and spent much of his free time on weekends flying to races. So far, so good, right?

Except as other runners began looking at his claims, examining his posted run times against publicly available photos and other data, something seemed wrong. Litton always started a couple of minutes behind all the other runners, then disappeared from the course for more than an hour. He reappeared at the finish line, usually at the front of the pack but wearing different clothes.

Finally, one of the other runners leveled a charge: At best, the middle-aged dentist was exaggerating many of his race times. At worst, he was making it all up. It wasn't just a question of taking a few minutes off the clock, as bad as that would be. According to allegations leveled at him on forums and blog posts, then later investigated and reported in the New Yorker, Litton had taken cheating to a whole new level, even inventing a race in Wyoming that never happened.

The "West Wyoming Marathon" had its own website, complete with extensive listings and race times of fict.i.tious runners. On MarathonGuide.com, a popular site that chronicles details of different races, several reviews appeared. "Great race!" one contestant enthused. "A runner's dream!" exclaimed another. It was an amazing effort ... for something that didn't exist, and in support of a goal that mattered only to the person who created it.

As strange as the fake marathon was, Kip Litton didn't fabricate everything. He really was a runner, he'd ran marathons in the past, and by all accounts he was a nice guy with no complaints lodged against his Michigan dental practice. Somewhere along the way, though, he started looking for shortcuts in his quest. Perhaps the problem was the goal itself. Instead of just running fifty marathons-an impressive feat on its own!-Litton's goal was to run each marathon at a sub-3:00 pace. (This is also known as "very fast.") No one knows exactly when or why Litton began fabricating details of his quest, but one theory is that the time-based goal of sub-3:00 was simply too difficult for him. The lure of accomplishment grew to exceed the reality of completing the task at hand, so he started cutting corners. Once he'd knocked down his actual time a few minutes with no immediate consequences, perhaps it was just too tempting to fabricate an entire race.6 The story of Kip Litton is essentially the dark side of a quest. What happens when you can't achieve the goal, yet still feel immense pressure to claim victory? I was toward the end of my own quest when I read Litton's story, and it caused me to wonder if I'd ever feel tempted to make things up. In my case, the goal of visiting every country was just a personal dream for nearly the first half. After people started following along, my life became a lot busier and I often had to cancel trips at the last minute due to visa or flight complications, which then threw other plans into disarray.

It certainly would have been easier if I suddenly didn't have to get to Saudi Arabia or Somalia-and I might have rationalized that no one would notice-but my quest was never about proving something to others. It was always about proving something to myself.

I don't think the lesson is to be a better person than the dentist who faked a marathon quest. For reasons known only to him, it seems he just got carried away somehow. The lesson is to know your own motivations. That way, you'll keep going even if no one else cares.

Walking Across Turkey

The middle of a quest can feel like a long run (hopefully one that you're not fabricating). Later on, you'll look back on some of the experiences and ask yourself, "Did those things really happen?" But sometimes, on the road or in the wilderness, you look back at the life you left behind and ask yourself the same question.

At a pace of sixty miles a week, forty-two-year-old Matt Krause walked across Turkey. His journey took six months, ending at the Iranian border, and Matt was a true pilgrim. Every day he walked an average of nine miles: a steady pace, but one that allowed him plenty of time to soak up the experience. Why walk?

"I walk," he wrote in his journal, "to challenge myself to be less afraid of the world." He continued: Walking is me submitting to the world. When I walk, my speed is slow, and my range is limited. I have little choice but to accept the world as it exists in front of me. Walking is a great way to see the country and meet its people, but I could see the country and meet its people by bus. Walking turns this trip into a personal pilgrimage, a way for me to practice submission to the world mile after mile, day after day, week after week, month after month.

One day Matt decided to check in at a jandarma post, a local security checkpoint that kept the peace in rural areas far from bigger cities. He'd heard that jandarma posts were essentially the travel agencies of rural Turkey, offering free resting points and the opportunity to receive advice on routing. But when he stopped in to say hi, he received more than just a place of rest. The commander ordered his chef to prepare a hot breakfast, which was delivered within minutes. After they talked over tea for an hour, exchanging life stories, the commander gave him the name of a friend in the next town. When Matt left the guard station, he had a spring in his step and a package of cheese sandwiches that the chef had whipped up to send along for his lunch.

The rest of the day, Matt walked along a two-lane road by the side of the mountains near the Goksu River. The beauty of the environment was overwhelming. In some ways, it reminded him of his old home in the Pacific Northwest. Back in Seattle, though, n.o.body gave him a free breakfast when he asked for directions, and folks didn't make a habit of dropping in on strangers for an hour-long chat. The people I know in America don't understand the rest of the world, Matt thought. If I can at least show them a small part of it, maybe that will help.

That night Matt made it to the village he'd mentioned to the guard post commander, and he remembered the recommendation he'd been given. The guy's name was Hoca, and conveniently for Matt, it turned out that Hoca owned a small restaurant. In the time-honored hospitality tradition of much of the world, when Matt introduced himself and mentioned their mutual friend, he was instantly welcomed.

Once again, a plate of food appeared, and a dozen cups of tea were shared. Another patron of the restaurant showed up and offered Matt a place to stay back at his apartment. Matt's rule for the journey was "no free car rides"-the whole point of his mission was to walk across Turkey. But Matt gladly accepted this kind stranger's offer of a couch to sleep on. They headed back to the apartment and spent an evening watching Turkish matchmaking TV and sitting around the fire.

The next morning Matt thought back on the day's experiences, from the scrambled eggs and cheese sandwiches he'd received at the guard post to the evening spent at Hoca's restaurant and at the stranger's apartment. At no point in the process was a bill presented. Everyone was surprised to see a foreigner traveling independently through Turkey (and on foot!), and new friends.h.i.+ps were forged all around.

Later, Matt reflected on his old cubicle job in Seattle. "I hated that job," he told me. "Every day I dreamed of getting away." Now that he'd escaped for the open road in Turkey, those days back home seemed so far away.

Matt said good-bye to his hosts and walked another nine miles toward Iran. The journey continued.

Back in Brisbane

One week before the symphony was set to be performed for the first time in twenty-eight years, Gary Thorpe stood at the arrivals hall of the Brisbane airport with a sign that simply read "Gothic." Fans and friends of the composer were coming in from England and elsewhere, excited for the big debut. Everyone else was excited, too, but they were also nervous.

On the big night, having waited nearly three decades, Gary worried about being late. With everything else that had gone wrong until then, it wouldn't have surprised him to have been shut out of the concert hall, or delayed by a ma.s.sive traffic jam, or struck by some other disaster. But then a strange thing happened: Everything went according to plan. The show went off without a hitch, ending with an extended standing ovation.

The choirmaster, who'd worried she was making a career-ending move by agreeing to manage the ragtag band of choristers, was ecstatic. "We absolutely nailed it," she said. "We did it. It was sensational to be up there onstage. We were so proud!"

Gary called it a masterpiece. The reviews concurred, with the international press calling it "a triumph beyond all expectation."

Why produce the largest symphony of all time? You do it for the same reason John F. Kennedy offered for visiting the moon-not because it's easy, but because it's hard. In the case of the Gothic Symphony, you do it because it's enormous. You bring it to a city not known for producing ma.s.sive works of art. London, Berlin, or New York hadn't been able to produce the symphony in thirty years. Why should a small city in Queensland, Australia, take on such a project? That's the point-to do what you're not supposed to do. To do it because it is overwhelming, because it is ridiculous.

It took twenty-eight years and many failed attempts, but the curse of the Gothic Symphony was broken.

Remember The middle of the quest can be the hardest part. As long as you still believe in the goal, don't stop!

By saving as little as $2/day for just a few years, you can go anywhere in the world.

If your quest relies on external recognition, be sure you have sufficient internal motivation as well.

1A bird scarer is available in many forms, with convenient online delivery provided by Amazon.com or your favorite local bird shop. Also available: a bird buzzer, a bird wailer, and a bird screecher "with over 90 constantly changing sounds."

2Read more on the $2/day experiment at ChrisGuillebeau.com/35/your-one-place.

3After the secretly developed software successfully s.h.i.+pped on every Apple computer, Ron spent some time overseas as a research fellow and then started his own company. He continued to develop the graphing calculator.

4Includes tuxedo rental in Monaco and all living expenses.

5Bird scarer not included.

6An extended a.n.a.lysis of Kip Litton's fict.i.tious marathon quest was published by Mark Singer. The author of the article, as well as many race directors, concluded that the entire quest was fict.i.tious. Attempts to contact Kip Litton to respond to this section of the book were ignored.

Chapter 14.

Misadventures

Every step gets him closer to greatness ... or disaster.

-JODY FELDMAN Lesson: CHOOSE YOUR FAILURES, AND HAVE THE RIGHT KIND OF DISASTERS.

Mark Boyle set out from Bristol, England, with a spring in his step and a pack on his back. A large group of well-wishers saw him off, including friends, family, and even a guy playing a conch sh.e.l.l. It was big fanfare for a huge undertaking. Mark wasn't just walking from England to India, as impressive as that would be on its own. Mark had a greater quest in mind: He wanted to make the whole trek without spending a single dollar, pound, or rupee. He wanted to travel the world without money, relying on the kindness of strangers and random events of the universe to provide.

Mark expected the journey to take two and a half years. In England he was a local celebrity, having received an abundance of publicity before the big departure, and he preached the gospel of extreme frugality to anyone who'd listen. Friends helped out as he roamed southward, and even strangers chatted him up throughout Ireland and Britain. Mark was quick to explain that he wasn't a freeloader; he was an adherent of the "freeconomy movement," where skills are traded in exchange for food, clothing, or shelter. "I will be offering my skills to people [along the way]," he told the BBC. "If I get food in return, it's a bonus."

Unfortunately, the plan quickly fell apart as he left his native sh.o.r.es. Living without money was tough. Crossing the channel to France, Mark quickly discovered that his schoolboy French had deserted him. He felt unable to speak a single word. Even worse, he was unable to communicate anything about his mission, and the values that had inspired him to leave home were not as universally understood as he'd hoped. In England his mission was seen as interesting and honorable, but in France people considered him a beggar. He hadn't even cleared the next border before deciding his quest was over. Turning around and heading back to England, the journey that was supposed to take two and a half years was over in a single month.

Fail Quickly

John La.s.seter, one of the founders of Pixar, says that "Every one of our films was the worst motion picture ever made at one time or another." At the studio that brought Toy Story and other hit movies to the world, the creative team embraces mistakes and failure, with an emphasis on making the mistakes as quickly as possible. As soon as they identify the mistakes, they're then able to fix them-but the point is to not shy away from the initial failure.1 When I conducted the research for The $100 Startup, I spent a lot of time a.n.a.lyzing the unconventional successes of many new business owners. The book was well received, but the number one question I heard at the first public readings was "What about all the failures? Don't most businesses fail?" At first I was caught off guard by the question. No, most new businesses don't fail, and if you take the right steps in the beginning, the odds of success go way up. Then I realized that some people are simply obsessed with failure-or at least they have a general expectation that a new project will more likely meet with failure than success.

Struggling for the right answer to the question, I learned to dissect the idea of failure more closely. If you start a business and it operates successfully for a number of years, then winds down as you move on to something else, is that a failure? What if you start a business and the initial idea doesn't work, but then you pivot to something more marketable-is that a failure? I'd argue that both of these common experiences are successes.

When to Keep Going and When to Stop

In pursuing any difficult project, sooner or later the thought will pop into your head: Should I quit? You might be tempted to banish this self-doubt immediately, forbidding it to ever make an appearance again. Full speed ahead!

And you might be right in doing that. Nothing worth doing is ever easy.

However, there may be other times when the right choice is to redirect, or perhaps stop entirely. Which is which-and how do you know?

Finding a satisfactory answer to this problem is critical, and not everyone's answer will be the same. Nevertheless, there are a few factors to keep in mind when evaluating this tough question.

1.Motivations. Why did you begin this project in the first place? What drove you to challenge yourself? Presumably, there were many different options you could have chosen for your quest or adventure, but for some reason, you settled on this one. Are you still driven by the same motivations?

2.Long-term happiness. Short-term relief and long-term happiness can be very different things. When Nate Damm was slogging across West Virginia, getting rained on and placing one sore foot in front of the other, he could have found short-term relief by checking into a motel and calling a friend to pick him up. For at least a few hours, he might have been happier with that course of action. But he was smart enough to realize that the quick fix wouldn't last for the long term. Sooner or later, he'd be kicking himself for not continuing with his quest. Faced with this realization, he kept going.

3.Rewards. Can you create a small reward at the end of your day, or at the completion of an important task? After pa.s.sing through customs and immigration hundreds of times around the world, I initiated a mental game of guessing how long it would take to clear the process each time. Upon landing I'd think through the variables: Do I already have a visa? How long will the queue take? Am I expecting anything abnormal about the procedures? This "immigration gamification" was oddly entertaining, if only to me.

4.Engagement of others. Sasha Martin, who prepared a meal from every country while living in Oklahoma, said that she felt motivated by the fear of failure-even driven by it at times. She explained that she was sensitive to letting down other people who believed in her. "My family and friends are always in the back of my mind, and that knowledge keeps me strong, especially on days when I'd rather do nothing else than take a time machine back to the simple, free days before I began the project," she said.

If, in the end, you realize your motivations have truly changed, and your long-term happiness won't be hindered by making a change, and it's not a matter of simply creating rewards for yourself along the way, then you shouldn't hesitate to move on. It's OK.2

Choose Your Own Disaster