Project Hitchhiker | travels, stories and adventures in lifestyle design
welcome to my blog
Project Hitchhiker is the online creative outlet of Mike H.
Mike’s adventures have taken him across 3 continents, including driving a motorcycle for 6 months across Southeast Asia, hitchhiking across Canada and Japan, and walking 1000 miles along the coastline of Nova Scotia.
Mike’s passions are music, travel and motorcycles (in that order).
Mike’s dislikes include writing about himself in the third person.
This site is a collection of his travels, stories and adventures in lifestyle design.
February is my month of French in the Power of Less Challenge. I committed to studying French at least 30 mins per day for the month. This goal in particular, is really important to me, as I want to come away from this job with a working ability in French.
But first, a quick thought about the language learning tools I’ve chosen. I recently had a discussion with a friend about why I gave up using Rosetta Stone for learning languages. My reasons for stopping have to do with effeciency and adherance.
“I’m going to quit smoking, lose 20 pounds, give up drinking hard liquor and run at least an hour every day.” How many people out there have ever actually succeeded with New Years Resolutions? Why does it always fail? My theory is that it’s too much all at once. It becomes more painful to continue with the extreme lifestyle makeover than the short-term pleasure you would get reverting to your old habits.
EVER. Okay, so that’s a little harsh and not completely true. But here’s what I did. It being the New Year and all, I’ve been doing a lot of reading about making changes. Seemed like an appropriate time. And in all this reading I came across some great stuff. Notably, I discovered this blog and then through it, this blog — where I found a few excellent articles on processing your Email Inbox to ZERO and keeping it there:
2009 is going to be fantastic. But first, a cliche look back at 2008:
Most important lesson learned in 2008
The number one rule: Do what you love. Don’t give a *** about what anyone else thinks about you.
Top Non-Fiction reads of 2008
Vagabonding by Rolf Potts and The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. These two books are required reading for anyone who wants to travel or doesn’t like the idea of spending their life in an office cubicle.
In the Four Hour Workweek, Tim Ferris talks about his simple, yet unconventional strategies for winning the Chinese National Kickboxing championship with relatively little kickboxing experience. How knowing the finer points of the rules and focusing on their weaknesses led him to win first prize in the tournament, simultaneously pissing off the whole of China. My mom was doing this Four Hour Workweek stuff — using existing rules and structures to her advantage, outsourcing her workload — before Tim Ferris joined his Highschool wrestling team. Back when he was still wearing tighty whities and Spiderman pajamas.
My friend Josh recently wrote a blog post about learning Spanish — what has been working, and what hasn’t — and asked for strategies from his readers. When I sat down to write a comment, I realized I had too much to say for just a short paragraph, so here it is. These are strategies that have helped me (and people who I have recognized as effective second language learners) pick up a new language quicker than average — not because we are smarter, but simply because we focus on time-efficient and effective strategies.
So I started reading the Four Hour Workweek a second time (if you haven’t read it, go to amazon.com right now and order it! Warning, however — you should only buy it if you want to quit your job.), and I’m starting to put some of the principles into action in my life:
The 80-20 rule:
This rule says that 20% of all your actions produce 80% of your results. Or 20% of all input equals 80% of all output. This isn’t set in stone, and the output number is often higher. Tim cites an example in his own business where 90% of his customers were causing him most of his headaches, yet were only bringing in 5% of his profits. He subsequently “fired” his headache customers, concentrated on his big customers (10%) who were making him over 90% of his profits!
