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.
Business Week once called Seth Godin “the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age.” His e-book, Unleashing the Idea Virus is the most downloaded e-book of all time.
Seth Godin is undoubtedly the best in the world at what he does.
But if I have no interest in marketing or entrepreneurship, why should I care?
Because he’s the best in the world at what he does, and he’s written a book called the Dip, about being the best in the world at whatever you do.
I came across this video, and could not, not share this with my readers/friends. (This is from a guy who absolutely hates those motivational email forwards, so trust me, it’s something).
The video is of professor Randy Pausch’s last lecture at Carnegie Mellon before his death from pancreatic cancer in 2008. The lecture is entitled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams and the runtime is 1 hour 16 mins — I PROMISE it’s worth your time (at the very least to see a top notch public speaker at his best).
Hope you enjoy the video. If you feel in the mood for more potentially inspirational/life changing talks, TED.com is a great place to start (a long-time favorite of mine) or check out the list and comments on this post at ZenHabits.com (where I found the above video).
Have a favorite inspirational/motivational video? Share it in the comments below.
“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.
After writing the last post about hitchhiking to Montreal to see TOOL, I got to thinking. How could I be so obsessed with a band and a genre of music so much eight years ago, and yet now when I listen to the same band I feel overwhelmed. Overwhelmed in a bad way. Like the music that represented my life and feelings so perfectly years ago, is now way too heavy and NEGATIVE for me.
I think we all intuitively realize on some level that music aligns you with whatever its VIBE is – whether it’s angst, lovestruck-ness, happy go lucky, sadness – but we rarely take a minute to consciously think about it. For instance, when someone just breaks up with you, you might listen or relate to songs about lost love, feeling down, broken hearts. Or it’s possible you would listen to heavy aggressive music because that’s how you feel. Or maybe you try to listen to happy music to cheer yourself up – to try to get out of that slump.
