Who cares what other people think, what do you believe in?
Stop trying to IMPRESS others and learn to EXPRESS yourself. Another great article from Glen at pluginID.com
So much time is wasted trying to impress others with our knowledge, sophisticated tastes, hobbies, etc. That pretense is… well pretentious. How about focusing your energies on expressing what you really love and believe in? I think we need more authenticity in the world.

NomadicMatt has a great article on how travelers try to impress with their stories. All Travelers are Created Equal. Another must read in my opinion!

Copyblogger.com covers a related topic in The Courage to Be Wrong.

The Future is FREE!
Chris Anderson’s latest book Free: The Future at a Radical Price is offered for free on Scribd.com.
While the topic of the book is not specific to my concept of being a Jet Set Citizen, I feel it is important because this is the future of  everything online. Anything that can be digitized will approach free over time: free music, free movies, free TV, free ebooks. It has huge implications for all of us who hope to make our living online. As competition intensifies and more people offer higher quality products at lower prices, we can all expect that most people making money from ebook sales now will have to move to higher value added products and services to earn an income. The key take away is that if you want to stand out,  offer amazing free products now. If your competitor is charging for a similar ebook, give it for free and shift to consulting, a membership program or publish a real book. Look what it did for Chris Guillebeau.

Here are some more links to check out:

Priced to Sell: Is Free the Future?
Malcolm Gladwell disagrees with Anderson in this NewYorker article.

Malcolm is Wrong
Seth Godin disagrees with Gladwell.
“Marketers struggle for attention and if you don’t have it, you lose. Free is a relatively cheap way to get attention.”
“Second, in a digital economy with lots of players and lower barriers to entry, it’s quite natural that the price will be lowered until it meets the incremental cost of making one more unit. If a brand can gain share by charging less, a rational player will.”

Carlos Miceli of Owl Sparks weighs in on the Free debate
“Free will win but I suspect only in the online world, which will require all profit-seekers (who will still exist) to stop looking at online shortcuts for attention, buzz, and money and will promote a move back to offline “real” business once again.”

Jonathan Fields also has a great article on this topic. Please read my comment there, as I discussed all my thoughts on the issue.

Get Rid of Your Stuff!
Going Global: Downsizing your Stuff and Right-Sizing your Life from BusinessBackpacker.com
FoxNomad has a related article Overcoming 7 Major Obstacles To Traveling The World – #2: You Think It’s Too Expensive
I also got carried away with my comment at that site, so please read if you are interested in my opinion on “stuff.”

The Tricycle Diaries – an Idea Becomes Reality
Christian Skoda buys a motorcycle and has a side car welded on the side to travel around the Philippines on nomad4ever.com.
Now this is just cool!

How to Turn Your Blog into a Business
Great post about promoting you services first on your blog from menwithpens.ca.

Introduction to Social Media Marketing
Three videos for getting started with social media marketing using Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.

50 Resources that will Improve your Writing Skills from SmashingMagazine.com

Awesome review of the Steve Martin Biography and the value of hard work from SoulShelter.com
“I did stand-up comedy for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success.”

Another great post from Seth Godin! The Confusion.
We frequently confuse internal biochemistry (caused by habits and genetics) with external events. If we didn’t, marketing wouldn’t work nearly as well.

Family of Four Starts Off on a World Adventure

Great post on how to use Google Gears to work offline with the Google Suite from LocationIndependent.com.
Also Lea Woodward from LocationIndependent has an amazing interview with Cath Duncan on MineYourResources.com. Scroll down to
“How to Be Independent, Free & Flexible by Creating a Location Independent Lifestyle” to download the podcast.

What is Wrong with the World?
I have been debating including this last article because I don’t like to focus on complaining, but I think it is warranted.
There is a fantastic Youtube video called, United Breaks Guitars by the Canadian country band Sons of Maxwell. (It is the video at the top of this post.) If you haven’t heard the story yet, United airlines baggage handlers broke one of the band’s guitars, and after 9 months of phone calls, United refused to do anything about it. Then the band put up this video which now has almost 3.7 million views! United finally tried to make the situation right, but in my view it is much too little, too late. It is unfortunate that all the thousands of others that have been wronged by United, won’t be offered fair treatment.

As a guitar player, I know that cases are fairly rigid. It takes extreme belligerence to break a guitar the way United did. I completely sympathize with the band because I have had similar experiences with United Airlines myself. I have personally witnessed United baggage carriers throw fragile items like skis and musical instruments onto the luggage carrier and then load all the luggage on top. I even called other passengers over to point out the obvious malfeasance. I have had four bad customer experiences with United. I have repeatedly flown with them because they have always been the cheapest carrier, but no longer. I will now pay a premium and endure longer stopovers to avoid the harassment of United employees.

I understand that a company with such demoralized employees must have terrible management. However, I don’t feel that passengers should bear the force of that resentment. United most certainly deserves all the negative publicity that these videos bring. All those employees that cared so little about the passengers and luggage they had in their care, will be responsible for their employer’s demise. I know that there are also thousands of great United employees and it is unfortunate that they will also be harmed.

I don’t like to rant like this, but I am just so sick of the terrible service and attitude I get in stores, restaurants and businesses in America and Canada. So few people care about delivering quality experiences to customers. What is wrong with the world? If you can’t do your job with minimum standards of human decency and respect, then quit. Those people don’t deserve to be employed.

Sorry, negative thoughts out. Happy thoughts in!

Best Lifestyle Design Links (Photo from George Eastman House)

Here is a a selection of the top links I found last week. I hope you enjoy the posts as much as I did.

All the Things you Don’t Need.
Great motivational article from Chris Guillebeau on The Art of Non-Conformity (chrisguillebeau.com)
You don’t need experience, a mentor, paperwork, or to pay for information. To start a business you don’t need to outsource, a new computer or business cards. And you don’t need permission. You only need passion, vision, a task and commitment.

A Flip Mino, a Twitter account and a little social media knowledge will not make anyone a marketer.
From Edward Boches on Creativity_Unbound (edwardboches.com)
Great Marketers use Social Media, Social Media doesn’t make great marketers.

How Much of a Life are You Actually Living?
Good article on the importance of being present in every thing we do from Glen Allsopp on PluginID.com

Lifehacks VS. Lifestyle Design
Important distinction from Adrian Koh on Litemind.com
Lifehacking is a bottom up approach to improving productivity. Lifestyle design is a top down belief in which “life should be lived consciously and deliberately, and not left to chance.

Functionally Dysfunctional
Wake up call from Craig Harper on Lifehack.org.
“Everybody has problems and issues and if you wait for personal perfection before you start to help others, you’ll never help one person.”

Cool Money: 12 Beautiful Bills
By Brynn Mannino on WomansDay.com
Cool images of money from around the world with a little history on the images.

So You Want to Be an Author.
Great information for writers by the author of Where Am I Wearing, Kelsey Timmerman on TheTravelersnotebook.com (Matador Network).
He talks about what it takes to be an author and get a book published.

Why I Chose to Self Publish
Good post for future authors by Zoe Winters on zoewinters.com
Getting a book published is extremely difficult and it still only gives you a small chance of earning a living. Statistically, self-publishing makes more sense.

What Can Travel Teach You about the American Dream.
By Debra Corbeil (theplanetd.com) on BraveNewTraveler.com (Matador Network).

Rethinking the American Dream
Great article in in Vanity Fair magazine discussing the history of the idea of “the American Dream.”
“Freedom from want, not freedom to want.”

7 Habits 0f Highly Effective People
Detailed Summary of the Classic Book on StephenCovey.com.
It is a good reminder if you have read the book and a good introduction if you haven’t. Virtually every personal development book in the last decade is based on these ideas.
Habit 1: Be Proactive – Design your own life.
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind – What do you want in Life?
Habit 3: Put First Things First – Do the most worthy things in your life first.
Habit 4: Think Win-Win: Solutions are mutually beneficial and satisfying.
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood – Listen with the intent to understand, not reply.
Habit 6: Synergize – Value differences in people. “Two heads are better than one.”
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw – Renew yourself in the four areas of your life: physical, social/emotional, mental, spritual.

Get a Job or Continue with a Start up Business?
Jun Loayza of Viralogy.com contemplates diverting attention from his start up, to get a great job and start earning some money again.

What is this Location Independence Stuff?
Freelance entrepreneur, Cody Mckibben talks about relocating to Thailand as part of viralogy.com/experts.

Top 10 Thinking Traps Exposed — How to Foolproof Your Mind, Part 1
Great article on thinking rationally and avoiding bad decisions by Luciano Passuello on Litemind.com
1. Anchoring Trap – Starting points can heavily bias your thinking.
2. The Status Quo Trap – The status quo has an advantage over every other alternative.
3. The Sunk Cost Trap – Sunk costs shouldn’t influence your decisions.
4. The Confirmation Trap – Looking for information to support your view.
5. The Incomplete Information Trap – We jump to conclusions.

Live the Juggle Life (PDF download).
Summary of the book ‘Juggle! Rethink Work Reclaim your Life’ by Ian Sanders on changethis.com
Sample chapter of ‘Juggle! Rethink Work Reclaim your Life’
“Mixing work, play, business and family, roles and projects. “
“It’s about being multi-dimensional, in letting our passions inform and shape our work identities.”
“The best plan is a non-plan.”

Some people STILL don’t get it! ‘Work’ is a mindset not a place you go.
Good article from the author mentioned above, Ian Sanders on his blog.

How to Build a High-Traffic Blog Without Killing Yourself
Tim Ferris (The 4-Hour Workweek) has a great video analyzing traffic on his blog and he answers some questions about his work.

Is This the Way to the 4-hour Workweek
Funny video mocking personal outsourcing from The Onion on thebigdreamer.com

Please let me know if you enjoy these collections of links or not. I will stop them if they are not worthwhile.