Of the many things that are providing inspiration for this adventure are two books (AudioBooks in my case) that have had a huge impact.
As mentioned in one of our first posts, Tim Ferris’s first book The 4 Hour Work Week was a real eye opener.
Not for the ‘notion’ of working only 4 hours a week (he admits that most people will not end up doing this), but more for the rationale and mindset that a person can aim to accomplish this work/life balance. The ideas of setting up an income that you can utilise from any location, and preferable earn in a higher currency and live in a cheaper country (i.e. Australia to bali).
One very interesting thing was that of the two books he traveled with on hist first longterm adventure, and what influenced him the most was the Rolf Potts book ‘Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel’.
The book proposes that long term travel is more of a lifestyle, and that the idea of simply taking short holidays as some form of ‘reward’ for a long year of work is a false dichotomy. Madly running around to each tourist attraction on a short 1-2 week break is not a form of relaxation and hardly a way to appreciate a splendid place that you might find yourself in.
Obviously these notions are not for everyone, and our circumstances are a little different to those of the two authors at the time of writing. We are however looking far beyond just a year away, to what this year will ‘give back’ to us and our kids in years to come. Our hope is that we will be able to look back on it the way these authors and many others have as a wealth of knowledge that no classroom or short vacation would ever provide.
I can highly recommend both of these books to anyone interested in longer term travel or just the idea of making your life a little more flexible for the ability to ‘change things up’ whenever you feel like it.
