Image by Un ragazzo chiamato Bi

This comes to you live from our “home” in Thailand – where we arrived safely after an arduous journey from Dubai a week ago. Thanks to those of you who have asked about the Munchkin & how she’s coping with the LIP lifestyle – she did brilliantly with the travel (slept most of the way) and has settled in well so far, acclimatising to the heat and only having a couple of disrupted, jetlag-affected nights.

We’ve had a busy time settling in, getting ourselves sorted and generally acclimatising to both our new destination and being on the road full time again – and, as always, it’s given us plenty of food for thought…

You can always tell when something’s a growing movement, the latest buzzword or something that challenges the status quo. You know, because you get push back.

You get push back from those who’ve never tried it but say it can’t be done; you get push back from those who’ve tried (and failed) and say it can’t be done and, most surprisingly, you get push back from those who’ve tried it, succeeded and then decide to spoil it for everyone else by saying it’s the “wrong” thing to be working towards and you’ve got it all wrong…

It’s Your Life

You don’t have to look too hard to find these types of posts online at the moment – the kind which tell you that you’re working towards the wrong dream, which tell you that you have got it all wrong and that what you thought you wanted, isn’t really what you want at all. Many actually make excellent points and appear to be helpful but they are so often steeped in negativity that the important message is unfortunately lost.

Here’s my advice: Ignore them. And while you’re at it, ignore us.

Focus on creating what *you* want, what works for you and ignore what anyone else says. If all you want is to trade your current location for somewhere with nicer weather, then go for it. If you want to work less and earn more but stay where you currently live, go for it. If you want to set up a range of new businesses, work twice as hard but do this from a beach halfway round the world, go for it.

Who am I to tell you that this isn’t “the dream”? Who are they? This is one of my favourite quotes from the LIP Lifestyle Guide which says it best…

“ If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” Jim Rohn

Thoughts On Productivity

Since I was pregnant/became a mother we’ve managed to get *way* more done than before that all happened. We’ve launched more sites, created more products/services and generally got our acts together on more fronts than ever before…which is kind of ironic given we’ve had about a quarter of the time to do it in.

It’s made me realise a number of things though which I think are relevant to most people who are looking to build a location independent life for themselves which include:

Don’t Waste All That Time

Seriously, if you don’t have a full time job, kids, babies, pets or other dependants who take up most of your time and you have 24 hours a day to work on your own business/projects – what are you doing with all that time? Are you really making the most of it? Probably not.

I can say that because I know for certain we didn’t. I have no idea what we did when we didn’t have a baby and had all the time in the world for our businesses/projects. Actually I do – I wasted a lot of time on Twitter, kidding myself that I was “marketing” and it was important stuff. But I wasn’t actually creating important stuff – I was prevaricating and procrastinating under the guise of doing something useful. Does that sound like you too?

Light The Fires

Part of the reason we felt no urgency back in the days when we had lots of time, was just that – we felt we had lots of time to get things done. There was no urgency to prioritise our activities – if we didn’t get that blog post written in the next hour, never mind we had several hours free later in the day to do it.

But not these days, if I don’t get that blog post done in the next hour it won’t get done until who knows when. That’s not to say that you need to create a false sense of urgency just for the sake of it, but I know plenty of people who are trying to get somewhere but not getting anywhere fast who could do with a bit more urgency and fire in their bellies.

Stop Preparing & Start Doing

This is something I emphasise in the LIP Lifestyle Guide – just do something. It doesn’t matter if it’s the *right* thing or not – but doing something is better than doing nothing and better than thinking about doing something or even planning to do something.

Planning to do something, thinking about doing something or researching doing something – that will get you nowhere. Literally. You need to do, not think, plan or prepare anymore.

I know that sounds simple but you will be amazed at the number of people who are still trying to become location independent but don’t actually do anything to achieve it. They’ll think they’re doing something by reading blogs, researching business ideas etc. etc. but that’s not enough. Launch that business, implement that idea – just *do* something and then make your next move from there.

I’ll leave you with the following quote (from an unusual source!):

“…there’s a tendency to mistake preparation for productivity. You can prepare all you want, but if you never roll the dice you’ll never be successful.” Shia LeBeouf

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