Travel cage match: Santiago, Chile vs. Buenos Aires, Argentina (part 2: Drink)

2 cities enter.  One city leaves.

Will it be Santiago, Chile – the home of enormous mayo covered hot dogs and some of the most impressive mountain views anywhere in the world?

Santiago Mountains image

or

Will it be Buenos Aires, Argentina -where you can (and more or less have to) eat steak 5+ times a week?

Buenos Aires City image

We spent 6 months researching–4.5 months in Buenos Aires and 1.5 months in Santiago–in an attempt to answer this frequently asked and extremely difficult question:  If you’re headed to the Southern Cone, which of these 2 great cities should you prioritize?

Last week we covered the food category and while Santiago had a strong showing and was far and away the winner on diversity of food options, we declared Buenos Aires the winner for the Food category overall – they may have limited menu options, but damn do they do them well.  Check out the full review of Buenos Aires vs. Santiago food.

We’re ready to move on.  Today’s category is…

2. Drink

This category is almost as important as food and despite bottles and bottles of intensive research, it is very difficult to declare a winner.  Let’s start with wine.

Category 1)  Wine:  Winner – Buenos Aires/Argentina  (though these are 2 of the best countries in the world to drink wine)

This is not really a Santiago vs. Buenos Aires thing, but rather a Chile vs. Argentina thing.  Both Argentina and Chile are deservedly proud of their wine traditions and more and more, they are gaining attention internationally for the quality of the wines they produce.  Both are pretty damn good and we had a rather fantastic (though for some reason, difficult to remember) time researching this category 🙂  By the way, if you are in Buenos Aires and like wine, you should do a wine tasting with Anuva – check out our original review on them for details:  Review of Anuva Wine tasting in Buenos Aires: Do it, you’ll thank us

Argentine wine tasting research with Anuva image

We like research

In both countries, most wine is grown right along the Andes with the largest regions being almost directly across the mountains from one another (Mendoza, Argentina and the many regions surrounding Santiago).  After visiting wineries in both of these regions and doing some additional research (Jen had to write a report for Spanish class on something…), we learned that while the regions are quite close geographically, being east vs. west of the mountains actually leads to some pretty significant differences in grape growing conditions – one of the largest differences being that on the Argentina side, the climate is quite a bit drier.  This and other differences lead to different types of grapes being better suited to one side vs. the other.  It’s why Argentina dominates global Malbec productions and is one of the only regions in the world to produces Torrontes and why Chile tends to export a broader array of both red and white varietals including the Carmenere which is largely exclusive to Chile.  Before we get into our sub-sub-category ratings, let’s start with some context on both regions.

Context

Argentine Wine Industry:

Argentina is currently the world’s 5th largest wine producer.  The vast majority of the wine produced in Argentina stays in Argentina – currently only somewhere between 20% and 30% is exported.  Up until the 1970s, Argentina produced more wine than pretty much any other country in the world.  They were apparently producing 22 tons per acre whereas most quality wine regions in France and California at the time were only producing ~2-5 tons per acre.  How did they do it?  Three words:

1)  Super

2)  low

3)  quality

Everyone used to have a big jug that they would go fill up every couple of days in the middle of town at a big wine keg type thing.  It was called “vino de mesa,” or “table wine.”  Back then, Argentines were drinking more wine per capita than any other country in the world (seriously, they were drinking something like 24 gallons/year/person on average vs. less than 1 gallon/person in countries like the US and UK), but virtually none of it was exported because, you know, it sucked.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that international wine experts started taking a closer look at Argentina.  After seeing the soil conditions, the lack of humidity, the lack of pests and the altitude, there began to be a lot of talk about the incredible potential Argentina had to produce top quality premium wines.  Slowly over the last couple of decades more and more of the industry has changed their practices away from mass produced low quality table wine to export-ready premium wine.  This has been largely driven by foreign investment.  When we were in Mendoza, we were told that back in 2002-2003 after the most recent Argentine economic collapse, there was an average of something like 3 new wineries opening every day as foreigners took advantage of low prices and saw an opportunity to make great wine.  This process still has a long way to go as they still only export a small fraction of the wine produced, but I think we can expect to see more and more Argentine wines in the international market in the years to come.  It is also worth noting, that the days of jug-wine are for the most part gone in Argentina and now even most of the wine produced for domestic consumption is quite high quality.

Bad Argentine jug wine

That said, we did experience some pretty bad jug wine up in Salta

Chilean Wine Industry:

Chile produces only a little more than half of the total wine that Argentina does and drinks only a small fraction of the wine that they produce; they export the rest.  In fact, they export 70+% of the wine that they produce which, despite the relatively small size and population of the country, makes them the 5th largest wine exporting country in the world (under France, Italy and Australia – Argentina is #8 at about 63% of the export volume of Chile).  It wasn’t always this way.  Similar to Argentina, the wine industry in Chile largely produced low quality wines for domestic consumption up until the 1980s.   Once they solved some political and economic issues, they recognized that they had the potential to turn wine into a big business, and they did.  Starting back in the 80s, they began using modern wine techniques from around the world and geared up their wineries to start producing great quality wines designed primarily for export.  They rapidly climbed the export rankings and continue to be one of the biggest exporters in the world.

You may have seen our earlier post on our visit to the Concha y Toro winery in Santiago – it’s the largest winery in Latin America and the 8th largest in the world.

Concha y toro wines image

You may recognize these labels... they are sold all over the world

Why am I telling you all of this?

I’m not sure really.  The important thing to remember is this… Chile is big in the business of exporting wine and Argentina is big on the tradition of making and drinking wine.  They both make great wine, but this context leads to some different outcomes.

Enough information, onto our totally subjective opinions…

Sub-category 1)  White wine – Winner: Chile (by a lot)

Argentina: Our experience was that Argentina focuses far more on red wine, and while we did find one Chardonnay that we liked, the vast majority of the whites that we tried there we thought were terrible.  Obviously this is subjective, but I’ve yet to hear anyone rave about a white Argentine wine nor have I ever seen one for sale in the US – if you have a different opinion, please let us know.  There is an exception to this… Northwestern Argentina is quite proud of their own unique white varietal known as Torrontes.  Many people talk it up as being a fantastic alternative to the more traditional varietals and the Argentines from the region (Salta) beam with pride whenever it is discussed.  We wanted to like Torrontes.  We really did.  Sadly, we could not.  After tasting several versions of it at a few of the wineries in Cafayate, the best way we can describe it is that it smells like very sweet dessert wine, yet somehow tastes like water.  It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that it’s not good.

Chile: Chile has fantastic white wines.  Virtually every white that we tried there we thought was excellent and if you are ever staring at the 100s of bottles of wine in a liquor store wondering what Chardonnay to buy, your odds of picking a good one are pretty good if you grab pretty much anything from Chile.

Sub-category 2)  Red wine – Winner: Too close to call

This is too close to call.  They both have fantastic red wines.  Some of the Malbecs from Argentina are absolutely amazing (others taste like kool-aid) and Chile has some fantastic big Cabs, Syrahs and others.  We are going to take a pass on this one.  Suffice to say, you can acquire fantastic red wine in either country.

Argentine Wine tasting picture image

This is just a random yet classy picture of wine glasses that I thought fit well here

The difference is in how much you have to pay for it, which leads us to the next category…

Sub-category 3)  Value for $ – Winner: Argentina

Value for the money is a pretty important dimension in determining what wine you’ll actually be able to try wherever you go and a big part of the reason why I provided so much context on the histories of the wine industries in each country up front.

Chile: Prices in general are a bit higher in Chile than Argentina for pretty much everything at the moment (though, with ~30% inflation per year, Argentina is rapidly catching up – until the next economic crisis).  The difference in wine prices is remarkable.  The reason for this is that Chilean wine is for the most part produced for export and priced at export pricing levels – we often saw the same bottles of Chilean wine that we’d bought here in the US for sale in Chile at the same or higher prices.  It’s not that it’s super expensive, it’s just that it’s internationally priced.  Argentina is different.

Argentina: Argentina exports only a small fraction of their wine and that wine is often labels that aren’t even sold domestically, so when you go to buy wine in Argentina, you are confronted with prices that were designed entirely for the local, relatively low-income, wine-loving market.  The vast majority of the wines in any store are priced at AR$15-30 which is US$3-7.  The staple wine that we drank all the time in Buenos Aires literally cost ~US$4/bottle.  That wine was awesome, and a bottle of that quality would easily cost $15-20 in the US (or Chile for that matter).  The value got even better if you were willing to spend a little bit more… we took back with us a few extremely expensive (on Argentine standards) bottles of wine that are easily some of the best wine we’ve ever had (and when we were consultants, people used to give us some pretty fancy wine from time to time!) – these super expensive bottles cost ~US$20, I’d put them in the ~US$100 range for something of similar quality here in the US.  Another great thing is that it’s easy to experiment with different high-end bottles in restaurants as the mark-up tended to be only 10-20% over store prices vs. the 2-3x mark-up that is common in the US (Chile also had a high restaurant mark-up).

Awesome Argentine Wine image

So good AND so cheap! Just look how happy we are.

On value for $, Argentina is impossible to beat.

Sub-category 4)  Variety of new wines to try in-country: Argentina

There is no question that Chile has great wines, but because they export so much of their wine, the wines that you’ll see in Santiago are pretty much the exact same wines that you’ll see in the Chilean section of a wine store in the US.  I’m sure that there are wines that you have to be in the country to experience, but in general, you can sample most of the Chilean wines from pretty much anywhere in the world.

On the flip-side, the vast majority of Argentine wines are currently impossible to purchase outside of the country.  You can be certain that a trip to Buenos Aires will expose you to an awesome variety of wines that you’ve never seen before.

Category 2)  National drink:  Winner – Santiago (by miles and miles)

Chile: Chile’s national drink (other than Nescafe) is the Pisco Sour.  It’s made from Pisco which is a grape based liquor and varying forms of sour mix.  Often there is egg white put on top, but the Chilean version usually skips that part.  It’s important to note that Pisco Sours are also very popular in other parts of Latin America (most notably Peru), but the Chilean version is their own.  The Pisco sour has the remarkable quality of tasting almost non-alcoholic – kind of like lemonade – yet having the ability to absolutely knock you on your ass in a very short period of time.  They vary in alcohol content depending on the type of Pisco used, but at one venue we had one drink each at around 5pm and were not able to walk straight again for about 4 hours.  The girl we were with threw up upon walking out of the bar.  After one drink.  Three hours later, we still wished that we had thrown up wih her.  They are dangerous, but we love Pisco Sours.

Pisco Sours in Santiago image

Pisco Sours make us happy

Argentina: Buenos Aires has an obsession with a very special kind of liquor called Fernet.  It’s made out of grapes and a variety of spices.  It’s often mixed with Coca Cola.  We tried a Fernet and Coke one time while in Buenos Aires.  Despite the fact that it was mixed with a fair amount of Coca Cola we could not drink more than a few sips.  It was without question the worst tasting thing we have ever put in our mouths.  This is of course subjective; there are many, many people that claim to love this drink – we suspect this is merely a form of hazing.

Fernet image

Fernet makes us sad

Category 3)  Coffee:  Winner – Buenos Aires (unless you are looking for a little something extra with your coffee..)

It may seem odd to have a category devoted to coffee, but the coffee/cafe cultures in these two cities are so remarkably different, we thought it was worth mentioning.  For us, we preferred the leisurely cafe experiences in Buenos Aires, but to each their own as these are very, very different.   Here’s the deal…

Buenos Aires: Cafes are a big deal in Buenos Aires.  The strong Italian roots of the city are likely the reason behind the strength of the cafe culture.  There are usually several cafes on every block and for the most part, they all serve fresh ground, strong and quite tasty coffee.  The standard ‘cafe’ is actually what we would call an espresso shot in the US, but there are several variations involving more or less amounts of milk (e.g., cafe con leche, cortado, lagrima).  It’s all good.  Pretty much any cafe you go to will serve some cookies and a glass of water with every coffee you order.  The locals spend lots of time hanging out in cafes sipping their espresso and reading the news.  There is no such thing as a to-go cup… when you’re going to have coffee in Buenos Aires, you are going to sit down and drink it for as long as it takes.  That’s just how it’s done.   Coffee is a big part of the culture here and a good deal of pride is taken not only in producing top quality drinks, but also in providing a great cafe experience.  If you’re in a hurry, it can be pretty difficult to get a quick cup of caffeine in this city, but then again we found that we were rarely in a hurry in BsAs.

Buenos Aires Cafe image

Coffee, cookies and water

Santiago: The cafe culture is very different in Santiago.  There are 3 main differences:  Experience, quality and legs.

1)  Experience:  There are still many cafes, but for the most part they are designed for getting a quick cup of coffee rather than as places to leisurely hang out for a couple of hours.  In fact, a large percentage of the cafes downtown don’t even have seating… everyone just quickly drinks their coffee while standing at a bar.  We found that getting coffee was typically a 10 minute experience.  This is not really better or worse than the BsAs style, just different.  On top of that though, we also found that many of the cafes were favorite destinations of smokers and sometimes there was so much smoke billowing out of them that we couldn’t breathe.  Starbucks is actually doing quite well in Santiago and many of the people we talked to suggested that a big part of their success might be that they are one of the few non-smoking cafes.

Stand-up coffee bars in Santiago image

Stand-up coffee bar

2)  Quality of coffee:  For various historical reasons which we never quite fully understood, Chile has a national obsession with Nescafe instant coffee.  Upon ordering coffee, the default offering you will get even in a fancy hotel or restaurant will be an empty cup and a plastic single-serve container of Nescafe.  After which, they will offer to fill your cup with either hot water or hot milk.  While instant coffee can be convenient when you need some coffee and don’t have any alternatives, it seems odd to order coffee in a coffee shop and get it.  To be clear, you can definitely order an espresso drink if you’re in the right kind of place, it’s just not the standard-Nescafe is everywhere.

3)  Legs:  We covered the Coffee with Legs/Cafe con piernas phenomenon at length in a previous post (see it here:  Cafe con piernas = coffee with legs).  Coffee shops that are part strip club or even brothel are not representative of the coffee culture in Santiago, but are certainly a significant part of it.  If you are into this, then the incredible number and variety of cafe con piernas establishments in downtown Santiago may well trump all of the other drink categories and make Santiago the city for you.

coffee with legs cafe rio santiago image

Ah the memories...

Overall winner for best Drink:  Buenos Aires (barely)

There is plenty of good drinking to be done in both cities.  If you’re all about trying new red wines that are really cheap and good you should prioritize Buenos Aires.  If you prefer white wine, go Chile.  If you like drinking gasoline, go to Buenos Aires and try some Fernet.  It really depends on you.  We happen to love red wine and were blown away by the incredible value we got in BsAs on awesome wine, so despite how much we miss Pisco Sours, we’re going to award this category to Buenos Aires by a slim margin.  We can’t declare a strong overall winner in this category, but hopefully we’ve at least given you some good context to draw your own conclusions.

Quick recap on the cage match thus far…

Round 1)  Food – Buenos Aires came out strong and won round 1 with best overall food despite Santiago’s superior variety

Round 2)  Drink – Buenos Aires barely edged out Santiago driven by the incredible value for your money on unique red wines

So far Buenos Aires has Santiago on the ropes, but the first two categories have definitely played to Buenos Aires strengths, so we expect big things from Santiago in the coming rounds. Next week, we’ll get into round 3 and tackle the issue of which of these two cities would be more attractive to live in as an expat.

Do you agree or disagree?  Let us know what you think!

Disclaimer:  Keep in mind these are just our opinions based on our personal experiences and we’re very happy to have people disagree as this is quite subjective – if you do disagree, please speak up and tell us why!

Travel cage match: Santiago, Chile vs. Buenos Aires, Argentina (part 1: Food)

2 cities enter.  One city leaves.

Will it be Santiago, Chile – the home of enormous mayo covered hot dogs and some of the most impressive mountain views anywhere in the world?

Santiago Mountains image

or

Will it be Buenos Aires, Argentina -where you can (and more or less have to) eat steak 5+ times a week?

Buenos Aires City image

We spent 6 months researching–4.5 months in Buenos Aires and 1.5 months in Santiago–in an attempt to answer this frequently asked and extremely difficult question:  If you’re headed to the Southern Cone, which of these 2 great cities should you prioritize?

Research wasn’t easy.  We worked relentlessly day in and day out to try as many restaurants, go on as many day trips and explore as many on and off-the-beaten-path attractions as possible.  We’ve also done an extensive wine comparison.  I don’t know how we stayed motivated.

There are five high-level categories to this competition, each of which will be thoroughly analyzed in it’s own post with a winner declared:

  1. Food – Quality, diversity and overall dining experience
  2. Drink – For these countries, this one is mostly about the wine
  3. Livability – How easy would it be to live here as an expat
  4. Visit-ability – How fun are these places to visit
  5. People/Culture – What are the people and culture like and how open are they to foreigners

Obviously, much of this is very subjective and our opinions should be taken with a grain of salt.  You may agree or disagree with our conclusions; our hope is to provide enough context such that you can draw your own conclusions based on your own preferences and priorities.  Our other hope is that this series of posts becomes a useful reference so that next time someone asks us the question of which city to spend more time in we can just tell them to read this rather than rambling about it for an hour–sadly, the rambling will likely continue.

Let’s do this.

Today’s category is…

1. Food

We like food.  We like food a lot.  Trying authentic foreign cuisines is one of our very favorite things about travelling, so this category is a pretty important one in our minds.  Let’s break it down:

Most crave-worthy:  Winner – Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires: We’ve been back in the US for a few months now and we haven’t bothered eating steak.  We know that it could never measure up to the Buenos Aires version that you can get at places like El Estrebe, Dada and a number of other stellar places (see our where to eat in BA post for recommendations).  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  Beyond just the steak, we can’t forget the empanadas…. oh, the empanadas.  The empanadas were unbelievable.  Also, Provoleta is missed.  We crave these things often and if/when we go back to visit BA, food will be one of the biggest reasons.

Argentine steak image

Want

Santiago: It’s not that the food was bad in Santiago, it was actually pretty good.  That said, we certainly don’t crave anything we had there.  Food is not as core to the culture of Santiago as it is to Buenos Aires.  It’s fine, but it’s unlikely to blow you away.  However, if you are a fan of giant hot dogs, Santiago is the place for you.

Chilean hot dog completo image

Yep

Best food diversity:  Winner – Santiago (by a landslide)

Buenos Aires: Virtually every restaurant in Buenos Aires has an identical menu.  As we’ve written about previously, there are really only 5 types of food in Buenos Aires (steak, pizza, pasta, empanadas and Dulce de Leche).  They do those 5 things quite well, but that’s pretty much all they do.  If you head into some of the more touristy areas you can find a handful of foreign cuisine options, but not many.  Despite the high quality, after a couple of weeks the monotony of eating the same thing every day does get to you.

Buenos Aires food pyramid image

Sometimes it's possible to combine all 5 food groups in one meal

Santiago: Santiago, on the other hand, is full of all kinds of different cuisines.  Peruvian and Japanese are probably the two most common (and quite good), but we also had some of the best Indian food we’ve ever had, there are lots of Chinese restaurants (which the locals strongly suggest avoiding), Seafood, Italian, American, French, you name it.  From a dining perspective, Santiago offers far more international options than Buenos Aires.

Peruvian ceviche image

We do kind of miss the Peruvian ceviche

Best dining experience:  Winner – Buenos Aires (if you have a few hours)

Buenos Aires: In BA, dining is definitely an experience–whether you want it to be or not.  For dinner it is usually a 3+ hour experience.  This is not (usually) the result of bad service, but rather is intentional.  In BA, dining isn’t really about eating, it’s about being with your friends and family.  Service is usually quite efficient and impressively formal up until they finish bringing your food; after that, you will have a very hard time tracking down your server to get your bill.  This is by design.  They would never want to give the impression that they were rushing you out and fully assume that you will spend another hour or 2 sitting around the table after you finish eating.  That’s simply how it’s done.  At first, this can be a bit unsettling for those of us from countries that tend to be in more of a rush.  After you get used to it though (and assuming you are not in a hurry), it’s pretty awesome to allow yourself to fully experience a meal with your fellow diners.

Santiago: In Santiago, the dining experience was far more similar to what you would find in the US.  Servers are interested in turning tables fairly quickly and in some cases may even clear your dishes and bring your check while you’re still chewing your last bite (update:  we have it on good authority from someone who has spent much more time here than us that this is usually not the case and perhaps we were going to the wrong places.  Either way though, they definitely value efficiency more in Santiago and meals were much quicker relative to BA) Great if you’re in a hurry, but otherwise nothing special.  I’m sure there are exceptions, but even/especially the fancier places we tried were not that memorable.

Overall winner in the food category:  Buenos Aires

Santiago is no slouch, but dining is core to the entire culture in Buenos Aires and as long as you eat meat and can handle the lack of diversity, they do it extremely well.  So, if your single top priority in choosing between these two cities is food (and you like meat), you should definitely prioritize Buenos Aires.

As important as it is though, food is unlikely to be the only factor in your decision making process, so stay tuned for future posts to see which city wins in the remaining categories!

Do you agree or disagree?  Let us know what you think!

And… we’re back

Coming back after a long trip can be an experience in itself.  We’ve been back in the US for 2 weeks now after spending 6 months in Argentina and Chile.

Buenos Aires is a drama queen–she cried the day before we left all day (AKA it rained).  Seattle welcomed us in the only way it knows how:  5 straight days of rain.  Awesome.

Luckily, things have improved since then and so far, we really like it here.

It’s a little weird being back in the US…

Probably the weirdest thing is how big the cups are when you order a drink and just general food portions – not hard to understand the underlying cause of the obesity problem here.

The second weirdest thing is that pretty much everyone is speaking English all the time.  Even after 2 weeks we still have to stop ourselves from speaking in Spanish when encountering strangers (e.g., “permiso” instead of “excuse me”).  Not an issue when in a real conversation with someone we know, but we’re just so accustomed to assuming that all strangers are Spanish speakers that it may take awhile to adjust.

Also, it’s quite a bit more expensive here, but we expected that.

Good news:  It doesn’t really feel like being ‘back’…

There are several reasons why it feels like we are basically still on our crazy adventure despite being back in the US:

  1. We’ve never lived in Seattle before, so are really enjoying exploring a new city together (it doesn’t hurt that Seattle is pretty great)
  2. Much like in South America, we still don’t have our own place to live and are bouncing around in temporary housing (special thanks to my sister and Jen’s parents for giving us places to stay!)
  3. We are still wearing the same clothes and living out of the same suitcases – due to poor planning, all of our other clothes are still in storage in San Francisco
  4. We are still gainfully unemployed – unsurprisingly, this makes quite a big difference in one’s daily schedule and level of stress
  5. We decide what we do each day – We still get to spend tons of time with each other, wake-up whenever we want and do whatever we think we’d enjoy each day

It’s pretty cool actually… While we will obviously need to address the unemployment thing in the near future (or at least the income thing) and would like to have our own place to live and some clothes without holes in them, our goal is to keep the general feeling of freedom and enjoyment of life going indefinitely.  I wasn’t sure what to expect upon return, but at this point, I’m extremely optimistic that we can make our change in mindset and lifestyle permanent.

So what have we been doing….?

We spent the bulk of the last 2 weeks driving around, getting to know the different neighborhoods of Seattle and looking at apartments.  At first we were looking for short-term furnished apartments, but we quickly discovered that for the most part short-term furnished options are either very, very expensive, or very, very crappy and sometimes both.  So, instead we started looking at real apartments and we found one that we absolutely love.

Living room image

This isn't even the whole thing

As of Oct. 12th, we are excited to say that we’ll be living just off Green Lake – only a block from my sister!  My sister and I haven’t lived in the same half of the country since high-school, so it should be really fun to be neighbors.  She just moved to Seattle in August, so we will get to explore the city together.

Stove image

Also, we will cook things on this beast

Did we mention that housing in Seattle is like half the cost of San Francisco???  This super-modern 2 bedroom right off of the lake with a patio and washer dryer in one of the pricier Seattle neighborhoods will cost significantly less than the small 1-bedroom we had back in SF.   I understand the value proposition of living in the Bay Area less and less (though ask me again after it rains here all winter).

Other than looking for housing, we’ve really enjoyed spending time with Jen’s parents and my sister and her new puppy Murphy.

What about getting a dog…?

We’re still absolutely planning on getting a dog and having lives that allow us to keep it alive (was a major consideration in our housing options).  That said, spending as much time as we have with Murphy has altered our perspective on it a little bit…  Murphy is a 5 month old Golden Retriever puppy and is unbelievably cute and fun.

Murphy sleeping image

You have to take pictures of him while he's sleeping... otherwise he is in constant motion

Murphy is one of the most gentle and well behaved puppies we’ve ever met.  Nonetheless, Murphy is an unbelievable amount of work and we have the utmost respect for my sister who works incredibly hard every day to keep him healthy and happy.  After some puppy-sitting, our view on getting a dog has changed in two primary ways:

  1. We no longer feel the same degree of urgency – we’ll still get a dog sometime in the next several months, but no longer do we feel the need to get one immediately (it helps that we will only live a block away from Murphy)
  2. We are no longer dead-set on getting a puppy – while Murphy is unbelievably cute and it seems like a really cool thing to be able to be with a dog as he/she develops, spending more time with Murphy has also opened our eyes to the many potential benefits of getting a slightly older and already somewhat trained rescue dog.  We’ll see…

What about job stuff…?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Actually, Jen has been having lots of networking meetings and even had her first interview earlier this week (ironically, it was for a consulting firm… but a very, very different type of consulting firm – more on that later).

I will continue to play with start-up ideas at least through the end of this year and will likely write more about some of them as things progress (which will be much, much easier once we have our own place to live!).

What about friends/social stuff…?

So far so good.  We haven’t been super focused on this yet as we’ve been mostly running around trying to find a place to live, but we’ve reconnected with a few old friends that live here and are already making some new friends.

We were lucky enough to get an email from Warren and Betsy from http://www.marriedwithluggage.com who read our last post that we were coming to Seattle and wanted to connect to introduce us to some folks here before they left on their own long-term trip (after 2 years of planning, they are finally leaving today for 3 years!).  It turns out that they were the Seattle hosts of Meet, Plan, Go! which you may remember from our earlier post.  They had been running weekly happy hours for people that are interested in getting together and talking about career breaks and/or long-term travel and we were able to attend one.  It was great meeting Warren and Betsy (and we look forward to keeping in touch while they are on the road and following their great blog) and it’s also really exciting to get in touch we such a dynamic and eclectic community of people interested in travel here in Seattle – a great first step to making sure we have a diverse social network.   We are eager to attend future happy hours.

What’s next…?

We continue to enjoy life while we settle ourselves into Seattle and co-create our new lives here together.  Exciting stuff.

p.s. stay tuned – we promise to get back to a more regular blogging schedule and still have tons of stuff to say about Argentina and Chile and Career Breaks and long-term travel and other stuff too.

Rehab phase 1 is almost complete; Phase 2 is coming

Today is our last day in Chile. Tomorrow we return to Argentina. Next week we return to the US.

Phase 1 of rehab has been intense

We have been unemployed and in South America for almost exactly 6 months now.

For 6 months we have had no deadlines and no responsibilities.

We’ve had neither cellphone nor blackberry and we’ve tried to exclusively spend our time doing things that we want to do rather than things that we were supposed to do. For instance, look how long it’s been since I last got a haircut:

I need a haircut image

Luckily, I'm getting a haircut later this week

We’ve slept for as many hours as we chose to every night (except for the damn 4am geyser tour in Atacama).

Geysers de tatio image

Stupid geysers. Stupid 4am. Stupid, stupid.

We’ve taken lots of daytime naps, we’ve enjoyed bottles of wine for lunch and we’ve consumed more steak then we had eaten in the previous 10 years combined.

Dinner in Buenos Aires: Perfectly cooked Argentine beef image

And we'd do it again

At times, we’ve seen amazing landscapes. At times, we’ve sat on park benches and watched dogs play for hours. At times, we’ve sat on benches and had people try to steal Jen’s purse – that was entertaining.

We’ve read lots of books. We’ve tried to read many Spanish newspapers. This has gone poorly.

We’ve lived in 2 countries and immersed ourselves in their cultures- Argentina for 4.5 months and Chile for 1.5 months. We are happy to help you plan your trips.

We’ve sat in cafes for hours – in the beginning we had lots to talk about… later we just stared at each other… then we started bringing books… then we ran out of books… Now we don’t go to cafes so much.

Each of these things has been a critical part of our rehabilitation. By completely removing ourselves from our old environment and the associated pressures/peers/challenges, we were forced to gain perspective. We were humbled on a daily basis. It was annoying.

Through immersing ourselves in foreign cultures in which nothing is expected of us and no one cares about our resumes or has a vested interest in what we do next, we found perspective on who we had been and on who we want to be. At times it was freeing, at times it was frustrating – both are part of the process.

Through meeting people on the road (both travelers and locals) our perspective on what life can look like and the sheer number of different possibilities that exist and can lead to happiness has expanded immensely. As has our definition of happiness-now we think it requires frequent napping.

Finding this perspective was the goal of rehab phase 1. This isn’t the end. We don’t have any answers, but this new and broader perspective will serve as the foundation for phase 2.

Rehab phase 2:  Re-entry / where we go from here

Next week we will fly back to the US and begin phase 2. We are not sad to return, we are excited to start a new chapter of this adventure. It’s like a choose your own adventure book, except written for adults instead of 8 year olds.

To say that we are ‘returning’ is not entirely accurate… we don’t have a specific home to return to. We have a storage unit full of stuff in San Francisco and a car in Seattle. We have no jobs and no place to live that is our own. And, due to poor/rushed planning all of our other clothes are in that storage unit, so we will have to continue wearing the same 5 outfits that we have been wearing for the last 6 months even though all of our sweaters and socks have holes in them. This should make a strong impression in job interviews.

We won’t be picking up where we left off, we will be starting fresh in a new city. We are planning to live in Seattle for a variety of reasons. It will likely rain a lot, but also be much cheaper.

The prospect of starting fresh is a little intimidating at times, but with our newly broadened perspective, we are excited to construct lives that offer us balance. We don’t know what it will look like exactly. From a distance, it might look like a dancing penguin. No one knows. That’s what makes it exciting.

dancing penguin image

Let's hope that it doesn't look like this dancing penguin

Jen is looking for a ‘real’ job. I plan to pursue a number of entrepreneurial projects that I have been toying with for some time. In both cases, we will only consider things that we think we will genuinely enjoy. We have already accumulated plenty of option value in our careers and are ready to cash in and find things we love. The evil mongeese can suck it.

We’d like to have a dog. And we’d like to have lives that allow us to keep the dog alive. We suspect that the dog will appreciate this as well.

We plan to have hobbies outside of work. We’ve heard that this is possible. Jen would like to teach English as a foreign language in the evenings. I’m excited to return to improv comedy. Maybe we’ll even do something athletic–fear not, we pledge to continue drinking enough wine to keep ourselves firmly out of shape.

We believe that we are ready for phase 2, but re-entry comes with a number of risks. We need to be ever-vigilant for any signs of relapse.

Signs that we might be relapsing:

If any of the following occur, we may need to buy plane tickets or at least some steak…

  1. We don’t actively pursue hobbies
  2. We eat take-out dinners more than twice a week
  3. We have more than 3 days in a row of unhappiness at work (a couple of days can happen anywhere from time to time – at 3, we torch the place)
  4. More than 50% of the friends that we spend time with on a regular basis have MBAs
  5. We spend more than 10% of our social interactions complaining about our jobs
  6. We eat lunch while still typing
  7. The idea of getting a dog dies due to impracticalities of work schedule
  8. The dog itself dies due to neglect
  9. Multiple instances of cancelling social events occurs due to last-minute work conflicts
  10. We check emails on our phone while mid-conversation with others
  11. We don’t manage to leave the country at least twice a year
  12. We achieve Starwood platinum status (and are proud of it)

There are almost certainly others. We will need your help to avoid relapsing. That is why we absolutely plan to continue this blog. It will become less about South America (though there are still tons of topics we’ve been meaning to write about on Chile/Argentina and still plan to), and more about Seattle and our re-entry.

We hope to be an example not just of a couple that left our jobs to travel for 6 months, but one that also made a successful return to our careers and are better off than we were before we left.

Stay tuned.

Any other relapse warning signs you can think of that we should watch out for??

Atacama: A Vacation within a vacation within a vacation

First…

we packed up our apartment in San Francisco, put most of our stuff in storage and went to Buenos Aires.

Then…

after ~4 months we left a couple of bags with a friend in Buenos Aires and went to Santiago.

Then…

after ~1 month we left a couple of bags with friends in Santiago and headed up to San Pedro de Atacama. We’ll be here for ~5 days.

Like a dream within a dream within a dream…

this is a vacation within a vacation within a vacation. We can only hope that the ‘kicks’ are timed correctly and we will be able to return to Santiago and then Buenos Aires and then the US with all of our things and ourselves intact.   If anything goes wrong we could become lost in vacation limbo forever. Obviously, this would be horrible.

We have to be careful.

We can only hope that our subconscious doesn’t create evil projections that are able to catch us and throw us out of our vacation early. To avoid them we will have to choose a new and exotic destination every day. We will go to crazy places like the Valle de la Luna, Los Geysers del Tatio, Las Lagunas Altiplanicos and others. If things get desperate, we may even go so far as to go sandboarding in the desert and/or cross the somewhat unpredictable and recently unstable border into Bolivia. Hopefully these crazy environments and activities will be enough to confuse our subconscious and keep us safe.

Time moves much slower here than in reality.

Because we have total freedom to choose what we want to do in each moment, every day spent in a normal vacation is worth 10 days of life at home (just add up how many hours you spend enjoying what you want to do vs. doing what you are supposed to do in a normal 10 day period in reality and you’ll see what I mean). Many theorize that this time distortion compounds with each additional layer of vacation abstraction–each day on a second level vacation is worth 100 days of enjoyment in your normal life; each day on a third level, 1,000. We’ll be here for ~5 days on this third level vacation which means that for us it will be the equivalent of 5,000 days worth of normal life enjoyment. You will hardly realize that we were gone, but for us, we will have experienced ~14 years of enjoyment here in the arid high-altitude desert of Atacama. If, upon reading this, you are now depressed by how little you enjoy your normal life, consider joining us–there is still room on our afternoon tour.

Unfortunately we do not have any spinny tops.

When we return… if we return… we will have no way of knowing whether or not we are back in reality or are in yet another layer of vacation. It’s entirely possible that we will spend the rest of our lives unsure whether we are on vacation or not. We are okay with this. If we do end up in vacation limbo, please consider joining us, but under no circumstances should you attempt to rescue us.

By the way…

If the last 6 months have just been a dream and rather than traveling in South America we’ve actually just been sleeping in a conference room using our laptops as pillows while making slides for a big presentation tomorrow… Please don’t wake us up; we will be cranky.

p.s. If you haven’t seen the movie “Inception” go see it. Then this will make (at least some) sense.

CPTJMIY: Dave Kovac on Volunteer Vacations, Global Village, and finding balance (Part 2)

It’s been a long and arduous 3 day wait, but I’m thrilled to let you know that you need not wait any longer… Part 2 of our interview with the very first featured Crazy Person That Just Might Inspire You (CPTJMIY) is here.

I’m sure you all read part 1 of our interview with Dave Kovac which focused mainly on his inspiring involvement in Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village international trip program (if not, you should!).  While reading it, you may have wondered how he possibly manages to spend 2-8+ weeks a year out of the country building houses and making a true difference for people in remote parts of the world.  It’s one thing to go on a trip every once in a while, but how has he managed to balance it with the rest of his life/career/family for several years now?  We’re glad you asked.  That’s what part 2 is all about.  Let’s find out:

Dave Kovac – The interview (part 2)

Dave Kovac Global Village image

As a trip leader, Dave is forced to wear many hats. Sometimes simultaneously.

Ok, a little more about you…

We hear you actually have a “real job”. When you’re not leading trips, what do you do with your time?

I split between a couple of things. I teach at Oregon State University, I own/manage some rental properties, I do a little consulting, and I’m easing out of my 12-year tenure as a house-dad.

Did you intentionally choose a career that would allow you the kind of flexibility you currently have? If so, how? And if not, how did you end up this way?

That’s an interesting question. I don’t see myself as having a “career.” I had one. I prepared for it and I worked for it and I followed a well-worn path that was to put me in a career position as a college administrator, but I found that the deeper I got into the career, the less time I spent doing what I initially intended on doing. It’s a fairly common occurrence — people join a profession because they enjoy the work and then move up the administrative ladder moving further and further from the work that they enjoyed so much in the first place. Our reward for doing a good job is oftentimes being given extra jobs for which we have little preparation or interest (or even skill). That produces ambiguity, loss of confidence, stress… In education, at least, good teachers are often promoted to administrative positions which require a completely different skill set. One goes from displaying the ability to connect with students and impart knowledge to balancing budgets and making personnel decisions. That’s not what most teachers are either trained for or want to do.

Now back to your question. When I stopped my career I thought it would be temporary but “knew” that it necessitated a change of some kind. I stopped in order to be a “house-dad” for our three growing children. My wife was in a position/career that she was devoted to and our kids needed the time and attention. It was weird and scary and oddly threatening — to me and to people in our community. A lot of people — including myself — seemed very uncomfortable with the notion of purposely jumping off of the career track. Some were disappointed, many were confused, and a lot, I discovered, were envious of me doing what they secretly hoped to do. So I added the title “consultant” to my name plate and shopped that around for a bit. It was easier than trying to explain what I was doing, an understandable “career-move” (if it brought in the bucks), and wasn’t untrue: I did a lot of consulting — I consulted with the family on what we should have for dinner, I consulted with the kids on when their soccer practices were, I consulted with my wife on what needed to be done around the house…

I began reconstructing my interests, skills, and priorities — not necessarily in any planned sort of way — in order to feel better about what I was doing. What I’ve come to is not a career, really. It’s a mix of commitments, responsibilities, interests, and involvements. I’m much busier now. I’m pretty scattered. I am crazy. But that’s my life — the one I’ve defined, and not the one defined by my “career.”

Dave Kovac Global Village 2 image

Dave and some of his 'clients'

How do you balance being on the road for extended periods of time with work, family, other responsibilities at home?

I don’t know if I balance it. It doesn’t feel balanced. But it doesn’t feel chaotic or stressful, either. I’ve been able to incorporate family into the trips by taking each of my children, separately, on a Habitat build. My wife will tell you that she counts on me being gone a few weeks out of the year so that she can have some alone time with the kids or visit relatives that we just haven’t had the time to see together. I do think that my teaching suffers when classes are interrupted by me being gone, so I’m trying to work on that. But that’s just a matter of me being more conscious of my schedule.

Dave Kovac Global Village Balance image

Looks pretty well balanced to us

Do you feel you’ve had to make any major sacrifices to find this balance?

Not really. This is more of who I am. I’m following my interests, I feel I’m making a difference, and I believe that the good I do in one area of my life seeps through to other areas. I do miss having spending money, but that never worked out so well for me anyway.

What are the biggest challenges? Biggest rewards?

The biggest challenge is packing. Oh, and completing expense reports. As for the rewards…they are plentiful, my son.

Any advice for people trying to create a better balance in their life (for instance, people who work crazy hours in jobs they don’t love)?

The easiest advice that someone could give is, “hey, if you don’t like what you’re doing, stop.” But that’s not very realistic. When we’re talking about achieving balance we’re really talking about developing our own identity. Who am I? What am I good at? What inspires me? What do I like to do? Seek out those activities that help answer those questions and reinforce what you’ve discovered. It’s funny, but I’ve found that during those times I’ve been completely stressed and anxious, instead of subtracting from my list of commitments, I ended up adding to them so that the sum of those commitments held meaning. “Who am I?” is not a question that can or should have one answer — it’s a compilation of many things.

Anything else to add?

If this makes me crazy, then yeah, I’m nuts.

One last thing…

When/where is your next trip? How do you sign up?

Thanks for mentioning that. We are still looking for participants in my next Global Village adventure to Udon Thani, Thailand in November. After that, it looks like I’ll be heading back to Macedonia in June. Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village program maintains a constantly updated trip schedule at http://www.habitat.org/cd/gv/schedule.aspx . Look at when and were trips are being scheduled throughout the world and if my name’s in the trip leader column — bonus!

Dave Kovac Global Village team image

Consider Global Village for your next vacation; these people did.

Thanks Dave!!  We definitely think that you are Crazy–and to us, that is high praise.  We are inspired and we’re hoping that this interview will inspire others as well.

You can get more info about Dave’s upcoming trip to Udon Thani, Thailand in this brochure.  Also, check out the Global Village website for info about this and other trips; they are happening all the time, all over the world and they are 100% worth checking out.

CPTJMIY: Dave Kovac on Volunteer Vacations, Global Village, and finding balance (Part 1)

We are tired. It’s hard [expletive removed] work trying to inspire all of you people out there to get out and create the life you’ve always wanted rather than the one you think you are supposed to have. We recognize that many of you read this and think, “Wow, that’s really great for them that they are out there having so much fun with no concern for the consequences,” shortly followed by, “That said, they are crazy.” Since we are outnumbered (seriously, there are more of you everyday!), we’ve decided to enlist the help of some other crazy people to help make our point.

As part of our very well thought out and documented blogging strategy (which often involves cocktail napkins and pisco sours), we are officially announcing our new feature “Crazy People That Just Might Inspire You,” or simply CPTJMIY–we even made a fancy logo for it (see above), that’s how serious we are. In CPTJMIY, we will periodically highlight crazy people that have found ways to combine their passions with their daily lives rather than put the pursuit of their passions off until “someday”.

Our first Crazy Person is Dave Kovac

Romania Habitat Global Village trip 2006 Dave Kovac image

See what I mean by crazy? 🙂

First, a little background on Dave

Dave holds a special place in both of our hearts. Actually, in a very weird coincidence, he was perhaps the first indirect connection between Jen and me and certainly a major catalyst for us having so much to talk about when we first met.

During the summer of 2006 just after I graduated from business school, I had the opportunity to go on a Habitat For Humanity International/Global Village program through the consulting firm that I would soon be working for (they were offering to sponsor this as a sort of sign-on bonus, which was fantastic). I chose a 2-week trip to help build houses in Cluj, Romania–the heart of Transylvania. I had never done anything like this before; it was an amazing experience. Working alongside locals and knowing that you are helping to make a difference for them is so much better than being a tourist–not only do you feel good about helping, but it’s also relatively inexpensive, you do and see things that you’d never be able to experience as a tourist and you get to hang out with a group of pretty awesome fellow volunteers. Why am I telling you this? Dave Kovac was the leader of that trip.

Romania Habitat Global Village Trip 2006 build site image

This is from our work site in Romania. We worked hard...

Not only was Dave the leader of my trip in 2006, but he’s been leading trips like this all over the world for years… including the same trip in 2007 at the exact same worksite in Romania that my now-wife Jen went on (you know what they say–a couple that builds the same house together, in Romania, a year apart, with the same trip leader, stays together). So, Dave knew us before we knew us. In an indirect way, he may be responsible for us (which he has mentioned makes him feel a little bit dirty).

Romania Habitat Global Village Trip 2006, Monastery image

... we also played hard. We spent several days exploring the country side with the awesome local staff as our guides. This photo is from a functioning monastery that we spent the night at. It was awesome.

I’ll let Dave tell the rest of his story himself, but one other thing I want to mention… Leading these trips is NOT Dave’s job. Dave does other things for employment and income purposes, but he still makes the time to lead a couple of these trips a year. He is a great example of someone that has found a way to balance passions and responsibilities in a way that perhaps gives him the best of all worlds. Don’t believe me? Let’s ask him:

Note:  We’ve split the interview into 2 parts.  Part 1, below, focuses mostly on Dave’s involvement with the Habitat for Humanity Global Village program and the kind of amazing experiences you can get from this form of “volunteer vacation.”  This is cool stuff and I highly recommend you look into it if you’re looking to do something a little different and extremely rewarding for your next 2 week vacation.

Part 2 of the interview will launch later in the week and will focus more on Dave himself and how he was able to set up his life and career in a way that allows him to spend ~1 month every year somewhere in the world leading trips like this.  Very cool stuff.

Dave Kovac – The interview

Dave, how does it feel to be the very first ‘Crazy Person’ featured on Consulting Rehab?

Kind of a weird combination of honored, overjoyed, humbled, and confused. But I’m ready. Bring it.

So let’s talk a little about these Habitat trips you lead…

So, give us the overview–how/when/why did you get into leading these Habitat Global Village trips?

Habitat for Humanity is a great organization. I think a lot of people know that. The Global Village program is Habitat’s international trip program that has really led the way in what has become the volunteer vacation movement. My initial involvement was accidental and during a time in my life when I was in transition — I had been a university administrator and teacher for quite some time and I needed to stop-out of that for the good of our growing family. So when I was in the room when someone received a phone call asking them if they’d be interested in going on a Habitat trip to Kenya, the person who received the call said “No, I don’t think so, but Dave might want to…” And I did.

I had a great experience on that first trip. But it was a little tough. It was in the year 2000 and we would be building the 1,000th Habitat home in Kenya. We didn’t really know that going in, but it became a big deal — dubbed “the Millennium Build.” That put a lot of pressure on our team leader who had to meet with dignitaries, resolve conflicts and disputes arising from villages and communities either vying for our attention or backing-out of previous arrangements, and generally feeling like all of our moves were under some microscope. While being pulled in so many different directions, our team leader asked me to help pay attention to the team and dynamics. All 13 of us were sleeping on a concrete floor under mosquito nets in a 12×13 room, there was no running water, at night we were at the mercy of periodic scheduled and unscheduled rolling blackouts, and during the day we might not even see each other as the team was divided into small groups of 2 or 3 and sent to different work sites (some as far as 90 minutes away) so that different communities could share in the honor of being part of the Millennium Build. I think there ended-up being 6 or 7 Millenium Houses. Separated, in tough conditions, and not knowing what was happening next, people got a little cranky. At the same time, we were all having a fantastic experience — we just need a little time to process it and share in this amazing thing that was happening. So I became the fun guy. It was great! I’d lead massive games of Simon Sez with 30 or 40 village kids each night; we set-up a soccer field in our encampment for evening games; we rented bicycles from the local bike-taxi drivers so we could take an afternoon off to tour the area… We became more engaged in the community. And as we became more engaged in the community we became more committed to the work and began relating to each other better. And I started thinking, “Wow! This happened within days! If I could bottle this up and take it home, think of how enjoyable and productive this could be to our communities, our businesses, and our corporations.”

During the later part of the build, as things were going better and our team really hit our stride, someone suggested I do this sort of thing on a regular basis – that I should lead trips. I was open to the idea but I was hesitant — there wasn’t any money in it and I was a little skeptical about jumping into an organization that I didn’t know too much about. I decided that I’d visit the Habitat headquarters in Americus, Georgia so I could meet some of the people I might be working with and to see if I could honestly support the work they were doing and how they were doing it. Habitat was great. They let me know of a training weekend in Americus, provided me with a place to stay in town — all I had to do was come up with airfare and book a flight. I’m glad I did. I discovered that like anything else, different people have different motivations for being involved in this kind of effort. And that’s OK. I may not be able to recite the spiritual rationale for Habitat’s work, but I can support the outcome. Doing something good is more important than saying something good, and Habitat’s Global Village program is all about doing something good. Once I learned how I could support the effort, it was easy to say “yes.”

How many trips to you lead per year? How long are they?

I average 2 trips a year. Some years I’ll do one, some years I might lead four. Most trips last a little over two weeks — about 17 days when you count travel time, which, for some destinations, can take 4 straight days of travel just to get there. There are a few week-long adventures to locations that are a bit closer to home and don’t take quite as much energy getting to the site. While the trips themselves might last a few weeks, the planning and developing of each trip can take as long as 10 months. And that, for me, is part of what holds my interest — it’s a thread that I use to weave together other facets of my life: the planning, and being intentional about what we try to do helps hold things together for me.

Where have you done trips? Any favorites?

I’ve been to a number of pretty cool spots in Kenya, Mexico, Tanzania, Portugal, Alaska, South Africa, Macedonia, Kyrgyzstan…and then there were the trips to Transylvania (Romania) with you and Jen. I ended up going back to Romania 9 times, I think. As for favorites, I get asked that a lot and end up answering pretty much the same way…it’s hard for me to pick out a single favorite. Each experience has been a little different — a different mix of people, of cultures, of scenery, of work, of conditions — and that mix has made each trip distinctive and special. Those moments kind of meld together into one great uber-memory for me. I have these pictures in my head of driving a bota-bota (bicycle taxi) through a little town in western Kenya while people poured out of their houses to point and laugh; of Habitat families, laborers, and our crew dancing around a tamale truck in Mexico celebrating someone’s birthday; retracing Nelson Mandela’s 11k to Freedom on the 10th anniversary of his release; a soccer match in Portugal in a stadium carved out of an old quarry; peeking outside of a yurt in Kyrgyzstan at the most amazing stars I had ever seen. All of those things are great, but I think what gets me every time is the sincere thanks that I receive from people who truly and sincerely appreciate what little I have done to help them get on with their lives. Most people I’ve come to know as recipients of a Habitat home are terrific, hardworking, wonderful people who have simply become stuck in an unenviable situation. And this little boost helps unstick them. What’s really cool for me is returning to a site that I’ve been to previously and seeing that that little boost really did help. And what’s super-cool is that for those builds I’ve been involved with overseas, there’s a 100% success rate. 1-0-0 PERCENT! Who can say that? Most of us contribute to things/people/causes as an act of faith — we hope that our contributions make a difference. I KNOW my contributions — and the contributions our teams have made — make a difference. And I am reminded of that every time I lead a Global Village trip.

How many and what kind of people go on these trips? (e.g., age, attitude, motivation for going, where they are from, etc.)

Teams can range in size from 8-24. A lot depends on the conditions at the local affiliate where there might be some restrictions on how many people can be transported to and from the worksite, what accommodations are available, how much room is at the project site, etc. Team members can be from anywhere in the world (most are from the US) and there’s an application process that’s facilitated through Habitat’s online web site. Applicants can be specific about when and where they’d like to be considered or they can be fairly general about it. The GV program tries to match potential participants with trips based on availability and interest, then it’s a matter of working with the team leader to make sure there’s a good match with each others’ expectations.

As for motivations of participants, I think that’s all over the map. Someone shared with me a profile of Global Village participants as having certain characteristics, but I haven’t found that profile to fit my teams. I think once you start looking for or targeting certain “types” of people you lose one of the special characteristics of a team which is its diversity. Different people with different motivations having different skills equals a great build experience.

Romania Global Village Trip 2006 image

Here's some of the group that I went to Romania with in 2006 - age range spanned ~50 years from youngest to oldest and people were from all over (Our fearless leader, Dave, is the top left)

Can just anyone go (do you need specific skills, background, etc.)?

Just about anyone can join a Global Village team. No construction skills are required — a little flexibility, willingness to learn, a helpful mindset, humor, and a sense of adventure go a long way, though.

What do you think people get out of these trips?

For a lot of people I think that there’s an unexpected sense of appreciation and purpose that comes if they just let it happen. People looking for something specific often don’t find it, or are so intent on finding that one ingredient they miss out on everything else. Not having an agenda actually helps as the experience unfolds. I know, it sounds very karmic. I find, though, that many of us are in jobs and commitments and relationships and activities that don’t seem to have tangible outcomes. We even get judged on those intangibles. What a building a house brings is a tangible set of measures — instant feedback. Combine that sense of accomplishment (even when it’s frustratingly produced) with a continual bombardment of appreciation and thanks, and think of the high that can produce. It’s pure positive feedback — even when it involves digging a hole (which I’ve done on several continents).

Any other marriages resulting from your trips?

Yeah, a few. But I have to warn you, there have also been a few breakups. I had nothing to do with either. Honest.

What do you get out of leading these trips/why do you keep doing it? Any favorite memories?

Besides that high of appreciation and accomplishment, I think what really keeps me involved is how this activity has provided a common thread of purpose through the various fragments of my life. I’m able to relate the experiences of these trips to my other commitments and responsibilities, which often feels fragmented and disconnected. My involvement in Global Village brings continuity to who I am.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this interview later this week to hear more about how Dave manages to balance these trips against family, career, life, etc…

Update: Part 2 is now available here

Management book chapter 2: Perfectionists should kick themselves in the head (perfectly)

Last week we discussed the merits of building career option-value and warned about Brick Wall Syndrome (BWS) and the tyranny of the evil mongeese.  This week, we’ll tackle the advantages of being a perfectionist and make the argument that if you are a perfectionist you should try to kick yourself in the head (as perfectly as possible).

Like last week, this will not apply to everyone.  The truth is, this one barely even makes sense, is WAY too long and is almost certainly 100% inaccurate.  If you do somehow force yourself to read it all the way through though, I hope you can agree with me that, at the very least, some of the pictures are pretty entertaining…

Why

It’s not easy to kick yourself in the head at all, let alone perfectly.  It will require a significant amount of practice to get it just right.  You may be wondering why I’m suggesting this.  It’s mainly because perfectionism makes me cranky, but I’m happy to come up with some other reasons if my crankiness alone is not enough for you (that said, we will likely both end up regretting this).

The basic argument is that kicking yourself in the head provides all of the same compelling benefits as trying to be perfect (e.g., almost impossible to achieve, hurts a lot, not worthwhile, etc.) while at the same time being infinitely more entertaining for others to watch.

Kick yourself in the head image

See? Entertaining, right?

You might be thinking “This is preposterous, I don’t even know why I’m reading it”

Imagine how I feel–I’m the one writing it.  The worst part is it’s just getting started.

If you’ve read the last chapter about career option value, then you already know about Brick Wall Syndrome (BWS) and how it instills in you a drive to manage your career/life by continually seeking out the paths of greatest resistance and pushing yourself as hard as possible to break through all of the brick walls you can find in order to build option value (even though you don’t necessarily have any interest in these options).  You’ll also know that if you suffer from BWS, any career choice that looks enjoyable and/or like something that you could really excel at without any pain or suffering will automatically be classified as an utter waste of time by the evil mongeese who are in charge of your life decisions.  This much should be fairly obvious.  This chapter isn’t about BWS though, it’s about another disorder–perfectionism.

Overview of disorder

At this point, I should clarify that I’m not talking about the benign and mild form of perfectionism in which people take pride in their work and have high quality standards.  That’s a positive thing.   I’m talking about the more extreme version that keeps people up all night obsessing over things that even they admit are a waste of time.  This is the version that inevitably leads to a constant sense of failure and ensures that no matter how much effort you put into something, you always feel like you should have done more . . . and that someone else would have.

Perfectionism isn’t about building option-value by choosing difficult paths.  Unlike BWS, perfectionism isn’t concerned with what specifically you choose to do; whatever you choose, this disorder’s primary focus is in making you obsess over doing things as perfectly as humanly possible–regardless of how long it takes, what other important things are going on in your life or if anyone else cares.  This could lead you to do any number of things, e.g.:

  • Stay up all night making sure that every PowerPoint slide in a large presentation has a perfectly matching color scheme (note: it’s not about consistency–consistency is merely good enough; the perfectionist will likely have painstakingly tried several different schemes to see what looked best)
  • Spend 5 days of intense effort to do what should have only taken 1 day (it’s not that you’re slow, you simply weren’t satisfied until it was 5x better than what anyone could have done in 1 day)
  • Spend all day trying to come up with a perfect third bullet point here to tie this all together in a comical way (if you are a perfectionist and have suggestions, please leave them in the comments)

Perfectionism and BWS are not the same thing.  It’s true that they often come together in a tightly-strung, type-A, fun-to-be-around package, but they are not the same thing.  Individually they are bad; together, they are worse.  You don’t have to believe me about this; here is the proof:

Perfectionist 2 by 2 - simple image

Note: if this 2 by 2 doesn't constitute definitive proof to you, you may not have what it takes to be a management consultant

Self-Diagnosis

Diagnosing yourself to be a perfectionist is usually not difficult.  Most perfectionists are fully aware of their disorder and often secretly (or openly) proud of it.  It is even easier to diagnose it in someone other than yourself merely by observing their daily activities.

Here are some signs that may indicate you have this disorder:

  • You frequently work significantly longer hours than others that have your same job and do not understand how it is that they can manage to go home so early and not be more stressed-out all the time.
  • When you point out how proud you are of having gone above and beyond to make sure that all fonts/colors/icons/etc. are perfectly coordinated and aligned to the nearest millimeter (you measured), rather than receiving applause, people just look at you and shake their heads.  This seems strange to you.  Your conclusion from this is that you will have to try harder next time.
  • When other people actually do compliment you on your work, you think they are patronizing you–you know that you should have done more, and if they think that you were good enough, then they really have no idea what they are talking about and should be avoided.

If any of the above symptoms are present, you may be a perfectionist and should continue reading for root causes and home treatment options.

Root causes

If you are an obsessive perfectionist, whether or not you realize it, and whether or not you are proud of it, what you are really suffering from is almost certainly varying degrees of the following two root causes:

1)  You are afraid that someone else will judge you to be not good enough

2)  You suck at managing competing priorities

Or, if you are confused (which can happen if you’ve been up all night perfecting something), you may be afraid of competing judges not managing someone else’s priorities well enough.  If this is the case, see your doctor immediately.

If you are a perfectionist, you are in for a rough time.  Whereas the person suffering from BWS is off prioritizing things based on degree of difficulty and perceived rewards, the pattern behind your decision processes is distinct.  Due to root cause #1, your main concern is avoiding someone else thinking that you are not good enough.  This is extremely stressful and requires constant vigilance.  You always have to be on guard.  No matter how small the task is that you’re doing, you have no choice but to go above and beyond and make it perfect–regardless of how long it takes (you really hate deadlines).  Having to be perfect all the time is a lot of pressure.

This type of extreme perfectionism is primarily about downside protection.  You are far more concerned about the downsides of being imperfect than you are motivated by the upsides that might come from doing a good job; unlike someone suffering from BWS, it doesn’t matter to you whether or not what you are working so hard on will lead to any rewards (real or perceived), it just matters that no one finds any errors in anything you do.

There are side-effects.  This fixation on downside protection can, at times, make you fear taking risks and prevent you from attempting things that are unconventional or creative (even if you have a spectacular idea: e.g., starting a monster truck rental business).  You tend to avoid things that don’t have an established set of criteria for perfection because you know that they are far more likely to result in criticism and failure (though, I think we can all agree that a monster truck rental business would clearly succeed).  You may have less fun and work harder than others, but at least you won’t risk being a disappointment.

Who is this person that you are so concerned about letting down?  To you, this is an irrelevant question–it does not matter who they are, whether or not you have any respect for what they think or if they even exist.  Because it doesn’t matter who they are, we’ll call them Mildred.

Perfectionist Mildred single image

If you’re a perfectionist, your priorities are determined by Mildred.  One might say that you are Mildred-centric.  You are so concerned about letting down Mildred that you will consistently assign exclusive priority to whatever things you think are important to her (even if you are just guessing).  In fact, you will often obsess over them so much that you will lose sight of other things that a more rational version of you may suggest are more important (e.g., happiness, loved ones, eating tacos)–this is root cause #2:  sucking at managing competing priorities.

Mildred is not the (only) bitch in this scenario

You may be surprised to hear this, but it’s almost certain that Mildred…:

a)  Couldn’t care less and doesn’t even know your name (or is some minor character from your past who doesn’t remember you – e.g., your 6th grade English teacher)

or

b)  Is in fact a bitch, and realizes how easy it is to manipulate you into doing whatever she wants through pointing out your weaknesses

or

c)  Thinks that you actually are good enough  – uh oh!  Time to find a new Mildred

How you choose your Mildred

Despite your debilitating ailment, you likely still have some people in your life that care about you.  These people probably not only think that you are good enough; they may even think that you are great.  This automatically disqualifies them from being your Mildred.  You have to look for a Mildred that exhibits either A or B from above in order to be sure that you will generate enough anxiety to perpetuate your disorder.

A fun side effect of this is that the people in your life that care about you (and who are likely also the same people that you yourself care the most about) are unable to help you.  Due to the very fact that they think that you don’t suck, you will constantly discard any positive things that they ever say to you and instead make it clear to them that Mildred’s opinion is more important to you.  This is awesome for them.  Fear not, in time these people will go away and you will be completely undistracted and able to focus all of your attention on pleasing Mildred.

Remember, the goal of this disorder is for Mildred to be your taskmaster, and that wouldn’t work very well if you picked a Mildred that was supportive of you.  This is why this form of extreme perfectionism is scientifically referred to as BMBD, or Being Mildred’s Bitch Disorder.

It gets worse

If you have BMBD and you have BWS (which often happens due to a failure to vaccinate for these things in infancy), you are really in trouble.

Perfectionist plus option value equals screwed image

With BMBD alone, your obsessions are more random and tend to fluctuate.  Mildred on her own may make you strive to throw the perfect birthday party for your 3-year-old one day, followed by obsessing over the formatting in your monthly report (and not even getting home from the office until after your 3-year-old has gone to bed) the next.  It doesn’t really matter what you are doing; her main concern is that you are always perfecting.  You may end up sacrificing other things that are important to you while in your Mildred-induced perfectionistic frenzies, but at least there’s a chance that you’ll have devoted some of your energies to things that actually do matter to you.

As proven earlier, it’s much worse if you also have BWS.  If you have both, your Mildred instead will be collaborating with the other mongeese to ensure that all of your energies go into attempting to be perfect at things that are extremely difficult and that you are simply not good at.  They will pick virtually impossible tasks specifically targeted to your weaknesses (because that’s where the biggest challenges and brick walls are–as mentioned, BWS sucks) and she will make you feel bad about yourself for failing to do them perfectly on your first try.

Mongeese with Mildred image

Focusing all of your energies on trying to be perfect at virtually impossible things which you are in fact not good at is no fun.  It’s certainly not as fun as competing in a taco eating contest (the great thing about a taco eating contest is that everyone wins).

taco image

You know you want it

Home treatment options for BMBD

Unfortunately BMBD is not curable–as you may have suspected, you will always be Mildred’s bitch.  However, there are some things that you can do to alleviate the majority of your symptoms.  Similar to BWS, embracing failure is extremely helpful in fighting BMBD–if you let Mildred down enough times, she’ll stop caring so much.

If you aren’t ready to embrace failure, try the following:

Step 1: Admit you have a problem

Like so many things, the most important first step is admitting that you have a problem.  BMBD is not just a harmless personality quirk; at its extremities, it holds you back, pushes people away and prevents you from having the life that you want.  Upon accepting that this is a real problem, you might be tempted to lash out at Mildred…  Don’t – it’s not her fault.

Step 2: Admit that you are the problem

The second step is realizing that Mildred isn’t the problem; you are.  It’s true – you can ask anyone that knows you well and they will tell you.

Now that you are horribly depressed, it is time to move on to step #3.  If you are not yet horribly depressed, you didn’t do steps 1 and 2 well enough–please repeat until you have perfected them.

Step 3:  Perform some Mildred Judo

This step requires some introspection.  If you have BMBD, it means that you suck at managing competing priorities and will let everything else slide in order to cater to the ever-changing whims of your Mildred.  If you can improve on balancing priorities using a little Mildred Judo, you won’t have to worry about what your Mildred thinks.  On the contrary, it is your Mildred that will have cause to worry.

The trick is to make your disorder work for you rather than against you.  What you need to do is to pick a new Mildred that has a more macro view of your life… Maybe pick your future self as your new Mildred.  Pick a high-level Mildred that is judging you based on how well you live your life across ALL dimensions rather than a small-minded Mildred that gets caught up on minor details and loses sight of everything else.  This new Uber-Mildred will have no trouble beating up your current Mini-Mildred and setting a very different tone for what remains of your lifetime of servitude.

Uber-Mildred perfectionist image

Note:  If the number of Mildreds mentioned in the preceding paragraph is confusing, just try to remember:  Uber-Mildred = good, Mini-Mildred=bad, millions of milling Mildreds mysteriously melting = hard to say.  Better?

Pleasing your new Uber-Mildred will require a whole new and much healthier mindset.  For instance, Uber-Mildred will be very unhappy with you if you work late and blow off spending time with your spouse.  That said, Uber-Mildred will also be unhappy if you do sloppy work and get fired.  What’s important to understand is that Uber-Mildred doesn’t require perfection in any one thing in particular, but rather requires that you devote your obsessiveness to trying to be perfect at balancing all of your competing priorities in a way that optimizes your happiness.

With her in charge, it’s not about having the perfectly formated report, it’s about having the best overall life (within which the formatting of your report is merely one of many other dimensions and should be prioritized accordingly).  Indeed, pleasing Uber-Mildred is all about getting comfortable with the idea of making sure that you are ‘good-enough’ across all dimensions before you are allowed to expend energy to go for better/great/fantastic/boy-howdy in any one category.  This isn’t easy.  Uber-Mildred is a harsh mistress and pleasing her will require making trade-offs (especially in any areas that mini-Mildred was particularly obsessed), but pleasing her will ultimately please you.  Isn’t that pleasant?

Step 4: Try to kick yourself in the back of the head

I suppose this step is optional, but, as mentioned previously, very entertaining for your friends and family and, depending on how extreme your BMBD symptoms have been, the least you could do is provide a little entertainment to thank them for putting up with you.  In fact, if you make it to step 4, please upload a YouTube video and link to it in the comments section below.

YouTube Video image

I'm not kidding

Note: If you are also suffering from BWS, the above steps will still help you somewhat, but in addition, you will need to seek out  and embrace failure (as discussed last week).  A good way to make failure a part of your daily life is to travel.  Immersion in a foreign culture will almost certainly make you feel like a failure several times a day.  Not only will you stop looking for brick walls, you will likely have moments where you are eager to eat Top Ramen for dinner because it means that you don’t have to deal with looking like an idiot with your poor language skills in a restaurant and potentially ordering something that has calf brains in it because you didn’t recognize just one little word in the list of 10 ingredients and assumed it must be something benign like parsley.  Not that I have any experience with this.

Disclaimer:  The author makes no claim whatsoever to have figured anything important out or to have anything worthwhile to say about this or any other topic.  He writes things like this merely for entertainment purposes–mostly his own. You should definitely not construe this as advice or take action based on it–you could end up unemployed in Chile.


Beaches and mountains and wineries, oh my!: More reasons why Santiago rocks

While Santiago is a great city in and of itself, possibly its most compelling feature is its proximity to an amazing variety of incredible day-trips, ranging from beaches to wineries to mountains and more.  This is a tale of some of those day-trips.

Context

I thoroughly enjoyed writing about career related topics (e.g., Career Option-value) and will absolutely be writing a lot more involving evil mongeese in the near future, but I didn’t want to go too long without offering a little travel-related inspiration…

We’ve been in Santiago, Chile for a couple of weeks now and we continue to like it more and more (see our original post on Santiago).  So much so in fact that we are now seriously considering getting jobs and living here for the foreseeable future.  Anyone have any good leads?  🙂

We may sound crazy.  You may be wondering why we would consider living so far away from home.  There are many reasons.  In this post, I’ll discuss 3 of them: beaches, mountains and wineries.  Oh my.

Santiago day trip 1: Beaches

About a week ago we made plans with some friends to go skiing in some of the gigantic mountains hovering just outside/over the city.  We headed over to their house at around 9am to meet up.  When we got there, they told us that they had heard the weather was rough and it might be snowing too hard in the mountains for skiing to be much fun.  We are fair weather skiers, so skipping the slopes for the day was fine with us.  After some discussion about possible alternate destinations, we decided to drive to the coast for the day.  It was drizzling for most of the ~1 hour drive, so initially we weren’t all that optimistic about the beach.  We were in for a surprise.

We started at Isla Negra, which is a small beach town a bit south of Valparaiso and the site of one of Pablo Neruda’s houses (he’s kind of a big deal here).  The tour of the house was very worthwhile (this guy collected all kinds of crazy stuff, including a narwhal tusk!).  Beyond the house, the beach was fantastic which was helped by the fact that the rain stopped..

Isla Negra beach image

This was Pablo Neruda's backyard. I wish it were my backyard.

After our tour, we decided to drive a bit further up the coast to Viña del Mar.  Viña is a popular beach destination for a good reason.

Viña del Mar coastline image

It's always a beautiful day in Viña del Mar

The weather was significantly better at Viña.  We had an awesome lunch on an outdoor patio (keep in mind that it’s the dead of winter here) and then took to the beach…

Viña del Mar beach image

Everyone out enjoying this beautiful winter day

Also, there were some very cool sand sculptures.

Viña del Mar beach sand sculpture image

Such as this crazy dragon thing

We got some ice cream, hung out on the beach for a few hours and eventually headed back to the city.

Let’s recap:

  1. We woke up in the morning ready to go skiing.
  2. We determined that it was snowing too hard to go skiing
  3. Rather than driving an hour east for skiing, we drove an hour west to the coast
  4. We spent the day enjoying a sunny, warm and beautiful day at the beach and eating ice cream (because it was snowing too hard to ski).

Does this seem strange to anyone?  Is this sequence of events possible anywhere else in the world?  If so, let us know!  If not, join us in basking in the awesomeness that is Chile.

Santiago day trip 2: Mountains

This weekend it wasn’t snowing too hard.  With our friends at the wheel, we managed to make the ~1 hour drive east (though ‘up’ is the more accurate direction) and hit the slopes at Valle Nevado.  It was our first time skiing in the Andes and it was unlike any skiing we had ever done before (in a good way).

Valle Nevado ski lodge image

This is the lodge down at the base (yep, that's the bottom...)

Aside from the incredible views and massive amounts of snow in every direction, there is something quite unique about skiing in the Andes…

Valle Nevado slopes images

Hmmm... what's missing from this picture?

Trees.  There are no trees.  I’ve never skied without trees before.  They pretend that there are separate runs, but really it’s more of a free-for-all where you can pretty much go anywhere–there is nothing but snow and mountains for miles and miles and miles.  At the lodge, you can conveniently pay for a helicopter to drop you off further out if you’re crazy (we saw it go back and forth more than a few times), or some people apparently take a lift up and just head off in a different direction and have a friend pick them up near the side of the road somewhere down the mountain (or just hitchhike from there).

I’ve skied all over the US, but I’ve never seen this much fresh powder–certainly none that is this light and fluffy.  Also, it doesn’t get that cold (rarely below freezing) and apparently the day we were there was the most crowded our friends have ever seen it–sometimes we waited in lift lines for up to 2 minutes.

Valle Nevado lift image

This is the 'most' crowded it's ever been...

And another thing…

Echaurren glacier at the top of Valle Nevada image

At the top of one of the lifts you get an incredible view of the Echaurren glacier (top left) which is hanging out at around 17k feet

If glaciers aren’t your thing, there are also some spectacular views of the city way down below.

Santiago view from Valle Nevada image

That's Santiago city down there in that valley. If you look closely you can see the buildings... completely surrounded by mountains

Not only that, but the drive home offered some pretty spectacular sunset views.

Sunset on road to Santiago from the Andes image

Sunsets in Chile do not mess around

Let’s recap:

  1. 1 – 1.5 hour drive from city
  2. Amazing powder skiing, wide-open runs, not crowded, warm
  3. Incredible glacier views
  4. Incredible city views
  5. Incredible sunset
  6. If we were feeling lazy, we could have gone to the beach instead

Convinced yet?  If you still don’t agree with us that Chile is awesome, that’s fine.  There’s plenty more…

Santiago day trip 3: Wineries

On another day, with some other friends (people are friendly here), we headed north to the small town of Los Andes.  It’s about an hour, maybe 1.5 hours north, nestled in between the Andes and the Coastal Range (more mountains) and more or less surrounded by the vineyards of the Aconcagua Valley (you have to be specific because there are like 7 wine valleys within an hour or so of the city).

Los Andes, Chile vineyard image

The views were ok

Frankly, there wasn’t really any need to have a particular destination in mind, you can basically just start driving and stare in awe out the window at the amazing scenery beyond every turn.

We had been pretty fixated by the Andes, but we learned about a whole new mountain range on this trip.

Coastal range from Los Andes image

Those are part of the Coastal Range. Also awesome.

We stopped at one point and did a little hiking through vineyards to get to the top of a hill (which happened to be the site of some very interesting petroglyphs).

Los Andes winery and mountains image

This is what we saw

After we managed to tear ourselves away from these incredible views (and of course buy as many bottles of wine as we could carry after some wine tasting) we headed to our friends’ favorite lunch destination in the area…

Los Andes lunch spot image

Decent place to have lunch -- try the drunken chicken

As if the above wasn’t enough, we also were treated to a brief performance by these guys:

Huasos image

Huasos - Like guachos, but Chilean

Once again, let’s recap:

  1. 1 hour drive
  2. Spectacular scenery along the way
  3. Not one, but 2 mountain ranges (Coastal Range and Andes)
  4. Cool wineries that make great wine in unbelievable settings
  5. Drunken chicken for lunch
  6. Chilean cowboys

What more could you want?

In Summary

We used to live in San Francisco.  San Francisco is known for having lots of incredible day trips you can do near the city.  While we are big fans of San Francisco, the day trip possibilities around Santiago make San Francisco day trips look a little silly (in diversity, intensity and proximity).  We’ve only just begun exploring this city/country and so far we are blown away.

Where else can you do all of this and more so close to a major city?  Why doesn’t everyone live here??  🙂

Check out more photos in our gallery:

Beach day photos

Ski day photos

Winery day photos

If I were to write a management book about career “option value” . . .

I know a lot of people that are working very, very hard in jobs that they don’t have any particular passion for (and in many cases dislike quite a bit) in order to have greater “option value.” I was one of them; I spent the majority of the last 10 years building option value.

As we come closer to the time we originally thought we’d end this Career Break, I’ve started to think about the future and my career again. I’ve started to think about “option value” – how much I’ve accumulated and what I should do with it. If I were to write a management book about option value it would look something like the following.

It will not apply to everyone.

Sometimes “option value” is about building a great resume…

It starts young. You don’t even know it’s happening. All you know is that you have to work very hard in high school to get into the right university. You don’t question it, you just know it’s what you’re supposed to do. Everyone knows it–and those that disagree just have wrong-minded priorities (e.g., fun). You know better.

Once in college, you have to make sure you choose the right major, get the right grades, do the right internships and demonstrate the right leadership qualities in order to get the right job after graduation. If you are in pursuit of option value, determining which job is the “right” one involves very little reflection upon what you enjoy doing or what makes you happy; instead, it requires seeking out the jobs that are hardest to get, the hardest to do and the most likely to consume the vast majority of your waking hours. This is obvious.

Duh image

Of course, this job is just the first such job; the whole reason you worked so hard to get it is so that you would be qualified for the next job. That’s the “option value.” There is always a next job/accomplishment/promotion/whatever–otherwise, why would you be working so hard at the current job which you barely even like? If you weren’t doing it in order to get the next job, it would be a little crazy, wouldn’t it?

Each new job will likely be harder than the last. If you’re focused on pursuing “option value,” you will likely inadvertently have become convinced that any job that would be hard and/or painful is automatically worthwhile and important; also, you’ll likely believe that any job that looks easy and/or fun is almost certainly frivolous and a waste of time. Obviously, this makes sense, even though it is sometimes hard to explain to others in a way that they can understand–fear not, this is likely due to their wrong-minded priorities (e.g., happiness).

This logic will force you to continually seek out the path of greatest resistance and push yourself as hard as you can to get “there.” The destination is irrelevant; it’s the very fact that there is resistance that makes it seem worthwhile. In other categories of your life you likely don’t have the same confusion–for example, you may fully agree that walking through an open doorway is a much better idea than trying to walk through a brick wall–but for some reason this logic gets reversed in regards to your career.  We’ll refer to this as “Brick Wall Syndrome, ” or simply BWS.

firewall_clip_art_10163 image

Watch out for "Irritable Brick Wall Syndrome", that's even worse.

Most people fail or drop out at some point in this process–which is understandable, as it requires near-perfection as well as a fair degree of luck to navigate the course. The longer you go without a failure, the greater the pressure to be perfect all the time and the more (it feels) you have to lose. Unfortunately, being perfect gets harder and harder. The further up this ladder you climb, the more years and vitality it extracts from you and the harder it is to remember what you were doing it for to begin with. On a positive note, with each new accomplishment you earn an entirely new set of options for the future. After 5 years of this intensity you have quite a bit of “option value;” after 10 you could do almost anything. Imagine if you did it for 20 years – someday you’ll be able to do all of those things you always wanted to do – not today, but someday . . .

Sometimes it’s about accumulating money and/or stuff…

This often looks similar to the scenario above. It often layers on top of the scenario above. Having money has real benefits:

  • You can afford to buy products and services that free up time (e.g., car, take-out dinners, Roomba). There are lots of things you can do with more time. Things like looking for more brick walls.
  • You can spend money on stuff to reward yourself for your accomplishments and to prove to others that you are “succeeding” (e.g., houses, watches, monster trucks). Unfortunately, spending it on these things along the way requires earning even more to pay for them. That said, the value of owning a monster truck should not be underestimated.
  • You can even save money so that someday you won’t have to work so hard and you can finally afford to go out and do all of those things you always wanted to do. I guess.

While it is not entirely the same thing, there is no denying that more money = more “option value.” And, you can always have more; someone else always does (we refer to them as “jerks”).

Options don’t kill people, people kill people…

There is absolutely a place for pursuing “option value” and many benefits can come from it. It can indeed get you where you want to go. . . as long as you know where that is. The thing is, you don’t really need 1,000 options, you probably only really want 5. And if you only really want 5, why spend so much time building the other 995? The trick is figuring out which 5 you want and minimizing the amount of time spent accumulating those you don’t care about.

For example, let’s say I want to go on an island vacation. It would probably make sense for me to figure out which island I want to go to, buy a ticket and go. Right? Alternatively, I could put off reflecting on where exactly to go and instead work really hard for several years to save up enough money to buy tickets to 20 different island destinations (just in case the first one doesn’t turn out to be perfect). I still won’t have gone to any islands over these years, but I will now have several to choose from and at least I won’t be sunburnt. Note: I tried really hard to come up with a funnier example for this analogy. I failed (see below, failure can be a good thing).

Pursuing options merely for the sake of having more options is not often a recipe for long-term happiness. It’s all too easy to get caught up in this cycle–especially when you are working so hard to get to the next set of options that you don’t allow yourself time to reflect upon where you are headed or what is on top of the particular ladder you are climbing–be careful, it could be an angry mongoose.

Mongoose With Ladder image

Worse, it could be a giant mongoose. BWS sucks.

One way to break the cycle…

Seek out failure. Failing early is better. Anything is better than running into an angry mongoose on top of a ladder. It’s much easier to succeed if you’re already a failure–and much harder to avoid failing if you are exclusively a succeeder. Most happy people I know have had significant failures. Few happy people that I know are pursuing options for the sake of options (though, they may have monster trucks someday so you should still be friends with them just in case).

Failure teaches you that it’s ok to fail (if this seems obvious, great–if not, be careful, you may be suffering from BWS). Failure often leads to new perspective and a more open mind regarding what “success” can look like. Indeed, failing at what you think you are “supposed to” do may open the door to pursuing what you actually “want to” do. Weird.

Don’t spend all of your time and energy getting stressed about avoiding/fearing failure (a prime symptom of BWS).  Instead, embrace it–it can be more fun that you might think.

Now what?

If you’re working hard on something you don’t love in order to build “option value,” always know why you are doing it and how you plan to “cash in” on those options. You get to choose why and how, but choose. Choose something that inspires you and work specifically towards it. It doesn’t matter what you pick (e.g., travel, time with family, volunteering, ninja training course, etc.). There is no right answer and you can (and should) change it as many times as you want. The important thing is picking something specific rather than just marching forward without a destination–if you don’t choose, the angry mongeese will choose for you and you definitely aren’t going to like what they choose (it will probably be something scary, they eat snakes).

Angry Mongeese image

With them in charge, what could go wrong?? (Note: I am fairly confident that the $2 I paid for this photo is the best $2 I have ever spent)

Once you pick something that inspires you, it’s time to ask yourself when. How much ‘option value’ and which options do you need to pull it off? How much money? Be specific. You might be surprised. You might have more than you need already. It might be time to cash in–you can always create more options later. Plus, who knows what new ones you’ll find along the way…

Monster Truck Mongoose Jump image

Maybe you'll be able to pull this off

Wasn’t that a nice inspirational note to end on?

Note:  The author makes no claim whatsoever to have figured anything important out or to have anything worthwhile to say about this or any other topic.  He writes things like this merely for entertainment purposes–mostly his own. You should definitely not construe this as advice or take action based on it–you could end up unemployed in Chile.

Update:  If you liked this, you may enjoy Chapter 2: Perfectionists should kick themselves in the head (perfectly)