Tim Ferriss is one of the very few people in this world that I look up to. After his announcement a while ago that a new edition of his world famous book The 4-Hour Workweek was going to be published, I realized I had a copy of the first edition sitting on my shelf and that, while I knew what the book was all about, I had never read it. I ordered the new one and decided I would read it this time. As I’ve said before, I often meet people who’ve travelled a lot and have also lived in other countries, even very different in many ways to their own. I always say the same thing when I hear their story: I’m so jealous, I’m gonna do that one day. You know, when the time is right.
I’m not a big fan of reading, I must say. Most of the time books just bore me to death. Tim’s had a slightly different effect on me. The day the book arrived I started reading it, and just couldn’t stop.
The Timing Is Never Right
I once asked my mom how she decided when to have her first child, little ol’ me. The answer was simple: “It was something we wanted, and we decided there was no point in putting it off. The timing is never right to have a baby.” And so it is.
For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up all the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. “Someday” is a desease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pros and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want do it “eventually”, just do it and correct course along the way.
—TIM FERRISS, The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated
After reading that, it struck me. The only thing that was putting me off from doing everything I ever wanted to was myself. Two weeks later, I’m quiting my job, selling or giving away everything I ever owned and moving to Southeast Asia for at least a year. First stop: Kuala Lumpur. I guess books can be life changing after all.
When I tell people, the most common reaction is “What the hell are you going to do in Asia? You have a life here!“. Well, one’s life is not anchored to any place. I’m gonna have a life there as well, it will just be different. How much different, I still don’t know. That’s what most people don’t get, that someone can embrace (and definitely get excited by) uncertainty instead of avoiding it. People who have lived somewhere else besides their own country have a different reaction, though. They say I’m gonna love the experience and that it’s gonna change me in ways I can’t even imagine. I’m sure it will, and I’m looking forward to it.
