The Art of Non Conformity

As I am looking at potential travel opportunities and evaluating my options, namely, whether to undergo a formal program or just wing it(!), I was happy to run across Chris Guillebeau's blog, The Art of Non-Conformity.

I pulled some good quotes from one of his longer documents:

"Here’s a quick side lesson: if you want to know who your real friends are, start telling your craziest idea to everyone you meet. Some people will slowly back away from you as if you really are crazy, but others will latch on to your idea and help you any way they can. The people in the second group are your real friends"

and here:

“You see, the conformists of the world will tell you to do one or the other, or else they’ll tell you to go make money for a while and then use your resources to help people. This is a deceptively satisfying answer for people who want to be reassured that it’s okay to put off thinking about the second question. It’s a satisfying answer because it pro­vides temporal relief. It’s deceptive because it’s not true, and over time most people gradually begin to correctly sus­pect that they’ve missed something big by believing this idea.”

Part of me feels that this is the stuff best-sellers are built on, challenging conventional wisdom: Take the road not taken, Follow your real dreams! And, having just read the Black Swan, his logic also seems to be susceptible to confirmation bias. He did it, and is telling us about it, but we don't hear about the others who try it and fail. Consequently, we have an inflated belief that we can do this too.

On the other hand, a large part of me agreed with his two quotes and with most of the stuff I see on his blog. He does a good job of balancing the ideological in an individual sense (he wants to visit every country in the world) and the practical (among his goals is a PHD in international relations).

If you'd like to see more of Chris's ideas, I'd recommend here, and here.