Alan Perlman

Case Studies in the 9 to 5 alternative: No. 3

Welcome to a series of profiles on alternative lifestyles. If you think that you (or someone you know) would make for an interesting interview, then drop me a line. I know there are plenty of you out there 🙂 Hope you enjoy!

Meet Nathaniel Olson, an avid traveler and certified teacher currently based in Busan, South Korea. Most people (that I know) who teach English abroad end up in places like Europe, Thailand and Japan, so when I connected with Nathaniel through Twitter (you can find him here), I was interested how he ended up in Busan. Did you know that South Korean schools typically have the highest pay rates for English teachers? Upwards of $2500/mo, a free round-trip plane ticket, free housing, and 50% medical? What a deal!

After college, Nathaniel found a job that took him to 48 U.S. states and 5 Canadian provinces. He eventually wound up in Busan after realizing that education was his true calling, likening the city to his hometown of Seattle. I’ll let him tell you the rest:

How did you end up with a Masters in Teaching?

Ever since I was growing up I had a feeling that some day I would become an educator.  Yet, the draw of making a ton of money sounded pretty nice coming out of High School…so I went the advertising route…after a year stint in Seattle, I realized that money really wasn’t that important to me and I needed to figure out what would make me happy.  After small jobs, I got a job with the Bureau of Education and Research.  The job allowed me to have close contact with many well known educators.  I eventually sat down with my sister and decided that is was time to go back to school to become an elementary teacher….

48 states and 5 provinces? Sounds like a lot of travel. What was the gig?

The gig was working for the Bureau of Education and Research.  I was a program manager, yet it’s easier to describe as a tour manager for educational presenters.  I traveled with a new presenter each week traveling the US and Canada…each day a new city.  It was tiring and fun at the same time.  I would have never gone to some of the places that I went without the job.  It also gave me the itch to go back overseas.

How did you end up teaching English in Busan over other world cities?

Actually, I didn’t know much about South Korea or even Busan before I seriously considered it.  I researched many job opportunities across the world.  What really attracted me was the opportunity to live in a port city, teach in a public school, financially be able to pay off my student loans, and a new experience.  I also liked how group oriented the society as a whole is.  I’ve loved every second of it.

Wait, Busan and Seattle are similar? In what sense?

They both are port cities with mountains in the background.  They have world famous fish markets, eco-friendly people, and are large cities, yet not the size of Seoul or Los Angeles.

What recreational activities do you amuse yourself with outside of school?

I love to go hiking, play soccer, relax on the beach, ride my bike, attend concerts/sporting events, fishing, snowboarding, and anything that gets me outside.

Any long-term plans? Think you’ll be hanging out in Busan for the next few years?

I’m done here in March 2010.  Then me and my girlfriend are backpacking around SE Asia for awhile, back to the Portland, OR area to look for a teaching job, then off to Africa for the world cup, and eventually living in Portland, OR by next fall.  Hopefully I’ll be teaching 5th or 6th grade in the public schools by then.

Best of luck, Nathaniel!

If you have any additional questions, feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll do my best to track him back down. He’s a busy guy, romping around Busan and all.

Have you heard the news?

That you can find anything, almost anything online…for free?

A handful of years ago, I came home from high school one lazy afternoon, only to find my mom hunched over our downstairs toilet with the biggest wrench I had ever seen. “Mom. What the HELL are you doing?” Not only had she managed to strip the wallpaper and sponge paint the entire room, but she had also piped open our plumbing and installed a new sink. “Don’t worry, Alan…I looked this all up on Google.”

That’s right folks, there’s no excuse anymore. From bicycle maintenance, recipe search engines and watching guitar lessons on YouTube, you can learn just about any task on the Internet superhighway. It’s pretty wild.

While “distance learning” traditionally refers to academia, I’m expanding the definition with a list of my favorite self-education resources.

Future Learners (photo credit)

Do It Yourself (DIY) Projects

Instructables.com—launched in 2005, user-generated DIY projects with step-by-step picture instructions.
>> Check out: Tetris DVD Shelf, Invisible Book Shelf and the Marshmallow Gun

DoItYourself.com—leading DIY website with thousands of projects, mostly home repair-related.

DIYIdeas.com—best resource I’ve found for home and garden projects.
>> Check out: for home-foliage-enthusiasts, they have a great outdoor section

Academia

Academic Earth—launched in March 2009, a seriously amazing and comprehensive collection of free video lectures from top U.S. universities.
>> Check out: Entrepreneurship

MIT OpenCourseWare—around 2000 MIT undergraduate/graduate course notes online, some with complete video lectures and test banks.
>> Check out: Sloan School of Management for business courses, and for all you rocket scientists out there, Nuclear Science and Engineering

Google Scholar—if you’re looking for specific academic resources, this is a good place to start. JSTOR, for me at least, has been a traditionally better resource, but as a college-graduate I no longer have free access.

Other Resources

Lynda.com—great collection of (mostly free) software and coding training courses. Suggested to me by Sean and Colin on the LocationRebel forum. There’s also a great interview on Mixergy.com with Lynda Weinman, the founder of the site. I’ll probably use Lynda to beef up my HTML / CSS / PHP coding skills, as they are currently quite poor.

Design e2 (via Hulu.com)—18-part documentary-style series that explores sustainable living and green design. A fantastic resource if you’re interested in the world of sustainability.
>> Check out: one cool episode, China, From Red to Green?

TED.com—AMAZING collection of presentations (“ideas worth spreading”) delivered by the most talented people in the world. There’s really not much more to say.
>> Check out: Stroke of Insight, Brief Digression and Spaghetti Sauce

What sites do you use for self-learning?

It has been exactly 9 months since I outlined my goals for 2009. Let’s review my progress:

1. Run 5 miles in 35 minutes

I’m on pace. Currently, I can hold out for nearly 4 miles, and come November 26th, I plan on breaking this goal. Registration just opened up today for Nashville’s Boulevard Bolt, a 5-mile, Thanksgiving morning run down and back one of Nashville’s most historic and scenic roads. Anyone want to join me?

Due to a seriously disgusting gash in my right heel (circa July 4th weekend), I put Vibram FiveFinger training on hold. Easing my feet back into them is a slow process, but well worth the pain. I miss the feeling of barefoot running too damn much.

2. Reach conversational level in Spanish

I had a similar response last quarter – yikes. I’m not giving up on this just yet – in fact, I have quite an interesting approach planned. I promise to map out my strategy over the next few weeks.

3. Read and take notes on 3 out of 77 books on the Personal MBA reading list.

Complete!

So far, I’ve read 6/97 books and written up my reviews on 3 of them. My latest reviews are of I Will Teach You To Be Rich and The 80/20 Principle, both of which I enjoyed for different reasons. Again, if anyone else is working their way through this list or has simply written a review of one of the books, please get in touch!

4. Compose a photo-journal coffee table book of my abroad experience in Nepal.

I have started putting it together, but then something amazing happened.

I found out that I will be traveling back to Nepal in November as part of my next work assignment! This will give me a unique chance to reflect on my experience 3 years ago, revisit some of my old photography sites and maybe put a refreshing, more comprehensive spin on the book.

On October 18th, I will be traveling to Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Nepal and Georgia for a cost-of-living assignment. You’ll be hearing more about this trip as the time approaches, trust me 🙂

5. Expand my blogging audience to at least 100 RSS subscribers.

Doh! This graph doesn’t look nearly as clear as I would have liked it too. Sometime in the last two months, my average subscriber account crossed the 100 mark. As of this morning, I’m looking at 122 subscribers.

I updated my Resources page and got rid of the Twitter-update box on the right side of the screen. Originally I wanted to free up room for some targeted affiliate ads, products and services that would help you all out, but I’m not so sure I want to mess with it. As an experiment, I am running two affiliate programs now just to capture impression and click-through data. I’ll most likely scrap the ads in the next few days. Who am I kidding?

I’ve also connected with some very cool people over the last few months that have helped bring my site to a larger audience. People like Nate at the way that you wander, John at JetSetCitizen, Rob at The Life Design Project, J.D. at Wage Slave Rebel and Diggy at Upgrade Reality. There are plenty more people that I have connected with – you all know who you are! I look forward to meeting new people through email, Twitter, TBEX, Location Rebel, and good ‘ole fashioned face-to-face.

6. Clean up my research paper on vertical farming and send it to Dickson Despommier at Columbia University.

7. Complete the Hundred Push Ups challenge

The 100 Push Ups challenge is a six-week program that builds endurance, enough to do 100 consecutive push ups.

Well, it took me awhile, but I finally did it. After doing push ups in countries like Nigeria, Ukraine, Albania, Syria, I completed the entire 6-week workout. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t the workout that pushed me over the top, it was a group of coworkers that agreed to do push ups in the conference room. At 11:30am on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we do 3 sets of as many push ups as we can do, resting for a few minutes in between sets. After just a few weeks with them, I noticed a sharp increase in the amount of push ups I could complete – team dynamics can be quite powerful!

Next update: January 1, 2010. 3 goals left, and 3 months to complete them. Until next time!

It was November 1955, and a British naval historian by the name of Cyril Northcote Parkinson had just published a comical article in the Economist, poking fun at the way government bureaucracies behave. In his short, satirical essay—which eventually lead to an entire book on the subject—Parkinson investigated the inner-workings of bureaucracies, arguing through keen observations that they are inherently positioned to swell up and expand.

Fast forward 50 years, and the essence of Parkinson’s witty and cynical argument, known as Parkinson’s Law, is still just as true. The first sentence of his original essay says it all:

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Bureaucracies inevitably expand because there is no time crunch for government growth. During Parkinson’s time in the British Civil Services, he saw the inefficiencies of expansion firsthand and realized that progress wasn’t necessarily about working hard. It was about defining goals and working efficiently and optimally—one of the core elements of lifestyle design.

For individuals, this proverb is an incredibly useful tool. If you give yourself a month to complete a project that might only take a few days of work, the project will invariably become more difficult so as to fill the entire month. While your work load may not increase, time is wasted with unnecessary psychological pressures—the fear and stress of getting the project done. If you take a step back and allocate an appropriate amount of time for projects, for assignments, for daily tasks, etc. then you’ll see that the work becomes much less complex than it needs to be. You might even find that you’re able to accomplish more in the same amount of time. For whatever reason, it took me a long time to figure this out.

PhotoBunga and Interview140

I love coming up with ideas. Businesses, book scripts, blog posts, the best songs to sing in the shower (cough cough)…you name it. It wasn’t until after reading about Parkinson’s Law, though, that I realized how inefficient I have been in pursuing some of them. Below are two case-studies that help explain how to apply Parkinson’s Law to side projects and business ideas.

Case 1: PhotoBunga

The idea—a travel photography/social network/e-commerce site, where images are geographically tagged to a large, interactive world map. Profile pages are set up for each photographer.

Over time, contests and an advanced rating/commenting system would make it easier for PhotoBunga users to search for quality, featured images. PhotoBunga would jump behind these high-end, amateur photographers and market their photos to various forms of print media. Companies like Fodor’s Travel (owned by Random House) are constantly in need of travel photographers, and PhotoBunga would be a cheaper yet just as professional alternative to using freelance photographers.

Why PhotoBunga never got off the ground—my time line was too loose. I dove too quickly into working with an outsourced web developer and did not spend enough time mapping out the shell of the site. I didn’t have milestones, I didn’t have short-term goals, I didn’t really have any kind of grand vision.

How Parkinson’s Law applies—I was working hard, not smart. If I had set distinct dates and milestones, I would have been able to move much more efficiently. My work was “expanding” to no end. I would have spent less money, less time, and less psychological energy wrapping my head around the idea. Luckily, it only took me a few months to package up my work and put PhotoBunga on hold, but I could have reached that point much quicker.

Case 2: Interview140

The idea—Interview interesting people via Twitter and post/categorize the interviews into a blog called Interview140. Eventually, I was hoping to build enough content and credibility to interview celebrities via their Twitter account.

How Parkinson’s Law applies—I went about this side-project completely differently. Influenced by a conversation with my friend Alex (check out his start-up, WebNotes), I decided to only take 30 days to get the ball rolling. I drafted a Microsoft Word document with 4-5 mini-milestones and sent it to Alex under the condition that, if I hadn’t finished my work by September 1st, I would owe him $1 for each day that it took me to get it done. I worked my way through most of the goals while I was traveling throughout Africa and the Middle East.

While I decided to put the project on hold to focus on a few other things (namely, organizing my life :)), I spent a minimal amount of time setting up the shell of the site, and not once was I stressed about getting my work done. In fact, I finished each one of my milestones ahead of schedule, often by 2-3 days. By allotting a short, manageable amount of time for completion, my work only expanded to the 30-day window I had set up.

Summary

Next time you’re working on a project, consider Parkinson’s Law and give yourself only the minimal amount of time needed to complete it. It’s much easier. Trust me. Are there projects, ideas or goals that you have failed to complete? Does Parkinson’s Law apply?

Photo credit: laffy4k