Pursuing epic goals requires trial and error exercises before reaching peak performance. Nobody ties up their boot laces for the first time and starts climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. Even the greatest stumble out of the gate. For proof watch Anthony Bourdain stumble through A Cook’s Tour, his first show before No Reservations, before The Layover, before Parts Unknown, before he was Anthony Bourdain. You could see his potential, but A Cook’s Tour was a disaster. Likewise, you don’t want to arrive at your dream location and be a disaster. If you want to enhance your around the world travel experience, take a few practice trips in the weeks leading up to your big adventure.
Trek to neighborhoods and areas of your hometown you never visited before. Learn how to identify areas to explore and what makes them explorable. Turn yourself into a local guide in your own city. Head to a bookstore or a library to read a guidebook on your city. Are the recommendations accurate? Are the places listed the ones you would tell a visitor to see? Is the restaurant list up to date? Would you use this guide to help you decide where to dine? Where to stay? Learn how to become an expert local guide in your hometown before you begin blogging about the best restaurants in Santiago.
The trial and error practice extends beyond learning to travel. There’s a learning curve with utilizing your camera and video equipment’s full functionality. Did you purchase a new camera for the trip? You think you’ll have time and patience while traveling to learn how to use the camera. When you are traveling you want to focus on…traveling, not learning how to change your video settings from 30 fps to 60 fps. You don’t want to be learning all the features of your camera or how to use the manual settings or what aperture means on the road. Practice photography. Look at professional photos of your local attractions. Then visit those attractions and take photos. If your photos stink, and it bothers you that they stink, take a photography class before you leave. Master the photo basics before leaving.
Are you bringing a drone? Practice flying the drone. At home, you know where the parks are located to practice flying the drone. You know where the airports are located and can’t fly the drone. The time lapse videos? The drone slow motion and speedup zoom outs and zoom ins? These are basic techniques that are easy to learn…if you take the time to learn before you leave. Once you leave, you’ll be too busy visiting sights, researching where to go next, booking hostels and train tickets, that you won’t have the time to learn these techniques. It’s possible that while you are out practice flying your drone you realize it’s more of a headache than you thought. How often will you fly the drone and should it take up space in your backpack? Figure this out before you reach your first destination.
When you are recording your adventures see what equipment you use. Are you better off with one walk around lens with a wide range of focal points or do you utilize multiple types of lenses? There’s no point in carrying around a lens that never makes its way onto your camera. There’s no point in carrying a virtual reality camera if it never makes its way out of the bottom of your day bag. Maybe you realize you need to upgrade from the $20 travel size tripod. Maybe you realize a larger tripod is too bulky. I have a cheapo time lapse camera stand that is nothing more than a kitchen timer with a screw to attach your camera. You wind the camera stand for fifteen minutes then the camera rotates…tick, tick, tick…every second for fifteen minutes. I never used it. I would have known that I would never use it had I tried it once before leaving.
Find what's unique about your home city and build your blog from there. Instead of waiting to write about the five best coffee houses in Hong Kong, write about the five best coffee houses in Philadelphia or wherever you live. At a minimum, you will have a greater appreciation for where you are from. You’ll learn how to find off the beaten path locations. You’ll realize that after the first couple of attractions the best way to discover a city is by walking around.
Learn how to adjust your photos and videos with editing software. Photo and video editing have a steep and frustrating learning curve. It will take weeks to learn all the nuances of photo and video editing software. Evaluate the editing functions that are available from a photo storage application, like Flickr, and determine whether you should upgrade to Adobe Photoshop. iMovie and WeVideo are nice, basic applications but you won’t know if you need to upgrade to something better unless you begin using these applications before leaving.
Practice writing and blogging. If you don’t start writing before you leave, you run the risk of not writing while you travel. Writing takes time. Figure out how to allocate your writing time now instead of while you are on the road. Experiment with your writing style. Do you enjoy writing a play-by-play documentary of your adventures? Do you want to be informative, entertaining, or both? Are you trying to be Bill Bryson? Try it all.
Practice refining your travel website. Experiment with different templates. Certain templates are great. Others are annoying. Find one template that works. Then make copies of that template for each new page. Experiment with different colors. Different text. Find landing pages you like. Great landing pages are difficult to create—it can drive you crazy to the point that you will be banging your head against the wall. Bang your head against the wall of your house before you leave…not the wall of the hostel while you are traveling.
I did not write or work on my website prior to leaving which was a najor mistake on my part. It wasn’t until after I started searching for a job in Hong Kong that I began to build out my website. I documented my travels in Tumblr posts which made it easy to copy the information to my website but I never took the time to organize my website to make it easy for me, or any else to read and follow.
Go on longer day trips. In Los Angeles I visited Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms. Other worldly landscapes and people living remotely. I made a day trip out of Southern Los Angeles—Long Beach in the morning, San Pedro Fish Market for lunch, the Korean Friendship Bell in the afternoon, and then around Palos Verdes before returning up the coast to Manhattan Beach. I went up to Santa Barbara and Pismo Beach. I went down to San Diego. This helped me plan day trip excursions from major cities when I traveled.
The practice doesn’t stop when you begin traveling around the world. You should constantly develop yourself. The exploring never stops. The trial and error never stops.
The trial and error practice extends beyond learning to travel. There’s a learning curve with utilizing your camera and video equipment’s full functionality. Did you purchase a new camera for the trip? You think you’ll have time and patience while traveling to learn how to use the camera. When you are traveling you want to focus on…traveling, not learning how to change your video settings from 30 fps to 60 fps. You don’t want to be learning all the features of your camera or how to use the manual settings or what aperture means on the road. Practice photography. Look at professional photos of your local attractions. Then visit those attractions and take photos. If your photos stink, and it bothers you that they stink, take a photography class before you leave. Master the photo basics before leaving.
Are you bringing a drone? Practice flying the drone. At home, you know where the parks are located to practice flying the drone. You know where the airports are located and can’t fly the drone. The time lapse videos? The drone slow motion and speedup zoom outs and zoom ins? These are basic techniques that are easy to learn…if you take the time to learn before you leave. Once you leave, you’ll be too busy visiting sights, researching where to go next, booking hostels and train tickets, that you won’t have the time to learn these techniques. It’s possible that while you are out practice flying your drone you realize it’s more of a headache than you thought. How often will you fly the drone and should it take up space in your backpack? Figure this out before you reach your first destination.
When you are recording your adventures see what equipment you use. Are you better off with one walk around lens with a wide range of focal points or do you utilize multiple types of lenses? There’s no point in carrying around a lens that never makes its way onto your camera. There’s no point in carrying a virtual reality camera if it never makes its way out of the bottom of your day bag. Maybe you realize you need to upgrade from the $20 travel size tripod. Maybe you realize a larger tripod is too bulky. I have a cheapo time lapse camera stand that is nothing more than a kitchen timer with a screw to attach your camera. You wind the camera stand for fifteen minutes then the camera rotates…tick, tick, tick…every second for fifteen minutes. I never used it. I would have known that I would never use it had I tried it once before leaving.
Find what's unique about your home city and build your blog from there. Instead of waiting to write about the five best coffee houses in Hong Kong, write about the five best coffee houses in Philadelphia or wherever you live. At a minimum, you will have a greater appreciation for where you are from. You’ll learn how to find off the beaten path locations. You’ll realize that after the first couple of attractions the best way to discover a city is by walking around.
Learn how to adjust your photos and videos with editing software. Photo and video editing have a steep and frustrating learning curve. It will take weeks to learn all the nuances of photo and video editing software. Evaluate the editing functions that are available from a photo storage application, like Flickr, and determine whether you should upgrade to Adobe Photoshop. iMovie and WeVideo are nice, basic applications but you won’t know if you need to upgrade to something better unless you begin using these applications before leaving.
Practice writing and blogging. If you don’t start writing before you leave, you run the risk of not writing while you travel. Writing takes time. Figure out how to allocate your writing time now instead of while you are on the road. Experiment with your writing style. Do you enjoy writing a play-by-play documentary of your adventures? Do you want to be informative, entertaining, or both? Are you trying to be Bill Bryson? Try it all.
Practice refining your travel website. Experiment with different templates. Certain templates are great. Others are annoying. Find one template that works. Then make copies of that template for each new page. Experiment with different colors. Different text. Find landing pages you like. Great landing pages are difficult to create—it can drive you crazy to the point that you will be banging your head against the wall. Bang your head against the wall of your house before you leave…not the wall of the hostel while you are traveling.
I did not write or work on my website prior to leaving which was a najor mistake on my part. It wasn’t until after I started searching for a job in Hong Kong that I began to build out my website. I documented my travels in Tumblr posts which made it easy to copy the information to my website but I never took the time to organize my website to make it easy for me, or any else to read and follow.
Go on longer day trips. In Los Angeles I visited Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms. Other worldly landscapes and people living remotely. I made a day trip out of Southern Los Angeles—Long Beach in the morning, San Pedro Fish Market for lunch, the Korean Friendship Bell in the afternoon, and then around Palos Verdes before returning up the coast to Manhattan Beach. I went up to Santa Barbara and Pismo Beach. I went down to San Diego. This helped me plan day trip excursions from major cities when I traveled.
The practice doesn’t stop when you begin traveling around the world. You should constantly develop yourself. The exploring never stops. The trial and error never stops.