Digital Nomad

We give 9 travel hacks and tips for getting the most out of a trip to central America. We discuss making friends and going on a 'technology cleanse' while traveling and Woody gives several high tech travel resources. 

Suntanned and fresh back in the states, Jonathan shares travel hacks and tips for getting the most out of a trip to Central America in this episode.

Woody shares several travel resources that may just save your trip from disaster. We discuss making friends and going on a "technology cleanse" while traveling.

This episode covers some powerful tools and tech to accelerate your language learning.

Along with how to be charming in a language you barely know and I finish up by sharing two awesomely embarrassing moments of culture shock.

For flirting, banter, and building rapport en Espanol during the day or night…

I had the pleasure of living in one of the sexiest cities in the world — Medellin, Colombia for over a year.

During this time I cross-trained learning game and mastering a second language, Spanish. I also spent time in Central America and lived in Valencia, on the sun-kissed southern coast of Spain, which (by the way) is a better place to pick up chicas than Barcelona.

2023 Update: This I wrote about a decade ago when I was living in Colombia. I had a lot to learn about networking with the caliber of people I wanted in my life.

When I say that…

Travelers are mostly vapid, gutless, and intoxicated.

It’s my cognitive dissonance remarking on the differences between the noble philosophies travelers claim and what I’ve observed.

From How to Be Cross Eyed: Thriving Despite Your Physical Imperfection — a mémoire and lifehacking manifesto

I had given up my aspiration of becoming a pseudo-Berliner, moved out of my flat near Alexanderplatz, and embarked toward the Slavic east. I only had a few days left on my Schengen visa so I didn’t linger long in Poland. As the night bus crossed the Ukrainian border it bumped noisily over a piece of cold metal that let out an eerie metallic groan into the dark. I was now a denizen of the wild, wild east.

Before we talk about accelerated language acquisition, using some exciting technologies, Memory Systems, Dual N-Back, and SuperMemo, let's talk about accelerated personal development.

Why is it that some people languish in personal development purgatory for years or decades while other people read a book, take a course, listen to a podcast, apply the knowledge, and get meaningful (or profitable!) results fast?

The most practical, measurable, and non-woo-woo answer to this conundrum is that the person who gets more results faster has a mind with healthier Neuroplasticity mechanisms. Neuroplasticity is a chemical process that occurs on the molecular and cellular levels of our brain's grey matter, it results in new brain cells being manufactured and synaptic connections forming in the mind.

Inspired by the style of Memoir from Antproof Case

It was a romance that burned hotter than most, which is no extraordinary thing - what’s extraordinary is how long it has burned hot.
Not all men (if they are being honest), can say that they’ve had a grand and all-consuming passionate love affair in their lives - that they’ve had a “love of their lives.” Most men settle; they find their partners in the space between lurching after the biological urge and compromising their values and standards to buy a bit of comfort.
I have had a love of my life - a star that shines so bright that it blots out all others while serving as a celestial beacon to navigate by to a mythological land of abundance. This is our love story, what we kindled now burns hotter than ever.

From How to Be Cross Eyed: Thriving Despite Your Physical Imperfection — a mémoire and lifehacking manifesto

Water and I have a sordid history.

Breathless, 90 feet down

The first time I almost died underwater was during my scuba certification dive. Scuba is a badass (and expensive!) hobby but it’s quite dangerous! Every seasoned scuba diver has a story or two (or more) about almost dying. There are just so many things that can go wrong when you’re deep underwater pretending to be a fish.

The city is a nice change of pace from the dreary capitals of Eastern Europe where I’ve been spending time.

The center of the city is quite clean and scenic with the beautiful Sava river, wide pedestrian streets, and elegant orthodox churches.

Liberal Epicenter vs Traditional Gender Roles Bastion

After years in the pickup Shangrila of Medellín, Colombia, I made a big move to Berlin, Germany, a city supposedly at the forefront of the decline of Western society. According to the manosphere, it’s the heart of the beast of European progressivism and feminism. I wrote about Berlin on Facebook:

“The liberal-hipster culture of the city is very politically correct but at the same time blase and apathetic. So I haven’t found many people I could really connect intellectually with… As far as the fairer sex; it’s a very diverse city with a ton of immigrants so you could definitely taste the rainbow here. However, Berlin is all about the "not giving a fuck" attitude, especially amongst young people, which means women are NOT very feminine in appearance or behavior.”

A country not living on its knees where men are men, women are women, and babas are round.

Update: Like anywhere, Bulgaria is a changing, complicated, and nuanced place (which my year-1 impressions, articulated here, barely capture). But it's where I've found the beauty, meaning, decency, and freedom that I ultimately sought as a self-determined man, that's why it's where I live.

Hello, fellow red-pilled man! I'm here to tell you about this beautiful country that you may not have heard much about...

This is a compilation of charming and friendly sayings in various languages, that I learned while traveling in Central and South America.

For the sayings, you'll see the language, the spelling in that language, the phonetic spelling as it sounds to an English speaker along with the memory association I used to memorize it. You can borrow my memory associations or make up your own, just remember the more bizarre your memory associations are, the easier to remember they will be to recall.

Next to skydiving on a frigid winter morning over the Colorado Rockies, coconuts are an excellent solution to vanquishing hangovers.

Check out this funny video of me doing an exceptionally bad job of explaining this and showing how to open a coconut in three seconds...

Book Review: Why human nature is antithetical to human rights...

This book begins with a treatise on free speech by Quintus Curtius, he makes the point that we assume incorrectly that society will just get better and better. We assume that we will just become freer and freer, we see the tremendous improvement in human quality of life in the past hundred years of history recorded via grainy photographs, shaky newsreel, and newspaper clippings and we assume that it's just going to get better but Quintus warns that progress is not our birthright...

From How to Be Cross Eyed: Thriving Despite Your Physical Imperfection — a mémoire and lifehacking manifesto

A lifehack for meeting interesting and influential people is to travel to exotic places and network with other English speakers.

Sure you can easily find plenty of rowdy Australian backpackers to swill beer with. But if you want to network up try to connect with entrepreneurs in almost any cosmopolitan metropolis you can find on Facebook a local entrepreneurial group.

In just such a group I saw that a few acquaintances of mine were getting dinner with the eminent blogger and author Mark Manson (whose best-selling book I was less than impressed by) at a swanky restaurant in Medellin, Colombia. I sent a few private messages to get myself invited. I dressed sharply and headed out.

From How to Be Cross Eyed: Thriving Despite Your Physical Imperfection — a mémoire and lifehacking manifesto

Apparently, it’s more common that you’re born with strabismus, I’m a bit of a rare bird in that I was born more or less normal and became cross eyed over time. So I was keenly aware of how people began to treat me a little differently over time.

I lived in the motherland of truly great coffee for two years; Medellin, Colombia, where I had a passionate love affair with the anti-oxidizing dark nectar.

I frequently hung out at some of the best cafes in the world there, which served straight black coffee that was as smooth as wine going down, I got quite hooked on the stuff.

The story of how I met the disciple of the most hated man in the world is illustrative of how to (NOT) spend money on personal development.

I had just arrived in an exotic, new (to me) city.

I knew nobody there. I started by requesting to join the local Real Social Dynamics' wingman Facebook group. As I've explained elsewhere my lifehack to forming intimate relationships fast is devoting my time socializing to high-affinity groups with deeply shared values; RSD-trained pickup artists are actually one of the best such groups. In the Facebook group, a cool-looking local guy had posted that he was offering free introductory pickup artist boot camps, which is infield dating coaching. I've never taken a boot camp but have always been interested, if I had several thousand dollars just burning a hole in my pocket I would do a boot camp.

He had posted a couple of indicators that he knew what he was doing, and it was a novel application of the freemium model so I thought, why not? What do I have to lose? 
I contacted him and made what I thought was a generous offer of buying him dinner and then we could go out at night and do the free coaching.
If he turned out to be an effective coach I might purchase one of his coaching packages. If he sucked then at least I would have explored the city some and had a stimulating conversation over a succulent meal.