Tag: goals

Mileage Run

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I got a crazy idea last month. I decided to do a mileage run. I’m going to fly 40,000 miles in December. The goal is to keep my Platinum status, which requires 50,000 miles for the year.

Of course, I’ve already flown 50,000 miles this year. (That’s like flying around the world…twice.) But 10,000 of those miles counted for status. The rest were award tickets. Those tickets gave me luxurious first-class experiences, but they didn’t count toward frequent flyer status.

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In this week’s post:

  • My take on Platinum Status
  • What it takes
  • Where I’m going

Platinum Status

I almost regret ever getting status. Before having it, I just flew where I needed to when I needed to. And I just took whichever airline was cheapest. But now I’m hooked. I limit my search to American Airlines, without ever looking at the other sites. Maybe that’s a good thing. Too much choice often paralyzes people.

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Giving Thanks for Travel

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Train stations are so much cooler than airports!

Wow, I can’t help but be thankful for this amazing year. Foremost, I’m thankful it happened at all. It could have remained a dream forever. Instead, it became an actual goal and then reality.

And it could have been awful. I could have failed to learn any language. I could have gotten sick. I could have been robbed. Stranded in Italy and forced to huddle in the shade of a marble cathedral surviving only on focaccia sandwiches and Brunello di Montalcino wine.

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“Can you spare some prosciutto?”

So after 10 months of traveling, here’s what I’m most thankful for. Friends, art, and of course, languages.

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Language Learning for Executives

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I _really_ want this for my badge photo.

What if you became the leader of a team that spoke a different language from you? Maybe their native language was Spanish or Japanese or Arabic. Every day they spoke English at work, but on breaks they shifted to their mother tongue, without realizing it. Unfortunately, you can’t just drop in on a breakroom conversation, unless you’re going to force everyone back to English.

Would you learn their language? You know that high-performing teams require strong relationships. Learning their language would reduce miscommunication and build trust, right?

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Japan Debrief

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Learning Japanese is like being eaten by Godzilla…

Learning Japanese was a shock after speaking Italian. Italian was almost effortless. In Italy, I could just throw out a Spanish word with an Italian accent and be understood. Knowing French and Spanish really gave me a huge head start.

By comparison, I started Japanese with nothing. Nada. Zero. I had to memorize alphabets – three of them. I had to conjugate adjectives (that’s a new one). And I had to re-arrange my thinking so that the verb always came out last.

What follows is an assessment of:

  • My level
  • What worked
  • What I would change

My Level

I did not reach taxi-ride-to-the-airport level like I did in Italian. More like order-from-starbucks. Besides ordering food I’m pretty decent at asking about traveling on trains and subways. I can also write about what I did each day – what I ate, where I went, how long I studied, and who I met with.

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How I Learned to Love Routines

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Routines suck. They’re dull and boring. Who wants the same, old same-old? Well, I do.

Leaving my job and moving to Italy, Japan and Germany was great. I was freed from the boring old routines! No going to work at the same time every day. No more driving the same commute! No eating at the same place for lunch. No going to the gym every afternoon. No gym membership at all! No more shopping at the same Whole Foods grocery store. Everything is new and wonderful and shiny.

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Uber Shiny!

Except, a lot of those things were useful and even healthy. Without them, I was starting over.

Here’s what I learned about routines.

  • Routines lead to success!
  • Routines are efficient
  • But you need breaks

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Debrief of the Italy Mission

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That title sounds so spy-like. Debrief of the Italy Mission. I bet debriefings are incredibly boring – listening to someone drone on about all the mundane details of hours stuck in the surveillance van with bad takeout food and…wait, do my blog posts sound like that?

Here are the results of three months in Italy in a surveillance van

  1. I can impress a taxi driver
  2. I wish I’d started school earlier
  3. I slacked off
  4. I earned an art history degree

Impressing a taxi driver

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I chalk up taxi fares to the “language practice” budget.

Everyone knows that the best judge of language level is a taxi driver. And I passed with flying colors. He couldn’t believe I’d only been studying for two months. We talked about my year of travel, the Italian economy, and how to learn a language. I sounded confident, my accent was good, and most of the words came naturally.

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The Interwebs Sent Me Around the World

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“Rome, if you want to…”

What makes a guy decide to travel the world for a year to learn three languages? Doesn’t everyone know that you can’t learn even a single language in a year?! Three is impossible! And you’ll be completely alone because you can’t make friends until you’re fluent. And your career! You’ll get passed over for promotions and probably never recover all that earning potential. It’s madness, I tell you! Madness!

Maybe all of my friends thought that way. At least they were kind enough to substitute something ambiguous like “it will be the trip of a lifetime” (which could be good or bad). When they said I had to do it while I could, I don’t know if they meant it was actually a good idea, or just something they knew I had to get out of my system.

Today I’m going to give credit (or blame) to some writers on the interwebs who inspired and educated me for this trip:

How weird is it that I’ve never met any of them? Or maybe it’s weird that I actually emailed with a couple of them. (I even wrote a guest post for one of them a long time ago.)

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Fear of Failure

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Here comes diabetes.

There’s a Chocolate Fair this week!

My goal for the first 90 days is to learn to speak Italian. A few days ago I kept feeling I was going to fail at it. I was spending time on other activities, besides studying or speaking. I went walking. I took long lunches. I played computer games. It seemed like I wasn’t taking this mission seriously and I would have nothing to show for my three months in Italy. Which also meant I would fail at Japanese and German (of course). And the rest of my life really (just a logical conclusion).

...and alcoholism

Lunch in front of the Palazzo Vecchio

Then I realized I’d only been here for three nights. I had to catch up on sleep, fight jet lag, find an ATM, a grocery store, a cell phone plan, and a library card (of course).  So I told myself to chill. Just allow enough fear to motivate me to focus.

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