7 Things The Aspiring Lifestyle Designer Needs To Ask For This Christmas

[Credit: Bakoko]

It’s hard to believe the new year is right around the corner. If you haven’t already made your escape, if you’re not already doing what you love, if you aren’t living the good life, well then, I have some really great news for you! 2010 is your year! It’s the year you cut the bullshit and take the plunge, however intimidating it looks. It’s the year you finally start your journey toward becoming the person you want and living the life you’ve always dreamed of.

Sound good? Good!

Are you ready to get started? No?

If you are anything like I was two years ago, you have no idea what you are getting yourself into, but that’s okay. It’s not 2010 yet. You still have some time to prepare. I suggest you use this holiday season as a chance to get in the right mindset, to start plotting your escape routes, to gather all your tools and to research your intended destination.

Here is a checklist of some of the most essential things for a successful journey.

1. The 4-Hour Work Week The 4-Hour Work Week has always been and will always be at the top of my reading list for anyone who wants to take a stab at lifestyle design. Now, I don’t agree with some of what Tim Ferriss has to say in it (because of personal experiences that contradict his views), but I can say that reading this book was the first thing I ever did that got me to actually believe the lifestyle I want isn’t crazy or impossible. I don’t know of anyone who could read this book and not walk away absolutely inspired to dominate life.

2. A Laptop One of the best things about working from home is that it can easily turn into working from Starbucks or working from Buenos Aires. Personally, I love hauling my “office” to the library. There’s something about the smell of books that really gets me in a working mood. Of course, this all depends on how mobile your “office” is. I have seen some pictures going around the internet of someone who took their desktop computer to a Starbucks, but, seriously, is that what you want? If you don’t already have a laptop, invest in one. I have a 13″ Unibody Macbook in my arsenal and I highly recommend them. They are small and light… and, yes, expensive. While you might be able to have a Windows-based PC with similar specs for hundreds less, for me it’s not worth the trouble of dealing with Windows. If you can’t afford an Apple computer, I highly recommend installing Ubuntu’s latest release, Karmic Koala, on any recently manufactured PC. It’s a much more pleasant experience than Windows and it’s free.

3. Getting Things Done If you are a fairly disorganized person, you probably won’t get much from David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Too much for a slacker to handle at once and, in my opinion, too detailed. But for anyone who has average to impeccable organizational skills, but who lacks a way to practically apply them to self-management, this can be a wonderful system. If nothing else, this book provides a foundation for building your own productivity system. If I hadn’t read this, I’d never have organized my to-dos by priority or written things down as soon as they popped into my head. It’s a good philosophical primer in productivity and an incredibly detailed account of such a philosophy’s practical application.

4. iPod Touch/iPhone I’ve had an iPhone for a few months now (after years of no cell phone at all) and I love it. In all honesty, you’re better off with an iPod Touch, though. Paying AT&T $80/month for the “luxury” of having people misdial your number or interrupt at the worst possible times is an absolutely ridiculous expense. However, the iPhone as a device is a delight. I use it for everything from weight loss, to blog reading, to running, to tweeting, to tracking bills, to hitting unsuspecting clowns with balls. For many tasks, it’s taken the place of a traditional computer. I recommend it because it can do wonders to simplify your life if you let it. It’s possible to go overboard, sure, but if you know your limits with technology it’s nothing but pure productivity (except for the hitting clowns with balls part.)

5. Lynda.com Membership I’m a self-learner. I barely tolerated high school and couldn’t manage college for more than five weeks. I just don’t work that way and a lot of lifestyle designers don’t. We’re a self-motivated and self-determined brood. Whether you are getting started with or without a college degree, you’ll most definitely need to master things you currently have no idea about and for most of you a significant part of these things will be tech related. Because of our general aims of living minimalist lives and being able to hit the road on a whim, stacks of technical books just aren’t an option. This is where Lynda.com comes in. For $25/month you can learn how to use WordPress, how to build web apps with Ruby on Rails, how to design websites, how to set up stores, and on and on. They are brilliant for when you need to learn something fast. And if you’re like me and need to see to learn, Lynda’s detailed audio/visual lessons are perfect. You can get a free trial by clicking here.

6. Moleskine Notebook Moleskines are in many ways the Apple Computer of notebooks. Some people are okay with writing on any old piece of paper, but for me, being a designer after all, I prefer using a Moleskine because of its rich history and its simple elegance. There’s no other reason. Any other notebook is capable of taking down notes. However, if something I’m using is well thought out and pleasing to see and to touch, I tend to be that much more productive in using it. Moleskines are available in many formats, including sketchbooks, ruled journals, plain journals, planners, storyboards, grids (especially great for designers) and others. Sometimes turning on a computer and opening up a text editor, productivity app or email site is just too much of a hassle to quickly jot something down. These notebooks are essential for those times when you want to or have to get away from all things tech but still need to get things done. If you already have a Moleskine, check out this collection of kick ass hacks for it.

7. Fever Feed Reader I have David Turnbull to thank for this new found obsession. I’ve only been using Fever for a few days now, but it’s already something I love. Lifestyle design usually involves connecting with many people over the internet and I’m probably not going out on a limb by saying that most of these people have blogs. Keeping track of all the goings on of the web is really important and Fever does it in such a way that, even if you miss several days in a row (which I always do) you’re able to see the most important and notable posts easily separated by degrees Fahrenheit or degrees Celsius. The higher the temperature, the hotter the post. It does this in a neat way by checking your feeds against each other. For example, my top post is currently about Google Chrome because it was mentioned on TechCrunch, LifeHacker and a handful of other tech sites. It’s a little technical to set up since it is a self-hosted solution, but once it’s up and running Fever offers the best experience of any feed reader I’ve ever used.

This list isn’t definitive by any means and some things are more essential for some people than for others. If you are an aspiring lifestyle designer, what would you ask for? If you’re living the dream right now, what would you recommend to a beginner?

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