Colin Wright: Around the World With a Mac
Colin Wright is an author, publisher, podcast host — and full-time traveler. His readers vote on where he moves, and he works from the road. He talked to Mac Life magazine about his travels, living a minimal lifestyle and the role of the Mac in it.
Mac Life | Colin, thank you very much for taking the time to do this interview. Where does this mail reach you?
Colin Wright| I’m in the US Midwest at the moment, visiting family.
What’s in your bag these days?
Very little, all things considered! I carry a 13” Macbook Pro and an iPhone 6s Plus as my primary, workhorse devices. I’ve also got a Siriu portable tripod, some adapters that allow me to use my phone as a camera, and a Moment lens adhered to it for wide-angle shots.
Beyond that, I carry cables, an Anker backup battery that is enormous (but can completely recharge my phone five or six times before it’s used up), a Cocoon Grid-It panel for organization, and some clothes.
I’ve recently acquired a Røde Podcaster mic for recording podcasts — it’s incredibly non-portable, but I’m taking it with me on a month-long trip to London, soon, so we’ll see how it does, mounted to the tripod instead of its usual mic-arm.
I’ve listed some of the other odds-and-ends I use at http://colin.io/recommendations, for anyone who’s interested.
You are traveling full-time. Which sounds like a pretty extravagant lifestyle. But you consider minimalism to be the key to it, don’t you?
I absolutely do. The thing that people misunderstand about minimalism is that it isn’t about owning as little as possible, it’s about owning exactly the right things, and nothing more than that.
For me, the things I own allow me to do the work I love and go the places I want to go, without having to carry any excess. For other people, it will look different, based on what they do for fun, their profession, where they live (or how they travel), and so on.
“The benefit is that this frees up an immense amount of time, energy, and resources (including money) to spend on other things.”
The benefit is that this frees up an immense amount of time, energy, and resources (including money) to spend on other things. So I can travel like this without worrying about money because my expenses are limited to the key, vital things in my life, rather than those plus a bunch of other stuff I’m supposed to want, or told I’m supposed to have.
It also helps to live like a local as much as possible. Typically, sticking to the tourist track while traveling will be more expensive than eating where locals eat, staying where they stay, and doing what they do.
We’re all all so obsessed with the things we own, aren’t we?
It does seem to be a trend. Not an incredibly new one, but one we’re beginning to recognize and attempt to counter. Thankfully, we live in the future, and there are a lot of technologies, methodologies, philosophies, and movements that helps a person think about how they live differently, in an effort to focus a bit better and enjoy a higher percentage of their time.
If the things we own don’t define us, what should define us?
Ideally, we define us. We step back and look at the big picture, figure out what’s important, and then figure out how to spend more of our time on those things. We’re defined by what we do, and if what we do is a series of activities and habits that were handed to us, we’re probably not living a customized lifestyle.
Much better to define our own shape, our own routines, and then buy things that will add to an already happy, enjoyable, fulfilling life. My laptop, for example, doesn’t define me. But it helps me do the things that do define me, better. In this way, stuff can be wonderful — we just have to make sure we’re acquiring the right stuff.
Let’s travel back in time for a while. You ran a branding studio in LA for a few years after graduating. This sounds like a dream come true for a lot of people. But not for you, so it seems …
There were a lot of things I really enjoyed about that time in my life, and I wouldn’t give any of it back, if I had the chance. But I wasn’t terribly happy; just professionally successful. It’s remarkable to me how good I was at convincing myself that professional success was equal to happiness, and how long I believed it.
“It’s remarkable to me how good I was at convincing myself that professional success was equal to happiness, and how long I believed it.”
Stepping out of that life, I didn’t know that I was moving in the right direction, but I was certain that the way I had been going wasn’t right — that’s helpful knowledge, even if it can seem like wasted time, at first.
Has there been any defining moment when you thought: “Okay, that’s it. I’m out of here. There must be something better.”?
That’s what I was thinking when I left LA, more or less. I haven’t thought that since, though, because my current lifestyle is flexible enough that I’m constantly changing direction and able to pivot on the fly. So when it seems that there might be something better, I can pursue that, without collapsing what I’ve already built.
Giving up everything — your home, your business, your car, and even your relationship — for a life of uncertainties surely sounds impossible for most people. How hard, how frightening has it been for you?
That initial step was terrifying. But it was also necessary, and I knew that.
To me, it was far more terrifying thinking that I would keep going the way I had, and end up where I was certain I would end up. Any alternative, even a truly risky one, seemed worthwhile.
What were your initial income streams?
When I first started traveling, I was doing brand consultation work for some of my LA clients. On the road, I began to dabble with affiliate marketing and online advertisements and things of that nature. I set up a print-on-demand t-shirt shop, and started work on an import-export business concept.
It wasn’t until I tried my hand at publishing a book and selling it that I found something that both felt right, morally, and had the potential to replace my client-based income.
It took about eight months of focused effort to make enough from my books to pay the bills, but it happened.
What are the main strongholds in thinking, the toughest ideas and conceptions one has to leave behind before living a full-time travel lifestyle?
It’s different for every person, but for many people I’ve spoken to, and to myself, the biggest shift is realizing how few things actually add to your life, of all the things you invest in.
“Much of what we buy, what we spend our time and money on, is largely a waste.”
That is to say: much of what we buy, what we spend our time and money on, is largely a waste. Many of us are just accustomed to having toxic job situations, damaging relationships, unhealthy ideas about how to make money, that the idea of doing only things we enjoy, spending time only with people we really care about, and being proud of the work we do can seem incredibly foreign — maybe even unfathomable.
Once it clicks, though, a whole new world opens up. Suddenly resources are more abundant, and your time-spent to value-created ratio becomes a lot more favorable.
When and how did this voting idea and the involvement of your readers come in?
Honestly, I just had no idea where to go. I’d never left the US before, and I figured that everyone else on the planet had more right to choose than I did.
I also found, after doing it a few times, that it was a great way to engage my audience, and get them thinking about where they would go. So I kept it up, and it remains a fun way to randomize the selection process for myself, but also to inspire other people to maybe take that trip they’ve been putting off.
Do you ever feel like not wanting to move again after four months, because you love a place and the people there so much?
All the time. Almost every time, actually.
And the reason I don’t is that I know the tradeoff would be, well, giving up the full-time travel lifestyle. And that’s something I truly enjoy.
I do break up the pattern periodically, by going someplace that wasn’t voted on, or doing quicker trips around a particular continent; self-selected adventures. But a lifestyle that involves regular uprooting seems to be best for me, my desire for novelty and new stimuli, and my creative drive.
Any place you could think of calling home after all these years on the road?
Lots of places. But the big caveat is that even with my favorites, I’m fairly certain I would start to regret the decision after four or five months. This has happened every places I’ve lived in the past; around that time I start to get itchy feet and need to move around again. I just don’t particularly like settling, even in amazing places. Much better for me, I think, to keep moving so I don’t lose my appreciation for them.
Your Mac is with you all the time. How minimal is your digital setup?Very minimal. MacBook Pro, iPhone 6s Plus, sometimes a backup Android phone, everything unlocked and easy to use internationally. Of late I’ve had a tripod and some microphones, as well, for video and podcasting work. But that’s it; I don’t like to check luggage, so everything has to be easily carried on my bag, and has to fit in the overhead compartment or under the seat in a plane.
Any thoughts about how the digital lifestyle and especially the Mac are important for your lifestyle?
They essentially enable it.
I could absolutely do some version of what I do without my devices, and all of my work is backed up a few different ways, so I could lose my devices and replace them without too much trouble. But the ease with which I can create, edit, connect, and publish, is absolutely astounding. I could do my work without these devices, but it wouldn’t be as intuitive, and as such, I would have to focus more on making sure the equipment worked, rather than being able to focus on the work I’m producing.
Are you connected 24/7 or do you have strict offline times or even hold a kind of ‘digital sabbath’?
I’m connected pretty much all the time. I’m good at balancing connecting with the world and doing things in isolation, for me and only me, so I don’t need to step away completely to feel like I’m getting the right mix. I’ve done things like that in the past, but what they’ve showed me is that having such a connection adds to my life, rather than subtracting from it, so long as I use it well.
“One thing that helps me maintain that balance is turning off all my notifications. No one can contact me, ping me, or vibrate my phone — I check these things and connect with people on my time, rather than having those little signals pulling me away from what I want to focus on throughout the day.”
Speaking of which, one thing that helps me maintain that balance is turning off all my notifications. No one can contact me, ping me, or vibrate my phone — I check these things and connect with people on my time, rather than having those little signals pulling me away from what I want to focus on throughout the day. This helps immensely, and sometimes I forget it’s not the standard way of doing things.
Writing and talking about your travels, but also about life and philosophy is a big part of your life. And you published a lot …Philosophy is the underpinning of everything that we do, and I realized long ago that it’s something I spend a great deal of time thinking about, so I might as well share what I’m thinking.
Those books and posts and talks on the subject tend to be some of my most popular, so I’ve continued to share — lots of people are looking for answers, and though I don’t claim to offer those, hopefully I can offer some things worth thinking about so that they can come up with their own answers.
With Asymmetrical Press you publish your own books, but also fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from indie writers. What kind of reading and writing are you looking for? What makes a book good enough to get published? And how do you decide if an article or book you wrote is good enough to be published?
We’re very selective with Asymmetrical Press, and as a result we don’t allow people to submit — we go and find people we want to work with, and pitch them on the idea of working with us. As a result, we are fortunate to publish some absolutely incredibly talented authors; people who write books we wish we would have written.
Most of what we publish outside of our own work has been fiction thus far, but we do a bit of everything: there’s no specific genre or topic that we’re looking for.
For me, deciding whether something is published or not is a process. I decide what I want to write about up front, and then edit and chisel it until it’s good enough to let out into the wild. It requires a lot of refining, and at a certain point you just look at it and think, “Yeah, okay, this is something I want other people to see.”
Asymmetrical publishes digital and print. What’s your perception of the publishing industry these day — digital and traditional?
It’s an exciting space to be working in. Publishing, like many other industries at the moment, is a Wild West, and there are no right or wrong answers. That means you can wonder if something might work, and then just go do it.
The cost of failure is typically quite low, and the potential rewards are immense; especially since you might come up with something that other people use, and which in turn changes the direction of the industry.
I think traditional publishers will always be around, as they do a lot of things we indie publishers don’t do as well. But the same is true in reverse, and embracing that — our respective value propositions — means there’s a much greater wealth of good work out there on the market.
Tell me about your latest ventures, ‘Consider This’ and ‘Let’s Know Things’, and their part in all of this?
Consider This is a YouTube show I started several months ago, because I had a lot of people asking about the topics I usually write about, but they themselves didn’t enjoy reading. So it was an excuse to cover familiar ground on a new platform, but was also a means of learning the ropes of hosting; I’ve had numerous TV networks and production companies reach out to me about hosting a show, and I wanted to make sure I had plenty of experience should any of those concepts ever come to fruition.
Let’s Know Things started out as a free newsletter containing links I curated each week, but now it’s also a podcast. On each episode, I choose something from the news as a starting point, and ‘unspool’ it, allowing me to, say, talk about hegemonic foreign policy and the economic benefits of policing the world’s oceans as a result of discussing an article about China.
Life hacking’ seems to be a big part of the blogging world these days. Everyone wants to get better, healthier and more productive. How is ‘Consider This’ different? And why do you want it to be different?
A lot of the lifehacking work is more about tactics than complete ideas. “Do x and you’ll make more money per hour,” “Do y and you’ll be able to produce more with every second of every day.”
At a certain point in my life, back when I was in LA, those ideas were appealing to me. Today, I’m more focused on doing things I enjoy, doing work I believe in, and being healthy while doing it. A lot of these lifehacks sound sexy because they’re so extreme, but extremes are relatively easy compared to taking the time to figure out what you should actually be doing with your life, in a you-focused way. If you do that, you don’t need so many tactics; you can just orient the things you do around your priorities, and you’ll be good.
To each their own, of course, and there are certainly some concepts in that space that have proven quite useful to me, as well. But in most cases, the people I see getting sucked into the world are scrambling and largely unhappy (or working toward goals that they’re convinced will someday make them happy), rather than working toward goals they believe in at a sustainable pace.
“A lot of the lifehacking work is more about tactics than complete ideas.”
Consider This is about that; about knowing yourself better so that you don’t need to hack your habits so much: you can just focus better, and get more out of every day that way.
What’s next for you and your exile lifestyle?
I have no idea. That’s part of what I love about it.
I’ll continue to produce my YouTube show and podcast, will continue to write at Exile Lifestyle and publish my books. I’ll continue to give talks and travel around.
But the nice thing about living this way is that I’m always open to new opportunities as they arise, and able to turn on a dime should something better come along. I have no idea if that will happen, or what it would be, but if that happens, I’m ready to enthusiastically pivot.
Thanks a ton, Colin. Any chances to see you in Germany soon?
My pleasure!
I was just recently in Berlin for a few days, but nothing on the calendar at the moment. You never know, though! I love Germany, and am looking forward to visiting again, soon.
Die deutsche Version dieses Interviews finden Sie in Mac Life 08/2016.
