Actually, I love giving and receiving gifts, but it’s not always as satisfying as I’d like. I think giving is most enjoyable for both sides when the person giving the gift is doing it freely and sincerely, and when the person receiving really wants or needs the gift and is grateful for it. If the needed gift comes as a surprise, that can enhance the experience even more. Unfortunately, these factors weren’t always the case when it came to holiday gift giving.

When we lived in the USA, we weren’t rich by North American standards, but we had everything we needed, and so did everyone else we knew. Gifts that people really wanted were usually out of any one person’s price range. And the pressure to buy a gift for all our extended family and close friends made the holidays more stressful. To help with this, the year before we left we simply bought everyone the same gift: a fun board game we ordered in bulk from Amazon.com — the games even came pre gift-wrapped. It was simple, but I suppose not all that personalized. Some years, Christmas giving almost seemed like we were trading money or gift cards back and forth without any real purpose — only because it’s what was expected. Of course we want to give meaningful gifts, and we appreciate the caring thoughts behind any gift we receive, but don’t we also end up buying the things we really need and want anyway?

The difference for us now is that we want and need so much less. We own only what we can fit into our carry-on suitcases. It’s not much, but it’s enough for us. We don’t want more, because then we’d have to carry it around with us wherever we go. We may replace items that are wearing out, but we already have everything we need. Maybe you do too?

This made for a different kind of Christmas last year, because Santa didn’t bring us any presents, and we only got each other small gifts. Our girls had already figured out the Santa myth before then, anyway, thanks in part to the Costa Rican tradition of gifts being brought by “baby Jesus” instead of Santa. Honestly, the holiday wasn’t quite as exciting as usual, but it was an intimate family day, and we enjoyed it.

Make a Difference in Someone’s Life

This year, we’re really excited about what we’re doing for Christmas! A few months ago, Emily was searching online (she’s a great little Googler) and came across a website called charitywater.org. She called for us to come to the computer and take a look at what she wanted for Christmas. After checking it out, we knew it’s what we wanted, too. Watch this quick video to learn about it. Then read on.

There are over 1 billion people in the world who do not have access to clean water. That’s one in eight of us. As the video explains, water affects every aspect of our lives. CharityWater.org provides clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations, and 100% of public donations go directly to fund water projects.

So, this Christmas we are not giving gifts to any family or friends. And we ask that you don’t give us any gifts either. Instead, let’s give to some people who really need it, and make a long-term difference in their lives.

Our goal is to raise $5,000 by December 31, which will provide clean drinking water for 250 people. In 18 months, we’ll also get pictures and a GPS location on a map of the completed water project. If you’d like to contribute and help us reach our goal, please visit the fundraiser page we set up at:

http://mycharitywater.org/pearce_family

To me, this kind of giving — the kind that is needed and makes a difference — is what the Christmas spirit is all about.

Other Traveling Families

Check out how these other traveling families are handling gift giving around Christmas.

• A King’s Life:  Forget the Gifts, Give an Experience this Christmas
• Family Trek: What’s For Christmas? Dear Santa, do we really need more stuff?
• The Nomadic Family: Poverty for Christmas
• New Life on the Road – Dear Mr Santa Claus Whats For Christmas
• With 2 Kids In Tow, It’s Backpacking We Go: Dear Santa, For This Christmas We Wish…
• Living Outside of the Box: The Best Christmas Presents
• Discover Share Inspire: Christmas is Coming – What Do We Give on the Road?
• Bohemian Travelers: Gift giving while living a simpler life
• Little Aussie Travellers: Presence vs Presents Christmas Time for Travelling Families
• Family Travel Bucket List: Feliz Navidad Without All the Stuff
• Livin’ On The Road’s kids: Susan – Christmas Traveling and Peter: Christmas
• A Minor Diversion – Reinventing Christmas
• Carried on the Wind – Christmas Giving

Share and Enjoy

Share and Enjoy

Now that we’ve made the move abroad, my businesses are more automated than ever, and I’m more used to my 4-hour workweek lifestyle, I wanted to do it again and see how things have changed. I’ll share the results with you here.

A lot of people seem to think that if you only have to work a few hours per week, you must be spending the rest of your time relaxing in a hammock drinking piña coladas. I mean, what else is there to do? Actually, everything!

I do spend my fair share of time relaxing, being with family and friends, and even doing “nothing”. But I can’t do “nothing” for very long before I get restless and want to do something more productive. I’ve found that tracking my time really helps me be aware of what I’m doing in the moment, and feel less pressured doing tasks I don’t enjoy. I also realize that time will keep moving on, no matter what I do. As long as I’m enjoying life, growing, and helping others where I can, I feel like I’m living my life well.

Disclaimer: Even though I have these tasks recorded to the minute, they’re not always accurate to the minute. Sometimes I forgot to switch my timer right when I switched tasks, so had to modify it later with a little guess work. Being off by a few minutes for several things has led to being off by a couple hours overall. But it will have to do. For this exercise, I used SlimTimer, a free on-line time tracking tool.

Work Time

I define “work” as activities done specifically to help produce income. This week I “worked” a little more than usual because I was getting some video tutorials written for one product, and launched a special offer with another. I also planned some important new features to work on next. For me, it’s normal for this category to be under 5 hours per week total.

• Music Teacher’s Helper: 5 Hours, 18 minutes. This includes advertising/marketing (1:35), checking programmer’s work (1:30), customer support (0:48), and the rest in business planning, finances, and checking stats.
• Studio Helper: 2 hours, 1 minute. This includes working on video tutorials (1:27), business planning (24 min), and the rest dealing with feature requests and checking stats.
• Other: 33 minutes. This week, I started researching a new business idea, and that’s what this time was.

Total Work Hours: 7 Hours, 52 Minutes

Family Time

One of the things I like most about my lifestyle is that I have so much time to spend with my family. We’re together pretty much all day, even if we’re not doing the same thing. I’ve only included my personal time with my family here, so this doesn’t include the time my wife homeschools the kids, or the time they spend playing together. Driving them to their art class should probably be included here, but I put all driving under Personal.

• Playing with kids: 11 hours, 32 minutes. I try to play with my kids a little every day. A lot of this is computer or iPad games with one daughter while my wife is doing homeschool with the other one. But it also includes reading to them, playing hide and seek, “restaurant” and other imagination games.
• Watching Movies: 6 hours, 51 minutes. We watched a few movies with the kids this week, in the evenings, including the 1969 Doctor Dolittle, and Tarzan in Spanish.
• Family Outings: 5 hours, 15 minutes. This includes a little hike up the mountains behind our house, and a trip to the park to ride ponies and bicycles. We also spent time together with our friends, which I’ve included in the Personal: Visiting with Friends section.
• Talking with Jen: 3 hours, 56 minutes. Jen and I enjoy just sitting and talking, as well as reading together. We want to make even more time for it this coming week.

Total Family Time: 27 hours, 34 minutes

Personal Time

Even though it looks like I have a lot of time left over for myself, I don’t really feel like I have much “free time”. I guess that’s because I try to fill my time up with things that I like to do and am passionate about. I still have a full to-do list, and do spend time on things I’d rather not, but I try to work on the most important items first each day. Overall, I’m doing what I love with the majority of my time.

• Sleep: 57 hours, 21 minutes. That’s just over 8 hours per night. This week, we’ve been sleeping in a different room where the sun hits us warmly every morning around 6:30 through the windows. It’s not conducive to sleeping in, but is a very relaxing way to get up.
• Visiting with friends: 11 hours, 22 minutes. We had some friends over for a late lunch one day this week, and we spent an afternoon out with another friend.
• Meals: 11 hours, 2 minutes. We ate out a lot this week (almost every day), and took time to enjoy our food. The meal with our friends is included under “Visiting with friends”.
• Reading: 9 hours, 8 minutes. I have some really interesting books I’m reading right now, although half of this time was spent reading articles and blogs on-line.
• Personal Email: 8 hours, 13 minutes. I had a LOT more time-consuming e-mail than usual this week. I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails from people starting businesses who want advice. I’ve really enjoyed being able to help people in this regard. Maybe soon I will have to start charging for consulting and move this into the “Work” category. :)
• Writing: 4 hours, 31 minutes. This was time I spent working on my new book about how to create an on-line business. I suppose this could also be considered “Work” since I will eventually sell the book, but that’s not my main purpose in writing it.
• Daily Hygiene: 3 hours, 27 minutes. It’s amazing how much time this takes. But I do love a hot shower.
• Sex: 3 hours, 9 minutes. Ahh… Having a pregnant wife has some nice hormonal advantages.
• Meditating and spiritual time: 2 hours, 41 minutes. I have a great place to sit for my morning meditation overlooking the hills and the city view. Very relaxing.
• Finances: 2 hours, 3 minutes. This is higher than normal because I’ve been working a lot with my accountant trying to figure out taxes, and have been looking at other investment opportunities.
• Exercise: 1 hour, 47 minutes. This includes my daily stretching and tai chi, and a little weight lifting. This doesn’t include all the hiking and walking we did as a family this week.
• And I spent anywhere from 10 minutes to 1 hour, 30 minutes on each of the following: cleaning and organizing, house maintenance, driving, facebook, games (pool, and angry birds), journal, playing the piano, shopping, time tracking, vacation planning, writing on my blog, and selling stuff on Craigslist.

Total Personal Time: 128 hours, 52 minutes

Now that I’ve gone through all the effort of tracking my time for a week, it would be a shame to simply write a blog post about it and not use the data to see where I can improve. In the weeks ahead, I would like to make the following changes:

• More time with my wife, especially reading and talking with her.
• More family time together with the kids at home. We spend a lot of time together outside the home, but when we’re inside, we tend to do our own thing. I also want to take a more active role in homeschool, helping the kids with their blogs, music, as well as math and reading, etc.
• More time working on my book. I’m excited to complete this project and hopefully it will help a lot of people looking to create a business.
• Less time reading on-line. I want most of my reading time to be focused and intentional, not jumping from item to item.
• Less time on e-mail. I had built up a practice of checking e-mail just twice a day and leaving it alone the rest of the time. But I didn’t follow that so well this week, and found my productivity waver because of it.

Have you ever tracked your time? If you’ve ever charged per hour, chances are you’ve tracked your time working, but have you ever measured what you’re doing with the rest of your time? Yeah, maybe it is a bit fanatical. But I think there is value in it at least every once in a while.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts below, and what changes you’d like to make in how you spend your time.

Share and Enjoy

Share and Enjoy

I’ve always enjoyed pushups. I used to do them every morning and night as a teenager, and I still often do them as part of my morning exercise routine. But I usually don’t do enough to get sore. This week has been different.

You can go to www.hundredpushups.com to read all about the program. You do an initial test and max out to see how many pushups you can do (I did 31 on my test). Then you follow a chart, and 3 days a week, you do a series of pushups with a 60 or 90 second break in between.

For example, yesterday, I did 20 pushups, then 25, then 15, then 15 again. Then I did as many as I could. I was SOOOO worn out, and was sore all day.

And I am still sore today. But more than being sore, when I woke up and saw my bare chest in the mirror, I was shocked and a little scared to find out that my chest had mutated! My pectoral muscles seemed almost twice the size they were last time I checked. I didn’t expect that, nor did I think it possible that this kind of growth could happen in just three days!

I’m a little scared to keep going with the program, because at this rate, I’m going to look like a girl by next Friday. I also don’t like being constantly sore. Then again, it’s kind of fun to have a little muscle – especially for a small guy like me. :) So, I think I’ll do some more tomorrow, and have a very sore weekend. Wish me luck.

Share and Enjoy

Share and Enjoy