The Doorstep Mile

Would you like a more adventurous life?Are you being held back by a lack of time or money? By fear, indecision, or a feeling of being selfish or an imposter?Living adventurously is not about cycling around the world or rowing across an ocean. Living adventurously is about the attitude you choose each day. It instils an enthusiasm to resurrect the boldness and curiosity that many of us lose as adults.Whether at work or home, taking the first step to begin a new venture is daunting. If you dream of a big adventure, begin with a microadventure. This is the Doorstep Mile, the hardest part of every journey. The Doorstep Mile will reveal why you want to change direction, what’s stopping you, and how to build an adventurous spirit into your busy daily life.Dream big, but start small.Don’t yearn for the adventure of a lifetime. Begin a lifetime of living adventurously.What would your future self advise you to do?What would you do if you could not fail?Is your to-do list urgent or important?You will never simultaneously have enough time, money and mojo.There are opportunities for adventure in your daily 5-to-9. The hardest challenge is getting out the front door and beginning: the Doorstep Mile.Alastair Humphreys, a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, cycled around the world for four years but also schedules a monthly tree climb. He has crossed the Empty Quarter desert, rowed the Atlantic, walked a lap of the M25 and busked through Spain, despite being unable to play the violin. The Doorstep Mile is Alastair Humphreys' 13th book.‘The gospel of short, perspective-shifting bursts of travel closer to home.’ New York Times‘A life-long adventurer.’ Financial Times‘Upend your boring routine… it doesn't take much.’ Outside MagazineVisit www.alastairhumphreys.com to listen to Alastair's podcast, sign up to his newsletter or read his other books.@al_humphreys ★ Support this podcast ★

BeginningsA dozen years agoI feel nervous and almost change my mind. A clock ticks and tocks on the mantelpiece. The small office smells of magnolia paint and aftershave. The headmaster of the school I teach at is a busy man so I will get straight to the point. The first year of my teaching career has gone well. So this is not a sensible career decision. This small moment in an everyday setting is the beginning of a new trajectory for me.‘I am sorry, but I have decided to leave.’‘Oh dear! Where are you going?’‘The South Pole.’‘St. Paul’s? Lovely school.’ A few years agoI feel nervous and sleepy as I climb down from the night bus into my first Indian morning. I heave on my rucksack. The warm air smells of sea and sewage. Palm trees rustle in the breeze. I am surprised at the lack of occasion I feel, because this small moment is the beginning of something bigger. I walk down to the beach, followed by giggling barefoot children. Waves rush up the hot sand and slide back down again. There is a row of slender wooden fishing boats hauled up above the high tide line. The sun rises from the ocean horizon. It is time to get moving. I am about to try to walk across southern India, all the way to the other side until I can watch the sun set into the ocean. Eight months agoI feel nervous rather than excited as I stir my tea. I always feel this way before new adventures. I’m in McDonald’s, the only place in town still open this late. Hard plastic seats, piped pop music, weak tea, the smell of chips. A very ordinary setting for a small moment that might lead to something bigger. I have had a new idea about how to write a book. I’m going to serialise it by email and give the whole thing away for free before it’s even published. I check the time; I want to get started before McDonald’s closes. I know that I’ll lose enthusiasm if I delay until tomorrow. I tap away on my phone, setting up a new mailing list, frustrated by clumsy thumbs. I already have a traditional bricks-and-mortar, 9-to-5 book publisher. Nothing they have done in 200 proud years of publishing recommends my late-night McDonald’s idea. This book will mean a significant change of direction away from them. It might not be the conventional path, but it feels intriguing.If you decide to live more adventurously, then you too will encounter these moments, whatever path you choose. You and I might strike out in very different directions, but if you are curious about the world and eager to live a little more adventurously, then we are heading for the same destination.Trying to summon up the guts to step out of your front door and begin is difficult. This is the Doorstep Mile, the hardest and most important part of any journey. Are you ready to walk the Doorstep Mile?  ★ Support this podcast ★

How to use this podcastWould you like to have more unusual, exciting or daring experiences? To be willing to take risks or to try out new methods, ideas, or experiences? I know that I would.Are you looking to make some changes in your life: to get outside more, be a bit bolder with your business, take up a new challenge or get more ‘life’ in your work-life balance? This is not a podcast about jacking it all in to launch a yoga retreat in Bali or magicking up the funding for a swanky start-up with free beer and hipster beards. Glittery though those dreams are, I’m guessing you’re more likely to be in the shove-aside-the-dirty-cereal-bowls-to-use-your-laptop demographic. Someone snatching ten minutes of yoga in front of the telly while your baby is sleeping, your good intentions hampered by busy days and limited budgets. Perhaps you have the restless, gnawing feeling that although your life’s pretty good in the grand scheme of things, a little more pazaz certainly wouldn’t hurt. In other words, you’re probably like me, casting around for some pragmatic idealism and a few ways to sprinkle a bit more adventure into the margins of your days. (If, however, you do make it to Bali or the FTSE 100, please don’t forget little old me…)I am not demanding an unrealistic revolution in your life, urging you to climb K2 in your pants. Instead, I am encouraging you to begin something small because it makes you happier or sets you moving in a better direction. Doing something small today – and then again tomorrow – is the best way to move towards your aspirations. It also builds a mindset that considers big things to be plausible. Besides, let’s not beat ourselves up if ‘all’ that we achieve is to become more curious, kind and enthusiastic.I describe myself as an ‘Adventurer’. It is a ridiculous job description for a middle-aged adult, I know. I have travelled on six continents, mostly by bike, boat or boot, and written various books along the way. Adventure is my career, my hobby and my biggest passion. My commute is a walk across the grass to a book-filled shed with good coffee and my choice of music all day. I earn my living by telling stories from beautiful wild places. I love all of this, and I know that I am a lucky man. There is nothing more toe-curling than a humble-bragging self-help book. So let me add a little more detail to the social media version of my life I’ve just painted. I often feel frustrated by the limitations of time, geography and patience. The excess of admin and chores. The mad hamster wheel of childcare. By thwarted dreams and pathetic procrastination. And therefore, jumbled up amongst my shed days, the trips to the mountains, the daily routine and jumping into rivers with my kids, is a yearning to do a bit more with my life. To, at the very least, strive for more interest and purpose. To figure out which of my many dreams to pick first and then be brave enough to follow that rather than convention.I want to take responsibility for all of this rather than hide behind excuses and end-of-day weariness. There are easier ways to live than this. But I do not want an easy life. I am starkly aware that my time is finite. I want to avoid regrets and the drift of decades, even if all I manage some days is stepping away from the email onslaught for 20 minutes to climb a tree. I am not just living for the weekend as I hear so many people sigh at the school gates. I have fewer than 2000 Mondays left to live. I want to make the most of them, not just tick them off!I initially sat down to write this book in an attempt to assess my own life. I wanted to measure my progress and unravel how I can live more adventurously amongst the obligations of life and the ever-changing shift of priorities and purpose. I hope that it might spark a fire for you as well and that our paths intersect somewhere along the way.There is no science or deep wisdom in these pages. Like most self-help narratives the whole book could happily be distilled to a page, a paragraph, or a phrase. In this case: dream big, start small. That is how I turn wishful daydreaming into actual action. In fact, you should probably just read the chapters about the Doorstep Mile and the Death Clock, then give this book to a friend and get started!There are countless specialist books, written by experts, about 10,000 hours this or 4-hour that, atomic goals and smart habits. My writing has nothing new to say. I would go as far as to say that you already know everything I have written, if only deep down. We all know this stuff; we just don’t always do it.All that I have to offer is a gentle, polite kick up the backside to help you step out the front door and begin. To go to your shed and do the work. If you merely lay this book aside after finishing it and think, ‘that was nice’ then I have failed, we are both wasting our time and I owe you a refund. But if you answer the questions at the end of each chapter honestly, I hope my money will be safe. My dream is that you read this book thinking, ‘yes, I knew that. Yes, that makes sense. Yes, I could and should do that. Yes, I want to do that. Yes, I am going to do that today!’Cajoling ourselves to live more adventurously is not easy. We might like the idea but face many barriers and excuses. For some of us, money’s the problem. For others, it is time we lack. The one universal hindrance is that we are all afraid of making change happen.We know we should eat some quinoa but reach for the cookie instead. We know we want our work to have meaning and our personal lives to have purpose. We know all this stuff. We can easily advise someone in the pub what they should do with their life. We know it, but we struggle to make it happen. It is not easy to embrace the discomfort and decide that today is the day to start. To ask yourself whether it is ‘one day’ or ‘Day One’.Over years of intelligent, philosophical reflection, I have concluded that living adventurously is a similar challenge to going skinny dipping. The idea sounds exciting, but it can be daunting to do.Are you ready to strip off and jump in?Over to youBeginning an adventure can be overwhelming, but pausing to gather your thoughts might help get you moving. Of course it would be beneficial if you reflected deeply, but I’m a realist. I know you’ll be checking Instagram within minutes! So I’ll settle for asking you to give each chapter 30 seconds of thought. Grab a notebook and scribble a few ideas. After all, reading a book is not the same as using one…- Why do you want to live more adventurously? Think about your motivations rather than  considering specific activities.- What is the most significant change you would like to make in your life?- What barriers stand in your way?  ★ Support this podcast ★

Skinny dippingIt is a hot summer’s day. The sparkling river below is enticing. You’d love to take the plunge. It would feel glorious in there – so much better than being stuck here, hot and bothered like everyone else. But rather than leaping in, you remain on the riverbank feeling nervous. Vulnerable. You think to yourself, ‘What if it’s cold?’ You mop your brow and fret, ‘Oh, respectable people like me shouldn’t be doing stuff like this.’ You clutch tightly at the towel around your body, unwilling to let go and unleash your lily-white buttocks upon the world. ‘What will people think?’ They might laugh at you.You summon up the will to dip your toe in the water. ‘There have to be easier things to do than this…’ Sure enough, the first step into the water is shockingly cold. (That never changes, by the way.) ‘I knew this was a terrible idea!’ You curse at yourself. The fun you imagined has been suffocated by the immediate discomfort and the worries in your mind. How much easier it would be to stay here where everybody else is.You almost retreat. Your mind whirls with thoughts of the cold and embarrassment, not to mention the monsters surely lurking beneath the surface, ready to drag you down to your doom. ‘They were right all along!’ you cry, feeling very sorry for yourself. You shiver with cold and fear and your buttocks wobble. The pebbles in front of you look sharp. The sun beats down and the water sparkles.What happens next? Do you stay where you are – or will you jump? ★ Support this podcast ★

What does living adventurously mean?I have been hooked on adventure since the age of 18. I began by reading Ranulph Fiennes, Dervla Murphy and Benedict Allen when I should have been revising for my A-Levels. Most of my heroes were adventurers and writers. I wanted that world for myself.I spent the best part of the next 20 years crossing continents, oceans and deserts in pursuit of ‘adventure’. I cycled tens of thousands of miles, camped for a thousand nights or more and travelled through almost a hundred countries. I wanted excitement, challenge, hardship and risk. To test myself, prove myself and live on the edge – of my maps, my potential and my comfort zone. And I got it all. Those were days of miracle and wonder.But my perception of adventure has changed a great deal since I first traded the green hills of Yorkshire for a year on the red soil of southern Africa. Real life arrived eventually. It catches up with most of us in the end! My uncomplicated pursuit of the life of my choice collided with the very different adventures of marriage and children. So today, I am an ‘Adventurer’ or an ‘Author’ for just 30 hours a week. The rest of the time, I am simply ‘Dad’. I have a mortgage to pay and two kids to pick up from school at 3.15 every afternoon. (Time check: 28 minutes left until today’s brief work slot is over. Or 33 minutes if I run to the school, thus risking the wrath of my 8-year-old daughter who deems such behaviour’ embarrassing ‘... much to my delight.) Is it possible to live adventurously in real life? This book began as my own attempt to answer that question. I no longer see adventure as the exclusive domain of rugged tough guys (and me) doing rugged stuff in rugged places. It is much broader than that. What’ living adventurously’ involves will differ for everyone. Rest assured that it need not involve crossing deserts or even sleeping in a tent. Despite the years I spent chasing big adventures from the frozen Arctic Ocean to the gales of Patagonia, this book has nothing directly to do with travel or expeditions. It is something we can all do, whether we are young and carefree, busy with bills and babies and yearning for a brief burst of escape, an empty nester, or someone looking to shake up a weary rut by learning something new.This is a critical distinction for the pages ahead: living adventurously is the attitude you charge at life with. Anyone can choose their attitude. Living adventurously is about being eager to look differently at things, be bold and risk looking a fool. This invites us to stretch ourselves – mentally, physically or culturally. To attempt challenges that are difficult and daunting. To accept the risk of failure in exchange for the enticing sense of surprised satisfaction upon completion.You can live adventurously anywhere; in your office or home as well as in the hills. You don’t have to be rich or fit or young or talented to live adventurously. It’s nothing to do with Mount Everest or the South Pole. Living adventurously is not about being lucky enough to have an adventure of a lifetime one day. Instead, it is a choice to live a more adventurous life every day. You can begin right now, without needing to spend a penny. A combination of age, momentum and understanding that living adventurously makes me happier means that I am now quite willing to be regarded as a weirdo. I have learned to prioritise that rather than what other people think I should be doing. I often feel like an outsider because of the way I want to live. But the ticking of those 2000 Mondays convinces me that the urgency is essential and being the village weirdo is a small price to pay.I am editing these words in a garden chair swinging pleasantly in the branches of a lime tree eight metres above the ground. I sleep out on hilltops while my friends are perusing the wine list in gastropubs. I love arriving at meetings reeking of wood smoke. I often give serious corporate presentations in a suit, but with wet hair and going commando after jumping in a nearby river and towelling myself off with my boxer shorts.Fear not: no lycra, muscle, beard, ego or even wanderlust is required for the reading of this book. Would you like to live more adventurously? I know that I certainly would.OVER TO YOU: - What does living adventurously mean to you? - Keep that definition in your mind every time I use the phrase. ★ Support this podcast ★

How I began living adventurously.I did not ask any big questions like ‘would I like to live more adventurously?’ until I was in my twenties. I was just getting on with life and working towards becoming ‘Mr Humphreys, the Science teacher’. I was modest in my ambitions, living a normal life with plenty of beer and football and jumping comfortably through life’s hoops towards what could be described as ‘a successful life’.I had gone to school because my parents took me. I took the exams my teachers made me do. I went to university because my friends were going. I anticipated getting a proper job because that was what everyone did. Conventional expectations and standards have a seductive pull. I cannot remember any specific incident that prompted me to look up from the well-worn path I was following everyone down. It is difficult when you are being swept along by your friends, your family and the conventional way of doing things. It is even harder to decide to change direction and push back against the crowd.But as I pictured the passing days building towards the drift of years, something nagged in my belly. Was this actually what I wanted from what Mary Oliver called our ‘one wild and precious life’? Did I really want to be a teacher? My immediate answer was ‘yes’.I enjoyed teaching. I was good at it. It was a worthwhile career. I liked the prospect of becoming a headteacher and having a significant impact on young people’s lives. The holidays were brilliant. The pay was enough.But dig a little deeper, and I grew uneasy. Did I really want to be a teacher? Was that truly how I wanted to spend my days? ‘How we spend our days,’ noted Annie Dillard, ‘is, of course, how we spend our lives.’‘Ah, yes,’ I continued my defence to myself. ‘If I was a millionaire, I would spend my days sunning myself in my Speedos. But everyone needs a job. You get a job, save up, settle down, retire and then relax. The Speedos come later. That’s the way real life works.’Does it have to be that way? ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,’ reflected John Lennon. Thank goodness he did not postpone his bold, creative ideas until later in life…So I decided to take a deep breath and change direction. By my standards, it was a brave decision. I slammed on the brakes, swerved off the congested conveyor belt I was on and looked down a different road.What I saw was a lonely and meandering path with no signposts or clear destination. It filled me with at least as much fear as excitement. I was tempted to stick with unhappy rather than risk uncertainty. But I consoled myself that if it all went wrong, I could always come back and get a job. That was the worst that would probably happen. I was fortunate in that it is far easier to take a brave leap with a safety net like this beneath you. The road I headed down in search of a more adventurous life was, quite literally, a road and an adventure. Your path might lead in a very different direction, even if what we are both searching for is the same: an engaging, curiosity-filled, adventurous life.I strapped a tent to the back of a bicycle and set off from my front door to have a look around. That adventure changed the way I looked at things. A liberating side effect of spending the next few years on the road was that I realised there is no such thing as the right way to live. Travel shows you many different versions of ‘normal’. One definition of normal life and priorities is very different from another. Pedal far enough from your front door and you eventually become an exotic curiosity yourself. There is no correct route through life. There is no ideal lifestyle. There is not even one perfect way of life for you. It is better than that: there is an enticing abundance of intriguing possibilities. Don’t be ashamed or afraid to pick an adventurous path that tickles your fancy then go and explore it.OVER TO YOU: - Theoretically, how could you change direction in your life to begin living more adventurously? Ignore all the barriers and realities of life. We will tackle them later. -What would be the worst thing that might happen if you did this?-What good things could happen if you did this? ★ Support this podcast ★

Living adventurously changes with timeEveryone’s definition of living adventurously is unique. I love that. It could be crossing a desert or cross-dressing, running a marathon or running a non-profit.Not only that, our own answers change over time. When I first got a taste for adventure as a teenager, it was simply for the fun of it. Climbing hills and looking around at the view, leaning hard in a heeling dinghy. These things are enjoyable. We should not make the mistake of seeing fun as flippant or something to save for the weekend. The world would be a better place with more fun in it.By the time I was in my 20s, however, my relationship with adventure had changed. ‘It doesn’t have to be fun to be fun’ was my mantra. Miles not smiles. Adventure became about the challenge. Pushing my body. Striving to be tough. Seeking an identity. Exploring what I was capable of. I was fortunate to have a comfortable, happy upbringing. So adventure served as the grit in my oyster. It helped toughen me up and taught me to appreciate things I habitually took for granted. Adventure gave me the momentum to try to do something interesting with my life.After that came curiosity. I wonder if it’s possible to hitch a lift on a yacht across the Atlantic? Could I run an ultramarathon in the Sahara? What happens if I don’t stop when my body tells me to stop? The answers were exciting. I began to see the stars rather than the mud when I looked out of the window.The trouble with learning to think this way, however, is that it becomes hard to remain satisfied with the ordinary. Pandora’s box had been flung open.I began to realise that if I wished to continue chasing adventure, then just repeating the same types of expedition was not the way to go. Sure, I could do things on a more epic level, push myself harder and take more risks. But a dog will never catch its tail, and Sisyphus never gets to sit down, have a nice cup of tea and feel the satisfaction of completion.  And so my motivation changed again. Still drawn to scaring myself and trying new things, I began learning the violin. I decided to walk through Spain, busking to survive. The idea frightened me, amused me, challenged me and intrigued me: I was living adventurously once again.These days adventure needs to fit in around the happy chaos of raising a family. Whenever routine winds me up and grinds me down, wears me out and keeps me in, I am aware enough of the symptoms to bust out briefly and press reset.So I cycle to the sea or climb a tree. I carve out occasional free days to run in the hills of the Lake District by driving through the night (once my children are in bed) in time to greet the sunrise in the uplands. I sleep on starry hilltops rather than soulless hotels the night before speaking at conferences.On the way to a talk in the Netherlands recently, I persuaded my taxi driver to join me in jumping off a bridge into the canal with the local kids. He thought I was mad but never stopped laughing afterwards.These ‘microadventures’ are how I keep the embers of my big, selfish, carefree adventure dreams aglow amidst the busy-ness of everyday life. I do what I can, when I can, where I am. What more can we do than that? Adventure has evolved from fun to machismo to curiosity to scaring myself to seizing the moment. I have laid all this out to help you relax about any decisions you take about changing something in your life. They are important choices, and they are urgent, but they are not binding. You once yearned for Spiderman pyjamas, didn’t you? The peak of your ambition was once to wheelie down the street. (OK, some things never change – bad examples.) I hope this reassures you that whatever definition and direction you plump for today is unlikely to be your path for the rest of your life. You don’t have to stress that you’ll be shackled to it forever.This choice or that choice could both be the right one if they lead to opportunities for you to pursue a more adventurous, rewarding, fulfilling life. Make the best decision you can with the knowledge that you have then stick to it until you can make a better decision. You do not have an accurate idea of who you will be twenty years down the line. This is epitomised by the existence of tattoo removal services. It is a mistake to defer living adventurously until you are clear about a masterplan or until the time is perfect. Neither exists. There is an old Chinese saying that ‘the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.’I might get that done as a tattoo.OVER TO YOU: - What did ‘living adventurously’ mean to you ten years ago?- What does it mean today?- If you continue living the way you are, where will it put you ten years from now? Is that a place you want to be? ★ Support this podcast ★

Yes, butLiving more adventurously might appeal to you if:You have a yearning to live a more extraordinary life, but don’t know how to get started. You enjoy stories of adventure but don’t believe they’re realistic for someone like you.Everything is fine, but you’d like to rekindle a few dreams and that childlike audacity you lost somewhere along the way.You wake up on Monday mornings with a sigh.You spend more time looking at your phone than making memories.Your most interesting anecdote from the past year involves office life, your kids’ potty training, the Christmas party, or something you saw on TV.The prospect of looking back on your life with regrets fills you with sadness and urgency.Now, I know what you are thinking. In fact, I can already hear you shouting loudly and angrily at me right now. ‘It’s all very well for you to say! It is easy for you. But my life is different because…’I don’t have enough time! (54% of people said this in a Living Adventurously newsletter poll. www.alastairhumphreys.com/living-adventurously)I feel guilty/selfish/it’s not fair on my family! (49%)I don’t have enough money! (38%)I’ve got nobody to do adventurous stuff with! (37%)I worry about making the wrong choice! (29%)I don’t know how to begin! (24%)I feel like an imposter! I’ll fail! (23%)I’m scared! (22%)I know you are shouting this because it is what everyone shouts – including me when I read other people’s stuff. So I will cut you off, politely but firmly, at this point. An essential task of this book is to make you aware of this voice in your head. The loud voice that is always ready, at the slightest opportunity, to leap up and shout, ‘I can’t do this because…’ After all, if we cry for too long about our limitations, then we get to keep them. I know there are hurdles. Of course I do. Time, money, family, illness, bills, Jaws the hamster: there are a million and one things holding us back from galloping off into the sunset and changing the course of our lives. We are all in the same boat. I recently learned a word that sums this up. Sonder is ‘the realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own – populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness.’ I want to try to make you accept that the voice in your head is not really shouting at the random author of a book you’re reading. It is you shouting at you. Yelling an endless, hard-to-ignore stream of objections, excuses, self-pity, blame and To-Do lists. The same thing is happening in my head: Who the hell am I to write a self-help book? I can’t sort my own life out.I am not pretending to provide solutions with a handy 7-Step-Plan-To-Adventure-Greatness. Only you can do that. What I will try to do is help you notice the noise, feel the fear and then do stuff anyway.OVER TO YOU: List all the ‘no buts’ you were shouting at me. ★ Support this podcast ★

Ask whyA hazy dimness had hung in the air all week. The northern sky darkened. I woke to grey ash falling soft as snow on my tent. Later that day, I smelled smoke. And then, finally, the route ahead was blocked by flames. This was a forest fire, Canadian style: it was enormous.The only road through the Yukon was now cut off and would remain so for several weeks, at least. Winter was approaching. I needed to cycle north to Alaska before the season changed. Hundreds of miles of blazing fir and spruce blocked my way. It was an exasperating situation. For three years, I had been obsessed with pedalling around the world. Literally every day had been building towards that goal. Yet suddenly the way ahead was impassable. And there was nothing I could do about it. Was this where it all fell apart? Was this the end after so much stubborn focus and purpose? Would I have to resort to taking an aeroplane? I thought of the word with disgust. You can’t really call it cycling around the world if you travel by plane, can you? Whatever happened next, the tyre tracks that stretched behind me for thousands of miles were about to be broken by the consequences of this vast forest fire. I filled page after page of my diary with ideas (and plenty of self-pity). What this angst-filled, caffeine-fuelled brain dump eventually revealed astonished me.Why was I so obsessed with crossing the swathe of burning forest ahead of me? The unbroken nature of my ride had crumbled long ago. An enforced armed police convoy in Egypt; some blatant cheating to get to a TV in time to watch a football match in Tanzania; another escort through a long tunnel high in the Andes. So I could not claim that the ride’s purity was why I felt compelled to keep pedalling. I poured more coffee and kept writing.My scribblings eventually teased out an epiphany from the depths of my Neanderthal brain. I was out here in the Yukon – thousands of miles from home, pretty much broke, years without seeing my family – in pursuit of something hard and meaningful (if only to me). That was what felt important. That was why I was doing this. I was not cycling around the world in order to cycle around the world. I was cycling around the world to live adventurously. I had not appreciated the subtle difference until now.This clarification made my situation much clearer and opened up possibilities. The question I needed to ask was no longer, ‘how can I keep cycling around the world?’ The vital question was, ‘How can I keep living adventurously?’ Snaking through the burning wilderness was the Yukon River. Perhaps that could offer my solution? Maybe, I mused, I could travel by river rather than road?Before bulldozers and tarmac ever reached this part of the world, the rivers had been the road. For hundreds of years, local people had paddled the rivers in summer or walked them as frozen highways in winter. An idea began to take shape. It was time to borrow a canoe. I was in the Yukon with a friend. David and I laughed and wobbled as the current took hold of our new transport and whisked us away downstream. Paddling was far more fun than pedalling. Our canoe sat low in the water, piled high with two bicycles and supplies for 10 days. The locals waved goodbye, nervously. They were worried that we were inexperienced at canoeing, that we knew nothing about bears and that we were heading into a wilderness that was on fire. All these things were true.But the best way to learn is to do. David and I dipped our paddles into the cold, clear water and began 500 miles of learning how to canoe.When I think back now to the four years I spent cycling around the world, I do not regret those 500 missing miles in the saddle. Instead, I remember our time on the river as a magnificent addition to the overall experience. David and I still talk about it fondly whenever we meet up to drink beer or plant trees. And we always daydream of continuing down the river to the sea one day.Our Yukon adventure taught me three useful lessons. (Four if you include the discovery that spicy sausage doesn’t work as bait for catching salmon.)It is important to pause from time to time and think about why you are actually doing something. The answer might surprise you. It might also be different from your motivations when you first hatched your plan. These core values should influence every subsequent decision you make.I learned to concentrate on what I could control rather than on all that I could not. There was little point getting angry at millions of acres of blazing forest and a squillion mosquitoes. All I was able to do was deal with the situation in front of me and keep moving forwards. Accepting (and ideally embracing) uncertainty is liberating. If you set out on a long journey, things will go wrong. If they do not – if everything goes perfectly to plan – that does not mean you are a genius. It means your goal was too modest. You will encounter forest fires and have to gamble on climbing into a wobbly canoe and seeing what happens. Mishaps turn a project into an adventure. In the long run, they often make the best memories and lessons.  OVER TO YOU: Think of something you have been doing for a long time. (It could relate to your job, outside work or with your family.) Ask yourself, ‘why do I do this thing?’ Has the answer changed over time? Is it still valid? ★ Support this podcast ★

Start with whyWhen we stumble upon something that captures our interest, we think, ‘Yes! That is what I want to do.’ Then we figure out how to make it happen, hopefully before the early enthusiasm wanes.What we do is visible and tangible (golf, gardening, gymkhana…). But the deeper motives of why we choose them are harder to pin down and therefore neglected, or only vaguely assumed. This is a mistake. It can lead to us flitting from one fad to the next, from job to job, not inspired enough to fully commit and never quite satisfied. If we do not uncover why we are out there searching. We risk ending up with nothing of substance. Chase too many rabbits and you catch none at all. Riding around the planet was the what and how of expressing my youthful, adventurous urges. But I only fully excavated the reason why I wanted to do it after the Yukon forest fire. I should have processed things the other way round.‘Start with why’ is a popular TED talk by Simon Sinek. He speaks in a business context, but I have found the idea useful for persuading myself to summon the effort needed to make interesting stuff happen. We can only spend our time once. It is foolish to not consider why we should take this path and not another. Being clear about why you choose to do something is an under-appreciated first step to living adventurously.It makes sense to have some idea about what matters most in order to illuminate our stumbling, fumbling journey through life. It serves as a keel to keep you on course, however foggy the conditions, and gives you more confidence to explore, dream and discover. The destination you end up in is likely to be a good one, even if it is not what you imagined when you first set sail from the safe harbour. (Another way to help with this is to pay attention to the people you spend time with. We tend to walk the same way as those around us.) The Japanese, as they often do, have a nifty word that encapsulates this essence of what gets you out of bed in the morning. Ikigai is the overlap of what you want to do, what you ought to do, and what you have to do. If you can find something that ticks all three boxes, then you have discovered your ikigai – and perhaps even the purpose of your adventurous life.Starting with why helps quieten our self-defeating noise and deters procrastination. For example, this is the sort of thought process that rattles around my tiny brain from time to time.‘My life sucks. I’m bored. I want to change things.’ Why? ‘So that I get back some purpose and direction. I want to feel healthier, happier and more alive.’These reasons are so compelling that I am motivated to actually make something happen, rather than just more late-night grazing on clickbait lifehack blogs.How will I go about that?‘I must re-evaluate the way I spend my spare time. I will figure out if I have sufficient money to skew my work-life balance a bit more towards life, family and exploration. Perhaps I’ll meet a few friends in the pub and make a plan. That way, we can hold each other to account. I sometimes need a mate to push me into boldness.’By this point, I should be bouncing around with eagerness. I’m clear about why I want to make changes and how I will go about it. Finally comes the easy part: deciding what to do. Because I’ve thought hard about the why and the how, I appreciate this is really important. Therefore the daunting act of signing up for a mountain marathon, turning up to a book club or asking my boss about cutting down my hours becomes more straightforward. Indeed it is now apparent how daft I would be not to do these things. Compare this approach to starting from a standing start. All the negative voices shouting inside my head: how unfit I am for a mountain marathon, how scary it would be to turn up at a book club where I know nobody, or assuming there is no way my boss would countenance any time off. He’ll probably fire me instead! Far safer to just keep hiding away behind my excuses and not begin anything… Over to You: Why do you want to live more adventurously?- Brainstorm or discuss (but don’t procrastinate) until things become clear. Bonus challenge: ‘Five Whys’ is a technique for getting deeper into the root causes and effects of something. Look at an answer and ask again, ‘why?’ Repeat the exercise five times (like an inquisitive toddler) and you’ll get a clearer insight into what drives you.- How can you begin living more adventurously? - What specific action can you take to put the ‘hows’ into action?  ★ Support this podcast ★

Case studyThis case study involves me, not because I’m particularly interesting but because I’m lazy. I have been writing books for a quarter of my life now. It is my job. Like most people, I occasionally wonder if I’m doing the right thing with my life. When writer’s block strikes and I can’t stomach any more tea or toast procrastination, I fantasise about becoming a carpenter, a tree surgeon, an advertising guru or a postman in the Shetlands. They are my usual four. The last time this career-angst happened, I asked myself the three why-how-what questions. This book is the result of my scribbled answers.1. ‘Bearing in mind the spirit of living adventurously, why am I still writing books after so many years doing the same thing?’It makes me think differently.I’m still learning to become a better writer.It’s a mental struggle.I can make a positive impact. It is satisfying.I learn a lot.I can walk my own path.2. ‘OK, I’m satisfied with that. I’ll hold off applying to Royal Mail for a while. How can I approach my writing to better encompass trying to live adventurously?’Take more risks.Try something new.Write and publish differently.Make the process more exciting.Force deadlines on myself.Work with interesting people.Learn new skills.Teach something.Speed up.Simplify.3. ‘Gadzooks! That list flowed out quickly. Seems I should make some of this happen. What shall I do next that focuses on living – and writing – adventurously?’Ask questions on social media to see if I’m alone in this or if other people are interested in the same stuff.Write a series of articles about living adventurously so that I can figure some stuff out for myself.Experiment with giving them away in an automated email series.Launch the mailing list with only a few articles written, thereby lighting a small fire under my ass to hurry up before the readers catch up with me!Turn it all into the skeleton of a book.Return to self-publishing to give myself complete freedom and responsibility.Knock up a mock front cover of the book. Stick it online and make the book available for sale, promising delivery of the book before the end of the year. Thereby lighting a blooming big rocket beneath my butt to get this written and to make it good enough for paying customers to be happy.The next thing I know, I am in a late-night McDonald’s, drinking tea and launching this whole daft idea into the world before I have time to see sense and wimp out.We have lift off. ★ Support this podcast ★

Focus, choose, doYou have dreamed about living more adventurously, reflected on why it matters and come up with some practical steps for getting underway. The final piece of the puzzle is to decide what you are going to do. Remember: you can do anything in life, but you cannot do everything. Here we encounter the agony of decision, the abundance of choice, analysis paralysis and FOMO – our Facebook-era curse of the Fear Of Missing Out.To ease the anxiety of picking wrong, it is worth considering the long term risk of doing nothing. That would be far worse. But we tend to undervalue that distant consideration. Humans are terrible at weighing up long term benefits versus immediate fears and the easy option. We want a six-pack, but instead we eat six packs of crisps. Our immediate emotions cloud our decisions on the future.There is so much good stuff out there that we agonise over anticipated regrets. The sheer abundance of choice can be so overwhelming that you might end up doing nothing. Imagine being offered every flavour of ice cream that you don’t eat any because you fear making the wrong choice or can’t bear the thought of missing out on all the others. Perhaps you have decided what adventure you want to do. You may even have begun saving and allocated time in your calendar. Your family and boss are on board. Nothing is standing in your way. (You have permission to smile smugly at this point, give this book away and get on with it.)For many of us, the yearning for change comes well before having a clear idea of what we want to do. The paradox of choice was a challenge for me when I first started dreaming of adventure. The world was so big, and there was too much choice. I didn’t really care what I did: I just wanted to do everything. I didn’t know how to make things happen or what was the best option. I didn’t know very much at all.How do you narrow down your choices when the whole world is beckoning? I knew only that I wanted to head far away from everything familiar and do something physically strenuous, though I had no specific skills to rely on. Wild places appealed to me more than cities. And it needed to be cheap. Oh, and nice food would be a welcome bonus. I said I was clueless, but if you read that previous paragraph again, I already had quite a few parameters in place without realising. It is easier than you might think to narrow down your options to a level where you can start to make decisions.I wanted to head far away from everything familiar: this ruled out exploring the UK or Europe.I had no specific skills. No climbing technical mountains then.I wanted to do something physically demanding. So no vehicles or hitch-hiking.Wild places appealed to me more than cities.It needed to be cheap. That eliminated ocean and polar journeys. It also made sense not to do the trip in expensive countries.Eliminating what you can’t do or don’t want to do is helpful. Far from making me sad, this simplification brings a lightness and enthusiasm for what is still available. I could now write down my thoughts more clearly than I realised.I wanted to do something difficult, but non-technical, in Africa, Asia or South America.It probably would be on foot or by bicycle. Cycling sounded preferable to walking.I’d already been to Africa. Asia has better food than South America.From having no idea what to do, I had quickly narrowed down the infinity of choice to going for a long bike ride in Asia. This led to me riding the Karakoram Highway from Pakistan to China. Until now, my unimaginative, more conventional assumption had been that I might go on a cycling holiday in Italy. Of course, I could have gone to Papua instead of Pakistan. Maybe life would have worked out better if I had studied for an Outdoor Education certificate instead. I should have taken more time over the ride rather than treating it as a challenge to be conquered. But I will settle for the choices I did make over the unsatisfactory world of coulda, woulda, shoulda… It is time to sift through the galaxies of options and ‘what ifs’ and pick one adventurous thing. Lay aside the bajillion other ideas and get on with it. Choose your flavour and enjoy it. You can return later and choose another. But for now, you need to stop hiding behind the reading and the pondering, the research and the dithering. Pick a path rather than waiting for a lightning bolt epiphany. It is time to make a specific choice of which direction you will go (at least for now). Reassure yourself that all paths run out of sight beyond the horizon. They twist and fork beyond our knowledge or control. The best thing you can do then is plump for an interesting-looking direction and get moving. OVER TO YOU: Write down a bunch of gut feeling, top-of-the-head parameters and see where they lead. Use them to draw up a list of plausible projects. Rank these by preference. Select one specific project that you will take into the rest of this book and turn into action. Slash a line through all the other ideas on your list. You can return to them later, but you must discount them for now and focus on one thing. What will be your ‘late-night McDonald’s idea’? Write it down. ★ Support this podcast ★

Back to the futureInterviews often ask, 'what advice would you offer to your younger self?' A more useful question is to ask what advice an older version of yourself would offer to you now. Our actions today have a direct bearing on our future selves, hence why we have savings accounts and plant apple trees.Sometimes when I'm sitting on a train, I like to look at everyone around me and make guesses about their lives. Each person acts as either a warning or an inspiration for the direction I want my life to go. So heed some encouragement and caveats from your 80-year-old self. Write a letter from 'future you' to 'current you'. What would they tell you to do with your life? What will they think about where you are right now? What would they plead with you to change? This is the idea of 'backcasting': if I want to end up there, what direction must I walk and how quickly? If I continue on my current path, where will that put me when I'm 80? A similar but opposite exercise is to write a letter to your future self. Picture where you want to be in a year or five. What are your hopes and dreams for that person? Declare what you will do today to try to make them happen. This is the less epic equivalent of Ulysses lashing himself to the mast. He wanted to listen to the Sirens' song but first commanded that his men must not change course under any circumstance. Try this exercise in self-accountability on www.futureme.org. The website emails the message to yourself at a chosen point in the future. It is an opportunity to hold yourself to account. You can also opt to make the letter public if you really want to be held to task.OVER TO YOU: - Write a letter of advice from your 80-year-old self to you today.- Send a message to your future self. ★ Support this podcast ★

Say yes moreOnce I started going on adventures, I fell deeply in love with the world of travel, expeditions and endeavour. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know. As I travelled further, I realised how little I had seen and how much there was to do in life. Would I like to go there? Yes! Am I up for this challenge? Yes! Every journey gave me ideas for new ones. Life was exciting!Mountains, deserts, jungles, cities, savannah: whatever it was, I wanted it all. I was greedy. I was never interested in becoming a specialist in one region or an expert at one sport. My appetite has always been for the new: I enjoy being a beginner. However, there was one type of adventure that never appealed. I had read plenty of books about ocean rowing, and the concept struck me as stupid. You go backwards for thousands of miles. It is simultaneously claustrophobic and agoraphobic. You face sharks, storms, capsize and seasickness. You are trapped in a tiny, home-made boat for so long that you end up with nothing left to talk about except whose buttocks hurt the most. And boy, do those buttocks hurt. You get boils on your bottom and salt sores everywhere else. It is a venture both tedious and terrifying: not a good combination.Then I opened an email.Hello Alastair...Are you interested in rowing the E-W Atlantic in January? ...Sounds fun, right? :)Bye, Marin No, I thought to myself. I am not interested in rowing the Atlantic Ocean – or any other ocean for that matter. I certainly don’t want to do it with you, weird bloke from Slovenia who I’ve never met. Rowing an ocean with people you don’t know is foolhardy. And leaving in six weeks? Well, that’s just daft. I can’t get ready to row the Atlantic by then. I’m busy. You’re an idiot. And no, it doesn’t sound fun at all. The only sensible answer to the question was ‘no’. So I clicked reply and answered, ‘yes!’I flew out to the Canary Isles, met Marin and my other two crewmates – Simon and Steve – and off we went, rowing out onto thousands of miles of empty ocean. And I was right: rowing the Atlantic was a mostly unpleasant experience. Why on earth did I say yes to Marin? I did so because it was clear that this was a rare opportunity. One of my missions in life is to make the most of my opportunities. By nature, I am a cautious, pessimistic person, but I have worked hard to teach myself not to be like that. An excellent way to do that is to say ‘yes’ more often. You might sensibly say, ‘you thought it would be miserable, did it anyway and then it was miserable. I’m not sure that sounds very smart.’ But now that sufficient time has passed, I look back on the trip with great fondness and pride. (I explain this concept of ‘Type 2 Fun’ later in the book.)  On the day that Marin’s email arrived, I was busy. But I imagined myself as an old man looking back on my life. 50 years from now, how many urgent chores would I remember? Zero, of course. But I would be chuffed to regale my grandchildren with tales of high adventure and chafed buttocks. And that was why I should say yes to the opportunity.OVER TO YOU: - What is an example of a time you said a bold ‘yes’ to an opportunity and were glad of it? - Are there any occasions when you regret not having said yes? - Think of examples in your work life and your home life. ★ Support this podcast ★

Follow your dreams, slowlyFollow your dreams – the nafforism that launched a thousand soft-focus Instagram posts and made a million people feel bad about themselves.There is a core of truth to it though. Given all the meandering paths and turning points that make up a life, it is tragic not to at least try to move in the direction of your dreams. One day too soon, we will be dead. So why do we persevere with things that suck our soul? If you must do the job, then fair enough. But if the motivation is to save up for a bigger car and a new telly, I think you're mad. If your house burned down today, how much stuff would you bother paying to replace?So I am in the 'follow your dreams' camp. But I urge pragmatic dreaming. I'm wary of the relentless positivity myth that peddles the dogma of 'everything you want to achieve is possible! You too can be extraordinary!' It is often preached from an altar of privilege and therefore not very helpful at all.If you are considering a significant shift towards doing something you love, I recommend you keep it as a hobby for as long as possible. Start small and build your expertise rather than quitting your life and leaping in at the deep end. I have written about my own decision to step off the career conveyor belt, to turn down Mr Walker's job offer and try to cycle around the world instead. But that skipped the previous years I had spent accidentally gathering momentum. The school camping trips, the bookshelves of expedition literature, the adventures in my university holidays, the mountain marathons and the weekends training with the Territorial Army. It took me years before I was ready to leap. Keep your day job. Pay the bills. Fill what free time remains with following your dreams. You could do a thousand press-ups a year simply by getting up a minute earlier each morning and boshing out three a day. The standard British worker has 112 days off each year. If you work a 40-hour week, that leaves 128 hours spare, if only in theory. You could listen to the War and Peace audiobook twice in that time. Use your evenings and weekends to write a book, tweak a recipe, keep your bees. Start making, doing and learning. One day you might earn a little bit of money from it. Then repeat the whole process, but better. When you get so busy that you haven't been to sleep for a week, consider decreasing your work hours a little. The squeeze should hurt you but not break you. This is your livelihood and future security we're talking about. Be wary of hurling it up in the air on the encouragement of the social media 'follow your dreams' candyfloss. Only once you are in a financial position to be able to survive on your new income would I encourage you to ditch the day job and go full time on working at your dreams. It takes a long time to become an overnight success. And then, once the safety net and the veneer of respectability of the day job has gone, the real hard work can begin.OVER TO YOU: What should you work on more slowly than your impatient side wants you to?  ★ Support this podcast ★

Dream big, start smallWhat would you do if…You were a millionaire?You were given a year off?You were a bunch of years younger (or older)?You had no responsibilities?Nobody would find out?You wanted a corker of an obituary?Are any of your answers achievable right now? If so, what are you waiting for?If your dreams look unrealistic, try to work out how you can start walking in that direction or come up with a smaller version of the goal that you can begin today? The idea of this is to turn 'that sounds cool but unfeasible' into 'what's the first step I need to take to make something happen?' ★ Support this podcast ★

Tea and biscuitsAll adventures have several distinct phases. The first is my favourite because it is enjoyable, exhilarating and very easy. This is the unrolling of a big map and your blossoming daydreams. It can take place by yourself with a mug of tea and a packet of biscuits, or with a beer in the pub where the volume and audacity rises with every empty glass.This dreaming stage is where I pour all the vague reasons for why I want to do something into an actual, real idea. A dream becomes a plan. From the comfort of my kitchen, I picture my life changing as I trace the route of my adventure across the map. It is fun to dream happy thoughts without the struggle of actually doing anything. This is the point we have reached in our journey together. I'm afraid that the next phase is more gruelling. Because ahead of us lies the arrival of doubt and the onslaught of negative barriers.This is the stage when most people fall by the wayside. You might not even have finished your biscuit before your own doubts arise. It is a jagged landscape crowded with dreamers, and few persevere long enough to enjoy the glorious views on the other side. It is time brush off the crumbs, fold away the map and roll up your sleeves. If your mission of living more adventurously is to succeed, you need to make through the rocky patch ahead. OVER TO YOU: Why do you want to live more adventurously?How are you going to live more adventurously?What are you going to begin? ★ Support this podcast ★

What stops usI am sure much is preventing you from living as adventurously as you'd like to be doing (and if not, why the heck are you still reading?).There are probably two distinct aspects to the barriers. One will be practical, perhaps a lack of either time or money. The second aspect is more intangible. These are the mental barriers inside our heads. This might be something you're shy to admit. You may have not even acknowledged it yet. But I'm convinced that every one of us struggles with them. If I had to guess, I reckon you feel like an imposter or worry what people think or are saddled with guilt for being selfish. (They're my usual three, anyway! I have plenty more where they come from if you need more…) I wrote extensively about overcoming the obstructions that get in the way of literal adventures (travel and expeditions) in my books Microadventures and Grand Adventures. Whilst researching them, I asked my website readers what they struggled with. From around 2,000 responses, the most frequent issues were time, money, family and commitments, fear, pressure, or having nobody to go with.I was fascinated that not one person mentioned the hurdles of falling down a crevasse or getting eaten by a tiger. The greatest hindrances to everyone's adventures all lay before their journeys began. So whatever you dream of attempting, it is wise to push the problems you may face later on to one side. That does not mean ignoring them. Just park them for now in order to give your mind as much space as possible to be brave about getting started. Allow yourself a long run up before tackling distant dramas. The most pressing obstacles are concerned with getting you on your way. If you don't solve those first, nothing will happen. The next chapters will help you try to identify the bumps in your own road. They will remind you that you are probably not the only one facing them. And then they will help you choose whether to solve the problem or opt for another route. The first task is for you to work out what is stopping you from living more adventurously. After all, this is a self-help book…Only by answering this honestly and thoughtfully is there any point continuing to read this book and be able to take the first steps towards making good things happen.OVER TO YOU: What practical barriers stand in your way?What mental barriers have you built up?Which concerns can be shunted further down the line?Think of the most significant thing blocking you from living adventurously. Now ask these questions, known as the Dickens Process:What has that barrier cost you in your life so far? What is that barrier costing you right now?What will that barrier cost you 10 years from now if it persists? ★ Support this podcast ★

The epidemic of busynessThis is an era of insanity. We have become lunatics, suffering under an epidemic of busyness. When did anyone last say, ‘gosh, I don’t really have anything to do today.’If you’re reading this on your phone, I know you’ve checked social media or email in the past five minutes. If you’re listening to my dulcet tones, I bet you’ve cranked me up to double speed. And if you’re reading a paper book, you’re probably on the loo. So much for my beloved literary masterpiece…We are all too frantic to be able to savour life or focus on the important things. And we live in a society that applauds the wildest ball jugglers. ‘Yowzers, I’m so busy,’ we boast, pretending not to be gleeful if we win the busiest person contest. At its heart, being busy makes us feel important and necessary. Most of us (except for those who are saving lives or cleaning streets) are not really either of those things. But it is nicer to think that we are.When I ran a poll on Twitter asking why people don’t leave the office at 5pm, 45% answered ‘because nobody else does’. But everyone wants to go home then, even the boss. It’s bonkers. (28% said they’d be reprimanded. But this is all a topic for a different book. I’ll get back to minding my own business…)An hour spent at work is equivalent to trading an hour of your life for some cash. It is worth pausing occasionally to consider that exchange (ideally at work when you might get paid for the pause). Do you enjoy your work? Or is it a pragmatic necessity that you must accept and make the best of?How much would you pay for an hour of life? How much do you earn per hour?Is this a fair/good/unavoidable swap? Could you earn more for that hour of your life? Could you work fewer hours? We face demands on our time outside of work as well: the things we have to do, those we ought to, and hopefully some things that we want to do. Throw in additional family commitments or partners with different priorities, and this can all tighten into nooses of resentment. I am surprised how many emails I receive along those lines. How can we claw back some time to live a little more adventurously every day? A good starting point is to work out where the time goes. We all begin each day with the same 24 hours to spend. Once we pay attention to the breakdown of our days, we can look for opportunities to cut out the junk and live a bit more adventurously.For example, which of these do you deem acceptable ways of being busy?Saving the world?Changing the world?Getting rich?Chasing dreams?Raising a family?Keeping your boss happy?Not letting people down?Having fun?Here are some other questions I have asked myself at various times. If you wish you can think of it as The Acme Busyness Scale, by busyness guru Alastair Humphreys.Am I too busy to move to Africa for a year?Am I too busy to cross Iceland for a month?Am I too busy to go biking in Scotland for a week?Am I too busy to camp out this weekend?Am I too busy to climb a small hill with somebody I love and watch the sunset?Am I too busy to go for a run at lunchtime?Am I too busy to swim in a river before breakfast?Am I too busy to climb a tree for ten minutes?Am I too busy to read my kids a bedtime story?Am I too busy for life?Which number are you on an equivalent list in your own life? Which level is acceptable, necessary, desirable or dutiful? Which level suggests priorities gone wrong and a heartbreaking waste? Inevitably, the packed nature of our lives means that pursuing your individual passion demands compromise or cutbacks somewhere else. Many of us – me very much included – feel guilty and selfish about this. We worry that it is not fair on our family to crave some space for ourselves. It is a very individual conundrum. All I will say as a generalisation is that it is important to invest in yourself as well as everybody else. Making the most of your own life can also make you a better role model for those around you.There are a mere 168 hours in a week. This used to scare, sadden and infuriate me, even back when I could pour 70, 80, 90 hours directly into the stuff I loved. I used to chase the clock and rage and grasp at the altar of getting things done. It drove me to the brink of madness. We certainly should use our time wisely. But we also need to accept that we cannot do everything. The way you choose to spend your time will be different from me. The percentage of time you dedicate to trying new things and stretching yourself will differ. There is no magic number. But there is probably a realistic golden mean to aspire to somewhere between excess and deficiency.  At long, long, long last – thank goodness – I have learned that if ever I think I am too busy to climb a hill and watch the sunset, or too busy to go for a bike ride in the woods, then what I really need to do is climb a hill and watch the sunset or go for a bike ride in the woods. And to hell with the emails. What are the equivalent tipping points in your own life that ought to be non-negotiable?Life is busy. But it is also for living. You’ll never have a life as good as this one again: make the most of it.Over to You: Mark up a table with how you use the 168 hours in a typical week. Each square represents one hour.  ★ Support this podcast ★

Important or urgentSometimes, like right now, I feel overwhelmed. I'm racing a deadline for finishing this book. But I've got a million and one other things to do and loads of people clamouring for my time (see the previous chapter about busy-boasting…). I came to my shed this morning determined to make inroads into some chapter edits. But then I discovered my website had been hacked and required immediate attention. I responded calmly and maturely by yelling, 'Agggghhhh!' at the top of my voice. This is one of the many advantages of working in an isolated shed.But life is always like this, isn't it? Unless you're living an Instagram existence of hygge, feng shui, green smoothies and yoga poses, then your reality probably involves running for buses, drowning in emails and a bewildered astonishment at how fast the year is flying by. It helps if you can separate what is urgent from what is important. Superficially the two words are similar but extrapolate your life a few decades, and they lead to very different destinations. Urgent shouts more loudly than Important. But Important is, well, important… When I reached a similar crunch point writing my last book, it needed drastic action to escape from the urgent and focus on the important. I took myself and my manuscript off to a mountain hut in the Lake District where there would be no phone signal, no clock and no demands on my time. It was a foggy winter day, but I was soon sweating as I hiked up into the hills. I had a grid reference for the hut's position, but I was a little anxious about finding it in the mist. It is an old miners' shelter, built of grey slate, lying low to the ground on a rocky hillside. I did not spot the building until I was about a hundred metres away from it. I grinned with relief. I pushed open the low, unlocked wooden door. Inside it was cold and dark. I dumped my pack on the stone sleeping platform under the solitary window and rummaged for a candle. The bothy was basic but beautiful and perfect for focusing on what was important. I lit a fire in the wood burner then fetched water from a nearby stream to make coffee. I pulled on a woolly hat and took out my pens and papers. It was time to write.All of a sudden, 24 hours expanded into an abundance. There were more hours available than I could possibly concentrate for. I could clear my brain either by jumping into a deep, cold waterfall or hiking up the hill behind the bothy. I woke when my body told me to wake up, relit the fire, ate breakfast, then worked solidly on my book until I needed a break. Sometimes, I stared out of the little window down the valley towards a distant lake. In three days, I made a month's progress on the book.Heading for the mountains with a rucksack and a back-breaking pile of firewood is perhaps a drastic option. You may not need to go that far if you do some ruthless differentiating between the urgent demands and what is actually important. On the first Tuesday of every month, my calendar pings a reminder at me. That's standard, of course: my life is ruled by a crowded calendar (because I am the King of Busy). But this is one ping that I always enjoy. Indeed, the busier I am, the more I appreciate the interruption. And that is because my calendar tells me to 'Climb a Tree'. It reminds me to step away from the aimless conference calls and the interruptions and spend 20 minutes doing something which I will never regret. It is a pleasant way to measure and notice the seasons as well as to reflect on my past month and contemplate what might lie ahead. I hope that I never deem myself too busy with urgent tasks to do something as important as climbing a tree. OVER TO YOU:1. When did you last climb a tree?2. Do a brain dump of everything in your head, from your life goals to the weekly To-Do list. It will help clarify what you should prioritise and what's best to delegate or delete. ★ Support this podcast ★