Many look at digital nomads as entrepreneurish types on a sabbatical from real life. In my mind, however, the fundamentals of the digital nomad movement– earning back your time and mobility first– form the bedrock of a wealth script.

I was fascinated by an article on Marginal Revolution that listed cities “at or near their peak of excellence.” I enjoyed hearing the author’s perspective and comparing it with my own, so I thought I’d do something similar and try and identify “lifestyle design” hot spots.

Ian here! In 2013, I traveled to 7 countries, living mostly in AirBnB rentals along the way. When I first starting using AirBnB, it would take me hours to find the right place. These days, AirBnB inventory is plentiful in most cities.

Ian here! In my short time on this planet I’ve owned over 20 cars– everything from Subarus to BMWs. I’ve worked as a mechanic, raced competitively, and read just about everything printed about cars that I can get my hands on.

I used to think that buying a business class ticket was crazy. Who does that? Even if you’ve got all the money in the world, why waste a few thousand bucks on a couple of inches of legroom?

If you asked me what the single most important feature/software/service/company in the last 10 years for the proliferation of the location independent lifestyle was, I’d guess Skype’s call to phone service.

Another packing list? Yeah! Why the hell not. I still geek out on packing list posts and love reading what other people are doing with their kits.

Part of my motivation for becoming an entrepreneur is that I wanted to free up some time to do the things I like to do– and there’s few things I like to do more than reading (and increasingly, listening to) books.

This thought experiment is interesting to me because over the past decade I’ve spent most of my career thinking about building products for customers, and not so much about building companies for buyers. Although we’ve managed to sell one of the mini-businesses we’ve created, we haven’t put much thought into positioning our company for strategic buyers.

What’s your “nature state?” Could you imagine a world in which you maximized your lifestyle so you could do mostly that? Would that be interesting to others or your business?

Last week I cancelled most of my phone calls, dusted off my copy of Freedom app (to turn off WIFI capabilities on my laptop), and caught a flight with my fellow blogger and coffee enthusiast James Clark. We were headed to the capital city of Vietnam-- Hanoi-- a place I always thought had a bookish vibe.

As an artist, your team doesn’t scale and the distribution channels are for the most part apparent, so you focus your energy on work that scales (writing, painting, songs), and ideas that get passed on by your audience.

Thinking of cash, time, and mobility as a system is useful for those of you seeking to employ people as well, as our experiments with various types of internship have shown us.

The life hackers and the time trackers. There’s endless articles about “how to build your business after your job, commute, family stuff, and other activities.” Less people seem to be pointing out the obvious– if the work is so important, why do you have a job, commute, family stuff, and other activities?

A few days ago one of the new guys in the DC stopped by to chat about business and life.

I was so surprised by the cool introduction that Elisa helped to make for our 100th podcast episode. She combined a bunch of funny outtakes from our past episodes.

Although I had a great time in college, I wish I would have been smart enough to skip it. In the end, I feel it unnecessarily disciplined me into believing that I wouldn’t be capable of making any real contributions or decisions for another 4 to 6 years.

One of my first business mentors, who I admired very much, offered me such a chance. Eventually we parted ways, and although a “lifestyle” focus wasn’t our key disagreement, the issue played a role in our separation.

Today I was going back through some highlighted passages from The 4th Economy by Ron Davison. What follows isn’t particularly outstanding, but I highlighted it because it applies directly to our new project, Start-up August.

My friend, DCer, and all around super nice guy Tom planted the idea of home exchanges in my brain a few months back. It’s exactly what it sounds like.