Photo by Kirbmart1000
A few months ago, I met a guy named Leonard Knight who’s spent the last 20 years building a folk art masterpiece called "Salvation Mountain." Leonard lives in the back of his pickup truck and usually sleeps under the stars. Visitors bring him food, paint, and minor donations, and Leonard continues to work on his adobe mountain and ~200 other folk art projects meant to convey the message that "God Loves Everyone." Leonard’s mountain has been likened to an epic work of folk art “comparable to the Watts Towers,” is entered it into the Congressional Record as a national treasure, and was also featured in the movie Into the Wild.

While I don’t seek to emulate Leonard’s lifestyle, I very much respect him for having the guts to peruse his dreams. Leonard’s life is highly unconventional and wouldn’t work for most of us, but it got me thinking about . . .

The Diversity of Lifestyle Design

When I think about lifestyle design, I usually think about automated income, mini-retirements, making money online, traveling the world, and the 4-Hour Work Week. The truth, however, is that there are an unlimited number of tools in the lifestyle design arsenal.  Lifestyle design is as old as life itself.

The philosophy of lifestyle design is actually quite simple.  It suggests that there are limitless ways to arrange and configure your life and that the logistics of living are much more flexible than most of us can imagine.

There is one [movie line] that stands out for me. It comes from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, when the Charlie Sheen character — a promising big shot in the stock market — is telling his girlfriend about his dreams. "I think if I can make a bundle of cash before I’m thirty and get out of this racket," he says, "I’ll be able to ride my motorcycle across China." When I first saw this scene … I nearly fell out of my seat in astonishment. Charlie Sheen or anyone else could work for eight months as a toilet cleaner and have enough money to ride a motorcycle across China. The thing is, most Americans probably wouldn’t find this movie scene odd.
-Rolf Potts

Rolf Potts has perfected the art of long term world travel, Dan Clements can run a business from anywhere while roving the globe with his wife and children, Lea Woodward has freelanced from every continent, Doug Mayle and his wife are traveling across the world in a sailboat, Mark Hayword runs a bed and breakfast on the Island of Culebra, and Tim Ferriss works the famed 4-Hour-Work Week. I admire the real-life adventures of these excellent writers (and their stories make me want to travel to Tortola today). I also think it’s important to acknowledge that these stories only convey part of the picture.

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