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Rolf Potts — The Vagabond’s Way, Tactics for Immersive Travel, Pilgrimages and Psychogeography, Empathy Machines, Full-Throated Love, The Slow Sense of Smell, Lessons from Thích Nhất Hạnh, Falling Upward, and More (#624)

  • Tim Ferriss
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    “Get a stack of postcards. And every time you want to send a text message, send them a two-week postcard instead.”

    — Rolf Potts

    Rolf Potts (@rolfpotts) is the author of the international bestseller Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel. His newest book is The Vagabond’s Way: 366 Meditations on Wanderlust, Discovery, and the Art of Travel. He has reported from more than 60 countries for National Geographic Traveler, The New Yorker, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, and Travel Channel. Many of his essays have been selected as “Notable Mentions” in The Best American Essays, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and The Best American Travel Writing. He also hosts his own podcast, Deviate with Rolf Potts.

    He is based in north-central Kansas, where he keeps a small farmhouse on 30 acres with his wife, Kansas-born actress Kristen Bush. My 2014 interview with Rolf can be found at tim.blog/rolf.

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    Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.

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    The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

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    #624: Rolf Potts — The Vagabond’s Way, Tactics for Immersive Travel, Pilgrimages and Psychogeography, Empathy Machines, Full-Throated Love, The Slow Sense of Smell, Lessons from Thích Nhất Hạnh, Falling Upward, and More

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    Want to hear the first time Rolf Potts was on the podcast? Listen back on our conversation in which we discussed fulfilling travel fantasies using the time-wealth principle, resources to fight the fears associated with world travel, conducting business on the road, the effect of vacations on creative output, appreciation versus achievement, writing process, success management, and much more.

    #41: Rolf Potts on Travel Tactics, Creating Time Wealth, and Lateral Thinking
    #42: Rolf Potts (Part 2) on Travel Tactics, Creating Time Wealth, and Lateral Thinking

    What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

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    SHOW NOTES

    MORE ROLF POTTS QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

    “We all have curiosity in our toolkit as travelers.”
    — Rolf Potts

    “We just have to slap down our apps and their algorithmically programmed way of holding our attention, and give our attention to each other as humans, give our attention to the places where we are, the smells, the other five senses. Not just the sounds you hear on your phone, or the sites you see through your apps, but what you smell. Let smell guide you through a new place.”
    — Rolf Potts

    “Having [an] obsession, be it pastries or surfing, is really a great pretext to have adventures that you could never imagine before you left home.”
    — Rolf Potts

    “Expertise is less important than open-heartedness and curiosity.”
    — Rolf Potts

    “I hope I travel until the day I drop dead, because it really keeps you new and fresh and vulnerable to new experiences in a way that it’s hard to pull off at home.”
    — Rolf Potts

    “Being completely an island away from other people is not necessarily a desirable thing.”
    — Rolf Potts

    “Get a stack of postcards. And every time you want to send a text message, send them a two-week postcard instead.”
    — Rolf Potts

    “Human culture has been urbanizing since the Industrial Revolution, and maybe this new technology will allow us to have a counter-movement against that urbanization.”
    — Rolf Potts

    “The most meaningful task for the traveler may well be to look past what feels exotic and learn to savor subtle differences in the things we already have in common.”
    — Rolf Potts

    “It’s actually good against neurodegenerative diseases to be lost and to figure out your way. They say London cab drivers, before GPS, had the most developed hippocampuses in the world.”
    — Rolf Potts

    “Find ways to play games with your sense of place.”
    — Rolf Potts

    “In an information-drenched society that tempts us to choose unhappiness over uncertainty, it is helpful to remember that one of the key gifts of travel has always been uncertainty itself.”
    — Rolf Potts

    “Walk until your day becomes interesting.”
    — Rolf Potts

    “Novels are empathy machines.”
    — Rolf Potts

    “If you are in the second half of life and you’re still grinding to compete with the guy next door, well, maybe that has less happiness embedded in it than just appreciating the life that you’ve built for yourself.”
    — Rolf Potts

    “I don’t want to knock technology too much, but attention is such a gift, and the moment is what we have.”
    — Rolf Potts

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