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Is Lifestyle Design a Scam?
Lifestyle Design has exploded into pop culture at an astonishing rate. Ever since Tim Ferriss coined the term in “The Four Hour Work Week”, the sheer number of bloggers and self proclaimed experts on the subject have grown exponentially. While the posts, explanations, and success stories can be downright inspirational and exciting, these theories and lifestyle design experiments have not been tested long term. It seems that almost every day there are new lifestyle design bloggers regurgitating the same location independence ideas and living off passive income shtick. They parade as experts on living the life they want to live and want to sell you their method on how to do it. There are too many eBooks and information products; Too many gimmicks, limited time offers, and expiring deals. It even seems that the way many bloggers make money is from selling an information product on “How to make money from blogging”. It’s obvious that trend can’t last. As the numerous information products saturate an already oversaturated market, the promise of easy money becomes less and less a reality. As the bubble builds, the only way out is innovation and differentiation. Yet, the Lifestyle design, Life hacking, and Life coaching terms get thrown around so much they almost lose their meaning. Countless cookie cutter blogs come and go. JD Bentley talks about this here. As RSS feed overload and twitter burnout set in, you are asked time and time against to subscribe to this and subscribe to that. It can be hard to tell what’s real anymore. Is Lifestyle design a scam? It can be. However, there are numerous incredible individuals out there succeeding in actualizing their ideal life. As the lifestyle design bubble builds, the genuine bloggers, success stories, and ideas will be here to stay, while the gimmicks, lies, false hopes and bullshit will be left in the dust.
Is Lifestyle Design making you sick?
Sometimes the sheer amount of get rich quick BS can make me sick to my stomach. Are there people who have rocked out, gotten rich, and have been successful? Absolutely. There’s Yaro Starak, Darren Rowse, Tim Ferriss, Ramit Sethi, Karol Gajda and Glenn Allsopp just to name a few. Was it easy? No, it took hard work and dedication just like being successful at a real job takes, yet on their own terms in their own way.
Is Tim Ferriss a Scam?
He doesn’t work four hour work weeks. Is this a Tim Ferriss Scam? His book simplifies lifestyle design and makes the concepts seem unrealistically attainable. And therein lies the beauty in all of it. He simplifies the concepts enough to make masses of people to make an attempt at Lifestyle Design. The ideas are shockingly amazing and the concepts ground shaking. Sure, you can criticize and say that Tim Ferriss romanticizes this new rich lifestyle making it seem easier than it really is. While he does, you cannot discount his ideas because of this. He brings mind boggling and life altering concepts down to earth and makes them seem an easily attainable reality. It is not easy to create multiple passive income streams and outsource your life in order to live anywhere. The benefit of Tim Ferriss making us believe this, is that we attempt and try to do it in our own way. If his book was written with a “This is extremely difficult, and only an elite few can pull it off” approach”, it wouldn’t have been a bestseller, resonated with masses, or spawned a revolution.
I feel that there will be a day of reckoning when the bubble will burst and many lifestyle design blogs will fail. I hope not to be part of that failure. I don’t know what the future holds, but I will work my ass off to try and succeed. Do I know when the bubble will burst? No, but I believe that when it does, it will begin the dawn of a new era in Lifestyle Design. From the trials and tribulations, much wisdom will be acquired as the community grows and matures. Is Lifestyle design a fad? Definitely not. It’s here to stay. The revolution has begun.
Every single day I’m inspired by other Lifestyle design bloggers, and my mind is blown by the sheer awesomeness and content that the community produces. However, we can’t lie to ourselves or allow our truth and substance to be lost. Don’t stop trying. Don’t stop doing. Just be real. Be honest and keep rocking out everyone. The whole world depends on it!
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Love it! It’s one of the things that I have been thinking about a lot since even before starting my site. I do think that there will be a bust similar to the dot com bubble bursting in the early 2000′s.
But, just like when that bubble burst and the internet didn’t go away, when this one bursts, lifestyle design won’t go away. It’s inflating now because it is a new concept to so many people. Unfortunately, much like what I posted today, too many people are looking at LD as a get rich quick scheme. It’s not that. If anything, it encourages you to throw some of your material junk away and slim your life down. There is a mentality that is infesting this culture that you can have even MORE than you do now with little to no work.
That doesn’t make sense.
I do think that there is a future to LD and I hope to be part of it. I’ve intentionally positioned myself as a lifestyle design blogger who is in the journey of getting to the goal while being married and having kids. I don’t really see many others doing that. My goal is that long term, even if this bubble bursts, I’ll have established myself as someone genuinely seeking out the lifestyle and pursuing it without selling all the scams.
Just from what I’ve seen of your personality, I would venture to guess that you don’t want to be one of the scammy people either.
David, I like your analogy to the dot com bubble bursting. I agree that lifestyle design isn’t going to go away. There will be a shift, but lifestyle design is here to stay. Minimalism in one’s lifestyle and slimming down material junk is definitely SUPER important. It helped me gain my freedom!
I also think that you are positioning and establishing yourself as completely genuine. I think its great that as a father with a wife and kids, you are on this great path that too many people associate only with single twenty somethings! Continue to break that stereotype!
I don’t know if it’ll “burst”, because it can’t ever plummet like a stock market, but like any specialization there tends to be a mass of people who start something, see success, then the market gets saturated. This makes success for others a lot more difficult.
If we’re doing lifestyle design for the sake of lifestyle design, then it’s fine – but if your goal is to offer misleading titles to get attention/money like Tim Ferris, then you’ve got some problems, and you’re inevitably going to fail. I’m pretty sure, at this point, that if anyone starts a blog for the pure intention of making money, they will fail – for two reasons, one, their intentions are bad so inevitably that will reflect in the content, and two, the market is already saturated, so it’s likely their target market is already jammed full, and differentiation will be hard.
Ross, the mass of people saturating the market does make it difficult for the real genuine stuff to show through. However, there are many ridiculously awesome people putting out ridiculously awesome content on a regular basis. The misleading get rich quick blogs with shaky foundations will fail, yet only time will tell. You definitely have differentiated yourself. This is definitely one of my favorite posts of all time.
10 Bloggers Talk About Personal Development
In fact, Im going to retweet that right now
Hey Mark!
Thanks for the link love. I don’t actually consider myself a lifestyle designer. I’ve never liked that term. As for a bubble bursting? No. “Lifestyle design” is simply the new wave of self-improvement. That will never go away. Some of us will always strive to improve. And there will always be others to read our words of self-improvement.
Additional note: something that may help with a possible bubble bursting is don’t be part of the bubble.
Cheers!
Karol
Karol! Lifestyle design, self-improvement, living how you want or whatever you want to call it is here to stay. I agree that there will always be people striving to improve and others reading those words. My hope is that people that are really truly trying to improve (and actually improving) themselves is what is read and not overshadowed by people preaching false hopes and trying to make a quick buck. As for the link love, it’s the least I can do!
I don’t particularly enjoy the lifestyle design moniker, either, but that’s become the blanket term for a whole lot of different approaches to being able to live the life you want.
I definitely agree that most of what’s out there is cookie-cutter blogging, though, and that most of them will fade away. That being said, though, I think that there will still be many that will evolve into unique voices in the blogosphere, and that the mimicry is necessary to get to the point where they have their own style and message…up until that point they don’t know the ropes well enough.
Great post! Keep ‘em coming!
Interesting point of view of “mimicry” being necessary to start out. At least it makes things a lot easier during the development of your own style, that’s for sure! This also leads to exactly the point that JD mentions in the next comment and that I hold to be true for many people: You reach a point where you get bored by the restraints of the field and just move on.
Fabien, mimicry definitely makes things easier during the development of your own style. Colin definitely makes a good point that we both agree with. I think that developing one’s own style can be difficult in the beginning, but will unfold magically over time.
Colin, you are absolutely right. Mimicry is necessary to get to the point where one can find their own style and message. I can’t wait to see how it all pans out. There is so much information and so many new and cool things and ideas popping up everyday. It will be interesting to see how the evolution of the revolution occurs as we get to watch it unfold before our eyes. Glad you enjoyed the post Colin!
I don’t think Lifestyle Design is a revolution. It’s just a new spin on the same old dream. Like Karol says above, LD is a continuation of something people have always worked toward or desired.
LD is a trendy new way to outline this desire while also attaching unnecessary rules to it (like the muse bullshit or the “let’s all live in Thailand so we can take advantage of its weak currency” bullshit or the create a blog bullshit). It really boils down to doing what you love. This can mean working as a barista at Starbucks for minimum wage or living life as a struggling musician who takes out loans to record an album. Whatever makes a person truly happy. The people who buy into “lifestyle design” as the trendy movement it’s become are people who really just want to make enough money while doing what they love. In most cases, lifestyle design leads them down the wrong path because it stopped being about designing a lifestyle after Tim Ferriss did it. Now it’s about mimicking Tim Ferriss and all the other self-promoting bullshitters out there.
I was taken in by this garbage and now I’m starting to find myself on the other side of things with a trail of mistakes behind me. So, lifestyle design (the current trend, not the underlying concept of doing what you love) wasn’t a solution for me as much as it was a refining fire. If something pushes you closer to doing the things you love, I suppose it’s worth it.
But I agree. The bubble’s going to burst. I’m already done with it myself and now I’m attempting to reclaim simplicity and authenticity.
“It really boils down to doing what you love.” Well said JD. I think that this is truly the core of the self improvement/lifestyle design movement. (Doing what you love movement). This whole idea can get lost in all the noise out there, but this is the center that the rhetoric will keep coming back to and be about. Whatever someone would like to do to make them truly happy they should seek out and do. It’s different for everyone and each individual needs to find their own path. Too often out of fear, or under the guise of “being responsible” people don’t do what they love or follow their dreams and listen to their hearts.
I agree 100% on this JD. I stopped blogging for a bit and it was partly b/c of this. I saw the charade and all the BS you’re talking about (build a business that’s your muse, travel the world, work remote from everywhere you want, blah, blah blah, barf in mouth, blah, blah some more).
It seemed so frickin’ fake to me and I got so wrapped up in it. One day I saw this and I was kind of like ‘woah..is this really who I am? Does ‘success’, personal salvation and freedom (another term thrown out there WAAAY too much) mean starting a frickin’ blog that will make some money so I can quit by day job? The obvious answer was no. I stopped blogging for a bit, re-connected to myself and came back not giving an f about all the marketing spew out there an being successful in the blogosphere. I write about something I have an insane interest in and that I like. People might say ‘that’s stupid and that’s not a business idea.’
My answer: I couldn’t care less. I’ll work on the business part if I feel inclined to do so.
I was also a bit turned off at comments such as ‘well who will be the janitors or garbage men if everyone just starts their own business and does what they want’ as if to imply that somehow being a janitor or garbage man is a bad thing.
To your point above, it’s like people are missing the point. You can be perfectly happy and ‘successful’ being a barista at starbucks or scrubbing toilets as a janitor. Happiness is not going to be found ‘out there’ or by creating some business. By that, I mean there’s too much focusing on the ends. What about the means? What about right the f now? Can you be happy right now? If not, that’s maybe what you should be focusing on first. Start looking within instead of ‘oh, if I do ‘x’ THEN I’ll be happy.’
I also find that the term lifestyle design overused these days to the point that it has become diluted. But, the idea of being able to live the life you want definitely resonates with me. I’ve come to look at it more as deliberate living – making choices and acting based on your values. Those bloggers who have a consistent message that adds value to people’s lives will survive and the conversation might become even stronger in the process.
You are absolutely right Audrey! The term definitely seems overused, but the idea of living the life you want to live isn’t. That is a message that will continue to resonate as long as people want to improve their lives; ie, forever. Yes, those that survive and remain consistent will prevail stronger than ever!
I know I will burst if I have to read one more seemingly sincere lifestyle design blog selling me an ebook whereby you read the sales page and it goes on and on and on. Each time you don’t click on the “buy now” there is more verbiage.
I think the whole “movement” is more about people just doing what makes them happy. Sorry to shock the younger readers, but this is not really new. Believe it or not, people have done this for years and years. True, the tools today allow more people to be more independent, but it’s not as revolutionary as it all seems.
Something else: 20-somethings add a lot to our world with a fresh and enthusiastic outlook and good grasp of the tools available, but many don’t realize that they don’t know everything and that just because something works for them now, doesn’t mean it always will.
As I get older (I’m turning 50 this year) I realize how much I didn’t know when I was younger. No wonder my dad would just smile. Now, I’m trying to remember that at 50, I don’t know what he knows at 80. It helps to not be so sure.
All of this is to say, it’s a bit much hearing a 25-year old espouse in his e-book what’s best for me, and everyone else. One line I read in an e-book I purchased recently to see what people were making money doing that exemplifies what I mean is: “Many older business folk expect you to meet with them and talk about mundane details of lame projects.” OMG. So eloquently put, if it was from a ten year old.
When the bubble bursts, meeting face to face may not seem so lame, nor will many “lame” projects that at the moment, you may not understand the merits of.
Bring on the bubble. The good stuff will survive. The solid bloggers will do well. Hurray.
Thanks for a great blog post and for exposing the naked emperor.
John, what a refreshing, awesome and insightful perspective! I agree at the core “the movement” is about what makes people happy. The over saturation of these sales pages makes it difficult sometimes to see through all the noise to the quality products that are out there. I definitely agree that as the bubble pops the good stuff will survive. There’s no denying that! In the context of twenty somethings espousing their ideas and take and take on the world, something is definitely missing. There needs to be more people in different points in their lives expressing their ideas, thoughts, and insight in this lifestyle design realm. Us twenty somethings are taking the community by force, and inspiring many. However, there needs to be a deeper pool of thirty, forty, fifty, sixty and seventy somethings with husbands and wives, children and grandchildren inspiring and leading. A single twenty something has different circumstances than a forty something with kids and its hard to take advice from someone in such a different situation in life. The bubble will burst, but the pool will deepen and strengthen. While there are some in each life stage in the lifestyle design realm, there is a lack of variety in life stages, as the majority leans towards single twenty somethings. I think all categories will grow, and I can’t wait for the pool to deepen and draw in many more people from all ages and backgrounds.
Mark, thanks for your very well thought out reply. You seem to be able to see the value of balance.
I certainly hope I didn’t come across as “anti twenty-somethings” because the dynamism of people in the age group is amazing.
One reason twenty-somethings may be taking this community by force is of course the vast familiarity with the tools available. This comes from growing up on an era where the web existed since childhood, but it also perhaps comes from being at a different phase in life. I’m learning all the time what things gain and lose importance as I get older.
I like what you said about hearing from people of all ages. It reminds me of the value that children can get out of spending time in family situations were multi-generations are together and talk. I think more of this used to go on. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think children are increasingly spending more time with their own age groups (physically or virtually) and this can create a narrowing of experience that translates into early adulthood.
I often think of this showing up by how we can get very narrow in who with and where we hang out online. If we all sit around in our little network, it’s easy to assume the rest of the world thinks like us or, in regard to your post, that there is some giant movement that’s got thousands, millions… of followers when the truth is, we’re fooling ourselves.
Though I was not part of the “60′s” as I was just a child then, I did hear a lot of it as it was going on and the deep-seated feelings of many people then thought they were going to change the world. Bob Dylan’s song “The Times They Are A-Changin’” is a good example.
Things did change, but not as dramatically as expected. I suspect the same is happening now. For example, I am very interested in minimalism and I read all the blogs on it, and many of the key bloggers feel “everything’s going to change.” I disagree. It will for people involved and it would for “everyone” if we actually have a Depression like the Great Depression, but in that case, it will be forced and not chosen.
Interesting topic. Thanks for sparking so much discussion on your site.
“Sometimes the sheer amount of get rich quick BS can make me sick to my stomach.” Part of my designed lifestyle is trying to be less cynical, but this comment resonates with me entirely. There is plenty of BS for sure. Wading through it is sometimes tiresome.
The other thing is that people often confuse lifestyle design with a requirement to be an entrepreneur. Both are mutually exclusive and therefore you can have one without the other! Lifestyle design for me is just about living more deliberately and not being shackled by the burdens of a typical 9-5 job with a tyrant boss. For other people, this might be what they want and I say “good for you”! Whatever makes you truly happy…
Adam, you make a really good point. Being an entrepreneur is not a requirement for lifestyle design. It’s about living the life you want to live, and if being an entrepreneur is not part of what you want to do, then don’t do it. Wading through the BS can be tough, but the powerful message of living the life you want to live in order to be truly happy will ring through.
i’ve been reading and “studying” lifestyle design a lot recently kind of on the edges at a stand off point. My blog doesn’t focus on lifestyle design much in the typical sort of way, but I am living the life I want and traveling. It seems to me that the “cookie cutter” lifestyle designers talk about getting rich which I have always found a big turn-off. To me, it’s not “escaping” anything… it’s just an alternative rat race.
Floreta, the get rich quick talk is definitely a turn off. Those that do will loose steam and fizzle out as when the lifestyle design bubble bursts. You definitely are living the life you want to live and traveling the world. That core message of living the life you want to live is not going to go away. Sometimes the escape artist, and escape rhetoric can be exciting, I prefer to run to something you love and get excited about as opposed to running from something you hate or are bored with.
Mark,
interesting post. I have to agree with J.D., it’s more or less a hype and a fancy new term. Webdesigners have been location independent for a long time, and only the appearance of mass internet marketing has brought that concept to a wider appeal.
Personally, I don’t believe it’s a bubble either. As long as you set out to inspire the world, you are good to go. Sure it takes hard work. If you are here to make a difference, you’ll find a way, sooner or later !
Mars, “As long as you set out to inspire the world, you are good to go,” is spot on! The ones who set out to inspire the world will make a difference. It doesn’t matter how small or how large, they will make a difference. Web designers have been lucky to be in a niche where they can be location independent. For those of us that aren’t the internet has enabled some to be able to be location independent in industries that previously weren’t. It takes hard work for sure.
I actually like the term “lifestyle design”. I just don’t like the way it is being interpreted regurgitated ad nauseum, and generally misunderstood by alot of people (new bloggers).
The idea that you can design your own life on your own terms is fascinating. As a designer by trade (architecture, furniture) I realized that I could apply some of the same principles I used to design buildings, and other objects, to my own life and the way I live. Colin Wright has an excellent article about this on Exile Lifestyle titled, “Brothers and Sisters, Design Your Freakin Life”. The thing is there is no one way to do it (a la Tim Ferriss). I actually think there are an infinite variety of paths to follow, and each own is unique to the individual that follows it.
So the bubble of folks telling you how to make money (get rich quick) by doing this or that. They will slowly be weeded out as people realize how many ways there is to go about it. Whether the bubble bursts or not is irrelevant, if, like Karol says, you keep yourself out of it, and just listen to your own voice and trailblaze your own path. But by all means keep designing your freakin life.
Good read.
Glad you enjoyed the read Gianpaolo. I like the term lifestyle design also, but am sick of some of the offshoots. The fascination and excitement revolving around designing your own life is unreal and unending! Colin Wright is definitely and great example, and I enjoyed that post of his you suggested. The only thing really standing in the way is ourselves. “Listen to your own voice”. This is necessity. Listening to your own voice is life. Not enough of us do it. There’s too much noise and distraction in day to day life that drowns out our own thoughts, wishes, and feelings. Well put Gianpaolo.
Here’s what I think about lifestyle design being a bubble ready to burst:
1. Lifestyle design is a rebranding of ‘improving your life’ by Timothy Ferriss.
This means that anyone working under the moniker has to deal with associating themselves with him, which makes it difficult to find their own voice.
2. There will never be enough writers encouraging people to live their lives.
Too many of the souls on this planet are wasted. People spend their entire lives waiting for a retirement that will never come, because they’ve been taught by the system to keep their heads low and wait for their big payday. It isn’t coming.
3. There is more than enough room on the Internet for all of us.
If you read The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, you start to realize just how freaking big the Internet is. Even the 172,000+ subscribers that Leo Babauta has isn’t touching the tip of the iceberg for people that are interested in this living a life that is better than the one they have. That’s because most people have sucky lives that they hate, and they can do a lot to do them better, they just need permission to do them better.
4. There’s room for you too. Write what you believe, write about the life you dream you’d have. If you lead enough, the people will follow. You only need 1000 true fans to support yourself, and then you can do anything you want — I know, because I crossed that threshold earlier this year.
The planet is freaking huge, and we’re all connected now.
Best,
Everett Bogue
Everett, I love your attitude! I believe you to be correct in that there is room for everyone who wants to write about what they believe. While a lot of us might wonder if the bubble is going to burst, there are always people who haven’t yet heard that there is another option; that they don’t have to live as factory workers waiting for retirement.
Anyone writing in the self-improvement niche (and that’s what it really is, isn’t it?) would do well to remember that there are people who have never heard this message. To them, all of this stuff we consider yesterday’s news is brand new to them.
(And I’m looking forward to my 1000 true fans. So jealous. LOL)
I like the point you make about it being difficult to find your own voice under the Tim Ferriss moniker and your optimism in their being more than enough room on the internet for all of us. However, in only a short years time the explosion in the amount of people in this “community” has been immense. I remember feeling lost and found certain people (yourself included, Karol Gajda, Rolf Potts, etc,) and feeling a sense of enlightenment and encouragement. I felt that anything was possible and the jail cell of my cubicle and the conventional lifestyle seemed to slowly drift away.
“There will never be enough writers encouraging people to live their lives.”
100% true. Though, the field seems to have so many people pushing so many similarly typed products that it can be hard to tell which ones are the best or which ones are worth it. There seem to be so many different tactics that used to be clever, but are now just overused. As I have only been following this stuff for about a year and half and have only had a blog a real real short time of one month, I wouldn’t consider myself an expert, but I have my observations and feelings from those that I cant ignore. I think that there will be a shakeout as the writers who encourage people to live their lives will rule over the ones that just encourage people to spend money. I love this community and I love seeing it grow. The bubble may burst, but it will continue to grow. Just might be in different ways.
This is the law of scarcity vs. the law of abundance…
The law of abundance mindset is a lot more fun to work in.
What I think lifestyle design originally sought to do, and I’d say most of the people who get excited about the concept are still seeking the same, is shift life from the conventional to the unconventional. Unfortunately, people have found the that easiest way to do this is through internet marketing and the sub sequential monitization that comes from it. But the point of lifestyle design is to be living the life you dream of, similar to how Richard Branson must feel, do we really have passion for getting subscribers, learning every WordPress widget and talking about search engine optimization…NO! This is just what it takes to get enough eyeballs to make money. I like to envision the web as a tool more through Gary V’s perspective than Tim Ferris or anyone else. We have an open space to capture any audience we please and create content for anything and everything in the world. The bubble of using the internet to talk about what lifestyle design is should be bursting soon, but the river of value that can come from having an open platform to express ideas, personal development or just entertainment about the life we are out living while the rest sits in a curve, is as expansive as the media and will be what comes out of what we’ve learned from the relics of the Lifestyle Design age. If lifestyle design is proposing that we do what we have passion for, why aren’t we seeing artists, filmmakers, poets leaping out of their corporate shells.
I see Lifestyle Design as a kid with a swiss army knife. We’ve been using only the blade to widdle spears from wood piece in our backyard, all the while neglecting what a useful and expansive tool it really is. We’ve all left a conventional life to live more free lives, but I think what we’ve actually sought to do is moves on in life to try living exceptionally. Gary V talks about legacy, it’s true, would you rather look back on you success and say that you did it by becoming an expert of living an extraordinary life, or by actually living extraordinarily.
So, I think the truly successful life designers are the ones who have used the freedom they’ve discovered, be it minimalist freedom, financial freedom, and have been pursuing a true passion. We are all passionate about freedom, and the ones that don’t find something else to be passionate about will likely be left in the dust, because there can only be so many how-to posts about selling e-products.
Like everyone here, I read The 4-Hour Workweek. Like everyone here, I look at it with a bit of a jaundiced eye. The bubble you’re referring to will only apply to those who I say suffer from “Fred Flintsone Syndrome”. Fred is always hunting for the get rich quick scheme. Make a million dollars for doing no work.
If you read 4HWW through the Fred Flintsone lens, you’re goign to fail. You’re going to continually think that success is something that should be handed to you as opposed to being earned.
If you look at Lifestyle Design as not having a hard edged definition. It is something about living life BETTER not necessarily with more money…then you’re setting yourself up for success. The part of the 4HWW that continually resonates with me is the idea of living and working more effectively. Doing something meaningful with my time, and subsequently, my life.
Jon, living better, and not necessarily with more money is definitely the key. The idea of chasing more money hoping that will make you live better has left many people unhappy and unfulfilled. There definitely is no hard edge defined definition of lifestyle design but there are core concepts. Straying away from these core concepts in search of “the easy way out” is a set up for failure.
Interesting post. I think it’s human nature for anyone involved in something to feel that they have “come at the end,” or that the “bubble is about to burst.”
Fortunately, for you, this is content that people want to hear.
Interestingly, something that comes to mind for me is Western music. Only 12 notes and still going strong, talk about a bubble waiting to burst. Can you believe the Beatles thought that rock n’ roll was over and saturated when they were in the midst of their career? Sgt. Peppers was meant to be a tongue and cheek take on the fact that in 10 years their trajectory saw them being a Vegas side act.
At any rate, I think the point is that yes things do get saturated especially when a few charismatic individuals make a movement but new people will always come along and innovate or at least invigorate.
Incredible perspective Chris! I can’t believe the Beatles thought rock n’ roll exhibiting bubble like qualities in the midst of their career! Boy did they prove themselves wrong! The point you make is interesting as it gives perspective on the current lifestyle design movement. We can all talk and talk. We can all ramble and rant, but you are right. It doesn’t matter how over saturated something looks, as long as individuals come along and “innovate and invigorate”. With the incredibly people involved in these concepts, I think people will continue to innovate, invigorate, and inspire.
To me, “lifestyle design” is merely a sexy buzzword for personal development, geared toward travel bugs and those who think things like “passive income” and “geo-arbitrage” are easy, straightforward solutions to the traditional 9 to 5. They’re not! They take work!
I’m hoping to see more transparency in this niche, more detail of what works for people, what doesn’t, more specific stories and business ideas and strategies and yes, even failures. The guys at http://www.lifestylebusinesspodcast.com and Robert at http://thelifedesignproject.com are two examples of this. Anyone can churn out “10 Reasons Why Lifestyle Design is Awesome,” but providing personal, specific experiences is what’s really going to help this community flourish.
I agree Alan. Transparency is key. I think this will be one of the make or break factors going forward. I’d also like to see more detail of what works for people, and what doesn’t. Documenting successes as well as failures is just as important, so people can learn from the mistakes. Also, good links Alan!
I agree with so many others here. The whole lifestyle design label is just another word for what my generation called doing your own thing. It is both good and bad!
It is bad if you think you are going to be Tim Ferris, or any other LSD guru, traveling the world and making millions while doing nothing. Few really ever get there, and most of them will probably not do it forever.
The problem is that no one thinks for themselves enough to understand that Lifestyle Design is about designing your life. If you just attempt to be like every one else, then you haven’t designed a damned thing! You just copied someone else.
It can be good if the person understands that it is about living their life the way they want. If you want to be a machinist, then design your life to be one. If you want to be a writer, then go for it. As I said above, don’t just copy someone else! There is a huge amount of people who live life by default, just going through the motions and letting someone else decide what is right for them.
Steve, “Doing Your Own Thing” is an awesome way of putting it. If you are doing your own thing in order to live the life you want, learn, and grow, then only good can come of it. If you are just a copycat, then i the name of doing your own thing you just follow another path and are in the same place as before. Going through the motions by being a copycat of someone else can be just the same as living the default life they wanted to avoid. We each have our own way. If it has to start out as being a copycat of someone else then so be it. But you are right Steve, it is about living the life they want to live. Sooner or later they have to figure out what that is, and go their own way.
One of my predictions for 2011 is that lifestyle design takes a breather as the economic recovery gains steam and allows people back into the work force, and allows them to find jobs they are actually interested in.
It’s hard to save for retirement and support a family as an average lifestyle designer don’t you think?
I don’t think that an economic recovery will slow the pace of lifestyle design. Many people have purposely left their jobs to embark on their own personal journeys. I think you are assuming people embark in lifestyle design because they can’t get a job when this is hardly the case. It’s about challenging the status quo and questioning assumptions.
It’s hard to save for retirement and support a family as being average in most things. Average job, average wage, the struggles are there. Also the concept of retirement is different and changing depending on who you talk to.
Mark, there will still be many legitimate guys playing fair, like: Chris Guillebeau. He is not one of these sales marketing lifestyle design guys and I liked a lot his Manifest of World Domination. And you are right – passive income and doing what you love is hard and takes years but it is worth.
The bubble will burst for people who are not transparent.