Tools I Use To Learn, Work And Travel Anywhere - Tomas Laurinavicius

December 11, 2019

Tools I Use To Learn, Work And Travel Anywhere By - Tomas Laurinavicius

I often get asked what apps, services and tools I use to learn, plan, track habits, manage time, travel, write, read and more.

I’d like to emphasize one thing, it’s not about the tools, it’s about your results, personal preference, and efficiency. If you work best with a pen and paper, there is no need to try and adopt a digital tool that doesn’t feel right for you, just because your peers or someone you admire uses one or the other tool you shouldn’t force yourself to use it just to be cool.

Traveling

I love traveling and try to do it as much as possible. To make my travel experiences more pleasurable, I research and plan a lot. Check out some of the tools and services I use.

Google Flights — a great tool for checking the world map with available flights to numerous destinations and prices.

Momondo — a smart tool for searching cheapest flights.

JetRadar — another great tool to search various airlines and find cheapest tickets.

Nomad List — useful tool for finding where to go next as a digital nomad, find prices of accommodation, weather, community

Agoda — find cheap hotels, a quite good value in Southeast Asia.

Airbnb — find accommodation anywhere in the world, get $20 credit for your first stay.

Booking — find and book cheap hotels, what I like about Booking is that it allows you to reserve a hotel without payment, you can pay once you arrive.

Google Maps — no introduction needed for this amazing service for finding your way anywhere in the world.

Foursquare — great app for discovering coffee shops, restaurants, gyms, bars and more.

Planning

It’s incredibly important to plan things. Your personal life, professional career, holidays, weekends and more. Just having a goal without a plan is just a wish. Even though you will not have a clear plan or the plan will change along the way it’s still good to have a direction to go to.

Pen and paper — old school pen and notebook work well for quick sketching or daily planning.

Toggl — simple and easy to use time tracker.

RescueTime — analytics software that tracks everything I do on my laptop and shows a productivity score.

Trello — a great tool for planning your projects and managing tasks with a team.

Apple Calendar — part of OSX operating system, works and synchronizes very well with my MacBook and iPhone.

Apple Notes — another native OSX app that works very well on MacBook and iPhone.

Evernote — a great tool for taking notes, saving PDF’s, scanning and saving receipts.

Swipes — to-do list app with intuitive user interface.

iDoneThis — tool for daily progress logging.

Coach.me — organize and track your habits, set goals and find a coach to help you achieve your dreams.

Speedtest — best tool to quickly evaluate if a cafe or restaurant has a fast WiFi for working.

Social Media

Social media has changed the way people interact with each other, discover news and make connections. It certainly has changed my life, I meet new people, have interesting conversations, find jobs and get discovered on social media. Below are some tools I use to analyze, track, create and moderate my social media accounts.

Buffer — a handy tool for scheduling social media updates.

TweetDeck — easily manage multiple Twitter accounts.

Klout — analyze, measure and track your social media presence.

Finances

PayPal — get paid from anywhere in the world and pay for services online like hotels, flights etc.

Wave Accounting — best free accounting and invoicing software.

Scannable — scan and save business cards, documents, receipts and more directly to Evernote.

Learning

I am constantly learning new things, self-development is one of the most interesting fields for me. From design to web development to business to marketing to writing to speaking, most of my learning comes from the following sources.

TED — amazing and inspiring videos on

Duolingo — learn Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian for free. I’m currently learning Spanish.

Skillshare — high-quality courses for creatives and entrepreneurs.

Udemy — thousands of courses on every imaginable subject.

Codeacademy — interactive and free coding courses.

Medium — a platform that connects amazing storytellers and readers seeking for inspiring stories.

Books

I’ve not been a huge reading fan when I was in school, but after I got the right book in my hands, I’ve made reading my priority. You can follow my reviews and reading list on Goodreads.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie — it is mostly common sense but principles in the book work like magic.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho — this book transformed my way of thinking about pursuing my dreams.

The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss — a book that will inspire you to take action, start optimizing your work and escape the 9–5 trap.

The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau — Chris shares inspiring stories of people who started a business and redesigned their lifestyle with little to no money.

Start With Why by Simon Sinek — learn how to find clarity in your actions and inspire people.

Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie — a touching story of TOMS Shoes, building a social business and making a positive impact in the world.

Willpower by Roy F. Baumeister — willpower must be the most important factor in making you successful.

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman — being intelligent is not enough, you have to learn to handle your emotions and read people.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell — virality is not an accident, there is a well-prepared process behind the big movements.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell — you might be overthinking in your daily life when making decisions. This book shows the power of thinking without thinking.

Inspiration

Dribbble — a great way to explore how other designers work and learn from most talented designers in the world.

Product Hunt — a powerful tool for discovering hottest products in the world voted by the community of tech experts, investors and general public.

StumbleUpon — a free web-browser extension which acts as an intelligent browsing tool for discovering and sharing websites.

Random Useful Websites — hit the button and get a random useful website, surprisingly works like magic.

Nuzzel — social, real-time platform that allows you to see the news that your friends share.

Prismatic — choose topics you are interested in and get the best content recommendations.

Muzli — an add-on for Google Chrome that provides you inspiration and useful resources for designers every day.

Podcasts

The School of Greatness with Lewis Howes — Lewis interviews bestselling authors, top athletes, successful entrepreneurs and other inspiring individuals.

The Tim Ferriss Show — Tim talks with scientists, authors, entrepreneurs and people who change the world. Topics range from neuroscience to psychology to business and more.

The Jacquesvh Podcast — Jacques interviews inspiring entrepreneurs and creatives, also talks about marketing, entrepreneurship and motivation. Check out an interview with me.

The $100 MBA Show — real life business lessons in short form episodes with Omar Zenhom and Nicole Baldinu.

The Fizzle Show — fun, actionable and inspiring show for creative entrepreneurs.

The Cubicle Crashing Podcast by Lydia Lee — Lydia interviews creative entrepreneurs and individuals about unconventional lifestyle and escaping 9–5. Check out my conversation with Lydia.

Entrepreneur on Fire — John Lee Dumas interviews most inspiring and successful entrepreneurs.

Communication

Slack — messaging app for teams. Get focused on work and reduce email communication.

Calendly — a tool for scheduling meetings, calls.

Skype — free software for instant messaging and video/audio calls.

Gmail — I use Gmail for personal email and Google for Business for Despreneur. Even though, Google for Business costs $5/person/month it’s definitely worth it.

Blogging

WordPress — a blogging platform that powers 25% of the internet. This blog is built on WordPress too.

Bluehost — affordable and reliable hosting for your blog or small project.

MediaTemple — more powerful hosting for bigger blogs and projects.

ThemeForest — Photoshop and HTML templates, themes for different content management systems (CMS), such as WordPress, Shopify, Drupal and more.

MaxCDN — a content delivery network which makes your website load significantly faster.

Grammarly — a fantastic tool that will make you a better writer. It checks your spelling, grammar and suggests fixes instantly.

MailerLite — email marketing software with super easy to use interface and affordable pricing.

MailChimp — another email marketing software. Good for smaller projects, an account with up to 2,000 subscribers is free.

SumoMe — online software for growing your website’s traffic and subscribers.

Creative Market — market for design resources like fonts, templates, themes and more.

Unsplash — high-quality free photos to use for personal and commercial projects.

StockSnap — this tool allows you to search for free stock photos that don’t suck.

Plugins

Google Analyticator — an easy way to install Google Analytics on your website.

Search Meter — this plugin tracks what your readers are searching for on your blog.

WP External Links — open external links in a new window or tab, add “no follow”, set link icon, styling, SEO friendly options and more.

Akismet — blocks incoming spam to your blog.

WP Smush — reduce image file sizes, improve performance and boost your SEO.

Yoast SEO — the ultimate all-in-one SEO plugin.

W3 Total Cache — easy web performance optimization using caching: browser, page, object, database, minify and content delivery network support.

Photo & Video

iPhone 6 — this powerful device fulfills all my photo/video needs.

ScreenFlow (for Mac users) — the screen capture software I’m currently using for screencasts.

VSCO Cam — I don’t use any other software for editing my photos, this app for iPhone is all I need.

Instagram — a great source of inspiration as well as a medium to share my travels and daily life.

Flickr — great for storing photos online. Flickr gives you 1,000 GB for free.

YouTube — great for watching videos, listening to music but also for storing all videos from my iPhone, upload, set to private and save.

Podcasting

Samson C01U Microphone — affordable USB microphone, quality is quite good if used it properly.

Logic Pro X — professional audio editing software for Mac users.

SoundCloud — great service for storing audio files, discovering new music and listening to podcasts.

iTunes — listen to internet radio, music on your computer and discover new podcasts or submit yours.

Business

Dropbox — easy to use cloud storage for your files. I store my projects on Dropbox.

Google Docs — free online alternative to Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. The best part that it allows live collaboration.

Google Analytics — free online software for tracking, measuring and analyzing website content.

Gumroad — great online software for selling anything online.

Focus

Headspace — I recommend this app for everyone who wants to try meditation.

ZenFriend — after my Vipassana experience I no longer use guided meditation, ZenFriend provides a simple timer I need.

StayFocusd — block distracting websites and have a limited time a day to access them. I’ve blocked Twitter, Facebook, and some news websites.

AdBlock — an add-on for Chrome that blocks ads on the websites, including video ads on YouTube.

Spotify — millions of songs for free. I have different playlists for different moods so I can get into the zone easier.

Originally published at tomaslau.com on November 12, 2015.

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Solo Female Traveler

The Solo Traveler’s Guide to Dealing With Loneliness - Susie Armitage

October 29, 2019

The Solo Traveler’s Guide to Dealing With Loneliness - Susie Armitage

Photo: Oscar Wong/Moment/Getty Images

Last December, I embarked on a month-long solo trip to Eastern Europe. I’d been feeling a bit stalled personally and professionally, and I thought a big adventure would help me get unstuck. I booked a flight to Estonia, reserved a few nights in an Airbnb, and planned to figure out the rest when I got there — after all, everything was up to me.

It was a thrilling thought: I was exploring a foreign country entirely on my own, with no one else’s schedule, wants, or needs to consider. I wandered the charming cobbled streets of Tallinn, the capital city. I sipped hot sea buckthorn tea at a Christmas market and bought a pair of reindeer-patterned leg warmers to cope with the single-digit temperatures. But a day or two later, shivering under the weak afternoon sun and surrounded by groups snapping photos, it hit me: I was really, truly alone in a place where I knew no one. And even though I’d chosen to come there, I was lonely.

Almost as soon as I recognized my own loneliness, I was disappointed by it. Feeling this way seemed at odds with the spirit of a solo adventure. What I didn’t know then — but have since come to learn — is that even if you genuinely enjoy traveling by yourself (and I do), you won’t necessarily love every single minute of it. In addition to that burst of quiet joy you feel watching a breathtaking sunset in solitude or the rush of pride you get from successfully navigating a new transit system, you’ll probably have a few moments when you’re tired of having no one but yourself for company.

For most of us, a little loneliness is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to ruin your trip. Here are a few ways to deal with it.

Give yourself permission to feel lonely

My initial reaction to loneliness was to beat myself up. It wasn’t just that it was ruining my trip; feeling this way also clashed with the identity I’d been mentally constructing. I wanted to see myself as an adventurous person, and in my mind, adventurous people didn’t get lonely. There must be a “right” way to travel alone, I concluded, and whatever it was, I wasn’t doing it.

It would have been comforting to remember that even confident, independent people aren’t immune to getting lonely.

I quickly started spiraling: Why wasn’t I making small talk with that barista? Why hadn’t I planned better, so I wouldn’t be walking aimlessly in the cold, wondering where to go next? I was privileged to be able to travel, so why couldn’t I just enjoy it?

In the moment, it would have been comforting to remember that even confident, independent people aren’t immune to getting lonely. “Be comfortable with the idea that it will happen,” says Janice Waugh, the founder of Solo Traveler, an online resource and community for people traveling alone. “But it will pass.”

If you’re taking a trip with the aim of clearing your head, like I was, keep in mind that getting away from your regular routine could exacerbate some of the worries you were already having. “You’re more in touch with your emotions because there’s nothing there to distract you,” says Scott Haas, a clinical psychologist and the author of the travel memoir Are We There Yet?

It took a while, but eventually, I realized I was judging myself too harshly. Once I accepted loneliness as a normal human emotion, it was easier to move through it and appreciate the unique experiences I could have precisely because I was on my own.

Stay somewhere social

Your dream solo getaway might entail a luxurious hotel bed and plenty of privacy, but if you want to meet people, hostels are a great place to do it. “Even if you’re not with people during the day, you’re going to come home, and there’s going to be a very busy common room at night,” Waugh says. If you’re past your days of bunking with snoring strangers, many hostels have private bedrooms and welcome guests of all ages.

I stayed in several shared Airbnbs on my trip, and while the socializing was hit or miss — in one place I chatted with a friendly Iranian grad student, but in another, I ate my dinner in silence while my host watched the History Channel — it still improved my mood to have someone else around. Friends of mine swear by Couchsurfing, a community where members offer travelers a couch or air mattress in their home for free. The site can also connect you with people who can’t offer a place to stay but want to hang out with travelers passing through their area.

Put yourself out there

As Waugh points out, many people drawn to traveling alone are likely on the introverted side, as she is, and may not be naturally prone to chatting up strangers. I fall into that camp, too, and though I’ve learned to approach people as a journalist, I still tend to be more reserved in my personal life.

I told Haas I’d spent one particularly dismal night in Lithuania drinking beer, pretending to watch a soccer game on TV, and feeling dumb for failing to strike up a conversation with the bartender. “Develop a script,” he said, suggesting I come up with a few go-to questions: How long have you been working here? Does this place cater mostly to foreigners or locals?

Group activities provide structure for socializing and can lead to new connections.

If you’re feeling shy, Waugh says, it’s important to remember that as a foreigner traveling solo, a lot of locals are likely interested in your story: “You’re doing it on your own, and people find that fascinating.”

When all else fails, take a creative approach. “I try to pretend I’m in a movie,” Haas says. “It helps me feel like I am playing a part.”

Become a regular

The night after my awkward evening at that pub in Vilnius, I went back to the restaurant where I’d eaten on my first day in town. The owners had been friendly before, but I brought a book to read at the bar in case they were busy. I didn’t need it. When I sat down, they greeted me like an old friend. After they closed up, we went out for drinks at another spot in the neighborhood.

Even a less effusive welcome can be comforting. Haas went to the same cafe two days in a row in Kyoto, and on the second morning, they remembered his order. “I felt like I had a little relationship to the place,” he recalls, “so I was less lonely.”

Schedule some organized activities

I’m not usually much of a planner, but after talking to Waugh, I realized it would have been a good idea to put a walking tour or cooking class on my itinerary. Group activities provide structure for socializing and can lead to new connections. For example, when it started raining during a free walking tour in Paris, Waugh and another woman decided to ditch the group and got lunch together instead.

Sharing about my trip helped me feel more connected to my world back home.

The Global Greeter Network can set you up with a volunteer who’ll show you around their city for free. They’ll try to match you with someone who shares your interests: Waugh wanted to explore the Chicago waterfront by bike, for example, so the group introduced her to a local cyclist and they went on a ride together.

You should plan to request a Greeter a few weeks in advance, but if you’re already in town, you can see if there’s an interesting Meetup nearby.

Share your experiences

I did a lot of Instagramming during my trip, mostly using the “stories” feature, so I wouldn’t stress about how many likes a picture got or if I was flooding my friends’ feeds. This let me share a lot of random observations I wouldn’t have deemed worthy of a regular post. For example, I went to an Estonian grocery store and posted pictures of interesting things I found, like yogurt flavored with rye bread and single servings of vodka packaged like Jell-O pudding cups.

Sharing these little things helped me feel more connected to my world back home; almost every morning, I woke up to messages from friends who said they enjoyed following my travels. It also reminded me of another reason I love exploring alone: I can take all the time I want to do things like document the dairy aisle.

Get away from touristy areas

A few days into my trip, I took the bus to a spa resort outside a small town in southeast Estonia. It was pretty, surrounded by majestic pine trees, but nowhere near the top of the country’s must-see list. (“Võru isn’t very interesting,” my Airbnb host said when I told him my plans.) I’d stumbled on the place while researching Estonian spa treatments and booked a massage.

“How did you find us?” the masseuse, Tiina, asked after rubbing my back thoroughly with a salve made from Estonian bear fat. “We don’t usually get foreigners here.”

Knowing that I’d successfully gotten off the beaten track bolstered my confidence. I spent the rest of the day relaxing on a heated lounge chair, watching snow fall outside, and listening to vacationing families splash in the pool. The spa facilities were fine, not spectacular, but that felt more like a perk than a downside: I didn’t care. I felt lucky to have a window into everyday Estonian life, glad to be away from all the tour groups in the capital and truly happy to be alone.

Reference :- The Solo Traveler’s Guide to Dealing With Loneliness by Susie Armitage

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Tools I Use To Learn, Work And Travel Anywhere - Tomas Laurinavicius

The Solo Traveler’s Guide to Dealing With Loneliness - Susie Armitage

The Solo Traveler’s Guide to Dealing With Loneliness - Susie Armitage

Reference :- The Solo Traveler’s Guide to Dealing With Loneliness by Susie Armitage

Tools I Use To Learn, Work And Travel Anywhere - Tomas Laurinavicius

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