That’s a wrap on the Bali chapter for me. What was originally intended to be a 2mo stay turned into an inadvertent 6mo stint due to Covid. Here’s the condensed summary of my last few weeks there:

I spent the 2nd half of June living in this ridiculous villa with @helensimkins , @christabellatravels and @nikkibartol. Views were stunning. And we had laughing ducks.

We had a proper July 4th BBQ at @canggucamp308 that rivaled anything I had done in the States, complete with grilled corn and a decapitated giant floating flamingo.

I moved into my buddy Trevor’s place and would spend my last month there. His villa backs up against a small jungle and has epic sunsets.

He introduced me to my favorite running trail. I would spend every other day in July running a narrow road between the rice fields listening to podcasts.

Meet Bowie, perhaps the world’s cutest puppy (next to @almathebalidog ).

This little guy I never knew his name but he was intent on stealing my Oura ring.

We had a magical Vietnamese dinner overlooking the rice fields. Shoutout to @_rachelcrocker_ for launching her sales course.

Winner of the most under-appreciated tech of the trip: the AirPods. These things proved to be indispensable for navigation. It’s funny, in December I was terrified to ride as a passenger on a scooter let alone drive one yet I now feel fully-proficient and ended up using one daily the entire time in Bali. Cheers to conquering fears.

Bali was an incredible, unexpectedly-prolonged chapter and there is a 1000% chance I will be back. For now I’m back in Lisbon and looking forward to trying beach life in some of the coastal towns in Portugal via the @selina “Passport” product.
Selamat malam (at Canggu, Bali)

Here’s the monthly update from me: Beaches are finally re-opened in Bali and we’ve been capitalizing on that for sunsets recently.

A couple of us did a trip to Bingin beach near Uluwatu and got to watch the surfers absolutely shredding there.

There is a cute puppy named Alma that has joined our little tribe and she even now has her own instagram @almathebalidog

She’s also ferocious and attacks you if you seem even remotely fun.

I moved into a new villa with 3 friends from Nomad Cruise and will be closing out the rest of June there and angling to get back to Portugal around July 6th or so (flights permitting).

I learned a song entirely in Bahasa for our Indonesian staff.

We’ve had limes in coconuts.

Crew after amazing crew of people.

Walks through rice fields, exploring temples, sick villas in Uluwatu, infinity pools, all the Bali stuff…

And similar to Remote Year, a group of folks who otherwise would likely have never become close has done just that.

I’ve started business blogging on grid7.com writing about learnings from working with nocode and I’ve been working my way through the 30×500 academy doing their excellent course on how to launch a product you know will sell. I’ll be speaking next week for FutureofWork.co talking about our efforts with @charitymakeover_.

Our next CM event is tentatively scheduled for July 25th. My bi-annual email update goes out in two weeks. If you want to get a deep-dive from me on everything I’ve learned during the crazy times of the past six months be sure to opt-in for that on scrollinondubs.com/about

Cheers (at Pererenan Beach)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CB2bmnwnrJ9/?igshid=14r46bpxr7506

Been awhile… here’s a quick update on what’s been happening with me over the past 5 weeks: ?
I celebrated a b-day at @canggucamp308

We had our first ever entirely-virtual @charitymakeover_ and our volunteers proved that these events are indeed possible to execute entirely remotely. There’s a great recap video as the last post on our blog if you’re interested to see what kind of stuff our volunteers were able to build in a day.

Canggu has started to re-open but with fairly intense rules. Banning hugs…okay but banning stories seems pretty heavy-handed.

Our group is fostering the tiniest kitten on earth. His name is “Tiger” and he is our watchcat guarding our workspace.

We celebrated another b-day (we’re getting to be pro’s at this).

It’s now planting season here in Bali which means farmers are mostly done lighting their fields on fire and instead are now just watering them intensely. The geckos here are having nightly feasts on every imaginable flying insect. I’m pretty sure the geckos will be bigger than the kitten soon.

The evenings here are pretty magical. It’s windy season and any given evening at dusk there will be dozens of these massive black kites in the air- some nearly a mile up. They don’t do the Kiterunner fighting thing – they just hover stationary but it’s beautiful.

I’ve been on a tear lately having read these four books. At some point I’ll do a blog post summary of each.

We had last night an amazing dinner with some amazing humans- Arthur of FasterToMaster.com, Erin of arenastrength.com and @_rachelcrocker_ of RachelCrocker.com

Rest assured friends while I’m staying mostly fit I am still doing my part to rid the world of desserts one cheesecake at a time. So far so good. Hope everyone is happy & healthy. (at Pererenan Beach)

So much for weekly updates… For the first time in 5mos I don’t have any spectacular photos to share. My weekly highlight lately is catching up with my folks via zoom.

I’m in week 6 of the Faster To Master program and I highly recommend. I had interviewed Arthur Worsley as my last guest on @nomadprep podcast. As sometimes happens the podcast interview ended up selling me and I became a student.

It’s a 6-week program to revamp your approach to productivity and time management. You do a time audit then seek to purge all activities that don’t get you closer to where you wanna be and focus on amplifying the ones that do.

It builds on a lot of the ideas of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” and extends them with a framework to ensure everything you do is strategic. It has an elegant tiered approach where each level rolls up to support the next level. The most value I’m getting is that I can trace the thread of how what I’m working on this minute supports my highest purpose.

I’ve also been going through Michael Singer’s course “Living from a Place of Surrender.” I’m in week 7 of that and it’s very good as well. The notion of “surrender” isn’t natural to me- I’m a Taurus so I’m more inclined to charge ahead and make things work. But this course is an eye-opener explaining samskaras and how clinging and resisting creates blockages and surrender’s role in unblocking those.

Anyways weathering this pandemic from paradise has its +’s: the food here has been on point.

I’ve been helping the one and only @_rachelcrocker_ a bit with her biz. If you do any kind of online course or coaching she has an ingenious method for using FB messenger to generate leads.

In other news apparently there’s something called the “Eskimo toe dance.” Who knew?

We’re holding the first ever social distancing party for my b-day in a few weeks. Get in touch for deets if you’re in Canggu. And our first ever virtual Charity Makeover is this weekend. We have a few more spots avail. Check CharityMakeover.org to see if we can use your skills. (at Bali)

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_MM3MKHkN_/?igshid=1tvp3gj42t7x4

We spent week 7 here quarantined on the northern side of the island in a private villa near Tianyar. This was the view off my porch.

The sun glinting off the water every morning reminded me of when our family used to spend time on Coronado Island in San Diego growing up.

We had a lot of downtime as the internet up there was nearly non-existent. I re-read two books: “Illusions” by Richard Bach and “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz.

Lots of creepy statues and ancient artifacts and roosters trudging around the yard all day.

We got good at recombinating the same canned ingredients with different sauces and doing dinners by candle light.

@helensimkins found the 3sqft of space on the property that had intermittent cell signal.

We improvised with coconuts one night and had a game of bocce ball at sunset.

Did I mention there were a lot of roosters?

@mattbowlesmaverick had me on his podcast for an unprecedented 3rd interview (that episode will be published tomorrow) to talk about our hurry-up offense to retool @charitymakeover_ to support all-virtual hackathons. Our hope is to be able to both provide some much needed assistance to some of the charities on the ropes right now from COVID-19 fallout but also give some meaningful work opportunities to people who are quarantined and sitting on their hands out of work. Ever the gracious host Matt fast-tracked this episode to get it live to help promote for our first ever virtual hackaton on Apr 11th.

We slept most nights with our doors open and woke up to this scene. It was a good week of decompression but we’re now back in Canggu for the fast reliable internet and I’m heads-down making the changes needed to our tech stack to enable what we’re trying to facilitate for these various causes. If you want to be involved in this effort from wherever you are, sign up on CharityMakeover.org – we can use all the help we can get and you can see what skills we still need on the website. Stay safe & healthy. ? (at Tianyar Barat)
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-WAnxbn4Ap/?igshid=1d0a3axf3izta

We’re in day 3 of a self-imposed quarantine on the north coast of Bali and the most action we’ve seen is a bunch of chickens running around our yard (confirmed they do cross the road but we still don’t know why).

As Americans we have been inundated with messages from our government directing us to return home but IMO this country has less far to fall than the US in this crisis and I feel more confident in the Balinese’s capability to weather this storm. We are here in this tropical paradise for now until the situation demands otherwise.

It’s time to unplug and unwind as a society. Wednesday is the Balinese holiday called Nyepi, which is like Yom Kippur where all power is cut and it’s a 24-hour window of downtime. COVID is forcing this holiday at a global scale.

As nomads our situation is largely unaffected. I recognize we are fortunate in that regard and most of the world is facing an incredibly difficult time.

I highly recommend ordering a TRX as a way to stay in shape at home. @crispypelican introduced me to this device on @remoteyear and I’ve done it weekly ever since. It’s a fantastic way to have a home gym.

When one door closes another opens… If you’re like many you’re on an inward journey during this time. I recommend adding this book on Stoicism – I found it to be incredibly beneficial grid7.co/goodlife

@benlakoff and I are scrambling to retool @CharityMakeover_ and transition from physical hackathons to virtual hackatons so we can play a small part in providing much-needed aid to the non-profits which are on the ropes right now. Apr 11th is the next event.

@helensimkins and I have been holding down the fort but @nomaddennis and @travelinglifestyle just arrived and we have a little @nomadcruise commune now.

This is going to be a shitty week for a lot of people. Healthcare workers are the 911 firefighters of today. Please listen to this interview with a British doc: grid7.co/DrJack

If anyone is struggling to make remote work work for the first time, I have made my course 100% free for you. This thread-> https://twitter.com/scrollinondubs/status/1239769207518015488?s=20?
Strength to you (at Bali)
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-E4-oLnkBy/?igshid=8a9x6ckrpl5l