1 ✕ Check In Bag
Just one checked bag.
I’ve been travelling for three years now, and the “one checked bag” is a mantra that I have been following pretty religiously.
All my possessions that I use, including camera, multiple hard drives, tripod, and even a set of bed sheets that travel with me from country to country, all of it fits inside one neat bag. The mantra that I follow is that the material possessions are just not as important to me, so I rather get rid of all unnecessary things and just keep the essentials.
And so, every time I move, just like I did yesterday, after spending almost a year living in Tokyo, Japan, I do an extensive “spring cleaning”.
I Marie Kondo’d the s%*t out of Marie Kondo.
Nothing but essentials are staying on. Everything else is either given away, regardless of value or quality, or simply thrown away. There’s no limit to things that are being given away — bicycle, window blinds, pillows, hoodies, t-shirts, books.
Not having space to store or carry things around the world gives me extra mental clarity to focus on my work. I started actively getting rid of my material possessions about 4 years ago. At first I started by selling my car, then got rid of my motorcycle, then most of my photography gear I didn’t use, then by giving away my books, and so on. In the end, all the things I own do fit in a small locker, and I get to travel the world with just one suitcase.
Don’t get me wrong — I like quality things. I own things I care about. But I make a conscious choice of having one pair of shoes instead of ten. I own just one pair of pants. I focus on utility. So when I upgrade my phone, I do mental calculations whether it will make me productive at work or at learning. If it does, I sell one, and buy another one.
Instead of accumulating material possessions, I now focus on acquiring knowledge and experience as fast as I can. I devour books at a pace I have never done before, at a current rate of about 100 books per year. I stuff my head with new languages, adding hundreds of hours of language learning a year. I write notes and memos about things I see around me.
I’m not a great learner, so everything takes more energy and mental concentration. Learning a fourth language in my mid-thirties isn’t the easiest thing to pull off. However, living out of one suitcase, I realized that while my material possessions are limited to what I can comfortably haul around, my mental capacity is almost unlimited.
My job requires me to be alert at all times, find opportunities, and act on them quickly. I learn about new markets. I strategize and execute new plans and idea for markets that few months ago I knew nothing about. Anything less than that bores me, raising my anxiety levels and restlessness. So as soon as something seems “routine”, I tend to move on, find a new challenge, accept higher level of responsibilities, with higher stakes.
And so, accumulating knowledge and experience is what keeps me sane. I’ll let the rest of my life fit inside one checked bag, and have no regrets about it.
Evgeny Tchebotarev is a VP of Growth, Asia at Skylum, a software company that makes Luminar 3, the best photo editing app for Mac and Windows. He previously founded 500px, a 17-million-photographers-strong community, backed by Andreessen Horowitz (acquired by VCG). Currently based in Taipei, Taiwan, after spending over 9 months establishing business in Tokyo, Japan.
