Thinking outside the box

For a while now, I have been following Tim Ferriss on his blog, after reading his book The 4-Hour Work Week. The title of the book alone is thought provoking and sounds for me crazy enough to read it. What I learnt so far from the book is that you can change things radically and become comfortable in being different.

My running partner, spoke about one or two years ago about some strange shoes, which look like gloves for your feet. They have a pocket for each of your toes and are the closest you can think of to running barefoot. Greg runs barefoot anyway. He made me curious about those shoes, but as with so many things, you hear, I parked the concept in my head for later recall. It takes a while, before some things become available in South Africa and I learnt to be more patient.

Then, I read about these shoes again on Tim Ferriss’ blog. He presented some more in depth research on the barefoot running and these shoes. It stirred my curiosity even more and I started actively looking for those shoes. I asked Brandon Hansen from Velocitysports if he can get these for me. He did and now I am adjusting myself to run in those shoes. I am also getting used to people looking at me and my feet and making comments. More often than not, these comments express curiosity and give a great opportunity for meeting new people…

What does that have to do with photography? Everything and nothing. What I am learning is that it is worthwhile trying something different and being different. What’s the worst thing that can happen?

This brings me to this video, I found on Tim Ferriss’ blog, where he talks about Stoicism and the Practicality of Pessimism. Contrary to what you would expect from the title, it is inspiring. Enjoy.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 13th, 2009 at 11:20 and is filed under Blog and tagged with barefoot running, Blog, curiosity, pessimism, Photography, practicality, South Africa, stoicism, thinking outside the box, tim ferriss. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.