I’m Canadian, but I’m currently living in the south of France. And, for the last five months, I’ve been doing something I never would have considered back home.

I’m not talking about drinking wine, eating baguettes or speaking French (although I’ve been doing plenty of those things).

No, I’m talking about riding a bicycle.

For the last 5 months I’ve commuted with my bike practically everywhere. I’d guess I bike at least 5-10km every day. And, while I’ve occasionally had a bike in Canada, that becomes agonizingly impractical when there is several feet of snow.

Location as an Underrated Factor in Pursuing the Ideal Life

I believe location is an underrated factor in pursuing the ideal life, but not in the obvious way people assume.

The obvious assumption is usually spoken in stereotypes. New York is fast paced. Paris is romantic. And if you want to start a technology company, you have to move to San Francisco.

I won’t argue with the specifics of these stereotypes, since I’ve never lived in New York, Paris or San Francisco. Maybe all the things said about these types of places is completely true.

What I will argue is that your location can have an unexpected impact on your lifestyle beyond the details that are most obvious when choosing a place to live.

The Unexpected Impact of Geography

Bike riding is a perfect example. The idea of biking everywhere I go wasn’t something I thought of when imagining life in France. Indeed, if I had chosen to live in a larger city like Paris or Lyon, the metro stations would more probably be my major source of travel.

Despite this, I think bike riding has had a major impact on my day-to-day lifestyle. For one, by biking 5-10km per day out of necessity, I’ve been getting a lot of exercise. Second, I’ve spent more time outdoors, which if you’ve ever experienced a winter in Winnipeg, is definitely a plus.

Location Independence and Choosing the Perfect City to Live

For most people, location is simply a matter of opportunity. My parents had moved to find jobs, and many other people will locate themselves wherever makes sense for their career.

However, there are a growing number of people who are drawing the majority of their income from location independent sources. Freelancers, web entrepreneurs or even at-home workers could theoretically live anywhere.

I think once you remove the job demand criteria as the #1 factor for where to live, a whole new area opens up, namely, picking the perfect city for your ideal lifestyle.

And, I believe this decision becomes more complicated for the reason I previously mentioned. Most of the salient details of choosing the perfect city are hidden, or at least obscured by popular stereotypes.

Finding the Perfect City

I’ve just started this journey, so I can’t weigh opinions about which cities are best. However, I think there are a couple factors worth mentioning, that are guiding my process of finding it:

1. Perfect is time sensitive. The ideal city, I believe, will be different when you’re 25 to when you’re 55.
2. Perfect won’t be obvious. I can’t be sure, but I’d guess that the ideal cities for most people are probably places they haven’t heard of yet. Or at least given serious thought to. The most popular destinations are also the most expensive and crowded.
3. Perfect needs defining. The size, weather and infrastructure that makes Montpellier an ideal city for biking is part of my definition of a great city. It will be different for every individual.

Of course, I’m not ruling out the importance of building relationships within a particular location over time. My argument isn’t that the ideal way to live means being a perpetual traveler. There are benefits to just picking a spot and then getting to know your neighbors.

However, just as the person you marry will have a major impact on your life, I believe the same is true of the city you live in. And, for a growing number, that decision will no longer be based on job openings.

If you need guilt to motivate yourself, your productivity system is broken.

“Are you procrastinating?” my roommate asks me. Three exams the next day and I wasn’t studying.

“No, I laugh, procrastination means I intended to do some work. I never planned on working tonight, so technically it isn’t procrastination,” I respond.

This was a conversation I had last week, during an exam period. Although my review schedule before exams tends to be a lot lighter than most, the biggest difference isn’t the time. It’s that I refuse to use guilt as a motivation tactic.

Stress-Cases VS Relaxed Achievers

Here’s the process a typical stressed-out student or worker uses to motivate himself:

1. Worry.
2. Be unsure where to start.
3. Take a break.
4. Take another break.
5. Feel guilty about breaking for so long.
6. Do 15 minutes of work.
7. Chat on Facebook.
8. Repeat.

Although there are probably a lot of problems in this situation, I think the worst is step #5. When you use guilt as a motivation tool you increase your stress without accomplishing anything.

Worse, guilt tends to be a lousy motivator, resulting in a little bit of effort but nowhere near the effort needed to succeed with your plan.

Now contrast this approach to the way a relaxed, effective student motivates herself:

1. Worry. (Hey, sometimes you can’t help it)
2. Stop and form an action plan with specific tasks.
3. Create a list of the tasks to be done.
4. Break the list down to a daily basis.
5. Work hard to complete the tasks.
6. Relax guilt-free.

Instead of guilt, there is a system. It’s this system that not only creates the results, but eliminates the wasted stress and time.

The System Doesn’t Need to be Complicated

If I’m making it seem like the second approach requires a black-belt level of mastery in GTD, that’s not my intention. A system doesn’t need to be hard or complicated to still work extremely well in 95% of cases.

Here’s the system I’ve used for the last few years of relatively guilt-free work:

1. Make a to-do list.
2. Chunk that to-do list into a list just for today.
3. Complete the list, without adding new items when you finish it.

Now, this may sound too easy. Sure, this might work for some people, but my work is too difficult, my academic program too intensive and the competition too fierce to limit myself in this way.

Wrong on both counts.

First, that attitude is wrong because this system works even better the more difficult your program is. The systematic approach to productivity, with pre-established limits, excels when your workload is hellish.

I’ve used this approach when managing full-time classes, international competitions, two volunteer positions and a part-time business simultaneously. Cal Newport has used a similar restrictions-first approach to get a PhD at MIT, build a wildly successful blog and publish several books.

Don’t tell me you’re too busy. You’re too busy not to have a system.

Second, this attitude is wrong because it assumes guilt is even remotely effective. It’s not. Guilt may be used in the 5% of situations where your system breaks down. But when you’re using it on a regular basis, it wears out and becomes useless.

Studies have shown that willpower is an internal resource. If you use it up on one task, you have less of it for the next task. So if willpower is this scarce, why force 100% of your work to rely on it?

Martyrs of Busyness

The real reason a lot of people like using guilt is for a secondary benefit that has nothing to do with accomplishing anything: social status.

When you tell people you have a killer workload, you aren’t just complaining. You’re also trying to tell people you’re important enough to have a killer workload.

Some tribes put discs in their lips or brand tattoos. Ours walks around telling everyone how “busy” we are, grinding away hours of our life in half-productive work. Whose is more destructive?

Guilt Free and Accomplished

January 2010 was the second best month for income I’ve ever had on the website. It was the number one for direct income. My health and fitness are nearing a personal best, last week I was able to complete 10 one-arm pushups with each arm in a row. Academically my grades will likely be staying high during my year abroad, and I’ve made significant progress learning to speak French.

Despite this progress, I’ve been more relaxed this year than perhaps any in my life. Tonight will be my forth night out in a row, in a series of going-away parties for friends leaving France. I’ve enjoyed enough free time to practice my cooking, read more books and enjoy the weather, women and wine in the south of France.

I’m not saying this to brag, but to point out a contrast. In other years I’ve had considerably more stress, a lot of it being self-inflicted. Also, during those years I arguably accomplished less towards my main goals.

I think that’s evidence that the burnout, guilt-soaked approach to work not only isn’t sustainable, it often doesn’t even get the most done.