The Adventure Formula for EPICNESS

With New Year’s revelry just a few days away, I thought I’d re-share my review of this very entertaining and informative adventurer’s manifesto by Jon Levi, a behavioral scientist who likes to party.

This book follows the storytelling-rich principle, anecdote, and scientific reference format that makes non-fiction a pleasure to read.

The author has a formula for epic experiences, but first…

I’ll tell you about a very silly place - Bocas Del Toro, Panama

This is an island in the Caribbean just off the coast of Panama. It’s a sunny resort town where travelers revel, drink till 9 AM, and generally get sunburnt. The unofficial slogan of Bocas is if it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down — You can find this message conspicuously in every bathroom on the island, and you can figure out what it means. I spent a couple of hazy weeks there once upon a time, and silliness ensued.

I stayed at this hostel/nightclub called Agua, which was basically a playpen for adults. It was built over the warm blue water on giant stilts. It featured a giant deck for sunbathing with a swimming pool (the Caribbean) that you could launch yourself into from a trampoline or some swings perched on the edge. Inside was a bar and dancefloor. Perhaps the most ridiculous thing about the place was that every morning after the nightly dance party, the floor would begin to come apart because of the drunks jumping on it. The hostel manager would hire a local crew of guys to come in, they would tear up the dancefloor and reassemble it so that hopefully no one would fall through — and they would do this practically every day!

One night at the hostel/nightclub, they were doing a talent show. A bunch of really awful local reggae artists were performing, and I decided to switch things up by volunteering to try to do some stand-up comedy.

Among the flip-flopped, tank top-wearing gringos and locals, there was one very elegant woman wearing a white dress that accentuated her amazing suntan. Of course, I approached her, made a little conversation, and got a pretty blasé response.

I had about 20 minutes to prepare some material for my stand-up routine, so I wrote down some jokes on my smartphone that I thought were good and returned to my bunk in the hostel dormitory to get something. On my bunk bed, I saw something very unexpected: underwear! Not mine, it was rather small underwear actually. Perhaps someone was trying to tell me something… I grabbed the underwear and decided to incorporate it into my stand-up performance. This was sure to be awesome!

My stand-up routine flopped; the crowd was, I think, expecting more screeching musical performances, and here was this gringo trying to tell jokes. I did indeed show off the underwear to the whole crowd and made some jokes about drunken hostel hookup culture that didn’t really land. I was played off stage after a few minutes by the DJ. Also, it turned out that it wasn’t underwear, it was a Speedo! I had only been out of the USA for a few months at the time and couldn’t tell the difference between panties and European swimwear. The speedo belonged to the Israeli guy sleeping above me in the hostel, and he was oddly angry with me for using his item in my stand-up routine.

But as soon as I exited stage left, guess who was very interested in talking to me? The woman in the white dress was suddenly entranced by everything I had to say. Not much more happened between the woman and me in the white dress, but it illustrates the value of taking social risks.

Social risk is a double-edged sword

It can make you a beloved celebrity at a party or make everyone hate you. This book delves deeply into the nuances of how to yield social risk wisely and maximize the ensuing adventure and romance…

When asked to describe the most wondrous, exciting, and remarkable experiences in their lives, people consistently say they occur by chance, that these experiences are moments of sheer serendipity — a by-product of the universe perfectly aligning to culminate in an extraordinary situation. But if this were true, if it were truly random, we would all live similarly exciting lives, and we don’t. This means that there must be some method at work, some best practices that I could learn.

You’re probably going to party from time to time, so why not lifehack partying so that you are getting the maximum bang of great memories from the buck you spend after the sun has set. But the book is not just about drunken debauchery and booze-fueled idiocy — I was a digital nomad for 6 years, and I observed that most travelers suck at actually having great experiences abroad; they consistently choose the lesser pleasures over the greater pleasures.

Epicness is hard to plan; what you want to devote logistical planning to is gathering a team of interesting people to party with.

the best nights almost always involved some kind of preparation. They often involved selecting the right group of people to participate and a new location to explore. There were trends in the types of activities that worked to bring people together, but there also seemed to be a clear line separating a fun night from an extraordinary night that consistently showed up around 2 AM.

Boring people can make the most amazing party or venue suck, while awesome people can make the most podunk little party, in a dreary little town, memorable.

I would always rather be with the right people at the wrong party than with the wrong people at the right party.

Mission-driven partying = Epicness

When you look at almost every great adventure ranging from literature and movies to news reports or even your friends’ stories, you will notice a clear and common thread: it had nothing to do with wealth, good looks, or resources; it had to do with a goal. Every great adventure has an underlying mission, and it isn’t just any mission; it’s one that is outside the person’s comfort zone.

Going out to aimlessly drink and peruse is not likely to result in anything extraordinary; you want to come up with some arbitrary mission, like…

* Parachute into a town where you don’t have a hotel room reserved or a designated place to sleep.

* Find someone who will give you a place to sleep.

* Get someone to give you their underwear.

* Take a photo with something childish.

* Steal something insignificant from a bar (make sure to return it, though!)

* Meet someone from South America.

* Kiss a police officer.

Constrain thyself

Having too many options will in fact make us less happy. Constraints are thereby critical for reducing the overwhelming effects of the paradox of choice. Not only will they increase satisfaction, they will also catalyze creativity and excitement within the context of an adventure.

Arbitrary constraints will make your adventures a lot more interesting, like…

* Go out with no money and convince people to buy you drinks.

* Use a fake identity - play a character.

* Don’t talk; only communicate non-verbally with people.

* Use a silly pickup line with every person you talk to.

In my article on flowstate, I talk about the importance of challenge to reaching an altered state — three characteristics define a good challenge:

CLARITY: There can be no confusion over the desired outcome. A person either succeeded or