Things to avoid, according to one of many downloadable “manifestos:” “sitting at a desk for 40 hours a week for an average of 10 hours of productive work,” going overseas “twice in your life, to somewhere safe like England” and going to college “because someone said you should get a degree.”

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Followers can’t imagine finding satisfaction in a reliable General Schedule paycheck or a nonprofit gig with good health benefits. They don’t work within the halls of power; they become one-person governments limited only by their drive and bank accounts.

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And they regard hierarchies and traditional gigs – even those with a supposed civil function that are woven into the District’s economic and cultural fabric – as the enemy of self-actualization and fulfillment.

Still (or maybe, because), I’m completely hooked. Instead of scrolling through Pinterest for recipes I’ll never make or beaches I’ll never visit, I fall down Internet rabbit holes learning how to maximize frequent-flyer miles, how they earn money from blogging, how to attempt a lean start-up and how I “don’t have to live the life everyone expects me to.”

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* * *

“Do What You Love” asks its followers, “How do we live a remarkable life in a conventional world?” Everyone answers differently. As I wrote last summer, after attending the three-day conference:

Each of the few thousand attendees has a slightly different answer: They are motorcyle-riding life coaches, motivational podcasters, school teachers who visit psychics, stay-at-home moms who craft children’s books. They are everyday bloggers and wannabe e-book writers and corporate refugees. They are travel fanatics, Boeing engineers who listen to the podcasts and read the blog posts from other WDS speakers. The event, which began in 2011, evolved from local meet-ups based on his website and book tours.

I haven’t done anything quite so dramatic. But after becoming hooked a couple of years ago, I began taking baby steps to a more independent, creative and adventurous life. I stashed away a tiny bit of money from my paycheck each month and used the savings, in part, for the cross-country flight and $500 admittance ticket to WDS (no discounts for press).

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I blogged, briefly. I bought countless Lonely Planet travel guides, with no real intention to live elsewhere. In moments of textbook post-graduate ennui and settling into the inevitable realities of emerging adulthood, the movement seemed appealing to me – as I’m sure it does to many other millennials.

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At the same time, I wasn’t really unhappy. Studying this movement brings questions ofwhether a steady desk job, happy hours and extra-curricular activities are existential shackles, but I still believe routines can provide purpose and meaning.

The movement’s founder, Chris Guillebeau, 36, however, might disagree. He started his blog, “The Art of Non-Conformity,” in 2008 and managed to amass a huge, loyal following. He now also boasts 125,000 followers on Twitter.

Guillebeau wrote the New York Times best-selling “The $100 Start-up” and “The Art of Non-Conformity.” He’s out with a new book, T”he Happiness of Pursuit,” part travel-memoir about visiting all 193 countries by age 35. It’s also part sociological exploration of real-life “quests,” which he defines as a challenge or adventure of Greek mythological portions.

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“General life improvement” – losing weight, writing a book, running a marathon – won’t do.

Guillebeau is, after all, a high school dropout who hacked his way through community college courses, made money on eBay when the money was good and traveled to all 193 countries before age 35. He has never worked a full-time day job in his life.

Guillebeau once assured me that he was not trying to paint working stiffs like me as the “other.” He knows his followers are privileged, and he argues that those of us with disposable income in the first world have unique opportunities to ask philosophical questions on what makes a good life.

Yet his writing is slightly more pointed. It includes bromides like “Realistic is the adjective of cynics” and a warning that “gatekeepers”– like lawyers, political parties, the media and labor movements — will tell you what to think, to do, which choices you have or “all of the above.”

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It seems like a hard sell for the type A, career-driven people who fill D.C.’s bars and yoga classes. Yet when Guillebeau stopped by local bookstore One More Page, people packed in rows of folding chairs and spilled out into standing room.

In attendance: high-ranking federal bureaucrats who run motivational speaking businesses on the side, a mother-daughter pair who drove from West Virginia in Beltway traffic to see Guillebeau, lawyers-turned-yoga teachers. There were lots of millennials, along with a surprising number of boomers looking for second acts.

Terry Nebeker, special events coordinator at the store, introduced Guillebeau. “Here in DC, we’re so goal-oriented,” Nebeker said. She listed off the usual high-achieving upper-middle-class family routine: soccer practices, AP classes, SAT tutors. “I wonder what we’re teaching and modeling for our kids. That’s why I’m so excited Chris is here.”

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During his talk, Guillebeau introduced a young Baltimore couple named Liz and Ryan Bower, who sat beaming in the corner of the room, preparing to embark on a multi-continent, yearlong journey around the world chronicling positive marriages. He introduced Kelly Newsome, a Washington resident who left a law firm to start a yoga studio.

Guillebeau also told the audience about the men and women and the “quests” he chronicled in “The Happiness of Pursuit”: a blind woman who trained her own guide dog, a man who ran 250 marathons in one year, a mom in Tulsa who resolved to make a meal from every country in the world, several Guinness world-record-breaking “questers.”

Though there’s an undercurrent of vaguely libertarian, mistrust of institutions running through Guillebeau’s work, his rhetoric is completely palatable to a Washington crowd.

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In order to win Guillebeau’s attention for the book, “quests” had to be specific goals with endpoints (“every good goal has a deadline,” Guillebeau advises), and driven by a “calling” or mission. They also required sacrifice of some kind: “There is no having it all when it comes to a quest,” Guillebeau says in his book, sounding as though he’s more tapped into the corporate psychology zeitgeist than he seems.

The book’s introduction includes a checklist for those considering a quests – Guillebeau’s writing frequently warns that following his worldview isn’t for everyone: “Do you enjoy making lists?” it asks. “Have you always enjoyed setting goals?” Do you enjoy planning?

But planning and goals and the sort of “World Domination” he espouses all require more than imagination and grit. Every travel hacking trick on the blogs won’t make it free; training for 250 marathons is a lot of time spent devoted to personal develoment. Guillebeau’s “quests,” in the end, all impress.