How To Recreate Your Life And Career In 2023 - Paul Millerd

Paul Millerd 0:00 What would happen over and over again is people would tell me things, and I'd be like, "Have you shared this with anyone?" "Well, I've said, like, a little to my spouse, but, like, I can't talk about this with anyone." So I was like, oh, wow, what I'm writing about is, like, this hidden knowledge that nobody feels they can talk about publicly.

Ali Abdaal 0:15 Paul has written a fantastic book called The Pathless Path, of which I have about 10 copies here in the office because I give copies to anyone who is struggling to figure out what they wanna do with their lives.

Paul Millerd 0:24 I went out for a motorcycle ride. The ideas just came to me, and I just broke down in tears. I realized it had, like, everything to do with my parents. They didn't go to college. They had to do the default path. And I realized what they gave me was the freedom to dream. It matters to, like, dream, do brave things. I really think this matters, and I think I can help people with this stuff, and I'm just gonna say it.

Ali Abdaal 0:45 Paul has a super interesting background. He used to work in a traditional field in management consulting, but then he quit his job to kind of wander this pathless path, and he writes a lot around how do we think of what a career means.

Paul Millerd 0:58 As soon as I left my job, I sort of dealt with this jolt of reality of, like, this increased freedom and space in my life. And then in 2020, the whole world sort of, like, showed up, like, asking these deep questions about work, and my readership just, like, exploded.

Ali Abdaal 1:13 The old formulas of what led to career and, like, life success and fulfillment and stuff, like, you know, just get a job and work your way up at the company and get the company car and all that kind of stuff, that's not really the formula that works anymore. And I think Paul's ways of thinking about this are incredibly inspiring. So if you've ever thought you're not really sure what you wanna do with your life, if you've ever had doubts about are you really in the right sort of career, I really hope you'll get a lot of value from this conversation. Just a very quick thing before we get started. If you have not yet subscribed to the podcast, either on YouTube or on your favorite podcast app of choice, then please do. It really helps us out

Ali Abdaal 1:43 a lot. So Paul, welcome. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on. How are you doing?

Paul Millerd 1:47 I am excited to be back talking with you. I think we talked almost, like, two years ago at this point the first time, so excited to dive in and catch up on both our journeys.

Ali Abdaal 1:57 Yeah, that would be sick. Um, so I've been-- Every, every time I have a bit of a c- a crisis in my life trying to figure out what I wanna do, I always think of you, and I always think of your writing and your book and your, uh, your newsletter. Um, so it's all just like... I mean, you're sort of my, um, I don't know, my, my life path, pathless path guru, um, even though I'm sure you don't intend to, to, to be as such. Uh, I would love to get started with if you can just, uh, w- how did... Essentially, like, how did, how did we get here? Um, how did you and I ended up, end up, end up talking like this? How did you end up developing this, I guess, career that, that you've landed into?

Paul Millerd 2:36 Yeah. So, so we'll have to dive into the, what we're talking about when we say words like career. But, um, m- my path, grew up in small town in Connecticut, um, sort of, uh, always did good in school, stumbled into, oh, these really impressive career options in college, tried to break into them, ended up breaking into strategy consulting for like nine years. Loved my time working in that industry, but sort of ended up feeling more and more stuck the longer I spent on that path, and really just desired to escape. Uh, so I saved a s- not that large amount of money and enough to kinda buy freedom for a year. Um, wanted to run away from work, and on that journey, uh, which has been five years at this point, sort of discovered I didn't want to escape work. I wanted to have a different relationship with work. I basically wanted, like, things I could connect to, work that brought me alive, things that energized me. Um, but it was really a slow stumbling, uh, awakening to that, and a lot of my writing was about that. I think that was some of the writing you connected with. And increasingly in twenty-twenty, a lot of the world started paying attention to what I was writing about. Um, before that, I was kind of... I didn't really know if what I was writing about was connecting with people, but in twenty-twenty, just so many people started showing up and reaching out and starting, uh, talking to me.

Ali Abdaal 4:05 So that's a, that's a pretty cool journey of, you know, starting out with a very, very traditional career, I guess, and then deciding to break away from it and, and do your thing. Um, I ki- So for, for, for a podcast like this, it's like there's... I think there's, there's sort of two ways to go about it. One way is, is where I essentially act as an interviewer and ask you your story, because I know that, um, I, I imagine most people listening to this are not familiar with your story. But I feel like because I'm already familiar with it, that bit is less interesting to me, and I just wanna dive in.

Paul Millerd 4:39 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 4:39 I think that's a pathway, just like, so j-j-just sort of diving into, um, the, the things that I am currently struggling with, and I would just love to get your take on it to be my, my personal therapist for this. Uh, how does, how does that sound?

Paul Millerd 4:51 L- Let's do it. I mean, this is the deep dive, right? So I love going deeper anyway. My story's out there. People can find it. They can get the, the surface level stuff, and I, I think the more interesting thing is that when we look at what other people do, we tend to look at the surface level stuff. Um, and it was... I was writing about this this week, and I sort of referenced you in a post I was writing about, which is, like, just observing you, you seem to have found some sort of mode in which you're able to show up in your life doing work you actually like doing. Um, and we can dive into whether that is still true or not and to what degree. Um, but when people look at you, they probably look at, like, metrics, right? Metrics, dollar amounts, all these things. But what I'm sort of talking about in a relationship with work is, like, that stuff is secondary, and convincing people that, that is, that is secondary is actually hard to do in today's world because so much of the world is oriented around the idea that, like, these metrics, these sort of goals, these titles are what matters.

Ali Abdaal 5:57 If that's secondary, then, then what is primary, I guess?

Paul Millerd 6:01 I think what I'm trying to say with work is that f- If we're just sort of showing up and accepting what society tells us, I call this, like, the default path. The default path is what most people around us are doing. This is the story we grow up with in our culture that says you are successful if you do these things. Get a job, go to school, get good grades, start a family, right? And for most people that works pretty well. Um, but increasingly large amounts of people, one, either can't make that work or end up on that path and something is just totally off. Now I think part of the nature of work and it becoming abstracted, we're not using our hands, we're not literally connecting to what we're doing anymore, people are just not as satisfied with their work. They're also taking these ideas like meaningful work and trying to fit it into a job container, and they're not quite getting what they want. And so there's this sort of confusion and people don't really know what to do with that feeling, and I think those feelings are really human ones of, like, wanting to matter, wanting to be useful, wanting to feel connected to the world, to people around us, to ourselves. Um, and that those are the things I'm arguing I think are worth finding. Um, but they're non-trivial to find and might require blowing up your life and doing things that don't look like success on paper.

Ali Abdaal 7:33 Yeah. I, yeah, I think that's, that's where this gets kinda tricky because, you know, just like, just like you I've had a very kind of traditional education, went into a job that was by all kind of external metrics and stuff like a prestigious and useful and good for society thing to do. And in a way when I decided to leave medicine to become a, you know, YouTuber for God's sake, that, you know, there was a huge part of me that was like, "Is this, is this really legit?" Like-

Paul Millerd 8:01 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 8:02 ... um, am I, am I making the right decision? Like will I essentially become a, an outcast or a pariah in society because I have gone for this-- I've, I've chosen to leave something as noble a profession as medicine which saves lives for the sake of making silly videos on the internet. Um, and so I, I think, I think that's part of it. It's like the what does-- what, what will society think of me? But I think also, like I've, I've had a bunch of conversations with people since, since I announced my decision to leave medicine and stuff. People now start emailing me having career crises that, "Oh, I've-- I'm in this job and the job pays well, but it's not the thing I really wanna do." How, how do you think about it in terms of

Ali Abdaal 8:40 like we all, we all need money to survive, right? Like so there is a baseline level of money that we need to get in our jobs, and the legible alternative careers of these days actually become a creator has become a lot more legible than it used to be back in the day. Become a creator is one of those things where there's basically zero guarantee of making any money at all, at least for the first, for the first while, especially if someone's a complete beginner to it. So how do you, how do you tackle that thing of I need money to survive, my job gives me money, but it's not the thing that I really wanna do?

Paul Millerd 9:12 I think the thing to do is sort of unpair the, the stories, the sh- the shoulds. We all have these like shoulds. I should do this, I should do that. And like really what I'm urging people to do is like actually reconnect with what-- how they're feeling. [chuckles] It sounds so easy, but even with like the creator path becoming more legible, more and more people are coming to me and saying, "Oh, I think I wanna quit my job and do my own thing." But then they'll list out a bunch of like concerns and issues they'll have, and I'll have to be like, "No. Like based on the people I know who are thriving on this path, you are not those people." So-

Ali Abdaal 9:52 What, what, what do you mean?

Paul Millerd 9:55 I think in the sense-

Ali Abdaal 9:56 You wanna go through-

Paul Millerd 9:57 I think in the sense that like they aren't like valuing the freedom of being on your own high enough. They aren't valuing-- They'll come to me with like, "Oh, what if I can't make money? What if I don't have predictable income?" And it's like you're not yet valuing the upsides of such a path. Like whereas a lot of the people I talk to, um, they're not coming to me for should I quit or not or how do I manage all these fears. They're coming to me and saying like, "Okay, I'm definitely leaving. [chuckles] Can you give me like five pieces of information to like help me improve how I'm doing this?" Right? And that's a certain personality type that is like craves freedom, needs autonomy over the how they're working, like really wants to like go on an adventure and do their own thing. And those are the people that are going to like thrive and make it. Whereas there's this meme now of like I wanna quit my job and do my own thing or become a creator, um, because people are seeing you can make money and gain status in it, though the status is probably questionable at the beginning. Um, and then they'll say, "Well, like, oh, I, I don't know if I'll be able to like pay my mortgage, and like I'm really concerned that like this isn't like a wise thing to do." And it's like those aren't actually things that like the people like desperately committed to this path are thinking or saying.

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Paul Millerd 13:21 I think there's just like that should like raise a red flag, right?

Ali Abdaal 13:24 Okay.

Paul Millerd 13:25 And be like, if those are your-- if like se- financial security is your primary se- like concern, [chuckles] like probably doing your own thing and having freedom is also not your primary concern, right? So it's really just checking in with like what you value. Now, you may still be somebody that wants to do their own thing and go on that path, but it's really figuring out like, "Okay, how can I just test this?" And that's where like the biggest thing I've realized is I don't think most people should quit their jobs. What I think most people should aspire to get in their life is like a one to three-month break from worker mode.

Ali Abdaal 14:06 Okay.

Paul Millerd 14:06 So worker mode is kind of like when you're hyper-scheduled, you're doing stuff constantly, you're moving towards stuff, you're working for other people, or you're just kind of in like an overscheduled reality, right? And getting that space in your life to sort of sit back and say like, "Okay, what am I doing with my life? What am I actually afraid of? What do I really value? Um, how does it feel to be out of worker mode? Do I feel really terrible in this mode? Okay, maybe my job has some hidden benefits and like upsides and things I do value that it wasn't visible to me before." So I think like what is really happening is like these default scripts are so powerful in society today that even the people that are thriving on that path don't really understand like why they're thriving on that path. So what I want people to do really is like reflect more and say like, "Okay, what, what do I value? What are the costs I'm paying, and what path makes sense given those things?"

Ali Abdaal 15:13 Ah, okay.

Ali Abdaal 15:14 That's nice. Okay, so step one, figure out what you value. Step two, figure out, I guess, how much that costs in terms of time, money, freedom, et cetera, like all of the things that it costs. And step three, is that a price worth paying? Um-

Paul Millerd 15:26 Yeah. So for you, I mean, we, we talked I think a year ago before you were leaving medicine, and I mean, you-- it sounded like your mother cares that you were a doctor, right? And that, that is a big thing for a lot of people. Like the number one question I ask people is like, "Will the people closest to you in your family judge you for making this decision? Um, and if so, like is that a cost you're willing to pay?" Right? And I imagine like you sort of ran that calculus and said, "Okay, something matters to me on this YouTube path." And I think like e-even at the beginning, you were downplaying it a little. I think you're inspiring a lot of people. You're creating jobs for people. You're giving people permission to create and do things, um, that are new and interesting. Um, are you s- I mean, are you still dealing with the challenge of like leaving that path?

Ali Abdaal 16:27 Uh, no, not really anymore. I think when I-- Yeah, when, when we last spoke, I think it was on your podcast, um, I was still like, "Oh, I'm n- I'm not really sure about it. I'm kind of half in, half out." But when I made the decision that, yep, it makes perfect sense to leave, at that point it felt like I had a lot of clarity and realized... It, it, it was really-- I, I think what was holding me back was feeling like, "Oh, to be honest, I could always go to b- go back to medicine if I want to." And in a way, it was always an option, and in a way it kind of still is an option.

Paul Millerd 17:03 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 17:03 But it took Lewis Howes on the School of Greatness podcast to prod me to be like, "Are you saying that if you des- if you were desperate for money, you would actually go back and do medicine?" To which my response was, "No." Like, I can-

Paul Millerd 17:14 Probably better ways to earn money.

Ali Abdaal 17:16 Yeah. There are far easier and more, for me, more interesting ways to earn money. And for me, what I realized is that, you know, if I, if I chart my life back from the age of like 11 onwards, the thing that I was doing in my spare time, the thing that I was doing for free, was sitting on a computer programming and making websites and trying to build cool stuff, and that was the thing I was thinking about in the shower. That was the thing I was doing at university-

Paul Millerd 17:37 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 17:37 ... while supposedly doing a medical degree. The, the main path was never the thing that I-- that brought me genuine joy other than when I was teaching other medical students. And so if I, you know, in, in this hypothetical worst case scenario where I lost absolutely everything, and, and I remember you saying [chuckles] when you were o- when, when you were on mine and my brother's podcast that, "Hey, you know, if you lost everything and you're broke and homeless, come over, stay at my place, and I'll, I'll feed and clothe you for a few months." [chuckles] And I was just like, that's... In a, in a way, hearing you say that just sort of pointed out to me the absurdity of the thing that I was actually worried about, that like I'm-- am I really worried about being broke and homeless and alone and no one will love me forever?

Paul Millerd 18:17 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 18:17 And it's like un-until I'd confronted that idea and realized that that's, that worst case scenario is actually not, is A, not that feasible, and B, I can recover from it because of friends, family, network and stuff, then it was more okay to be like, "You know what? Even if in the worst case scenario I lost everything, I probably still wouldn't go back to medicine." And it was that, that click in my mind that, yeah, I'm fully out of this now.

Paul Millerd 18:42 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 18:42 That really gave me the peace to be like, "You know what? This is fine. This is great." YouTube channel dies in the next five years, great. No worries. I'll start a tech startup. I'll learn how to code again. I'll program in Web3 Solidity or whatever the thing is there. I'll continue to write. I'll continue to teach, and I trust my skills in being able to make money off of the back of those things almost by default, which means they don't rely-- it doesn't rely on medicine to be the thing that I'm, I'm doing to make money.

Paul Millerd 19:08 Yeah, I've-- I wrote about this in my book. It's-- it almost sounds like you had a similar path to me. I grew up playing on computers, building websites, screwing around, doing-- like earning money on random things online, selling things on eBay, participating in these online like simulation NBA leagues. And then when I graduated college, the tech economy was booming, and I went and joined strategy consulting and made PowerPoint slides. And [chuckles] like in, in my day job, I was still like reading tech, tech blogs and like still screwing around with websites and writing online, and I just wasn't paying attention to it. Um, so I think it's a good thing that these paths are becoming more legible, but for me it was like, oh, I, I sort of had this moment a couple years into my journey, um, I was like writing, doing things online. It was like, "Oh wait, I'm doing exactly what I was doing as a kid." [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 20:03 Hmm.

Paul Millerd 20:04 It just took me 15 years to remember this is the things that energized me and I liked.

Ali Abdaal 20:11 Yeah. Yeah. Um, do you ev- okay, so I often hear from people... Uh, so, okay, hang on. I'm just, I'm, I'm just gonna zoom out a bit and-

Paul Millerd 20:19 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 20:19 ... and so, so we're talking step one, figure out what you value, step two, figure out how much it costs, and step three, make it happen. And so right now, I guess we're talking about step one. One way of figuring out what you value is thinking about what are the things you were doing as a kid? What were the things that genuinely brought you joy? What are the things you do outside of the day job that you would do for free? What are the things you're thinking about in the shower? Um, one, I ha-

Ali Abdaal 20:41 I, I've spoken to a few people who say that, you know, when, when it comes to this idea of essentially follow your passion and figure out what your passion is, that, "I don't know. I don't really know what I'm passionate about. I go home and I watch Netflix and I scroll Instagram, and occasionally I'll post a photo on Instagram, but like I don't really have any clear passions beyond that. Like, I don't know. How, how can I figure out..." And, and you know, I've, I've got my, my day job as a management consultant, for example, or a strategy consultant, but beyond that, I, I get home from work at like midnight. I have to wake up for work at 7:00 AM the next day.

Paul Millerd 21:11 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 21:11 I don't, you know, I kinda wanna play the guitar, but like I've never picked up a guitar 'cause I-- work is just too busy. Um, do you ever get sort of questions from, from, from people like that? How, how would you go about, I, I guess giving advice or giving suggestions to people in that position?

Paul Millerd 21:25 The-- I can-- I mean, I can share my story. That was me. Uh, the reason I did not leave my path sooner is because I didn't have any imagination for what other possible paths or lives I could take. I was mostly surrounded by people like me doing things exactly like I was, um, who are also not cultivating an imagination of different possible lives. So I think what I would say, like basically what I say with-- to people now is like different states are possible. There's a state possible where you can be so energized and like discovering ideas and, um, learning new things and reconnecting with that childhood joy. Like that state is possible. I think it is possible for most people. Now, knowing that state is possible, how can you raise the urgency in your life to like go find it? Now, I don't perfectly know how to find it, but there are a number of things that can help you find it. Like certain things like health crises will force you there.

Ali Abdaal 22:26 Yeah.

Paul Millerd 22:27 Um, I don't advise those, [chuckles] right? Um, losses of people in your life can do that for you. I think like the combo of a health crisis and losing my grandfather really like shook me and made me reflect on like what mattered. But still, it only planted the seeds, um, that I didn't fully explore even until I left my job. And I think a couple things-- two, two of the most powerful experiences for me, one was after seven months of freelancing, I decided I would not look for any work and I would not do any work, um, that I wasn't like fully drawn to do. And I just sort of woke up, woke up. I wandered around Boston. I was like writing. I launched my podcast at the time. I wasn't trying to make money 'cause like I didn't know how to make money in the creator economy at that point. It wasn't called the creator economy. Um, and like I just like it felt right. Like I was just like, "Something feels right. I don't know what this is, but I need to follow this." And I had this sense that I had to protect like the writing, um, the things I was doing. Um, and like making money was like I'd figure out ways to do that, but like I had to protect that time and the autonomy and freedom to do those things. Um, so that kind of committed me to the uncertain path. Um, and then the second thing was really just traveling and moving abroad to Asia. Um, I had started freelancing again, but moved to Asia and like couldn't find remote freelancing gigs.

Ali Abdaal 24:01 Hmm.

Paul Millerd 24:01 Like I just like was failing. Um, so I didn't have anything to do. Also, it was a lower cost of living, and I sort of just like showed up and did the same thing. And again, like I started writing again, and like I started to slowly realize writing is-- writing seems really important. And I reflected back and it's like, oh wow, I've been writing like every year of my life in some form. Um, so in 2018 I just decided like, write-- I need to pay attention. Like if writing disappears in my life, something has gone wrong. So that is the state I need to come back to. I need to protect that at all costs. Now, how I've made money has varied in so many different ways over the past five years, but like the writing has never disappeared.

Ali Abdaal 24:49 Yeah. So it sounds like part of the figuring out of what you value is finding the space to take a break away from the, I guess, rat race of continuing to, you know, to continuing to be in work mode, and in a way figuring out like re-- al-almost Realizing what you naturally want to spend your time doing

Paul Millerd 25:12 Yeah. And m- maybe for you that sort of naturally just took over your life, like you were already doing those things. Like, I think spending 10 years in the corporate world sor- sorta numbed my creativity and imagination. In a way, maybe if you start thinking about these things earlier and younger, it doesn't affect you as much. But a lot of the past five years have just been a sort of unlearning of, like, certain cynical modes, being like, I don't know, a little too passive, a little too powerless, and, like, realizing, oh, I, I can show up and do things I wanna do. [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 25:51 What do you mean?

Paul Millerd 25:53 So in the sense that, I mean, when you're in the corporate world, even if you're, like, in an impressive position, you're still constantly asking for permission, and you're constantly being told, "No, you can't do things." "Hey, this cool new tool, we should try this." You, you can't just, like, update a website at a company.

Ali Abdaal 26:12 Yeah.

Paul Millerd 26:12 Like, I can do that now. I can just, like, update a website and come up with a new service that I'm offering people and just do it in, an hour. Um, that's like a six-month to two-year process at a company sometimes. [chuckles] So, like, going from that state of possibility, which is, like, very little possibility, you start just, like, giving up ideas of what's possible to, like, having to be on your own and self-employed and starting to like, "Okay, how do I regenerate that, like, creativity, energy, like, possibility for life?" Um, and I think this is why I love following people like you. I, I sort of just like-- I see people like you and other creators come up with ideas, and I'm like, "Oh, wow, that's really interesting. I never thought of that. I could do something like that in a different way, in my own unique way."

Ali Abdaal 27:04 Just a quick little break before we get right back to the episode, and that's to let you know that this episode is very kindly brought to you by Shortform. Shortform is the world's best service for reading summaries of books. But it's more than just book summaries. What Shortform does is it basically creates a sort of study guide for tons and tons of different nonfiction books from all sorts of genres from self-help and personal development to money and history and philosophy. It's just got loads of really interesting books, and they summarize them firstly with a cool one-page summary, but then they also have chapter-by-chapter outlines of each book. And in between the chapter summaries, they also have kind of interactive exercise sections where you can take the insights from the book and actually apply them to your life. And the other cool thing about Shortform is that if, for example, an author says something that is a little bit dodgy or that has been debunked or kind of disagreed with, with another author, then the Shortform team will write a note saying that, "Hey, you know, this person said this thing about this topic, but actually that has been debunked by this other person," and they'll bring in another source. And so it's not just a way of getting summaries of books, it's also a way of expanding your understanding of the genre as a whole. For example, Shortform have recently released a summary of Building a Second Brain, a new book by Tiago Forte. And so whether you've read the book or whether you haven't, you can revisit or visit some of the ideas in the book. And then based on that, you can decide if you wanna actually read the book, which is often how I personally use book summaries. So if any of that sounds up your street and you too would like to try out the world's best service for summarizing books, then head over to shortform.com/deepdive, and firstly, that will give you a completely free five-day trial where you can try it out and see if you like it, and it will also give you 20% off the annual premium subscription, which is the thing that I personally subscribe to. So thank you so much, Shortform, for sponsoring this episode.

Ali Abdaal 28:40 Yeah, yeah, I think often I find th- kind of through c- through conversations with people that another thing that holds them back is, is-- So, so, so for example, a, you know, a close friend of mine is a high- highly paid strategy consultant, and she's been toying with the idea of quitting the job. Um, but one thing that's been holding her back is the idea that, "Oh, currently in my high-paying job as a strategy consultant, I am making X amount of money," which is like, I don't know, high six figures or something like that, or, uh, low six figures. "And therefore, in order for me to quit my job, I need to make sure I can make the same amount of money doing something else."

Paul Millerd 29:19 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 29:19 And it's like, oh, but I can't make the same amount of money doing something else because it's-- Oh my, how the hell do you make six figures a year doing, uh-

Paul Millerd 29:25 Right

Ali Abdaal 29:25 ... you know, doing your own thing? There- therefore, I couldn't possibly quit my job because I need that money to be able to, 10 years from now, send kids to private school. Or like, you know, I wanna, I wanna save money. I wanna get on the property ladder, and therefore I kinda have to stay in this job because of the m- because of the, the golden handcuffs in a, in a way. Um, yeah. How, how do you, how do you approach that?

Paul Millerd 29:45 That's, that's the cost part. I've never matched my salary when I left five years ago. Um, this is the first year maybe I will come close. Um, but I don't know, and then it's uncertain after that. So, like, this is, like, what cost are you willing to pay? For me, I was willing to pay enormous costs because I had sort of discovered this path is not a winning strategy for life for me. I was so certain after 10 years on that path that, like, if I spent five more years on that path, I would definitely become less of a person I was proud of. And that was so incredibly costly to me that, like, replacing my salary was like, this is trivial. Like, this is my life. [chuckles] And I think-- I mean, the thing that seeded that for me was five years before quitting my job, like a health crisis. I was out of work, and I had sort of lost my identity. I was just sitting around, and, like, I desperately wanted my identity back, and I went through this reflection exercise of, like, what would happen if I couldn't work again? And it was like, oh, I'd be okay. Like, I'd have my family. I'd have people to take me in. That's why I make the offer to you, and the offer still stands. I'll take you in if you, uh, [chuckles] go a few months without salary. Um, but Yeah, it's-- I was willing to give it up. So like this is why I share my income too. Like my income the first five years w- like if I look after tax, it was like 45 because I was freelancing, then like 30, then 25, and then I think last year it was like 55-

Ali Abdaal 31:29 Okay

Paul Millerd 31:29 ... thousand US.

Ali Abdaal 31:30 Fifty-five thousand dollars a year. Okay.

Paul Millerd 31:33 US, yeah. Um, so I've sort of been-

Ali Abdaal 31:35 Which I guess compared to kind of a strategy consulting job is very low.

Paul Millerd 31:39 Yeah, and I was making-- I think my final year, the-- it was probably about 170, 180 US a year, and when I left, I had about 50 grand in savings. Um, so I sort of said, "Okay, I can live for a year on 50 grand of savings. I need a year just to like figure out what I wanna do with my life." Like my surface level plan was like, I wanna be a freelance consultant, but I sort of discovered quickly like, "Oh, this is just recreating my previous life," but like slightly less work. Um, but in that space, the less work, I was able to get enough like breathing room that it was like, "Ooh, I wonder what would happen to my life. What are the possibilities if I like keep following this uncertain journey?" So like this is the equation I talk about in my book. Like it sort of flips once you add this sense of wonder or possibility to an uncertain discomfort. Uncertain discomfort is terrifying.

Ali Abdaal 32:40 Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty scary. [chuckles]

Paul Millerd 32:42 But if you pair it with wonder, like ooh, what might also happen, then you s- can sort of im- immunize yourself for a certain period of time. And I mean, this is when I start reading like people like David Whyte or Rebecca Solnit and like people that are like giving me courage to like follow these uncertain journeys. And this is when you need poetry and literature and like [chuckles] all these people that are like, "Trust the flow of the universe." Like you need that stuff because like you have no idea what you're doing. And then when you're doing it at the beginning, you-- I also-- Like people would ask me, "What are you doing?" And so like I would feel the need to be like, "I know exactly what I'm doing. Here's my..." It's I had no idea what I was doing, and I was terrified. Now you-- Like every time somebody asked me, it would scare me. Um, so yeah, you sort of have to have this surface level story, but at the same time, just this deep sense of like, "Okay, there's a direction. I'm gonna follow it, but I, I may also be wrong." Like that's-

Ali Abdaal 33:43 Yeah

Paul Millerd 33:43 ... the deepest humility in the world, like I may be wrong. And I think that's the best way to follow any path.

Ali Abdaal 33:51 Yeah. No, that's nice. Yeah, I think, I think it was when I added in the component of wonder that I st- suddenly started to feel okay with the decision to leave medicine and pursue this uncertain path because-- And with, with, with medicine and with most traditional careers, there is a level of certainty you get. You know that, okay, if I con- if I stick at this for long enough, I will get the promotion. I will apply for specialty training in X number of years, then it will take eight years to become a consultant and then da, da, da, da, da, da, and then I'll die. Um, but with the uncertain path, it's like, uh, right, right now, I mean, I don't really know what I'm doing. My YouTube channel is kinda going well, or maybe it's not. Maybe my podcast is doing well, or maybe my side little software business is doing well, or maybe I have nothing at all. I have no side hustles, and I just know I've got enough savings and enough of a family and friends safety net to be able to spend a year experimenting. And then I know that if that experiment fails and I ended up, end up needing to go back to a job, great, I'll just get another job. But if the experiment succeeds, I guess kind of the upside of that is that I have figured out a way to live my life, um, that is more in line with the person that I wanna be.

Ali Abdaal 34:59 And for me, it was in, uh, th-there was a lot of, a lot of fear around this uncertainty. But when I added the component of, yeah, you know, it would be interesting. It would be kind of interesting to see. I'm sure I'll be able to figure something out, and even if not, worst case scenario, I've got family that I can le- I can lean on to kinda help pr- help prop me up. That made it feel much more okay. And even now, even with like all of the traditional metrics of success on the YouTube channel and the business and everything, I still feel the sense of like five years from now, I have absolutely no idea what I'm gonna be doing.

Paul Millerd 35:27 Oh, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 35:28 But it's like, uh, sort of em- embracing that with a sense of, uh, excitement, curiosity, adventure, which I manage to do about half the time. The other half of the time, it still feels really scary, and I think, "Oh my God, I don't know what I'm, I'm gonna be doing five years from now." [chuckles]

Paul Millerd 35:42 Well, yeah, and I think that's the part a lot of people don't talk about on these paths, and I think people probably miss when they look at people they deem successful, right? They're mapping their idea of success onto you. Now, like I see some of the success you're doing, but I also know for sure you're in the same point as me of like, you have no idea-- We have no idea what's gonna be happening in five years-

Ali Abdaal 36:09 Yeah

Paul Millerd 36:09 ... as opposed to being in a more traditional career path. Um, but I think one of the benefits of an uncertain path is it forces a constant grappling with the uncertainty. Like one of the things I didn't realize on my previous path was that no one ever asks you, "Why are you doing this?"

Ali Abdaal 36:30 Ooh.

Paul Millerd 36:31 Like no, no one deeply asked me, "Why, why are you working as a strategy consultant? Why would you p- pursue this path?" It was so obvious, right? Because like everyone thinks it's impressive, and like everyone knows you make like good money. Um, then as soon as I quit, people are like, "What are you doing? How could you give up this job? What's your plan? Don't you want a family? Don't you want a house? Don't you worry about this?" And like [chuckles] you start to realize everyone has these fears, and then you realize, "Oh crap, I have them too, and now I have to face them." [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 37:04 [chuckles]

Paul Millerd 37:05 So like I think what I've learned to do over the, the journey over the last five years is you sort of are able to take these massive ambiguous like- Fear of death, fear of being loved, fear of not belonging, and like break it down into like mini daily existential crises. So n- now like I can kind of like in a mindful way, like I s- see the like fear of uncertainty coming up and I'm like, "I see you. I see you. All right. Money insecurity, fear of going broke, been here before. All right, we can deal with you." [chuckles] "Gotten through this before, gone through stretches of not making money for a couple months. We'll be fine." Um, but it's still there. I don't know if it ever goes away.

Ali Abdaal 37:51 I was tweeting the other day about like, you know, what it feels like to hit three million subscribers and kind of how it's a sort of metrics are a double-edged sword, and you linked me to this article, uh, by Paul Jarvis about finding your enough point. And that like--

Ali Abdaal 38:06 that was a, that was a good, that was a good article. I, I was like, there's, uh... It's always nice when you post what you're thinking on Twitter and someone responds with the absolute perfect advice that you need to hear. Um, this, this idea of figuring out what is enough is something that I continue to grapple with in the sense that, you know, I'm in a very privileged position now where it's like, oh, the business is growing and growing and growing, and it's like now I need to decide how much do I want to continue to stress out in terms of, you know, numbers going up. But another part of me is also like, I ne- I need to make sure the numbers continue going up because I need to have a safety net, a na- safety net of ten million-

Paul Millerd 38:49 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 38:49 ... in stocks and shares and crypto and real estate, and crypto is a bit volatile anyway, so, so I need to make sure that I have at least enough money to be able to 4% return, make at least 100K a year off of just the investment returns. And it's like the point of enough, I haven't really figured it out, figured out what it is, but it keep-- it's a very high number right now and it keeps on getting bigger and bigger as the business grows. And I know that that kind of thinking left unchecked or like not examined is just like generally very unhelpful and not a way to live a, live a happy life. Um, I wonder if you can share your perspective on how do you figure out what is enough for you and at what point you can stop pursuing more in the sense of money and fame and numbers and ambition and promotions and all, all of those [chuckles] traditional metrics of success.

Paul Millerd 39:34 Yeah. So I think this goes with another default script. The default, like drive in our world is more. It's always going to be more. So unless you're explicitly defining an alternative to more, it is more, right? And I think that is good to sort of acknowledge because, I mean, you have employees now, so like unless you're telling them, "We're not trying to make as much money as possible," that is the assumption in like a business and a job and things, right? Um, so you could probably do interesting things. I mean, like Paul Jarvis defined, "Okay, I'm not hiring employees ever." That is a constraint he created. That doesn't limit the amount of income he can earn, but it does limit it to a certain degree. Um, yeah, and then I think what you can do is like just-- I attempted to write my own definition. I can read mine. I wrote it in the book.

Ali Abdaal 40:34 Oh, yeah, what is yours?

Paul Millerd 40:35 [chuckles] And defined it in the book. So I basically just decided like Jarvis is like I should just define what enough is and like write out my definition. So let's see.

Ali Abdaal 40:53 Bringing up my Kindle highlights from the book as well.

Paul Millerd 40:55 [chuckles] Yeah, get the branding. So, um, enough is knowing that no amount of money in my bank account will ever satisfy my deepest fears. It's knowing that I have enough friends that would gladly open their door and share a meal if I was ever in need. It's the feeling that I've been able to spend my time over an extended stretch of time working on projects that are meaningful to me, helping people with a spirit of generosity, and having enough space and time in my life to stay energized to keep doing this over the long term. Enough is seeing a clear opportunity that will increase my earnings in the short term, but knowing that saying no might open me up to things that could be even more valuable in ways that are hard to understand. Enough is knowing that the clothes, fancy meal, or latest gadget will not make me happier, but also that buying such things won't mean that I'm going to end up broke. Enough is having meaningful conversations with people that inspire me, people that I love, or people that support me.

Ali Abdaal 41:54 Nice. How, how often do you return to that definition? Like how is it-- Does it help you in kinda day-to-day life?

Paul Millerd 42:03 Yeah. I, I think by writing these things, I think by doing a lot of my writing, it's a sort of ongoing reminder to myself that I'm trying to live a sort of principled life. And I think by writing about these things, I'm-- A lot of what I'm trying to do is just hold myself accountable. Like I'm saying these things matter, like putting generosity over making my own money. Okay, how do I actually do that? Um, am I bullshitting on that? Like [chuckles] how am I actually doing that? And then also not being too stuck to these stories I tell about myself and like trying to do things just to like virtue signal. Like I wanna do things that are really aligned with like how I'm wired. I love helping people. I love like connecting with people. I love helping random people on the internet and like navigate their paths. I love these things and like that's why I've kept doing them. Um, but I don't wanna be like unnecessarily tied to like, "Oh, I have to do these things because I'm writing about it." Um, so it's just constant reflection and trying to be honest with what I really care about.

Ali Abdaal 43:14 Just a quick note from one of our sponsors, and we'll get right back to the episode. And this episode is very kindly brought to you by Skillshare. If you haven't heard by now, Skillshare is one of the world's leading platforms for online classes for online education. They've got thousands and thousands of classes on all sorts of topics, from business, entrepreneurship, lifestyle design, cooking, interior design, loads of stuff. And very excitingly, I have actually been teaching on Skillshare since 2019, and I've got 13 classes on Skillshare. Yes, 13 classes. And you can access all of them completely free of charge by going to skillshare.com/deepdive, and that link will give you a free one-month trial to Skillshare, during which you can watch any and all of my classes. One class you might be interested in is my YouTube for Beginners class. If you've ever thought about starting a YouTube channel, this is the class for you. I'll take you step by step across, like, three, four hours, something like that, through all of the steps you need to take to make your first two videos on YouTube, how to do the channel art, how to think of a name, all of that fun stuff. And loads of people have taken that class and said that that class was so good that they would have literally paid hundreds of dollars for it. But you get it completely for free on Skillshare by going to skillshare.com/deepdive. After your trial's over, you can choose to continue the subscription if you like, and you can access the thousands of classes Skillshare has from other teachers, including people that I know, people I'm friends with, like Thomas Frank and Nathaniel Drew. But yeah, the main reason to check out Skillshare, of course, is that you wanna check out my classes if you wanna learn about productivity and video editing and YouTubing and even cooking. So head over to skillshare.com/deepdive, and thank you so much, Skillshare, for sponsoring this episode.

Ali Abdaal 44:35 Uh, one thing I wanted to ask you about is kind of this idea of following energy versus following money. And I wonder if you can elaborate on, on what you mean by that.

Paul Millerd 44:43 There's a lot of people that are very hyper-analytical. We grew up in a world that clearly values money, and it's very easy to understand, like, things that turn into money. I think the mistake is over-indexing on, on that and just not paying attention to, like, what the actual energy of, like, what you're doing is. And, like, I think people can get trapped in l- like local minimum, where they're optimizing around, like, something that produces money, um, and possibly even miss out on sort of those unknown opportunities that can emerge from just giving yourself time to explore other things or saying no to those things, right?

Ali Abdaal 45:34 Yeah.

Paul Millerd 45:35 I imagine early on in doing YouTube videos, you sort of noticed, "Oh, I like this." [chuckles] Like, in some ways, like, you can't actually make it to where you are now without actually being energized by what you were doing.

Ali Abdaal 45:51 Yeah, absolutely.

Paul Millerd 45:52 Es- especially at the early stage.

Ali Abdaal 45:55 Yeah.

Paul Millerd 45:56 So I think this advice is, like, super important at the early stage, where, like, people think the issue, especially, like, if they wanna follow a creator path, is like, "I need to make money as soon as possible." I think a lot of times that will short-circuit this exploratory mode and, like, sort of finding paths where you can ride that energy wave, um, such that, like, people can't actually make it to that second phase where they can commit to that path.

Ali Abdaal 46:26 Yeah.

Paul Millerd 46:27 So there's a lot of different ways you can do this, right? You can do like, "All right, I'm gonna do, do a 30-day challenge," where, where like, I call it ship, quit, and learn. Um, ship 30 posts, 30 videos, 30 something. Even do, like, seven. Do it small enough that you know you can do it. Design it to quit. But, like, in the process of doing it, notice, "Oh, do I like this? Do I wanna do more? Do I find myself trying to learn more things?" If you're, like, resenting doing the post on, like, the fourth day-

Ali Abdaal 47:00 Yep

Paul Millerd 47:00 ... like, you need to pay attention to that. You'll never make it to 100. [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 47:05 I love that. That's sick. Riding the energy wave. Yeah, this is, like, basically the concept of my whole book. Uh, it's about, like, how the secret to effortless and sustainable productivity is to figure out what energizes you and go towards that. And if you're having to do stuff, like your day job, that doesn't energize you, then there is a way that you can approach it to an extent that makes it more of an energy source and less of an energy drain. And I think that's why for me, like, making YouTube videos, doing the-- these podcasts, the s- the, the, the stuff I've done has almost never felt like a chore. There are still... You know, there, there are times when it does, where it's like, "Ugh, sponsor deadline. We should probably get out a video tomorrow." Um, but those are very, very few, and broadly, I feel enormously energized by doing videos and stuff, and that's great. And it's just such a competitive advantage as well, in the sense that if someone else is trying to be a YouTuber because they wanna make money, but I'm doing it because I genuinely enjoy it and it energizes me, it's like-

Paul Millerd 48:04 You'll win

Ali Abdaal 48:04 ... I am way more likely to keep going [chuckles] than the other person that is not gonna see any kind of momentum on the money front for a while.

Paul Millerd 48:11 Yeah. Like, I mean, I see a lot of people start newsletters and stuff, and I sort of know I'll probably make it to, like, 1,000 issues of my newsletter. [chuckles] Like, I've, I've tapped into something and so I can play a, a slower and stupider game in some ways. Like, I don't need to worry about monetizing or scaling or growing it or being super successful, because that's sort of taking care of itself and, like, as long as I protect the energy that, like, is naturally going there anyway, I'm gonna keep doing it. So then in some ways, ambition and how much money or, like, how successful you wanna be is really a question of, like, speed and time.

Ali Abdaal 48:52 Hmm.

Paul Millerd 48:54 So it's like, uh... And I think I've started to, like, rethink ambition o- over the past couple of years as I've, like, gotten more of a footing on my path. It's like, okay, I can be ambition- ambitious just over, like, a longer stretch of time. Like, I don't need to crush it in three months, but, like, I can sort of have a, a sensible plan to, like, take the three to five-year plan and, like, because doing it at that speed will be a little more fun for me.

Ali Abdaal 49:23 Yeah. Yeah, I was listening to a good, um, uh, Ca- Cal Newport chatting to Tim Ferriss on Tim Ferriss' podcast where they were talking about-

Paul Millerd 49:30 Oh, that was a great episode

Ali Abdaal 49:31 ... this idea of like-- Yeah.

Paul Millerd 49:31 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 49:32 Slo- slow productivity or-

Paul Millerd 49:33 Slow productivity

Ali Abdaal 49:33 ... patient productivity. Yeah. Where it's like you're, you're optimizing for creating meaningful output across a 10-year time horizon rather than a 10-day time horizon or a 10-week time horizon. And that just means that, you know, if I was thinking about, can I make cool stuff in the world in a way that I enjoy and that help... is helpful to other people, that energizes me, but I'm doing it over the next five to 10 years, then it means that I probably spend more time deep working on my book, for example, rather than feeling the need to every single week bang out another two YouTube videos, because that's all very sort of short-term productivity. Whereas the more longer term tends to be the thing that's, uh, well, potentially the thing that is-- tends to be a little bit more needle moving. But also, I guess it just depends on what, what you enjoy. There are some people that love the high octaneness of putting out content every week or even every day or even-

Paul Millerd 50:22 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 50:22 ... multiple times a day, and there are others of us that would rather kind of take it a bit slow, and as long as we're doing the things that we enjoy, we're being-- we're feeling energized by them, and I guess they're useful to other people in some way, then that's a, that's a reasonable path as well.

Paul Millerd 50:36 I think in the last year, I've sort of realized I'm on a path that's really aligned with what I value. So I, I don't pay much of a cost for like worrying that other people see my path as low status. I'm like, "Eh, whatever." [chuckles] Um, I also am not too worried about like not making tons of money. I just like don't have much material aspirations, nor does my wife. Um, so-- And I highly value the, like, creative connection and that creative mode. Like, it's so valuable to me. It gives my life so much energy and, um, like just keeps me going, like at such a deep level. So I can sort of look around and like see people panicking about money, like starting on this path, and it's like, I'll probably still be doing this in like 20 years. [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 51:35 Yeah.

Paul Millerd 51:35 And the way the internet's going, like you can sort of just bet on like, okay, you'll probably be okay because like this is just an expanding space and like you'll figure out some stuff, you'll slowly get better. Maybe at a slower rate than other people, but you'll be fine.

Ali Abdaal 51:51 Yeah. Yeah. No, I like that. Okay. So, so

Ali Abdaal 51:55 coming back to our sort of anchoring three p- three-part framework of like step one, figure out what you value, step two, figure out how much it costs, and step three, figure out if you're willing to make that trade. So within figure out what you value, we talked about like the shower test or the free time test. What do you find yourself drawn to in your s- in your free time? Um, I love this idea of yours of like, um, ship, learn, quit. What was that? Ship, learn, quit? Try something out and-

Paul Millerd 52:18 Ship, quit, and learn.

Ali Abdaal 52:19 Ah, ship, quit, learn. That's the one. Sort of try, try something out, you know, thinking like, "Oh, maybe I want to be some kind of YouTuber." Okay, cool. Try making videos for four weeks, once a week, and, and see, and see how you feel. Uh, learn from that. And the more of these experiments you run on yourself, the more of a barometer you get for what are the things that I value. And one way of doing that is to figure out, did this thing give me energy? Did I feel almost effortlessly incentivized to continue, or did it feel like a chore? And I guess if I'm-- if I think of people I know who say that they don't really have any hobbies and they don't really know what they value, they tend to have done very few experiments of this kind. They'll have ideas in their head of like, "Oh, maybe it would be cool to do X, Y, Z," but then they won't-

Paul Millerd 53:06 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 53:06 ... they won't, they won't try it out because, uh... And, you know, this is, I guess, kind of the way we're taught is that like this thought of-

Paul Millerd 53:13 It has to be perfect.

Ali Abdaal 53:14 Yeah, it ha- it has to be perfect and it has to be long-term. It has to be sustainable. It's like, "Oh, maybe I wanna be a YouTuber," but I can't imagine what that looks like for the next 10 years. It's like, don't worry about the next 10 years. [chuckles] I should get... I should take this advice myself. Don't worry about the next 10 years. Just try it for now, try it for a little bit and see if it energizes you. And if it does, then that gives you a decent data point, and that is something that you potentially value. So other than what do you, what do you find yourself doing in your spare time and run experiments and see what vibes with you, do you have any other strategies for helping, helping people figure out what they actually value in life? [chuckles] I guess that's a big question.

Paul Millerd 53:48 Yeah. I mean, what, what you value, I think reflecting, asking the hard questions. We all know the hard questions we need to ask. Um, it's just really sitting down and like grappling with our answers. Sometimes we don't like our own answers, so we hide from them. I think in terms of like finding things you actually wanna do, what I've found is that if you give people enough free time, and this is why I think like ta- finding a way to take a one-month sabbatical in your life is so vital to like reclaiming the energy in your life. Like, people will just start doing stuff. In like 99% of cases of people I talk to, they, they start to, "Oh, wow, I st- I literally forgot I liked playing this instrument as a kid, and I just started doing it." [chuckles] And like, you hear these stories over and over again. Um, "Oh, I started volunteering at a local garden, and I was just like walking around my neighborhood and I like remembered I like engaging in my local community." So it's like we all have this. Like, I don't think this is a hard thing to do. I think the thing that's hard is we often have things that out-compete or zap our energy. Um, and the thing that's worth noting is like, this is why it's so important just to like get reps of experiment. Like, this is why I love helping people to like just start stuff. Do 100 tweets, do five posts, do five YouTube videos. Like, even just do one, um, just to realize you can do stuff in the world. We don't need permission anymore. We have more freedom to do more things than like at, at any time before. It's such an amazing time to be alive. Um, and then these things compound. Like, I see even you, like, I feel like you're launching and trying new things, like, all the time. And that's-- that makes so much sense because you realize, like, the more experiments you do, like, you constantly wanna, like, keep learning and, like, keep finding those new spaces, those new ideas, those new avenues, those new energy slipstreams.

Ali Abdaal 55:57 Yeah. Yeah, and I guess as we, as we run the experiments, like, i- if it-- whether it's in my personal life or as a, as a team in the business, we're, we're getting really useful data points from them. Like, we, you know, we were-- ran an experiment thinking, "Oh, we should totally start a h- whole new YouTube channel," the Part-Time Creator Academy, teaching people how to be creators. Then we tried it, you know, planned it out, did the whole thing, um, bashed out... You know, we, we had, like, sev- like, seven videos filmed and ready to go, and it would-- You know, just the feeling of the project was so energy-draining, like, "Ugh-

Paul Millerd 56:27 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 56:27 ... this is such a heavy lift. We don't have the capacity to do this. If we wanted to do this thing, it would require us to hire an extra probably five people or cut some other projects." And in, in the end, we decided, "You know what? Let's take the loss on this." Uh, it was an experiment. We tried it out. It didn't work. The idea is still good. Someone, someone could totally take that idea and run with it, but it's not something we wanna do right now. And then we pivoted from that into thinking, "What if we just did it as a newsletter and a Twitter account instead?" It's like, ah, all of a sudden it's like that feels like-- that feels like all of the weight has been lifted off because now that's a thing that, you know, other people in the team can write and can take ownership of, rather than me having to be on camera at all times. So that was great. So now we've built this thing, and we were like, "Okay, cool. Let's connect it to the course." And now that's sparked the opportunity to p- potentially collab with other creators and create courses for them, because that's fun, and we're all about sharing ideas. And it's like doing an experiment and just sort of doing it quickly and realizing, "Okay, what is the data? What is the learning we've gotten from this experiment?" And even if lots of time and money has gone into it, you know, that sunk cost fallacy, it's way better to quit a thing early [chuckles] or quit a thing-

Paul Millerd 57:26 Yeah, for sure

Ali Abdaal 57:26 ... when you know it's not right than it is to worry, "Oh, but we spent like six months preparing for this already." And so I think that attitude of experimentation applied to life in general. You know, like I've been saying for the last couple of years, "Oh, I really wanna travel the world and do the digital nomad thing." The appropriate response there and the advice I would give to someone else is, "Well, just try it out for two weeks, see what happens."

Paul Millerd 57:46 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 57:46 And so right now I'm in Wales. We're on this four-day team retreat. We're still making the podcast happen. The internet's a bit sketch. It's cut out a couple of times, but oh well, it's working. The setup looks good.

Paul Millerd 57:54 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 57:54 No one's gonna complain about quality issues 'cause the camera's sick. Um, this is great. I'm currently looking o- on, over, over these, like, ridiculous fields at, like, some cows and sheep and stuff, and this is so nice. And so what I should do is probably experiment with, "Okay, my hypothesis is that I think I would enjoy the digital nomad lifestyle. Great. Let's experiment. Let's try it out for two weeks. Let's see what happens. Cool. I enjoyed that. All right. That's g- that, that's good data points. Let's now try it out for a month. Let's now try it out for three." Whereas I think the thing that's holding me back on that front is thinking that, "Oh, in order for me to experience the, the digital nomad lifestyle, I need to wait for the conditions to be perfect. I need to have a whole year-

Paul Millerd 58:27 Right

Ali Abdaal 58:27 ... where I have nothing to do and no responsibilities, and then I can take a one-- get a one-way ticket to Bali or, or something like that." [chuckles] And that's just such a dumb way of looking at it, and I-- it's only now saying this out loud that I realize that that's subconsciously how I've been approaching it, because I haven't been consciously thinking about what is the smallest unit of experimentation that I could apply to get, to gather data about this hypothesis that maybe I would enjoy this kind of lifestyle.

Paul Millerd 58:52 Yeah, and I think this is a key point, which is, like, you're starting with, like, a story of, like, a script of, like, what a digital nomad should be [chuckles] when, like, what you're really trying to test is, like, would it be cool to work in a different location than my home base?

Ali Abdaal 59:10 Yeah.

Paul Millerd 59:10 That's it.

Ali Abdaal 59:11 Basically, yeah. [chuckles]

Paul Millerd 59:12 Right? Um, and I think where people get into a lot of trouble on traditional paths or other things is, like, when they're trying to be something [chuckles] r- rather than, like-

Ali Abdaal 59:23 Be-

Paul Millerd 59:23 ... literally just be themselves.

Ali Abdaal 59:27 Be something-

Paul Millerd 59:27 Right?

Ali Abdaal 59:27 ... rather than be themselves. Okay.

Paul Millerd 59:29 Like Ram Dass ta-

Ali Abdaal 59:29 So trying to be a digital nomad, trying to be a creator.

Paul Millerd 59:33 Yeah, like Ram Dass talks about this idea of, like, the, this spacesuit. Like, you go on Earth and you wear this spacesuit of, like, this person that's you, and you're sort of performing all these roles. And, like, really the human experience is remembering that, like, you aren't that spacesuit. You're just, like, this human body [chuckles] and, like, you're just living in the present moment. Um, so what-- how, how does that apply to, like, work, right? Where, like, people don't wanna leave their jobs because, like, "I am a consultant that makes this amount of money," and, like, "I need to be that kind of person that makes this amount of money," right? When it's like y- the real question to ask is, like, are you feeling this fire in your soul that is telling you there is possibility and wonder to be found in the world? And, like, how long are you going to not listen to that voice in service of, like, continuing to maintain this beingness of that role and identity?

Ali Abdaal 1:00:39 Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely.

Paul Millerd 1:00:44 Like e- even the, the digital nomad stuff, uh, I sort of stumbled upon it by accident. I took a one-month trip to Asia, and I landed a freelance project right before I left because somebody reached out and I said, like, "Not available." They're like, "We like your background though. Can you please help us?" So I was like, "All right. I'll do it 10 hours a week from Asia for, like, double what I normally charge." And they're like-

Ali Abdaal 1:01:11 Hmm

Paul Millerd 1:01:11 ... "Fine." I'm like, "Oh, wow." [chuckles] So I, like, fully funded my trip, and then I found myself in Bali. This is the first year of self-employment. Um, I was staying at a $20 a night surfer hostel o- overlooking, like, surfers with my friend, and, like, I walked down the rock ledge to a cafe, and I'm, like, overlooking the ocean, doing work, paying, like, way more than $20 an hour. And I'm just like, "Oh, wow, I never even thought about the possibility of doing this." [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 1:01:47 Yeah.

Paul Millerd 1:01:48 And I sort of had this like, what else like haven't I imagined? And that-

Ali Abdaal 1:01:52 Yeah

Paul Millerd 1:01:52 ... sort of just expanded my imagination. And on that trip I decided I'm gonna move back to Asia. And like figure it out. Like-

Ali Abdaal 1:02:02 Yeah.

Paul Millerd 1:02:03 And I really didn't have a plan, and like I really was almost like crippled by the questions that summer from my family. Like the-- pe- people were asking, "What's your plan?" Like, "You don't have any money." Like, "Y- you're gonna run out of money. What are you gonna do for healthcare? Are you gonna move there forever?" And like it was just a experiment. I was gonna do it for three months. Like I didn't have a plan. I didn't know if I would like not have work. Um, but a month into my trip, like I started to change my life and met my now wife. Um, and [chuckles] that sort of changed everything. Um...

Ali Abdaal 1:02:39 Yeah, that's d-- Yeah, this is definitely something I need to be-- I, I, I, I w- I want to be and, and, and will be more mindful of, just this attitude of experimentation. Like I was, I was re-listening-

Paul Millerd 1:02:48 I think you're good at it, though. [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 1:02:50 Yeah. No, I think I-

Paul Millerd 1:02:50 So like-

Ali Abdaal 1:02:51 ... I think I'm good at it. I, I think I'm good at it at work. I think I'm less good at it in my personal life.

Paul Millerd 1:02:56 Fair.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:56 Like, um, I w- I was re-listening to an, an interview I did with Noah Kagan on like back, back in the day when I was doing livestreams on the YouTube channel, um, 'cause we released that as a episode on "The Deep Dive" as like an in-betweenisode. And one thing he said, he was like, "Hey, you know, I've always been interested in the idea of living in a van, so I just rented a van and I'm gonna live in it for three weeks." And I was just-- I, I w- was listening to that like now two years later after the interview thinking, "Damn, that's such a good attitude." It's like I've also-

Paul Millerd 1:03:23 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:03:23 ... kind of been watching the van life videos on YouTube and thinking, "Huh, I wonder what it would be like to live in a van." And I've just not taken the step to be like, "I could just rent a van for a week and see what happens." And I've just been caught up in the default script of, "Oh, I guess I'm living in London now. I'm-- I guess I have a studio and an office, therefore I guess every day I have to go to work. And like on the weekends I guess I go home and see my family." But I could do all that from a van just to see what it's like living in a van. Like why, why not? And I was kind of like thinking, thinking to myself like that, that exact thought process that you had is like, "Damn, what other things have I just thought of that, 'Oh, it would be cool to do X,' and just not done the extra step of, 'All right, how do I try this out for a few days or for a week or for a couple of weeks?'" Or just like, "How do, how do I turn this into an experiment and let's see what happens?"

Paul Millerd 1:04:10 I do wonder if in certain cities, like I was living in Boston and New York for a long time, and in London, if there's just this sort of like gravitational pull that [chuckles] like narrows out that imagination. Like I think moving to Asia for me sort of gave me this distance from my default culture that new ideas started seeping in in interesting ways. So I-- and maybe Wales can do that for you. [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 1:04:42 Yeah, maybe. Just like thinking, looking at the hills and thinking, "You know what?"

Paul Millerd 1:04:45 Yeah. You, you're looking out at like a vastness, right? [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 1:04:49 Yeah. I'll, I'll turn the camera around so the people on the podcast-

Paul Millerd 1:04:51 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:04:51 ... can see it if you're listening to this on the thing. It's like-- it's just insane. I'm, I'm currently sitting on a snooker table, and there's this like enormous... I mean, I d- I don't think it's gonna focus 'cause the lighting's all off, but there's just this enormous like vast expanse of hills and trees-

Paul Millerd 1:05:07 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:05:07 ... and stuff. And it's just really cool. It's a good, good place to, yeah, to, to be here for a little reset. And the other thing is that-

Paul Millerd 1:05:15 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:05:15 ... like even then it doesn't-- I think it's, it's, it's easy to get too precious about this stuff that, "Oh, yeah, I n- I need to go out into nature so that I can think about my life." But like for me, if I had just spent s-set a five-minute timer and just be like, "For the next five minutes I'm just gonna brainstorm cool shit that I can do for a week at a time," I w- I would've come up with living in a van [chuckles] and been like-

Paul Millerd 1:05:35 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:05:35 ... "You know, that would just be cool." And it's just I've never had the thought that I'll-- "Let, let me just spend five minutes thinking about this," and then of course, uh, yeah, I can, I c- I can do all this cool stuff. And five minutes is not that much time, but I guess it's so easy to get into, again, this default thing of life go- going on where you just don't-- genuinely don't stop to think, "Huh, let me just ask myself a q- question, you know, what am I procrastinating from? What's something cool I could do? What's something that I would be glad I did 10 years from now?" Like these sorts of prompts I think are really helpful in just ex-- forcing yourself to just get outside of the mode of like the mode of life where you're following the script that you've always followed, and just actually thinking a little bit outside the box, to use that, to use that phrase.

Paul Millerd 1:06:15 I think it's very hard. I think even on my path I sort of got in a routine of like living this sort of simpler existence and doing the same things over and over again, and like I'm constantly amazed that like I'm like, "Oh, I should've thought of this idea earlier." Like recently I've decided to lean back into my podcast and I sort of came up with the idea of like, "Oh, what if I like sought out a sponsor?" And like I just put that in my newsletter, and then somebody reached out and said, "We'll sponsor you." And I was like, "Oh, I could've like came up with this [chuckles] two years ago."

Ali Abdaal 1:06:54 Oh, yeah.

Paul Millerd 1:06:54 But I just-

Ali Abdaal 1:06:54 I was thinking of sponsoring you as well. I was-- I s- I saw your page, I was like, "Ooh, we should totally sponsor that podcast." [laughs]

Paul Millerd 1:07:00 Yeah, and it's, uh, uh, yeah, it's this constant challenge. And I, I think this is something if you are going to be on an uncertain path, like this is a challenge and something you need to have a plan for. Like how do I continue to experiment? How do I continue to come up with new ideas? And like if you don't like doing those things, like you probably shouldn't follow an unconventional path. One of the benefits of like having a job and a more stable career is like a lot of that thinking is sort of just baked into the path for you. [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 1:07:32 Yeah.

Paul Millerd 1:07:32 Now, I would still advise you to like figure out like if you really value some of the benefits you're getting, um, but you-- there's just less to worry about and sort of like constantly refreshing your life and injecting new things in- into your path.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:48 Have, have you gotten any mileage out of those sorts of long-term-y, thinking-y type exercises of like imagine yourself on your deathbed and, like, what would people say at your funeral? That kind of stuff. Do you ever, do you ever think about that?

Paul Millerd 1:07:59 I think-- So a book that has really stuck with me is Tuesday’s With Morrie. It talks about this guy at the end of his life. Um, I quote it towards the end of my book, too. Um, he's sorta-- He's in his late 70s. He's dying of Lou Gehrig's disease, and it's doubly interesting because the writer, Mitch Albom, is at the peak of his work career, and he sort of realizes that, "Oh, this is my professor. He's dying. I lost touch with him for 15 years because I got carried away in my career. How am I gonna reorient my life?" Um, so it's a really powerful book because it talks about this guy, Morrie, who's fully alive and engaged with life at the end of his life. So I think a lot about role models in terms of, like, how they're showing up in their life. So I really admire, like, older creative men, like people like Morrie, his story. Um, I look up to people like Seth Godin. I think he's, like, in his 60s now. He pr- probably doesn't want us, like, saying that, but, um, he's still connected, energized, like, seems fully alive with, like, what he's doing. Um, I really admire people like Jim O'Shaughnessy, who's, like, still injecting this playful curiosity, um, at his age. And, like, that's kind of, like, my aim in terms of a state I wanna arrive at later in life. So-

Ali Abdaal 1:09:21 Yeah

Paul Millerd 1:09:21 ... I don't think the way to get there is to, like, play the, like, okay, I need to play the retirement game of, like, maxing out, of, like, aiming at a target retirement number. Like, can that help? Sure. Like, I don't wanna be broke when I'm older, but it's like I need to sort of, like, have an intuition that I'm, like, headed towards that state. Um, and this is what made it so easy to walk away from my previous path. I just-- I wasn't on a path to get there. [chuckles] I was on a path to show up like a lot of the men I was surrounded by, who are, like, cynical, overweight, slightly disillusioned.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:00 Yeah.

Paul Millerd 1:10:00 Good bank accounts, but, like, I don't know, some of them had been, like, divorced, disconnected from their kids. Like, I didn't want any of that.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:07 Okay, so we spent a bunch of time figuring out this whole values question, like what the, the step one of the kind of [chuckles] breaking away from the default path. Step two, we talked about, uh, what is the-- Figuring, figuring out the cost of this, and we touched a little, a little on the money, on the money side of things, but I wonder if you can e-elaborate

Ali Abdaal 1:10:24 on this. Like, how do we genuinely figure out what it costs to, to have a-- to, to, to take one of these non-traditional, more, um, uncertain paths?

Paul Millerd 1:10:35 Yeah. So the financial costs are obvious, right? You're trading, like, certain income for uncertain income, and most people worry enough about money that they are hyper-focused on this cost. The other costs you need to be aware of are what other people think of you. I-- And this is a really important one, especially the people close in your life. Do not be surprised if you take an unconventional path that you will receive less support than you expect because you will be feeling more uncertain about your path, which means you will crave, like, affirmation and appreciation from others more, and you will notice that the lack of active encouragement from others feels like you're not being supported. And that can be really hard for people early on a path, and figuring out, like, how you're going to deal with that. And this is why I think one of the most important things and, and a real reason to share ideas in public and write about your journey is to, like, find the others. Like, finding other people you can literally just be around, and you don't have to have the conversation of, like, "Why are you doing this? Don't you worry about X?" It's like, no, we can just sort of, like, both exist in our uncertainty for, like, not knowing what we're doing and, like, connect on that vulnerability. It's a big reason why I'm in Austin. Like, there's j-just a lot of people doing these weird internet online creator paths and, like, people in your audience or my audience might look at us and say, "Oh, wow, impressive people." But, like, we're kind of low status in the normie world still. [chuckles] Like, if, if I try to talk about what I do in, like, fancier circles, people are like, "What are you, what are you talking about? Why would you do any of this?" [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 1:12:43 Yeah.

Paul Millerd 1:12:45 Um, so you sort of need those connections of, like, people who do understand you and, and want to actively encourage you. This is why, like, I've really tried to lean into, like, actively encouraging and supporting people across all different levels doing these paths 'cause, like, I wanna keep people in the game because, like, I need friends. [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 1:13:05 Yeah. [chuckles] Can we-

Paul Millerd 1:13:08 Yeah, like-

Ali Abdaal 1:13:09 Can we zoom in, zoom into the money point a little bit? 'Cause I think-

Paul Millerd 1:13:13 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:13:13 ... there's, there's something there around the fear of, uh, or, or, or the perceived cost in terms of money being different to the actual cost in terms of money.

Paul Millerd 1:13:24 Yeah. I-- My relationship with money changed dramatically from being employed to being self-employed. I went from making high income that was increasing throughout my career pretty steadily to making no income for the first three months after quitting my job. And I sort of, like, had this bold hunch, like, "I can figure it out," but, like, I totally underestimated how terrible it would feel to not make money. Especially I was living in New York spending like $5,000 a month. It felt so painful to like start to see my savings go down. I felt terrible. I felt like an idiot, and I sort of realized like, oh, this was there the entire time. [chuckles] It was just like I never had to stare it in the face when I quit my job. So like I drastically took action in both directions. One was to like lower my cost of living, and I quickly like started dropping things out of my life and almost bearing like no cost. Like I just stopped going out to restaurants. I started cooking at home. I started eating much cheaper. And I'm like, "What was I doing for the last several years?" Like I'm not less happy by giving up any of that, but that was like a decent amount of money I was spending. And like even I thought like I like kind of needed those things, right? That was like part of what made me happy and like totally not true. I didn't value it. [chuckles] Um, and then lowered my co- and then the, the other side of that is like I think one thing people underestimate when they go without income is like how motivated they will be. I was ready to like do any kind of work for any kind of money at the beginning of my journey. Like, I like, I held signs in New York like walking around like trying to find people for a survey. Like I got hired for a gig to like do research for this, um, private equity firm, and I was just like walking around like holding up this sign trying to find people with-- wearing a certain type of shoe. And it was like, I don't care. I'll do, I'll do anything to make money at this point, [chuckles] make the pain go away. But like leaning into that to like realize, oh, you can ride this wave of energy at the beginning. I think that eventually like mellows out a little. So like what I say at the beginning is like lean into your money insecurity and like just go hard and try to earn money in a number of different ways in your first six months. But like eventually you do need to shift into a mode where like you're making money in a way that's connected with yourself, and that's where this like deeper stuff comes in. But then I sort of got stuck in this like minimize spend mode, especially after moving to Asia. I was like tracking expenses, like minimizing spend, and I was short-circuiting my creativity. I created a course at one point, and I remember going into a store looking at these webcams and like I s- like there's like a $100 camera and there was like a $40 camera, and I just like toiled. I ended up buying the $40 camera. And like looking back, this is so silly. I should have just bought like the $100 camera. It would've like raised my ambitions a little. And like I was just like short-circuiting my energy by like worrying too much about money. Um, so I was playing accountant, and I write this in the book. Like I was playing accountant rather than like living my life. [chuckles] So I sort of just decided like I don't wanna be spending my day tracking my spending and counting my dollars. Like I was using a spending app, got my spending to under $1,000 a month. And like I was still pretty happy, but like I was playing accountant. I wasn't actually like living my life. And that was when I started like leaning back into like the creating stuff, like sharing on Twitter a little more, like writing a little more publicly, and like being a little bolder, um, and digging out of that. Like even the other day like I was thinking about relaunching my podcast and doing an in-person one, and I was like, you know what? Like I'm wasting zero time on buying the best equipment. I bought like a $260 Cam Link. I bought a Shure mic, and I was like, you know what? I'm not, I'm not playing accountant. I'm just like gonna commit, go all in, and like I think this is a better bet. Um, so I'm, I'm still learning to like play with money. Um, and investing in myself has been really hard for me to do because I went into it with like, I need to break even. I can't like spend more than I make. I don't wanna see my savings go down. Whereas like now I'm five years in, and I'm like I'm giving myself these pep talks. I'm like, "Paul, you've sort of found your footing. You wrote a book about like being confident on your path." [chuckles] Like, okay, you can be a little bolder. You're not gonna turn into this hustle bro. Like I don't think there's any chance I'm gonna turn into a like hustle pro- productivity bro. Um, I'm not gonna start like money maxing. Like I'm gonna be okay. [chuckles] I can like be 30% bolder and like still be myself.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:46 Yeah.

Paul Millerd 1:18:46 Um, so-

Ali Abdaal 1:18:47 I quite like that

Paul Millerd 1:18:47 ... yeah, it's been a journey for me.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:49 30% bolder. Yeah. Um,

Ali Abdaal 1:18:52 can we talk about the book a little bit? So how-

Paul Millerd 1:18:54 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:18:54 ... how, how did you, how did you just write a book? [chuckles]

Paul Millerd 1:18:56 Yeah, we gotta talk about your journey too.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:58 Oh, yeah, we c- we can do that, but like, yeah. Let's do yours first. [chuckles] Yeah. How did, how did you just write a book?

Paul Millerd 1:19:04 So mine was very emergent. Uh, like I said at the beginning, um, I was writing about this stuff from as soon as I left my job. I sort of dealt with this jolt of reality of like this increased freedom and space in my life and like, what does this all mean? Like why, why was it so hard to leave my path? Why was it so weird feeling when I became self-employed? So writing about that and then just consistently committing to that after moving to Asia. And then in 2020, the whole world sort of like showed up, [chuckles] like asking these deep questions about work, and my readership just like exploded, and I started just having more and more conversations with people. I had these weekly curiosity conversations, and I actually just like recently paused them, but I had 383 of these over the last five years about people's relationship with work. And w- what would happen over and over again is people would tell me things, and I'd be like: "Have you shared this with anyone?" It's like: "Well, I've said like a little to my spouse, but like I can't talk about this with anyone." So I was like, "Oh, wow, what I'm writing about is like this hidden knowledge that nobody feels like they can talk about publicly. Like, I'm just gonna like lean into this, write more." And then at the end of the year, like I had like three or four people that said to me, "Paul, you have this like broad range of ideas, like where do I start? Like, can you just write a book?" [chuckles] Um, and I had an interesting trade-off at the time. Tiago Forte was running a, um, boot camp with Billy Broas around like, okay, how to take your course to the next level, and I had this consulting skills course that was like really crushing it in 2020, um, 'cause of remote work. And I had a clear path, like it was like, okay, if I double down on that and go all in on this this year, I could probably make a lot more money. And I asked myself like, "What would I do if I made more money?" It was like, oh, I would use that to get more free time to write. It was like, oh, why don't I just write? [chuckles] I'm in Taiwan for the year. My cost of living is lower. Um, I'm really drawn to like write about this stuff. And I just committed to write the book. Early on, I thought it would be just like I'll package some essays, uh, from my newsletter and just ship it. Um, and then in the first three months, I really realized, wow, this, this is a deeper like, um, just self-reflection exercise of like figuring out what this has all meant to me. And I knew there was something deeper to say, and I just sort of committed to the book, and it-- I sort of had this sense of like, I know I can end up somewhere, and I'll know when I'm heading towards that, and I r- and I know I can get there. Um, so I spent 13 months writing it, and that was kind of the main priority for the entire year. And yeah, it, it was a magical experience actually. Um, the introduction when I write about like why this stuff matters to me didn't come to me until like my final weeks in Taiwan. And I was feeling so frustrated, I went out for a motorcycle ride, and like the ideas just came to me, and I just broke down in tears. And I realized it had like everything to do with my parents, and like they didn't go to college. They had to do the default path, and they felt like they sacrificed so much so that like I could succeed. And I realized like what they gave me was like the freedom to dream. And I, for the first time, this was like October, so seven, eight months ago, like finally felt like I can say this as a human, like it matters to like dream, to like do brave things, to like create. And yeah, and I, I think these things are important. And before that, I didn't have the courage to say that stuff. I always couched my stuff or like qualified it. I was like, "You know what? Like I, I really think this matters, and I think I can help people with this stuff, and I'm just gonna say it." [sighs] And so it was a really powerful experience for me, and I imagine you're going through something similar. Like it's been really cool to watch your journey too because I feel like it's allowed you to understand your own journey better too.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:48 Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, the journey of writing a book is gen- is, is, is interesting. Um, a lot of like windy turns along the way, but I'm very happy with the direction that it's currently going, and the plan is today, tomorrow, and the day after, bang out a first draft of one of the chapters each day. Um-

Paul Millerd 1:24:06 Nice

Ali Abdaal 1:24:07 ... so we'll, we'll, we'll see what happens there. Um, yeah, I was just kinda thinking as you, as you were saying that, that like your path is almost like it's, it's weird when it comes to the creator economy and kind of making a living doing what you love on the side and all that, all that stuff, that a lot of people's paths seem to follow the same general trajectory of I started making stuff that I liked. In your case, started writing about this job stuff and this career stuff.

Paul Millerd 1:24:42 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:42 And I did that a bunch of times, and I realized I like doing it and that it energized me, so I kept on continuing to do it. And then along the way, people started to find out about it, and then what you did was you had your Calendly link where for free anyone could just book a call with you and you would just talk to them completely for free on the internet for like 383 times.

Paul Millerd 1:24:59 [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 1:25:00 And so through that, you're speaking to people about this thing that you really care about, this thing that energizes you, and then the next step is you're like, "All right, cool. This is interesting. Let's write a book about it." And then you go and write a book about it and self-publish the book. And it's like now your newsletter, you know, if you wanted to get more and more lucrative sponsors on it, you could probably easily do that. Like there's all these options that you now have for making money out of this thing because you've now done it to the point where you were just following your cur- curiosity. You've bu- you know, built an audience now. And, and, and it's just like, you know, when people ask, "Oh, how do I quit my job to become a creator?" That's literally the me- the method. It's like step one-

Paul Millerd 1:25:40 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:25:40 ... experiment with lots of things, figure out the one that energizes you, do that repeatedly. At some point you can quit your job if you've got enough of a financial safety net, et cetera, et cetera. And then just keep on doing that repeatedly. More people will find you, and then you will just figure out opportunities along the way, whether it's a book, whether it's a course, whether it's sponsorships, whether it's consulting gigs, whether it's corporate speaking for 100 grand for an hour of speaking. Like, there will, there will be stuff that comes up by virtue of the fact that you are showing up there in the world and providing value, I guess, in inverted commas, but in a way that energizes you, in a way that feels somewhat effortless for you. Like, even if you weren't making money, you would probably continue doing the writing thing. And so it's just-

Paul Millerd 1:26:17 Right

Ali Abdaal 1:26:17 ... about finding com- f-finding, finding that thing. Like, what is that thing for, for people listening if they're interested in, for example, quitting their job or, like, doing the creative thing or doing the business thing? And, like, I think it's, it's the same with startup founders. Like, the startup founders that exit, what do they do? They, they tend to take a few months off, and then they just start another company 'cause they just love it, in theory. Uh, or maybe they're just chasing more and more. But, like, you know, mostly the people I've spoken to genuinely just enjoy building companies and like, "Oh, great. Now I can start a new app." And I think what we're all trying to do is just get to that state where we can be showing up and doing the things that genuinely, intrinsically motivate us, which as a side effect happen to make enough money to sustain our, our lifestyle.

Paul Millerd 1:26:59 I think that's spot on. I think the opportunity and upshot of doing your own thing is that you can lower the percentage of things you're doing that you sort of resent or, like, you feel like you're sacrificing, right? In a job, you may just have, like, too many things, and this was my case. Like, I was just doing too many things that I thought were silly, pointless, or just, like, grueling to power through. And, like, I still do some of those things. It's just less.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:27 Yeah.

Paul Millerd 1:27:27 So it means there's more space for that creativity and curiosity to stay alive, and that is really important to me. And if it's important to you, it's, it's possible, and I, I think this is kind of what I was trying to get at in don't find a niche. Like, find a mode of being in which you can show up. And, like, if you can find that, I think, like, ambition is really just, like, how fast you wanna go at that point or, like, how much, like, leverage you wanna implement into your life. I tend to like to go slower. Um, I find, like, super scale or super large ambition pretty scary. Um, and maybe that will change over time. But I have the mode, so I have this, like, deep faith that, like, I'm gonna be okay. And I also just like my life. [chuckles] And but to someone looking at my life on a spreadsheet and trying to, like, do the math of, like, how sh- life should be lived, they'd be like, "How is this gonna work? How are we gonna afford a house?" Like, I can't afford a house right now. It's fine though because, like, [chuckles] that's not what I'm valuing right now, and I feel really good about my life. And I don't feel like I'm failing.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:50 Do you feel like if and when you have kids that your attitude towards this sort of stuff will change?

Paul Millerd 1:28:57 I think-- So we wanna have kids, um, soon, and I assume my perspective on a lot of things will change in ways I can't predict yet. Um, however, I think it will just force me to be more, like, committed to, like, the things I'm doing. I think I've-- Like, we've already started to think and talk about kids, so, like, I do wanna be a parent, and, like, a lot of what I've been doing on this path has been preparing myself to be a parent because I wanna be a present, engaged, and alive parent. And that is just really important for me. So, like, this kind of life gives me the highest odds of doing that.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:47 Yeah.

Paul Millerd 1:29:49 But this is also-

Ali Abdaal 1:29:49 And you don't worry

Paul Millerd 1:29:50 ... why I've been, like, leaning into, like, okay, maybe I should, like, try to, like, monetize some of the things I'm doing be- because I also realize, like, when I do have kids, I am going to feel more responsible, and that's just gonna make me braver at this point probably. And also people are gonna wanna root for me to succeed too. So, like, there's gonna be benefits too. People sort of look at these things like, what about kids? Like, what they're doing is, like, mapping their fears onto me. Um, I already have those fears. I have all the fears. On an uncertain path, you grapple with the fears every day. [chuckles] But I can make choices, and I feel really good about having ownership of the degrees of freedom I have. And after five years, I do see paths to make money. So, like, if that was my prime aim, I, I have confidence I probably could do it at this point. Or I'll just apply for a job on your team. [chuckles]

Ali Abdaal 1:30:53 Yeah, absolutely. [chuckles] You're welcome anytime. [laughs] Um, Paul, this has been absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for, for coming on the podcast. Uh, where can people learn more about you and your work?

Paul Millerd 1:31:04 Uh, s- so my newsletter boundless.substack.com or website think-boundless.com. Um, a lot of the ideas we talked about are better put in my book, uh, The Pathless Path. Uh, check it out. Um, pretty active on Twitter too. Um, love hearing from people's stories, so, uh, definitely reach out.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:26 Amazing. And yeah, just wanted to say a massive thank you to you as well for, like, all of the stuff that you've written, uh, in the book and in the newsletter that's-- and, and on Twitter as well, and in podcasts, that has continued to inspire me over the last couple of years as I've gone onto more of this, uh, non-traditional, s- more uncertain path than the very traditional one that I was on. And yeah, anyone listening to this, if you are considering breaking away from, [chuckles] say breaking away, uh, from a traditional path, and you would like some advice on how to pursue an uncertain one, yeah, check out all of Paul's stuff. I was just looking through my Kindle highlights on your book, and they're just absolutely enormous. And yeah, at some point I've been thinking, "Oh, I need to get round to actually turning, turning your book into a book club video for my channel." There's just the incredible, like, copious amount of highlights I have for it. I'm just like, "Damn, okay, this is gonna be like a whole, like, week-long project to just try and parse all this stuff, figure out what are the bits that most resonated with me." 'Cause I find that when I'm, when I'm reading a book and I'm just enjoying all of it, it's just like highlight, highlight, highlight, highlight, and then I'm like, "Oh, damn-

Paul Millerd 1:32:20 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:32:20 ... I've highlighted like 80% of this book. Damn, that's kind of annoying." [chuckles] I need to go back through and progressively summarize the highlights as, as some people would recommend. [laughs] Um-

Paul Millerd 1:32:28 Awesome. Well, continue to be inspired by your journey too. Keep, keep going, man.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:34 Thanks very much. Um, everyone, thanks for tuning in, and we'll catch you later. Bye-bye. All right. So that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Uh, do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.