The Tension Between Success And Happiness - Paul Millerd

1. 0:00 – 1:40

   Intro

   1. PMPaul Millerd0:00

      I think what we really want is to be useful. We want to do work that matters. We don't want to do meaningless work. It drives humans crazy to do stuff we don't care about. But we all have this desire to do stuff. We want to contribute, we want to help people, we want to do things that we feel like are important.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:18

      (wind blowing) Paul Milled, welcome to the show.

   3. PMPaul Millerd0:22

      Excited to be here, Chris.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:25

      I have been fully adopted by Texas now, so I went to a-

   5. PMPaul Millerd0:29

      (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson0:29

      ... Co Wetzel country music f- rock concert in a stadium last night. People unironically wearing cowboy hats, people unironically saying, like, "Dang," and "Yee-haw," and, dude, I'm, f- I'm one of the locals now.

   7. PMPaul Millerd0:47

      I think I'm the same. Me and my wife, uh, were saying, "We still have to go to a rodeo, and then we can probably say that." (laughs)

   8. CWChris Williamson0:53

      There's, like, a sequence of, uh-

   9. PMPaul Millerd0:56

      (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson0:56

       ... qualifications or trials-

   11. PMPaul Millerd0:57

       Onboarding.

   12. CWChris Williamson0:57

       ... that you need to go through. Yeah, yeah, precisely. How many cans of Lone Star have you drank? How many times have you said the word dang?

   13. PMPaul Millerd1:05

       Exactly. Yeah, we, we love it here. It seems like there's a convergence of internet weirdos and hyper-curious-

   14. CWChris Williamson1:13

       (laughs)

   15. PMPaul Millerd1:13

       ... kind of creators, uh, (laughs) that I've just really enjoyed.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:16

       Well, the first time that we met was at the, uh, LessWrong-

   17. PMPaul Millerd1:19

       (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson1:19

       ... meetup, which is, that's the-

   19. PMPaul Millerd1:21

       About the nerdiest place you can be.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:22

       Oh, that's the synthesis. Yeah, that's-

   21. PMPaul Millerd1:24

       (laughs)

   22. CWChris Williamson1:24

       ... the fucking epicenter. That's patient zero for the nerdiest people (laughs) in, in Austin. And they'd even imported people from outside of Austin to make it significantly more nerdy.

   23. PMPaul Millerd1:36

       Exactly. Yeah, it, it's been great. I love it here.

2. 1:40 – 9:17

   Happiness vs Success

   1. PMPaul Millerd1:40

   2. CWChris Williamson1:40

      One of the things that we've both been converging on was something that I put into my newsletter this week, and I want to talk about that. So, I'm going to read the newsletter out for people that didn't read it. If you haven't read it, go to chriswillex.com/books, and you can sign up for free. Uh, so one of the most common tensions I talk about at the moment is between the desire for success and a desire to feel like we're enough. Success is a strange thing. Presumably, we want success because we think a more successful life will bring us more happiness, meaning, and fulfillment. Here's the problem: we sacrifice the thing we want, happiness, for the thing which is supposed to get it, success. Failure can make you miserable, but I'm not sure success will make you happy. One of the most common dynamics I see amongst high performers is this: parents want their child to do well. Parents encourage their child to do well by praising them when they succeed and criticizing when they fail. The child learns that praise and admiration is contingent on succeeding. That lesson metastasizes through early adulthood into, "I am only worthy of love and acceptance and belonging if I succeed." Now, powered by an internal feeling of insufficiency, this person is driven to achieve many things. They're prepared to outwork, outhustle, and outsuffer everyone else because they're not just running toward a life they want, they're running away from a life that they fear. Success and progress ameliorates the feelings of insufficiency. Therefore, success and progress become prioritized above everything else. Now, don't get me wrong, many high achievers genuinely love the work that they do, and many are driven by a well-balanced simple desire to maximize their time on this planet rather than trying to fill a void inside of themselves. But if I was to place a bet, I'd guess that the majority of high performers are driven by fears of insufficiency rather than a holistic desire to be better. I think people who are high achievers, on average, are more miserable than the average person. So what does it mean that the people we most admire are the ones with the least admirable internal states? If the pursuit of success is in an effort to make us happy, and in the pursuit of success we make ourselves miserable, why not shortcut the entire process and just be happy? Is that even possible? Now, external accolades do count for a lot. I don't think that recanting all worldly possessions and retreating to a cave in the woods is an optimal strategy. Some degree of external material success is important to make us feel validated and satiate our desire for status and respect. But external success won't fill an internal void. Insufficien- insufficiency adaptation is this: if your drive to succeed comes from a fear of insufficiency, and you continue to disprove those fears with success in the real world, and yet the feelings of insufficiency persists, what makes you think that the answer to this problem is more success? There's no clean answer here. The world is messy, and we're hopelessly irrational. You don't need to let go of all success goals, but spend some time working out whether there's a shorter route to the life you want by removing obstacles rather than just pressing harder on the accelerator.

   3. PMPaul Millerd4:40

      I love it. It sounds like you're, uh, on the pathless path now, (laughs) uh, basically what I've written about. But, uh, I think this is such a fascinating topic because it sort of describes my own journey. I went from somebody that was what I call trying to get ahead. You're aiming at a future potential success, and you're saying, "Okay, I'm willing to sacrifice in the now to get there." The problem is, you never arrive, right? And the funny thing is, I didn't have the parents praising me or criticizing me for achieving or not achieving goals. I fully brought this upon myself. (laughs) In college, I was just around people who had those parents, and I was like, "Ooh, they want all these things. I want what they want," right? Classic mimetic desire. Um, and I did that for the next 12, 13 years until I just slowly, more reflection and more reflection, realized, holy crap, this isn't me. (laughs) I thought I was like 10% different than those people around me, strategy consultants, high achievers in the corporate worlds. I was probably one or two standard deviations little different in terms of what are the elements of, um, life that are gonna bring me alive and connect me to who I am.

   4. CWChris Williamson5:59

      What were the biggest differences?

   5. PMPaul Millerd6:02

      I think I have an unreasonable need for autonomy and freedom over my life, the things I do, the ideas I work on, and how I do it. Uh, most people are willing to sacrifice a lot of those things in exchange for, like, security and a paycheck. Right? I was not pricing, uh, that appropriately. I didn't get as big a benefit, and I was paying bigger costs for, like, what I was giving up. Um, the problem, and the reason I stayed on my previous path so long, was that I didn't have an imagination of a different possible life. My only model of the world was work hard, get ahead, keep working for the future indefinitely. There was no, like, alternative path. So, I think deep, deep down, I was seeking what you wrote about this past week of basically just trying to be happier. And I didn't know how to get there, or, uh, I didn't have models. I had, like, role models of, like, people I admired who embodied that state, people like Seth Godin, later in life, creative, fully alive and engaged with the world. I had no idea how to get there though. It just, his existence was like, "That's possible. That seems worth trying to figure out."

   6. CWChris Williamson7:21

      How do you f- define success?

   7. PMPaul Millerd7:25

      Right now, it's something that probably doesn't make a lot of sense to people. Uh, it's basically the space and freedom and possibility to continue doing the things that bring me alive or connect me to who I am.

   8. CWChris Williamson7:40

      (laughs) The thing that's interesting, o- o- obviously we're both in Austin, and Austin has its, uh, share of asceticism and sort of New Age, uh, spirituality. And, you know, the pushback against the default desires, the reprogramming of your wants and needs to be the things that genuinely do bring you alive, you know, this isn't, this isn't anything new. But I do think that when you frame it within wantrepreneur, nomadic internet hustle culture world, I do think that it has a little bit of a new slant on it. Even if perhaps it's moving in the same direction, the language is very different.

   9. PMPaul Millerd8:20

      Agreed. I, when I left my job, I just wanted to escape work. I was very similar to, like, FIRE people who just want to, like, solve life on a spreadsheet and hit exit, right? And then we're done with work. We've solved that. I don't think that's how life works. So I wanted to escape work. I kind of ran away. I tried to limit the amount of work I was doing at first. I went to these digital nomad locations. I went to beaches where I'd meet, like, Bitcoin people who did solve the financial problems or people who had exited from startups and had more money than they needed. The thing is, nobody actually wants to sit on a beach (laughs) . I think what we really want is to be useful. We want to do work that matters. We don't want to do meaningless work. It drives humans crazy to do stuff we don't care about (laughs) . But we all have this desire to do stuff. We want to contribute, we want to help people, we want to do things that we feel like are important.

3. 9:17 – 13:47

   Happiness via Financial Independence

   1. PMPaul Millerd9:18

   2. CWChris Williamson9:18

      What's your thoughts on the financial independence retire early movement? It's not really caught on as much in the UK.

   3. PMPaul Millerd9:28

      I think i- it- it's p- probably 'cause I think Americans oftentimes don't get that our labor market is bananas, especially at the high end.

   4. CWChris Williamson9:37

      How'd you mean?

   5. PMPaul Millerd9:37

      For, like, kno- for knowledge work. Just, like, strategy consulting, for example. My friends I know in the UK doing the same thing at the similar level are just getting paid like 40, 50% less, right? (laughs) So part of FIRE is emergent from just this excess capital both in, like, high wage knowledge professions and also the tech economy where you're having people working at Google, like, making $300,000, $400,000 a year. So they're just doing the math and being like, "Well, why am I even working?" Right? But my, my take on the FIRE movement is overall net benefit. I think at a surface level though, it sort of misses the point, which I think this is the biggest shift I've realized is, like, escaping work is not a good motive for life. Finding the work you want to keep doing is a more important motive. I imagine no matter what success you have, you're not gonna lose that curiosity of talking to people, having conversations, exploring ideas. That seems so uniquely, like, you, right? Y- you can't make it to, uh, 450 episodes (laughs) unless that's, like, something, like, very authentic and emergent.

   6. CWChris Williamson11:05

      Yeah, sometimes I do wish that I could switch it off. I think that my f- my friends definitely do if they just want to chill out and I'm like, "Dude, have you ever wondered about why it is that the sky's able to be pink and sort of dark at the same time? I wonder, have you ever considered about the reason why sugar tastes shorter s- uh, spikes of sweetness as opposed to, um, sucralose, which is, like, a longer v-" So yeah, sometimes I do wish that I could turn it off. However, I think that the, one of the things I realized upon reading some of your work about the financial independence retire early movement is that some people don't want to stop working, they just want a break. They don't need to f- to quit work. They've just maybe pushed it a bit hard for a while. And it does seem, uh, people have a very binary view of a lot of things, and it's like, "I either wanna stop or I wanna go. There's no in between."

   7. PMPaul Millerd11:59

      Right. (laughs) I think one of the biggest net benefits to the world might just be a mandated sabbatical of three months once you hit your 30s.

   8. CWChris Williamson12:07

      Are you saying the Mormons have got it right?

   9. PMPaul Millerd12:09

      ... perhaps, yeah. They're doing it at, like, 18 years old though, right?

   10. CWChris Williamson12:13

       Yeah, yeah. Yeah, fair point.

   11. PMPaul Millerd12:15

       But they're p- (laughs) I don't know. I always, I always seem more mature anyway, but, um, we won't go down that rabbit hole. Um, yeah. I think... I didn't realize this at first. When I left my job, what I realized quickly was that I had oriented my life in such a way that work was the primary mode of which I thought of myself as a person and how I related to everything in the world. Where I lived, who I hung out with, what I did, how I spent my time, when I was allowed to take time off was all dictated downstream of work. And when I left, I sort of had a little more freedom. And in that space, like, I just had this hunch that, like, I needed to lean in even more. And seven months into after leaving my job, I decided to create my own, like, non-work sabbatical where I wasn't going to pursue any paid work. And what I discovered in that, that was when I started my podcast, that's when I started writing, that's when I started creating online. And I just found absolute joy in creating these things for the sake of themselves and then meeting the people that were like, "Oh, hell yeah." And that was the first, like, hunch I had. And this is before, like, this whole current creator economy of like, there's all these paths to make money existed. It was like, I had this hunch that, like, if I lean in this direction, it- I could create a better life for myself.

   12. CWChris Williamson13:44

       What... Why do

4. 13:47 – 28:43

   The Anti-work Movement

   1. CWChris Williamson13:47

      you think it is that so many people are disappointed with work at the moment?

   2. PMPaul Millerd13:53

      So, I don't even know if so many people are. It, it's sort of this catchy media headline of the great resignation, and the fact is, uh, anti-work, you talked about this with Anna.

   3. CWChris Williamson14:08

      Yeah.

   4. PMPaul Millerd14:08

      Um, I think she has a great perspective on this 'cause she's gone deep into the history of this and has a much more nuanced perspective. Uh, but being anti-work broadly, there's like 35 on ramps onto that. Anyone who's ever had a bad experience with a manager ever can be like, "Oh, yeah. Work sucks," and you can relate to that meme. However, when you ask most people, "Do you like your job?" a high majority actually say yes. And people don't like to hear this. (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson14:40

      I remember-

   6. PMPaul Millerd14:40

      But-

   7. CWChris Williamson14:40

      ... I'm, I'm not sure how recent these stats were, but, um, 50... no, sorry, 70% of people are neither engaged or disengaged with their work, and 15% of people are actively disengaged with their work, so 85% of people were either neutral or negative. Now, that was a while ago. I think that's a Johann Hari stat. Um, but I, I don't know. I mean, do you think, uh, in, from your experience that people are more engaged with their work?

   8. PMPaul Millerd15:12

      So, I think it's too broad of a question. I, I've seen all... the full range of stats, like, and are there many people doing pointless things? Sure. I think one of the things that put me on my path, when I was 18 years old, I had a... my first internship in a corporation at a big industrial manufacturing company, and I was just shocked at all these adults sitting around doing the most pointless stuff ever and then me bringing up this fact and them telling me I was the naive one. I'm like, "This is a crazy world." (laughs) Right? So, it, I'm actually not interested in the question of, like, is work good or bad. What I'm more interested in is, like, this deeper level of, like, how did work become so central in our lives? Because that is the ultimate key of, like, taking a sabbatical. Taking a sabbatical is taking a pause of existing in the world in the state of a worker, right? So I think people want to break from living in worker mode and enable them to, like, reconnect with the world, reconnect with those childlike things they do. Like, over and over again, people when they take breaks, they start doing things like they did when they were a kid. They start playing tennis or basketball or reading or volunteering or gardening, all these things they did when they had more time and space in their life. Um, and that reminds them, "Oh, oh, crap. I'm not a worker. (laughs) I have these other things." And then that's when people often can start pricing their time and freedom appropriately and start making trade-offs and saying like, "Okay, maybe work isn't going to be perfect, but I can at least figure out what are the things that matter and not compromise on them."

   9. CWChris Williamson16:54

      Do you think that most people or a big chunk of people see their primary source of value to the world as being their job or their title or the work that they do?

   10. PMPaul Millerd17:04

       Yeah. I, I think it-

   11. CWChris Williamson17:06

       Why, why do you think that is? I don't think that's always been the case.

   12. PMPaul Millerd17:09

       Yeah, I, I think... So we're always in relation to our economic system. Like, in many ways, our economic system determines, like, our consciousness, right? And whether we want it to be true or not, the way you acquire most things, food, shelter, uh, ev- everything, you have to pay for those things, right? So that's like an economic system you're part of. So that influences how we think of everything, right? We have all these phrases which we don't even think about. Time is money. Don't waste your time. (laughs) Right? They're economic framings. Like, even just, "I'm busy." "Oh, I had a productive Sunday." "Oh, what did you do on Sunday?" "Oh, I just did a bunch of laundry and stuff." It's like, why are we de- why are we calling that productive? That's a little silly, right? So we're so influenced by this, and then in Western countries, like, we've just had hundreds of years of this, like, refactoring of work being, like, a central aim of life. It wasn't until the Protes- Protestant Reformation that we started to look at work as the aim.... instead of this instrumental thing that helped us get other things.

   13. CWChris Williamson18:24

       I think that's-

   14. PMPaul Millerd18:25

       If work ... Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson18:25

       ... that's a really important point. Like, that's a super important point. The fact that you can bypass work being a vehicle to get you the thing that you want presumably, which is the ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want, and no one can tell you otherwise. Like, money is freedom as far as I can see. That's all it is in, at its best. Or wealth is freedom, should I say, at its best, most sort of pure form. And if work is a vehicle to get that ... Now, some people love their work, and some people can be fulfilled by it. But for the people that aren't, you can forget the fact that you aren't massively invested into this work, existentially or emotionally, and yet still give it the same sort of, um, fundamental magnetic tie between you and it, right? You become inseparable from your work, despite the fact that it was just supposed to be a vehicle to serve you, not for you to serve it.

   16. PMPaul Millerd19:24

       And I would even say that's sort of a limited definition of freedom. So money is freedom, sure, but people say things like, "Oh, I'm financially independent." What does that really mean? It basically means you rely on paying other people to do stuff for you (laughs) , right? So you're only free inasmuch as everyone else continues to operate in that way, right? But that's not actually what leads to a fulfilling life. What leads to a fulfilling life is, like, treating a friend for dinner and not expecting them to pay you back (laughs) . You don't want to ... You literally don't want to be p- paying for everything. If you're not receiving gifts and giving gifts to at least some people in your life, I imagine you're not as happy as you could be (laughs) .

   17. CWChris Williamson20:14

       I'm s- (clears throat) I'm still trying to think about why it is that we see work as so central to who we are. I understand that it's a vehicle to get us what we need, but it doesn't tell the whole picture as far as I can see.

   18. PMPaul Millerd20:30

       Well, it's, it's not true everywhere, right? So there's ... Max Weber in his book, The Protestant Ethic, he writes about how before the 1500s, basically, like, a person did not desire to, like, have work as the most central thing in their life. There was this what he called traditionalist view of work, and it was, "Okay, I've done enough work to, like, pay for what I need, and I'm done working." And early, when you read about the early, um, evolutions of capitalism, you read that this was a huge problem (laughs) . So how do you set the wages such that people will continue to work? Because they were finding that they'd pay people and people would say, "Oh, all right. I'm good. Thank you. I'm done with my job" (laughs) . Right? So, and then you have people like Josef Pieper writing after World War II. Uh, he wrote an amazing book, Leisure, Leisure, the Basis of Culture. He's contemplating this question, and he's saying, "Okay, we just had these crazy terrible things happen in the world, and now everyone is just running back and throwing themselves in as, like, a worker, and, like, pretending nothing happened. Like, why are we doing this?" And his conclusion was that we've kinda lost touch with this more ancient version of leisure. So we sort of have these two modes, in Western cultures especially. We have the doing mode, and then we have being lazy (laughs) . And he's arguing that, like, leisure is in the middle of this sort of in-between state, and I think this is what I experienced when I took that, like, first non-work break. And the definition of leisure is not laying around and watching Netflix. It's defined as, like, an active engagement with the world. And really interesting thing, like, I cover this in my book, if you go back to the Greeks, the definition for work or, like, the phrase they had for work was not at leisure. So before this whole flip and the Protestant Reformation-

   19. CWChris Williamson22:42

       Mm-hmm.

   20. PMPaul Millerd22:42

       ... and the evolution of capitalism, like, leisure was the center of life. It was just taken for granted. And now, we've sort of flipped that, but we've paired the opposite of work with this laziness. So you're either lazy or you're working. So then, like, when people say, "I'm terrified to stop working," they're terrified of being labeled lazy, but they don't know this in-between mode of, like, active engagement with the world. I would call ... I guarantee what you do with podcasting does not fit into one of those two buckets, right? It's, like, it's almost like you have to do it. You're so pulled to do it. And I guarantee, too, like, 'cause I have this experience with writing, if you don't do it for a few weeks, you feel like something's missing in your life. Does that resonate?

   21. CWChris Williamson23:28

       Do you ... Yeah, absolutely. That, um, not-at-leisure, uh, insight about the Greeks is phenomenal, and it, it highlights exactly how backward I think fundamentally people have a sense that the work world is, that they're living to work, and that a lot of their time is spent obsessing over their job. Now, obviously, what, what you're trying to do or what most people are trying to do is repurpose their job into something that they don't mind obsessing over, which is fine, you know? If, if you can get yourself to the stage where, um ... M- my housemate, right? So he's a physio for Newcastle Falcons Rugby Club, so Premier League rugby team, top flight, you know, one of the best in the country. Uh, and he gets up every day and gets to go and do that. But even that situation-... if he had unlimited degrees of freedom with how he was going to spend his time, he may choose something else. So it's the best of a good situation, but it's still within the framework of it being work. Now, I, I totally understand how not creating a, you're either working or lazy, um, world would be very, very bad for capitalism.

   22. PMPaul Millerd24:45

       Right.

   23. CWChris Williamson24:45

       I'm very hesitant around the conspiratorial, like, Henry Ford and the Vanderbilts got together in the 1900s and decided to do this thing. (inhales sharply) I would lean, as an explanation for this, much more toward a, either a memetic or a status, uh-

   24. PMPaul Millerd25:01

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson25:01

       ... built ver- version of a- an answer that, look, you see other people working hard. Other people get accolades and are admired for working hard because you know that working hard is a proxy for future success. Therefore, people start shortcutting the desire for success or happiness and just go straight to working hard because it's a more obvious signal. Do you think I've got that right?

   26. PMPaul Millerd25:22

       Well, I think you're onto something. I think the criticisms of capitalism fall short for me because capitalism isn't really a thing. Like, it's continuously evolving, and people are reacting to the incentives that exists in the world. Like, I think in many ways, you can almost reframe it as, like, people like Henry Ford, what would they have been doing a thousand years earlier? Probably leading s- a wa- he'd probably be a warlord or something.

   27. CWChris Williamson25:48

       A baron or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   28. PMPaul Millerd25:50

       (laughs) Fighting wars with people, right? I- instead, he can, like, channel this, like, unbridled ambition into the economic system. Like, and people can disagree about that, but this is also the challenge with carving your own path, is you can't just, you can't just exit work, right? You, like, you can't es- escape the default reality. Existing in the way I am, like, I'm self-employed, I make income in a number of different ways, I do a bunch of different things, I don't work in traditional ways. I still feel the tension. Like, it's very obvious I'm a weirdo. (laughs) That's why I come to Austin to hang out with all the other weirdos. Um, but other people judge me based on, like, people still say to me, like, and I make enough money to support my life and, like, I'm doing better and better every year, "When are you gonna get a real job?" It's like, "What does that mean?" (laughs) And, and I think what I'm trying to lean into and open people's eyes to is, like, we've sort of gone from this economic system in the '50s to, maybe the year 2000, in which, like, the possibilities for our paths... Like, our lives were not possible then. They are possible now, and the possibilities for creating different kinds of work and working in different ways, working remotely, part-time, flexibly are so much more than they were even, like, 10, 20 years ago. But we don't have a script or way of orienting to the world to, like, unlock those possibilities. So, like, I think it's actually a great thing right now. Like, some people don't realize it's sort of low status to do this, like, self-employed creator path. Especially, like, our parents often don't like what we're doing. (laughs) They wish we do other things. Um, and th- that's sort of an advantage because there's just, like, less competition right now. (laughs)

   29. CWChris Williamson27:47

       It's low status depending on who you're speaking to-

   30. PMPaul Millerd27:50

       Right.
5. 28:43 – 34:52

   Exposing the Pathless Path

   1. CWChris Williamson28:43

      you talk about the, the pathless path and the default path as sort of two different worlds. Are you hoping in future that the pathless path will no longer be pathless then, that it's going to be well-trodden enough that people actually can see some alternate, um, routes that are laid out for them archetypally, they can, th- previous people have sort of laid out a, a route that they can take?

   2. PMPaul Millerd29:09

      I think what I'm trying to convey to people is it's worth s- softening our grip on the default path. (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson29:18

      What is... How would you define the default path, and what are the problems with it?

   4. PMPaul Millerd29:21

      So the, the default path is simply, like, the script we grow up with. Everyone in almost every country has a story of, like, how to be a successful adult, and it's typically, like, a very surface level story. Get a job, go to school, get married, have a family, get a j- job. And, like, the problem with these scripts is that they often only involve events that happen before the age of 35 and are categorically positive. So when anything goes wrong or you're thrown a curveball in life, we have no, like, story to orient to. So people, like, double down on, like, more security, more certainty, right? Except the path, the default path, is not delivering the benefits it once was. It used to be this, like, sort of golden ticket. We had these, like, two-parent households. We have way less two-parent households now. Um, this work at a company, they'll take care of you, they'll give you a pension. Nobody believes that exists anymore. Some people have it. Very few do. Um-... and you could kind of, uh, afford a home on a reasonable salary and, like, buy it when you're 24, buy your next one when you're 27. That's not really possible as easily anymore. So, like, that path has gotten a lot harder. We don't have an alternative story to grip to, so we're lo- sort of, like, stuck with that and, like, I think as we're shifting to this information age, like, we have a lot of people in jobs that are like, "I want to escape," but they're so scared because they don't really have a new story for, like, how to orient their life. So, like, (laughs) my bold attempt is, like, the pathless p- path can be your story. And I don't want to convince everyone to take this. I'm really writing for, like, the people already on the unconventional path and saying, like, "Hey, here's how I'm making sense of it and how in a way that's fulfilling and feels sustainable to me. I don't know if this will work for you. Beg, borrow, steal, um, from all the principles I put out there and remix it. Like, write your own version of it too." Um, but I've had many people tell me, "Oh, wow, I've felt like such an idiot for years and now I don't feel so alone." (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson31:36

      How can people tell if this is for them?

   6. PMPaul Millerd31:42

      The people... The majority of people that reach out to me, and I've had hundreds of curiosity conversations with people over the last five years, I just have an open calendar on Wednesdays and people can book calls with me, this is how I kind of lor- learn, um, the majority of those people know that the default path won't work for them and they just want information. They want different ideas, different paths. And a lot of people just want friends. Like, the best antidote to feeling like you're crazy (laughs) and not able to fit in the default path is to find a few friends who are seeing the world in a similar way or moving in a similar direction. Um, and that can be enough to kind of give you a confidence to move in a different direction. But that's often what people are seeking. They just want to feel less alone and that they're not so crazy for trying to figure out a different way.

   7. CWChris Williamson32:39

      Is the solution then for everyone to just go work for themselves or work on their own or go freelance?

   8. PMPaul Millerd32:44

      I don't think so. I've talked to a lot of people, uh, surprising number of people who know... Th- they know themselves, right? This all starts with self-reflection. Through self-reflection, I realized I needed an insane amount of autonomy over the work I was doing. Most people are willing to trade some of that for, like, certainty and a paycheck. Like, jobs are freaking awesome. (laughs) Our current iteration of jobs, think about people 100 years ago, they would've been like, "Hell yeah." (laughs) "You're gonna give me a steady paycheck? I don't have to worry about, like, the next, uh, the next crop if it's gonna grow or not?" Um, so this is great for a lot of people, right? I think the challenge is a lot of people just kind of, like, go through life, they're raised in this, like, the whole purpose of going to school for t- the first 15 years is to then get a job, and then you work in a job for 10 years and then people are like, "Wait, this is just... Y- j- we just do this forever? And then we retire? And then what?" (laughs) I think a lot of those people who do figure out, "How can I reclaim that space?" and start leaning into leisure mode, taking those sabbaticals... I even talked to one person who I ch- I challenged him, I was like, "Have you ever done anything unplanned during a work day?" He's like, "Never in my life." I was like, "All right. Here's the assignment for you. What is something you loved doing as a kid?" He's like, "I loved just, like, riding a bike around and exploring." I'm like, "All right. Tuesday, block off your calendar, put important meeting, and just go do that from, like, 2:00 to 5:00." And it was, like, a dramatic shift for him. He's a friend. He has no desire to not work full time. He has big ambitions, he wants a big house, he wants, like, all the fancy things. He knows exactly what he's w- the costs he's paying, but that was, like, enough space for him that he was like, "Oh, crap, I've just been, like, ignoring myself completely." (laughs) "Maybe I should lean into that a little more and I can be a lot happier."

6. 34:52 – 41:55

   The Limits of Ambition

   1. PMPaul Millerd34:52

   2. CWChris Williamson34:52

      What do you... You talk about the limits of ambition. Obviously, a lot of people are very ambitious. This is one of the things that drives them. And for all that I can, um, try to remind people that success doesn't equal happiness and that you can shortcut your route to get there, maybe, um, ambition is seductive and it makes us feel fulfilled and meaning, it might not give us happiness, but it can certainly give us meaning. But you talk about the limits of ambition as well. What are they?

   3. PMPaul Millerd35:23

      Have you ever read any of Agnes Callard's writing?

   4. CWChris Williamson35:26

      Never heard of her.

   5. PMPaul Millerd35:28

      She's amazing. She'd be a fantastic guest. So she's written about... She's a philosopher at the University of Chicago. She's written about, um, two different ideas, ambition versus aspiration. And she says that ambition is basically aiming at something which we already value, right? So, I want to be a famous YouTuber. We already value being a famous YouTuber. So she would argue... And there is space to, like, learn new things along the way, but she would argue given that we already know what we val- how we value that and that we value it currently, there's not as much to be gained on the journey. Whereas, like, an aspirational journey is, like, we're aspiring to be a certain sort of person, shift to a different life stage, um, shift to a different mode of being, um, it's a little more vague, it's harder to articulate. A lot of people have this, like a deep down, like, gut instinct of where they're headed and who they want to be. Um-... and the values instead, we don't really know what we're going to come to value. So one example is, like, I mean you could say, like, "I want to be somebody that, like, appreciates wine." Or actually, let's, let's go sports, 'cause, like, the nerdy, um, (laughs) the nerdy tech people we hang around with don't talk about sports enough. (laughs) Right? So I love basketball. I grew up loving basketball. Read everything, absorbed it, played all the time, know all the players. I still follow the NBA closely. I just love it. When I watch a game, and like, I remember, like, do you watch the NBA?

   6. CWChris Williamson37:13

      Uh, I watched March Madness a lot this month.

   7. PMPaul Millerd37:15

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson37:15

      It's been great.

   9. PMPaul Millerd37:17

      So I watch a game, and like, sometimes you just see freaking beauty on a court, right? And it's like, "Oh my gosh, this is perfect." Like, I'm in love with watching this game. (laughs) And, uh, I can't articulate that to someone. You would actually need to spend, like, an enormous amount of time learning to come to appreciate the things I al- I already appreciate about basketball. And you don't get into learning to appreciate basketball, um, knowing what you value already. Right? So applying this to, like, our life, like, Marc Maron and Bill Simmons, they were very early in the podcasts. Pe- almost everyone said podcasts were stupid. Bill Simmons was at ESPN, and they were like, "We don't even want to, like, support this or run ads on it." He was in that because there wasn't an outcome of, like, being a successful podcaster. Right? So there, there was a lot of space for, like, serendipity and, like, learning to value different things. And he probably had a really meaningful journey learning to become a podcaster. Compared with, like, now, people are like, "I want to be a successful podcaster." They're almost like shortcutting the space for what makes the journey fun. (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson38:37

       So I, I do agree, and I think that although it's not the default path, it's also not a pathless path.

   11. PMPaul Millerd38:43

       Right.

   12. CWChris Williamson38:43

       It's a non-default but well-trodden path. That being said, not everybody, and I'm probably a pretty good example of this, man. Like, I don't have an unlimited amount of creativity in me. You know, I, I like orderliness in my life. I like a degree of predictability. It's why, um, I'd never be a good trader, um, because if my financial assets were getting ragged around at the mercy of the market, I wouldn't be able to focus on what I was supposed to do. So I think that what we're talking or what it sounds like to me, what I've got in my head, is it's kind of like a spectrum. So we have, on one side, we have default path. On the other side, we have truly pathless path, right? Aspiration, um, yes, aspiration. But s- in between that, we have sort of varying degrees of people doing things that are non-default but well-trodden. Then even less default and even less well-trodden-

   13. PMPaul Millerd39:41

       Right.

   14. CWChris Williamson39:42

       ... right down to, "I'm going to completely free-fro my- free-flow my life into whatever it is that I want to manifest."

   15. PMPaul Millerd39:49

       Yeah, I, I think f- for me, it's like a journey of, like, detaching from, like, "I'm going to trade off everything for these future ideas," or, like, "I want to be an identity, I want to be a startup founder." Instead, like, just getting rid of all those scripts and memes and ideas, like meaningful work and all these things, and, like, figuring out, "Okay, what are the things that I'm driven to do? What are the things I'm excited to do? What are the things that, when I experiment and try them, I keep wanting to do them?" Like, writing is one of those things that emerged for me. I really love it. Right? Now, then once you figure out what you want to do, you can then start leaning back in the other direction. And I think this has been my journey over the past couple of years. I've kind of... Like, I was so scared of creating another job for myself when I left my job, and I had to lean so far in the other direction to, like, distance myself from that. And then through that, I gained the confidence. It's like, "Okay, now I know, like, the mix of activities and things that drive me and, like, the things I'm not willing to do such that I'm probably not gonna le- burn myself out. Now I can lean back more into the ambition direction." Right? So I wrote a book last year, right? Th- you have to be a little ambitious (laughs) to write a book.

   16. CWChris Williamson41:02

       No small task, man.

   17. PMPaul Millerd41:04

       (laughs) It's a crazy thing to do. But, um, I knew I liked writing enough that it was a very natural next step. So I was starting with, like, what I enjoyed doing. Writing the book was thrilling. I loved it. I had so much fun. (laughs) One of the most meaningful creative projects of my life. I'm guessing that's kind of, like, a similar progression for you. Like, I mean, I saw y- your video with Jordan. It's beautiful.

   18. CWChris Williamson41:33

       Thank you, man.

   19. PMPaul Millerd41:33

       Like, it's a work of, work of art. Like, that's, that's ambition, but you're leaning into somebody you already know. Like, you, it was probably beyond where you were slightly, right? Challenged you. Um, but you knew that was something you wanted to lean into, that was true to you.

   20. CWChris Williamson41:52

       Yeah. Yeah. It, it is an interesting blend.

7. 41:55 – 51:55

   Meaningful Work

   1. CWChris Williamson41:55

   2. PMPaul Millerd41:55

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson41:55

      You mentioned there are words that you use a little bit, which is meaningful work. What do you think about the idea of meaningful work?

   4. PMPaul Millerd42:03

      I think it's not a useful meme for a lot of people. I think I was sort of trapped. So (laughs) in 2007, when I was graduating college, uh, Google came on The Best Companies to Work For for the first time, at number one. And it was like, "Google is this amazing place to work, beanbag chairs and free lunches and yoga," and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, that's so fun." Like, "I want to have fun and, like, l- love my life." Um, and for the next 10 years, I basically just kept jumping job to job trying to find that, like, dream job. Um-What I didn't realize is that it didn't really matter, like, what I did, it was the how. So it's like the being mode of, like, how am I showing up and spending my time? Right? I might've... I have no idea if I would've liked working at Google. I like technology, but would I have liked all the meetings and, like, the kind of people I worked... I don't know. (laughs) Um, so m- meaningful work, there's this amazing paper from, uh, MIT, or the MIT Sloan Review. It's from, uh, the University of Sussex. Uh, two researchers looked at what actually gives people meaning at work. What they found was basically, um, poignant moments, uh, stressful moments, so like, poignant, like, powerful moments, very specific. Um, stressful, often, like, crises or, like, things they had to push through. Um, often they didn't realize it was meaningful unless they, like, reflected upon it. So this is not what we think of when we think of meaningful work. When a lot of people are thinking of meaningful work, they're thinking of Google. "I just want to be happy. I want to be, like, loving what I do." What really gives you meaning is, like, the book-writing process was... It was hard, it pushed me, it was uncomfortable. It was w- like, (laughs) it was, I felt like an imposter, like, (laughs) a lot of times. But I pushed through that and kept figuring it out. Um, that's, like, meaningful work. Meaningful work, I think, it's hard to fit that in, like, a job container, 'cause in most jobs you have to do stuff you don't want to do.

   5. CWChris Williamson44:18

      Talk to me. Obviously, that's a creator journey, and you, you pivoted from being in a much more default path to one which, although it might be free-flowing, is still kind of creator-y.

   6. PMPaul Millerd44:26

      Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson44:27

      What are the trade-offs between time and money that people need to make when they get exposed to a creator journey?

   8. PMPaul Millerd44:35

      I think for me, the relationship between time and money flipped. So, when you're working full-time you sort of have a salary, and then you, like, (laughs) you're basically an accountant for your life. You're like, "All right, monthly salary, I'm gonna budget this out." Um, whereas... This seems so obvious now, but it was shocking to me a couple of months after quitting. It was like, my first couple of months, I didn't make any money, and I was quickly realizing everything I spent I had to earn, right? It's like, oh, this great ramen place down the street, I was living in New York City when I left my job, it's, it's like $22. It's like, maybe I don't want that. (laughs) Like, maybe I don't want to work the $30 to earn that r- bowl of ramen, right? Do I really value that, uh, bowl of ramen and, like, eating out every night? So it sort of made me, like, refactor and revalue everything I was spending my time, my money on. So, like, instead of saying, "Okay, I have this bucket of money. I'm just gonna spend it. I don't care what the hell I do," it was like everything was like... I was auditing every expense in my life. "Okay, is this bringing me value?" Um, and what I started to realize is that I just really valued my free time. I valued it at such a high amount that I was willing to lower costs in other aspects of my life. Um, and I just kept leaning into that space. So... And I still think this way. Everything I do, it's like, okay, if I'm gonna join a gym and pay $200 a month, what does that actually mean? That means I have to earn an incremental, like, three or four grand a year to pay for that. Is that worth the trade-off? Or can I leave that space open of work I would otherwise have to, like, push for, try to get consulting gigs for, um, to leave that for creative projects? So the work worth doing for me is, like, the writing. I love the writing. But w- writing doesn't really pay the bills, so I want to protect that space for the writing, though, and, like, creating and podcasting and doing these experiments. 'Cause over the long run, over the next 25 years, I know those are the things that are gonna energize my life and make it worth living.

   9. CWChris Williamson46:52

      There's that story from, uh, The E-Myth Revisited, uh, about a lady who starts baking cakes, I think. So there's this woman who loves baking, loves making cakes, decides that she's gonna start doing it, and then just the classic solopreneur journey. S- some of her friends want her to bake cakes for birthdays-

   10. PMPaul Millerd47:12

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson47:12

       ... then she starts doing weddings, then she decides that she's gonna get a little store. So she gets a store, and then she gets some staff because you need some staff to work at the store, and she's baking, but then she spends a bit less time baking because she needs to manage the staff and she needs to make sure that the accounts are done. And then she gets super, super popular so she gets an even bigger store, and then she gets a deal to be able to start selling these to supermarkets-

   12. PMPaul Millerd47:33

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson47:33

       ... and before you know it, she doesn't even remember what the smell of a cake is like. She hasn't baked in months, and she spends all of her time managing and doing stuff. And I think that, again, this unbridled ambition that people have takes them, often takes them away from the thing that they actually want to do. Um, and, uh, you even see this... Like, forget all the existential meaning conversations. Think about it from a pure business perspective that a lot of the time in a sales organization, uh, a great salesperson naturally wants to move up. But that great salesperson might not be a tremendously good manager, so you lose a good salesperson, gain a shitty manager. That person no longer has mastery over the things that they do. They're not built to do that, but because we have this sort of single vector of "I need to be moving forward, I must progress like this," um, and I think that trying to offer people alternatives of, look, how can you take this skill set and perhaps move it elsewhere? There's never been as much opportunity for you to go and do things... And again, we're speaking to a very specific type of person here, right?

   14. PMPaul Millerd48:38

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson48:38

       You know, it's not, it's not the person who has a bunch of responsibilities and, "I need to... I've got to put food on the table for the family," and stuff like that. Like, you know-... do what you got to do. Like, if you've got to get that grind done, then sweet. But for the people that this does resonate with that say, "I do think that maybe I, I, I'm built to do something different than I am now. I, I have this disgruntled, unsatisfactory burbling somewhere inside of me," but maybe they're lacking courage or bravery or direction or a first step. What would you say to those people, practical steps or just, um, things to lean into in themselves that's gonna give them that, that bravery and that courage to decide to do something a bit different?

   16. PMPaul Millerd49:25

       The reason I wrote my book is that the stories I read about people quitting their job were fake. (laughs) Like, they were too simple. And, uh, I've noticed this impulse in myself, and it's why I started writing about it a few years ago, is that when people ask, "Tell me about the moment you decided to quit your job," and then all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, maybe this moment, and then I had the courage to leave." My experience was a slow, fumbling towards quitting my job, of, like, slow and painful years of realizations, silly experiments that didn't quite make sense unless I looked back, and then all of a sudden I reached a point in which it was, like, obvious to quit. But even, like, as I was quitting, I, I didn't have this, like, idea that, like, I was headed towards this something else, right? So I think what I often have people do is, like (laughs) , I did this in a course I used to run, um, have people do an action challenge. What's something in a week that can get you out of your comfort zone that might give you some information about what to do next? So I call this approach ship, quit, and learn. (laughs) So basically, do something, design it for quitting, so you're not dealing with, like, getting caught up with, like, the end state or definitions of success, and the only point is to learn what to do next.

   17. CWChris Williamson50:48

       Give us an example.

   18. PMPaul Millerd50:49

       So... So if you want to start a podcast, buy a mic, sit down with yourself, and record an episode for 10 minutes saying why you want to do a podcast and publish it, and then just see how it feels. And then figure out what do you do next. Right? And I think people miss this. Like, they probably look at you with the podcast, and they're like, "I have to have the same setup as him." It's like, no, go back to his first episode. He's sitting around with his buddies.

   19. CWChris Williamson51:22

       (laughs) This sucks. Sucks dick. I've got to

   20. NANarrator51:23

       (laughs)

   21. PMPaul Millerd51:23

       No, it's g- it's beautiful, though, because that's how everyone starts.

   22. CWChris Williamson51:27

       Yes.

   23. PMPaul Millerd51:27

       This is the great thing about the internet, is you can see people's full journey.

   24. CWChris Williamson51:29

       Yes, you can see the full trajectory. Yes, dude, I say this all the time. You know, you can go back and watch Rogan on-

   25. PMPaul Millerd51:35

       (laughs) Exactly. He's so fat.

   26. CWChris Williamson51:37

       ... some potato. Yeah, it's awful. He's like, the first 10 minutes of it is him trying to get the internet to work, and they're looking at the, the, they can't work out if it's going on. You're, you're way, way, way ahead of where Joe Rogan was when he started, and look at where he is now. Yeah, uh, that's, that's a really good thing. I also

8. 51:55 – 1:00:00

   Growth in Incremental Changes

   1. CWChris Williamson51:55

      very much appreciate the, um, open honesty around it not being a fairytale penny drop about anything. People ask these questions. I remember Love Island, they used to say stuff like, uh, "So what's your type?"

   2. PMPaul Millerd52:09

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson52:09

      And what they, they, what, what they meant by "what's your type" is, "What are the narrowly defined physical characteristics that you look for in a girl?" I'm like, dude, who answers this question with like, "Yeah, it's like brunettes-"

   4. PMPaul Millerd52:21

      It's crazy.

   5. CWChris Williamson52:21

      "... with blonde eyes, and she's got to be a this thing." And I'm like, who, who genuinely who has this, like, low-resolution view of the world? Or the same for people will say, "Man, so when did you know that you wanted to start doing club promoting or you wanted to start a podcast?" I, I, I don't know. I don't know. Like, I, we, we don't exist. Maybe sometimes we encounter a situation which is so traumatic or so grand or so beautiful or so awe-inspiring or so life-changing that it causes us to just orthogonally go, "Oh, fuck, I wasn't ready for that." But it's so rare. It's so rare.

   6. PMPaul Millerd52:59

      (laughs) Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson52:59

      Things... We are the product of tiny, incremental changes that compound over time. It's the same as asking somebody, "When did you get old?"

   8. PMPaul Millerd53:08

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson53:09

      Like, one day at a time.

   10. PMPaul Millerd53:12

       The, the thing is, I think people can prototype these changes, too. And, uh, I think people mistakenly m- Like, to take a creator solo entrepreneurial path, even, like, exploring different kinds of work, the scripts of the default path tell us that we need to get access before we can do the thing, right? Y- We need permission from a gatekeeper. We apply to a job such that we can then do the job. The reality of the world now is we can often just start. And instead of aiming at, like, an identity, a lot of people... Like, this whole creator path is, like, now legible. Whereas, like, I'm talking to people at big tech companies and they're like, "I want to be a creator," and I'm like, "Well, what do you create?" It's like, "Well, I want to write." I'm like, "Have you written anything?" They're like, "No." I'm like, "You should test that first. (laughs) You should, like, give yourself a one-month challenge and see if you write every day for a month. Do you actually like that?" Um, and that was what I had been doing without knowing it on the side. Like, I was writing on Quora for fun, and I was writing-

   11. CWChris Williamson54:24

       Right.

   12. PMPaul Millerd54:24

       ... publicly, and then people were reaching out based on what I was reaching out. And, like, I was really just practicing the things that I would eventually end up doing. But I, I didn't leave with like, "Oh, I'm gonna become a writer or creator."

   13. CWChris Williamson54:38

       Yeah, realizing, realizing the price that you pay to do the thing that you want to do is a, a pretty important insight, because a lot of the time... You know, b- being a rockstar sounds fantastic, but touring whatever shitty country you're from in the back of a cheap camper van-... for five years, barely earning enough money, with no promise that this is going to work. And having to master your own records and having to learn about mixing down. Like, dude, it's not standing on a stage and playing songs. It's arguing with your band mates over who's going to drive the van home.

   14. PMPaul Millerd55:13

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson55:13

       Like, that's the reality of being in a rock band. And I, I'm, I'm close with, um, the guys from Bring Me the Horizon, and like hearing them talk about the first few years of them... And they got... They rose to pretty quick prominent fame. And even with them (laughs) , their first few years are like unbelievably primitive, and they've just released a song with Machine Gun Kelly and Ed Sheeran in the space of a month.

   16. PMPaul Millerd55:41

       Amazing.

   17. CWChris Williamson55:43

       And that's the world that they started in. And you go, "Okay," like, uh, d- Conor McGregor as well, you know? Maybe less so now 'cause he's kind of gone a bit mental again. But the Conor McGregor of five years ago, when he was king of the world, people looked at that and said, "Yeah, I want that." And you go, "Okay, well, what do you think that was like for him living in his parents' attic on Irish, uh, like Job Seekers Allowance with his missus, no idea if it was going to work, rolling the same sequences day after day, throwing the same combinations day after day, endless drills, endless training sessions, living on benefits?" Like, is that... That's, that's what it is. That's his life.

   18. PMPaul Millerd56:24

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson56:24

       That's the life that it is. And it's only in retrospect when you can see success that anything lo- th- that glory is to be found in those first instances. Um, so yeah, I think working out, trying to find that intersection of a price that you would be willing to pay, that's a-

   20. PMPaul Millerd56:42

       Yeah, I w-

   21. CWChris Williamson56:42

       ... that's a good place to start.

   22. PMPaul Millerd56:44

       I was calculating how much income I probably gave up over the last five years of stepping off this path. I'm pr- it's conservatively a million dollars.

   23. CWChris Williamson56:55

       (laughs)

   24. PMPaul Millerd56:56

       (laughs) But in my f... So my first like six months, I did freelancing and I proved like, "Okay, I can make money. I can make this work." And then I was quickly drawn to like this creator stuff. And over the next 18 months, I made about $20,000 and I was like barely making ends meet. I was burning down savings. I moved abroad to save money. I was like so anxious about finances. But I, in those months, found work worth doing. And after that, I was basically willing to go to war to protect that opportunity. That seems like that matters. Like, and I think I wrote my book because I want to tell people that like if you find this stuff and you think it's important, that matters. Y- will you be able to get, will you be able to get paid for it? I don't know. I don't know how to do that. I'm not a rockstar, hyperambitious person that can just monetize everything. But might it lead you to a, a life that is energizing, where you feel alive, where you feel connected? It might. And it, it might suck in the short term, but it might also be worth it. (laughs)

   25. CWChris Williamson58:06

       Two things that I've got in my mind. First one is, a lot of people that I know are converging on this same stuff. You know?

   26. PMPaul Millerd58:13

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson58:13

       That blog post of mine was before I'd read your book, and yet it converges perfectly. Look at Chris Sparks, man. Chris, former-

   28. PMPaul Millerd58:21

       It's the same, yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson58:22

       ... online number four poker player on the planet, productivity coach. Like, he literally, he sharpens the bleeding edge of the most ambitious people on the planet, professionally. That's his job. And yet you speak to him and it's like talking to some zen master that's just come back from a cave. All of us are relinquishing the trappings that kept us imprisoned before-

   30. PMPaul Millerd58:49

       Yeah.
9. 1:00:00 – 1:08:46

   The Price of Success

   1. PMPaul Millerd1:00:00

      and error.

   2. CWChris Williamson1:00:00

      ... it's also figuring out, look, is that what I want or is that what I want because other people seem to want it?

   3. PMPaul Millerd1:00:07

      Yeah, exactly.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:00:07

      Because psychological contagion is a hell of a drug, man, and mimetic desire will carry you a long, long way. Because it's easy to look at someone like Ali who's, uh, his course will be bringing in 3 mil, 4 mil probably a year at, fuck knows, maybe 85% margin, maybe more. You know? Like it's all, it's all, it's internet stuff. It's all money. It's all profit. Um, plus he's got his YouTube channel, plus he's got a book coming out soon, plus all of the sponsors on his podcast and blah, blah, blah. And you go, "Dude, that's, that's great." But like he is a one in a, one in 10,000, one in 100,000 freak who has a very particular blend that has allowed him to do this. Um, is that genuinely what you want? And is that the price that you're prepared to pay for it? And looking at success and what it means to you, starting from y- a value-led...... my contribution to the world, what I know about myself, that sort of reflection. Starting from that position, I think it's very difficult to go wrong because you go, it... What you said earlier on, you know, a million, uh, dollars over the space of five years. I mean, that, that's like-

   5. PMPaul Millerd1:01:18

      (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson1:01:18

      ... toe, toe-curlingly fucking painful. But the, the point is that if that's not what you value and if you value the things that you're doing now more, then that's a price that's worth paying. Here was the other thing-

   7. PMPaul Millerd1:01:30

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:01:31

      ... that I wanted to say about that as well. In retrospect, a lot of the time we forget why we did the things we did. So looking back and saying, "I could have earned a million dollars over five years, a million dollars more," um, you can say, "Well, I would love a million dollars," but you forget why you didn't earn a million dollars. My point is that the person that we are in the moment and the person that we are in retrospect-

   9. PMPaul Millerd1:01:53

      Yeah. It's so true.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:01:54

       ... are very, very different, and that's so important. Like, um, "I wish that I hadn't drank last night." Everybody says that the next day.

   11. PMPaul Millerd1:02:01

       (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson1:02:01

       But you go, "Well, did you enjoy? Did you, did you enjoy the party?"

   13. PMPaul Millerd1:02:05

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:02:05

       "Well, yeah." Okay, well maybe you, maybe this isn't the case. Maybe this is just your frame of reference right now.

   15. PMPaul Millerd1:02:13

       Yeah. I, I... When I look back, I actually couldn't continue working in that job. I had reached a breaking point. I had burned out. And I think one of the advantages I've had on my current path is that I burned out, and I had reached some level of success that I sort of knew, like, that wasn't what I wanted. I didn't want to be trading my time for some future payoffs in other people's eyes. I wanted to find that internal driver of success, 'cause I had a hunch it would be more sustainable. That has mostly panned out. And I now just, like, I'm... Mistrus- I don't trust, like, automatic success memes. I've been doing online courses since 2018. Then I see people like Dave and Tiago, Dave Perell and Tiago Forte, for people who... Like, they're hyper ambitious, and they're a- amazing. Like, they've really leveled up the whole ecosystem of, like, what these courses can look like. My wife's taking gre-

   16. CWChris Williamson1:03:16

       And how much money you can earn from them from their side as well, not just the experience-

   17. PMPaul Millerd1:03:21

       Right.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:03:21

       ... of the student, but the, uh, monetization of the creator.

   19. PMPaul Millerd1:03:25

       Yeah. And so I've been doing courses, and, like, I'm running a course teaching consulting skills, and I'm making good money. Um, but it, it was very easy for me to know, oh, I'm not them. I don't have that level of ambition. How can I design the thing to fit within my life? So I love, like, one-on-one helping people. I love it. So I designed, like, my course. So before this podcast, I was on a one-on-one coaching call. Seeing that, like, individual improvement, it just, like, fires me up. I love it. And that's sustainable for me over the long term. But if I'm running, like, a larger thing and, like, have to have employees and contractors and, like... Uh, I'm going to light it on fire (laughs) and just, like, burn it to the ground after I do it. It's the E-Myth story, right? Um, so I think this is also an advantage of a solo, self-employed creator path, is that if you do go into an ambitious mode that isn't your path, you'll probably burn out faster.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:04:25

       Yeah.

   21. PMPaul Millerd1:04:26

       Whereas in a job, I think where people get really stuck and can do harm to themselves is they maintain this low-grade burnout for a long time. Whereas, like, on the solo path, you're just gonna blow it all up (laughs) 'cause you're either going to go too hard and you're ultimately responsible.

   22. CWChris Williamson1:04:45

       There's no one to lean back on either.

   23. PMPaul Millerd1:04:47

       Yeah, exactly.

   24. CWChris Williamson1:04:49

       I think th- th- this is something that I've been playing with for a, a long time, and I'm, I might try and write about it this week after this conversation. Um, not having boundless ambition is so uncelebrated in the modern world. The... Everyone... And this isn't just your quintessential Gary V's, it's the subtext of, "How did you spend your Sunday?" "Oh, I had a productive Sunday. I, I folded loads of laundry and got this done." It's there is always more ambition to chase after.

   25. PMPaul Millerd1:05:22

       Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson1:05:22

       And increasingly, I'm seeing in myself and in the people that I talk to about this stuff that realizing matching the amount of ambition that you have with the sort of life that you live is the solution.

   27. PMPaul Millerd1:05:40

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson1:05:41

       That's, that's precisely where your highest point of contribution, uh, can be deployed, because you're not going to burn yourself out. And just because David Perell can do three or four cohorts of Rite of Passage every year and write huge blog posts and create a documentary about Porter Robinson and be a, a Thiel Fellow or whatever the fuck else it is that he's doing, or Ali can do the podcast and the YouTube and the courses and the book and the whatever. Like, if that's not you, fine.

   29. PMPaul Millerd1:06:18

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson1:06:19

       Like, honestly, fine, because there are prices that you would have to pay to get yourself to that level, and you're probably not prepared to pay them. And just because other people say that the, that level of aggression is something that you should aspire to doesn't mean that you should.
10. 1:08:46 – 1:09:28

    Where to Find Paul

    1. CWChris Williamson1:08:46

       to finish. Let's leave it there. Paul Millerd, ladies and gentlemen. If people want to buy the book or find out what you do online, where should they go?

    2. PMPaul Millerd1:08:52

       Yeah, think-boundless.com or just google Paul Millerd. I'm pretty easy to find, only one with an internet presence.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:08:58

       Nice. Path Less Path will be linked in the show notes below as well. Dude, I really appreciate what you do. I appreciate you. Thank you for making me feel very welcome here in Austin as well. Uh, I'm looking forward to catching up soon.

    4. PMPaul Millerd1:09:08

       Awesome. Thanks, Chris.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:09:10

       What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 1:09:28