Bookworm Transcripts

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Well, I made it back from the mountains in California, Joe, and I'm excited to talk to you about the pathless path today.

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Yeah.

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Did you find any paths in the mountains while you were there?

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Oh, there are paths everywhere in the mountains.

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It's kind of interesting in the Midwest, where kind of spoiled, I guess, with how much room we have.

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Because up in the mountains, like the view is beautiful, but the houses are pretty much on top of one another.

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Yep.

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And the roads are like a lane and a half wide, but they're two lanes of traffic and you frequently feel like you're about to go over a hill down in a bankman.

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My wife and I rented a cabin in the mountains in Tennessee.

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This has been a while back now.

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And I just remember thinking, it's like, OK, this is really cool.

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We get a cabin up in the mountains, but there's like nowhere to sit outside.

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Like you're in the cabin.

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And if you go out on the deck, that lets you oversee the big view.

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But if you look down, it's like 100 feet off the deck, just because it's all rock.

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It's like, well, at least the house won't go anywhere, but I'm used to big yards and acreages and stuff.

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I was like, it's just not worth that out there.

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Yeah, a little claustrophobic, but it was a beautiful area mentioned before we hit record.

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I trained for a half marathon.

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So did a couple of runs up in the mountain air, which completely kicked my butt.

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I'm not used to the altitude.

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I'm not used to the hills and like ran 13.1 on the Thursday before I went there, ran two and a half while I was there considerably slower.

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And like the elevation gain on my Apple Watch when I run around here is like 13 feet different.

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So if I take the hilly route right there in my two and a half mile run, it was 360 feet.

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A little bit of a difference there.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, a little different, but absolutely beautiful.

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Got to go to Disneyland.

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That was awesome.

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OK, remind me, Disneyland versus Disney World.

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I'm bad and get these backwards.

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Yeah, Disneyland's the original.

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That's what it is.

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Anaheim, Irvine.

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And that's the one that Walt went all in and bought the land and built the park.

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And then Disney World came later.

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But Disneyland, there's a lot less room.

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So it's kind of interesting.

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Like we were walking around the Star Wars area and Star Wars, like Galaxy huge, right?

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And there's not a ton of room there.

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So they have a lot of interesting things they've done with the sizes and shapes of the models to make it feel like things are further away than they really are.

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It's actually kind of trippy when you when you see it because you'll come at something from one side and you'll see that like this big fake mountain range thing is like right behind this thing.

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And then when you get up to it and you look up at it, it feels like it's thousands of feet away, you know.

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It's weird.

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But yeah, Star Wars land is pretty cool.

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And I went with David and it was pretty cool because he knows I'm a Star Wars nerd, but not on the level that he is, but he's just pointing out all these little details that I would have missed if I was there.

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Like we were in the cantina and there's the booth by the door and we're walking out and there's two blaster holes in the wall right by the door, right from episode four when Han and I forget the aliens name.

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You know, they have the shootout.

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Yep.

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And he just makes comments like, huh, somebody's blaster must have gone off right there.

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You know, so they really did a great job with the area and then being with David and his family.

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They just they knew exactly where to go and just had to follow them around and do the things.

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Didn't have to make a single decision.

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I think the entire time we were there.

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I think stuff like that is underrated.

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Like people don't realize like if you have somebody who was in the know that knows the stuff inside and out, like go with them.

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And just tell them, give me a good time and I don't want to make any decisions.

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Like just just go for it.

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And it's always way better that way because they know like the best of the best.

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It's like that that right there.

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That's the best way to do it.

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Yeah.

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Well, I am going to put a link in the show notes here for people who are interested.

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I highly recommend Disneyland.

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I've been to Disney World to Disneyland is better.

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Can confirm.

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And I know David and his wife have put together like the Disneyland field guide videos that they've done.

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Sure.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, which is pretty cool.

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So even if you don't have somebody to show you around, there's at least those resources.

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And I'll share those for people who are interested.

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But yeah, it was a good time.

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David would be the one I'd want to go with for sure.

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All right.

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Should you talk about follow up?

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You've got two action items here.

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I do.

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And I mean, I did both of them.

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I had I have better results on one versus the other.

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See if you can make a quick guess as to which ones, which the second of the two.

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But the first is make sure my posture is OK.

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So like this is like the whole stand up straight scenario.

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And I have my Apple Watch tap my wrist every 15 minutes, which I know is super annoying for some people.

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And they think it's obnoxious.

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It's necessary for me.

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Otherwise, I completely lose track of time and life is completely gone.

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And I don't even realize what just happened.

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So I did this and I'm pretty good about, you know, standing up straight or, you know,

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having better posture when it goes off as far as like all the mental stuff that goes with it.

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I can't say there's really any.

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I found zero benefit from that mentally, physically.

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My back doesn't hurt as much.

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So there's that.

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So I'll take that one.

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I'll keep doing it just because physical pain.

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But and I'm talking about very, very minor, like soreness is what I'm talking about.

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Not like I can hardly set up.

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I'm exaggerating this quite a bit to make a point.

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But yeah, I'll keep doing it.

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The second of the two was to say yes more to my kids.

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I started doing this and, you know, trying to make sure that I was saying yes more often than no,

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just because that was what I was wanting to try.

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And then I was reminded, if you ever seen there's a movie called Yes Day.

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Have you seen this?

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I don't know if I recommended it or not.

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There's not really any known actors or anything to it.

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But we watched this with our kids.

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Basically the moral of the story was that the parents were not allowed to say no

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to their kids for the entire day.

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And it was planned ahead of time.

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And there were boundaries like we can't kill people.

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We cannot leave go outside of 25 miles from our house.

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We can't spend more than this amount of money.

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Like there was some restraints they'd put on it.

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But I'd forgotten about the movie entirely until I got about halfway through this last two weeks.

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And I was at one point talked to my kids and said, I'm trying to say yes to you guys more often.

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Like, oh, can we do a Yes Day?

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It's like absolutely not.

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Like I will do a no on that one.

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Not going quite that far, but played a lot more games than I have been.

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I'm getting the whole let's play horsey.

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Let's play ballerina.

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Yes, super fun.

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Yeah, I didn't guess I have three girls.

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There you go.

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The bearded ballerina.

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Yeah, I know, right.

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It's like do the whole.

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Nice.

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So yeah, no, it was good.

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I'll try to keep that one up, but keep both of them up, I guess.

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But saying yes to the kids is more fun than I expected, but at the same time,

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no, you cannot have six pieces of cake.

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There is a line here.

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Sure.

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Well, that's cool.

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I did not have any action items from the last book, which was the 12 Rules for Life,

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but did have a couple of instances to make fun of it while I was on my trip.

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OK, so skateboarders at like Arrowhead.

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So obviously I did not disturb the kids on their skateboards.

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Good job.

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See, you're already learning a little book.

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Good job.

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Yeah.

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All right.

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Well, I guess time to get into today's book then, huh?

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Sure.

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Take us down the path.

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The pathless path.

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Oh, got it.

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That is today's book, The Pathless Path by Paul Millard.

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And this was one that originally I had heard of because it was listed in one of Ali Abdall's

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videos on like influential books, kind of like the influential podcast video that he did,

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but forgot to link to us at the beginning.

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Yep.

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If you're listening, Ali, I love you, but let's try again, shall we?

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So then it came up again.

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He did a dedicated video on this specific book.

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And Toby had brought this to my attention the first time that he mentioned it.

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Then the second time he mentioned it, he's like,

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"Dad, we should get this book."

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And basically anytime Toby suggests a book that I am even remotely interested in, I buy it.

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By the way, that's a rule for life.

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If you trust somebody and they make a comment, even in passing about a good book that they've read,

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buy it immediately.

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I've been doing that for years.

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And it may sound like a lot of money, but it's really not.

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I mean, you're not buying thousands of books a year, I don't think, but maybe.

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So yeah, this one came up a couple of times and it looked good.

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So I bought it.

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I bought the hardcover version.

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Which version did you get?

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I got the hardback.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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So does yours have a weird material on the cover and the pages aren't cut very well?

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I can't say that that was my experience, no.

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Okay.

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Well, I got the book feels weird.

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It's like a different sort of coding on the cover, at least for mine.

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And I brought it with me to the retreat and everybody there made the same comment when they

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picked it up like, "Whoa, this one feels kind of weird."

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And when I got it, about half of the pages were stuck together.

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I had to like physically rip them apart page by page.

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Okay.

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Because it just wasn't cut very well.

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But you know, that can happen, I suppose.

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But all that to say, this doesn't feel, I don't know if it's self-published.

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I kind of think it is because there's no publisher name.

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It is, yeah, because he mentions in the book at one point that he did all the

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stuff around it and had it printed and such.

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Sure.

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So it feels like a self-published book.

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But I think that's just comments on the outside.

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We'll get to the inside here in a little bit.

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But broken into two parts, part one is the default path where he kind of shares his story.

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And then part two is the pathless path.

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And that's kind of where he gets into the, I don't want to say strategies or tips,

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but kind of like the thought perspective and the more general application of the concepts.

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Part one has six chapters, chapter one is an introduction.

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Which by the way, I kind of like that they actually called the introduction chapter one.

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I don't remember what the book was.

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Chris Bailey had the introduction as chapter zero.

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I've always really liked that concept, but that's me being a computer nerd,

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that developer world just wants it to be starting at zero.

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So that's me.

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I mean, that is a legit way to do it too, I think.

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But I don't like the separate section as introduction.

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That feels weird.

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Yeah, so chapter one introduction, chapter two, getting ahead.

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Chapter three, work, work, work.

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Chapter four, awakening, chapter five, breaking free.

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Chapter six, the first steps.

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Then you go into part two, and then there we've got chapter seven, wisdom of the pathless path.

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Chapter eight, redefine success.

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Chapter nine, the real work of our lives.

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And then chapter 10, playing the long game.

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Now, before we dive into the content of the book itself,

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I got to get your reaction when you picked this one up.

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Or even when I said I wanted to read it.

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What were you thinking?

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Because I think there's probably a couple different scenarios or options available here.

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Well, first reaction was just purely off of the title,

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because I had not heard of it at all.

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So whenever you mentioned the pathless path by Paul Millard,

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I completely knew title to me at all.

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My first thought was, of course, that sounds like a mike book to me.

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And so that was my first reaction.

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When I got it, I can't say that I had any issues with quality of the book.

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I just want to point that out.

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It's like mine just felt like a normal.

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It just feels like a standard, hardback to me.

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None of the pages stuck together at all.

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It was all straight, all the things.

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I have a tendency to notice immediately if there's a publisher mark on the spine of the book,

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which this one does not have, which immediately told me it was a self-published book.

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And then, of course, that sets some radar bells off.

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It's not always a bad thing.

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Like, there are some that we've had that are really, really good that are in that territory.

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It kind of skews the other way, typically.

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So it kind of made me like, okay, let's keep our guard up here.

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A little bit.

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But yeah, I can't say that I had any, like, this is going to be a terrible book.

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I didn't have any of that at all.

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I think if I had picked up the book and it had a really weird feel to it

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and the pages were all stuck together, I would maybe be scared of what I was about to get into.

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But I didn't have that.

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I'm kind of grateful that I didn't have that because I came at this with a better expectation

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than I would have given the other scenario.

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Yeah, I was a little nervous.

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Like, what did I get myself into?

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Yep.

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But yeah, overall, I think it was a pretty good book and I'm excited to talk through it.

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Maybe let's jump into chapter one here, which is the introduction.

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And again, this is in the first part, which is kind of where he's telling his story.

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And this is the default path.

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And when he talks about the default path, he's basically talking about the path that society

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kind of just unconsciously funnels people down, which is go to college, get a job,

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climb the ladder, accumulate a bunch of wealth, right?

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He was on that path.

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He was making $200,000 a year in New York City and then started to question like,

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is there another option?

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He's got different parts of his story that he tells in the different chapters.

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I don't want to keep coming back to that story though.

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So I just kind of want to get it all out of the way here in the introduction.

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Okay, that'd be good because it's kind of reiterated a lot.

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It is.

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So one of the details that I liked was that he accidentally quit his job.

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He was at some thing on a day he was out, but he's doing email on his phone anyways,

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because he's getting pulled into these projects.

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And he's arguing with his manager over something and then makes a comment on one of the emails like,

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I'm not sure if this is the right place for me, which his manager took as his resignation.

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That would be pretty scary, I think.

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But kudos to Paul.

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He used it as an opportunity to rethink things.

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And that's kind of what he's setting up here in chapter one in the introduction.

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I don't think there's a whole lot of other details from his story that I want to unpack.

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Was there anything that kind of stood out to you?

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Just that the overall story is that he was headed down the fast track of corporate elite

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world, going to McKinsey with the big consulting firms and GM and GM.

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That didn't sound right.

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I think so.

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Anyway, he's going down that path of elite careers, if you will, and finds out he hates it,

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ends up being burnt out.

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It's not all other.

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It's cracked up to be, has some health issues, which we'll probably cover here in a bit.

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But then he overcomes that and then starts down this whole path of kind of going where

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everyone's traveling all over the place and doing work freelance style.

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Big picture, that's his story.

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If you want to get that out of the way and not have to reiterate this throughout the rest of the episode,

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there you go.

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Yeah, I mean, he's a good storyteller and the details are entertaining and worth the read.

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But for the sake of the discussion here, yeah, I think that's a good synopsis.

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The end result is that he's traveling the world.

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He meets the love of his life and they are completely happy on a lot less than he was making

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in the day job.

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And it kind of all revolves around defining for yourself what success should look like.

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So now back to chapter one introduction.

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This is where he starts the, it plants the seeds or lays the foundation for that discussion

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about the default path.

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He finds it as a series of decisions and accomplishments needed to be seen as a successful adult.

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And I think that definition can resonate with just about anyone.

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He says on page 11 that many people find it difficult to create change in their lives

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because they lack someone who believes in them.

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That convicted me because I not only, I think have felt that myself, but I think I'm at the point

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now where I could be that person who can help somebody else who just needs someone to say,

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you know, you got what it takes.

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But the other big thing here is that most people think they have to have things all

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figured up by the time they're 25.

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And I definitely felt that as well.

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My career arc is kind of non-traditional.

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So you might look at my experience and be like, well, that doesn't really make any sense.

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You've kind of like gone against the green in that area, but I've definitely felt what he's

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describing there.

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And I've definitely felt the sense of responsibility associated with that.

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Like, well, you got a, you're married, you have a family, you know, you have to have to provide.

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And that is definitely a responsibility.

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I'm not saying like you need, you should be able to just shirk those things.

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But I think what he's saying is that we get so attached to the responsibilities.

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And they're kind of anchored in this worst case scenario, which forces people into the default

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path.

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And so right at the beginning here, I'm feeling the call.

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I have the, as I process like some of my own career path, like I've been on a whole bunch of different

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trajectories and have always kind of worked semi-close to tech and in the middle of it.

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But it's always been following that default path.

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And it's one that I can't say I've ever had a reason to not go down that road.

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But this, at least, I think it was helpful, at least in this part to define it.

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The thing that I kind of struggled with is like it started to feel like almost like I've heard this before.

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And I'll maybe save some of my thoughts on that for a little later because he does bring up another,

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bring that up in another spot and then it struck me.

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But he kind of has this, you don't have to follow the ideas that are set in front of.

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You don't have to follow through on people's expectations and be careful of the things that

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you feel like you should do.

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I feel like that's really what he's setting it up for here at the very beginning.

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It's just try to pay attention to the thing, like the unconscious foundational ideas that you're

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acting on without even comprehending that you're doing that.

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I feel like that's really what he's trying to set the stage for is just keep your eyes open.

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There is this default path, but it doesn't always have to be that way.

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That, to me, was like the foundation he was setting up here.

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He did a good job with it, too.

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Right.

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Yeah, I agree.

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Let's go into the next one here.

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I think this one will be fairly quick.

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Chapter two is getting ahead and just jotted a couple of things down from this chapter.

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Again, this is all kind of rooted in his story.

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But some of the things that hit me was he said that it can be difficult to pick when there are

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so many options.

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I definitely feel that.

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My way of getting around that is Ben, I think, to say yes and.

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So do all the things that I want to do.

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Obviously, you have to say no at some point, so it's not do all the things, but try all the things.

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The way to try all the things is to not assume that you have to go full-time with all the things.

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I'm not a full-time podcaster.

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I'm not a full-time YouTuber.

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I dabble in these things, but enough to know what I like about them and what I don't like about them.

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And I feel like that's important because ultimately what you want to avoid is kind of the big questions

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he's asking here.

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You know, one of them, he says, "What am I living for?"

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Another one is, "What do I really want?"

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The third one, "How do I want to look back on my life when it's my time to go?"

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I don't want to get to the end of my life and have regrets because I was too scared to try something.

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And I really am feeling that now as I'm reading this, my oldest son is about to

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get his temps and I'm realizing like time is going quickly and he's going to be at the point

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where he's going to be making some of these decisions in his life very soon.

00:23:49

And I want to be an example more than an advisor when it comes to this stuff.

00:23:58

So really what I want to model for him is the courage to try the things, even if you maybe did

00:24:06

it once and it didn't work out, you know, that doesn't mean that it doesn't work.

00:24:10

Embrace the growth mindset and figure out what you can do better if it really is something that

00:24:16

you are passionate about, which again does not mean something that you like to do, but

00:24:20

something that really is meaningful to you, something you're willing to suffer to see come about,

00:24:24

then be willing to do the hard things and figure out ways to make it work.

00:24:30

And the other thing he mentions in here is to be wear cracks in your career identity.

00:24:36

I like this. I interpret this, the cracks in your career identity basically is like you've

00:24:42

assembled this persona of who you are and what you do. In fact, if you go to a party or a gathering,

00:24:49

the chances are when you first meet someone, they're going to ask you like, what do you do?

00:24:54

Right? So whatever your default response is, you know, that's your career identity.

00:25:00

And if it's something that is like really meaningful to you and you're excited when you say it,

00:25:05

then you're probably good. But if you're like, well, that feels a little bit disingenuous to

00:25:11

frame it that way, that would be a crack in your career identity.

00:25:14

Yeah, it's in this chapter that he mentions his health crisis that he works through. And I just

00:25:22

want to point this out because this was like the turning point for him. And it's one that I can

00:25:29

relate with, but he was going down like this corporate ladder thing, starting to realize that

00:25:35

maybe this isn't quite right, but didn't know what else to do. And then he finds out he has Lyme

00:25:40

disease. And he was explaining some of his process for trying to beat this. And I've been there,

00:25:51

like I've had Lyme, I've been through it, beaten the thing, but all the stuff that he explained

00:25:56

from a normal doctor and their methods of treating that and it not working. Like, yeah, I get it.

00:26:04

Like that's just like the standard procedures. So I kind of feel bad for him in that sense. So

00:26:09

you can't really go the traditional route on that one, it seems. But that particular health crisis

00:26:15

for him basically snapped him out of the process of trying to go down the default path and trying

00:26:23

to continually climb the ladder, always looking for the pay raise, always looking for the next

00:26:27

better thing and becoming a classic hoop jumper, as he calls it. And this is the spot where he starts

00:26:36

to try to figure out, okay, well, what could the alternative be? And that's the break point for him.

00:26:44

So I was really glad he explained it in that sense. He brings it up a few times

00:26:49

throughout the rest of the book, but that's similar to sometimes people can't really make big changes

00:26:56

unless there's a complete crisis moment. And it's those that I, you know, we've talked about this

00:27:03

before where if you have a crisis moment, sometimes that's where the hard change can come about.

00:27:08

Like that's that's sometimes where that can be a positive. So that's exactly what happened for him.

00:27:15

So I was just glad he shared it. Yeah, that's right. I forgot about that story until you

00:27:24

brought it back up again, but it makes sense that that would resonate with you.

00:27:27

And kind of the framing of that story, which it sounds like he's worked through it was my

00:27:34

interpretation of that. But the reason he shared that was that it forced him to think non-traditionally

00:27:43

about his work, because he couldn't show up. He didn't have the energy. He wasn't well enough

00:27:50

to do it, but most jobs aren't going to look favorably. If you say, well, I'm not feeling

00:27:57

great. Okay, how long are you going to be out? And you say six months, right? Right. Yeah, just to,

00:28:03

you know, and some employers can help with that. Like whenever I had,

00:28:08

Lime, I was in the middle of trying to do a contract for a corporation and that contract went south

00:28:14

and all sorts of bad things happened. But I ended up leaving that work to come work for the church

00:28:22

full time. And I was like in the depths of Lyme disease at the time. And I told them, like,

00:28:29

here's a deal. Like I'm not 100% and won't be for a while. And they were fine with that.

00:28:35

And you know, take care of yourself. If it gets to where a day is too much, just go home. Like if

00:28:39

it gets to where you feel like you can't drive home, go lay down on a couch somewhere. Like,

00:28:44

they were totally cool with that, that process and we're willing to support me in that process.

00:28:50

And obviously having gotten past that and being where I'm at now that's served them very well.

00:28:56

But I don't think I could have successfully maintained a full time job without that kind of

00:29:04

grace involved. So in the traditional job role world, that would have been catastrophe. It really

00:29:14

would have been. Right. Well, speaking of full time jobs, let's go into the next section. That's

00:29:21

the perfect place to do it. Because chapter three is work, work, work. And the big idea from here,

00:29:32

I would say, is that the 40 hour work week is a fairly new construct.

00:29:41

He mentions in here that the German historian Max Weber founded the,

00:29:48

founded the spirit of capitalism, failed to take hold on societies that had a traditionalist view of

00:29:56

work. And this is just in other cultures where they work as much as they need to to support

00:30:03

their current lifestyle. And then they stop. It's kind of a uniquely, I'll say American thing,

00:30:08

but I'm sure it's beyond the United States, where you continue to work to accumulate as much as

00:30:15

you possibly can. And then he talks about how the period from 1946 to 1980, where this 40 hour work

00:30:23

week was kind of established. That was not the norm in the totality of human history. It was sort

00:30:31

of an anomaly in this whole idea of work life balance. That is an idea that sounds like it belongs

00:30:39

in another era is how he put it. And I think I maybe tend to agree with him after a couple of

00:30:44

statistics that he shared, because he said that the US is one of the strongest wage based societies

00:30:51

in the world. But only about 40% of adult Americans have jobs where they work more than 35 hours per

00:30:58

week. That seemed low to me. And yes, I know that there are older Americans that would fall into

00:31:03

that category with that have retired. But he also said almost all job growth from 2005 to 2015 was

00:31:10

for alternative or non traditional jobs. So basically what he's saying here is that the,

00:31:18

the thing that we tell ourselves, everybody is doing this, there are actually fewer and fewer

00:31:24

people doing that. So he's trying to inspire us to think about work a little bit differently, I think.

00:31:29

Yeah, I was thinking the number was actually less than that, less than the 40%. I had 26% in my

00:31:35

head. I don't know where that came from. But maybe that was a different stat. Sometimes I get numbers

00:31:39

transpose like that. But regardless, it's true. Like fewer and fewer people just have a classic

00:31:48

day job, you know, nine to five, eight to four, whatever you want to do. However, you want to work

00:31:53

it. But we tend to think like work is life. Like you were saying earlier, like we identify with

00:32:00

the job, the career that we have, and not necessarily what we do for leisure.

00:32:08

And making that a priority, I think we'll get there here before long. But I,

00:32:15

I know that I sometimes see like work is the thing that I do. And that's all I do.

00:32:22

I know that I have that mentality regularly. So much so like I have to track my time that I'm at

00:32:30

work, not because I need to make sure I'm putting in enough time, but so that I quit on time. Like

00:32:36

I'm backwards on that. Because I make sure like, okay, I'm at 41 hours this week, or will be by the

00:32:44

time something into Sunday hits, I need to go home at noon today, or I'm going to be sitting at like

00:32:50

45, 46 hours. Like that's, that's my mentality on it. And it's just because I know like my

00:32:58

tendencies, like I just want to keep doing things. I don't know why that is per se. I mean, I know

00:33:02

I really like what I do. But that's me. The workaholic can be.

00:33:10

And like 46 hours, I think that's what you shared there. Like there are a lot of people.

00:33:16

If I didn't, like there are weeks, like that's me tracking to make sure I don't hit that.

00:33:23

Because there are weeks where if I just if I didn't keep track of it like that, I would easily be in

00:33:28

the 55 range without even realizing what I was doing. Right. And that was kind of my,

00:33:34

my point is like you describe that as workaholic tendencies. And I think I would tend to agree

00:33:39

with you because really it's just in your general default response, well, I'm going to keep working

00:33:45

because there's more things that need to get done. But there are a lot of people who would take

00:33:49

that 46 number or even the 55 number and be like, huh, that's not a workaholic because they're doing

00:33:55

eight hour weeks. Yeah. I think back to my farm days when, you know, an 80 hour work week, work week,

00:34:03

not work period, work week was the norm. So yes. But even like comparing those numbers,

00:34:12

that's the wrong approach, right? But it's interesting to me because the minute that you

00:34:17

share any of those numbers, I found myself immediately thinking back to like my time read data and

00:34:25

how much do I work trying to locate myself in that spectrum. Yeah. Yeah. How do I compare to that? Yeah.

00:34:32

Yeah. But that's not what we should be doing. We should be defining what's the right thing for

00:34:40

us. And I guess that's a good place to go into the next chapter. So let's do that. Let's go into

00:34:48

chapter four, which is awakening. And this is kind of just thinking differently about not just work,

00:34:56

but what's your life could look like? He asked a question and I jotted this down in my, my mind

00:35:01

not file. What does a life not centered around work look like? I'm not sure I know.

00:35:09

Yeah. It's such a normal thing that it's, it's tough to get your head on that. Like I've asked

00:35:14

this question. Oh, probably for at least three years now, it's like, what would it look like

00:35:21

if I could somehow get paid to live the lifestyle that I want in a way that would pay all the bills

00:35:29

and let me have some semblance of a savings? Like what is a lifestyle look like that you could get

00:35:35

paid to have? That's a weird question to ask, but I feel like that's what he's getting at here.

00:35:41

Kind of. And I think you're right. That's kind of what he's driving at. But I think there's different

00:35:49

flavors of that, which are more interesting to me, which I mean, the life theme thing is big for me.

00:35:58

Yeah. So I think you could view your work as just a job or you could view it as your

00:36:02

vocation or a calling. And if you do land in one of those ladder buckets, there's probably the

00:36:07

tendency to think, well, I really like what I do. I just want to keep doing it forever. So it's

00:36:12

easy to excuse. But even in those scenarios, imagine, you know, you're a carpenter or somebody who

00:36:19

uses their hands all the time, or maybe like a writer, I guess, you know, like I use my keyboard.

00:36:26

But if I all of a sudden could not use my hands to type, and that was that part of my identity was

00:36:32

removed, like what would be left? And how would I feel about that? And there are different

00:36:39

different things, different roles, different responsibilities that I have, which I found myself

00:36:45

kind of thinking, Oh, well, I'd lean on this to help fill that gap. I'm a husband, I'm a father,

00:36:52

I'm a elder in our church, I help lead the men's ministry, you know, if it all ended tomorrow,

00:36:59

and I didn't have to go to work to get money to live, maybe I would like do those things more.

00:37:04

But I really didn't have a concrete. This is really who Mike Schmitz is and what he does.

00:37:12

So it's a little bit challenging to me. I guess what the life-themed stuff kind of what I've

00:37:18

been doing, and I don't necessarily think this is wrong, is to filter the things that I am doing

00:37:24

through that life theme, because in my experience, when you do that, if they are the right things,

00:37:30

you gain the motivation to do them. If they are the wrong things, you gain the clarity to say no to

00:37:35

them. But when you force yourself to envision a future where work itself is removed from you,

00:37:43

that is a little bit challenging to say the least. What does it look like to

00:37:50

go do the things you love to do every single day? Right? And I feel like this is

00:37:56

it's weird and it's difficult to grasp, because at least for me, because what are the things you

00:38:06

love to do? And we immediately started thinking of hobbies, right? Some people have paid board games,

00:38:11

some people go fishing, build cars, people do all sorts of stuff for a hobby.

00:38:18

But if you didn't have to go to work, would you actually do that all day every day?

00:38:24

If the answer is yes, then is there a way you get paid to do that? But then does that change the

00:38:30

dynamics such that it's not what you love anymore? And then you've come up with a different hobby.

00:38:34

This is the cyclical, this is where my brain works. If that's the case, then I don't want to do

00:38:41

that all day every day. I would likely have like 12 different things that I just cycled between,

00:38:47

because I'm obnoxious like that. But I have a hard time grasping what that would even

00:38:53

look like. What does life look like if you don't have a work bucket that you're filling all the time?

00:39:03

And it's not even you don't have a work bucket. I don't think he's saying this is

00:39:09

continuing doing what you've been doing or stop everything you've been doing and just go do the

00:39:13

things that you enjoy doing. Because he mentions also in this chapter that many people view their

00:39:19

compensation as a measure of their worth. So the challenge is thinking through the balance of

00:39:25

things and what actually is enough. So many people I think would be attached to their work,

00:39:36

even if they absolutely hate it, because it provides a level of security and they justify it by their

00:39:44

take home pay. And that just kind of anchors them. Well, this thing is immovable. This is a big rock

00:39:50

that goes into my life bucket and everything else has to fit around it. But the other thing

00:39:55

that jotted down here is that you have to be able to imagine an alternate life. So if you were to

00:40:01

envision that rock being removed, it opens up other possibilities. It doesn't mean that you can't put

00:40:08

other work related things back in there. But think about what are some of the other alternatives? What

00:40:14

are the other options that are available? We tend to just gravitate to the thing that we know because

00:40:20

it feels safe. It feels secure, especially when you coach it through, well, I have a responsibility

00:40:27

as the breadwinner for my family and I've got mouths to feed yada yada yada. That's true.

00:40:32

But there are other ways that you could do that. And it can be difficult, I guess, without an

00:40:39

encouragement from someone like Paul in chapter four to think about the other possibilities that

00:40:45

are available to you. Going back to Master Your Motivation by Susan Fowler, one of the things that

00:40:51

derives motivation is choice. So what are the choices that are available to you? We tend to

00:40:58

attach to this is the thing that I've chosen to do and I'm going to do it for the next 30 years.

00:41:03

And that's it. Never think about it again because it's safe, it's secure. I know it's going to be there.

00:41:11

I think that's the hard part with this. One of the hardest parts, I think, with this whole

00:41:18

concept is just going to a job is like the safe, easy bet for an income, right? Because it's difficult

00:41:29

to get away from the need for an income unless you have somehow managed to slip away from tax

00:41:36

structures entirely and can raise all of your own food and produce all of your own energy

00:41:44

and handle all of your own waste. This gets to be a lot to take care of, which people can do that.

00:41:50

I don't know many people that have successfully done all of that. And yet, what is the alternative

00:41:59

to the day job? And are you able to put together pieces of things that generate enough of an

00:42:06

income that you can be content with that and live a fulfilling life? That's, I think,

00:42:13

the open ended question here is what does that look like for you specifically?

00:42:20

And he does it. He can show you story after story of people who have done this, who took 18

00:42:26

months off and went sailing for a year and a half. People can do that. But I have no interest in

00:42:33

that. Number one, I would be seasick. But I don't think that particular scenario is not one for me,

00:42:41

but I don't know how to work through the process of determining what this non-day joby world might

00:42:51

look like. So I have all sorts of ways I could maybe try to figure that out. But I'm also not

00:42:56

certain that my current day job is one that I would want to leave either. Because I feel like it

00:43:02

very likely fits very well with what I personally want to have as a day lifestyle type.

00:43:11

But I don't know that. It's partly why I'm going through your thing. We'll find out.

00:43:14

All right, we'll find out together. The next chapter is chapter five, and that is breaking free. So

00:43:25

this is kind of assuming that you do want to leave the day job. There's some interesting

00:43:31

statistics and quotes and things in here, including from his personal story, he shares that when he

00:43:39

left one of his jobs. Forget exactly which one. I had a handful of them. He says that he stayed

00:43:46

in the job three months, which he defined as about three months too long. And take away

00:43:53

from me from that. And I think I knew this already was that if you are thinking about a job transition,

00:43:59

you don't want to drag it out longer than it needs to be. He talks about how burnout happens

00:44:09

to people who are dedicated and committed trying to balance their need to give to please others

00:44:13

and to work hard. And that kind of resonated with me. I shared previously that I dealt with

00:44:22

burnout at the beginning of the year, had a mild panic attack. And he uses a quote from Gary

00:44:30

Cherness who says that burnout is the bureaucratic infringement on a professional's autonomy.

00:44:37

Not sure I agree with that 100%. But I think there is some truth to that, the thing that can be stressful

00:44:44

about the professional situations can be the fact that there are so many moving pieces and so

00:44:52

many other people relying on you that you feel like you can't let other people down.

00:44:58

Page 68 says, "If you're suffering from burnout, you're likely not thriving at work." And over

00:45:06

time, it's easy to see yourself as the cause. I felt this a little bit.

00:45:15

So I mentioned dealing with burnout, but also I tend to take the personal responsibility

00:45:23

route to this and assume that it's just as much, if not more so, my fault than the people around me.

00:45:32

That may be right, it may not be right, but I feel like there's little you can do to change other

00:45:37

people. There's a lot more you can do to change yourself. I'm not sure what to do with this quote,

00:45:42

I guess, but I take it as a warning sign. Basically, what I'm getting from this chapter is that

00:45:48

my personality is kind of working against me at this point, and I'm my own worst enemy.

00:45:54

He ends this chapter, well, not the very end, but the last thing I jotted down was that if

00:46:01

work dominated your every moment, would life be worth living? Sounds like for you with your

00:46:09

day job and you're not convinced you want to think about other scenarios. I'm putting words in

00:46:17

your mouth, but correct me if I'm wrong here, maybe you would have like, "Well, I don't know,"

00:46:23

sort of an answer to that. For me, it was pretty easy. I work to live, don't live to work.

00:46:31

So this kind of challenges me to rethink my relationship with work, not saying that

00:46:38

you're going to love what you do all the time, but again, what are the other options? I've been so

00:46:45

attached to, "This is who I am and this is what I do," and I really just feel at this point in the

00:46:51

book, I got to put everything under the microscope. Everything is on the chopping block.

00:47:00

Is it no longer doing certain creative projects that so be it, but I got to figure out what the

00:47:09

right mix is. Also, just full disclosure, I'm 40 years old, so as I'm reading through this,

00:47:15

I'm like, "Am I having a midlife crisis?" Okay, honesty coming out now. All right.

00:47:23

But I don't think I am. I've talked to a lot of people about this and how I've felt about things

00:47:31

the last several months, and having other people kind of confirm the things that I'm seeing

00:47:37

makes me feel like I'm not just making up this story in my head. It's quite possible,

00:47:43

Dave Gray, liminal thinking of surrounding myself with people who are going to see things the same

00:47:48

way I am, but I do my best to not do that and get different perspectives. So

00:47:54

doing my best to fight against it, but if I am, well, I guess it is what it is.

00:47:58

I think in my scenario, and I don't know that you're putting words in my mouth because I know that

00:48:06

if I did my day job all day every day, every moment, were it not for the fact that I have a

00:48:15

family that I'm trying to raise? Let's ignore that particular piece, though that's a difficult

00:48:21

thing for me to ignore. If that were the case, I think I would still do that. I love being able

00:48:29

to support the church in its mission in the ways that I do. And there are some feats that we're able

00:48:35

to pull off that can create scenarios for people to have some experiences that are not otherwise

00:48:43

possible if I don't do what I do. So that's something that I know, at least for me,

00:48:49

is encouraging in the process at the same time, like you're saying, there's always stuff that you

00:48:54

don't want to do that's a part of any work scenario. There's always pieces of that. So I know that,

00:49:02

for me, the current day job is likely still a piece of the pie. I don't really know what

00:49:13

the alternative stuff there is, though, because I do know that it's possible that I've got

00:49:19

a handful of other side things that I do that can support what I do as a day job

00:49:28

that are more lifestyle based that I do with my kids and such. So that's probably the area that

00:49:34

I want to evaluate more so than the day job piece. But I don't know if that's me, like the hard part

00:49:40

with this is like, well, is that just me being complacent and not being willing to embrace the

00:49:46

ideas that Paul is pitching here? Or is that actually where I feel like I should be?

00:49:56

And I don't know the answer to that question. That's one of those, like, am I just not wanting to

00:50:01

acknowledge the question is a good one? Or is that actually my answer? I sometimes struggle to nail

00:50:06

down which side of that coin I sit on. Yeah, well, no one can answer that for you, unfortunately.

00:50:12

Thanks, Mike. Thanks for the help.

00:50:17

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00:52:23

Last chapter in this first part is chapter 6, the first steps. This is really about confronting

00:52:34

the fear. I think that is a possibility from what you were just sharing. He does say

00:52:42

in this section that most people will choose certain discomfort and coping mechanisms over

00:52:49

uncertain discomfort. That's not saying that your job is horrible. Don't read that wrong.

00:52:54

But it's easy to anchor on the things you don't like. Basically, when it comes to

00:53:00

making choices that are going to eliminate pain, because there's only two motivators. The

00:53:07

elimination of pain in the pursuit of pleasure when you boil it down. Most people will anchor

00:53:14

on the pain. That's the stronger one. If something is causing you pain, but you have a coping

00:53:20

mechanism in place, which reminds me of that burnout inventory that I took, people will

00:53:27

default towards that instead of embracing something that is uncertain, even if the potential of the

00:53:34

uncertain future could be much greater than anything you'd ever imagined, you're just naturally not

00:53:40

going to consider those things. Only you can decide for yourself whether the thing that you're doing

00:53:45

right now is really something that hits the mark and you absolutely love doing it or its fear

00:53:50

that it's holding you back. But that's what I was wrestling with in this section was,

00:53:54

"What have I been afraid of?" He talks in here about how many people don't actually make a leap.

00:54:03

They just prototype a new life until they find something that works and most life transitions

00:54:08

aren't boiled down to a single event. Then at the end of this chapter, or the last thing I jotted

00:54:15

down was this whole thing about fear setting. Are you familiar with the concept of fear setting?

00:54:20

This is a Tim Ferriss thing, right? Yep. So fear setting, first time I came across this concept,

00:54:28

anyways, was the Tim Ferriss. I think it's a TED talk, so I'll try to grab a link to that and put it in

00:54:34

the show notes. Essentially, what this is is that you think worst case scenario. I did actually

00:54:45

think through this with my wife. I didn't tell her we were doing this. I just threw her at asking

00:54:50

questions. "Hey, what about?" Yeah, exactly. She's like, "What the heck?"

00:54:55

It's always fun because then when you're done, it's like, "Oh, by the way, this is that process.

00:54:59

We just walked through." "Wait, you're doing a thing on me?" Okay. Again, Joe, really.

00:55:04

Yeah. So essentially what it is is the way he's defining it right now, you write down the change

00:55:12

that you are making, although I would argue you're considering making, because this is a thought

00:55:16

exercise before you actually make that leap. Then you list out all of the worst case scenarios.

00:55:22

Really, the point of this is that your brain will manufacture something that is a lot worse

00:55:27

until you get it down on paper and then you realize that it's not really all that bad.

00:55:31

You write down all the worst case scenarios, then you identify the actions that you could take

00:55:37

right now to mitigate those negative outcomes. When you do that, you're like, "Huh,

00:55:43

this really isn't all that scary." Then from there, the other things he wrote down are lists

00:55:50

some steps or actions you might take to get back to where you are today. What could be some benefits

00:55:55

of an attempt or even partial success if you were to embrace this new thing and what is the cost of

00:56:01

inaction in three, six, or 12 months? Interesting exercise that I would recommend people do if they

00:56:09

are thinking about something and they realize that fear is the thing that is holding them back,

00:56:16

because what you may realize from this is that really fear shouldn't have that big

00:56:21

hold of you. That's also quite possible, I think. If you do this, I haven't experienced this,

00:56:27

but I could first see a scenario where you do this and you're like, "Actually, yeah, that sounds

00:56:31

really bad. Let's not do that." That's not the outcome that he is portraying from doing this exercise,

00:56:39

obviously. Yeah, chapter six is one where I started

00:56:46

to maybe doubt him a little bit in this process, because when he mentioned Tim Ferriss

00:56:52

here, I connected some dots around when we read the four-hour work week,

00:57:01

there was definitely an emphasis on travel as the end game. That was like, "Travel the world

00:57:07

and see things and experience everything you can." It occurred to me that that's what he was doing

00:57:14

as part of this process, going back to his life story, which we said we weren't going to do.

00:57:18

He was going to different countries and experiencing these things. Travel was a big part of

00:57:25

and going to live places was a big part of his process. I don't want that. He never said that

00:57:34

that was the end game and that was the thing, but he definitely, I feel, misses out on a lot of

00:57:43

things in the process of him choosing that particular lifestyle, which then makes me maybe

00:57:48

question some of his thoughts and his ideas here, just because if travel is what you're going to do

00:57:55

and you're always going to be leaving the friends that you just made and never building deep

00:58:00

relationships, save with one person that you're traveling with as your spouse, that to me, that

00:58:06

feels very empty and you're missing out on something much bigger. Then it makes me kind of

00:58:13

put my guard up a little bit more around the ideas that this person is sharing with me,

00:58:18

just because I know we're coming from very different places on a foundational level.

00:58:22

This is really where that started to hit me a little bit. It then made me process back on all

00:58:27

the things that we've just gone over. I don't think he's wrong in this process and encouraging

00:58:35

the creativity and encouraging you to explore this path just maybe makes me put a more intense

00:58:44

microscope on it a little bit, just so I'm not getting thrown off. Maybe this is unfounded,

00:58:50

but that was just kind of where my brain went. Well, I think that's a very natural reaction

00:58:56

and to be honest, I had the first, I had the same initial thought. It's like, well, you're

00:59:03

creating this image of the good life that isn't what I want for the good life. Mine looks different,

00:59:11

but I don't think that invalidates the challenges that he's sharing in this first part about

00:59:19

thinking different about the options. Just because his ideal future looks different than yours or

00:59:26

mine would, doesn't mean that we shouldn't entertain it or because it looks different to think that

00:59:33

it's not possible. It's just going to be different. Again, I don't think I'm saying that the stuff

00:59:43

we've covered so far in this book is wrong. It was just a thing that made me realize,

00:59:52

does the end result alter his recommendations, I guess? Is the end result that he's after,

01:00:04

that his goal is, does that impact and give him a strong bias in the process and the ideas that

01:00:14

he's recommending? I don't think the ideas that he's recommending here, like everything we've covered,

01:00:20

like work is not necessarily what life always has been. I didn't mention this, but in chapter

01:00:26

five, he's got this thing on towards the beginning of it. The ancient Greek word for work was simply

01:00:33

not at leisure because leisure was the bulk. Then when you were working, it was like you were not

01:00:40

doing what you normally do. It's completely flipped. I totally get that, totally with you,

01:00:47

100%. You know, it has to go very far back in history to get to a point where people worked

01:00:53

as a lifestyle to raise animals and crops for their own sustenance. Any what they would call work

01:01:04

for income was a fairly small amount of the time that they spent. You don't have to go very far back

01:01:12

in time to get to that era. So like the world that we're living in today is not common, which is

01:01:18

exactly what he was saying. Like this is not a normal thing. So I can't say that I'm completely

01:01:23

invalidating everything. That's not what I'm getting at at all. It just made me pay attention

01:01:28

a little bit more. I guess that's the main point. Sure. Well, let's actually go into the

01:01:34

next part here because I feel he's going to kind of speak to this a little bit in chapter seven,

01:01:42

which is the wisdom of the pathless path. One of the things that I jotted down in this

01:01:51

chapter as an action item is to define my rich life, which I think is exactly what you're

01:01:59

getting at there. He's defined his rich life, which looks very different than my rich life,

01:02:05

but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't consider what a rich life actually looks like.

01:02:09

And then he also says in here that nothing good gets away as long as you create the space to

01:02:16

let it emerge. That sounds a little woo-woo, but I think maybe there is some truth to that.

01:02:23

I've got a gapbook that I read on the plane. I read the new Stephen Pressfield book.

01:02:29

And he defines it as the universe expands when you are brave, basically, butchering the phrasing.

01:02:40

But he uses that picture of the universe and the resistance. When you conquer the resistance,

01:02:45

the universe is there to accommodate you, essentially. And they're both kind of saying the same thing,

01:02:50

I think, which is that when you're brave enough to consider an alternative, even if you don't

01:02:54

really know exactly what it's going to look like, you do have the capacity to receive it, but not

01:03:00

until you make the decision. And there's some space or some margin there. I'm doing a bad job

01:03:10

of explaining this. But essentially, I think what he's saying is that when you make the choice,

01:03:15

that's when you'll see the options. And I think there's truth to that. He also says here that

01:03:24

on page 113, "Having faith is admitting you don't have all the answers for what comes next." So that

01:03:28

is a key element, I think, here. And really just encouraging us that no matter what decision you're

01:03:39

trying to make or what your pathless path looks like, what your rich life looks like,

01:03:44

you're never going to have it all figured out, and it's never going to be a decision that makes

01:03:48

perfect sense. The one that makes perfect sense is the one that you already know. If you're going

01:03:53

to be analytical and logical about it, you're never going to make that decision.

01:03:57

This is one of the areas where he starts to redeem some of what I was just getting at,

01:04:04

because-- and I'm glad to use that as a segue too, because in this piece, it's like you're saying,

01:04:11

you don't always know the full picture of where you're going to land. If you could,

01:04:14

you would probably alter it. And that's not always the best. But as I reflect on my own process for

01:04:25

getting to where I am today, I know that there've been a lot of times when I have taken a step,

01:04:31

and then I don't know what comes next, but I know that this is the right next step.

01:04:37

I can't tell you what step two is. This is not a chess game where I can lay out the next three,

01:04:42

four, five, six steps in my attack. This is just-- I know the next one, and that's it.

01:04:48

Sometimes I know two, but rarely do I know more than that. And just trying to make the decision for

01:04:56

what the next step is, that-- I can get on board with that. If you can nail down what the next one is,

01:05:05

it may scare you half to death. That next step in what it needs to be, but at least you're taking

01:05:12

the step instead of just being complacent and just going with whatever happens to you. And that's

01:05:17

usually where you get people throwing a fit and complaining, because life is so hard, and it's like,

01:05:21

we'll do something about it. Get off the couch. That's my mentality. But yeah, the next step,

01:05:28

like I'm totally on board with that. Well, I think that's the powerful thing about this book

01:05:34

is, yeah, you're right. You and I both have that same perspective, I think,

01:05:38

instead of complaining that things are so bad, and they may be bad, and they may not be your fault,

01:05:43

but that doesn't help you until you take ownership. And you say, I'm going to actually change this.

01:05:48

That is when your life can start to turn around. And really what he's saying is not even beyond

01:05:55

accepting the personal responsibility part. Imagine if you were the only one who was in charge of

01:06:02

your success. If you really were the captain of your own ship, because he does talk about that

01:06:08

people's pathless path stories share four steps. They become aware of their own suffering,

01:06:12

curiosity re-emerges. They desire to continue their non-work journey, and that's just like the

01:06:17

non-default journey. And then the fourth one is that they write. I got to kick out of that.

01:06:22

I think that may be a little bit biased, although that probably is true. I mean, especially with

01:06:30

the age that we live in, and the internet, and the creator economy. I really think

01:06:35

this is sort of the undertone of a lot of stuff that he's sharing, but I don't think he explicitly

01:06:40

says this. There never has been a better time to find your pathless path, because the tools are

01:06:48

there for you to reach just about anybody. And if you are able to help people, which really is the

01:06:56

whole idea behind all of this, then the opportunities are there for you in abundance.

01:07:04

Actually, let's go on to the next section, because in the next section, he kind of speaks to that

01:07:12

specifically. So he mentions chapter eight, redefine success. The second stage of success is when

01:07:20

you shift from what you lack to what you offer. That's kind of what I was just describing. So

01:07:26

instead of trying to accumulate things you're looking for, what can I give? In terms of value

01:07:34

to other people. And then he mentions that the internet makes it easy to find micro communities.

01:07:39

I love this quote on page 124. It says, "The internet does enable negative groups to form."

01:07:45

So he's not disregarding that. "But we pay far too much attention to these communities and not

01:07:51

enough to the positive connections and life options made possible all over the world for people who

01:07:56

are online." 100% yes. And I think this is the thing that bothers me about all of the noise that

01:08:06

I've seen about, "Oh, Twitter is toxic. I'm moving to Mastodon." Everybody that I've seen that has said

01:08:12

that has already made the connections. They don't need them anymore. So it's like,

01:08:19

"I'm just going to take my ball and go home. Me and my buddies are going to go chat over here

01:08:24

because I don't need the internet. I don't need to find these people. I don't need to find my

01:08:33

tribe that way. My tribe is going to follow me wherever the heck I go. And I think if you're in

01:08:37

that position, cool. Like kudos to you. But I just think that we tend to focus on all the bad stuff

01:08:46

that happens. And he's basically saying, "Yeah, there is bad stuff that happens. People suck. That

01:08:52

is true." But there also is some great opportunities if you're able to look past that stuff. And that's

01:08:58

kind of how I feel as well. The whole Twitter Mastodon thing is just annoying to me. Because

01:09:04

like you're saying, the people who throw a fit about it, about Twitter and move, generally have

01:09:13

the luxury of being able to do that because they're following as large enough that people just go

01:09:17

with them. Or it just doesn't matter what their social media following is. They're not dependent on

01:09:23

Twitter for their business in any way, shape, or form. And that's fine. It is fine. I have to admit,

01:09:31

though, that the amount of yelling, complaining, name calling, negativity on Twitter on my feed

01:09:42

has dropped significantly since this big exodus away from Twitter towards Mastodon.

01:09:49

Like, that's been a positive that a lot of people have left Twitter for me, which has been

01:09:55

weird. And yet now my previous Mastodon feed was generally positive. And people talking about like,

01:10:05

how can tech get this feature or that feature or, "Hey, check out the new way the kangaroos can swim."

01:10:12

Like all this stuff. And now a lot of that negativity has gone over to Mastodon. For me,

01:10:19

again, this is just purely one person's experience. So that negativity went at Mastodon for me.

01:10:26

That's just so weird. My experience has been exactly backwards for what some folks are saying.

01:10:33

All of this aside, the concept of trying to help people and serve people. If that's the thing,

01:10:41

and that's something I think you and I have said for a long time, helping other people

01:10:46

is a big part of your life mission and should be. And if that's not a part of it,

01:10:51

you're probably going to get burned out on it at some point, just because the fulfillment isn't

01:10:57

going to be there. So I absolutely like, yeah, that's a big part of this. And I hope everybody can

01:11:03

adopt that part. Yeah, there's some other really great stuff in this chapter too. So the arrival

01:11:09

fallacy, this is the problem of goals. I'm not going to go into it, but this definition is great.

01:11:15

The idea that when we reach a certain milestone, we will reach a state of lasting happiness.

01:11:21

I feel like it's not explicit in the goal setting process, but that's what you fall into by default

01:11:29

if you just rely on goals. But he's not talking about goals per se in this section. He's basically

01:11:37

saying that when you start off on the pathless path, you'll be like, oh, once I get to this point,

01:11:42

you know, that's when things are going to be easy and fun. And yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not the case.

01:11:46

Right. Yeah. This is the chapter, by the way, with the 26%, only 26% of people have a full-time

01:11:52

job that was a statistic here. Got it. That's where that was. Also, like, if you go back to

01:11:57

chapter three, page 44, he talks about meaningful work. It regularly is like when people say they

01:12:05

have meaningful work, it generally means that they are overcoming obstacles and defeating pain.

01:12:12

Like those are the two things that they're doing that lead to long-term lasting happiness.

01:12:19

So defeating pain is what you're looking for, not ease.

01:12:24

Yeah. And then when you combine it with the idea here of second-stage success being instead of

01:12:32

getting what you lack to focusing on what you offer, essentially what you're saying is helping

01:12:38

other people eliminate their pain. That's the thing that provides massive value to people.

01:12:43

That's what the Internet marketplace is all built on. I used to think that when digital marketers

01:12:48

talked about the pain points, things like that, they were just trying to manipulate people to

01:12:52

get a buck, but that's really not true. I mean, there are people who do that in a sleazy way,

01:12:57

but it doesn't have to be. That's ultimately what people want. So that's not disingenuous

01:13:05

if you're actually able to help alleviate some of that pain and suffering, then go for it.

01:13:09

The other things he mentions here are that if we don't define enough, we will always default to

01:13:14

more guilty. And then the other one was don't play not to lose play to win. And that phrase is

01:13:23

kind of just stuck with me for the last several days. What does that actually look like?

01:13:29

I feel like in some ways I have been playing not to lose, but I don't know exactly what that

01:13:39

looks like. But I do think I need to think a little bit bigger. What would winning look like?

01:13:46

This is kind of getting back to that action item of defining my rich life. These things are kind of

01:13:53

all related. I actually have a couple different action items from this section. The other ones

01:13:57

are a little bit later, though. So move on to chapter nine. Yes, sir. All right. So chapter nine

01:14:06

is the real work of our lives. What is the real work of our lives?

01:14:13

That's a great question. That's a pretty big question.

01:14:21

The pathless path, he mentions, is a solo journey, but you need friends that you can talk to.

01:14:27

This is where he talks about building a company that you want to keep working at.

01:14:33

And really, it's just what is the thing that really is inside of you? There's a quote here from

01:14:42

the gospel Thomas that I like to say that if you bring forth what is within you, what you bring

01:14:46

forth will save you if you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth

01:14:50

will destroy you. There are other quotes here like Henry David Thoreau be resolutely and

01:14:56

faithfully what you are. And this is where he says that humans don't mind hardship. They

01:15:02

actually thrive on it. What they mind is not feeling necessary. Creativity is by nature

01:15:10

and act of boldness and rebellion. That's Robert Green. But yeah, it's really getting into

01:15:19

what is your purpose. This is kind of life-themed territory here. And he mentions that there are

01:15:27

many ways to express your creativity. You need to ask a lot of questions. They have to be driven

01:15:33

by curiosity, not by fear. That's a theme, by the way, throughout the whole book that kind of

01:15:39

resonates with me is just being a little bit more curious about things, exploring options,

01:15:45

embracing choice, asking myself, what if? But yeah, this is all set up for playing the

01:15:54

long game, which is the next one. So what stood out to you from chapter nine?

01:15:59

I can't say anything specific. I have zero notes on that particular chapter.

01:16:06

It really just felt like a setup for the last chapter. So we're probably going to go on to that one.

01:16:10

Okay. Well, the last chapter is chapter 10. And that is playing the long game.

01:16:19

This one, I've got a couple different action items from at the very beginning. And they're

01:16:26

kind of different versions of the same action item. And they're a different way of thinking

01:16:30

about the first one. So the first one I shared to find my rich life. So he kind of challenges

01:16:36

the reader, but me in this case, in chapter 10, invert that by asking what does a miserable life

01:16:44

look like? I'm not sure I, this will be a fun exercise.

01:16:52

I don't want to answer that one. Like, just that none of us don't want to.

01:16:56

Can we not do this? Please. Well, I'm going to take one for the team and actually do this.

01:17:02

I don't know if I'm going to share it. I'll skip with the outcome is, but I feel like this is going

01:17:09

to be a natural bookend to the other one. So might as well. And then the other one right below that.

01:17:13

Who is the person that you don't want to be? I've got to talk to David about this in the Focus

01:17:18

Podcasts multiple times. And he's kind of a shared that his, he could be the guy who's good at email,

01:17:24

right? And responds really quickly, but he doesn't want to do that.

01:17:28

And I always laugh when he uses that definition, but I do like that, that perspective, like that

01:17:38

framing. And I don't think I have one of those for me. I mean, the guy who is good at email, I'm

01:17:44

so far disassociated from that persona that that's not even like that does nothing for me.

01:17:51

But there's got to be some version of that, you know, that I am, I don't know, I'm kind of a natural

01:17:57

people pleaser. I don't want to let people down. So maybe that's the version of this where I'm a

01:18:02

little bit closer than I'd like to be to the person that I don't want to be. So I'm going to

01:18:07

define that one too and see where we go from there. Yeah, I can't say that defining what a

01:18:14

miserable life looks like is something I want to do. Like there are things that I'm actively bad at.

01:18:19

Like I'm bad at email. And there are a lot of people that are like, they know Joe's bad at email.

01:18:26

So don't send him an email. He won't get back to you. He's like, well, I usually see them within

01:18:30

decent time. I just don't choose to respond when most people think you should respond because

01:18:40

it's not actually necessary in that time frame. And I know that, you know, the support stuff that

01:18:47

comes into my email. In most cases, if I give it time, someone's going to figure out how to do it

01:18:54

on their own, which is better in the long run for them to learn how. And two, it's got a very

01:19:01

high likelihood of resolving itself just because sometimes computers and things just need time to

01:19:07

continue finishing the thing that you clicked and told it to do. And you just got antsy and you just

01:19:11

need to wait for 30 seconds. Not jump on your email until Joe, how it's all falling apart and your

01:19:18

computer is terrible and he's replaced. Like, no, you need to stop having 150 Chrome tabs open at

01:19:25

the same time. That's the actual solution. So like, I know that these things happen. People don't

01:19:31

like that I don't respond right away. And thus I get this like image of being bad at email and

01:19:39

people like, you just got to text him if you want something right away. Well, what's his phone

01:19:44

number? I don't know. Like, see, that's this is why the people who can text me. I will generally

01:19:50

get back to you within decent time pretty quick, at least with, you know, give me some time and

01:19:55

I'll get it that type of message. But I don't want to be good at it. Like, I'm with you on that.

01:20:01

But there are other things that I don't know that I'm one that I would say I specifically want to

01:20:10

be bad at this. I think I'm with you on that. Like, I don't really have these types of things,

01:20:16

but maybe I do. I just am not aware of them. I don't know. It's possible. But I also know that

01:20:23

trying to decide what are the things I want to be good at known for like that's that's a little

01:20:29

more motivating to me than what does a terrible life look like and try to how do I avoid that.

01:20:34

It's not as motivating for me. So I don't really want to do that.

01:20:38

Well, that's fine. He mentions in this chapter that there's two types of freedom. So I do think

01:20:44

you need to consider both of these. There's the freedom from that's the negative stuff we don't

01:20:48

want to do anymore. Those last two action items, right? But then there's the freedom to, which is

01:20:53

the positive. That's the stuff that you want to do. However, you can't just want to do those

01:20:59

things without stopping doing other things. So I feel like these are two sides of the same coin

01:21:05

here. And I think I don't know this for sure. But my guess is that you have to consider

01:21:11

both of these if you really want to make some change. Now, if you don't have to make change

01:21:17

necessarily, but he's kind of encouraging us to here in the last chapter. He mentions that the

01:21:23

pace of change is only going to accelerate. Those on the pathless path are best suited to benefit

01:21:28

from it. You got to develop the skill of reinventing yourself. And then he talks about the gift economy.

01:21:35

And this is a really cool idea. And this is essentially, we started touching on this in the last

01:21:40

chapter, maybe that was chapter eight, about not just getting the things that you lack, but

01:21:48

what can you contribute? So the three guiding principles of the gift economy find ways to

01:21:52

give without expectation of anything in return, be willing to receive gifts in any form and on any

01:21:56

timeline, be open to being wrong about all of this and adjust your approach as necessary.

01:22:02

I really like that third one. I think a lot of the books that we've read to all the lists,

01:22:09

you know, like the three steps, whatever, they kind of have this underlying tone that this is the way.

01:22:14

Just follow this, right? Three simple life hacks to save an hour a day every day for the rest of your

01:22:18

life. But he's openly admitting that like, this is just where I'm at, and this is my thinking on this,

01:22:25

but I don't know this is this is right. That's kind of the again, the liminal thinking,

01:22:29

be willing to consider how you might be wrong. But I think this gift economy idea has merit.

01:22:37

He also mentions that gifts flow toward the greatest need. I think that's kind of freeing.

01:22:44

If you embrace this idea, and another way to say this, maybe would be give more than you take,

01:22:49

be looking to give instead of what you can get from people when you get it, enter into a relationship

01:22:58

with them, going all the way back to that action item where I ranked the people in my life. Do you

01:23:02

remember what book that was from, by the way? No, you and I were talking about it when we were

01:23:07

together. I can't be there. I still have not been able to nail down what it was. Maybe some

01:23:12

magic person who's listening to this can figure out what episode that was from.

01:23:16

That was such a good one though. I refer back to that all the time. And that's really what the

01:23:22

gift economy is all about looking to give instead of to get. He mentions that the goal here is to

01:23:31

come alive, not to get ahead. I don't know about you, but when I read that phrase, it was kind of

01:23:36

impassing that he said that, I feel, but it really resonated with me. I think my default perspective

01:23:43

has been to get ahead just because we got five kids and thinking about the future. And it's

01:23:51

expensive. And so that's just natural, I think, to try to get ahead of things. And I think maybe

01:24:01

that's wrong, or at least it's wrong for me. And I got to think a little bit differently about

01:24:07

things. And then at the very end, he talks about the pathless path challenge and the different steps

01:24:12

to go through that. But essentially, we've been talking about different aspects of that

01:24:16

through throughout the whole discussion here. Yeah, I mean, the gift economy is one that it plays

01:24:22

right into that help other people concept, right? But the weird thing about that is, is it ends up

01:24:29

helping yourself just as much as you end up helping them, which is tough to get your head around,

01:24:37

I think. I know that every time I've stepped in and donated either time or money or skills,

01:24:46

like any time I have done that, it's always been very much a positive to me. So, yes, I have helped

01:24:55

the other person or the other group. But at the same time, it's like, I come away from that, like,

01:24:59

yeah, let's go do some more. Let's get after it. So, I know that it can be very motivating and

01:25:08

encouraging even to your own spirit in the process. So, definitely on board with that. I don't know

01:25:14

what that means. I do that type of thing quite a bit, it seems like. So, it's one that I don't think

01:25:21

I really have an action item around that because it's just a, I wouldn't say it's a huge part of

01:25:26

my lifestyle, but it's definitely there. And I'm glad he called it out because it's not something

01:25:31

I feel like you hear about much. Agreed. All right, anything else before we get into action items?

01:25:37

No, sir. All right, then to action items we go. I have three, although they're all really wrapped

01:25:48

up in one. And that is to define my rich life. And on the inverse of that, answer the question,

01:25:56

what does a miserable life look like? And then who is the person that I don't want to be? So,

01:26:02

by the time we reconvene, I will know what I want to be when I grow up.

01:26:07

What about you?

01:26:12

This says the midlife crisis 40-year-old. Okay, cool. Got it. I only have one. And you might say

01:26:21

this is lame, but I think it is very valid knowing my personality. But I need to make sure that I'm

01:26:28

committing to your life-themed course and not just trying to take the shortcuts out of it,

01:26:34

because that's my tendency is to just do the minimum amount of work if that whenever I do those

01:26:39

types of courses. So, I want to make sure that I'm actually committing to that fully and not just

01:26:44

skating through it, just because I feel like there's the overlap between what I think what

01:26:50

you're doing in that course and what Paul is getting at with this book, I think are very tightly

01:26:55

connected. Maybe I'm wrong in that assumption, but I feel like they're very close. So, I want to

01:27:04

stick with it. I don't know what the result of that is, but I'll try, try my best.

01:27:11

All right. Style and rating? Go for it. All right. Well, I think you're right that there is a lot of

01:27:22

overlap between the stuff that is interesting, important, things that I'm passionate about,

01:27:31

and this book. So, I don't think it's a surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

01:27:39

I do think that it's a type of book that everyone should read at some point. I know you mentioned

01:27:51

that he said things that we've heard before, and I think I agree with you, but he kind of framed

01:27:57

him in a way that felt new and fresh, and the end result is that he does a very good job, I feel,

01:28:07

of getting people to consider what your life could be like. And I think that's his whole goal

01:28:15

from the very beginning is to inspire you to think a little bit differently about the life that you're

01:28:22

living and what is your rich life. It's also refreshing because he's not hashtag productivity

01:28:29

guy. He doesn't profess to have all the answers. I don't know if you felt the same way, but I felt

01:28:34

like he had a very humble tone to everything that he shared here, almost to the point where he's

01:28:42

sharing something and you're like, "Dude, you got to be a little bit more excited about this.

01:28:46

This is life-changing stuff here." Some really big ideas, I think, in here, and just really well

01:28:56

put together. I've got quibbles with the quality of the self-published hardcover version,

01:29:00

but I'm really glad that I read this. Now, I fully understand that there will be people

01:29:08

for which this is not a book worth reading. However, I got done with this one and immediately

01:29:17

texted Toby, he's like, "You need to read this. I'm going to require all my kids to read this."

01:29:22

Maybe there's a better book that kind of speaks to some of these same ideas, but I have yet to find

01:29:33

it. I've got a couple others on my list that are probably going to speak to some of these

01:29:43

ideas as well. I got inspired reading this one. I want to explore this topic a little bit more,

01:29:50

just the whole idea of the non-traditional career path. Really, the thing that gets me

01:29:55

is, like I said, my kids are growing up, and what do I want to instill in them? I don't want them to

01:30:02

follow the traditional path. I feel like at this point with the world that we live in, that would

01:30:07

be doing them a disservice. I have to figure this stuff out so I can help them figure this stuff out.

01:30:15

If you are coming into it with that curiosity mindset, I feel like this is a phenomenal book.

01:30:27

Like I said, there are people for which this is not the right thing. I fully understand that,

01:30:35

but I also think that for the right person, this is a life-changing book.

01:30:42

I am struggling whether to rate this 4.5 or 5 stars. The justification for the 4.5 rating would be

01:30:51

that there is a small subset of people I think that this is not for. However, I do think for the

01:30:57

right person, this is right up there with the best of the best of all the things that we have

01:31:02

covered. With that caveat that it is not for everybody, I think I am going to rate it 5 stars.

01:31:09

Right up at the top. Sorry, I'm not joining you today.

01:31:14

That's all right. How it goes sometimes. He's really driving me nuts with the story.

01:31:21

It really was. I think if he had taken the approach of telling

01:31:27

different stories to help with the ideas and then sprinkling some of his throughout it instead of

01:31:35

making his the focal point that's carried throughout the whole thing, I think that could have been

01:31:42

significantly better. It felt like I was reading a narrated memoir. Here's

01:31:50

what this means. Here's my story and here's what I learned from it. Here's my story and here's

01:31:53

what I learned from it. Here's my story and here's what I learned from it. That's kind of what I

01:31:57

was getting out of it. That cadence kind of drove me a bit bonkers because it's not what I was

01:32:05

expecting in that. The travel thing kind of got me. Between those two, those were some of the

01:32:11

gripes I had with it. The self-published-edness of it. It's a technical term. Not everybody

01:32:18

understands that self-published-ed-edness. I had zero issues with it. I don't want to say

01:32:26

flawless, but I didn't find anything that told me that it was poor quality. I don't know if I just

01:32:34

got one later than yours and they fixed it or you just got a weird one. I don't know.

01:32:40

You just don't like you. Maybe that's what it is. It's definitely it. All of those qualms said,

01:32:48

"This is very helpful at the same time." He's got, he just nails some things. He has a different voice

01:32:54

coming at these topics, the concept of the default path and setting your own journey,

01:33:01

being willing to evaluate what that looks like. He doesn't give you a set formula on how that's

01:33:07

going to look because he's just trying to help you find the next step, which I very appreciate

01:33:12

that he's doing that. All told, it's a solid book. I would definitely recommend that people

01:33:19

read it. I'm not sure what the category of people I would say need to read it. You would

01:33:26

probably be better suited at that particular one than me, but I know that this is one that I'm

01:33:31

grateful for having read. Just have a few qualms with it. That's all. All that said,

01:33:37

I'll put it at 4.0 just because that's where I feel like it lands.

01:33:41

I figured you were going to put it at 4.0. Cool. Let's put the pathless path on the shelf.

01:33:53

What's next? Coming up next, we have the Almanac of Nival Ravacont by Eric Jorgensen.

01:33:59

I looked up how to say his name. This should be a good one. This is one I've seen make the

01:34:06

rounds for quite a while. It's very highly rated. People love this apparently. This is unlike Jordan

01:34:12

B. Peterson does not seem to have a divisive crowd around it. Sorry, Canadians, but this is one that

01:34:20

I think we'll really enjoy, and I'm really looking forward to diving into it. This one looks great.

01:34:26

So we'll do that. And then what, Mike? Next is a recommendation from Carol, and that is

01:34:34

The Gap Versus the Gain by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan.

01:34:40

I've talked about this topic. I bring it up all the time, and this is a whole book on a very powerful

01:34:50

concept. So I feel the book might be just an extension of the concept, but at the very least,

01:35:01

it's going to provide some great discussion. So that will be a fun one, and it will be something

01:35:09

in the Bookworm Library that I'm sure I will point people back to for many years.

01:35:17

Cool, cool. How about Gap Books, Mike? I do have a Gap Book. I mentioned I read this

01:35:24

on the plane. Stephen Pressfield has a new book, Put Your Butt Where Your Heart Wants to Be.

01:35:29

It's standard Stephen Pressfield, very War of Art-esque. He actually quotes different sections

01:35:39

from the War of Art, and then adds additional context in this one, but it's a very short read.

01:35:43

It's like 140 pages, and a lot of the pages have a couple sentences. It's Stephen Pressfield.

01:35:50

Yeah. So it talks about some of the themes from this one in a little bit different way,

01:35:56

and again, the whole idea is helping people overcome the resistance. So if you're looking

01:36:01

for something that's going to inspire you in your creative journey, that is a good one.

01:36:05

What about you? Got any Gap Books?

01:36:09

I picked up Tribe of Mentors, Tim Ferriss' book again, and I've been working through that.

01:36:15

I think I've mentioned that's when I'll have come up from time to time, but it's a solid.

01:36:21

It's fun reading some of those profiles. Yeah, that is a big one.

01:36:26

Yeah, that might take you a year to get up to 600, 700 pages. It's a monster. That's not a true

01:36:33

gap book. That's like a reoccurring gap subscription. That's what that is.

01:36:38

That is true. That is true. All right. Well, thank you for listening today.

01:36:47

Thank you specifically to the Bookworm Club Pro members who support the show financially.

01:36:55

If you'd like to become a Bookworm Club Pro member, you can go to bookworm.fm/pro.

01:37:01

You get access to the circle community that we spun up, some additional areas in there,

01:37:05

including all of the book notes, the Mind Node files. I mentioned the Mind Node file a couple

01:37:09

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01:37:14

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but even if you don't decide to do that, you should go check out the circle community because

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there are all of the dates for the live recordings there. You will never miss a live recording if

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01:37:57

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01:38:01

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01:38:07

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01:38:29

a lot to both Joe and myself. Helps us keep the lights on. Thank you.

01:38:32

Yeah, you guys are awesome. Absolutely. Could not do this without you, for sure. You've been on a

01:38:39

long journey with us and we're very grateful for all of you who do that. If you are also

01:38:44

one of those amazing people who reads along with us, pick up the Almanac of Nval Rovikant by Eric

01:38:49

Dorgensen and we will cover that one with you in a couple weeks.