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title:: Books / The Pathless Path purchased:: Jun 19th, 2022 start:: Jul 19th, 2022 end:: Aug 9th, 2022 published:: length:: author:: @Paul Millerd cover:: score:: 3.2 - - TODO send note to author on seeking and looking inward; share my learning - Cover Notes collapsed:: true - From @vgr [thread](https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1538650046308024320) collapsed:: true - Finally reading [@p_millerd](https://twitter.com/p_millerd)’s book. It’s really good. Really drives home the extent to which the culture of modern work is is a success cult. You’re in it even when unemployed, or in obvious McJobs, with no pathway to the Promised Land of corner offices. - Not done yet, but the first part is a really solid interwoven tale of his own journey into and out of the cult, told with almost painful honesty, and reflective commentary drawing on things like academic literature on burnout and eclectic philosophical sources. - I hadn’t prioritized reading it since I assumed I’d know what it was about from his newsletter, but no… this is polished and fresh content. **It really should be a mainstream airport bestseller type book**, not niche subculture blogger self-published book. - The cult of work extends down to high school, into retirement, and sideways to “non-working” spouses, and deprogramming out of it is 3x harder than a normal cult because it is an overwhelming majority rather than a minority of crackpots in a compound. Never thought of this angle - It’s not that jobs and workplaces are bad, or that we don’t need the outputs of the industries that are within the cult of work. Paul is careful, where many are not, to not demonize paycheck work itself. What’s toxic is “success culture” for powering its labor needs. - Not sure how to define this separately, but “success culture” as in: — people who are paid more are more worthy — jobs are in a hierarchy of prestige and that’s good — prestige is a good variable to maximize — spreadsheet-optimizing job-hunting is healthy - t’s tough to thread the needle here. Critiquing the cult without sliding into “tear down capitalism and let’s all live on organic farm communes/trad communities” bullshit. This book is so far managing it. I’m guessing the last chapter won’t devolve into BTFSTTG polemics 😆 - I’m not sure why I was never really into this cult side of work. Possibly because they didn’t want me. Unlike Paul, I was rejected by McKinsey and didn’t bother trying again  The one real job I had for a few years, I enjoyed well enough, but never got attached to. - ...... - The second half is probably more useful to younger people who are still evaluating and selecting their influences. Paul serves as a an honest broker presenting selected wares from the idea marketplace circa 2022. Older people have likely already chosen. - dude making sense of what the grace manifested through him - book is good that it’s authentic and personal; but lacks any original ideas or deep insight - “This book you are reading did not require anyone’s permission to be published. I just decided to do it. I wrote it myself, hired editors and designers to help me, and put my name on it as the publisher. You can do this too.” - principle of inversion, popularized by German mathematician Carl Jacobi. He told his students to “invert, always invert,” encouraging them to approach difficult problems by inverting the equation to gain a new perspective. id:: 62f2f702-fd3c-47db-882f-8e56a9314d20 - Random Highlights collapsed:: true - This idea gained popularity in the late 1990s. In “Jobs, Careers, and Callings,” a famous study by Yale professor Amy Wrzesniewski and others, people were asked if they defined their work as a job, career, or a calling. id:: 62b45fe1-5470-45e7-a593-922dc6cedb3c - These questions inspired an idea: what if I paired making less with working less? id:: 62b77049-81fe-44e1-b8b4-9df8442e86b5 - I started to imagine a new path. Why not attempt to do the work I wanted to do as a freelancer while also having more flexibility and control over my life? - The word burnout was coined in the 1970s by Herbert Freudenberger, an American psychologist who studied workers in free health clinics. collapsed:: true - He found that the prime candidates for burnout were those who were “dedicated and committed,” trying to balance their need to give, to please others, and to work hard. He noticed that when there was added pressure from superiors, people often hit a breaking point.52 - Freudenberger seemed distraught by this fact but still wanted to understand what might cause burnout. He was intrigued by Professor Cary Cherniss’ **==definition of burnout as “the bureaucratic infringement on a professional’s autonomy”==** - the right way to think about burnout was to focus on the disconnect between an individual and the culture of the company in which they worked. - The norms of the organization were pulling me too far away from the person I wanted to be and the energy I used to manage this disconnect undermined anything good I had to offer. - Professor Freudenberger noted in his research that for some people, burnout involves the “dynamics of mourning” due to dealing with the “loss of something within yourself, something you treasured and valued, your ideals.” - - Two “characteristically needy people,” as Callard describes them, isn’t a recipe for disaster. In my experience, it’s usually an opportunity for a beautiful friendship. - In a blog post titled, “Five Regrets of The Dying,” one of the most viewed online posts, she shared her reflections. The most common regret? Not staying “true to themselves” in their lives and focusing too much on what others expected of them. - TODO add the five regrets of dying to #secondbrain. This was my first capture, distillation and expression with a wallpaper .. love ❤️ - The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours. — Amos Tversky - TODO slack? - TODO Boston, this was what inspired me to sublet my New York apartment, find a cheaper one in Boston, and move there almost immediately. When I added up rent savings, cheaper Chipotle bowls, and the lower tax rate, I was able to lower my spending by about $3,000 per month. - When I became self‑employed, I was disoriented because the people paying me for the projects didn’t care when and how much I worked. - shift your mindset from what you lack to what you have to offer, from ambition to aspiration, and from hoping that joy will result from a specific outcome to experiencing it as a byproduct of your journey. #Cities, NYC and Boston - One way to earn prestige in this world is to give generously and share everything you know. People like Nat Eliason, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Pieter Levels, and Tiago Forte - As Thoreau once wrote at Walden Pond, “Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.”123 - the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can’t tell you how to do it. - Seth Godin - In the paycheck world, there used to be a saying: dress for the job you want, not the job you have. The analogous idea in the free agent world is: learn to exercise the freedoms you might acquire, not just the freedoms you have. – Venkatesh Rao