Paul Millerd > Quotes

“On the pathless path, the goal is not to find a job, make money, build a business, or achieve any other metric. It’s to actively and consciously search for the work that you want to keep doing. This is one of the most important secrets of the pathless path. With this approach, it doesn’t make sense to chase any financial opportunity if you can’t be sure that you will like the work. What does make sense is experimenting with different kinds of work, and once you find something worth doing, working backward to build a life around being able to keep doing it.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“This is what the pathless path is all about. It’s having the courage to walk away from an identity that seems to make sense in the context of the default path in order to aspire towards things you don’t understand. It’s to experiment in new ways, to remix your own path, to develop your own personal definition of freedom, and to dare to have faith that it will be okay, no matter how much skepticism, insecurity, or fear you face.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“woke up each morning and did what I felt like doing.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“Your life is too short and too valuable to fritter away in work. If you don’t get out now, you may end up like the frog that is placed in a pot of fresh water on the stove. As the temperature is gradually increased, the frog feels restless and uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to jump out. Without being aware that a chance is taking place, he is gradually lulled into unconsciousness. Much the same thing happens when you take a person and put him in a job which he does not like. He gets irritable in his groove. His duties soon become a monotonous routine that slowly dulls his senses. As I walk into offices, through factories and stores, I often find myself looking into the expressionless faces of people going through mechanical motions. They are people whose minds are stunned and slowly dying.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“The philosopher Andrew Taggart believes that crisis moments lead to “existential openings” that force us to grapple with the deepest questions about life.16 He argues there are two typical ways this happens. One is the “way of loss,” when things that matter are taken from us, such as loved ones, our health, or a job. The other path is the “way of wonderment,” when we are faced with moments of undeniable awe and inspiration.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“The word burnout was coined in the 1970s by Herbert Freudenberger, an American psychologist who studied workers in free health clinics. 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”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“The pathless path is an alternative to the default path. It is an embrace of uncertainty and discomfort. It’s a call to adventure in a world that tells us to conform. For me, it’s also a gentle reminder to laugh when things feel out of control and trusting that an uncertain future is not a problem to be solved.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“many people who face crises often experience “post-traumatic growth” and that this manifests as an “appreciation for life in general, more meaningful interpersonal relationships, an increased sense of personal strength, changed priorities, and a richer existential and spiritual life.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“No money is worth it if it undermines your desire to stay on the journey.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“On the pathless path, retirement is neither a destination nor a financial calculation, but a continuation of a life well-lived.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“In other words, given sufficient coping strategies, people will be willing to tolerate consistent levels of misery for long stretches of time. Is there anything that can override this? In my conversations with people who have made changes in their life, one thing seems to work reliably: wonder.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“Enough is the antithesis of unchecked growth because growth encourages mindless consumption and enough requires constant questioning and awareness. Enough is when we reach the upper bound of what’s required. Enough revenue means our business is profitable and can support however many employees/freelancers we have, even if it’s just one person. Enough income means we can live our lives with a bit of financial ease, and put something away for later. Enough means our families are fed, have roofs over their heads and their futures are considered. Enough stuff means we have what we need to live our lives without excess.125”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“That thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you is usually what you need to find, and finding it is a matter of getting lost.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“a silent conspiracy that constrains the possibilities of our lives.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“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.”⁠24”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“I have a suspicion that a whole bunch of energy will get unlocked. I’ll just start doing things, and creating things and talking to people, and going to places…that I cannot fundamentally imagine right now, and it will be that stuff that shapes my life going forward…I am curious what else will show up.”⁠3 He was able to take the leap because he had tapped into the power of wonder, enabling him to be excited about an uncertain future.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“We are convinced that the only way forward is the path we’ve been on or what we’ve seen people like us do. This is a silent conspiracy that constrains the possibilities of our lives.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“I have a suspicion that a whole bunch of energy will get unlocked. I’ll just start doing things, and creating things and talking to people, and going to places…that I cannot fundamentally imagine right now, and it will be that stuff that shapes my life going forward…I am curious what else will show up.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“While ambition does not preclude aspiration, Callard argues that ambition “consumes much of an agent’s efforts and does not expand his value horizons.”⁠8”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“the longer we spend on a path that isn’t ours, the longer it takes to move towards a path that is.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“To her, the “best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“We like to think that once we “make it” we can finally be ourselves, but based on who the companies selected, it was clear that the longer people stay at a company, the higher odds that they would become what the company wanted. I realized I didn’t want that to happen to me.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come. ​— ​C.S. LEWIS”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“that most people, including myself, have a deep desire to work on things that matter to them and bring forth what is inside them.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“once you are on the pathless path, defining your own constraints and fixed points is not a choice, it’s essential to thriving on your journey.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“The comfort we feel when we do what is expected keeps us from developing the skills we need to face uncertainty.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life

“only by taking action do we learn and only by learning do we discover what we want.”
― Paul Millerd, The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story For Work and Life