The Pathless Path with Paul Millerd

Kevin is the man behind the Epic Gardening channel. Although he had not read the Pathless Path at the time of the recording of this episode, he seems to be living it with every breath he takes. The only constant thing in his life seems to be that is constatly reinventing himself. From professional poker, gaming, web design, indie consulting, blogging to running a huge YouTube channel about gardening with almost 3 mil. subscribers, we meet at his next crossroads, after he's decided to take a step back from running the show personally day to day. 

🎥🍿 YOUTUBE: WATCH HERE

Links:

• Epic Gardening YouTube channel
• Kevin's personal YouTube channel
• Kevin's Personal Website
• X (Twitter): @KevinEspiritu
• Instagram: kevinespiritu_

⌛TIMESTAMPS

• (00:00) - Intro

Enroll In The 5th Cohort of Nervous System Mastery: You can get $250 OFF using the code PATHLESS => nsmastery.com

Jonny Miller is a dear friend and I've had the privilege to get to know him closely over the past four years on our own journeys. We've lived in Japan, Indonesia, and Mexico together. When we met we were both single but now are both married in cross-country relationships and have navigated finding work that matters, getting married, and living in foreign countries together.

🍿Watch on YouTube

This conversation was really special.

Links:

• My interview with Jonny on The Curious Humans podcast
• Paul's Interview with Al Humphreys 
• The Three Marriages (David Whyte)
• Jonny's TEDx Talk on Grief

----

📕Buy Paul’s Book (Published Jan 2022): The Pathless Path

Joe is an executive coach and the founder of the Art of Accomplishment. Having worked as a venture capitalist, a consultant and an international banker, Joe discovered meditation on a trip to Asia and has practiced it since for over 25 years since then. Meditating as well as a deep study of various spiritual, psychological and neurological traditions allowed him develop his unique ability to help others with personal transformation.

🎥🍿 YOUTUBE: WATCH HERE

Links:

Art of Accomplishment
Podcast
X (Twitter): @artofaccomp
Instagram: theartofaccomplishment

⌛TIMESTAMPS

• (00:00) - Intro

Christine Bader is currently living in Bali, Indonesia, where she is spending time focused on her family and self.  She is the author of The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil and the former head of CSR for Amazon before leaving in 2017, a journey she details in an amazing essay titled “The year I learned to quit.”  

She talks about leaving the corporate world and shifting her focus from building a career to building a life.

Topics Discussed:

• Corporate social responsibility
• Taking a sabbatical in Bali
• Building a life
• The greek concept of Kairos
• Working in Asia
• Working at Amazon

Recommended Reading

• Can a business of any size be good?
• The Year I Learned To Quit (New York Times)

Jacqueline Jensen has been a digital nomad for 3.5 years, living and working globally. It might surprise you to find out then, that she's written a book called "Travel Isn't The Answer." While counter-intuitive, she argues for a return to awe and wonder with what is already around us. She talks about different moments of wonder she has experienced (including a breathtaking view in Montenegro) and different techniques for how people can "Live With a Sense of Curiosity, Passion, and Awe Anywhere and Everywhere" (the subtitle of the book).

Last year, in a planned sabbatical she came face-to-face with the fact that work was the center of her world. While she almost "quit" the sabbatical, she pushed herself to redefine her day and time to claim back some of herself from a sole focus on work.  She provides many actionable tips and perspectives that can help people question the role of work in their lives, take steps to increase the amount of awe in their lives and connect with people that matter to them.

More About Jacqueline:

• TedX Talk
• Twitter: @JackieMJensen & LinkedIn: Jacqueline Jensen
• Book: Travel Isn't The Answer (Amazon)

Recommendation on getting outside of your comfort zone:

• Check out local music: sofarsounds.com
• Go to an art museum
• Travel-as-a-service recommendations discussed: Hacker Paradise, Recess Labs, Roam, Outsite
• App for re-aligning your day: Today

After attending a few corporate recruiting sessions, he didn't take for granted that his path was to enter the corporate world.  Twenty years later, he is still carving his own path and has recently returned from Koh Lanta, where he lived with his three children in Thailand for the last six months. 

We Talked About

• Ben starting a "tribe" in Fiji
• Early internet adventures
• His experiences coaching people with career transition
• The decision to move to Thailand with his three kids for six months
• Using "no code" tools to start things like Rebel Book Club
• How to think about a career in today's world
• How finding a friend is one of the most important things to head in a new direction

Links Mentioned:

• Ben Keene's site
• Rebel Book Club
• Tribe Wanted Fiji
• Right to Dream
• Escape The City
• Moving to Koh Lanta with three kids
• His experience after the six-months in Thailand
• The 100 year life (book)

Andrew is a Practical Philosopher who believes that "there may be no greater vexation in our time than the question of how to make a living in a manner that accords with leading a good life." We dive deep into the questions of "what is the good life?" and what he means by "sustaining life." He also shares his perspective on the concept of "Total Work," a phrase first put forth in 1947 by the German Philosopher Josef Pieper, and shares how that phrase became central to his current writing on the topic and conversations he has with business leaders and executives.

We also dive into his dichotomy of the three modes people could think about to make a living:

1. Use what you've got
2. Exchange what's in hand
3. Offer what you can

He reflects on our modern culture's over-reliance on exchanging our time for money while ignoring how we can live off the land and operate within the gift economy. Next, we talk about some of the different modes of living (whether it be a "settler", nomad or somewhere in between) and the implications for the community in society as a whole as well as how has dealt with that with his wife.

Finally, Andrew offers three practical steps people can take to re-engage with life and try to understand what "a life worth living looks like" that does not include the advice to just quit your job.

• Dis-identify with the identity of the worker: Questioning whether you truly only are a worker, a CEO, a marketing manager, an accountant, etc...
• Begin an inquiry into the question "If I am not a worker, then who am I?": What else is worth living for? What practices do I want to have in part of my life? What relationships and conversations nourish me?
• The question whether or not the life you have defined is "sufficient": Are you thinking deeply enough about the question of who you are?

Andrew's Writing & Site:

• Andrew's Newsletter On Total Work
• If Work Dominated Your Every Moment, Would Life Be Worth Living (Aeon)
• Andrew's Writing

Other Writing Mentioned:

• Josef Pieper's Leisure, The Basis Of Culture
• Andre Gorz, Reclaiming Work
• David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs

Tash Walker is the founder of a firm and spends her Fridays making marmalade.

Before instituting a four-day workweek at her firm, The Mix, she barely had time for her relationships. She decided to start doing research about different ways of working. There had to be a better way than the default options of "Summer Fridays" and "flexible work," that never seem to make less anxiety or stress-ridden.

In her research, she discovered many examples of Swedish companies embracing 4-day workweeks and also found that when they instituted it, they often helped improve productivity. After bringing the option to her team at The Mix, they decided to do a three-month trial. They didn't even tell their clients.

The funny thing? The clients didn't even notice. Even better, when they shared it with their clients - they weren't offended. They were curious to learn more and impressed that they had prioritized their people. While many quickly reflex to "well that can't work here," Tash and her team went forward anyway and have shown that a 4-day work week can work and it can work in professional services - an industry where many take for granted the fact that you should always be available for your clients.

Beyond improving the lives of the people at the firm, they achieved some incredible results:

• Revenues up 57%
• Absenteeism down 75%
• Productivity stayed the same
• Doubled the number of clients
• Client referrals up 50%

Want to learn how to make this happen at your company? You can download their "4-day week" report which is one of the best reports I've seen on the future of work.

John Zeratsky was a designer in the tech industry has worked with hundreds of startups in his time at Google Ventures.  He’s also obsessed with redesigning time and thinking about what matters in life.  Earlier this year he just got back from 18 months living on his boat "Pineapple" with his wife sailing around Central America, which he wrote about in an article titled “What quitting my job to sail around central america taught me about fulfillment.”

In this conversation we talk about:

• Growing up in a small lake community
• His love of sailing growing up
• Why him and his wife change their mind on taking the trip in 2015
• Rethinking convenience and comfort
• What comforts are worth paying for
• Belonging and community
• How his relationship with money has changed
• How him and his wife are structuring their life to work how they want
• The one change that helps people be less addicted to their phones

Links Mentioned:

• Designing Your Life
• Sprint: How To Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas In Just Five Days
• Make Time: How To Focus On What Matters Every Day
• Twitter: @jazer

Packy says that his differentiation "is that I’m going to be having more fun than most people”

I've been a big fan of the energy he's brought to his writing over the past couple of years. But he didn't set out to have a popular newsletter.  His real plan was to launch an in-person community.  

We chat about how the pandemic helped him figure out why that wasn't a good idea and how he's thinking about his solopreneur journey.

The reason I asked him on the podcast is to talk about his recent newsletter on the future of work.  He argues that “Employees will ultimately make the decision” about what work looks like post-pandemic.  I think he is mostly right and we talk about what that might mean for people's lives.