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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Paul Millerd
Read between
January 23 - January 26, 2024
John Maynard Keynes once pointed out, “that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”
Leo Rosten once argued was the purpose of life: “to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
However, the proliferation of paths presents a challenge. With so many options it can be tempting to pick a path that offers certainty rather than doing the harder work of figuring out what we really want.
prestige is “a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy.”12
“the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing,”
in all men’s lives at certain periods…one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside.”
“spirit of capitalism” struggled to take hold in societies that embraced a “traditionalist” mindset towards work.18 In Weber’s view, a “traditionalist” view of work is one where people work as much as they need to maintain their current lifestyle, and once that aim is achieved, they stop working.
Luther and then Calvin both wanted to undermine the authority of the Catholic Church to govern an individual’s relationship with God.
Calvin paired Luther’s increase in individual freedom with the idea that everyone is predestined to serve God through a specific calling. Working hard in the area of one’s calling determines the status of a person’s relationship with God.
Religious scholars point out that the Protestant “work ethic” is more than a blind obsession with work. It is paired with thrift, self-discipline, and humility. Yet as fewer people look to religion for wisdom on how to navigate life, they are only left with the watered‑down version of these views.
the most meaningful moments of my career, they involve overcoming obstacles, or getting through setbacks to complete something I didn’t think I could.
I split into two different versions of myself. One, “Default Path Paul,” focused on continuing my career, looking for the next job. The other, “Pathless Path Paul,’’ was finding his footing and starting to pay attention to the clues that were showing up.
Jerry Colonna, an investor turned executive coach, asks his clients this question, “How are you complicit in creating the conditions you say you don’t want?”
Freudenberger to ask two provocative questions: What if the value system of the institution is diametrically opposed to the values, ethics, and competencies of the individual professional? What if the individual professional seeks to live up to the external, organizationally imposed criteria of what constitutes success and achievement, but is unable to do so?
work dominated your every moment, would life be worth living?”
German philosopher Josef Pieper, who first wrote about it in his book Leisure, The Basis of Culture.
Pieper pointed out that people “mistake leisure for idleness, and work for creativity.”
The philosopher Erich Fromm has argued that “creative union,” or when “man unites himself with the world in the process of creation,” is a way to experience love.
one of prototyping a change, is not only a better way to think about taking bold leaps but is quite common across many people’s stories.
This kind of approach, focused not on being brave, but instead on eliminating risk, is common for people who take unconventional paths.
Callard defines aspiration as the slow process of “trying on the values that we hope one day to possess.”69 This is in contrast to an ambitious journey where we already know what we value.
While ambition does not preclude aspiration, Callard argues that ambition “consumes much of an agent’s efforts and does not expand his value horizons.”
Callard argues that the aspirant’s understanding of the value of their pursuits “is characterized by a distinctive kind of vagueness, one she experiences as defective and in need of remedy.”71
Rao argues that the answer is not to abandon goals altogether but to take them more seriously and to put more thought into identifying unique fixed points, ones that align with the things that bring us alive.
By choosing a unique and personal fixed point, in Mill’s view, you are not only raising the odds of finding a path worth staying on, but you are also serving an important role in pushing culture forward.
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
“come graduation, they do not go outside to a hostile world; they transfer.”95
a great question: “What is your rich life?”
People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who’s on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it’s alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself. – Joseph Campbell
Henry David Thoreau once reflected, “the life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind.”
William Deresiewicz’s essay, “The Disadvantages of An Elite Education.’’
Rebecca Solnit’s insight about getting lost in A Field Guide To Getting Lost.
The need to feel useful is a powerful one. This is the hidden upside of the pathless path and a reason why finding work that aligns with what matters to you and makes you feel useful is so important.
William Zinsser. He urged me to “believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.”
I encourage everyone to write a description of the person you don’t want to be, then brainstorm actions that might create that outcome.
Fromm argued that the reason lied behind two different types of freedom. First was negative freedom or “freedom from” outside control. Second was positive freedom or the “freedom to” engage with the world in a way that is true to yourself.
Wallace’s point is that doing what almost everyone else is doing is the natural thing in life. If we are serious about other approaches, it will take work.
In addition to doing something challenging, “finding the others,” or discovering a different kind of work you enjoy, you might also find a mode of being that opens you up to a deeper relationship with the world and yourself. In this way, the creative act is one of the most sacred things in the world and should be taken seriously in itself and not with any expected outcome.
Writer Simon Sarris argues that we can only do this by increasing our capacity for agency, or our ability to take deliberate action in the world.
He argues, “the secret of the world is that it is a very malleable place, we must be sure that people learn this, and never forget the order: Learning is naturally the consequence of doing.”158 In other words, only by taking action do we learn and only by learning do we discover what we want. Without this, we will struggle to take advantage of the freedom that the pathless path offers. We are ultimately the ones that determine our fate, and without expressing agency, we struggle to be free.
Dolly Parton: “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
“end of history illusion.”
if I’m going to change more than I can expect, I might as well attempt to shape those changes.
if coping with these challenges increased my confidence, is comfort overrated?
Indeed. Is comfort over rated?
Thompson noted that “time is now currency, it is not passed but spent.”163
Wendell Berry wrote about how economic success includes the hidden cost of depriving people “of any independent access to the staples of life: clothing, shelter, food, even water.”
What was once the riches of self‑reliance have become things with a price.
Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein. In it, he introduces the idea of a gift economy which he argues has been with humans for ages. He compares it to our default economic mindset:
Tim Wu made this point in a widely read essay titled “The Tyranny of Convenience,” where he argues that convenience, “with its promise of smooth, effortless efficiency…threatens to erase the sort of struggles and challenges that help give meaning to life.”166
Create Your Own Culture
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