Reimagining our relationship with 'Work', ft. Paul Millerd

Ali

My name is Ali, I'm a doctor and YouTuber.

Taimur

I'm Taimur, I'm a data scientist and writer.

Ali

And you're listening to Not Overthinking.

Taimur

The weekly podcast where we think about happiness, creativity and the human condition. Hey, folks, this episode is very kindly sponsored by Skillshare. Skillshare is the best way to learn anything online. They have courses on pretty much everything from photography to writing, to business stuff like starting an e-commerce store, or even has a few courses that it won't stop going on about about video editing, productivity, and how to study more effectively. So if you're interested in teaching yourself something online, go to skillshare.com/notoverthinking to get two months free. That's skillshare.com/notoverthinking. Big thank you to Skillshare for sponsoring this episode. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Not Overthinking. This week, we have with us a very special guest, a chap called Paul Millerd, who I've been following on Twitter for a while. And who seems like one of the sort of eminent thinkers when it comes to thinking about work and life and, and sort of how to live a good life, especially as it relates to work. Paul, do you mind doing like a quick introduction? I don't want to like butcher, butcher, what it is, or other how you'd actually describe yourself?

Paul

Yeah, I guess the cliffnotes are 10 years corporate world, never really felt right, in that world. But on paper, seen as successful. Last three years I've been, I left, became self employed. And I've been trying to figure out, like, how do I actually design a life I want to design which is hard. And I don't have answers, but kind of share and connect with others who are curious about those questions as I go.

Taimur

Also. And so when you say self employed, what exactly it is, what roughly does that mean?

Paul

It means I have to generate the income to cover my cost of living. So at the beginning, my my first conception of becoming self employed was added this idea, okay, I'm just gonna leave and do consulting. Instead of doing it for a corporation, I'm going to do it on my own. I had some confidence and understanding of the market that I knew I can do that. So I did that for about six months. And I kind of proved to myself, I can make money and survive. I then decided to just not pursue any work for a few months, and started working on creative projects. I booked a trip to Asia for a month. And basically, that's when I started writing. That's why I launched my podcast, I started building website exploring like web design. And probably when I started engaging with people on Twitter as well, just connecting with others and finding Oh, crap, there's other people exploring different paths and perhaps not just going down the straight hustle path too.

Taimur

Yeah. Okay, nice. And eventually to get a bit of a sense of like your, your own kind of cultural background and context. So like, how old are you now like, mid 30s or something?

Paul

Yeah. I'm 35.

Taimur

35. Okay. And like, Where did you grow up and all of that kind of stuff?

Paul

So here is where I grew up. I'm actually in my parents home for the summer. I grew up in a small town in eastern Connecticut. Not even suburbs, like little more rural than suburbs, small community and grew up around a lot of family. So grew up with a huge extended family. And it's actually been interesting, Coronavirus, work from home. My aunts and uncles and cousins and I've had multiple cousins come back here and like, work from here. So it's been kind of a re it's been like a reliving of childhood in interest.

Taimur

Okay, yeah, all the cousins around and that kind of stuff.

Paul

But yeah, there's basically about 12 of us cousins on my mom's side, which was kind of the center of my social life. And just the community in town here. And four sisters, who are on my mom's side who kind of hold everything together. And then my grandparents had a lake house. My parents now live in the house behind that, my aunt lives over there now. My other aunt lives down the street that way, my cousin with four kids lives around the corner. So I'm kind of tapping in now to a lot of the things I did grew up with. But yeah, an interesting thing too, is my parents didn't go to college.

Taimur

Okay.

Paul

I didn't. I didn't grew up with any ideas that like I had to be successful. The only thing was like do well in school. And go to college because we didn't take advantage of that opportunity. And we want you to do it. So those are basically the guide rails in my of my life. And then I think I discovered, I was kind of blown away by like what I discovered once I landed a job at a place like McKinsey, I like pulled the blinders, and it's like, oh, wow, this whole elite world there, they're actually people that grew up their entire lives, thinking about work and having to be successful and needing to make a lot of money. And I didn't really grow up like that. Everything was family. And that was like, the most important thing.

Taimur

Yeah, that's very interesting. Actually, I think for us, it feels like the age is becoming younger and younger at which people start to like, get onto the path of like, Oh, I need to like, get into good university, and then get a good job and that kind of stuff. I feel like things got serious for us, maybe around age, age 16, which in the UK is like the first kind of round of public exams that you do. And so around roundabout, then it was like, Okay, I want to get into a good university. And I wanted to kind of be successful or whatever. What was like, I mean, was it same for

Ali

Yeah, I think I'd say probably even even sooner than 16. It was, I think, almost as soon as getting into Secondary School, which is, I suppose the the the middle school slash equivalent in the UK around about age 11, the seventh grade. And because our school was quite, like, academically inclined, and our mom's whole spiel was that, you know, it's all about academics, you've And it was all leading towards this, you know, this dream of getting into got to get good grades, because then you'll get a good job. It was just sort of like an implicit thing that, oh, I guess I have to try and, you know, compete, outcompete all the other people in my year group to try and get the best exam results from the seventh grade onwards. And so for me, personally, that was like, a huge source of my identity when I was in school. university, preferably at a place like Oxford or Cambridge, which were always like the sort of the the places where you aspire to go to.

Taimur

Where so when you were like, 12, you were thinking, Man, I need to get, I need to get good grades to go to a good university.

Ali

Yeah, genuinely.

Taimur

Really?

Ali

Yeah. This was like, yeah, it was just the life script that I was following.

Taimur

Oh, wow. What was like the age that you follow?

Paul

Oh, are you older, Ali?

Ali

Yeah, I'm one year older.

Taimur

So yeah, I mean, I would have thought we'd have pretty similar sort of stances on this, but that's used to be.

Paul

Well, it's it's interesting how different people internalize these things, right? The age, I was always pretty good at school. I never thought about, I never worried too much about college. Like we had a couple of good, we had like a regional public school near us. And then UConn University of Connecticut. And I always just kind of felt like, Oh, my grades are good enough to get into UConn. So I never really thought about it. To be honest, I took the SAT in my junior year, I think, I went to like three study classes that my school offered. And then I took it and I got a decently high score. And then people were like, well, you should apply to these schools in this school. But like, I just want to go to I'm actually wearing UConn shirt, but I just want to go there. It was a good enough school and I didn't like I didn't even understand what a liberal arts school was. I went to visit Holy Cross with my cousins. And I couldn't understand, like, why somebody would go to a liberal arts school. It was just so internalized.

Taimur

Yeah, what actually is I've never been clear on this. I've heard Americans say like liberal arts and stuff. I don't know what it really means.

Ali

And people usually say and as like, almost like it's a slur. Like, oh, you know, you've got a liberal arts education.

Taimur

Oh, really?

Ali

At least that that's how I've interpreted it. Like, what does it actually mean?

Paul

Well, yeah, that's that's the it's basically schools that gear more towards the humanities, right. So English, literature, philosophy, over time of different majors have kind of creeped in and made their way and you do find more engineering and sciences that these schools but it's kind of like if you go to these schools, you study something like literature, art, and I just didn't make sense to me is like, the point of going to school is to get a job, right? So I was going to study engineering, so I would be employable because I was good at math. It just like, I honestly didn't think too deeply about any of it.

Taimur

Which is liberal arts as a distinction from like a trade school where you study engineering to become an engineer or study, you know, something to become that something?

Paul

Liberal, I mean, let's just speak frankly, liberal arts is just where rich people send their kids.

Taimur

Okay, right.

Paul

I think I mean, It's interesting, right? I think if you go back the purpose of education, and I think this is still alive, a little more in Europe was kind of this worldly wisdom to become wise as an adult, right? In America, like universities, purely thought of as a road to get a job, like even university presidents are saying, like, our purpose is to get people educated, right? And that's the reality for most places. I think I posted something in my newsletter today about showed some graphs from Harvard, basically, like Applied Sciences, going like this, like 5X from 2012 to 2016. And then humanities is like, less than 200 people in their class, it just keeps shrinking every year.

Ali

Oh, that's interesting.

Taimur

Yeah, I get the impression from like, friends in the US, and, and, you know, spend some time there that, yeah, the culture there is at university is very much solely to get you a job. Whereas I think, I think here, that sense is still kind of there. But I don't know, like the default would not be to, I don't like I say, most people in my year, for example, did not study something that directly translated into a job. And that's kind of the norm, that you're like, study some subjects, and then you'll get some job at some point.

Ali

Yeah, I think it also kind of depends on what sort of environment you've grown up in, like, I remember. So obviously, with our parents, it was kind of the immigrant parent mentality, which is that you go to university in order to get the job that you want in order to be successful. And I found it, and I can remember finding it a little bit baffling when I would ask kind of white friends of mine, essentially. So what do you want to study at university? And they would say, history? I'd be like, why? until like, because because I like history. Like that concept blew me up. I was like, but what are you going to become a history teacher? And like, No, I'll just, you know, get a job. And it just didn't really compute. And it was only, like, a few years. And that was okay, maybe the point of university isn't necessarily to get a trade skill, like medicine, so you can then become a medic?

Paul

Yeah, I think I've always resonated with the experiences of higher education and careers. With for, like, immigrant mentality, and generally just first generation college students. I think it's all that like, Alright, you're, you're going to college get paid, right?

Taimur

Yeah.

Paul

Like, I mean, you chose a path, right? Of becoming a doctor, like, to me that that is, like, terrifying. Deciding at 18. Like, for me, I wanted to keep options open, because I had no idea what I wanted to do. And then I like one of my college roommates, he decided, like 17, to apply to the combined med school undergrad program. And it's like, wow, that's committing to your path until you're 30. And then, by the time he was an attending physician, like I had had, like five jobs, I'd gone to grad school lived in multiple cities. And it's, it was always, I couldn't, like, I just was not wired for that.

Ali

Yeah, it's, it's even more, it's even more streamlined in the UK, because in the US, at least, you have to do four years of college and then you go to med school, whereas in the UK, you decide kind of age 15, 16 that right, I want to get into med school, you spend those next two years racking up work experience, volunteering, trying to get good grades, trying to pad out your CV to do certain extracurricular activities, make sure you get to grade five in piano, because then you can mention it on your personal statement. And then at 18, you enter med school, and six years later, you're a doctorate 24. And from 20, from 24 to 26, you're working in your first two years of the house job. And so that's what I've just, I've just finished, I've basically been living in Cambridge for the last eight years, six years of med school, and now two years of being a doctor. And it's just one of those things like you get into the system, and then you're just on the conveyor belt. And every year there is that pressure in a way to kind of what's the next step that you're going to apply to. And so this is, this is like a point of contention I always have with my mom and other family members where they feel that I should be kind of looking to the next step of my medical training and applying to a specialty training program, which then you're in for seven years and then you get spit spat out at the other end as a fully qualified attending or consultant in the UK. And my view of it was, well, you know, I've got some time. While I'm young and unencumbered. It makes sense to just travel the world and explore this internet thing and you know, the YouTube channel is going well and the side businesses are going alright, so why would why would I do that? I get, yeah, I completely resonate with the idea of sort of coming in at 16 and then just sort of going on the on the conveyor belt forever.

Paul

Oh, I see these assumptions everywhere, right? So the generation before us, I wrote about this, I wrote this essay called the boomer blockade. And it, it kind of talks about our I mean, your parents are probably roughly that generation. But they came of age in a demographic blip where they peaked as the majority population at every age of their life. In, I think, similar in the UK and the US, maybe not as much in the UK as they were in the US, but also the UK and the US had crazy economic growth, from like, 1950 to, essentially the early 90s, depending how you count it, and then it's slowed. And that kind of mindset of like, keep going works. One, if everyone else is doing it, because then everyone is orienting their lives in the same way. And two if, like, the economic growth is providing enough interesting opportunities, now, progressing with slower growth, or budget cuts, means more competition for jobs, more nonsense. And overall, like more frustration, so for somebody that is like learning medicine from 16 to 25, in the, it's more complex than it's ever been more confusing. Like, you need a freakin break. Like, it'd be crazy from a like, flourishing or like thriving standpoint of life to keep going on that path. Like, that's the crazy thing to me, like. And I have this weird experience of writing about these things, and exploring these things and sharing my own journey. People reach out to me all the time and share like how much pain you're in, how much stress, how much of a weirdo, they feel like in their current system, and people don't talk about this. And I just want it to be more acceptable for people to say, like, I need to not work for six months or three months. Right? And like, it's an amazing world, like, what's possible?

Taimur

Yeah, for sure. I think what one of the, especially with something like medicine, where you're locking yourself, I mean in where you're, it feels like you're locking yourself into a certain path. But I feel like even with other sort of lines of work, you know, I've met like 16 year olds who are already planning to become like investment bankers and trying to get internships before university.

Paul

Consulting too, right?

Taimur

Right. Yeah, exactly. I think there's like, I don't know, looking back to when I was 16, or something. I think I had like a remarkable short sightedness of like, Yeah, sure. I'll just like go and commit to doing this thing for like five years, which is like a quarter of my life that I've lived so far. And there isn't really a sensor like this. That's actually like a pretty big decision.

Paul

Yeah.

Taimur

Especially with like, the the medicine thing. I think, I think a lot of people, I certainly had a lot of friends who they were just kind of into science or something. And it seemed like, you know, I think procedures is definitely a factor. But it almost felt like a willy nilly decision of like, yeah, I guess I'll guess I'll do a medical degree. And I wasn't, I think I was sort of interested in going down the medical path. For some of my life, I wanted to be a vet, actually, which is a similar process in the UK in terms of how much you have to study, and how you get into university and all that stuff. And I think it was basically just because I didn't really realize that there are other options, I think, kind of like how you were saying Ali, of like, you know, I didn't really realize you could just study history and then still get a job doing something. And it wasn't until I met. Right. Yeah. It wasn't until I met, I was sort of chatting to one of our cousins a few years older than us. And it turned out that he just studied maths. And that was like mind blowing. It was like, Whoa, you can just like studies study maths. And so I think like seeing someone who wasn't like super different to me, going down a different path was kind of opened my eyes to the options. But I think like you, you mentioned the family thing, being a big part of how you grew up, I grew up. I think family is one of those interesting things where you basically, most people go through life with only like one data point of like, family culture, and like what a family is like, and I think if you're making these decisions at age, like 16, 18, whatever, based on one data point about, like, you know what life can be like, it's very likely that it doesn't seem ideal.

Paul

Yeah, I mean, it can work though for people, right? I think everyone I knew growing up had a full time job and a stay at home mother. Right? And it was like this, it worked really well, we had a vibrant community, because there are a lot of people investing in the community, that even the fathers, I mean, some others worked, didn't work crazy hours. And I call this my accidental meaning hypothesis, which is that people accidentally found meaning by following the default path.

But I don't think it is, as possible today, it's still possible,

Taimur

Oh, nice. right? But you're not going to accidentally stumble onto it, you need to make some tweaks, you probably need to arrange daycare in a creative way, you probably need to find some remote working and flexible work options to make it We, like it never occurred to me to become a doctor. It just didn't even seem work. And then you also need to find like the community where it's not too expensive, where everyone is dual income working couple. But it's cheap enough hat some people stay at home and invest in the community. Like it's really ard. But yeah, I think that blows me this is something where my mind is just ike, I don't even know what to think anymore about what a default path is. ike, it is crazy. possible. I didn't really know any. Like, my parents never mentioned it. But then like, my college roommate, he's from Vietnamese family. That is like he was like, trained to think that's his only purpose in life since he was three.

Yeah.

Paul

And he did it and it like worked for him and he likes it. But yeah, it's like, oh, how'd you come up with that? Right?

Taimur

Yeah.

Paul

It's like your dream is really to own a own a home, have a mortgage and do exactly what your parents did. How did you come up with that? Right? And one of the most interesting things of taking this self-employed path for me is meeting so many people around the world living in such different ways. That it's, it's just kind of hard to limit myself to like one path now. Because I know, all right, that person is actually enjoying life that's working over there, this person is doing this, it's working. This smart person makes 30 grand a year. And that works. Like you don't actually need 200 grand to live like some of my former peers, like some of my former peers would really be in physical pain if like they had to lose their salary, right? They just don't have the conception that life is possible without their current way of setting up life. So most of what I've been doing is trying to explore and test myself and see like, what are the possible lives? How can I build resilience and flexibility for the future rather than a higher stakes life and more money and more success?

Taimur

Yeah.

Ali

So, you said that you you spent 10 years in the corporate world, in consulting, presumably, how how did you sort of what was the story of how you decided to leave and kind of how how you felt kind of faced facing the void, of not of not having full time employment?

Paul

Yeah, I don't know if I was ever suited for full-time employment. Like I think if I knew one person who was an entrepreneur that I met growing up, I would have taken a very different path, but I just like didn't have those mentors or people or models to look at. So, I always felt a bit off. I think I approached it by always getting involved in like improvement initiatives. I worked in like change management, leadership, operations, organizational change, cultural change, people, operations, all that kind of stuff. And the deeper I went, I kind of realized, okay, this stuff is just, it's harder than I thought, like driving positive change at a large organization is kind of a fool's errand. There's just so many unintended consequences of large scale change. And then, in my career, I basically would get to the point where I wanted to learn more, and the balance between learning how to act at this company and learning like new things and new environments, it would tip towards learning how to act in this company, and now it happened after about like 12 months to 18 months. So I basically just get restless and keep moving. So I left my first job after 12 months, my second job after three years, I went to grad school, I worked and did this 8-month fellowship while I was in grad school. And then I worked a job for 14 months, 15 months, and then two years and three months. And I basically just ran out of moves. And I was getting to the point with confidence, where I kind of knew I could like, at least cover my cost of living. And I just wanted to break like I was working with assholes in New York. And everything was about money, power and status. I hated that game. And I just kind of felt trapped. And I think part of me just wanted to run away, like, looking back, it's almost funny how little of a plan I had. I basically just set up a legal entity for my company, a website and then went on vacation to Europe per month to like, clear my head.

Taimur

As all of these sort of hops that you were doing, was that just because you got bored at these jobs? Or was it for like a sense of progression of like, I'm like, moving on to the next better role or something?

Paul

Yeah, it was a bit of both, I think. When you're in the mix, right? We, it, these work beliefs and like ideas about career is so deep, right? If you look up the definition of a career, it's like a steady progression of achievement, like that's the definition. And among like, the knowledge working class of people, that is so deeply assumed, people are always asking, oh, what are you gonna do next? Like, what? If you got promoted, like, you're always kind of aware of your progression, right? And then, after grad school, the three jobs I had after grad school, like, I bumped my salary up a bit, but I was basically doing the same job. And I realized that you either need to keep moving, to move up, or get paid more, or find a different way of living, right? And I think I was just frustrated with who I was becoming, I was becoming a less likable version of myself. I think I was frustrated and a little edgier. Because I was angry at like, my circumstances, and the organization I was in and I just wanted to clean slate.

Taimur

Yeah, what was like, I mean, so it's, it sounds like, from what you said about your family, and like growing up in rural Connecticut, that you will live in quite a different life, you know, in New York, at McKinsey, or whatever. Compared to like, your parents and your uncles, and things like that. What was their impression of how you were doing in life? Was there a sense of like, oh Paul's made it to like the big city, good job, this kind of stuff, or?

Paul

No, no, no, it's it's much lower stakes in a in a healthy way. Like, nobody ever. It was like, Yeah, he's like, yeah, it was like, just as long as you're employed and like making good money.

Taimur

He's got a job. That's fine.

Paul

Yeah, yeah.

Taimur

Okay.

Paul

But yeah, I think I learned more about that when I have left. Because of, I think, like, people have gotten used to it a little more. But at first, I think, like, my decision to leave my high-paid job made other people very uncomfortable more so than me. And, I mean, to me, like, I mean, I grew up, my father worked in manufacturing his whole life, like making stuff. Like literally starting in the factory floor, and like working his way up. And I was just making PowerPoint slides, like all my colleagues are sure they're having like an impact or whatever that is, but like, I couldn't find it. I couldn't taste it. I couldn't put my hands on it. And you're just like, this is so silly. It always just felt so silly. And I, I always battled against that by trying to work as little as possible, which worked pretty well. Like I always had good flexibility and I never really compromised on the things that matter to me in my personal life. But it was just like, I don't know 40 to 50 hours a week of consulting is a bit too much. I've found now I like like working that muscle like 15 hours a week max like that's more than enough.

Ali

Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what I'm, I'm, I've been thinking about medicine for a while like I've.

Paul

Yeah. I could imagine.

Ali

There's, I've got, I've got this pet theory that I don't think anything is fun as a full time job because.

Paul

That's one thing I am fully on board. That's my working hypothesis.

Ali

Nice. Because like, the thing can be fun, but when it's a full time job, it has all of the baggage of the fact that it's a full time job. And medicine is fun. But doing it five or six days a week, I don't know, man. And so I'm thinking sort of long term strat, two or three days a week as a doctor would be quite a fun thing to do. But then there's also probably a big part of me, that's just saying that because it feels very scary to even contemplate just like fully leaving mostly for, for the for the loss of the identity, like the whole being a medic has been my identity for the last like 10 years of my life, that to suddenly let go of that it just feels like a very scary thing. So like, how, how did you think about letting go of your identity as like a, you know, an employed and productive member of society?

Paul

Yeah, this is a this is a good question. I, I think I did a similar thing in leaving consulting, right? My only imagination surprise was to become a freelance consultant. Right? And if you ask me what I'd be doing 10 years from then it would be freelance consulting. Like, once I created space. Well, I think first just becoming a freelance consultant is not what I imagined. So I basically, imagine I'd kind of have a similar life, and I just have a little more flexibility and get to choose my projects. What I found was a lot more space, a lot more ownership, a lot more responsibility and a lot more ambiguity in terms of who I was. And suddenly, if I'm not in these full time jobs, people want to know, well, what are you doing? What do you have a business? You're hiring people? Oh, are you? Are you growing? Do you have clients? Like, what do you like? And then I would, when I started, I was in New York, I would come up here for like, couple weeks at a time. And like I'm wandering around in the middle of the day on a Wednesday and people are like, what are you doing? And it's, it's about identity, right? Because they want to know, are you a worker? Right?

Taimur

Yeah.

Paul

And then I'm grappling with, I'm not a worker, right? But for the first time I faced this, I was going through a health crisis, and I was out of work. And I realized a lot of my life had been oriented around work, right, you decide where to live, you just say, your friends are who you work with, and people who make similar salaries, because you can't afford the same similar cocktails unless you make similar salaries. And suddenly removing from that, having my income be a little more precarious. Not going out to dinners. It's like, Oh, well, my friends still love me. Like, that is what that's what it comes down to, will my parents still love me. And I'm not gonna bullshit people like, the reality is some people won't. And they might, like, especially some people's parents, they might be a little harsh to you for years. Like, I have friends who have been self employed for a long time, and it took their parents maybe five to seven years to accept their lifestyle. That is really hard. And I think the most important thing is like, you need to find a few friends who are like, taking these alternative paths. And I'm happy to have a call with you whenever you're struggling. But yeah, I mean, now. Now I'm doing similar stuff. Like I've accidentally have a YouTube channel that took off like, I don't know how that started for you. But I that's happened for me. Now I have some income coming in from that I have my online course teaching strategy, consulting skills. I have some writing income. And then like, I don't even really do consulting anymore. I don't know who I am. But I know, I'm a human not a worker. And I'm trying to orient life around that.

Taimur

The thing you said about people basically trying to answer the question of, are you a worker, I think that that kind of hits the nail on the head for sort of how I felt. So I've kind of been out of the full-time employment game for about two years now. So I had I had like a real job if you want to call it that for about a year after after I graduated. And then I left to do consulting kind of contracting stuff for a friend startup and that was like my off ramp into kind of doing my own thing and not not really, you know, having a real day job. And I remember at the start, especially when I was in the in-between phase of just kind of doing some consulting work for this for this friend startup, people would ask me, like, what do you do? Especially like family gatherings, like we went back to to Pakistan, where some of our families still offer a wedding or something. And so there was lots of like, what do you do kinds of questions. And I always, I always hated those because like, at this point, Ali had just graduated as a doctor, and he just like started work. And so he had like, a very clear cut answer of like.

Paul

Oh, nicely packaged up.

Taimur

Yeah, nicely packaged up, like, I'm a worker, I'm a doctor, you know, I'm like, in the system, you've got nothing to worry about. Whereas, like, I had just spent like, three months, three months in the US. And it was unclear whether I was gonna, like, go back and live there full time. I was like, I don't know, we'll see, it was unclear, like, you know, was I gonna stay at my current company, full time or whatever? Long term and so, I never really had good answers for that. And I hated that. The question is, basically, are your worker, and like, yeah.

Paul

Yeah, it's, and I think what people are asking, like, if you if you trace it back, a lot of these work, beliefs are like work is suffering. That's like a Catholic view of work. And work will save you that's like the more modern Protestant ethic. But work will give you your life purpose, right? I think what people are saying is, are you contributing, right? But they don't know. They're saying that they're, they're caught in like the modern translation of that. But if we trace it back, like we had work beliefs, such that like, you need to suffer, otherwise, there will be no food. Right? That was it?

Ali

Yeah. Yeah. That was reality.

Paul

So what your family's doing is like, are you contributing to the game? Right? But our game now is so convoluted, we have no idea to how to track like my efforts to the food that appears over here. Yeah, it's impossible. Right? So we're kind of lost. Like, one of the interesting things I've been exploring is like, what are the work beliefs that are going to emerge? Like we've had a whole new economy emerge? Like, like, you're, you're making money from YouTube ads right now? Yeah, how? You're not working like your, I guess your videos are working? Like, how do we have it?

Ali

It feels like cheating. Genuinely.

Paul

Right. Like, I I've started to earn money from YouTube, not crazy amounts, but it's like, every day, it's like, $7 or $8. It's like.

Ali

That pays for lunch every day.

Paul

It does feel like cheating. And then I don't know how to account for this. Like if it ever was a crazy amount of money I and you see people like Jack Dorsey is trying to give away a billion dollars. And he doesn't know how, right because he probably feels like this is ridiculous. Like, I'm on cheat mode. We have all these tech companies that earn exponentially more profits and companies did 20 years ago. We have no way to account for this.

Ali

Yeah, so one thing that I've, I've started thinking about recently, so I'm on the note of making money from things like it like a YouTube channel and stuff. One of my main fears with the whole kind of taking a break from medicine thing is that, you know, if someone asks me, what do you do, or or even if I internally asked myself, What do I do? My only real answer would be well, I guess I sort of make a bit of money from YouTube ads and sponsorships and kind of do a little bit of teaching on the side and do a bit of this bit of that. It's just a very, not satisfying answer. And yet now, when people ask me what my brother does, I say, Oh, he runs his own startup, as if that's just. Yes. Yeah. It's great. Yeah, it's it's perfect. It's probably how you felt back when I was a doctor.

Taimur

Yeah, I mean, I still don't I think the standard thing is probably a neater answer than what you have now. But it's, it's still like, a bit of a messy answer because I think a lot of people think Oh, so you're like, unemployed? Or you know, like, if you're not into like tech and stuff. It's very unclear what that actually means.

Ali

Oh, I guess so. Yeah, I guess if you're into tech, he runs his own startup is a very neat answer.

Taimur

Right. Yeah.

Paul

Yeah. I mean, there's different answers for different audiences. I mean, the like, relative that needs to know occupation and salary. You give them like something very tactical. It's like I'm running a consulting practice. And I have a client pays me money, right? But then like, I mean, my my friends were like, actually curiously like no, actually, like, what do you do? I try to be a little provocative. When people say what do you do? And I say, well, I I usually read a lot. I listened to a lot of podcasts, I try to spend time with my family. And I have calls with curious people on the internet.

Ali

That is so provocative. My god.

Paul

Yeah, it sets up all sorts of alarm bells. But I usually just play around with that question because, like, I enjoy making people think about, like, where does this come from? Why are we asking this? Why does it matter so much?

Taimur

I think the thing about the what do you do? I mean, certainly. So like, I've, over the past few months, I've met like some new people, and I'm always quite wary of asking them, what do you do? And I think what I'm most interested in is like, how do you spend your time rather than like, the Are you a worker and that kind of stuff? And, and if most people have a day job, or whatever, then what do you do is, is kind of asking how do you spend your time? Like, you know, tell me what your life kind of looks like, you know, but it feels Yeah, I think now the what do you do question has a lot of baggage. And so I find myself having to find more creative ways to ask them, it's like, I can signal that, look, I'm not questioning whether you're a worker or not, I'm not trying to estimate your salary, or we just want to, you know, find out what your life looks like.

Paul

I mean, I think it's darker than that. I think most many people are just workers. And this is the thing that scares me is I, I think I looked around in my early 30s. And I saw my, like, when you're young living in a city and working even if you're working a lot, you have a lot of socializing and community built around, you're going out, you're orienting around, meetups, maybe you're dating, things like that your part of clubs, intermurals, that, like slowly starts to dry up in your 20s. And then at the beginning of 30s, it starts disappearing. And unless you have kids and engaged in local community, a lot of people's lives are solely work. And that's it. So like the what do you do is relevant because that is their life, the one decision, their job, career and how much they make dictates almost everything in their life. So, like, I want to start a movement of more illegible people, right?

Taimur

Yeah.

Paul

We see political movements in especially Western nations that they're solely built on trying to identify who people are. That's not interesting at all. Traveling around the world, like, everyone's got a story in a background intro, and I love how you start out, like asking me about my background, because, like, I'm a white guy, but I, I liked a lot of my role models aren't white dudes like? I, the most interesting people are always like, from all over the place.

Taimur

Yeah. Do you have a sense for like, how we, how we ended up here? I feel like when they teach you sort of history and stuff in school, you learn a bunch of facts, but I'm curious, like, what what what were people's ideas of the good life and making it in life and stuff? You know, 50, 100, 500 years ago? I'm guessing you have a decent sense of, of how we actually got here, right?

Paul

Yeah, I think if you have you ever read Max Weber's book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism? So he kind of talks about where capitalism came from. And he's kind of blown away in this book. And he says, it's kind of amazing that we were convinced people to go work in jobs, right? Because we had to overcome what he labeled as traditionalism. And traditionalism was like you work enough to meet your needs. Like if you're a farmer, you work the season and you take the rest of the year off. You kind of went with the flow of the times, right? Not everything was great back then. But we had to turn work into something that was noble, right? And honorable and the Protestant Reformation came along and turn work basically from something that was looked at as like, a necessary evil, to something that was like the central aim of life. So the central aim of life went from like something like flourishing, and I think, especially in Europe, the higher classes this was still the highest aim, right? So kind of held together by those traditions into something were taking the American model if you look back at like the Tocqueville when he went to America and he's like, I don't understand these rich people, they just work harder.

Taimur

Yeah.

Paul

Yeah, they don't relax. And I think if you're competing globally, right, these systems started taking control of everything, right? You can't do anything without buying it anymore. Right? Like everything has been turned into something that can be purchased. And like the American style is taking over, has taken over the world as like, work. The system is so powerful, right? And I think what's happened is like, people don't realize that the system creates your reality, it creates your experience and dictates your behavior. Oshan Jarow has written a lot about this. And he's contemplating like, what are the implications of this hyper capitalism where we're not limited by a eight hour work day, or scarce resources? The whole goal is to like, monetize your mind 24 hours a day. And yeah, people can work 24 hours a day too, so what does that mean? Like, it's, it's pretty crazy. And we basically just taking this conception of leisure, which is like an active participation in life or contemplation about the mysteries of life and push that to a side, right? Leisure is merely a break from work now or right away to recharge the weekend, so you can get ready to hustle, right?

Taimur

He's crushed it on Monday. Yeah.

Paul

And it's, I mean, Derek Thompson has written about this as workism. It's religious in nature. Right? You see it, We Work they have like, we live for Mondays. It's like, What? What is that? That's so bizarre. Like, we used to live for Sundays, because it was a day of rest.

Taimur

Yeah. Wait, so how long ago? Did the sort of Protestant work ethic come in? Are we talking like 1500s?

Paul

1500s. I mean, Luther, and then Calvin kind of supercharged it. I'm not gonna get it perfectly. But Calvin basically had this idea that like, there was a select few, he called him the Select, and they, they had to work and their profession was kind of chosen for them, preordained and they were destined for heaven, based on their work, right? And then that kind of slowly took over more and more through religious veins, and then kind of soup paired with capitalism worked perfectly.

Taimur

Okay, that's interesting. I wonder how. So whenever I think about these things, it feels like that there's one, there's one big need that needs to be filled of like, having a, you know, having a roof above your head.

Paul

Yeah.

Taimur

And my impression is kind of that like, I think if you if you told most people, look, I'm gonna give you this really nice, big house in a good location. You don't have to pay mortgage or something. Do whatever you want with your life. I imagine they actually wouldn't work. And like even like worker type people, I imagine that would be like, oh, okay, I actually don't have to work. And so like, from the very little I have studied about, like, ancient Greece and stuff like that, like, yeah, the impression I get is very much that working is for poor people. And if you're rich, you're obviously not working. You're sitting around, like philosophizing. And like, you know, doing some maths.

Ali

Yeah.

Taimur

As leisure and stuff like that. And I feel like once that once the like house thing is checked off, then you're kind of free to, to do all this other stuff. And I'm not sure what the housing situation was like in ancient Greece. But like, I don't imagine there was this like, system around like, mortgages and stuff where you basically have to, like, keep working to sustain this thing. I don't know, but it probably probably had like a decent house that he didn't have to keep working to stay in or something.

Ali

Yeah, I think he called it his cave.

Paul

Well, I mean, if you look back at Greece, basically, I mean, they had slavery, supporting the or, like, elite. And the highest aim of life for them was like public contemplation and like work was an evil thing, like work was not good. Work was seen as like ignoble. And that kind of shifted over time. But, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I agree with you. I think maybe in Europe, you'd be more directionally correct with that, that people might have a taste of like how to be at leisure. But, I mean, you do have friends of like, talk about their Sundays that are like, so unproductive today.

Taimur

Oh, mate. Yeah, this is my biggest pet peeve. Yeah.

Paul

We're like, this stuff is so deeply ingrained that we have to be doing something. Right? That I, and people just. And this is one of the shocking things to me, I think people realize this once they become self employed, which is that the more money I spend, the more money I need to work. Full-time employ es and full-time employment is a great creation in terms of like weal h, distribution, and creating security and stability. But people never stop and ay like, well, I've earned enough, I have the house, I could just stop working I think the identity stuff is too much to unpack. And you can always just come up with more stuff you want to b

Ali

This is something that I've been sort of thinking a lot about, because essentially, so when I was like 17, 18, I discovered the four-hour workweek.

Paul

Right.

Ali

And since then, kind of for the last nine years of my life, my whole thing has been okay, I am enlightened, therefore, I don't want to be a doctor full time, I want to be doctor part time. And in order to be a doctor part time, I need to have these multiple streams of passive income, because then I have the freedom to do whatever the hell I want. And in the last kind of six months to a year, because of kind of the exponential growth of the YouTube channel and the surrounding online courses and blah-di-blah, I have gotten way beyond the point where essentially, you know, I can afford the house over my, the roof over my head. And now I'm like in this real pickle, it's it's a nice problem to have. But I'm like, even now, like earlier today, I was setting up some new Google ad campaigns for any online course and running with some friends, because that seemed fun. And then after this podcast, I was thinking, Okay, I need to write tomorrow's email newsletter, we can repurpose this podcast into 18 bits of content. Your thoughts and work are really interesting. We can repurpose that into YouTube, as the whole train just keeps on this keeps on continuing and so.

Paul

Well, maybe you can maybe you can buy a house for your brother, and then he can stop working because he sounds like he's ready.

Ali

I mean, we jointly own the house that I live in. So we've collectively got the roof problem sorted. Right? We've got two bedrooms, two bathrooms.

Paul

Yeah. Right. It's like, yeah, it's very weird. I've spent a lot of time not working. And it's very weird. I'd say living in Asia was really interesting. And not working. People don't really ask like, what do you do, they're, like, Taiwan might be unique too because it's like they have universal health care. And I think like family is like, clearly much higher. There's some costs that there's a lot of family obligations and pressure. But like, if you were to like stop working and move back with your family, your parents would be like, Oh, my, my daughter moved back. She's living in me like, everyone would be like, I'm so jealous. I wish my daughter would move in with me and that kind of thing.

Ali

Move back with your parents, you're, you're a complete loser.

Paul

Yeah, so they're, they're like other aims of life. Whereas like, I think it also helps to leave a city like London, or, like, where I was New York or Boston, like, everyone is convinced that the only way to live life is to like, you have to make a lot of money because houses cost $750,000. And you need this $750,000 house because you need to go to an expensive school. And then you And it's like, I think a lot of these issues are like the people that are like need to go to an expensive school and get tutors because you need to get into an elite college. And it's like, wait, are you just trying to clone yourself and you're frustrated and stressed now like, what if you rented with roommates with kids and homeschooled or send your kid to public school? Would things be okay? doing better in today's economy, like they're the ones struggling and they shouldn't be and it's very confusing because they have the economic resources to like solve their problems, but the people who are like literally kicked out of their jobs by the shutdown are like really struggling and they want to work bec use they are doing things that like h

Ali

There was something interesting that you said, really early on which I was like, I need to, I need to ask you more about this. You said that after your 10 years in the corporate world, you decided that you want to go into work for a while. And so you set up a podcast and started writing online and instead of an accidental YouTube channel, so like, how do you think about the content as versus kind of the idea of work?

Paul

Yeah, so I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago for my 100th newsletter, issue. And I, maybe you're similar, but I was like a tech native growing up, I loved being online, I was always kind of like experimenting with building websites, and hacking stuff, and all sorts of things. And I kind of lost that. So I think when I was self employed again, and I think just in the last five years, there's been so much energy and creative tools, you can use online, kind of just experimented with a lot of stuff. So combining that with, I don't have a perfectionist streak, like probably to a fault. Where it's like, I'll screw around and shoot some videos and send it to a friend or post on YouTube and see what happens. Basically, it's, I had a video, I filmed for my coworkers in 2015, of like, 14 PowerPoint hacks to make good presentations. And it got a crazy amount of views. And then I was like, well, there's a bunch of subscribers, why not do some more videos. And it's like, these really random feedback mechanisms, which is like, keep it going. So when I have free time, I kind of just screw around. I'm always trying to like help people and teach people. So the best feedback cycle I found was writing publicly online, and then people reach out. And then, they asked me for advice, or they ask questions, and I'm like, Oh, that's an interesting question. Let me write up something or let me create something for you and send it to you. And that's basically the strategy I have now, which is, I only want to be doing things I like doing. And I want to do them with people I like doing them with. So I'm very hesitant to like commit to anything. So I create more space by design. I do the things I want to do, like write and create and make sense of ideas. And then just see what happens. But no, like explicit goals, no revenue metrics, no like. Like, I don't even hold myself accountable for like working a set amount of hours. Like I've been dealing with some health issues for the last month, I've worked very little. And it does feel like cheating. But I think after those first few months in Asia, after moving there in 2018, were all my freelance income dried up. And I was basically just wandering around in parks and reading books, and trying interesting food and trying to make friends. I just became a lot more comfortable with just like sitting with myself and being okay with it.

Ali

Oh, nice.

Taimur

How much do you say I think like a big driving force for people who are, you know, in the workism kind of mindset is like, the status and prestige and the approval of their peers. And then and, and the older generation and stuff like that. You alluded to caring about that stuff in your blog posts and things. How, where are you on the spectrum now? And like, how do you dial that down? Like, what's been helpful for you to be able to dial up? Dial that down?

Paul

Yeah, I think I mean, my wife's a weirdo, like me, and, okay, taking a different path. I think we, we just talk a lot and support each other on these things and kind of just acknowledge, like, we're never going to be fully accepted. And we just need to build comfort with that, right? I, I think like, I talk to like my mother a lot about my path and helping her like come up with new conceptions of it. Like, I was basically teaching her to, like, think of me as an entrepreneur. Right? Because it's not actually about me. It's about her, her friends asking her what is your son doing? Right? If she says, I don't know, she feels ashamed. These things are like multiple layers. So it's not just about me. So it's about like being proactive and giving people a story of what I'm doing. Writing about it, so like, people are like, what are you doing? It's like oh, I wrote 100 newsletter issues about it if you want to read it if you really care. It's all out there. But yeah, just being okay with the fact that I might not get at status and prestige. And the fact is, if I do tap into something that makes a lot of money, I will get status and prestige. Am I happy about that? No, like, do I wish I got more credit for just talking with random people around on the internet about their challenges with their work identity? Eight to 10 times a month. I do wish that was higher status. But, yeah, I wrote an article about this too like, try to find your own prestige, economy, right? So we award prestige based on the systems we're in. I think there's like Twitter, I don't idea web, kind of like nerd Twitter. There's a lot of status awarded by just like helping people and sharing ideas. I had no idea. Your backgrounds, really, until I started looking into it. My wife was like, oh, he's the he's the doctor, YouTube guy. I'm like, What is that? Like, look it up. But I had just shared a lot of interesting back and forth with your brother and genuine curiosity, openness, vulnerability, and sharing of ideas. And that was like, those are the people I want to connect with. And that's been a saving grace in today's world where you walk around a lot, and people want to know where you stand politically, or they want to make you feel bad about how bad the world is. I don't know. Like, I don't know what, I just can't operate on that level. I need to have some optimism and generosity and engage with those kind of people.

Taimur

It sounds like for you like finding a partner, you know, a life partner, if you will, who is also kind of weird and gets this stuff and is on board with figuring things out as you guys go along. Like, at what point did you guys actually meet and sort of during your your journey?

Paul

Yeah, so I got lucky I blew up my life before I found the partner. Because I that can be really hard, right? If you suddenly wake up and you tell your wife like, I don't want this million-dollar house anymore, and I'm not sure I want to work in investment banking anymore. Damn, that's, that's tough. But yeah, so I worked for a year freelancing, I moved back to Boston to save money. Because I was burning too much cash in New York. I wandered around kind of like the US because I was working remotely for clients my first year, so mostly working in Boston. And then, after eight months of freelancing, I took that time off sort of the podcast writing, I didn't have any work like I couldn't find any either. So I booked a flight to Asia to visit my friend. And then I combined that turn it into a month trip to like six or seven different places. And I started working remotely there. And then I was like, Oh, crap, I can spend $20 a night and live by the beach in Bali and work remotely. So then I moved to Taipei, where my friend was living. He was my college friend who quit his job at 30. Travel the world for a year then moved to Taipei to be an English teacher and make his Chinese better, because he grew up speaking Chinese with his mother, but not really. So I went to visit him for a week. And then I basically just decided on a whim, I'm gonna go to Taipei, because you can live there on 1000 a month, pretty easily 1000, 1500 a month, so I didn't have savings. I hadn't really spent down my savings. Because I made enough from freelancing. I just said, I'm just gonna go for it. Like really open it up blank. Like, I'm not gonna have any work because I don't know if anyone will hire me 12 hours away. And I'll just see what happens. And I, I met my wife via dating app, I think I saw like we shared some books. We shared in common The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin. She had like it in her profile and is like hell yeah.

Taimur

Nice.

Paul

And we just met and like hit it off like immediately. So like our, she was in the process of leaving her job to become a fitness trainer. So she quit her job and then we went and spent a month in Thailand. So we like quickly tested like all the elements of like living together, traveling together, transitioning, and like we really helped each other. As like I was grappling with questions, she was grappling with it. And then we lived in Taiwan and ended up getting married. And now we're like, making it up as we go.

Taimur

Nice. That's sick. That's really cool.

Ali

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Paul

Yeah, I mean, it's amazing to have her I think she's quit her job. Again, she was a fitness trainer for a year. And she's trying to like reinvent her stuff. She has a podcast in Chinese about fitness training. And she's like building communities in Taiwan and other Taiwanese people around the globe. And it's really cool to like, take some of the lessons I've learned and help her. Because that's what fires me up is like helping other people do this stuff. And like, I, I basically want to make more friends for myself, right? So if I can get like 50 other people to like hack a living by creating online, I have like 50 other people to hang out with who understand that you can take time off on a Wednesday to go for a bike ride. Right? And I don't know, we'll see. We'll see where it ends up 10 years from now.

Taimur

Nice. It sounds like you kind of met your now wife pretty pretty soon into the whole unplugging from the system thing. But like, when you were taking the plunge? Was there ever any like we ever concerned of like, Okay, I'm, I'm now being like, officially really weird. And this will seriously resume, this might make it more difficult for me to find like a life partner. Because, you know, most people aren't this weird in terms of work stuff. And they probably have more traditional conceptions of how you should live.

Paul

Yeah, I'd given up completely.

Taimur

Oh, wow. Okay.

Paul

Before I moved to Taipei, I was telling my friends like, I think my life goal is to like be the cool uncle, like, really spent a lot of time and I was bullshitting myself, my friends say this to me now. They're like you always wanted like, to be married and like, have a family. Like, that's part of it. And it's like, yeah, well, it's pretty obvious now. But yeah, I, I had really given up and I think it's all tied together with the work stuff. Because I was in Boston and in New York and trying to date and like, you tell people like, I want to live life so that we can take six months off every year. And they're like, what, like, how will we afford the Hamptons? Or like don't you want vacations? It's like, no, don't you realize you don't need a vacation if you're not oriented around a 5-day workweek. And people are just like, I don't know. It doesn't sound right. But yeah, I've also gotten like progressively weirder as I gain more evidence that you can live in different ways with different countries and fail in many different ways.

Ali

Yeah, so have you have you got any pro tips on the traveling front, I was mentioning to you guys, just before we started recording, that I've recently become enamored with the idea of road tripping across Europe, and then just living in a different city for a month at a time. And then just, you know, still making two or three YouTube videos a week, but then sort of playing the rest by ear or taking taking things as they come.

Paul

So I would challenge you to go to a place for two months, and not make any YouTube videos.

Ali

Oh, like a big time.

Paul

I think the best part of traveling is when you like settle in a place for a month or more. I have, I've done the like one week at a time different places traveling. And that kind of stresses me out. I think my wife and I were more like one month minimum. Just to like, it's really cool to like plug into a place, start to figure out your local supermarket. Figure out some places you'd like going back to find a routine. And just seeing it work in different locations. I think the key with traveling is like creating space and creating time. So plan a lot less in terms of work than you think. Because it takes a lot more to like get situated the first week, you're just like finding your bearings, or the first few days in a place. You're just like trying to figure out where to get food and how to use the subway or the bike system. But yeah, I mean, there's many different ways you could do it. But yeah, that that would be my challenge to you. And then I can interview you on my pad podcast. About how you're grappling because I've interviewed a few people who have done like, work sabbaticals. I talked to this woman, Jacqueline Jensen, who created a work sabbatical for herself, where she wouldn't work. And like it was really painful for her because she was like very successful crushing it, founded startups. And basically just been like, working hard her whole life. And she created like a basically like non-work sabbatical for herself over three months. And she said, it took about two months until she could like, wake up and not think about work.

Ali

So one thing that I struggle with, and again, this is a good problem to have is that, because everything is going so well on the content front, and it feels like living life using a cheat code, I have this sort of, I have this fear that it's all a house of cards that's going to come crumbling down at any moment. And so regardless of how big the numbers get, I always think, okay, you know, I'm only, you know, if I, if I stopped making videos for even a week, then the algorithm is not going to like me anymore, and then people are going to stop and then the numbers are gonna start dipping, and eventually I'm going to be homeless and destitute. And I think, yeah, how do you? How do you avoid thinking in those in those sorts of ways and being more and being okay, with the inherent risk that would come with not having a job that's churning your income and keeping it keeping things growing?

Paul

Yeah, I think I think my large, extended family gives me a lot of freedom, because there's, I mean, they do have resources, they would, it's not as much that they would give me money if I ran out, but I would, I always have a home to come back to, and I'm never gonna have to worry about food, because they'll feed me. And so it's not that bad. I think it's harder for you because you're making money. But the best experience for me was going those first few months on my own without making any money for the first three months, I didn't make any money. And then again, six months in for a few months, and then again, when I moved to Taipei, so like realizing, okay, I'm okay, there's no money coming in. And, like, really, I'm just trying to make friends. Because if, okay, if if you run out of money, I will just send you some cash, or you can, or you can stay with me wherever I am. But I'm serious. That's a real offer. Like I'm really offering that. Like, I think what this the stuff that concerns me of all this work stuff is that we now think we have to pay for everything. Right? It's bullshit. Like, we can just say like, Hey, dude, I love you, I'll feed you, I'll house you. Like, you can stay my couch. Like, we don't do that enough. Like, it's, we don't even ask our friends to stay at their places anymore. Because it's easier to book a hotel. That's crazy. We need to remember that, like, life's a little more fun and interesting, maybe a little more uncomfortable too, if we like, impose on people a little more, it's a real gift to some people to say like, hey, will you help me?

Ali

That's a, that's a really good point. I think, I think what's interesting, at least, at least for me, is that, for example, even for me, like I have, I have no worries that I'm actually going to end up homeless and unable to eat.

Paul

Right.

Ali

Because I can just stay at my mom's place, or I can, I can come over to your place. And so the fear of not continuing to make videos is not really a fear of ending up homeless and starving. It must be some kind of internal, you know, I need to keep like internal drive to keep the prestige level, the prestige indicators up to keep the bank balance growing to keep that like all of the numbers trending in the right direction.

Paul

But do you like it rather than it?

Ali

Yeah. I enjoy it. It's it's fun making the videos.

Paul

Yeah, then keep doing it. And like don't worry about the other stuff.

Taimur

I don't know what it feels like Paul, you have a different I mean, you have a YouTube channel and stuff. But my impression that I get of you Ali is that you, you enjoy making the videos, but there is also a sense of like, a workstyle formula of, Okay, I have to make X videos a month or something like you enjoy it, but like there's a sense of I have to do it for reasons whereas Paul, I don't know how like, how do you think about it?

Paul

Um, yeah, I I try to avoid anything where I have like an implicit contract. With an audience or something, so I think we have these ideas, but like, I'm trying to think so like I followed Tim Ferriss for a while. And I think what was interesting about him is that he took his listeners in many different directions. And now he's exploring a whole nother direction of like psychedelics and mental health, right? It's really, that's interesting, right? I follow somebody because they're curious. And, like, it takes courage for them to take you into a new space. Even though he was probably a very, he'd lose listeners, and maybe he has lost listeners. But if you're doing things you don't want to be doing, like I've met instagramers that fall into this trap. And the algorithm clearly tells you what to do. I think Instagram, YouTube is a little, we don't have as much granularity on the algorithm for YouTube. But like, Instagram clearly tells you what to do. And over time, if you let it tell you what to do, you're suddenly creating for something else and not for yourself anymore. And I think it's about the courage to like, take your audience in a new direction. I guarantee if you posted a video that was like, I'm gonna do this two month experiment. If it fails, it's all Paul's fault. And he has to feed me for the rest of my life. But I guarantee your audience would be like, Oh, this is really interesting. Like you have a lot of productivity videos, and everyone that does productivity also struggles with like their relationship with work.

Ali

I can imagine that last week I put out a video entitled How I watch TV productively, and it was kind of tongue in cheek kind of because of this is Chrome extension that lets me watch anime at 3x speed. So I, I skipped through the boring bits and slow down for the fights. I got absolutely lambasted online people saying you know this, this is what is wrong with the world today, the fact that you feel the need to watch anime at triple speed. What is wrong with you?

Paul

But that cracks me up, right, like, remove the word pro-, if you remove the word, productively. But that's just, that's just really interesting about you. That's really weird, too. Right? I want to know, like a lot more about like, why you're watching at 3x to watch the fight videos. Like, the interesting part is like your interest in the fight videos has nothing to do with productivity.

Ali

Yeah.

Paul

Right?

Ali

But yeah, it was more a provocative kind of title that I knew people would be like, cool.

Paul

Right. But, but yeah, I mean, there's a little bit of gamesmanship of like titling things and stuff. But yeah, it sounds like you're still just creating things that are interesting to you.

Ali

Yeah, the thing that I try and think about that, the, the bigger the number, the sort of the view counts, and subscriber counts get, the lower, I try and have my own bar for quality. Because, and, and, and I, I tell myself that I'm, I'm trying to be more okay with shitposting on YouTube, like I would on Twitter and Instagram. Because as, as you become a slave to the algorithm there is that there's very much that pressure to continue being a slave to the algorithm. And so, I try and kind of actively work against that by being okay, I'm just gonna, I'm not gonna plan a video, I'm not going to think about title and thumbnail, I'm literally just gonna talk and see what happens. And some of those videos do really well, where it's just like a half an hour ramble of me talking about.

Paul

Yeah.

Ali

How I think about medicine, where as it relates to work, and what what that means. And those do just happen to do very well, because people are like, Oh, actually, like hearing your thoughts for half an hour at a time just about why medicine isn't as fulfilling as you once thought it was.

Paul

Well, it's, it's making me think there's like this cycle, right? And for people listening, I'm drawing like a normal curve. That's like, my, my wife watched some of your videos, and he's like, you need to get better cameras. And so, but I think there's something cool about getting a better camera because you get a better camera and it forces you to create better stuff, and creating better stuff forces you to learn. And that's really fun, especially at the beginning. So then you move up the curve, and then you have really high-quality stuff, but then you can mistake the quality for what people are watching for. Right? And they're probably watching you not the quality of the video. But then you need to like kind of go back down the curve, to like lose to like use the platform you've built to like then explore and like have more fun and like not optimized for like you don't want to go up to like 4k cameras and like a professional studio. For some people that might be the right path because that's what they enjoy, but I think that's where people get trapped, right? You have these super famous people. And they all say the same thing. Don't follow my path. I burnt out. Like, it's funny like GaryVee seems to be the only person with a huge following who's still having fun. And I think that's what makes him interesting. Everyone else talks about burnout, like, like, it's like, you see all these Instagram people, they all make, like, they go up the curve, and they don't go down and loosen up and have more fun, they go up here, and then they post the video about mental health and burnout. And it's like, don't go up, don't keep going up, like, go down, have more fun, loosen up and see what happens.

Ali

Yeah, that's a, that's a really good way of putting it. Um, so I had, for a bit of context, I've had this thing on my, on my website for the last few years where it's, it's kind of like a standing offer that if anyone is happens to be in Cambridge, and then I'll buy them a coffee, if they wanna hang out, stolen from, What's the name? Patrick McKenzie?

Paul

Oh, yeah, @pati

Ali

Patio11. Yeah. And so over the last few years, I've met up with a few dozen people who just happened to be passing through Cambridge. And so yesterday, I had, I had lunch with someone who had been following me on youtube since like, kind of the, the second week that I was making random vlogs in Cambodia, in like, 2016.

Paul

Thats awesome.

Ali

And he was and and he and he was making this exact point, he was saying, because I was I was, I was saying to him that I'm not really sure where the content should go and this sort of stuff. And he was saying that, like, at this point, you've got the quality down, people are actually following you a lot, a lot of people following you for your personality. So if you, if you started doing more cut more like a raw, raw less produced sort of Day in the Life blog or something where you just filming with your iPhone, rather than having to rely on having 18 tripods and different lights set up around the house.

Paul

Right.

Ali

That would probably be quite relatable and quite interesting. And I was like, Whoa, no way. Because I guess in my head, it's a case of it has to be 4k, you know, super, super high quality, otherwise, it's not worth putting out. And so that's the thing I'm trying to question.

Paul

Yeah, I think those are the interesting people, right? It's, I always send drafts and stuff to the people that like cheered me on when nobody read any of my stuff. Because though, be honest, and they will also like call you out when you're bullshitting. Those people are great. Because they actually are interested in you and not like what your production quality is.

Ali

Whether you're a worker.

Paul

but yeah, I, I love the idea of the coffee conversations. I've been doing something on my website called a Curiosity Conversation. I stole it from Brian Grazer, who's a movie director. And I've had this on my site since I started my blog and at the end of 2017, and I've had probably 200 conversations with people around the world. And I just say anyone can book a talk with me to talk about anything. Every Wednesday, I have like two or three calls. And I never know what's gonna happen. I've talked to people from probably, I don't know, 25, 30 countries, all sorts of people. And it's really cool. Yeah.

Ali

That's a great idea.

Paul

It's also just a way to like, open up the channels, because I think when you're creating online, I talked to somebody last week, and they were like, I've been reading your newsletter for two years. I love it every week. And I'm like, why don't you email me and tell me? Because I see a lot of times they'll just send on my newsletter, crickets, where you don't hear anything back. And like, I love doing it. Because I love writing. And I love exploring ideas. But it's like, I always thinking about how do I create less friction such that like I can actually connect with the people because I don't think I'm some sort of like super guru or expert. I'm actually like, equivalent to the person that's reading me if they're curious from what I'm writing, I'm curious about why they're curious too. And I want to know what they can add to the conversation.

Ali

Nice. So what is the setup for this that you have like a just like a scheduling link that gives you one of three time slots on Wednesdays? Like how does it look like in practice for you to arrange these?

Paul

Yeah, I can. I mean, it's just a link on my website. I have it like on my homepage, and then I just have a short explanation then just links to Calendly. And I made a short YouTube video about my experiences with it, too.

Ali

Oh, that's awesome, right. I'm gonna steal that idea. If you don't mind.

Paul

No, definitely. I've had 10 people I think steal it probably. It's like I want everyone to do this because I think what I saw was okay, I've learned a lot from Tim Ferriss. But when he's like, when you when you have all these inbound requests, you need to make sure you automate, block all your email nobody can contact you, check your calendar. I'm like, I don't, I don't want o do that. Like, I want to make it easy for people to connect with me. Of cours , if it ever got to the point where I had 40 calls a week, and I had a 40 hour, I couldn't handle that mentally. But I don't know, I'd still want to think abo t ways where people can just connect with me, because I talked to the mo t interesting people who are just like curious and trying to find their own wa

Taimur

Yeah, I think like the the sort of timeboxing thing of like, every Wednesday afternoon, I've carved out this time where I'm just going to talk to random people kind of helps. Because I feel like yeah, I feel like even at my at my sort of relatively small level of, you know, internet following or whatever. You get lots of DMs and things of like, hey, like.

Paul

We should chat, sometime like, yeah.

Taimur

We should we should chat sometime kind of thing. Let's get a coffee kind of thing. And it just feels like well, I can't say yes to all of them. But also like, I need some kind of system for actually doing this. And I think, yeah, carving out like some time every week kind of solves that problem v ry nice

Paul

Yeah. Picking a day is good, because I had it open like eight to six every day. And then I just had all these random calendars. And I basically r alized over time I needed to, like structure my workweek and to be creat ve and actually get in flow states

Ali

Yeah, I've I've started to realize that recently. So because sort of for the for the last few months, every, every week, we'll get like a handful of emails from people wanting to meet up in Cambridge for a coffee. And we've been been, I've been putting them off saying that, you know, from August, once I'm unemployed, I'll have all the time in the world. And now, from August, the fifth suddenly had like a deluge of emails from all these people wanting to meet up for coffee. And this was fine. But then I found that sort of like, my calendar for the next few two weeks is like completely chock a block with these random one hour one hour meetings and like podcast recordings here and there. So I was thinking, okay, I need to be like, maybe Tuesday afternoons, I was stationed myself in a coffee shop in town, and whoever wants to come can just come and have a chat. And then just leave that open to as like a sort of structured way of doing it.

Paul

But that's, that's really interesting, right? Like, if that was a job, you wouldn't think it was weird, right? Let's say you worked in sales. You just be meeting with people every day. But yeah, like, I mean, just think of the people you're meeting. I'm sure people are like, really excited to like, connect with you. They've been like following your story. And that's, I mean, that's work. And like that's giving back and contributing to the community.

Ali

Yeah, I guess. I'm yeah, I think I'll I'll enjoy the conversations. It's just that thing of like, as you know, like once your calendar is booked.

Paul

Yeah.

Ali

One hour slots. You have so little time to actually do creative work and.

Paul

But conversation is creative work.

Ali

Oh, that's good. Yeah.

Taimur

I think that's a good point. One thing I always rail against Ali for is always thinking about like material out first. Like I think for you create creative work is like churning out content.

Ali

Oh, yeah.

Taimur

And you use the phrase churning. And I think you kind of joke about it sort of tongue in cheek of like, oh, god gonna churn out the content, you know, as someone's forcing you to do or something.

Paul

Yeah.

Taimur

And I'm always trying to tell you to, like, read more random PDFs, read more books that aren't on Kindle that haven't been recommended by Gary or Tim Ferriss and stuff. And, and then you say this thing of like, Well, look, I'll do that eventually. But right now I need to, like make videos is going really well. And I'm making money and stuff. As I've been trying to hammer this, like, meaningful, crazy work is not necessarily like creating some tangible thing. You know? Have you changed your view on that? I think like, a couple of months ago, we had a podcast, where I was saying this, I was saying, like, what look seriously, man, why don't you read? Like some seriously interesting books. And I think you actually said, Look, once I quit my job, then I will have more then I won't have to churn out content, like in all of my spare time, and then I'll have time to actually explore my interests. That's kind of what you said.

Ali

Yeah. So I've, I've now been unemployed for the last three days. And I am. It's possibly a bit of a cop out. But I feel like I'm catching up on all of the random bits of admin that I had that I've been sort of letting pile up. At the moment, what I'm thinking is that I'd like to get to sort of set up where I will carve out kind of one day a week where it is for churning out YouTube videos. And then one day a week to kind of hang out with people do do coffee meetups, and then the rest of the time sort of on unstructured, just like do whatever.

Taimur

Yeah.

Ali

And so I was thinking, I've started kind of building up a reading list of like more weird, esoteric things to explore during that time. Maybe that's a cop out, but that's kind of the way I'm thinking about it at the moment.

Taimur

Okay. That's good.

Paul

Yeah. I mean, give yourself a couple months just to, like be unemployed. You'll figure it out.

Ali

Yeah.

Taimur

So look, before we wrap up, I think there's, I think so whenever we do these podcasts, I always have, like a thread running in the back of my mind of like, Okay, how are people gonna uncharitably interpret this? I think one very obvious way in which people are going to uncharitably interpret this whole podcast episode is, okay. This is like three really privileged dudes who are whining about how having a job is so bad and how it's been really hard for them to, you know, not have a job and still have enough money to live a comfortable life and stuff like that? Like, what would you say to people. Who I mean, I think, yeah, objectively, just being for me and Ali, I think we're extremely privileged, sort of financially and in terms of always having somewhere to go back to where there's a roof and food and stuff like that. You also kind of mentioned this, like, what would you say to people who are kind of stuck in a workism, kind of mindset and lifestyle, but, you know, they don't necessarily have that level of privilege, where they can just quit their job, and toss around and just think about random stuff while walking around in Taipei?

Paul

Yeah, I think. Yeah, it's always an interesting chain of logic, I'm not sure the endpoint of your privileged means you should stay in a high-wage job. Well, I'm trying to unpack this. And the, I definitely am aware of this, right, if you're born in like, the Western nations, Australia, UK, there's a bunch of them. And you go to college, you basically can earn a lot of money, relative to most other countries. Like you, you can live in many, many, many countries on $1,000 a month, which is pretty easy for many people in the US to earn. Now, I've, I made a lot of compromises. So like, when I left New York, I had like a nice apartment, I spent a lot of money. I moved in with four like 23 year olds, in a five bedroom house, like in a distance away from downtown Boston and dramatically reduce my rent to like, save up, save money. And I made a sacrifice, like I stopped going out to eat with friends, I cooked at home I like, so I made like dramatic life changes that I think a lot of people could make. And then I think the interesting thing that kind of shifted things for me is meeting people around the world who have much less and seem to make much braver decisions, than some of my peers making a lot of money in the US. So I think sometimes like the privilege, conversation almost traps people more into not doing something they're like, I can't go to this country and just like hang out because it it just doesn't follow that right. So I think by spending time in other countries, meeting other people, meeting people of different backgrounds, I've become a nicer person, I've become more generous, I've engaged more with my free time locally. Like, I do the same thing you do in Cambridge with, like, I've done a lot in Taipei, like people dalways try to, like pay me or offer me things. But I just help people. I've helped local businesses build websites, I've helped people to interview for jobs to be a pilot, I've helped people with their resume, I've helped people learn English. So there's a lot more ways to engage with the world than making money. And I think part of the problem with politics in the West is that we tend to look at everything as a financial calculus. So like, the problems with society are that people don't have enough money, right? And that I think, traps us in seeing the ways for connection, generosity, and those things matter and there are inequalities. But like, I mean, my wife was not making very But in many ways, like I think some of those people are a lot better off than much money. Taiwanese average salaries like 7 grand US a year. people in the US like they have universal health care. They've much tighter community of family and she saved like $3,000 and then quit her job and traveled for three months. And that was all the money she had. That takes a lot more guts than me.

Taimur

Yeah, for sure.

Paul

Is she? Like, is she coming from privileged? Like, maybe relative to some other people, of course. But I think there's a lot more opportunities and ways to live life. I'm consciously aware of privilege everywhere I go in the world, if you're a white guy traveling, that's, that's like the best situation. Right? So, and my wife is of a different race from a different background. So I'm constantly aware of things from her perspective, too. So yeah, it's, but yeah, that that's such a default response from high wage knowledge workers in the West. And then I go across the world to Indonesia, and meet people who never went to college who are just like hacking a living as a digital photographer. And it's like, this person has a lot more imagination for the possible ways to live life. In my online course I run, the most enthusiastic people are people from low wage countries. And I have a gift program where they can name their price they want to pay for my course, they almost like categorically finish online courses, and people don't finish online courses. The US people will pay full price and then not open it again. Which is great. They can fund my support of people from around the world. So yeah, it's Yeah, I think that's the thing you learn when you travel is these conversations are different everywhere, right? And there's different conversations of privileged classes in Taiwan that are incomprehensible, unless you've lived there for a year. So yeah,

Taimur

Yeah, I think that the traveling and seeing other alternative ways to live really kind of shifts the privilege scale quite a lot as to like, how much that's sort of stopping you from doing things. And I feel like, I feel like there's like a, there's also a bit of like a privilege trap, where I have like lots of friends who also went to good universities and things right. And then you're kind of comparing yourselves to your peers who also did those things. And suddenly, like, there's a much higher economical bar that you have to reach to kind of Keep Up with the Joneses and stuff like that.

Paul

Yeah, I mean, I just flat out flat out challenge people, people are scared to admit they want a lot of money. Like, if people if people were more honest about that, they wouldn't have to be as themselves about wanting to like travel or work. Like, I've made 30 to 40 grand for the last three years in the US, my peers would die if they had to, like move into my life.

Ali

Is that 30 grand per year or per month?

Paul

Per year. But that's been like I've covered my cost of living, I've probably broken even, only in the last six months have I started to save and invest for the future again. And if money goes down again, they'll have to tighten up and figure it out. I think me and my wife figured out we could probably live in 1000 a month in Taiwan. And like, I have family there now too. So it's like, that's kind of a place where I always feel at home too.

Taimur

Actually, final thing that I'll be curious to get your take on. I feel like with all these conversations about, you know, if you want to call it like becoming more enlightened about a certain thing, I think you can get stuck in like a local optimum, where you're, for example, unenlightened, but with a high paying job. And you have like various badges of prestige, like good university, brand name, company or whatever. And going, you know, it feels like you could do worse things, then play the prestige game for a little bit, maybe until 21 through 25 and then choose to become enlightened about these things. Whereas, you know, if you tell some, like 40, if you tried enlightened some 40 year old, I would have said that it just might go horribly wrong. And maybe it is sensible to kind of, you know, be on unenlightened for a bit before, like unplugging.

Paul

Yeah. So I think a couple things are happening. I have noticed that the ages are getting younger, when people are like opting out of the default path. Like, I'm talking to people that are like, in college with job offers from big firms that are like rejecting it and saying, like, screw it, I'm just going to start it. So I think what's happening there is people have just like people have lost faith in the American dream, the British dream, whatever that default dream is in their country. It's really reached a critical mass where the myths have kind of crumbled, we don't have myths to replace them. So many people are just saying Screw it, I'll just figure it out on my own. I think I'm always a strong advocate of going to these big institutions or organizations, because you learn. You basically get space to play and learn skills and try things and kind of wander around a company if you're aggressive enough to experiment in different ways. So I've been playing with the idea of like, the 10-year career, and I think we'll see a narrative emerge around this, maybe something like we're always doing too is like, you go become a doctor. But then you take a few years off and explore things and maybe you come back to being a doctor with a little more wisdom of life, and combining it with other things, right? Like, I can only imagine how much you could help people. Like with your medical knowledge and creativity and productivity, and like the insecurity of like carving your own path, like that's like everyone in today's society, like everyone needs needs those skills. I don't need any more doctors that like, only know how to read a scan and suggested surgery. Right? We don't we don't need that, we need like, compassionate, creative, interdisciplinary thinkers that can help us. Yeah, that kind of went off on a tangent but.

Taimur

I think that's a that's a great note to end on.

Paul

Yeah.

Taimur

Awesome. Well, Paul, this has been amazing. Thanks so much for chatting.

Paul

Thank you very much.

Taimur

We'll, we'll place links to all your various things in the show notes. Is there anything you'd like to tell people where they can find you online?

Paul

Yeah, think-boundless.com or boundless.substack.com. And then the YouTube I mentioned is my StrategyU channel. So if you go to Strategyu.co you'll find my strategy consulting videos, I have a personal one, but there's not much going on over there. Maybe one day. But yeah, just dream bigger, I think is my challenge to people and explore all the opportunities we have in the world. There are a lot of challenges. There are a lot of things that are not going well in the world right now. But there's also a lot of possibility for love, generosity, creativity, the things we've been doing forever as humans. And if Ali does this experiment and stops creating videos and his channel crashes it's not my fault.

Ali

It's fine. I'll come stay with you.

Paul

Perfect. Yeah.

Ali

In a few weeks. All right, thanks, man. It's been a pleasure.

Taimur

That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. If you like this episode, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts on the apple podcast website. If you're not using an iPhone, there's a link in the show notes.

Ali

If you've got any thoughts on this episode, or any ideas for new podcast topics. We'd love to get an audio message from you with your conundrum question or just anything that we could discuss.

Taimur

Yeah, if you're up for having your voice played on the podcast and your question being the springboard for our discussion, email us an audio file mp3 or voice notes to hi@notoverthinking.com.

Ali

If you've got thoughts, but you'd rather not have your voice played publicly, that's fine as well, tweet or dm us at @noverthinking on Twitter, please.