I went on The Pathless Path podcast with Paul Millerd on Feb 28, 2023—my first podcast appearance ever!
“I think spending time on Sloww is magical. You can tell you care. There’s this passion put into it. It’s like, ‘Why would anyone do this? Why would anyone do these incredibly long, thoughtful posts?’ You’ve basically mapped out how to live an intentional life and put everything on your site. You realize the only reason somebody would do this is because they enjoy it, and that’s so beautiful … You’re probably one of the best in the world at reading, researching, and synthesizing.” — Paul Millerd
Listen: Spotify, Apple, or here:
Watch (show notes below):
The Pathless Path Podcast #143: Default Paths, Total Work, Quitting Career, & More
Show Notes
0:00 — Intro
1:45 — Stories and scripts I grew up with, getting to know myself, dissecting my socialization/conditioning, how I ended up on the default path, fear of disappointing parents/others, a bit about my parents and childhood, the hard work ethic script, being good at something vs loving it, being a “good quitter”
10:00 — Background in graphic design, graduating from college, no internships, no rush to start a career, stumbling into a marketing career, waking up 7-10 years later wondering how I ever got into it in the first place, inversion & counterfactual thinking
13:45 — Pre-existential crisis, when a hard work ethic comes back to bite you, burnout plus purposelessness, existential crisis, asking all the questions
17:15 — Company/brand “purpose-washing,” the irony of having an existential crisis while my day job was being paid to reinvent the brand I was working on
20:00 — Paul reads a quote from my crisis, “total work” philosophy, the vicious cycle of jumping jobs
22:30 — “How to have an existential crisis” doc, discovering intentional living for the first time, trying to reset my perspective on life
25:45 — 2.5 years of cognitive dissonance post-crisis, growing disconnect between what I was learning vs how I was living
28:00 — Money scripts, leaving money/lifestyle behind, finally pursuing the entrepreneurial path, wife/parental support, work vs play
34:15 — 6 months of decompression time after quitting career, evolving relationship with money, imposter syndrome, aversion is the flip side of greed
41:00 — Figuring out who you are and who you are not, figuring out the one thing you can’t not do
43:00 — Existential crisis is still the spark/fuel 8 years later, everything is connected with everything else, the art of living, end of history illusion
45:00 — Thinking itself as a passion, writing to help thinking, synthesizing and dot connecting across themes/patterns, lifelong learning, quality as a byproduct of quantity
48:00 — Personal development before business development, discovering d-commerce (as opposed to e-commerce), the continually unfolding process, the transformative learning journey
53:30 — Humanizing Sloww, getting out there more, realizing my personal story is interesting, balancing learning and living
58:30 — Surprising trade-offs, starting as an audience of one, no praise/criticism, structuring your day, nothing gets done if you don’t do it, hidden upsides
1:03:30 — Where Sloww fits in your info diet, creating online courses starting with the Synthesizer course
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Kyle, it has been rather refreshing to listen to this. My crisis happened over 18 years ago and things changed dramatically afterwards but not really of my own doing, I guess it was how my make up reacted to a terrible situation. The 18 year journey has been a roller coaster, and I’ve been feeling a sort of crisis/lack again of late as I’m comparing my position/status/wealth with others and at 47, my peers all seem to be “thriving”. It’s time to do another dissection of this idea of Joe.