Paul Millerd Quotes

As we age we do become more mentally rigid and minor challenges to our routines can be landmines threatening to blow up our weeks, and suggestions that we live in new ways are treated as acts of war.

Before you quit your job, money is the resource you want to conserve.

After, it’s time

You can make more money teaching people how to make money than actually making money

Imagine if we paid teachers in schools like this

I've come to a point where I'd rather fail as a writer than succeed as a lawyer, and I need to try and fail or try and succeed, but I need to do it.

Whereas money today embodies the principle, "More for me is less for you," in a gift economy, more for you is also more for me because those who have, give to those who need it. Gifts cement the mystical realization of participation in something greater than oneself which, yet, is not separate from oneself. The axioms of rational self-interest change because the self has expanded to include something of the other.

The goal that can be named is not the goal

one thing i have seen since becoming self-employed: there is a certain sort of serendipity which occurs for many - they follow their interests for years, become skilled at something, keep going, and then a company identities that value and is willing to pay a lot for it

Success in business has more to do with interest in business and finance more than almost every other factor

Now a successful life? That’s got many paths

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

A lot of modern writing feels like you're getting hammered over the head with words. Maybe that's the point to get you into submission to buy something or blindly follow. It's a big reason I've been reading more fiction and poetry. Even if some of the fiction writing can be too flowery, at least they care about a sentence.

One instance I see of this is the repetitive short chunk after a statement.

You want to be like a river. Flowing. Bubbling. Effervescent. Heading downstream.

It's like a staccato chaos. Maybe good for rap music but it breaks the brain down. Just write a better sentence of what you are trying to say.

You see the inverse too.

You need to be pathless. Not climbing. Not grinding. Not achieving. Just pathless. (what is the point of a sentence like this?)

To her, the "best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.

Goals are mostly a waste of time.

Having an aim or direction of a different future you want to create? or idea of where you don’t want to be? Great

Leave your OKRs at work. Dream bigger

The internet gave us beautiful longform and stupid takes

Barbell.

Create longform.

The word burnout was coined in the 1970s by Herbert Freudenberger, an American psychologist who studied workers in free health clinics. He found that the prime candidates for burnout were those who were “dedicated and committed,” trying to balance their need to give, to please others, and to work hard. He noticed that when there was added pressure from superiors, people often hit a breaking point.

I have a suspicion that a whole bunch of energy will get unlocked. I'll just start doing things, and creating things and talking to people, and going to places…that I cannot fundamentally imagine right now, and it will be that stuff that shapes my life going forward…I am curious what else will show up.⁠3 He was able to take the leap because he had tapped into the power of wonder, enabling him to be excited about an uncertain future.