The Path without Paths - Launching a 9-5 Escape Pod
Why I'm building various side-projects (like starting a business, a podcast, and this newsletter) and documenting my journey and learnings along the way.
For years I have had an itch to explore a world outside of a traditional “9-5”, straight line career path. I have often day-dreamed about what it would be like to “forge my own way”. To experiment, to create, to learn and to grow from this adventure. More than that, I’ve dreamed of what it would be like to be totally open about this journey and share my learnings with others along the way, so that I could create the content I wish I had right now whilst trying to figure all of this “alternative path” stuff out.
The thing that has held me back until now is fear. Fear of sharing my opinion and being ridiculed, fear of failing, fear of giving up, and ultimately, the fear of not being good enough. Even sharing these thoughts and sharing my writing in a newsletter is scary to me! After listening to a podcast between Ali Abdaal and Robin Waite (more on that in a moment) I’ve come to realise this is a terrible reason not to do something that’s absolutely wonderful and exciting to me.
In my day job I work at a large tech company as a middle manager. There are many elements of that job which I truly love and I would say that I’m even moderately good at (creating highly functioning teams, coaching people and helping them grow). I have, and still do, put a lot of effort into my career in engineering & management. However, over the past few years, I have had what Paul Millerd describes as “a pebble in my shoe”, and it has only continued to grow. Well, enough is enough. I’ve decided that it’s time to shake that pebble loose and - like Forest Gump - start walking and seeing where it takes me (ok, maybe metaphors aren’t my strong point).
There are so many ideas and projects I’d love to try where I haven’t got the slightest idea how to get started or how to make it successful (like this newsletter), or if I’ll even like it. I’m no longer going to stop this from letting me try. These ideas are things like:
Starting a coaching business focused on leadership & management
Starting a podcast where I interview cool people from all walks of life (I believe this is the same motivation give by Ali Abdaal for starting his “Deep Dive” podcast).
Figuring out how to grow this newsletter, as well as sharing my thoughts and findings on social media, without getting sucked into the depressing black-hole-doom-scrolling-algorithm-click-bait side of the internet.
Figuring out how to find my voice online and become a better writer.
Starting a YouTube channel and learning how to make engaging, useful videos.
Offering online courses or workshops.
Running an online community for coworking, networking, and knowledge sharing.
All in all - living an intentional life and finding out what’s important to me and how to balance work, life, health, wealth, and ultimately figuring out what life I want to live every day. (What’s my purpose? Is there one? Do we need to have one?)
If any of these things sound interesting to you, you can subscribe and follow me on this journey. The goal of this newsletter is simply to make me accountable and give me a place to share my thoughts and learnings along the way. If I can help a single person then this entire project is a success.
I’ll also share interesting podcasts, books, quotes, and resources, as well as guides and strategies for any of the projects I’m currently working on (e.g. starting a business, or a podcast, or a YouTube channel). As a productivity and time-management nerd, I have a lot of book recommendations and resources ready to go in my backlog. I’ll share everything as openly and honestly as I can, including sharing the full financials of any earnings I make along the way.
💎 Weekly Gem - Your Morning Formula
To kick things off, this week’s highlight is a podcast episode from Ali Abdaal’s podcast Deep Dive, where Ali interviews Robin Waite about starting a business in 2023. Essentially, the episode consists of Robin running a coaching session for Ali and talking him through starting a business. This interview was key for me in realising that fear is what has always held me back from starting my own projects like this newsletter.
The whole thing is fantastic and worth a listen. A particular exercise I want to highlight is what Robin calls his “Morning Formula” (timestamp: 1:53:00). It is the idea of changing your future “will do’s” to present tense “do’s” in order to adopt the identity you want for the future and define your future-truths. Rather than “I will become a podcaster” or “I am going to publish a book and become an author”, you can say “I am a podcaster” and “I am an author who has published a book”. This exercise is not about deluding yourself, it’s about bringing your goals into your current reality and giving yourself a boost to go for it. The follow-up question is also gold: “In 12 months time, the future version of you is thanking today’s you for doing something to create these future truths. What is that?”
This first publication of this newsletter is my contribution to this idea of future-truths. Rather than “I’m going to start writing a newsletter one day” - I write a newsletter. Rather than “I’m going to start figuring out how to make projects that excite me” - I am figuring out how to make projects that excite me. I’m doing this in the open, right now, and I’m sharing everything along the way.
See you next week.
Mike.
✍️ Quote of the week
It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
📚 Currently Reading
The Creative Act: A Way of Being - Rick Rubin (Amazon [Affiliate], Goodreads)
I’m about 40% into this book and it’s a complete and utter rollercoaster ranging from “what is this guy talking about… cosmic rays??” to “oh wait, that makes a lot of sense, why have I never thought about creativity that way” . For this reason I was hesitant to recommend it, but I think it’s worth the ride. Admittedly if the author wasn’t who they were, I would’ve given up rather soon, but I’m glad I didn’t. There are some true gems in there for anyone in a creative field. Just buckle up and be ready for anything!
🏆 Other things I enjoyed this week
📝 Tool: Obsidian is a wonderful, markdown-based note-taking app with a tonne of plugins for customisation. It’s where I take all of my notes at work. Love the ability to quickly link docs together, and as I have a technical background, writing in markdown is lovely and feels very natural.
🎤 Tool: I’ve used mmhmm twice this week to record quick clips of presentations at work and send them to colleagues. It was a surprisingly painless experience and “just worked” out of the box, which is the highest praise I can give to an app.
🤖 Video: The A.I. Dilemma - March 9, 2023 - a long but super interesting look into the potential issues with A.I., what a safe rollout looks like, and considerations for the future. Not going to say more as I think it’s worth the full watch.
📱App: Polygloss - this is a language learning app with such a simple but effective idea. The kind that made me ask “why did it take so long for someone to think of this?” - you pick an image, write about it, send it off. In return you get a description from another player and have to guess the image. Simple, creative, and totally removes the friction of usual language exchange apps.