Paul Millerd
He walked off the default path in 2017 and has been writing about the life he found ever since.
Paul Millerd spent ten years in strategy consulting, the kind of career people are told to want. In 2017 he left. He wasn’t close to financially free and he didn’t have a bold startup plan. In his words, “I just couldn’t do it any longer.”
What came next confused him: why did self-employment feel so different, why was everyone so worried about his plans, and why did it feel okay even as his bank account shrank? He started writing to make sense of it. That newsletter, Pathless, now reaches more than 26,000 people, and the questions became a book. The Pathless Path came out in January 2022, self-published, sold slowly, then took off. It has sold more than 74,000 English copies and been translated into French, Russian, Chinese and Hindi. He turned down a deal from Penguin in 2023 to keep doing it his way. His second book, Good Work, followed in 2024.
He lives the book, too. He and his wife Angie, who is from Taiwan, spent sixteen months with their young daughter living out of three suitcases, from Austin and Oaxaca to Chiang Mai, Busan and a “traveling village” of twenty families moving through Vietnam, Taiwan and Korea. In 2026 they settled into an apartment on a mountainside outside Taipei, where their second daughter was born that summer.
What makes his newsletter worth reading is how honest it is. He shares what his books earn, the years that felt stuck, the year’s profit after his family’s cost of living, and the projects that didn’t find their flow. He keeps his business small on purpose and measures his year by one goal. It’s a weekly reminder that there is more than one way to build a good life.
Great quotes from Paul
From his newsletter, Pathless.
- On leaving consulting in 2017I was performing a role that wasn’t me, and I needed to find a new way of showing up in my life.
- Some days I write. Some days I code. Some days I goof off. Other days I take a nap. I may try to make money, but it’s not my only aim.
- Looking back on 2025For the eighth time, I accomplished my only real goal: don’t go back to the paycheck world.
- I don’t want to be a billion dollar creator. Hell, nor do I want to be a million dollar creator. I simply want to create, connect with others, explore ideas, and hopefully keep funding my ability to do it all.
- When I’m feeling stuck, my instinct is to do less.
- Despite the obvious temptations to optimize and follow a playbook for newsletter growth, I find that I can’t really do much except follow my interests.
- After sixteen months on the roadWe are settled for now, and may be here for a few years, but at least for us, the concept of being settled isn’t a worry or goal.
- On traveling with other familiesIt turns out the “village” idea basically works, it just takes quite a bit to get others onboard.
Read more
- Pathless, his weekly newsletterSubstack
- The Pathless Path, chapter by chapterMy summary
- The Pathless PathAmazon
- Good Work, his second bookAmazon
- Thoughts on being nomadic for 1.5 yearsPathless
- Toward Full-Stack WeirdnessPathless
- Reflecting on 2025, money and allPathless
- Paul’s site, with his podcastpathlesspath.com
366 meditations on gratitude, kindness, and the people who inspire us — one true story or quote a day. Many of the people on this shelf will be in it.
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