Paul Q&A Episode - Moving to Asia, Parenting, Preparing for Kids, Pathless Hardcover Art Edition

[00:34] Paul Q: It's a book for the fans of The Pathless Path.

[00:37] Paul: It's a collectible edition for those people, and also a book for the people that may just want to support my journey in this crazy path I'm on, or that love beautiful objects and books. You can learn more about this project and see the book in all its glory at pathlesspath.com/hardcover or check the link in the description. Hello. I'm experimenting with doing some solo podcasts, and today I am going to go through some questions that several people submitted. I'm also gonna play with some of these features on Riverside. Um, thank you.

Thank you. Um, wanna give you a little update. On where I'm at, what I've been doing in my career. I've sort of taken a year break from the podcast. I recently put an episode out with my friend Nat Eliason that helped me kickstart some things to get going again. And one of the things I realized is, oh, I love doing these kind of podcasts, having conversations with people, and I want to keep doing it.

I've always sort of known I'd take breaks and come back to the podcast, but excited to give this a go again. Life update. I, as many of you know, I'm a father. I have a little over 2-year-old now, and we're learning every day. She has a lot of emotions, a lot of energy. She's so much fun and really enjoying that.

The past few months too, I've really been shifting back to work after pretty much being like parent mode first for the first 2 years of her life, which is no regrets at all. And I'll talk a bit about that. Some people submitted questions about that. Second thing is I'm in Koh Samui, Thailand. My wife got her citizenship in the US and we had spent the last 3 years in Asia. I mean, in the US, we were mostly in Austin.

We had traveled around a bit, spent some time in Connecticut as well. And we always sort of knew we'd be coming back to Asia, especially when our kids were young. But we have made the move back to Asia. We are traveling a bit in Thailand. We're gonna be spending some time with her family in Chiang Mai coming up and then likely spending the remaining part of the year in Taiwan. Happy to answer qu— Well, nobody's asking.

This is a solo pod. Getting used to this. But yeah, I will answer the questions people submitted and then I'll probably keep doing these. I'll riff with the format. I'm playing around with it. Riverside has some cool features, but without further ado, I'll play the intro track.

Awesome. I love that video made by Paul Lacroix. Shout out to him. I get to see a lot of my favorite people in that little intro video. May have to update it. Have some great guests over the past couple of years.

But yeah, Koh Samui, we are on an island. We picked this because there are a bunch of schools here that offered short-term enrollment and we wanted to experiment with our daughter being part of like a daycare with other kids. She had mostly been with us, but after 2 years old, they sort of get to the age when there is some upside to engaging more and playing more with other kids. So it's enabled us to sort of travel around, explore the island. It is very beautiful, very calm. It's not very packed right now.

Not many tourists. I have this video. This is sort of me walking around on the beach one morning. Pretty chill. The waves are pretty calm. Um, thought I'd show you some other things.

The fire shows here are amazing. This is a preview. If you come to Samui, definitely do a fire show. I'm just gonna run that again. I'm gonna put this on repeat and talk about it. Um, we kept our daughter up for this too, and she absolutely loved it.

She was just amazed. If you have young kids, you know that they love this kind of stuff. But yeah, that's sort of like the fancy side, the side you see on Instagram. This is more the like day-to-day reality. This is one of the more busy intersections. So there's only like one traffic light with a red light.

On the entire island. And you're driving on the left side of the road, the wrong side, right? I don't know how the British decided to drive on the wrong side of the road, but yeah. So this is going to be really cheesy, like I promised. But yeah, driving the other side of the road, the steering wheel on the other side for me was a bit uncomfortable to get used to, but had to drive my daughter to the school we were bringing here too. Really interesting that like no one stops ever.

Right. So there's no real stoplights, stop signs, anything like that. So you just keep going and you get used to this really fast. It's kind of weird. You're just like, okay, I should never stop. People are going to inch their way in.

If they inch their way in front of you, then you stop. Right. So if you want to turn and you want to pull into traffic or get through something, you basically just like pull into traffic. It takes a while to get used to, but very entertaining. Let's go to the questions. Question 1, Dave Folks.

Do you have any inkling, even anecdotal, that there is a broader rejection of, as you say, the default path? I was doing some filming work with regular clients in finance and they enjoyed doing something creative, but the dog-eat-dog politics and theater of corporate performance behind it all had him a bit down. He said it, he was just sort of contemplating like how many people are just stuck in jobs they don't like doing. I don't know if I have a good sense of if this has changed or not. I do think one bigger trend with the rise of alternative paths like mine and people sharing the viability of these, sharing on Instagram, sharing just like how many people are freelancing creators, all these things. More people know it's possible.

More people know it's alternatives. There are alternatives. I think one thing I did notice in post-COVID return to work as people got more in the office, one thing one person said to me really stuck with me. He said, I find it very challenging in the meetings because everyone now knows it's a performance, right? You're performing this role of worker. But since everyone knows that everyone knows, it sort of like takes the, like, I don't know, there's sort of a ritualistic element of work prior to that that was taken away from it.

I think in my consulting work, you're sort of like going and like you're acting professional, right? At McKinsey, Marvin Bower talked about this idea of the professional persona, right? It's this ideal you're aiming towards and like everyone sort of agrees upon it. But if everyone sort of is like, ah, I don't wanna do that. It, I think it does take something away from work. And I think this is leading to a lot of people really questioning like, what am I doing?

How do I keep going through this whole thing? And everyone finds their own way with work, right? It's not perfect. Even some of the things I do, like, would I skip it if I had more money or more options? Sure. But you just got to do sort of the things you do.

I do think like there is definitely a link to the economy. A lot of people judge how they think about career risk based on how they see the economy doing. But even that has sort of become unpaired from reality now. Like in the US, like Democrats think the economy is terrible, Republicans think it's great. Everyone's delusional about everything, right? The US economy has actually been really strong under multiple presidents in a row.

And it's sort of like everyone reports, yes, my financial situation is good, but the economy's terrible, especially if their like non-preferred candidate is in office. Good question, Dave. Let's go to the next one. Steve asks, Any challenges with the adjustment for you and your fam? How does the fam in the US feel about you relocating? So I lived abroad in Asia for almost 3, 4 years before coming back to the US.

So I think at this point they're sort of used to me living in various different places. Also, I was living in Texas, which was still quite a ways from where a lot of my family was. We didn't have a lot of visitors. We ended up going to Connecticut a lot where a lot of my family was. To be honest, I, I think there are mixed emotions about me returning to Asia. That's all I'll say there.

But for Angie and I and our family, I think this is definitely the best decision for us right now. It's something we've been really deliberate about and had a lot of conversations about over the past years. I think challenges, my daughter adjusts surprisingly well to different environments. Well, not surprising. I think many kids adjust well. It's just that when you have kids, you just worry about them.

It's funny, like on the flights, it often takes me and my wife Angie a little more time to adjust to the flights than it does to, for our daughter. She She did pretty well on the 16-hour flight from Houston to Taipei when we came back. But me and Angie did not sleep well. But yeah, the, the bigger, bigger challenge, just like normal stuff you'd be facing anywhere. Our daughter just started daycare and that comes with a lot of challenges, just like her getting used to it, sleep patterns, eating, other people, trusting other people. It's really challenging for us.

Everyone got sick the first week she was there, but that's pretty normal pretty much anywhere. I think moving back to Asia has generally been positive for us. We're also— Angie's family is going to be spending some time with us helping to watch our daughter, and that should be pretty awesome to help us free up time, work on our creative projects and things like that. KS also asked about traveling with a child. I need to do a longer post on this and maybe I'll even make a longer video on this, but traveling with a child, we've definitely taken a lot of flights with our daughter. I think it is very age dependent.

When we flew to Taipei when she was about 5 months, it was very easy. She slept almost the entire time. Kids that age just sleep a lot. Flying 8 months, she had, she was teething when she was flying. That was very rough, mostly just 'cause she was in pain from the teething. But I would say 90% of our, 90, 95% of our flights have been pretty good.

You also, as a parent, gain more capacity for dealing with the crying, the tantrums, the upsetness, and you just learn to roll with the punches. I think, Angie and I, because we have traveled so much, we've also just gained a lot of resilience from dealing with things going wrong. And we know how to like have patience on travel days in which everyone's tired, people are grumpy, things go wrong, things don't go as expected. And so it's sort of a skill we've developed over time. I would say in terms of ranking the traveling with ages, I think under 6 months probably the easiest. 6 to 12 months, still pretty easy.

They kind of do whatever you want and can't even move until they start crawling, like 9, 10 months. They also, like our daughter, slept wherever and whenever until 9, 10 months too. So that was pretty easy. I would say around a year was definitely a challenge, but I think the biggest hurdle was around like 17 to 24 months. And this was when she started to move and walk and she did not like to sit in place on an airplane. I think around 22, 23, 24 months, she started paying more attention to stuff.

And so she could watch like a video longer. Before that, you can like give a young kid an iPad on an airplane, but they won't watch it for more than like a minute. And so once they get to the age when they can pay attention, do some coloring, stickers, all sorts of games, like movies. She loves watching Moana. Then it becomes a little easier just for them to like sit in place for a longer time. Still learning though.

I think one thing we've learned to do is really just like arrive in a place and then buy stuff we need to make our lives easier. Sometimes that's meant literally buying a pack and play and then selling it on Facebook Marketplace. Other times it's been buying gates for stairs if we need protection, doing childproofing at the beginning. But you learn pretty quick and you kind of understand what they need. I would say I haven't really noticed the difference of her being in different places and like sleep disruptions and things like that versus when we were in Austin for a year straight. So yeah, good question.

All right, Matt, if you could give advice to yourself in the 1 to 2 years before you had a child, what would it be? Good question. I was 38 when I had my first kid, so I almost feel like I had overlived my life by the time I had kids. I was like ripe and ready for having kids. I think there's actually like no real way to prepare for having kids. You just have to be ready for it.

And I think probably the best advice would be developing your nervous system capacity and also just a deeper ability to like self-reflect and work through challenges like with your partner. I think Angie and I spent a lot of time together. Before we had a kid. Like we were literally together most days cuz we were always at home and together and we just spent an abundance of time together in the first few years of our relationship. So I think that was really important. And then yeah, I, I think nervous system stuff, check out Johnny Miller's stuff.

Knowing how to sit with emotions I think has been the most valuable thing. Of having a kid, especially early on. They cry, they trigger you, they do stuff you don't want, they trigger you. Your partner does stuff that triggers you. And so you need a process for working through all the triggers, right? Which is mostly on you, right?

It's easy to blame others, get mad at others, and you will do that as a parent. But knowing how to, like, work through all the discomfort and coming back to a place where you're aligned, I think is probably one of the most valuable skills you can develop. Other things would be like develop, I mean, especially if you're self-employed, I know you are, Matt, develop a comfort with not working. And so definitely try to make money so you have money to spend on buying time back to spend with your kids, especially early on. But develop a comfort with not working because especially after like 3 to 6 months, everyone will start asking you like, why aren't, why aren't you working more? Why, why aren't they in daycare?

It's just the norm in a place like the US. I leaned hard against that. I was watching Michelle at least 2 to 3 days a week until only a couple months ago. And yeah, developing capacity of sort of letting my business not be optimized or not doing my best, but leaning into life. I think I developed that skill a lot over the past, the years before I had kids. Charlie, what's your approach to education for your kids?

I would say I am not fully thought through on this. I don't have a good answer. Now I think I have good mental models that will help me think through this. And I think the mental model I have is not like, how do I get my daughter into the best schools? Is how do I cultivate one, her natural curiosity and interest? I think that is like super primary and we have family values around this.

And then two, I think it's understanding like who my daughter is. So I think we are very open to alternative approaches and part of the next year is learning and meeting people, doing different things like world schooling, homeschooling. Even international schools, but we're not fixed on it has to be this way. I'm not a super dogmatic person. That may surprise some people, but I'm usually just very bottom up in terms of, okay, what is the philosophical question we're solving is like how to educate and inspire and cultivate the natural impulses and drives of a human, right? So I like to start really philosophical and then basically just work backwards and solve that.

It's sort of how I think about where I live and housing type thing, right? A lot of people are like, I want a house, I need a house. Right? For me, it's like, okay, how can I get the environment that helps me live the life I want? That could mean renting in one place. That could mean buying in another place.

I'm not like dogmatic and like things need to be this way. And so for education, I noticed a lot around me, especially even when kids are like newborn. So like, what are your plans for schools? So many people in the US have this generalized ambiguous worry about what's your school, what are you thinking for school? What are you thinking for college? Mostly I'm not thinking about that.

I am just going to take it year by year. We're going to pay attention to our daughter's needs, see the options around us and try to make the best decision, right? Do I want to like, optimize to the nth degree in terms of like getting her on the most elite prestigious paths? I think probably not. But if she's wired like that and seems to be handling it and wants to pursue that track, I'm not going to go against that. Right.

And so, yeah, it's not a satisfying answer, but yeah, we're going to take it year by year. Next question. J.K., I'd love to hear a deep dive in your self-publishing process. I heard you talk about it with Eric on Smart Smart Friends. Yeah, that was a great episode. Definitely check that out.

It's Eric Jorgensen on Smart Friends. We talked about the history of publishing and how I'm thinking about publishing in the next couple of years. Right now I'm working on two books. One is called Buy Your Freedom. It's sort of my riff on financial independence, money, and sort of the monetary financial side and all the mental models we have around, around that. And pretty fun.

It's sort of my own, like, self-knowledge too. So don't know when that will come out, but working on that too. I'm also just working on like a slower, more contemplative book called Scenes from Asia, which is just my riffs and maybe like pseudo journal entries as I'm wandering around the world. Really enjoying writing that. I don't know when that will come out. That could be years, but we'll see.

I'm enjoying working on that. And then the big thing I have coming out is a really beautiful, incredible— like, this version of The Pathless Path, this hardcover version is going to be delightful. Cloth cover, beautiful illustrations, Easter eggs throughout the entire thing. Like, bolded quote pages, um, uh, foreword from a good friend who agreed to do it. And yeah, it's sort of fitting with my vision of what does it mean, um, what does publishing look like for an independent creative, right? I don't want to work with the big traditional publishers unless they suddenly start offering me better terms, better deals, um, which I'm open to.

But right now I just don't think that fits. I'm going to launch this hardcover edition. It's going to be a $100 book. It's what some people call the art or, yeah, the art version. Craig Mod follows a similar strategy. And so it sort of pairs with, okay, the fans of this book are going to want a beautiful artifact that they can keep.

It's something special to them, something they connect to. And that's probably 1 to 3% of the readers of The Pathless Path. I've sold about 60,000 copies. And so what is that? 600 people? 600 to 2,000 people.

That's sort of like what I'm feeling is those are kind of the super fans. I want to create something that absolutely delights them. I want to create something that's beautiful, that delights me. And also that makes a statement against the grain of the current pull of publishing, I think, which is basically just not really pushing the boundaries of creativity. I think there could be way better books in the current paradigm, but I think because of the way the industry's set up, a lot of people will write books that are geared toward sort of a mass market. That is not my goal.

I want to reach a niche audience of like hyper-curious nerds who want to go deep on a topic, can handle ambiguity, can handle researching more on their own as I riff on ideas and things like that. And so my vision of publishing is like, how do I get my books into as many hands as possible at low or free, low cost or free? So that's digital audio. And then the hardcover book is sort of like the collector's edition. And so stay tuned for more on that. If you are interested, drop a comment on the video before below or an email to me and I'll keep you on the list to make sure you know when that's coming out.

But that should come out in September, October. Longer term, I don't really know. I'm going to work on those two books. But yeah, I didn't really answer your question about the publishing process. I've written a long post about that. Called Blog to Book on pathlesspath.com/self-publishing.

And so I would just check that out. But for the most part, I write them in like Google Docs format and Vellum and then upload to Amazon. But this new process, I'm working with Otter Pine and Saia Wood. She's leading the production process and she's actually going to take physical ownership of the books and then ship them out in her fulfillment center. So that's a bit different. This is when things get complicated.

But yeah, still learning. Like, I feel like I have so much to learn about this industry. It's still so early, but I'm going to keep writing books. Hopefully I'm still going 5 to 10 years from now. And that's pretty much it. I posted a short post before to see if anyone had any additional questions, but I think that's it for now.

Let me know how you like this video, this video Q&A. I'll probably do more of these over the coming year, just more informal riffs. People seem to like them. But yeah, email me questions, or you can even add your questions below this video if you're watching on YouTube. And I will, I will answer them. Anyways, that's it for now.

Let's, yeah, let's bring it out.