The Inner Game of Work: Pranab Sachi on Codependent Origination, Rob Burbea, Quake Books, Attentional Co-Piloting, Michael Taft, and "Non-Success"

[00:58] Paul: Today I am talking to good friend Pranav Saachi, and he told me before we started that he sort of speedrun— speedran The Pathless Path, which I do agree with. I've— he's somebody I've gotten to know over the past few years living close by in Austin, but the first time we talked was in a Curiosity Conversation in 2021. He's one of these people that I had a random conversation with on the internet and we somehow became friends in real life. As I've observed your career, Pranav, you seemingly flow between jobs, part-time jobs, identities, scenes with impressive ease. I would say. And that's always really inspired me about you.

I want to talk about that. I want to talk about some of the spiritual rabbit holes you've gone down. I'm sure Joe Hudson will come up, but welcome to The Pathless Path Podcast, Purnav.

[02:02] Pranab Sachi: So good to be here, man. This is, this is awesome.

[02:06] Paul: What's the best context for people listening to give them sort of background on you? Maybe a little bit about where you grew up. And how that influenced things.

[02:17] Pranab Sachi: Yeah, I'm still figuring out the right way to do this. I think I've always disliked narratives, and I think over the last several years I've learned how to like own my narrative or own any given version of it and see that it's useful and like very useful to share with people. So yeah, I was born in India, grew up in Canada, lived in the US, in South Carolina, so that's one whole thing. I went to school at UT Austin in Texas and studied chemical engineering. Around that time was my first era of Pathless Path type stuff, or really, I guess, more Tim Ferriss lifestyle design-y type stuff where I realized that wasn't— I kind of had this version or vision of a path that ended up crumbling before my eyes where I was working in this job in a chemical plant over the course of a year through various internships and just progressively saw how this just wasn't what I wanted to do.

I think that's when I found your stuff for the first time with Strategy U and all the consulting. So I was going to all these consulting events and trying to network with people and meet people and do all the case interview stuff. And it was fun. I got a lot out of it. And then before my last year of school, figured out I wanted to get into tech and just kind of sped around that path, fell into growth marketing, worked in a startup in San Francisco, got laid off, went into freelance work, did some random stuff from Twitter, worked at a psychedelic startup, worked at a meditation company, got another job in tech, and now I'm starting apparently like a coaching-ish business, maybe. And that's, that's the speedrun version of the last several years.

[04:04] Paul: That is quite a lot. I, it's so interesting too, because I think for me, pursuing strategy consulting was in a way trying to escape the default path early on for me, because to me it was, oh, people actually are caring about what they do and going harder and even more curious. And that did work for a while, but I spent 9 years on that path. You considered it and moved on. Like what, what about you enables you to flow through these phases so quickly?

[04:41] Pranab Sachi: Yeah, I don't really know. I think it's a good question.

[04:44] Paul: Is it moving around a lot growing up?

[04:46] Pranab Sachi: You think maybe, I feel like it's funny cuz Even now, I think now my self-narrative is I'm someone who moves around a lot or kind of can flow and move and be responsive to things as they happen. But for a long time, I kind of just had this idea that I was the same person doing the same thing kind of all the time. Like, I don't think even just a couple of 3, 2 or 3 years ago, I would've kind of told you I was basically been the same person since I was like 10 or like 8. But I think through a combination of meditation stuff, emotional work stuff, and honestly just internet blogs. And I think just being a product of having grown up on YouTube and all the stuff that comes from that. I also, I guess, I think an interesting thing is I would have described myself earlier in high school or college as really enjoying existential crises.

So that's probably, if I depend on one thing, it's enjoying almost seeing my worldview collapse and shatter and having to build a new one, which I think is probably somewhat rare. But I had a few of those even like in high school and college in a way that I think was very useful to me that allowed for kind of more swift decision-making in some ways.

[05:58] Paul: Yeah, I do sense there is some upside of having your life crumble earlier. I think what made my reinvention so hard is that it was happening in my early 30s and I had realized I basically neglected a bunch of inner work that I now had to embark on with all the baggage and bullshit. But you said what? I mean, what is growing up on YouTube? You're like growing up on YouTube and all that means. I actually don't know what that means.

I grew up on AIM and AOL and an era in which I would literally run out of stuff to read on the internet. So yeah, what does growing up on YouTube mean?

[06:43] Pranab Sachi: Yeah, I think it's, so I was born in '97, so I remember when we talked, I was like, yeah, I started Facebook when I was in like 6th grade or 7th grade. And you were like, no, that was like college for me.

[06:57] Paul: Freshman year, sophomore year of college. Yes.

[07:00] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. Yeah. And so I think just some sense of, and then Reddit became a thing probably around middle school for me. But yeah, it was probably something like, I mean, it was still an early era of YouTube where everyone in my class, all my friends, we all watched the same stuff. There wasn't necessarily totally divergent rabbit holes where you could be in your own corner like there is now. But I still ended up stumbling upon kind of self-help and personal development stuff from a pretty young age.

I think what initially drew me to all that was some, early childhood me wanting to reject trying to be my father in any possible way. So that like the one-liner for that was, I want to be wise because I kind of think my dad's stupid. So I'm just going to be as wise as possible. And yeah, somehow I think— and then in the summer of 8th grade, I read the book Siddhartha for like a summer reading thing. And that was probably my first like spiritual shift or something where, yeah, I read it. I just remember feeling different.

I couldn't tell you exactly what or how or what really shifted, but something happened in a way that was cool. And then from 9th grade through 12th grade, I kind of stumbled on these personal development rabbit holes. I got into stoicism, I got into self-help type stuff. I got into something like proto-rationalism. Wait But Why, Tim Urban's blog was really nice. And yeah, just this whole idea of Quake books or kind of books that would kind of change your whole sense of the world or kind of looking from different perspectives.

Yeah, there's a lot of that.

[08:38] Paul: Yeah. What was one of those first crises, either in high school or college?

[08:43] Pranab Sachi: I think a girl thing, to be honest. I was super into this girl that was like one of my closest friends, and it was like a classic, like, nice guy friend zone situation. And then in 10th grade, she started dating someone else. And I was just like devastated. And I remember just feeling so sad and then just somehow kind of stumbling into stoicism or CBT type stuff from that almost as a way to get myself out of a hole. And it's funny, I haven't thought about this in a while, but I think that's actually one of my initial catalysts from the pain side of like, oh no.

And then, and then yeah, there was a bunch of family stuff where I was kind of like seeing my dad do these things in a way that I didn't really like and just wanting to not really be like that. So even in high school, I was reading Reddit, personal finance blogs, Mr. Money Mustache. That was maybe early college, I think. But like the whole, you know, financial independence, like lifestyle design, Tim Ferriss probably came 2017. So like a few years later, but like all that stuff just became a thing over time where I just wanted to learn, learn, learn, learn, learn about how life should be lived.

[09:50] Paul: Yeah. In some ways I'm so jealous of this, but I'm also sort of glad I didn't, uh, I wasn't absorbing Stoicism at 16. There's, there's sort of a funny, uh, I'm, I'm picturing you sort of like contemplating Marcus Aurelius or Seneca, like trying to practice poverty at 16 and channeling that, but it's also so amazing. I definitely would've been down the same rabbit holes if I had access to the same ideas at the age.

[10:25] Pranab Sachi: And it's funny if you look at the Zoomers now, Zoomers are so into some even more esoteric and niche stuff. Like it's crazy how fast the development can be.

[10:34] Paul: Yeah. What, so what was your idea of a career? I mean, you found my stuff, you were sort of looking at strategy consulting. When did sort of occur to you that, oh, I either have to go my own way or that is what I want?

[10:53] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. So my parents aren't the typical South Asian parents. They never were like, you have to do this, you have to do that. But they wanted me to be a doctor. I remember in high school I did a, in high school I did like a summer volunteering thing at like at the local Medical University of South Carolina, and I had like a candy striper vest on. I was just like this little dude doing photocopies and stuff.

I remember one time I had to like shred a bunch of papers for like an afternoon, and one of those papers was like a list of salaries for the residents and fellowships. And I was like, bro, this is so low. And I just, I just kind of internalized that and just thought, oh man, I don't think I really want to go to med school. And then, and then, yeah, I got into UT Austin, which was like all my friends were going to local state universities for the most part. And I applied to Ivy Leagues and I didn't get in. And yeah, UT gave me a scholarship and I was super excited and I chose chemical engineering because I thought the world— I was like, it was actually kind of more of an intellectual thing.

I thought, yeah, I feel like chemical engineering is like how the world works. It's like how stuff is made and like processes and I like legitimately thought that when I was like 17, that that's the main reason I wanted to do it. Plus the salaries are pretty good. There's going to be a ton of job opportunities. Pragmatically, I could have gone to med school maybe. And then, yeah, my first year or two of school, I just went to like all the career fairs and all the company expos and just learned as much as I could about like what was out there in the field.

That was probably one of my first examples of using a skill that I now use all the time, which is being able to like index a field and map it and like, oh, these are the people doing these things. Like market mapping, I just do, I apparently just did all the time, even in high school, like thinking about YouTubers and social scenes. I just kind of like naturally made market maps and mind maps of where people were and how they were all connected. And then yeah, that's like the basic stuff. And then that's how I learned about consulting. That's how I learned about banking.

My roommates, I had a bunch of roommates and they were all in different fields. So I like, I was in the finance team for a while because I thought maybe that was a path. I just, I just kind of like enjoy living in the potentiality of all the different things that there are. And it was cool learning about it. So yeah, I mean, I could talk more about that whole thing, but TL;DR, I like worked in a chemical plant for a few different ones over the course of a few years. I worked at a bank at Capital One.

I thought about finance, I thought about consulting. And then eventually I kind of just landed and just got obsessed with tech. I got obsessed with startups. I was reading a ton of Paul Graham essays. I realized that like, oh, this is where all the cool people are who have online blogs and I can learn about them. And like, there's all this stuff and there's a whole like rabbit hole of that.

[13:42] Paul: Yeah. So there was a period of a year in which every time I talked to you, you were changing jobs and were ending up with higher and higher salaries. Yeah. So talk to me about how this was happening. You, you were almost doing the opposite of what I've seen. Like I've seen some people fall down.

You were sort of like falling up. Yeah. How was this happening?

[14:07] Pranab Sachi: Yeah, I mean, I can kind of, I can always just share my salaries over the last like 7 years where, yeah, so like my first job out of school, It was a growth job at this company called Samsara. I made like, I was making like $90K, $95K or something with a little bit of stock, which I was extremely excited for. And dude, it was crazy. I, so like that, I mean, that was probably the hardest thing I've ever done. Like breaking out of ChemE and getting a job in tech, like in my super senior year of school was just crazy hard. I just was insistent that I wouldn't get a master's.

I was really trying to go for product management roles. And I had a few interviews and I just bombed them. And like over the course of like, I like read Cracking the PM Interview cover to cover and I legitimately loved it and then tried, failed, and then tried to go for analytics and just started reaching out to a bunch of people on LinkedIn. And then the long story short is that I reached out to this one guy who's now one of my closest friends. I'm actually like in his apartment building right now, and he just happened to respond to my cold LinkedIn DM and I was like, you seem smart. Try this company.

And I was shooting for like an internship thing. But anyways, he was like, try my team. I like spedrun learning how growth marketing worked enough that I could get the interview. I worked crazy hard on like the homework. I used Ramit Sethi's briefcase method to do like an extra project where I like went on Reddit and interviewed like 20 people, paid them in Amazon gift cards, and like made a whole report that I printed out during my on-site. And I think that's what really tipped the needle.

And it worked out and it was super hard because I had a bunch of stuff going on. But my girlfriend at the time was going to be in San Francisco and I knew if I didn't do it, I would just— we would break up. And also like this was like the best possible job I could get. And it just worked out, man. If I didn't, if it didn't, it was a bit— it was a mix of lucky break plus hard work. If I didn't have that, I don't think I would have had the career I have now where, yeah, I've worked at a bunch of different I've done growth and operations at a bunch of different startups since then, all somewhat serendipitous and due to lucky breaks.

But yeah, for the last like 5 years, actually, every job since then, I've never had to send my resume. Every single job I've had since my first job, it's just been through Twitter and friends and random stuff.

[16:17] Paul: Well, I think you're really good at connecting with people. I think two things. One, you just naturally assume, I think, this is sort of your orientation is, oh, I'll just make friends and you really have no goals, but maybe talk a bit about like why you do that and why you seek out people. I think I've taken a similar strategy and I noticed a lot of people when they're embarking on their own paths, they don't do this, right? They think I need to figure out my business first, right? Whereas I think one of the approaches I've taken on my own journey is just make friends to build a life I actually want.

And then I don't know, maybe hopefully the work stuff will be solved.

[17:02] Pranab Sachi: Yeah, totally. I think I've always wanted to be authentic. The way that showed up has been different over the years and it's gotten much deeper and much more real, but I think I just have it. I just didn't really have friends. Through 7th or 8th grade. And then I slowly started making friends.

And I think I remember reading How to Win Friends and Influence People somewhat cringely, but also just that's like what happened. And I got really into like comfort zone challenges. And there's a channel on YouTube back when I was in high school called Simple Pickup where it wasn't even about like picking up girls, right? But I was 15 and my friends and I would go to the mall and just like talk to strangers and just get over this fear of rejection and get over talking to people. And all of that to say, I ended up just becoming the guy that went from having no friends to just having a lot of friends. My first year in Texas, I didn't know anybody, but I would be the person that, like, talked to the person to the left and right of me in class and ended up just meeting a bunch of people.

And I just like people. I think somehow in the process of doing that, I learned how to be really— Yeah. Yeah. I think I just like people and I enjoyed asking questions and getting to know them. Over the last few years, I've had to unwind a lot of that and have seen that a lot of that has come from kind of like putting myself down or almost like erasing myself and just like figuring— it's kind of funny how like the things that made you who you are, you then have to kind of like unwind or let go of to really become who you are. So there's a whole thread there where a lot of the Joe Hudson spiritual stuff has been helpful.

But yeah, I kind of just conditioned myself. Say more there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think like I conditioned myself to like people and enjoy them no matter what. And over the last few years, I've learned to dislike people and not care about what they want me to do or what they say. Basically just the courage to be disliked kind of thing.

And just that has helped me show up in a way that's actually much more loving and much more connecting and actually just much more myself in a way that I don't think I could have ever imagined. Yeah.

[19:03] Paul: I definitely resonate with that too. I think There was, I, I almost had a dual track of, oh, I want to be likable. I want to make sure I'm not bothering people. Yeah. And by embodying that, I did become more confident and more likable. Right.

But at the same time, I think I slowly had to figure out, okay, what, how do I develop boundaries such that I'm actually connecting with the people I deeply care about? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[19:36] Pranab Sachi: And that's a, I think there's a lot of stuff from my meditation in the last few years from internal family systems and inner work with somatic stuff with the Joe Hudson work and just a bunch of just life stuff in general where I've kind of learned a lot about boundaries and, you know, boundaries are the distance in which I can love myself and love you. And like learning how to run experiments on that too. I think the experimentation approach has been super helpful for all of my life and my relationships. And that's a lot of— yeah, in a lot of ways, that's kind of— I've somewhat fell into that over the last several years and I've gotten better at designing experiments. But I think a lot of what you have in Good Work, a lot of what Ann Lora has in her book Tiny Experiments, I ended up kind of doing somehow. Over the last several years in a way that's been super awesome.

[20:30] Paul: Yeah. Once you start doing experiments, it's kind of hard to stop too. We almost embrace the experiment as living now. Yeah. And so I would say— I'm the same way. They think our life is a little insane, but me and Angie just love, like, we're— every month is like a new experiment of how we're setting up our life and we're like, oh, we can just keep learning stuff.

[20:57] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. And I admire that a lot about you guys.

[20:59] Paul: When are you, when are you gonna buy a house? It's like, I don't know. At some point I will probably run the experiment of having a mortgage. Yeah. Yeah. It'll, I probably won't like it, but you never know.

[21:14] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. It's been cool. Kind of like, it's been cool showing myself that experiments don't always have to be more weird. In like cultural sense, they usually are. And it's actually probably good if they are, but like I just had a W-2 job for like 4 months and that was the most traditional job with like the highest paying salary I've had. And now I'm just doing something totally unknown and totally weird and random.

And I don't know where the future goes. It might go back to that. It might go, probably will go even more weird, but yeah.

[21:45] Paul: Yeah. So I, I love the, The current track you're on, you're calling it attentional coaching. And you first told me about this, I don't know, a year and a half ago, where you did this session that somebody was coaching you on, I think IFS stuff while you were working and sort of unclogged some stuff for you. So we're, we're actually going to do like a mini session here. Yeah. I'm wondering.

What do you think? Do you want to go down some of the spiritual rabbit holes you've explored first, or do you want to do the coaching thing first and then zoom out and talk about that?

[22:23] Pranab Sachi: What do you think is better? Let's do the rabbit holes first because it kind of gives some good context and it probably— Okay. Yeah. And I think I kind of— I've probably spent too much time on the kind of boring stuff that was like the preface, but like, I feel like all the juice—

[22:36] Paul: Interesting. People are going to like this. Leave comments. Sweet. Send Pranav messages. Trust me, I know the listeners of this podcast.

You're— Yeah, you're— And yeah, your story is interesting.

[22:50] Pranab Sachi: Oh, thanks, man. I just feel like the last 5 years have been even more interesting and just even more weird. So it's like, yeah, so that's, that's kind of funny.

[22:59] Paul: Yeah. Rob Bourbea.

[23:02] Pranab Sachi: Tell me about him. That's, that's a man with a name. That was a good intro. Dude, yeah. So Robert Bea, he's one of my strongest meditative Buddhist spiritual influences. He's a guy who was a jazz musician, meditation teacher, author, Dharma teacher.

He has like 450+ talks recorded that are free live you can listen to. He died about 4 or 5, I think 5 years ago, I think, from cancer. And he basically taught until his last dying week. And a lot of the way he talks about dharma or meditation and just like spirituality in general has just like really kind of grokked into the core of my being. And I think it's going to take like decades for me to like really internalize a lot of his work. He has this book called Seeing That Frees, which is one of my favorite meditation books.

And the most practical way of talking about his stuff is it's all about ways of seeing the world that lead to more freedom. It's all about taking on ways of looking and frames that allow you to just, one, feel better, and in a more Buddhist sense, reduce suffering, and in kind of in a more general sense, just feel joy and feel more alive. Any kind of way of looking that you can take on that helps you see a situation better is good in this whole frame. So that's kind of a way to talk about a lot of his work.

[24:41] Paul: What's an example?

[24:43] Pranab Sachi: Yeah, so I think a lot of what you write is actually deeply compatible with his stuff or kind of fits in that metaframe where The Pathless Path is a way of looking. So instead of even just the, even the Even thinking about scripts, the default script and the pathless path, like even having that, that is a conceptual lens to experience that can lead to the insight that leads to freedom. And freedom in the very specific sense, oh, whoa, like you pay attention to this concept, oh, default script, pathless path, you investigate your own motivations, you investigate kind of the people around you. And almost like the David Foster Wallace, This is Water, you realize, whoa, perspective shift. I was in the water and now I'm outside the water looking at it. And now that I'm outside the water, I can see there's so many other waters and I can choose those.

And then it kind of just keeps going and keeps going and keeps going. Where there's this concept called codependent origination, which is like a fancy word for just saying that we construct our reality. And that's the whole— there's a whole woo manifestation way of talking about this, but in a very practical way, like Fundamentally, so much of reality is socially constructed. So much of what we tell ourselves is concept and story that is self-reinforced by relationship and by the fear of death, fundamentally. And just kind of like really getting to like the metal of that is pretty crazy and pretty radical and just super practical. Like I think just seeing the ways we see the world and open it up in more ways that lead to beauty and aliveness is good.

[26:14] Paul: Yeah, I love this. When I first, I first encountered the phrase The Pathless Path in a David Whyte book, and it was handed to me by Johnny Miller a day after we met. And he just said, you have to read this. And it was sort of this, yeah, through Johnny, I was sort of taking his way of seeing and I was like, wow, he seems to be looking at the world in a different way. So I had to read this book. I find the phrase and the phrase, I had a literal shift when I read this.

I was like, whoa. It was like a full body, like it was a body experience. And then I spent the next 5 years trying to explain this in words.

[26:57] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. I think a lot of, yeah, I think a lot of people—

[27:01] Paul: Well then I was gonna say, I then went to Taiwan about 3 months later and walking around day to day in a radically different way of seeing the world. And it was disorienting, but also incredibly freeing. It was like, wow, everything I grew up believing, it's not wrong. It's just another way. Of seeing.

[27:31] Pranab Sachi: And, and that was going into that, like, what was that like? Like even seeing that perception change? Like what was the feeling of the perception shifting? Like what was maybe how you would've seen it before compared to how you then saw it during those moments?

[27:48] Paul: Yeah, it, this, this is the thing I've really tried to explore talking about is that a lot of what we see, even people that have sort of co-opted the phrase the default path, they use it as a way to talk about a more ambitious American path, right? It's like escape the default path to become more rich. And it's totally not what I experienced. It's, um, yeah, it was a mix of so many emotions. And this is the, this is the hard thing is that It was so incredibly deeply exciting and exhilarating and beautiful and lovely, but also immensely sad because in that acknowledgement of this different way of seeing, you understand in a deep way without even being able to say it, is that you're having to leave. Part of you that was constructed, like the spacesuit, the spacesuit you that like, uh, I think Alan Watts talks about.

And yeah, that sadness, uh, sort of always stays with you. I think once you embrace new ways of seeing, there is a deep sadness that stays with you, but it shows up. In a way that enables you to connect with people in a much deeper way.

[29:21] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. And it's, I don't think people talk enough about the emotions involved in new ways of seeing and the emotions involved in insight, but every insight is basically like in one way of looking at it, a death of your old self. And it's definitely a death of your old way of perception. And there's just grief.

There's always a little bit of grief. There's always some sadness, sometimes anger at like, oh, why did I think that? And why did those people tell me it was that way? Like helplessness, hopelessness. Like there's so many emotions. And I think a really interesting thing is I used to see those things as bad and as problems or kind of like negative side effects of this kind of thing.

But that's actually more of the gateway to more freedom. Like the more I can actually just even 1, acknowledge, 2, accept them, 3, welcome them, and 4, like embrace them and love them. It doesn't always happen. Like, it's really hard. And I don't think I think it has to be that way all the time. But the more I tend to kind of go down that direction, the more just like stuff just keeps flowing and it's super intense.

Like life, you just kind of like notice the deep intensity of life that's there all the time. But it's kind of fun if you're kind of like a certain weird brain like us in some ways.

[30:43] Paul: I think for you, you were able to embrace these a lot quicker than me. I've been on this path for 8 years now. And so encountering that phrase, The Pathless Path, was literally 7 years ago. And then going to Taiwan was a couple months after that. I'd say it took me 3 to 4 years to fully feel the full range of emotions. And a lot of it was just avoidance.

I was scared to feel them because I think growing up I was in environments where I think many of us were in the '90s in the US. I think people are a lot more aware of these things now, of we're expressing these, especially as a man, is not safe. And even interactions of my peers and friends probably were more reinforcing this than like my parents. I think a lot of people sort of blame their parents, but this stuff is reinforced in every context, especially work. Right. Um, and yeah, you experience this and it, it was so hard to face some of the sadness and the pain and the regret and the anger and do it in a healthy way.

And I would say even not until the last 3 years encountering Joe Hudson's work was I able to fully feel some of these things. And now I'm, I'm able to show up so much more attuned to what I'm feeling and be more open to what's emerging. And I know that shifted because like I'm able to experience the sadness and joy at the same time. And it's often like tears that are showing up. Yeah, like, and it's so helpful when you have a kid because literally like every week is a new phase. And so whenever I'm constrained or feeling tight, I just say, I just try to open myself up to, okay, what joy is about to emerge?

Yeah. And all of this is a great intro to maybe talk about Joe Hudson a little bit. Yeah. I think he, he's somebody we've connected on, like me and Angie have explored his work deeply. It's really helped me be a better parent, better friend, better person in the world. But yeah, what was your first experience of Joe Hudson's stuff?

[33:10] Pranab Sachi: Yeah, I think just from being on our little corner of Twitter, mine probably a little more on the meditation emotion side than yours and seeing his stuff.

[33:19] Paul: I think some of the podcasts in 2021, Yeah, I mean, seeing you up close, you had a deep awareness that you were in a challenging period. And what I saw was somebody that was saying, okay, I'm going to face this and it's going to be hard. I'm probably going to take a step back in like my social life and maybe not push work as hard. And I mean, there's just so inspiring. I always said to you. Like, what?

Wow. It, it's a blessing and a curse, right? It's, yeah, it's hard to face that in your early 20s, but also I feel like you're just going to be way more mature than me at 30. Um, so yeah, it's, yeah, yeah, it was very inspiring. I'd, I'd love to hear, so touching on that and like sort of being ready for this inner work or emotional work, Joe Hudson stuff. I encountered his stuff in 2021 and it didn't take.

And I think for it to like take or like to be open to these ideas, you do need to have some sort of embodied presence you're tapping into. That's sort of my hunch. And I think that opened up for me through doing more meditation and breathwork, actually. Yeah. What, what do you think are some of the on-ramps of this, because I've actually sent Joe Hudson's stuff, like his Vue framework to people, and I've noticed people absorb it intellectually and then they're like, well, what's like, what about this? Yeah.

Right. So how do you be like, what are the on-ramps to actually being ready for this kind of contemplation or inner work?

[37:24] Pranab Sachi: I've thought about this a lot. I think I've sat on the domain after the app .com for like 6 years, where I thought a lot about how do people go from like Headspace and meditation apps to like a spiritual practice or whatever. And just from the work I've done and meeting hundreds of people these last few years, I think I have a decent idea of some of the ways people get into this stuff. One, which is not really mine, but I think a lot of heady people on Twitter get into, is on the philosophy route. You're trying to like understand the world, you're really into truth, and you read like a bunch of stuff, then you fall into like Karl Popper, David Deutsch, or Wittgenstein, and they kind of have constructed a lot of this stuff from like a super heady intellectual lens. Deutsch less so, but anyways, there's that.

There's kind of the really curious human bit where you're kind of into self-help, self-development. I think we're both in this camp where you kind of just understand the human experience and that ends up taking you down from like self-help to self-unfoldment. And I think a ton of people in our broader space like Charisma on Command, I think Ali Abdaal, like so many people, Tim Ferriss especially, I think the biggest one, have kind of went from this personal development into personal unfoldment and kind of self-help and spirituality through this thing of just what does it mean to be myself and live a good life? Those are some of the biggest. I think historically psychedelics is kind of a big one, like from the '70s. And, you know, that's kind of how all the meditation teachers from the '70s got their start, which no one really talks about.

Was like psilocybin and MDMA, which we can go into or not. I don't mind. I don't know if it's friendly for the podcast, but that's a whole thread. And then, and lastly, probably, I don't know, I think like life, I think just life ends up doing it, doing that for most people, like heartbreak, birth of a child, death in the family, like some of these big life moments just give you just like a huge perspective shift. Anytime you go close to death, I think you kind of encounter what it means to live. And that's just where all this stuff ends up becoming really salient and you kind of like see what matters.

Yeah. So those are a few that I could think of, but yeah.

[39:28] Paul: Yeah. What does self-unfoldment feel like? And I want to tie this to something you said at the beginning. You said, I guess I'm sort of doing this like coaching thing, right? Yeah. And so that sort of implies that you didn't choose it.

It just sort of seems to be happening.

[39:50] Pranab Sachi: I mean, dude, one month ago I did not plan on making this my full-time thing. So that's, it is, is very much an experiment that I'm living that I'm just embracing.

[39:59] Paul: What is that? What is that experience like? Because I think I know what you're talking about, but what does Yeah. What, what does unfolding feel like? I think this is much of what I experience, but it is very hard to describe. And I think we do need like podcast length conversations to explore this.

[40:20] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. Yeah. And I think almost, so going a bit more on the spirituality side before going into here, I think what I've learned from, and I've worked with this guy, Michael Taft, for like 7 years, 6, 7 years. And I've studied under a bunch of meditation traditions. I've done like 4-ish, 5-ish, depending how you count it, retreats. I meditate a bunch.

Like this Sunday, I went and meditated for like 2 hours at a local temple with some friends. So I do a lot of this stuff. And I've also done a bunch of internal family systems, IFS type work, which is like the somatic parts type thing. I'm also super curious and I've like learned a lot of other self-help modes and like reading books and do a lot of exploration journaling type stuff. So I've been doing all this stuff for years and there's a— in doing that, you kind of, in my room on my own, have like tapped into like a sense of me and like a greater sense of space and like, whoa, I'm not really the voice in my head or this like person behind the eyes. And like you kind of just get a sense of loosening around the definition and boundary of who you are.

And that sounds kind of like esoteric, but it's really much a lived experience that leads to a lot of openness and freedom. Where I just, when doing that, I feel much more myself. It's like, oh, I can just express myself and live more authentically because it's just a bit more arbitrary. Like, I don't have to worry about it feeling so heavy and like intense all the time. Before getting there, it actually gets quite heavy and intense because you're like, sense of self and like all the things that you believe about yourself just get really like, ah, and tight. But then there's often these moments of openness and freedom on the other side.

But typically that's always felt kind of separate. And I think I've heard from a lot of people that it's always felt separate from other life. For me, it's always been one and the same. Like even in 2020, I wanted to start this podcast called The Non-Success Podcast, which is all about non-attachment and like work and relationships. And I never ended up doing it, but it's basically what I'm doing now in some sense. But really, like, I think this stuff is deeply super practical and like super like real and relevant to like day-to-day waking life.

And it's not about the retreats or the highs or the bliss or like all this crazy stuff you might read about. I mean, that's nice and that's there, but it's more about just like how you, how for me, how I show up every day in my relationships with my family, with my friends, with my work. And yeah, so that's the context setting. And then now, yeah, I'm doing this thing called attentional copiloting, which is basically One way of thinking about it is bridging the gap between inner work and actual work. Like, there's so many people that we know that do all this stuff all the time, but when it comes to actually like sitting on the laptop and doing stuff, they just kind of revert back into their old scripts and their old self. And it's like a physical thing.

Like, if you've watched Severance, people quite literally undergo a severance procedure and like snap into like some different version of themself when they're in front of a laptop for some reason. Which makes total sense. I get why it happens, but a lot of what I'm trying to do is just like bridge that gap and notice the holes in that story and just make it just like a little bit more enjoyable, a little bit more easy in a way that actually leads to better results. I'm friends with a couple of founders and my like most successful founder friend who's around my age, I think he just lives his life this way where he just, I think based on growing up and having secure attachment and also like living in a Zen temple for a few years, he just kind of shows up in a way that like is deeply open and alive and curious and spacious.

And he knows how to kind of recover when he's not feeling those ways. So yeah, I'm super into bridging all this with like actually living a good life.

[43:50] Paul: Yeah. Why is this so hard to believe for people that you can flow with what you're doing and that you can enjoy it? Like, I mean, I often get in silly debates with hustle bros who just must, like, they cling so tightly to the idea that like anything worth achieving is you must suffer, right? You must go through this pain. And they are pointing at some truth, which is that, okay, if you do want extreme outlier results, there probably is going to be some period of challenge, but it seems, um, It's so many people just don't believe that you can like your work like this. And somebody posted this entire essay like dunking on me.

It's like, oh, Paul Millerd thinks we can just show up and have all this joy every day and lightness and flow. And that's sort of a caricature of what I believe. Like there is pain and there is realness. But yeah, I actually do think like things can feel light. Now, can you do that in a job-shaped container? I don't think so, at least not reliably throughout a consistent 40-year career where you're optimizing around money and achievement.

But I actually do think you can experience this much more than many people think.

[45:21] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. Yeah. I think my answer, like, why don't people want to believe it? Is safety. I think it's like deeply load-bearing to think that you need to suffer to have a good life, because I think once you poke holes in that story, there's just so much suffering and just so much pain from seeing all the years that you didn't have to do that. I totally see that with my dad.

Like, I think my dad started a business. He went from like minimum wage to having a pretty good business for himself, but he's like always actively wanted to do the thing that was hard. Even when it was stupid to do that. So I think like I've just seen firsthand how you can be so into this idea of like suffering as currency, like, oh, I suffered, therefore I deserve this. And that's actually just deeply messed up, I think, in a lot of ways, which I, in a way that I deeply care for, like it's super sad and I think understandable given if you lived in certain ways or if you had trauma and all this stuff, or if you've needed to use that as a way to like fuel your success so far.

But in kind of like a what got you here won't get you there kind of thing, like you can kind of rely on that to like be at a pretty decent level of success materially, but then to like truly live your life, I think does require a lot of shedding, which does require pain, but an emotional pain of like confronting yourself and confronting all the stories that you thought were true but aren't actually true and all that stuff. So they're kind of right, but also kind of wrong. And yeah, and I think on the job stuff, I have, I think I might actually, anyways, yeah, we'll bookmark that, but yeah. Yeah.

[46:57] Paul: No, go, keep going. I think one of the things for me is a lot of this requires slowing down and doing less, at least for a period of transition. And doing less does actually feel painful. And it's funny that like that, that pain is not something the more grind set is willing to go through.

[47:23] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. Yeah. I think I—

[47:25] Paul: but like, yeah, the relative, the pain of like grinding towards something is fine, but like the pain of grinding away from something is often more scary to people. And it actually is. I'm trying to think about writing something on this soon, but actually slowing down and doing less means sort of letting go of this, oh, I was supposed to be a successful person. Yeah. And maybe I'm not going to achieve that. And let it— but letting go of that allowed me to actually do work in ways that felt good.

And now that I've had some success, it feels so much better because I know I don't need to grind to sustain it. It's like, it's so beautiful cuz it's like, oh, I can just keep doing this because I'm not fighting myself to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[48:22] Pranab Sachi: And I think it's a thing where kind of to your point where people can criticize you, people will criticize me, uh, which is something I'm now more open to. And it's like, I think people will be like, oh, you can do that because you have money or safety net or— and I'm happy to go into details because like, I really do. I had some like super intense financial constraints, which, you know, for a bit. And it's funny because people think you're like super wealthy and like crazy rich and that's why you could do it. But when you like, you shared like, yeah, once you had like it was like a few, maybe a couple of years of savings, that's when you quit. And I was like, dude, I know, like I know millionaires.

I know people who like crazy $300K+ tech jobs. You know, people like way down the line who just have so much material success, material support, and just community safety like their parents or their friends or this and that. But they still feel much more belabored or like shackled. And I know people who are much less financially well-off that are like much more free. And to be clear, financial success really helps. And like you do need safety net to kind of even take these experiments and risks.

And it's like, I wouldn't have been able to do this without a certain set of circumstances in my life letting me do this stuff. And I think that's like super real and like very valid. And there are so many people out there that could be doing this stuff that they're not really taking risks or experiments. And it's mostly just an emotional block or it's mostly like the fear sense of safety. Yeah.

[49:49] Paul: And I still have like drive to earn money. I think that's the thing people fear they're going to lose. Like I still wanna feed my family and give them a certain kind of way of life, but I also don't wanna become a person that I don't think is the best for the world and my family as well. So it's this constant Intention. So let's, yeah, let's shift to this intentional coaching. So maybe talk to people about it and then we can just go into a sort of a mini session.

Yeah.

[50:25] Pranab Sachi: So basically a lot of what we've talked about so far is kind of the philosophy of this copiloting session. And I like using the word, so I actually use copiloting over coaching because I think coaching, well, one, I just like coming up with new words. 2, I think, dude, I came up with so many different versions of this before I landed on Copiloting. And Copiloting is by far the best one, and it still kind of sucks. But I think it's okay. But, you know, with— people know like GitHub Copilot, like all the different AI copilots.

So imagine a human copilot for work. That's like the tagline for now. And it's this idea that, 1, work is fundamentally emotional. 2, procrastination or resistance is not bad, and really it's just competing wants. So you can see that anytime there's resistance or distraction, that's just another want in your system. 3, you can actually learn to cohere your wants or kind of give space to them in a way that like you can choose which want to come from.

And that's kind of vague, but I'm like, kind of pulling that from like IFS and Joe Hudson type stuff. And 4, by doing this over and over and over again through the rep of like these sessions, which people will learn how to do and can do on their own without me for sure, you will learn how to build a life that you like to live and like build a life that has more experimentation, build a life in a lot more alignment, bridge the inner work and outer work type things. And yeah, that's like my goal for this thing is really kind of open up kind of different ways of being for people and just show like, cool, run your own experiments, see what happens and see that you can do it in these ways.

[52:04] Paul: Awesome. So yeah, how do we dive in?

[52:08] Pranab Sachi: So sweet. So sweet. Okay, cool. So like, like very practically, typically I do these over an hour with people. We'll do a very condensed version. So let's start with a guided meditation and it'll be like a 5-minute interactive guided meditation.

Where we'll kind of settle in, and then I'll just ask you to like describe your experience as it's happening. And it's kind of like IFS or somatic therapy, but mixed with the guided meditation stuff. I'll be pointing at certain things such as like a sense of groundedness or resource or open spaciousness, and we'll kind of do that for a bit. If any distractions come up, always let me know. If anything too intense comes up emotionally, always let me know. We'll do that for a little bit and then we'll kind of go into either a task or the thing we talked about beforehand around some of the writing retreat stuff.

So, yeah. Okay. And maybe we can time block like 20 minutes for this, something like that. Yeah. Sweet. Nice.

Got any questions? No. Cool, man.

[53:11] Paul: All right.

[53:12] Pranab Sachi: I'll get into my meditation mode. Um, sweet. So nice. So when you're ready, just close your eyes, settle in, feel your feet on the floor, seat on the chair. And paying special attention to sensations and the flow of sensations, just describe what you're noticing.

[53:52] Paul: Noticing my feet connected to the ground, some energy flowing through that, remembering I have feet and not just a head. Yeah. Hearing some background noise. Someone just joined over here taking a video call, trying to stay present. But yeah. Nice.

[54:15] Pranab Sachi: And keep your eyes closed if you can, and almost like try to keep dropping down into like body level, sensation level experience. Stories and thoughts will come up. It's inevitable. You're gonna hear what the video call's about, but just try to kind of drop into sensations. Flow of sensations. Notice your energy levels and any valence, kind of the pleasant or unpleasant tone of various things.

And just describe what you're noticing when it comes to kind of pleasant sensations in the body.

[54:57] Paul: Yeah, just, uh, noticing I'm pretty relaxed, pretty calm, feeling good about the day.

[55:04] Pranab Sachi: Yeah, notice if you can feel into like any specific locations or physical places in the body that feel extra calm and relaxed, and just describe what those are like.

[55:22] Paul: Say, probably like my chest is feeling really calm. My, my legs and stuff are a bit sore because I did leg day. Nice. But, yeah, upper body's feeling pretty calm, loose.

[55:44] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. And just notice that sense of calm looseness in the upper body. And see if you can kind of enjoy it 10% more. Breathe into it, relax. Notice any flow throughout it, any sense of kind of ease or spaciousness inside of it. And just describe what you're experiencing.

[56:34] Paul: Definitely just feeling more energy around the chest, um, looseness. Um, I don't know, just lightness.

[56:45] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. And without any effort, really, with whatever non-effort there is, just notice if you see or sense any space or openness or awareness that might be kind of pervading throughout sensations and surrounding sensations. It may not happen, but just notice if there's any sense of space, kind of large boundary, boundlessness. It may have qualities of awakeness or freedom.

[57:29] Paul: Yeah, I think definitely some openness. It's almost in expectation of what we'll talk about next, but, uh, definite openness to like what might emerge today, this week, generally in a pretty open stance toward the world in the past few weeks.

[57:50] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. Yeah. And noticing what that open stance feels like, almost like the signature or the kind of, um, fingerprint of that. See if you can really feel into it and really feel the sense of enjoyment and delight from that open stance. And if there's a label or phrase that you could use to kind of point at that stance, is there something you'd call it?

[58:32] Paul: Pathless. Yeah, nice.

[58:37] Pranab Sachi: Yeah, yeah. Really feel that. Really feel the sense of pathlessness. Yeah, that's good. Breathe into it. Kind of relax into it.

Almost like simmer in it if you can. And when you're ready, you can come back to the call, noticing that the sense of pathlessness doesn't go away. It's kind of just still there. You can even just now tune into it a little bit more. And throughout the rest of the next, like, 12 minutes or so, we'll kind of tune into that throughout as we do work. And that's kind of the key to a lot of the insights and the stuff that'll happen.

Nice. Yeah. How's the surround sound Chinese that's going on?

[59:37] Paul: It's good. It's good. It's, yeah, that is more just like piquing my curiosity because it's I have the desire to know, to understand, and that's something I enjoy learning.

[59:51] Pranab Sachi: Totally. Yeah, me too. Nice. So, so we, so you mentioned the writing retreat. Is that still a thing you'd like to kind of tackle for the next, like, few minutes or so?

[01:00:03] Paul: It's something I've talked about. It's something I sent a sign up in my newsletter before. It's something I've mentioned friends. It's something I've mentioned to Angie, and Angie's challenged me, just do it. Like, I think I get stuck when I'm like, oh, who should I invite? How do I do it?

Um, when do I do it? Do I do it just my friends? Yeah, there's a lot of stuff, as you can tell. Yeah, a lot of, uh, a lot of nonsense. And I'm aware that This is all what I would call nonsense because I don't experience this in most of other what I do. Organizing this podcast took less than 5 minutes.

Writing is very easy for me. I just sit down and write for a few hours. Yeah. Nice.

[01:00:56] Pranab Sachi: But yeah. And doing a quick check-in, if you can check in somatically, did anything shift just as you described that?

[01:01:04] Paul: Yeah, it's— I, there's definitely, there's fear. There's also the rational awareness of where that fear might be coming from. I know I have this script of, um, doing things beyond myself, like scaling, um, my fear of recreating jobs I left behind. And managers in my head. Yeah, I think there's a general fear of doing things beyond myself. Most of what I end up being able to do and commit to are solo activities.

Yeah. Or one-off activities like a 1-hour combos with friends. I don't really have meetings with people unless it's a friendly discussion of our podcast.

[01:01:57] Pranab Sachi: Yep. And just, can you tune into that sense of pathlessness even now?

[01:02:05] Paul: Yeah, it's, it's there, but it almost feels separate from— Yeah. This. Yeah.

[01:02:12] Pranab Sachi: So it will feel separate and that's kind of how just life works for a while. But just every minute or two, I'll almost drill you and be like, tune into the pathlessness, tune in the pathlessness. And if you can remember, that's great. And just even now, savor it a bit and notice what that's like to reconnect with it, because it didn't go away. The pathlessness is still there. It's maybe faded a bit, maybe a little obscured, but it's still there.

[01:02:38] Paul: Yeah, I must have like some sad— some sadness coming up now. I don't know.

[01:02:43] Pranab Sachi: That's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the sadness? Is it okay to go into that a little bit?

[01:02:49] Paul: Mm-hmm.

[01:02:50] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. If you could kind of identify where the sadness is location-wise, what does that feel like?

[01:03:00] Paul: Yeah, it's— I mean, it's definitely like in the chest.

[01:03:08] Pranab Sachi: And if it's ever too intense, just let me know.

[01:03:14] Paul: Yeah, it's I don't, I don't really know where. It's sort of like in my chest. It's, yeah, it's loosely connected to this fear of, yeah, it's all this fear of like recreating this life I don't want to live anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:03:48] Pranab Sachi: Is it okay? Can you still connect to that sense of pathlessness while still being with the sadness in the chest?

[01:03:56] Paul: Yeah.

I mean, it definitely feels like I have to go back and forth a little bit.

[01:04:05] Pranab Sachi: Still perfectly okay. Perfectly okay. It's good to notice you can go back and forth. Like, the fact that it's still accessible, it's not gone, is a good thing to notice. And really, yeah, give it a few more moments of just kind of even going back and forth, feeling the pathlessness, feeling the sadness in the chest, almost really taking in the fact that you can always return to the pathlessness.

[01:04:39] Paul: Yeah, it's very confusing.

[01:04:43] Pranab Sachi: Yeah, yeah, that's good, that's good. And if you're open to it, if it feels okay, see what it's like to just be on the surface of the sadness, almost like right on the edge of the sadness. Like right on its surface, almost like an inch away, and see if anything shifts or changes. It's—

[01:05:11] Paul: yeah, I'm like, I find it hilarious.

[01:05:15] Pranab Sachi: I don't know why. Yeah. What's coming up?

[01:05:19] Paul: It's making me laugh. Like, it's— yeah, it's like a very— I think what's coming up is like, it's like, yeah, what do you— like, you don't have to worry about this anymore.

[01:05:32] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. And where's that laughing coming from?

[01:05:34] Paul: Like, yeah, it's like, I mean, I literally wrote a book called The Pathless Path and hundreds of people have told me it changed their life. So like, what the hell am I doing? Yeah. Yeah. It's But, uh, yeah, but this is the whole point of like what I'm writing about is like you, you aren't supposed to escape it. Like that's the whole point.

And so yeah, it really is about this shifting back and forth. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that's, that's the beauty. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:06:15] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. Yeah, man. That's good. That's good stuff. Feel into that.

[01:06:45] Paul: Yeah, I think it's, it's hilarious and sad and like, yeah, it's realizing like anybody crazy enough to go on a writing retreat with me would be totally uncomfortable with all these emotions.

[01:07:07] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. Oh, uncomfortable. No, comfortable. Oh, comfortable. Oh, yeah, totally. Totally.

Yeah.

[01:07:15] Paul: Yeah. I'm not going to attract the kind of people that are like, how can we? Yeah. How can we grind harder on our writing? Yeah. Yeah.

It's, yeah, it's, yeah, the world's always going to demand that we push harder and people are going to be disappointed in me for not being successful enough and That's okay. And I can do a retreat from a mode of maybe it will suck.

[01:07:52] Pranab Sachi: And just check in as you say that, what shifts or changes? Like what's the feeling tone? How's the chest?

[01:08:01] Paul: It's like, oh, this is how I do everything. Yeah. Like I, I, I've shipped two books with mistakes in them and like all the people I want it to reach, like no one cares. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's beautiful because like, that's the whole point.

[01:08:24] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. And tune into The Pathless Path a little bit more. Just notice its qualities.

[01:08:40] Paul: Yeah, I think, yeah, there's now, yeah, I'm definitely able to like reorient a bit and yeah, be like, oh, that, that would be the fun. Yeah. Of like, like, what if I, what if I did one without— I had this idea I need to create like an itinerary and tell people what they're gonna do. Well, what if I just don't tell people what we're gonna do?

[01:09:14] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. Yeah. What would, what would success feel like or look like for the writing retreat?

[01:09:24] Paul: Yeah, I think success is just experiencing what I'm experiencing now where they're able to connect with themselves. Yeah. And so in my, in my personal mode, like when I'm showing up with the writing, I have no expectations. I don't care if my books sell. Yeah. And that's, I think that's true.

I think people that are close to me know that's true. And, um, I still wanna find out, I still wanna like play with the universe. I still wanna like put things out in the world. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe it's not like a writing retreat.

Um, yeah, there's, I've sort of been in waiting mode. I did this cohort-based course with. Um, my work called Reinvent in 2019. And that sort of led to the book, but I, I haven't really done anything with my work. I have like this community, but it's sort of very passive. It's what people make of.

And I'm just getting a lot of requests from people. Like, yeah, I'm— the universe is telling me that like people want to be guided. People want to be part of things. People, maybe it's digital, maybe it's, it is writing retreats. But yeah, I think starting from the place of what if, what if it doesn't have a plan? What if it doesn't have a goal?

Is really interesting. Um, and noticing that makes me excited again.

[01:11:00] Pranab Sachi: And noticing you're totally coming from a pathless place right now and you're still thinking about the writing retreat, but coming from a totally different place. That's interesting. And it just took 10, 15 minutes.

[01:11:13] Paul: So you're noticing a shift?

[01:11:16] Pranab Sachi: I can notice the shift where like your whole body language.

[01:11:19] Paul: Yeah.

[01:11:19] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. The how you're describing it, the way you're talking about it. And if you tune in to the somatic state and stuff, like you don't need me to tell you, you can probably feel it. You can feel that it's feeling more free and open. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

[01:11:30] Paul: And I think, well, I can, I can tell I'm feeling free and open cuz I started thinking of like many other, you Yes. Now, yes. And like when we get out of, it's not just the writing retreat, it's, oh, now there's more possibilities for my path. And totally. Yeah. That, that's beautiful.

[01:11:48] Pranab Sachi: Yeah. It's less crystallized or congealed into a certain shape and more just like, oh yeah, I guess I could do that and that'd be fine. But also look at all these other things. There's more creativity, there's more experimentation mode, and that's awesome when it's there by itself on its own. But I also want everyone to know that you can return to that feeling. And even if it's not— like, this was awesome because there's a release and it was really good.

This may not happen every single time, but you can always reliably move towards it. You can always tap into the pathlessness, even with the other thing there. Like, the pathlessness and that little sensation, that is kind of always there a little bit. You can always tune into it. Yeah. And now if I like— If we had a longer session, what I would do is be like, cool, let's say you have 30 minutes to work on this.

What would the next steps be? And like literally GTD style, what are the next actions? How would you clarify those next actions? And almost notice. Yeah. I, yeah.

[01:12:44] Paul: Yeah. Notice what?

[01:12:46] Pranab Sachi: You can almost notice if I bet if you were to do that now, it would feel totally different than if you did that 20 minutes ago.

[01:12:54] Paul: Yeah. I love that. That's great. I do have a yoga session after this, so I'm not going to be able to work. Yeah. But yeah, I'm going to inject this, probably do a little meditation.

This is awesome.

[01:13:08] Pranab Sachi: I love this. Sweet. Thanks, man.

[01:13:10] Paul: So much. Because yeah, it's Yeah, it's— it— I, I have this— I like, I love reinventing things and doing things on my own terms, but for some reason I wasn't able to access that energy with this new thing. And I think like even on paths like this, we get set in our ways. Like I really do love most of what I do and I flow throughout most of my days, but like I've sensed in the last 2 years, I'm on unfolding into a new chapter, partnering with more people, working with more people. And yeah, I think this is going to be a key to letting that unfold. This is beautiful, man.

[01:14:01] Pranab Sachi: Thanks, man. I appreciate that a lot. Yeah.

[01:14:06] Paul: Yeah. I just want to say, like, when you told me about this year and a half ago, it's like, oh my God, this is like And I've applied this same approach to other work and writing has been like self-therapy for me. I think that's the thing is like writing sort of bakes this into the kind of writing I do. All my writing's personal. So I, I do end up in tears sometimes while writing. Um, but yeah, this, this is great.

Like, I really think you're on the edge of something really powerful. And I think we're a part of a broader shift where people are realizing they don't have to grind. Like if you think you have to grind and you somehow made it to an hour and 10 minutes into this podcast, I don't really know how you made it this deep with us.

[01:14:55] Pranab Sachi: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:14:56] Paul: But I will say people listening at this point are going to be pretty open and curious about this stuff, I think.

[01:15:01] Pranab Sachi: For sure. And I will say I'm actually, I'm not against grind. I'm against the meta grind. I'm against grinding for the sake of grinding without ever thinking about it. But like, I think there's periods of life where you can actively consciously choose to grind and that's not grind, you know what I mean? Like, so it ends up eating itself or it's like not really, you know, like truly grinding.

[01:15:21] Paul: The end of a book is like that for me. Yeah. Like the end of both books have basically looked like, okay, I need to read through my book over and over and over again. So like every waking hour I'm like reading, highlighting, and then any open moment I had for my second book, I was just like at a computer. I would put my daughter to bed and then like sprint to the computer and like work as much as possible. And like, but that was like, I was able to internalize this idea of like, I love, I've already completed one book.

I love this. And therefore this is like, like a pathless grind.

[01:16:01] Pranab Sachi: 100%. Dude. Yeah.

[01:16:02] Paul: Maybe this could be the name of your thing. Pathless Grind. The Pathless Grind.

[01:16:06] Pranab Sachi: Yeah, I had, I had Guided Deep Work, Meta Productivity. Oh no.

[01:16:10] Paul: Executive. We can't use Deep Work.

[01:16:12] Pranab Sachi: Yeah, I know. Right. Executive Unblocking. All bad. All just not good. Executive Unblocking.

And it's just not, that was the dude. I was gonna publish that with this name like 2 weeks, 3 weeks ago. And I'm so glad I didn't. Uh, cuz Copiloting is so much better. Copiloting's Huh? Yeah, executive blocking before.

Yeah, dude, totally. You're— yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. 100%. But yeah, I think it's just like this thing where I really believe like, you know, having more of my day be like this means more of my days are great, which means more of my weeks are great, which means more of my months are great. And then I think it just— the cool thing about this is it leads to an open space where creativity just flows.

And we end up wanting jobs that are more creative anyway. And I think it also still works for someone who's in like a corporate job they don't like because there's kind of a Joe Hudson-ism of how can I enjoy this 10% more? And you can't really even experiment with how to enjoy your job more if you're feeling crushed by it. And there are ways to kind of just like feel some relief, almost know that you can feel at ease in your own body and then still show up because there's probably a reason you're there, whether it's for like, taking care of your family or, you know, whatever the case is, you can kind of get in touch with the want around it. And that really kind of helps because there's times in my life where like I had to, like I wasn't exactly doing what I wanted, but I had to, or really felt like that was the want I had to make.

Yeah, I don't want to get into had to and should, but like want to because to make material ends meet. Right. And that feels good. And then it feels fine, you know, and there's probably some blockers on why it doesn't feel great. But then And then, yeah, and maybe if there aren't actually any shoulds, maybe that's the thing where you can actually quit your job and it like leads to like the right existential crisis for you so that you like make a good move. Because I think a ton more people can do freelance or outside work or whatever, and they're just a little bit nervous or just kind of like tired all the time.

And it's hard to do fun stuff when you're tired all the time and under-resourced.

[01:18:10] Paul: Awesome. This is Yeah, I feel like this is a great intro to your work. I loved hearing a bit more about your influences. We're going to thank that girl who broke up with you in high school, setting you on this journey.

[01:18:26] Pranab Sachi: Oh, we didn't even date. It was just a friend-zoning thing. But I will say that's the start of it.

[01:18:31] Paul: Inspiration's everywhere.

[01:18:33] Pranab Sachi: Yeah, the start of all this came from a breakup like 6 weeks ago, so that was also part of it. Breakups are great, man. Breakups caused my— 5 years ago, 2020, that's how I got into Twitter because I was laid off and broken up with in the same week. So dude, breakups, plus one for breakups. Am I right?

[01:18:51] Paul: I'm going to title this From Breaking Up to Breaking Through. Nice. That's awesome. Thank you, Purnav. You're a good friend. I'm really inspired by you.

Lucky to have met you. Appreciate the work you're doing. Where can people learn more about this? I feel like you're going to be massively in demand over the coming years.

[01:19:15] Pranab Sachi: Thanks, man. Dude, first, before I get to that, dude, so much appreciation for you. I remember like some of my darkest times in like 2023, 2024. We like worked together for a little bit and I just like this really remember how much you believed in me and just like how much you cared about me. And dude, that got me through a lot. Like, I just gotta say that got me through like a ton.

And there have been many times like on meditation retreat or journaling where I'm just like, wow, so many people believe in me and I wanna believe in myself the way that they believe in me. And you're like frequently on that list. So yeah, dude, so much gratitude and much love. Yeah. Thanks, man.

[01:19:53] Paul: I appreciate that, man.

[01:19:55] Pranab Sachi: For sure. Yeah, I kind of got to revamp my whole digital thing. I think just like my Twitter is the best or X profile, whatever is the best. It's @nopranablem. So N-O-P-R-A-N-A-B-L-E-M. I'll update my website, pranabsatchi.com.

I got LinkedIn, but it's like pretty old or it's like one month old at this point. And yeah, Twitter's the best. On Twitter, I have my pinned tweet for how you can work with me on this Copiloting sessions. It's basically what we did, usually a little more task-oriented. And I'm really trying to figure out how to scale this and kind of how to bring it to more people.