Paul Millerd
Author of The Pathless Path, former McKinsey consultant turned full-time writer
Where to hear and read about Paul Millerd1 episode or test
Paul Millerd is a former McKinsey consultant who left a prestigious career to write full-time and self-published The Pathless Path, which has sold almost 50,000 copies. The most useful thing to learn from him is his editing loop: read aloud, rewrite, and remove every snag until each sentence feels true, in a book written for the specific readers who need it.
I think if you haven't cried yet like you haven't written enough.
Leaving McKinsey to Write Full-Time | Paul Millerd | How I Write Podcast
Paul Millerd: the story and the lessons
1Paul Millerd's path from McKinsey to full-time writer
Millerd's big credentials did not give him the life he wanted. He went to MIT and worked at McKinsey and GE, but wanted time to think, read and talk about ideas. He built a life around writing consistently, not around a title.
He says many people feel stuck in jobs that don't inspire them, with colleagues they don't click with.
It took 16 months after quitting for him to see writing was it. One morning in Taiwan, with coffee and no plan, he felt delighted. He had only felt flashes of this in consulting, where the context was wrong. He made about $30,000 in 2018, hacking together basic bills.
He then studied what helps him write: wandering, talking to people, and avoiding work that drains creative energy.
He tested the myth of the safe path by taking two months off. At first it felt terrible, with a pressure telling him he was a loser. For 7 years he has kept asking questions like this, seeing how they feel and writing about them.
His point is not that the default path is bad. It is the belief that it is safe, secure and linear. He calls the pretending a silent conspiracy not to bring up your insecurity.
The Pathless Path now supports his family with little marketing. The book is self-published and has sold almost 50,000 copies. He says he would not have landed a book deal when he had 5,000 newsletter subscribers.
Publishers favor pre-validated ideas, which he thinks is why the best new ideas often come from small audiences.
2How Millerd wrote The Pathless Path
Millerd's book came alive when he stopped writing advice and wrote his story. Writing coach Sasha Chapin gave almost no edits and told him the opportunity was to go into his personal story. A three-month ebook became a personal book.
To write the page four passage about $100,000 a year once feeling like being rich, he sat with a specific moment and kept asking "What was it really like?"
He chose a true book over the formula of anecdote, study and takeaway. He modeled it on Tuesdays with Morrie, where Mitch Albom's own life changes to match the lesson. A playbook for a more marketable book existed, but he could not write it truthfully.
He says the book was not written to reach the biggest audience, and it still sold almost 50,000 copies.
He tested the idea by pasting old writing into one document. He called the project an ebook to lower the stakes, made chapter headings and moved pieces around like a puzzle. His excitement about the document told him whether to keep going.
He worked bottom-up like a three-month consulting project: start with hypotheses, then let the data guide you.
Millerd dropped rough notes under chapter headings as ideas arrived. After a conversation he would add a note to the relevant chapter, creating a heading if needed, even if he could not decode the note later. He trusted the good ideas to resurface.
He says the draft was chaos at times, and that most of the work was rewriting by popping into a chapter at random.
He swapped every link for what he actually thinks. Moving from internet writing to a book, he found links lazy and had to state each idea for the reader. He also saw he could not tell the same story ten times.
He hid a nerdy history of work inside a memoir. Chapter three, Work Work Work, runs from Thomas Aquinas to Erich Fromm. The book has over 200 references, alternating a quote with personal reflection.
He gives a study a few lines and moves on, so the personal story keeps its pace. The ideal-self versus ought-to-self research became a short passage about leaning on the ought-to self.
3Millerd on readers, core ideas and finding your people
Millerd named who he was not writing for. A scathing email from someone he respected led to a long reply he realized was really a letter to himself. He turned it into the post I'm not writing for you, aimed at unconventional weirdos who need a different way.
He expected 500 to 1,000 readers. Over the next 2 years his curiosity conversations grew from one a month to a couple a week.
He admits writing is an act of ego and wants to be heard. William Zinsser's line, that writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it, felt like a release. He had pretended he did not care about being read, partly out of fear.
Millerd coins hundreds of terms and tests them in conversation. Most do not resonate. He finds out which do by watching whether people's eyes light up.
The pathless path landed with a friend, then his wife, then readers. It gives an insight yet leaves people asking him to tell them more, which makes the book easy to pitch.
He treats his own curiosity as his niche. He argues people aim at a niche as if it were a job, and it can constrain what they feel free to publish. He writes about what he is curious about that week.
David Perell's test for a core idea is where what your head, heart and wallet want you to write about line up. Millerd says he might still be talking about the pathless path in eight years.
He collects possibility archetypes instead of role models. Seth Godin shows creative work can stay energizing later in life. Derek Sivers writes books on his own terms and sells them directly to his audience.
He also cites Tim Ferriss leaving angel investing, and says leaving money and a success identity is harder than having no identity.
He measures resonance by thoughtful replies, not reach. The number of well-written emails is his best sign that writing hit someone. A slow, thoughtful reply can make a fan for life, where much of the internet rewards short-lived reactions.
At the start, a handful of people emailed weekly to say keep going, though his writing was objectively not great. He now messages early writers himself, whatever their audience size.
4Millerd's method for editing and shipping a book
Millerd reads every sentence aloud until it feels true. He asks how each line feels in his body. If he does not believe it or it feels bad to say, he keeps reworking. Some chapters were rewritten 50 to 60 times.
When he recorded the audiobook he hit friction only about three times.
He irons out every snag, like a wrinkle in a shirt. When a word catches, such as a repeated 'days', he highlights it, says it aloud and tries variations until it flows. Newsletters and tweets ship unedited, but the book does not.
He picked up the method from Nick Maioli. For intensity he relies on specific scenes, not a thesaurus, using Robert Caro's question: what would I see if I was there?
He edited the long draft in several formats. He printed the book and read it straight through, marked it up on Kindle, then read it aloud. He read the whole book about 25 times in the last month.
He thought it was 98% done when it was about 90%, and the last stretch takes long.
He asked five early readers only what they loved. Only five people read the book before launch. He asked each "What do you love?" and told his editor not to delete any of it.
He asks for feedback on almost nothing and still has not found great editors.
He reads feedback for gold, silence and confusion. A paragraph called gold means the ones around it need strengthening. A silent stretch suggests boredom. A comment that something is confusing can make him rewrite everything.
He says a lot of feedback is not good, and writers who have posted a hundred pieces need to trust their own taste.
Millerd ships when he loves the piece or hates it. His rule is to publish when he feels either that this is the best day he has ever written or that he absolutely hates it. Either state means no patience left for revising.
He shipped the book at that point, knowing it was probably not 100 percent ready.
5How Millerd protects the conditions for his writing
Millerd leaves the draft and moves when he is stuck. He took long walks or whole weeks off the book. Stuck on the intro, he took a scooter ride in Taiwan, pulled over and wrote the key passage on the side of the road.
He says business books are weak partly because their authors work full-time and have no space for ideas to wander in.
He judges a session by the flash of surprise. His signal is stumbling into a sentence that surprises him, saying it aloud and feeling that it works. He then solves the puzzle of the sentence before moving on.
He pays attention to which circumstances, people and reading produce that feeling, and removes work that destroys it.
He wrote his life purpose until he cried. A couple of years before the book, he rewrote his purpose statement about 21 times before it moved him to tears. His mission, roughly, is to explore ideas and creativity that matter to him and share them with friends.
The same phrase later appeared in the book's intro, and he had to relearn it.
After his daughter was born he moved to fixed writing hours. He works 3 days a week while his wife works 2 and is also writing a book. He aims for 3 hours of writing on each of his 3 days.
Before that his mantra was 'I write most days'. He no longer needs it.
Leaving McKinsey to Write Full-Time | Paul Millerd | How I Write Podcast
Paul Millerd explains how he wrote a self-published book that sold close to 50,000 copies by writing the true personal version of his ideas for a specific kind of reader. The technique worth hearing is his loop of reading aloud, rewriting and removing every spot where he snags, until the sentences feel true in his body.
Millerd's big credentials did not give him the life he wanted. He went to MIT and worked at McKinsey and GE, but wanted time to think, read and talk about ideas. He built a life around writing consistently, not around a title.
He says many people feel stuck in jobs that don't inspire them, with colleagues they don't click with.
It took 16 months after quitting for him to see writing was it. One morning in Taiwan, with coffee and no plan, he felt delighted. He had only felt flashes of this in consulting, where the context was wrong. He made about $30,000 in 2018, hacking together basic bills.
He then studied what helps him write: wandering, talking to people, and avoiding work that drains creative energy.
He tested the myth of the safe path by taking two months off. At first it felt terrible, with a pressure telling him he was a loser. For 7 years he has kept asking questions like this, seeing how they feel and writing about them.
His point is not that the default path is bad. It is the belief that it is safe, secure and linear. He calls the pretending a silent conspiracy not to bring up your insecurity.
The Pathless Path now supports his family with little marketing. The book is self-published and has sold almost 50,000 copies. He says he would not have landed a book deal when he had 5,000 newsletter subscribers.
Publishers favor pre-validated ideas, which he thinks is why the best new ideas often come from small audiences.
Millerd's book came alive when he stopped writing advice and wrote his story. Writing coach Sasha Chapin gave almost no edits and told him the opportunity was to go into his personal story. A three-month ebook became a personal book.
To write the page four passage about $100,000 a year once feeling like being rich, he sat with a specific moment and kept asking "What was it really like?"
He chose a true book over the formula of anecdote, study and takeaway. He modeled it on Tuesdays with Morrie, where Mitch Albom's own life changes to match the lesson. A playbook for a more marketable book existed, but he could not write it truthfully.
He says the book was not written to reach the biggest audience, and it still sold almost 50,000 copies.
He tested the idea by pasting old writing into one document. He called the project an ebook to lower the stakes, made chapter headings and moved pieces around like a puzzle. His excitement about the document told him whether to keep going.
He worked bottom-up like a three-month consulting project: start with hypotheses, then let the data guide you.
Millerd dropped rough notes under chapter headings as ideas arrived. After a conversation he would add a note to the relevant chapter, creating a heading if needed, even if he could not decode the note later. He trusted the good ideas to resurface.
He says the draft was chaos at times, and that most of the work was rewriting by popping into a chapter at random.
He swapped every link for what he actually thinks. Moving from internet writing to a book, he found links lazy and had to state each idea for the reader. He also saw he could not tell the same story ten times.
He hid a nerdy history of work inside a memoir. Chapter three, Work Work Work, runs from Thomas Aquinas to Erich Fromm. The book has over 200 references, alternating a quote with personal reflection.
He gives a study a few lines and moves on, so the personal story keeps its pace. The ideal-self versus ought-to-self research became a short passage about leaning on the ought-to self.
Millerd named who he was not writing for. A scathing email from someone he respected led to a long reply he realized was really a letter to himself. He turned it into the post I'm not writing for you, aimed at unconventional weirdos who need a different way.
He expected 500 to 1,000 readers. Over the next 2 years his curiosity conversations grew from one a month to a couple a week.
He admits writing is an act of ego and wants to be heard. William Zinsser's line, that writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it, felt like a release. He had pretended he did not care about being read, partly out of fear.
Millerd coins hundreds of terms and tests them in conversation. Most do not resonate. He finds out which do by watching whether people's eyes light up.
The pathless path landed with a friend, then his wife, then readers. It gives an insight yet leaves people asking him to tell them more, which makes the book easy to pitch.
He treats his own curiosity as his niche. He argues people aim at a niche as if it were a job, and it can constrain what they feel free to publish. He writes about what he is curious about that week.
David Perell's test for a core idea is where what your head, heart and wallet want you to write about line up. Millerd says he might still be talking about the pathless path in eight years.
He collects possibility archetypes instead of role models. Seth Godin shows creative work can stay energizing later in life. Derek Sivers writes books on his own terms and sells them directly to his audience.
He also cites Tim Ferriss leaving angel investing, and says leaving money and a success identity is harder than having no identity.
He measures resonance by thoughtful replies, not reach. The number of well-written emails is his best sign that writing hit someone. A slow, thoughtful reply can make a fan for life, where much of the internet rewards short-lived reactions.
At the start, a handful of people emailed weekly to say keep going, though his writing was objectively not great. He now messages early writers himself, whatever their audience size.
Millerd reads every sentence aloud until it feels true. He asks how each line feels in his body. If he does not believe it or it feels bad to say, he keeps reworking. Some chapters were rewritten 50 to 60 times.
When he recorded the audiobook he hit friction only about three times.
He irons out every snag, like a wrinkle in a shirt. When a word catches, such as a repeated 'days', he highlights it, says it aloud and tries variations until it flows. Newsletters and tweets ship unedited, but the book does not.
He picked up the method from Nick Maioli. For intensity he relies on specific scenes, not a thesaurus, using Robert Caro's question: what would I see if I was there?
He edited the long draft in several formats. He printed the book and read it straight through, marked it up on Kindle, then read it aloud. He read the whole book about 25 times in the last month.
He thought it was 98% done when it was about 90%, and the last stretch takes long.
He asked five early readers only what they loved. Only five people read the book before launch. He asked each "What do you love?" and told his editor not to delete any of it.
He asks for feedback on almost nothing and still has not found great editors.
He reads feedback for gold, silence and confusion. A paragraph called gold means the ones around it need strengthening. A silent stretch suggests boredom. A comment that something is confusing can make him rewrite everything.
He says a lot of feedback is not good, and writers who have posted a hundred pieces need to trust their own taste.
Millerd ships when he loves the piece or hates it. His rule is to publish when he feels either that this is the best day he has ever written or that he absolutely hates it. Either state means no patience left for revising.
He shipped the book at that point, knowing it was probably not 100 percent ready.
Millerd leaves the draft and moves when he is stuck. He took long walks or whole weeks off the book. Stuck on the intro, he took a scooter ride in Taiwan, pulled over and wrote the key passage on the side of the road.
He says business books are weak partly because their authors work full-time and have no space for ideas to wander in.
He judges a session by the flash of surprise. His signal is stumbling into a sentence that surprises him, saying it aloud and feeling that it works. He then solves the puzzle of the sentence before moving on.
He pays attention to which circumstances, people and reading produce that feeling, and removes work that destroys it.
He wrote his life purpose until he cried. A couple of years before the book, he rewrote his purpose statement about 21 times before it moved him to tears. His mission, roughly, is to explore ideas and creativity that matter to him and share them with friends.
The same phrase later appeared in the book's intro, and he had to relearn it.
After his daughter was born he moved to fixed writing hours. He works 3 days a week while his wife works 2 and is also writing a book. He aims for 3 hours of writing on each of his 3 days.
Before that his mantra was 'I write most days'. He no longer needs it.