Book Announcement, Moving (Back) to Asia, AI = More Work?! | #293
Monday, April 7th: Greetings from Austin. We are headed to Taipei tonight. Wish us luck on the long flight with our daughter. This issue includes a number of fun announcements. Please let me know if you will be in Asia in the coming year as well (see below).
I published my 2024 reflections on my blog and also published a riff on healthcare hacking for self-employed people in the US I shared on X a couple of weeks ago.
#1 Some book announcements
I am retiring the V 1.0 hardcover of The Pathless Path
It will be available until the end of April.
In its place, I’m launching a version 2.0 beautiful cloth cover version in the fall
I believe that the future of publishing will be author-first, where authors will seek to build direct relationships with readers, offering things like bundles, signed books, and premium editions that readers want. Right now, publishing is built around the needs of random companies in New York and one giant one in Seattle.
I don’t know anything about the biggest supporters of my work unless they’ve gone out of their way to let me know (which, luckily, many have). Over the next couple of years, I want to do a better job of being more thoughtful about reaching those of you who have been so meaningfully supportive of me and going direct.
I’ve been inspired recently by Brandon Sanderson and Craig Mod, both of whom have created beautiful physical versions of their books (Craig’s essay, “Books in the age of the iPad” is very much worth reading to understand my thesis here).
It’s been a huge investment financially and it’s made me a bit nervous on that front but when I think about how to commit to my path in a way that feels good and is in line with what I care about, like true artistic expression, this was the most interesting, fun, and energizing thing I could think of.
Want to get on the super-secret list to be notified before everyone else? You can do that here.
P.S. I have 1-2 spots for potential sponsors of this project. I’d be looking for something around $10,000-15,000. I’m fine doing it without sponsors, but it also could be a win-win for someone who wants to support work like this.
Book Sales Tracking
I created a monthly book tracking site comparing Good Work and The Pathless Path. As you can see, sales are somewhat similar (I’m close to 3,000 books with Good Work).
You can check out the combined dashboard here or the more detailed one for The Pathless Path here.
(Both coded with Cursor and LLM tools!)
#2 We’re moving to Asia
My “long 2024” will end this week as I board a flight headed back to Taipei.
Over the next year, we’ll be spending some time in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Taiwan. We don’t have a “home base” we are committed to yet, but we have some ideas for places we’d like to set up shop and hopefully start connecting with other young parents.
Both Angie and I are excited about returning to Asia and spending time with her side of the family after spending the past few years in the US.
It’s been so great to be in the US, especially in Austin. In 2021, as we were returning, I was a bit scared of being able to “make it” and afford the increasingly expensive life in the US. The expensive part seems to be getting worse, but I did gain a bit more confidence (or simply, more years on path and some lucky breaks) in being able to continue to figure it out.
2025 feels quite wide open right now, and I’m excited to step into this new chapter.
I also finished up my 2024 review, which was a bit scattered and felt a bit incomplete, but if you are interested, the write-up is on my blog.
#3 Some Links!
Gen X Creative Careers
NYT has an article about several Gen X creatives working in media, journalism and other endeavors who have seen their career prospects go from great to terrible in the last twenty years.
Aside from lost income, there is the emotional toll — feelings of grief and loss — experienced by those whose careers are short-circuited. Some may say that the Gen-Xers in publishing, music, advertising and entertainment were lucky to have such jobs at all, that they stayed too long at the party. But it’s hard to leave a vocation that provided fulfillment and a sense of identity. And it isn’t easy to reinvent yourself in your 50s, especially in industries that put a premium on youth culture.
“I know people who said, ‘Screw this, I’m going to become a postal worker,’” said Ms. McKinley, the ad industry veteran. “There are still a lot of people who are freelancing, but it’s dried up quite a bit in recent years. It’s painful.”
While reading this, it felt like reading an article about the Rust Belt of a dying industrial town, except for the knowledge economy. The creative fields have been hit the hardest with the internet, and while many people have done really well with the internet, the kinds of opportunities don’t appear as jobs anymore. I suspect this kind of subtle shift will keep happening across industries.
AI = cheaper work = we’ll work more?
Tina He posted an essay talking about Jevon’s paradox, the idea that people do more of something if it’s cheaper, and how it might apply to work.
She argues that because the opportunities to make money from work are going to increase, be easier across many domains, and be dependent on cheaper tooling, the opportunity cost of NOT working go up:
When your productivity increases, several mechanisms kick in simultaneously:
Leisure's opportunity cost skyrockets. When an hour of work generates what once took days, rest becomes luxury taxed by your own conscience. Every pause carries an invisible price tag that flickers in your peripheral vision.
Productivity breeds new demand. Like efficient engines creating new energy uses, AI can create entirely new work categories and expectations.
Competition intensifies. The game theory is unforgiving: when everyone can produce 10x more, the baseline resets, leaving us all running faster just to stay in place.
I buy this argument and you can see some elements of this overlapping in what I was pointing out with hustle culture. To the person that defines themselves by work success, this is just going to lead to more 24/7 work, just with more AI agents in the mix instead of virtual assistants from the Phillipines.
Tina goes on:
When speaking with founders and creators, a common thread emerges: the fear is no longer about meeting standards, but about optimizing every variable in an increasingly complex equation. A senior engineer at a major tech company recently noted that his team's productivity metrics had improved, yet satisfaction scores had declined. The tools that promised liberation have instead created a new form of constraint.
The essay is worth pondering:
Taking The Low Road
Venkatesh Rao argues that we end up taking the “low road” to technological futures no matter if we like it or not.
Worth pondering amidst today’s chaotic shifts that seem to be underway.
Thanks for hanging out in my email thingy
Which I’ve been doing since 2015. I’ve somehow figured out how to hack a living doing things like this.
If you like what you read here, you’ll probably enjoy my books The Pathless Path and Good Work:
If you’d like to meet others on “pathless paths”, you can join The Pathless Path Community.
Some things I endorse: Crowdhealth, an alternative to US health insurance, Kindred, a home sharing app, and Nat Eliason’s Build Your own AI Apps course.
If you received this and find yourself in a state of outrage thinking, “How the hell is this drivel allowed in my inbox?” I strongly encourage you to unsubscribe below. It is your god given right and there is plenty of good stuff online.
A reminder: I don’t check unsubscribe alerts and never look at my subscriber list. So if you feel like unsubscribing, you can do so below.
If you make it back to Pai, let me know!!
Excited to welcome you all back to Asia! I'll be in Bangkok end of May if that aligns. Otherwise I'll see you guys in HK / Taiwan this year I'm sure!