Five things: a simpler issue | #319
Sunday, January 4th: Greetings from Taipei! I’m experimenting with a slightly shorter email format after reflecting on the fact that I want to direct a little more writing energy in 2026 into longform and books. Let me know what you think?
Reader Survey - Help me share cool data next week?
I shared a link to a reader survey last week. It has some basic demographic questions, interest questions, and a couple of fun questions as well. I’ll share the results of next week in the newsletter.
Also, a few of you said you had trouble logging in to the Substack-hosted survey, so if you want to use a direct link, you can do that here.
#1 Write Once, Read Forever
Today I had a conversation with a reader here in Taipei who had only recently stumbled upon my writing, first discovering the Wise Agency series from last month, and then immediately reading The Pathless Path. It was interesting to talk to someone who had very little context on most of my journey and writing. He was appreciative of the Wise Agency remix of my ideas, even though I’ve been feeling like I’m rehashing the same ideas too much.
It’s a good reminder that my desire to always ship something new, novel, and inspiring is a hard and impossible bar for myself. It’s also why I’m playing with this new format, which is mostly what the newsletter was from 2017 to 2019.
I want to ship interesting essays less frequently and dedicate more time to book-length projects than to medium-length newsletter essays.
We’ll see how it goes!
#2 Some Things I Read & Enjoyed
Jessica Lackey’s book Leaving the Casino is an excellent guide for new indie freelancers who want to build their own solopreneur business but want more substance than the traditional tactic-style advice found online
I finished The Other Side of Change by Maya Shankar. This is a book of stories about people who went through changes in their lives. If you like the kind of reporting style non-fiction books that interweave a bunch of stories about people, you’ll like this book. The writing is down-to-earth, and it doesn’t come with an agenda of any kind. The best part, by far, was the final chapter in which Maya detailed her own challenges trying to build a family, which, given some of our own recent challenges, was relatable and powerful.
And I also finished Unhinged Habits by Jonathan Goodman. This was GREAT. I loved it so much that I am going to be writing about it next week. I think this will be a great companion for people on a pathless path who can’t quite commit to one thing or one habit forever.
Vitalik’s essay on popup cities and other experiments in living is very good:
But I also think there is something different at play: people just have to get off their butts and actually create these alternative cultures and environments, and doing it is hard. Startups are also hard. But startups have had a multi-billion-pdollar capitalist optimization machine figuring out all the most optimized ways of doing them and rapidly growing them to scale, and turned them into cookie-cutter standardized playbooks. Culture does not have the same profit motive
Also, 12 underrated reads from 2025:
#3 Books
Angie Wang 安吉 just put the finishing touches on her memoir, Made in Taiwan. English translation will be out later this year.
However, if you read traditional Chinese and would like to receive updates, please sign up for her newsletter or express your interest here.
#4 People/Things Worth Following
Becky Isjwara and Bhav Sharma new podcast Small Creator, Big World is a great one. Both share the perspective of creating while having full-time jobs in the creator world. I love the frame of a “small creator” and have a video coming out about it, too. They both have great chemistry together, and I’m lucky they are friends too:
#5 A Tweet
I don’t know how the age of AI will change work narratives, but you can already feel it shifting.
Give me more data to analyze by filling out the reader survey before you go
I shared a link to a reader survey last week. It has some basic demographic questions, interest questions, and a couple of fun questions as well. I’ll share the results of next week in the newsletter.
Paul finally wrote a shorter issue, nice
Short for me at least.
I’ve been doing some form of public writing since 2015. I’ve somehow figured out how to hack a living doing things like writing books and launching premium art editions of my book. If you like what you read here, you’ll probably enjoy my books The Pathless Path and Good Work:
If you’d like to join a virtual community of others on “pathless paths” from around the world, and get access to courses, tools, and other resources I’ve created over the years, you can join The Pathless Path Community. Our recent WhatsApp community is very active if you like hanging out on messaging apps instead of Circle.
Some things I endorse:
Readwise is offering 2 months free (I use it for book notes and reviewing highlights). Or two months free on
Readwise Reader, which I use for RSS reading and epub reading
Crowdhealth, an alternative to US health insurance that I’m still using while abroad
Postbridge: A social scheduling app created by a reader without crazy upcharges for more accounts
Kindred, a home-sharing app
Collective for handling your S-Corp accounting needs, and Nat Eliason’s Build Your Own AI Apps course
If you received this and find yourself in a state of outrage, thinking, “What is this?” I strongly encourage you to unsubscribe below. It is your God-given right, and there is plenty of other 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.
I like the idea of shorter posts so much that I want to adopt it for myself.
Thanks so much for the shoutout, Paul! We're super lucky to have you in our corner 🥹