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Thomas del Vasto's avatar

Paul, I'm sure you get this question a lot and I don't mean to be rude, but do you change your advice at all based on whether someone has a realistic vision?

Before getting too critical - your writing helped me launch this substack, so thank you! I appreciate your motivational writing and it has helped me be a bit more ambitious with my side hustles, but for instance, I would love to quit my job and write a book right now. I've been working on it, have lots of thoughts, etc. But the problem is I'm just not a very good writer yet. I need practice.

On top on that, I have a family I need to help support. So I think that while your advice is great for a small subset of really successful people who have financial safety nets... I worry that many will take your advice before they have a realistic plan, and crash and burn.

How do you address that risk?

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Paul Millerd's avatar

why do you have to quit your job to write a book?

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Thomas del Vasto's avatar

You don't! And I'm hoping to at least work on it while being employed full-time. But when you add up taking care of the house, the family, the pets, doing the job, having a social life, etc it becomes difficult.

I suppose I'm saying that while I like your vision and push for motivation, it should be clear to people that creating anything as serious as a book takes sacrifice. One of the reasons I struggled so long to get started writing is that I was trying to have it all, I didn't understand that if I actually wanted to be a writer I would have to give up other parts of my life.

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Paul Millerd's avatar

Yup it’s hard. This is why I don’t have pets and we don’t plan to own a home. It would be too costly for our life.

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