- Cultish Creative
- Posts
- "Good Work" By Paul Millerd (REVIEW)
"Good Work" By Paul Millerd (REVIEW)
this is some great writing on the topic of good work
Matt Zeigler
November 01, 2024
Read on, or, watch this review here:
Still reading? Let’s do this.
If you’re reading a Paul Millerd book, you’d expect it to show up inside of his standard up-beat non-fiction style. Throw in some David Whyte-isms and you don’t have to call it a day, but you’re stepping in the right direction. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s, now, an established thing. It’s what happens when you start to genuinely develop a voice.
But, the greatest bit of writing on the topic of good work in Millerd’s latest, Good Work, surprised me. It shows up when, it most non fiction like this, when we’re at the rehashing of the rehashed points segment. The best bit shows up in a stretch of narrative fiction that Paul wrote in the epilogue.
Here’s the bit (my emphasis added):
Luke smiles. “That would have scared me a few years ago. I was so burned out when I quit. I was terrified to have to go back. But I don’t really care if I have to take a job now. I’d do what we need to do for our future family. But to be honest, I see so many other ways of making things work before I have to take a job I hate. That’s the key thing for me. I just retired from bad work.”
“I like that idea,” says Carlos. “Bad work and good work.”
“I just retired from bad work” is a hell of a sentence. “Just” because it’s recent or at least fresh. “Retired” because it’s not coming from anybody you’d traditionally think of as saying the word (meaning, the character in the story, who is described as relatively young), and “bad work” which is the acknowledgement that there’s more than one type of work one can do in exchange for their time. Sunsetting the bad doesn’t close the door to the good.
Bonus shoutout to “from” too. Because if you move from something, you’re moving to something else. Just retired from bad work, to good work, amen.
Millerd’s at his best in the epilogue, like I said. But this type of, poetic explorations of words, which are there if you’re paying close enough attention (I’m not invoking Whyte for nothing!) shows up in other parts of the book too. Often tied to way more personal stories.
Ambition is a state of being. In his words,
I’ve come to understand that one of the most ambitious things we can do, following our own true path, does not feel like we might expect ambition to feel. it does not come with pain, or contraction, or endless suffering. Instead, it feels light. It feels natural, as if everything you are meant to be doing is obvious. And all you need to do to “‘be ambitious” is to simply follow this feeling and stay connected to it.
Sloth is a character trait we best understand by triangulating around it.
The opposite of sloth is not busyness; instead, it is deep and active engagement with our work. As Noah [Huisman] argues, the word for this is “Zeal.”
And I could keep going—with “free time” or “edge” or “delusional” and much, much more across 221 pages, BUT.
Here’s what makes Good Work the most special:
Paul has a consulting-trained brain, and a curiosity-tuned soul. Of course, sloth has a whole puzzle of meaning around it. Of course, ambition is a complex web of emotional attachments he has to battle through. Of course, good work is about the weight and nuance a simple world like good conveys.
The Pathless Path was a step from blogging to book writing, in a voice as influenced as it was becoming influential.
But Good Work is the product of a well refined writing-habit. This time around, all of the words are puzzle pieces. Millerd’s fitting them together, for all of our benefit.
10/10.