When it hit me, I had been giving career advice and coaching to friends and clients for over 10 years. My superpower is helping people understand what they were good at and telling a story that enables them to move towards something where they find more joy and satisfaction. People looked at me as someone that “had it figured out” and wouldn’t be in this position.

I did have a lot of things figured out.  I knew what I was good at. I knew what drove me. I had a good sense for the things that were non-negotiable and the annoying work-related things that I could deal with. I always knew I could get another job and had managed my life in a way that I never depended on needing to make a lot of money.

None of my preparations mattered.  No one is immune from the feeling that overtook me in my final day of full-time employment.

Burnout: slowly and then all at once

It should have been a day of joy.  I was kick-starting the next chapter in my journey.  Externally, I was putting on a good front.  I was telling people how pumped I was for the future and telling people about my freelance and self-employment plans.  Because you know, people love plans.

I saw it coming. I knew early on that there wasn’t a strong values alignment between what I cared about, what my company cared about and what my managers cared about. I’d even studied and wrote about the research on motivation that says you need this alignment to achieve big goals, stay motivated and succeed.

Still, I stayed and I stayed too long.  Part of me wanted to prove that I wasn’t a “job-hopper.”  But even with the confidence that I could get another job, there is something pernicious about the mindset of full-time employment and how you build your life around it with 1-year leases and other financial commitments.

From the first day of my first internship in college, I always had a deep fear that is impossible to put into words, but I’ll try anyway.  Picture a slightly overweight middle-aged man, who stayed in a job too long looking at his desk amid an existential crisis.  He had told himself, “one more year” so many times and in the process, a slow creepy disatisfaction built as he simeltaneously increased spending to quell that pain.  He is numb and absolutely lost.

I wanted to avoid that at all costs.

I left jobs before getting promoted because I knew learning would energize me more than a raise.  I always took all my vacation days.  I tried not to work too many hours. I put a lot of effort into working with people I would also want to be friends with outside of work.

Yet, it still hit me.

That final day of work, I walked around in a deep fog of gloom, shame, and embarrassment.

My body desperately calling for something else.

Just wanting to run away.

Burnout.

Alienation

The research on burnout shows it is similar to depression — just very focused on the workplace.  This may be the saving grace of burnout – that it doesn’t always infect every aspect of your life.

When I reflect back, I see a different person.  An optimistic person, I struggled to see the positive in things. My values were disconnected from the leaders I was working with. The National Institute of Health describes this common symptom as “Alienation from (work-related) activities”:

People who have burnout find their jobs increasingly stressful and frustrating. They may start being cynical about their working conditions and their colleagues. At the same time, they may increasingly distance themselves emotionally, and start feeling numb about their work. 

I started blaming the people I worked with.  If only they could change their mindset!  If only they saw there was a better way to do things!  It didn’t matter.  My own negative attitude was destroying any good ideas before they even had a chance to survive. I was in a different mental state.  The only thing that would cure me was leaving.

Is burnout an inevitable flaw of the modern workplace?

Work is increasingly complex, people are working more and managers are trying to lead without a foundational understanding of the complexity they are fighting against.  Edgar Schein has highlighted these problems for decades.  His article from 1993 still resonates:

…one of the most difficult problems of our age is that leaders, and perhaps academics as well, cannot readily admit that things are out of control and that we do not know what to do. We have too much information, limited cognitive abilities to think in systemic terms, and an unwillingness to violate the cultural norms that leaders must always appear to be in control and to have solutions for all our problems.

More than 25 years ago! Work from 1993 would probably seem pretty appealing today without 24/7 connectivity and limitless information to churn into more charts and graphs.  I’ve written extensively about how many of these problems still persist and have outlined six core reasons people are running up against.  Still, people feel helpless.  If there is one phrase I hear more often than others in my conversations with people it is this:

it sucks but what can I do?

I may not have been able to save myself, but I am fascinated by what I can do to save others from burnout.  Or at least to help them pick up the pieces after the fact.

As I walked out on my final day I also felt something else — disappointment. I knew that I had held back at certain times and could have done more. I left growth and potential on the table. If I was doing pretty well and was still leaving creative potential untapped, what does this say for the rest of the workforce?  How many millions of people are suffering the slow, marginal creep of looming burnout?

I hope to make a small dent in helping people avoid that fate.

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

The post Burnout wasn’t supposed to happen to me…at least not yet appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.

She was probably right. I quit my first job at the gas station because I kept missing Patriots games. This was 2001. Looking back, it looks like a great decision — it was the start of the Brady-Belichick dynasty. But I was just being selfish.

However, that word — ambition — stuck with me. I knew deep down how much I was capable of and wanted to prove her wrong.

But I now realize the kind of ambition that drove me was not what my mother was talking about. She was talking about responsibility and ownership.

I was more worried about the kind of ambition that is seen as the path to success in today’s world — climbing the ladder, working at good companies, getting paid well.

In college, I spent a lot of time crafting myself to fit the mold of what I thought these companies wanted. At first, I wasn’t great at it, but I got better and better.

I was able to land jobs at top companies and then use those positions to land even better jobs. I was then accepted to one of the top grad schools in the country.

My resume made it look like I was crushing it, I was winning a game I like to call prestige bingo. But winning prestige bingo has nothing to do with doing what matters to you and deep down, I couldn’t shake that fact.

Losing It All

When I finished grad school I was on top of the world. I had earned two masters degrees from one of the top universities in the world.

Several months later I was waking up every day after 10 hours of sleep completely exhausted — I was muddling through each day. I spend my time trying to make it through work and the rest trying to figure out what was wrong with me. This was not how I envisioned my post business school career!

I eventually was diagnosed with a bad case of Lyme disease and began the road to recovery. As anyone who has dealt with health issues knows — there is a constant sense of uncertainty and I struggled to process it all. A supportive boss at work encouraged me to take a leave of absence just to get my head straight.

Without work I sat home for hours a day, focusing on my recovery. But I also experienced an overwhelming sense of loss. Not only the loss of my health but the loss of my career. I came to realize that my identity was tied up in my job, my career and my resume. Not only that, I realized that as my savings dwindled and my grad school loans still loomed, I was pretty much broke.

Yet, I had started to realize I had been deluding myself about what really matters. I didn’t have much money, but I had family that cared about me and cared more that I showed up rather than where I worked. I had achieved some modicum of career success but really hadn’t done much on my own. I was still scared to put my ideas into the world.

Deep down, I knew that the default formula of success was not going to work for me, but also started to realize that failure as we conceive it in the business world is mostly an illusion. Failure is impossible if you have your health, relationships and freedom to do things that matter.

The default path comes with certain assumptions — These are the jobs you should strive for, the promotions you should get, this is the salary you should expect, you should always try to do more!

The reality is, you can carve your own path. It just takes a bit of work. Over the next few years, I started to test out this belief, not without learning a few lessons along the way.

Crafting a new story

I continued to gain strength over several months and felt a renewed sense of energy. I may have had less energy than everyone else but my brain was moving a mile a minute.

I started to look around at some of my high-performing colleagues and ask are they truly happy? Is everyone just pretending? I asked myself — is there a better way? Is there a way to build a life instead of a career?

I started simple. I made a list of my priorities.

Number one was health. I had known what it felt like to lose my health and didn’t want to compromise on it ever again. My next inclination was to list career but then had the crazy idea that maybe my career should be last. I finished my list: second was relationships, third was fun & creativity and fourth was career. I still have a calendar alert that pops on my phone each morning with these priorities.

I use this simple list to make decisions. For example, I have said no to any type of job or opportunity that is going to force me to compromise my health. No amount of money is worth it. Second, I will never let work interfere with my relationships. I don’t cancel on the important people in my life.

This list makes people uncomfortable.

Shouldn’t you work as hard as possible early in your career? Isn’t that the path to success?

What if we already know a better way to define success?

In the 1970s, Edward Deci and Richard Ryan came up with what they called self-determination theory. They found three elements that helped maximize intrinsic motivation or doing work for its own sake. Those three elements are competence, relatedness, and autonomy.

The theory also helped explain why I felt so lost when I became sick. I was basing my success on a number of extrinsic rewards — the jobs, schools, degrees, prestige, and pay associated with my early career and when I had to leave my job — I had nothing deep down driving me. Deci and Ryan found that these types of rewards often backfire and undermine intrinsic motivation.

While recovering, I spent a lot of time reflecting on what was energizing me. I realized that I spent a lot of time mentoring people to make career changes and helping them make sense of the working world. I love helping people. I also would get so frustrated when people felt “stuck” in companies that treated them poorly. I realized a second big motivator for me was making the working world a better place. I started sharing this with people, saying yes to any opportunities that would enable me to learn more and taking some risks through a couple of side hustles.

Over the next three years, I pursued a number of experiments. Many freelancers tell me it often starts like this — years before they make a formal “leap.” My first side hustle was a career coaching business, after a career coach I met challenged me to put my dream into the world.

Taking this first step was terrifying, but it also taught me a vital lesson about the future of work. By stepping into uncertainty, creating new challenges and taking responsibility, you will naturally push yourself to learn and develop new skills at a rapid pace.

My second experiment was a group coaching event to help people tell their stories and try to find more meaning in their careers. The big lesson for me was realizing how much fun I had creating the content and tools and doing deep research on the topics I was most passionate about.

Over the next couple of years, I kept sharing my passion and looking for opportunities to build my skills. I volunteered to give a 45-minute talk on careers at my alma mater, I gave my first paid speech about careers in consulting and gave another speech at PwC as part of their coaching program for young professionals.

All of these experiments scared the crap out of me, but they were also exhilarating. It was the challenge and rapid skill-building that I wasn’t finding in the corporate world. Pieces of all these experiments have informed what I am currently focused on now — helping people navigate the future of work. Luckily as a freelancer, my life is now one experiment after another.

As I put my energy into the world — reading, writing and taking action (competence) I became more confident. As I connected with others with a shared mission, I felt part of something bigger (relatedness). As I started working on work I was excited by, I came alive (autonomy).

Deci and Ryan were geniuses.

Popping The Delusion

My eyes were on the verge of tears. I felt ashamed. I was sitting in my manager’s office and I knew what was coming. I had reflected on my own performance over the last six months and knew that while my work was great, I wasn’t being my best self at work. I was frustrated and wasn’t even close to being the positive influence on my peers I aspired to be.

Although I had started to tap into something deeper — something more aligned with my intrinsic motivation, that was happening mostly outside the confines of my day-to-day job.

My re-assessment of values and priorities was helping me figure out what mattered, but they left me an increasingly bad fit for the corporate world. When I talked about things that excited me — I found very few others that shared the same interests. When I came up with new ideas or experiments, I was told I was naive or that I needed to learn how things worked.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault…I was still trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Around the same time, I had also been trying to position myself for a raise or promotion. I kept getting the responses “you need to be patient” or “you should be happy with what you have.” I was pissed. I was doing great work.

I’m also thankful that I didn’t get that raise or promotion. 

If I had gotten either, I would have been in a worse position. Deeper into a system that did not align with my values of how I wanted to live, create, or work. There was no one to blame. The onus was on me to carve my own path and create the conditions where I could thrive.

If you don’t get out now, you may end up like the frog that is placed in a pot of fresh water on the stove. As the temperature is gradually increased, the frog feels restless and uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to jump out. Without being aware that a change is taking place, he is gradually lulled into unconsciousness.

(William Reilly, from Brain Pickings)

“What does a good life cost?”

There is no right way to leave full-time employment. While some people have ways to earn money before becoming a freelancer, it is mostly a leap of faith. After talking to my employer about my plan, I was able to negotiate a three month transition period.

During this time, I did all of the technical things required to start a company (detailed here). In talking to several people who were full-time freelancers, the most important thing seemed to be commitment. This part was easy for me. I had no intention of returning to the corporate world if I could help it.

…but what about rent?

The most popular question I got when I told people about my plan was “what about rent?” or “aren’t you worried you won’t make money?”

My conclusion: people worry about money a lot.

My second conclusion — A full-time paycheck warps our thinking. It makes us think that money is supposed to come in at regular periods. For most of history, this was not the norm.

There are many good things people get from employers. However, it is often at the cost of doing the work we want to do. We look at someone with a job that they hate and say “good job.” But at what cost?

What I realized was that happiness really has nothing to do with the stuff we have. We buy things because that is what everyone else is doing. We stop buying “two buck chuck” from Trader Joe’s not because we dislike it but because that’s not what you are supposed to do past a certain age. When we make decisions like this for more expensive things like our apartment, clothes, and other possessions, it means we become trapped in a job we hate.

So as I started looking at my finances as a freelancer, I realized I wanted to question everything. I started with the question “what does a good life cost?”

I reflected back to early in my career when I was barely saving a couple of thousand dollars a year. I loved my life! I still loved my life, but the lifestyle creep was real! It was the same happiness for a higher cost.

So I sat down with a spreadsheet challenged myself to answer that question. I was able to lower my cost of living $20,000 a year by making some simple changes and moving cities. All that meant was more time to commit to freelancing, more time to make mistakes and more time to learn.

Stumbling into a future of work mindset

The second chapter of my career started five years before I quit my job and had nothing to do with work. It started with me becoming progressively sick over six months and then a year-long battle to regain my health.

In that time I was forced to question everything I believed and was forced to look at the world, my life, and my career with a different lens.

This was the start of a personal “awakening” that pushed me into high gear to discover a different path. It took four years from the health crisis I faced until I took the leap to become self-employed, but what I learned along the way was priceless.

In the near future, I believe many of us will face this type of transformation — forced into the “future of work” without a path to follow. It is up to you whether you want to start planning for it today or have it take you by surprise. The quicker you face that challenge, the better you will be prepared for the future

I was lucky that my health crisis forced me to discover a mindset shift that has enabled me to better navigate the massive shifts happening in today’s economy. While I am excited, most people I talk to are stressed, anxious and are terrified at the idea of making a change.

We blame companies, bad managers, and even ourselves for our misery. At the macro level, we distract ourselves with stories of how robots will replace our jobs or how politicians limit our ability to succeed. This tells us more about how scared and unprepared we are for the future than the reality that there is more opportunity than ever.

I was never a great fit for the corporate world. The corporate world still defaults to rewarding people who prioritize money, status and power — to the benefit of few and increasing disillusionment of many. Going through the process of identifying my priorities and questioning what success meant helped me make decisions and focus my time on building towards a more sustainable future for my career and life.

Ten years into my career, I had no choice but to take the leap.

The future we are shifting to will be closer to what the firm Vega Factor has uncovered — that when people are at their best work feels like play, it has purpose, and helps you realize your potential. It will likely also lead to an awakening about how we are meant to live, spend our time and support each other.

I am excited about the future. By many lucky coincidences, I ended up working at the types of companies and having the types of experiences that gave me both the confidence and skills to be able to compete in this new economy.

My mission now is to put those skills to use to help others unlock their creativity and curiosity to do things that matter to them.

I aspire to help build the world that Ralph Waldo Emerson talks about when he said:

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

So instead of asking someone “what do you do?” let’s ask each other “what are you meant to be doing?”

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

The post My awakening: How I learned to harness my creativity, build the courage to quit my job, and start a new chapter of my life appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.

As I laid in my bed after not working for the third month in a row, I started to question my beliefs. I challenged my beliefs about what mattered and also began to question my own identity and what I stood for.

I had been sick for almost a year. I had taken a leave of absence from work and was losing hope that I would recover and live a “normal” life.

Eventually, I would realize that even this life was pretty damn good.

A year earlier, I had just graduated from one of the best grad schools in the world and was thriving. I defined myself by my job at a fancy company, my social life, my success in school and my impressive early career trajectory.

As I spent the next year becoming sicker and battling for my health, this identity crumbled. As I shifted to working part-time and eventually taking an unpaid leave of absence, I faced a deep sense of loss. In addition to the uncertainty of my health, I was losing what I thought mattered.

What would people think if I couldn’t work again?

What if I couldn’t continue to progress and have success in my career?

I was wallowing in despair to one of my friends that I had met after I became sick: “wait until I am healthy again, I used to be much more fun.” He told me I was already pretty fun. Rattled with cognitive dissonance I tried my hardest to dissuade him of his claims to no avail.

I kept reflecting on that conversation and realized that if one person could like me even without all my impressive grades, schools, jobs or career trajectory, I might be caring about the wrong things.

I challenged myself to think about my “worst case scenario” and kept ending up at my parents house in my hometown where several of my family members lived. I’d be sick, but I’d also be around some of the people I cared about most.

Shit, that’s not so bad…

I’ve been lucky to continue to recover and live a generally healthy life. Unfortunately, I’ve encountered many young people who are battling various diseases and other health challenges themselves. My heart stops every time a new person says “will you talk to my friend, he/she is going through something…”

Our modern institutions and definitions of success are not compatible with sub-optimal health or appearances of weakness. After 18 months of battling Lyme disease and other health challenges, I began easing myself back into the workplace. I was working full-time but would face days and sometimes weeks of complete fatigue and exhaustion.

At that point, I was consumed with focusing on recovery. Every moment was overshadowed by some thought or reminder of my health and its inherent uncertainty. It felt like a massive burden to me.

I overestimated the actual impact it was having on my day-to-day work. I came to this realization after building up enough courage to share my challenges with my manager. What I saw as limitations — having to work from home, needing some flexibility to take the occasional nap — she saw differently: “no big deal.”

Many people I talk to are not as lucky. Many are early in their career and don’t have confidence in their work. Some have yet to graduate college and haven’t even taken that first step to establishing themselves in their careers. Others are in jobs where having flexibility may be all but impossible. Some are facing much more serious health crises.

There is no language for talking about being sick in the workplace. The modern workforce is designed for people who are strong, healthy and willing to work hard. However, given the right environment, it is still possible to make a massive contribution while still fighting a disease on the side.

In the US, so many benefits are tied to having a job. For people battling health challenges this means that not only are you facing the loss of your health, you are also facing the loss of benefits, income and often even harder, the pride and respect that comes from having a job.

When I open up to people, I am always floored at what stories they share with me. Everyone is battling something— whether it is health, personal or financial. Before getting sick, I was oblivious to suffering. I assumed everyone was happy and doing well like me. Being sick changed that.

As I’ve gotten to know people better, I’ve realized that it has led to stronger team relationships and higher quality work. There are likely people on your teams at work that are going through something right now. Even if you can’t talk about it, begin to give people the benefit of the doubt — just in case you are in those shoes one day yourself, because we all go through something…

For a more in-depth account of my battle with Lyme disease journey: Conquering Chronic Illness

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

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The post Career, Interrupted: Building a career while fighting for my health appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.

I only learned about consulting two months before being rejected by McKinsey. In the middle of my summer internship, my manager started telling me about consulting. That night I went home and lost several hours reading anything I could find about the consulting industry. I was filled with excitement. Getting to learn about different topics in a fast-paced way surrounded by great people? I knew this is what I wanted to do.

At the time, I had no idea how much time students at schools like Harvard, and Stanford had spent preparing just to get an interview. One friend who I later met at McKinsey told me he knew he wanted to work in consulting as a senior high school!

Given that none of my friends knew anything about consulting — I was preparing by practicing case studies in the mirror. When it came time to apply, I chose the brute force method. I found Vault’s Top 100 list of the best consulting firms and applied to every single one.

100+ rejections later, I ended up going back to work at GE. I had underestimated how much work and preparation it took.

I saved the rejection letter I got in 2006 from McKinsey.

Dear Paul,

Thank you for your interest in McKinsey & Company and your patience in awaiting our reply.

Unfortunately, we regret that we are unable to extend an interview to you at this time. Our team’s decision was a difficult one given the strength of our applicant pool and the limited number of positions available. In the event that our hiring needs change, we will get in touch with you directly.

On behalf of McKinsey & Company’s recruiting team, we wish you every success in your career.

All the best,

Recruiting Manager

McKinsey & Company

Rejection sucked — but it only added fuel to my determination. I didn’t see the rejection as an indication of my abilities, only as an obstacle to overcome. I kept reading and learning more about consulting and after working at my first job for almost a year, I started re-applying.

One day I was browsing jobs at my apartment when I stumbled upon a Manufacturing Research Analyst role on monster.com of all places (yes, really). As I read the job description I got more and more excited — I had a lot of the experience they were looking for from my time working in manufacturing in college. Holy crap, did they write this for me?

Later, I would find out that I had another moment of luck. The analyst who was hiring her replacement had recently been doing in-depth research on GE’s Six Sigma program when she came across my resume. Over the past year I had volunteered for multiple Six Sigma projects knowing that this might eventually help me land a job at a consulting firm.

Four months later, I walked into the McKinsey office and my life would never be the same.

When I walked into McKinsey in June 2008, I was on top of the world. I would later realize that I had, in fact, landed my dream job…

The two years I spent at McKinsey helped shape the person I am today and the leader I aspire to be. My time there was a period of unconstrained growth. McKinsey raised my expectations of what was possible for modern organizations. It made me realize that high-performing organizations were not only achievable but worth all the time and investment they took to sustain.

When I reflect back to my time — six fundamental things contributed to making this my “dream job”:

1. I gained an understanding of what “high performance” really meant: I had always been proud of the work I had done in the past but working at McKinsey changed the way I thought about creating something great. Through a healthy obsession (though some may argue otherwise) with logic, structure, and communication combined with iteration in teams of great people, I was always impressed with the result of the work I did at McKinsey. It was far better than anything I had done before. It has raised the bar for my own work and has raised my expectations of what is possible in the working world. (see related article: Decoding High-Performance At McKinsey)

2. I was surrounded by peers who did not see limits but saw tough problems to be solved: As I’ve gotten older, I have noticed that people in the business world seem to be very good at identifying why something cannot be done. To me, this is not an impressive skill. There are always 100 reasons why something cannot be done. While at McKinsey, I was surrounded by people that were hopeful and saw the world as something they wanted to help improve. When faced with a tough problem, I was surrounded by peers who would endlessly problem solve new ways of thinking about a problem or new ways to look at information. This may have been a factor of the relatively low age of most people, but I think it is inherent to the culture of the firm as well. It was fun.

3. I wasn’t the smartest person in the room, but I still held my own: I remember one project where I was working with a Rhodes Scholar who was a consultant and also happened to be a practicing surgeon on the side of consulting (not joking!). To say there were some impressive people would be an understatement. But there are also many more people who are not the next world leaders (and I mean that in the best way). While there, I found people did not pay much attention to where you went to school or what you did in your past. Everyone was treated as an equal and judged based on the quality of their ideas and thoughtfulness you brought to problem-solving. There is a cultural value of “the obligation to dissent” which I found to be terrifying at first (when Partners are asking you what you think on your first week), but wildly impressive after (I have not had many jobs where the leaders consistently ask ”what do you think?” and expect an honest answer.

4. Great mentors who believed in me: I had three different managers and a research team leader that was absolutely incredible. Whether they were a product of a system that knows how to develop people or they were just inspiring leaders (I think a bit of both) — the best thing they all did was give me space to learn, make mistakes, ask questions and develop. Looking back, my work product wasn’t the best, but they trusted me 100% and helped me build an incredible amount of confidence. I’ve realized that this is 90% of leading — finding good people and trusting them. I owe a lot to these people and was lucky to have these experiences

5. I knew I was lucky: While I was at McKinsey, I searched Harvard in the internal database and found 1000 employees that had some affiliation with the school. I searched the University of Connecticut (my school) and found six. This made me incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to work there. As with every job — there were things to complain about. Given my perspective — I was able to look at these things with rose-colored glasses.

6. ”NAKC”: I worked at NAKC aka the North American Knowledge Center. Mckinsey started really investing in its knowledge network (much earlier than most other companies) and had an open and collaborative space in Boston. It was a collection of a lot of young (and all young at heart) researchers who also came from schools that didn’t typically have a shot working at McKinsey in the past. That office and the collection of inspiring people is by far the best environment I have ever been a part of.

I’ve turned my 10 years of experience in strategy consulting into a course. Curious to learn the “secrets of strategy consulting? Come join me at StrategyU.

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

The post Getting rejected and then landing my dream job at McKinsey & Company appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.

I just graduated from MIT, with a masters in engineering and MBA — something I had secretly been working toward for years. I was about to embark on the most transformational period in my life — but not in the way I thought.

I. Getting Sick

It started with a cold while traveling for work. I was sitting in a hotel room in New York with the normal dread that anyone gets when they first realize they are getting a cold.

Nooooooooo, not me!!

Okay. maybe I am a little dramatic when I get sick.

10 days in I has a funny feeling, something wasn’t right. I wasn’t getting better. 20 days in, I was legitimately scared.

What is wrong with me?

Nothing, according to several doctors. This dragged on for a couple more months. Fatigue evolved into a mess of other symptoms. Doctors kept running all sorts of tests and assuring me “you are perfectly healthy!”

Here is me taking a sleep test in the fall of 2012:

One doctor tried to convince me it was just depression:

Doctor: You should consider that it could be depression. Depression can cause a range of symptoms in patients including fatigue.

Me: Ok, I mean I am open to anything, I just don’t really believe that I am depressed. I have this irrational positive mentality and honestly think everything in my life is excellent. No wait, perfect. Seriously, I am really freaking happy. Let me ask you a question, can I be depressed and not THINK I am depressed?

Doctor: Well depression can present itself in many different ways.

Me: Do you think I am depressed then?

Doctor: Well no, but fill out this survey, it will help us see for sure and understand your issues.

Me (looking at survey skeptically): Now wait, look at this. This survey isn’t going to be helpful. It asks me if I do less now than I used to. I HAVE to mark this because its true. However I WANT to do more, I just feel like shit. It’s not because I am depressed. (Fills sheet out and hands back to Doctor).

Doctor: OK This score says you are mildly depressed, but I agree with you now. I don’t think you are depressed from what you are saying. However, antidepressants might be an option that could help you sleep and give you energy.

Every time a doctor told me all was well I experienced a sense of relief. As soon as I left the building a sense of dream would re-emerge. I always fought off the urge to run back into the doctor’s office and beg them to continue to look.

Around January of 2013 I finally landed in a doctor’s office where she agreed with me that something was off and wanted to be my “partner-in-crime” to help figure it out.

A sidebar: Some of you are probably guessing where this is going if you’ve lived in the northeast United States: I had Lyme disease. Well not just Lyme disease, but some other nasty tick-borne ailments as well. I’ll spare you the medical details, but it was a confusing disease to untangle. There is a major political battle about this disease. To this day, I’m still not 100% sure if I really had Lyme disease. All I knew was that my body was not working correctly and I found a doctor that wanted to help me get better.

That January I started treatment with a doctor that convinced me it was Lyme. The standard protocol of treatment called for three antibiotics that would rotate on and off over a period of three months. At first I was ecstatic at getting a diagnosis. However, the second day I started taking the medications my body was rocked with so much pain that I didn’t know what to do.

II. Diagnosis and Treatment

Throughout this time, I had been working part-time for my company and the head of our US business was incredibly supportive of me. I was feeling a bit bold and had been staffed on an on-site consulting project in Princeton, NJ. I didn’t know when I was going to feel better so I just thought I could power through. The first week on site was when I got diagnosed. I started taking medication the next day. During the second week, I experienced my first “herx” reaction to the meds:

A die-off reaction, also called a Herxheimer reaction, can occur when treating the Lyme germ, some co-infections, and yeast. It occurs as bacteria or yeast die during antibiotic treatment. It is common to have Herxheimer die-off reactions when starting herbal anti-microbials or antibiotics when treating Lyme (source: Herxheimer Die-Off Reaction)

Sitting in my hotel room in Princeton, NJ I had no idea what to do. I was scared and I was feeling worthless. If I couldn’t work, what good was I?

Returning home that weekend, I had a call with my manager to share with him my frustration. He could likely sense that I was scared and didn’t know what to do. Despite the obvious business and financial repurcussions of me bailing on a consulting project, he treated me like a human and just told me to take some time off and not worry about it. I’m still so grateful that my manager was a true leader when I needed it most.

I ended up taking an indefinite leave of absence from work. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, the time away from work was needed to devote all of my energy not only to getting physically better, but also on my mental health. I was in no shape to be a valuable member of my team at work.

III. Struggling with Treatment (IN CHART FORM!)

When I first started to make sense of all of this in 2012, I started blogging as a way to be open about my struggle. Being open about my journey, despite the bad news a lot of the time, helped me become a lot more comfortable with uncertainty and vulnerability. There were a lot of emotions shared, but coming from a consulting background, I’ve always been fascinated with how to quickly and simply communicate information via charts.

As you’ll see, the beginning of treatment was brutal in terms of my energy level:

I then started playing with what I came to call the “shittiness index” which was a combination of my fatigue, muscle discomfort and pain. It went over really well with my loving blog followers.

As you can see, I started to feel better in March, felt crappy at the beginning of April and started feeling better in May, but had a rough finish to the month:

Around that time, I had a scary feeling that something was still “off.” I trusted my gut and got a second opinion from another great doctor in the area. She discovered that I also had babesia, another common and emerging tick-borne illness in the northeast. They had missed it in the initial screen because they had tested for the wrong strand. I started treatment for that in June and had a terrible initial herx reaction, but started to feel better:

By August I was starting to feel like the end was in sight and that I should go off the medications cold turkey. However, my doctors thought I had more work to do and I followed their instructions.

By mid-summer, I decided to retired version 1 of the shittiness index. I realized that I wanted to focus on the positive. So I gave people a guide of how I was feeling.

This was also intended to help me start thinking more positively. I had been trying to be positive on the blog and to people I would see, but really I wasn’t being honest. I was still wrecked with anxiety, worry, uncertainty and fear.

I still wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to recover.

But before I could take the step towards recovery I had to get my mental health in check.

IV. A Conversation That Helped me Re-Gain Sanity

Over the summer is when I started to regroup mentally. The months of treatment and not working were hell for my mental health. I felt worthless and depressed. Looking back now it is easy to spot, but in that moment it was hard to make sense of everything I was feeling.

A conversation with a friend helped me begin to flip the script.

I was sitting on my back porch telling this friend how fun I was before I was sick and that I couldn’t wait to be that guy again. He quickly responded:

Paul you are one of the most fun people I’ve ever met and I met you after you were already sick

Wow.

I was overcome with shock. I had been stuck in the past, obsessing over trying to be my “old” self instead of just living life. My mindset began to shift from a focus on being sick to one of recovery. The difference may seem subtle, but it was a dramatic transformation.

Identifying as a sick person implied I was stuck in a fixed state. Recovering implied I was moving forward, which I desperately wanted and needed.

I started to make plans again, setting up coffee or dinner with friends. Each day was a victory — I was in control of my reaction to my illness and I was choosing to be in recovery. As I started to feel the momentum, I shifted away from sadness. I stopped looking at my physical challenges as limitations. Instead, I danced at the bar even if I would feel like crap the next day.

V. The End of Treatment

That fall, I continued to feel better and my hunch that I should stop taking medication was getting stronger. However, there were still a lot of lingering issues. The medication itself had taken a toll on my body and it was hard to differentiate Lyme symptoms from side effects from the drugs. Looking back, it was definitely time to stop treatment, but I was still wrestling with the unknown.

What if I’m not fully recovered?

I don’t want to have to go through this again.

I listened to my gut. It was time to move on — I just felt that any additional treatment was going to do more harm than good at this point. My original symptoms of pain, sleep dysfunction and fatigue had disappeared or were a lot better.

VI. Recovery

Starting 2014, I was optimistic, but still overcome with anxiety and uncertainty about my future. This quote from my blog sums up my mindset:

Moving into 2014, I am anxiously awaiting what this year brings for my health. I’ve completely embraced the vulnerable state I am in and fully expect to go through some crappy times. The difference now is that I know how to handle these periods and have the confidence to get through them.

Looking back I was definitely prepared, but still did not realize how much stress and anxiety I was carrying. At this point, the majority of my days were good day, but that meant sometimes I would spend 3 and sometime 4 days a week feeling less than ideal. The antibiotics had done a number on my stomach and I was trying to recover from that. I experimented with many different supplements which had marginal impact, but I now know that what I needed was time.

For someone that was so determined and action-oriented at the time, this was frustrating.

VII. Re-thinking “healthy” / experimentation

Throughout that year I experimented with different diets and exercise. I was eating what I thought was healthy — for example, turkey sandwiches at lunch on bread. Exercise-wise, I was also doing what I thought was best — running. Neither of these things turned out to be true — for me at least.

Historically, I was a fussy eater and scared to try new things. However, towards the end of the year, increasingly frustrated, I told myself that I needed to be willing to try anything and everything. I finally read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which had been recommended to me several times. This helped shift my thinking from what I saw as healthy and I started thinking about food quality versus my conventional beliefs about food.. As I started reading more and more I was shocked by how terrible my knowledge was around food (Great books like The 4-Hour Body, The Bulletproof Diet and Why We Get Fat helped re-shape my thinking). I experimented with a modified keotogenic diet, paleo and intermittent fasting. The impact from these were considerable. I now had knowledge and approaches with my diet that I could use to accelerate my full recovery.

The next step was getting into strength training, which I started doing regularly in 2015. This is the step that really took me from doing pretty good to feeling amazing. At first, I experimented with the 7 minute workout. I had read the impressive research behind high intensity interval training and was excited to try something that did not drain me the day after exercise (as long cardio sessions had been doing). Similar to opening my mind to a new way of thinking about food, I started learning more about the benefits of strength training (which are considerable) and started doing more. I moved on from the 7 minute workout to the “Big Five” workout. This was a 15 minute strength training workout that I started doing at the gym a couple times a week.

On top of starting to feel a lot better, I opened my mind to question my beliefs about health and fitness. I had believed for years that the key to exercise was long, vigorous workouts. I was forced to look for an alternative because for me, this did not seem to be true. Working smarter, not harder was my only option. As I was seeing gains from my simple, but impactful workouts, I kept experimenting and moved on to dead lifts, squats and kettle bells (a really amazing podcast on strength training that inspired me is here) which continued to improve my energy, mood and strength to this day.

I had to question a lot of my beliefs in this experimentation phase. It helped me be more open minded in all aspects of my life.

If I was wrong about health, nutrition and exercise, what else was I wrong about?

I’m now trying to take what I’ve learned and make it sustainable. One way I think about doing this, I’ve borrowed from Scott Adam’s book: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big which he talks about having systems, not goals. If my goal is to gain 15 pounds of muscle, that’s going to be hard to accomplish and may seem overwhelming. So instead, my fitness “system” became very, very simple:

Go to the gym every other day

That is it. It doesn’t matter how many minutes I work out. If I decide once I get there that today is not the day, I go home — and I have, trust me.

This simple system helped me get in the best shape of my life and also help continue my momentum to be feeling the best I had in a long time.

VIII. Lessons

Like I said at the beginning, this is one of the toughest things I have ever gone through, yet it taught me about life.

I also have to reflect that this experience, though bad, makes me realize just how lucky I am. Most people are dealing with something and when you are dealing with something it is easy to assume nobody has it as bad as you. I recently read a powerful holocaust survivor’s experience A Man’s Search for Meaning which made me realize how lucky I am.

I took away found main lessons and continue to reflect on these in all aspects of my life:

1. Real confidence comes from embracing vulnerability: Life was pretty good for me growing up. I didn’t really face any monumental challenges. When I was experienced pain, I saw myself as somewhat of a failure. After all, “Real men don’t cry” or so the logic goes. Through this, I learned that was bullshit. I didn’t realize anything close to real confidence and courage until I embraced vulnerability.
2. Real relationships are built on sharing when things aren’t so great: Being in a state of suffering gave me two choices: share or hold it inside. At first, I chose the latter but eventually had no choice but to learn how to open up and share to people “I feel like crap.” The blog really helped with this and gave people an avenue to ask me how it was going. It was shocking to find that this didn’t bother people and that they stood by my side. Before being sick I spent too much time protecting other people from my feelings. Though, I am a relatively positive person, I made the mistake of thinking people only wanted positivist from me. I realized that great friends and relationships are about standing by people in good times and bad and I realized how many I had once I showed them my pain.
3. Living in the present is the only option: As anyone who has battled a chronic health issue will tell you — this is the biggest challenge. There are many challenges in life where you just know deep down you will get over it (breakups, anyone). With a health challenge, there is always the looming uncertainty of “I may never get better.” It is easy to spend time thinking about this, dwelling on that uncertainty. Trust me, I spent a lot of time doing that — but it only lead to more anxiety. You spend more time in your head than living life. Similarly, you always lose when comparing yourself to a healthier time in the past. It is so easy to idealize the past. When I learned to embrace a recovery mindset, I could finally forward into a new and better future by staying in the present and taking it one day at a time.
4. Losing it all is not that bad: We spend so much time worrying about “failure” that we lose sight of the things that matter. Whether it is a job, a relationship or material things, losing things is ultimately, not that bad. I had lost my health temporarily and had to slow my career trajectory a bit. At the time this really stressed me out. However, the process of experiencing this loss also made me realize it was survivable. It also helped shift how I think about risk. For example, at work I can take risks, try new things and pursue things I am passionate about instead of trying to fit in and being scared of being fired.  Worst case is always losing my health, not my job. In relationships, I can invest in others without worrying about protecting their feelings or losing the relationship. I can live authentically and honestly, which actually helps pull people closer. By thinking I lost it all, I know its not that bad. At the end of the day I still have great people in my life, which is really all that matters.

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

The post Conquering Chronic Illness & Learning How to Live appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.

“Pursue your passion and you will never work a day in your life”

— Many people

For me, this was always a very vague notion, albeit one worth pursuing.

I’ve always had a restless spirit. I remember being in school when I was younger and throwing myself into doing well. Doing well and getting good grades was rewarding, but I never really had an answer to “What do you want to do when you grow up?” question.

That restless spirit stayed with me as I got older and transitioned into a productive, taxpaying adult. During my first corporate internship during college, I worked at a desk for 40 hours a week. I was dumbfounded by how little everyone really accomplished — It was incredibly frustrating. I wanted to get rid of that feeling.

I had a few more internships in other major companies and kept finding the same thing: Inefficiency and personal frustration. I was NOT finding what I wanted to do. This put me in a bit of a desperate state and I started looking everywhere for inspiration. I picked up Freakonomics one summer and could not put it down. It unlocked a period of creativity for me that hasn’t stopped ten years later.

Discovering my first passion was easy: A restless hunger for learning

With senior year looming, I sunk my energy into obsessively researching careers that might be a better fit for me than a corporate job. I came across strategy consulting and was immediately energized. Consulting firms were a place where you could work on some of the most challenging business problems and be surrounded by people who also crave learning at a incredibly fast pace. Why had nobody told me about consulting? This became my new goal.

With little preparation, I threw myself full-steam ahead into trying to get a full-time offer at a strategy consulting firm. I quickly built a massive spreadsheets of over 100 firms and tried to find every possible connection through family, friends or alumni that I could.

I ended up getting a number of phone interviews and four or five final round in-person interviews.

Bottom line: I got rejected from 100+ consulting firms

The following rejection is my favorite:

October 2006

Dear Paul,

Thank you for your interest in McKinsey & Company and your patience in awaiting our reply.

Unfortunately, we regret that we are unable to extend an interview to you at this time. Our team’s decision was a difficult one given the strength of our applicant pool and the limited number of positions available. In the event that our hiring needs change, we will get in touch with you directly

On behalf of McKinsey & Company’s recruiting team, we wish you every success in your career.

All the best,

XXX

Recruiting Manager

McKinsey & Company

In the moment, the rejection hurt. But I didn’t let it impact my confidence. I knew I was capable and I had committed to this goal. So I kept applying. Two years two years later, I was sitting at my desk, working at that same firm, one of the top consulting firms in the world, McKinsey & Company.

I had made it, right?

In a sense, yes. I was proud to have achieved my goaI. However, I still had a certain bit of restlessness — I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do. I still had more learning to do.

It took me a few years after leaving McKinsey to understand how much the culture in my office had resonated with me. My peers were brilliant, kind and enthusiastic about learning. Team leaders were 100% supportive and mostly hands-off, letting me achieve the already high expectations that I had for myself. It was incredible. The problem? This culture was not the norm in the business world. I wanted to help create these environments elsewhere.

My second passion: Being a part of and building amazing communities and company cultures

The discovery of a third passion solidified for me only recently, but was accelerated by an experience I had in 2009. After I finally “broke into” consulting, others from UConn reached out to me for advice on how to do the same. One persistent and enthusiastic student stood out. He was determined to work in consulting. He was a bit late on application deadlines, but seemed undeterred. I was not as confident.

It was 2009 and the economy was in absolute shambles. This kid was a rock star and had enormous potential, but the opportunities were slim and all the jobs were going to students at the most prestigious schools. There was no sugar coating it. This was going to be hard.

I was impressed with his determination — he wanted to pursue consulting, even if that meant graduating without a job. Fortunately, his hard work paid off. With weeks to go prior to graduation, he received an offer at a consulting firm. Not only that, but it led to an impressive career in consulting and strategy. I’d now consider him a peer, at an equal level to the success I’ve achieved in my career. He may not have known it at the time, but he was inspiring to me — and still is. It gave me tremendous joy to play a part in helping someone so impressive achieve their goals. I had to do more.

Passion #3: Helping inspirational people achieve great things

I’ve only recently gained clarity on this. This has taken years of reflection and soul-searching, but it adds a lot of clarity in my future career choices. If I use these as a lens for my career choices, a lot of the decisions I made seem to make a lot more sense. Everything I’ve pursued checked at least one of the three boxes. For now, I’ll use these as a guiding force, but have no idea where it will take me. Here’s hoping I find new inspiration and passions down the road….

To summarize, the key learnings for me were:

1. Finding my passion really meant getting to know myself better. I did this through a combination of putting myself in different jobs and environments and combining that with reflection on my experiences, especially the most frustrating and exciting emotions

2. Passion does not equal a job title or company. Instead of defining my success based on a role or company I was working with, I focused on the behaviors and environments

3. Listen to your frustration or angst. I took notice of what frustrated me and what energized me. I tried to do less of the things that frustrated me and more of the things that excited me. Simple, but powerful.

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

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