Emma Goto

The Pathless Path introduces the concept or the "default path" or life script that most people tend to follow, or aspire to follow. Get a university degree, a 9 - 5 job, marriage and kids. After a period of illness, the author Paul Millerd discovered that this path was not for him, and instead embarked on what he's dubbed the Pathless Path.

As someone that got laid off from their tech job earlier this year, some of what he wrote really resonated with me. Generally humans see their job as a "worker" as a core part of their identity (heck, I still identify and call myself a "software engineer" since that was my job for so long). When you are making smalltalk with strangers "what do you do?" is a common topic that gets brought up almost immediately. Having gone to a couple of tech meetups after being laid off, it's a pretty awkward feeling to say you are unemployed, or that you aren't jumping straight back into the job search. Millerd notes that it can be scary to quit your job - as you don't know how your friends and loved ones will take it, and I can resonate with that too. How would my husband feel about me being unemployed? Would he think I was lazy?

Millerd lays it out plainly that this book isn't going to give you a solution for how to make the Pathless Path work, and it doesn't. In that sense it's not very realistic - people need money to survive. And moving away from the default path leads to a lot of financial uncertainty until you can figure out a way to make it all work. To do the work that makes you passionate and make a living off of it at the same time is a hard thing to figure out. I love blogging and going hiking, but do I make money off of it? Not at all.

But the point that Millerd tries to make is that taking time away from a regular 9 - 5 gives you the time to be more flexible, connect with new people, try new hobbies and be more creative generally. Rather than saying "yes" to the first financial opportunity that comes your way (i.e. a new job) you should say "no" and instead focusing on finding the work that you really want to do, rather than the one that brings in the most money.

He sums up some of his core beliefs at the end rather nicely:

• We are all creative, and it takes some people longer to figure that out
• Leisure, or active contemplation, is one of the most important things in life,
• There are many ways to make money, and when an obvious path emerges, there is often a more interesting path not showing itself.
• Finding the work that matters to us is the real work of our lives

I think jumping on the Pathless Path forever is rather a hard sell, but in the case of someone like me who is already unemployed anyway, the idea of taking a proper 6 - 12 month sabbatical rather than jumping straight into your next job sounds like a fairly reasonable take (depending on your financial circumstances). And even if you are employed, I think there is some merit in stepping off the default path once in your life, at least for a little while, in order to explore your options.

This book came with a rather bold title - "A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity". In it, author Gloria Mark refers to some rather rather in-depth time studies she has done to discover when and how people are getting distracted. My interest was piqued when she calls out the state of being in flow (a term that comes from one of favourite books Flow ) as a bit of a productivity myth and not realistic for many office workers who have to do a lot of busy admin-type work.

The second point that further piqued my interest was Mark's claim that actually, spending your time doing non-productive things like scrolling social media (which she calls "rote attention") is not actually a bad thing.

One might think that if you are not able to achieve a flow state due to the nature of your work that you should try and restructure your job in such a way that you can have more flow time. Instead Mark accepts that it's quite possible that you like your job how it is, and you don't really need that flow state at all. She backs this up with some time studies where at certain times people would be asked to rate their current sense of happiness. The study found that people were happier when doing things that require rote attention rather than focusing on a task - i.e. shopping online instead of focusing on their work. Scrolling social media or doing an online crossword brings quick gratification, while people tend to be stressed while working.

Mark also refers to some findings where this seems to apply with face-to-face interaction versus spending time socialising via Facebook. People report being happier the more time they spend on Facebook instead of with social interactions. It's not quite clear, but it seems to imply that they measured this as checking Facebook at work vs having a social interaction with a coworker, so I'm not really sure if that's a fair comparison.

The book loses me somewhere in the middle - it did a good job of hooking me at the beginning with the mention of Flow, and how social media scrolling isn't always a bad thing, but I didn't feel like it quite smoothly flowed from Mark's initial claims through to what behaviours we can change to reach this "Groundbreaking Way" like mentioned in the book's title.

Mark wraps the book up by suggesting that it's totally fine to not be 100% productive all of the time - it's not at all realistic. And that it's good for your brain to break periods of focused work up with periods of time spent on rote attention tasks like Facebook scrolling. Of course you shouldn't be doing this all day though, so you need to learn how to get off Facebook once your break time is up.

Oddly though, she's against the idea of using internet blockers, and instead suggests that people should learn the skill to "self-regulate" and find the willpower to not browse distracting sites on their own. I really don't agree with this, and considering she still suggests doing things like putting your phone in another room, or locking it in a drawer, this basically feels like the same thing as using a blocker?

Overall, I agree that it is not realistic to expect to be in a period of hyper-focus all the time and it's good to give yourself these downtime periods. But at the same time, giving yourself permission to scroll on social media (especially without internet blockers) seems like a trap and even if the studies say that it makes you happier in that moment, I'm sceptical that it actually leads to more satisfaction in your life in the long run.

My personal takeaway from this book would be that instead of social media, it's time to find other "rote attention" activities that you can do in these downtime periods instead (doodling? knitting? reading a chapter of fiction?) that can provide you with some personal satisfaction, but with less detriment to your life.

I’ll admit I had heard only vaguely of “The Troubles” of Ireland and that there was some car-bombing involved by the IRA. So this book served as a nice overview of that period (albeit a little slow to get through - it took me two weeks).

As a little bit of a primer, and for my own notes since I always find the UK to be a bit hard to wrap my head around (what is a country, what is the UK?):

• Ireland was originally a Kingdom (i.e. territory of) England. Technically since England was Anglican, Ireland’s official religion was Anglicanism as well. But the majority of its people were practicing Catholics.
• In the 17th century, the Protestant British colonised the northern bit of Ireland
• Eventually the United Kingdom was formed, including the whole of Ireland
• In 1919 - 1921 the Irish War of Independence was fought by the Irish Republican Army, or IRA. The northern bit of Ireland remained part of the UK, and became Northern Ireland. The rest of Ireland became the Republic of Ireland, which is its own country

The Republican of Ireland was overwhelmingly Catholic, while Northern Ireland had a Protestant majority.

The context of the 17th century colonisation by the British wasn’t mentioned in the book, but it explains why even though Ireland the country is majority Catholic, the northern bit has a Protestant majority. And would also help to explain why Protestants in Ireland are staunchly pro-Britain and pro-UK, since they are actually descendants of British people.

The book begins with a 1969 student civil rights march through Northern Ireland, protesting discrimination against Catholics. Along their march, they are ambushed and attacked by Protestant loyalists (i.e. people loyal to the UK). What complicates things is that the police force of Northern Ireland was also overwhelmingly Protestant and did not do enough to prevent or stop the violence. Notably Dolours Price and her sister Marian Price, future IRA members, were participants in this march.

The Troubles then kick off in the 70s, as the Provisional IRA or “Provos” attempt to unify the whole of Ireland and remove Northern Ireland from British rule. The book focuses on the disappearance of a single mother of ten, Jean McConville. Suspected by her neighbours (in a very Catholic area) for secretly supplying information to the British, she is kidnapped and assumed murdered by the IRA. Which really sets the tone for the book - that the IRA were a ruthless organisation willing to do whatever it takes to help unify Ireland.

What I found interesting is that Northern Ireland’s Catholic/Protestant split is very segregated. Even today there are peace walls that split up Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods, and schools are split by religion as well. It’s a very strongly held part of their identity. And those that were affiliated to the IRA and its cause were fanatical about it - in cases where they might have done wrong by the IRA, they would accept their punishment, and seemingly even be willing to go to their death (see the case of Joe Lynskey, - another blogger has quoted an excerpt from the book). Not to mention the 10 prisoners who chose to hunger-strike and die in protest of their treatment in jail.

We also learn about Dolours Price (who I learn is the person on the cover of the book. I thought it was a guy, actually) who becomes a key member of the IRA, acting as a driver to pick up people who will be later murdered by the IRA and participating in a car bombing in England (the logic being that most of the violence had occurred within Northern Ireland, and IRA wanted to make their struggle a bit more obvious in England as well).

In the end, the Troubles end in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement. Ireland is not unified - and so these ex-IRA members are left to wonder, was all that violence worth it? After all, they had carried out acts of violence and murder with the justification of it being necessary for a unified Ireland, and yet were left with seemingly not much to show for it. Dolours Price felt the guilt of acting as the driver for people she had helped disappear - she would recall seeing those that she had driven to their deaths when looking in her rear-review mirror.

The book also touches on the rather botched “Belfast Project” which started out well-intentioned. With the aims of preserving the history of the Troubles, a couple of historians took down oral histories of what happened during the Troubles - basically confessions by ex-IRA members - with the assurances that the tapes would not be released until after they died. When a book was published from two of the tapes (after the two people recorded had passed away), authorities caught onto the fact that a bunch more tapes existed, and attempted to subpoena them.

And finally, coming back to the mystery of the disappearance of single mum Jean McConville, the mystery of her killer has never been officially solved - but the author at the end of the book reveals the name of who he believes to be her murderer.

Gerry Adams, former leader of the political party Sinn Féin (the largest political party in Northern Ireland) has denied ever being a part of the IRA, but the general consensus of historians is that he was one of the leaders of the IRA and quite possibly involved in Jean McConville’s murder. So even though the the Troubles are over and the IRA has mostly disbanded, it has many ghosts that are still lurking.

One “good” thing that did come out of the Troubles is that with the Good Friday Agreement, if a referendum is held and the majority of Northern Island wants to join the Republic, then Northern Island and the Republic of Ireland will finally merge into one country. Interestingly the author points out that the ratio of Catholics/Protestants in the north is growing in the Catholics favour. Not to mention with Brexit, Northern Ireland is no longer part of the EU (as Britain is not) while the Republic is. So we may still see a united Ireland yet.

As other reviewers of this book have pointed out, what makes this book interesting is its choice to focus on a few key characters in the IRA, plus adding in a bit of a murder mystery as well. It makes it a bit more readable than say, a straight recounting of events during the Troubles. It was even turned into a TV drama in 2024, which probably boosted the book’s profile and is how it ended up on my radar as well.

After visiting my husband's hometown of Shimane last year, I noticed how much the town seemed to love Lafcadio Hearn, a writer who lived in Shimane only for a short 15 months. I also found it ironic that Hearn wrote about Japan (in English) to share Japanese culture with the western world - and yet today his writings seem to be best-known in Japan itself, rather than abroad. (At the very least, I had never heard of him).

However! I did have a couple of commenters let me know that they did know of Hearn, and I told myself I should give myself a bit of self-education on the topic sometime so that I could know of him too, which prompted me to pick up his book Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. Published in 1894, this was the first of many books he published on Japanese culture.

The book starts off with Hearn describing his first impressions upon arriving in Japan. Funnily, it almost bears similarities to what a first-time traveller might experience today - even in the late 1800s, there were already "don't touch this" signs in English (Japan getting tired of the tourists already). And Hearn was enchanted by the the Japanese aesthetic, which he admits is because the text on shopfronts being in Japanese just looks cool (Super Dry, anyone?)

He then heads off to Kamakura and Enshoshima to check out the temples there (a place still much-beloved by tourists) and even the cave down the bottom of Enoshima Island.

One rather topical section for me was when Hearn explained the Sai-no-kawara - a Buddhist story about how children are doomed to stack stones along a river, unable to continue their journey into the afterlife. I had coincidentally first heard of that story just a month prior when I hiked Mt Ono and came across a small shrine with writing about that story on the trail.

Finally he arrives in Shimane. From the town of Matsue he spots Mt Daisen, "a glorious spectre towering to the sky" - which I didn't realise you could see from the town, plus "a beautiful little islet in the lake" or Yomega-shima, a small island on Matsue's Lake Shinji.

Next it's a visit to the Izumo Shrine and a resort town called Inasa. He mentions the "Chihiki-noiha", which I think is a reference to a rock with a torii gate on it, now known as Benten-jima.

He also takes a visit to Shimane's Kaka-no-Kukedo sea caves - which I had never heard of - where the previously mentioned sai-no-kawara story makes a reappearance. In the cave there are statues of Jizo, and many piles of stone - "Only at night do the shadowy children come to build their little stone-heaps at the feet of Jizo". And it is said that in the early morning the little footprints of children can be seen, before they dry up and disappear in the heat of the day.

I actually found this chapter particularly compelling, and it seems like I'm not the only one, as I found a blog post from 11 years ago where a Matsue resident chose to visit those caves, inspired by Hearn. Maybe I'd like to check it out someday too.

Towards the end of the book Hearn goes on a long tangent about the various varieties of supernatural foxes that live in Japan which starts to lose me a little. In Matsue he is known for being a big fan of the Jozan Inari Shrine, which he has a paragraph on earlier in the book - Matsudaira Naomasa of the Matsue Domain established the shrine after a fox spirit came to him and said that he would protect the capital from fire if a house was built for him within the castle grounds.

He also recommends a Inari temple in Yoshiwara, Yokohama which I wouldn't mind checking out, although I'm not sure it exists any longer (AI points out that this area could possibly have been destroyed as a result of the either the Kanto Earthquake or WW2 firebombing). I suppose this fixation on foxes is the starting point of his future writings, as from what I've heard much of his writing ends up being focused on introducing Japanese yokai and other such supernatural tales.

Overall, Hearn had a very positive opinion of the Japanese people. He's surprised how even sailors in Japan - who you might expect to be a little more "rough" - were still very gentle and polite. And that in 14 months in Izumo, he never saw any sort of domestic violence, or raised voices during an argument. He seems to be a little naive in taking this at face value though - when I would think that there would have been for sure plenty of that going on behind closed doors. I would assume that this very positive impression is part of the reason why the Japanese people love him today, though.

Nonetheless this was a rather charming book. I would love to see a side-by-side of his writing, together with what that place he's describing looks like today (if it still exists). It seems even Einstein and Charlie Chaplin had the same idea and were inspired to visit Japan based on Hearn's work. Alas I don't think there is such a thing in English yet, but I would bet there is plenty of resources in Japanese available for that.

After reading Daily Rituals, I figured I’d stay on the same theme and I also picked up My Morning Routine. I feel like it addressed basically all of the criticisms I had with Daily Rituals - namely the lack of diversity, and doing more of an analysis of the things in common with peoples' routines, instead of just showing one routine after another.

It also touches on what it's like to be a parent with a morning routine (for both genders), even some examples of how Ramadan can affect your morning routine, and also how a partner can affect it (since it's not like we tend to do these in isolation) so overall the information in it felt accessible to more people.

As a brief summary of each of the chapters: - How to wake up in the morning - ideally waking up before your alarm, getting in some sunshine, exercise, not using the snooze button and putting your alarm in another room if need be to make sure that you actually get out of bed - Focus and productivity in the morning - don't check your emails the first thing, try and find one important thing to get out of the way first rather than letting notifications from other people dictate your morning for you - Morning workouts - as we all know, exercise is really, really good for you - Morning meditation - that meditation and mindfulness is quite a good thing. For those that are against the idea, even something like focusing on grinding your coffee beans without multitasking on something else is a way to get a bit of mindfulness in - Evening routines - prepare for the next day by laying out your clothes, making a to-do list, cleaning up your home, meditating or journalling to wind-down - Sleep - consistent wake and sleep times - Parents - a chapter dedicated to how children will inevitably impact your morning routine. Waking up before your kids to get in some personal time is good, staying off of your devices so that you are more present, and reminding yourself that this is only temporary - Self-care - giving yourself me-time in the morning, and how having a morning routine can give you a senes of accomplishment to start off the day and is a form of self-care in itself - Different environments - sticking to a morning routine when you are travelling, but really don't beat yourself up if you find that you can't (especially if you are on holiday) - Adaption - you shouldn't feel bad if you can't stick to your morning routine perfectly (and let that negatively impact the rest of your day). At worst, try and focus on completing one or two things, like exercise

The thing I found the most useful was one interviewee mentioned that they have their router settings set to turn the internet off at a certain time. I decided to do the same thing (my internet now turns off at 8pm) which has been a fairly good way to kick us off the TV / laptops at night. Would recommend.

The book is nothing ground-breaking - it’s just giving a bunch of examples of how having a morning routine works for different people. But it can be useful if you need a kick up the butt to improve your own. And it's good if you can find little things that other successful are doing that might jog inspiration for your own morning routine.

This book is a long list of different rituals and morning routines that people followed (mostly famous artists and writers). It mostly skews towards older or long-dead people - I think I would have liked a bit more of a range in time periods so we can take a look at how people manage their routines nowadays with the advent of technology like phones and laptops.

There are also some fun facts that pop up, like how Beethoven always counted his coffee beans (60 per cup) and just generally a lot of alcohol and drug consumption going on. But other than 1 - 2 pages per person, there isn't really anything else to the book. I suppose you are left to draw your own conclusions on what makes a good routine, or to try and find some commonalities between them.

There were also two types of routines in terms of discipline - some believed in writing or doing their art every day, no matter what, while others did it whenever they felt like it. Same goes for early birds or night owls. Quite a few would stop work by dinner and then enjoy the rest of the night with their families, some only did a max 3 hours per day, while others would get hooked on their craft and continue all night. Plenty would take long walks to help spark ideas or for the exercise (not so much running or weight lifting - although I suppose that's a more recent invention).

I found Hemingway's routine also interesting - to stop writing at a place where you know what's coming next, rather than just continuing on with that thread. I'd heard that advice before, but for programming (i.e. don't get into the flow and code all night until you get stuck on a bug - instead you should stop at a place where you know how to solve the next step). It's hard to stop, but makings it easier to get started again the next day.

One thing that did stand out for me was that these people generally only focused on one thing. They might spend some of their time replying to mail and doing admin tasks, but otherwise generally focused on the one thing, and had 1 - 2 sessions of it per day (broken up by a meal). Deep work / focus time is important, and I suppose you can't spread your time too thinly across too many interests, or you won't achieve success?

The author also stepped on a bit of a landmine with this book, as less than 20% of the people he featured were women.

Maybe if you consider the patriarchy, there would have been less successful and famous women 100 - 200 years ago to have sources to refer to for this book. So statistically speaking the percentage might be what you'd expect, but I can also get why reviewers of the book might be disappointed with that.

What stood out to me about this though is how it's taken for granted that these great men are propped up by their wives. One wife worked full-time to pay the bills (to give her husband time to create) and yet she still made him breakfast before she went. And there was another story around how a husband and wife decided to take it in turns in who would get to stay home and write, while the other worked to pay the bills. The wife ended up famous - and the author made the off-hand comment that this meant the husband never got his chance to write. Kind of ironic considering that probably happened to plenty of the hidden women in this story.

It seemed the author did take the criticism onboard and wrote a follow-up book specifically centred around women and their routines.