Inc. Fall 2023 must-read and Next Big Idea Club pick
Which Way Is North
A handbook for human creativity
Written in 2022
A threshold document
“Which way is north? It depends which way you face. The human element is choice. It’s a choice we make alone and a choice we make together.”
“The Human Element Is Choice,” page 229
Will wrote Which Way Is North through 2022, in his last months leading creative strategy at Reddit. ChatGPT was released that November, as he was finishing the book, and the final manuscript was accepted in February 2023.
From inside one of the largest conversation systems on the internet, he watched people ask strangers and algorithms what to think, who to be and where to go. Sincerity was already becoming scarce. So he wrote a book about remembering what is human before handing choices to machines became effortless and everywhere, from a company whose own code of conduct asks people to remember the human.
Published in October 2023, it is among the last books written wholly by a human as generative AI arrived. AI never touched any part of its writing or editing. Read today, it stands as a threshold document, written at the last moment when people still assumed meaning-making was entirely human. It lives in the gap between acting like a human and acting like a machine, between speed and responsibility, between looking for answers and finding direction.
The book’s opening thesis
Anxiety is creativity, ready to be transmuted
At eighteen, Will sat on a cushion across from a Zen master who taught him what hides behind fear.
The master guided Will’s hand to the lump in his own throat. “Cancer. How interesting is that?” Then he asked, “What is behind fear?” The book begins with the answer: the energy inside fear and anxiety is creative energy, and the practices that follow are ways to sit down, breathe, feel into your soul, and come out of a pause holding something that has become all too scarce: original thinking.
What is behind your fear, and what could it make?
Matt Holt Books (BenBella), October 2023. Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Inside the book
“Walk the path from out of your Head and into your Heart. Find your Voice in between.”
“Even the most impressive of what we call ‘generative AI’ designed to make art can only render, not conceive. Machines have no worries. They ask no questions. They have no dreams.”
“Creating with Machines,” Direction VI: Shaping, page 222
As a handbook for human creativity, the book is built on seven directions Will has taught in workshops and meditation sessions. Its chapters include “Creating with Machines” and “The Human Element Is Choice,” and it treats machines as collaborators that need a human to aim them.
Written from three lives at once: a Berklee-trained composer, a marketer inside internet culture, and a reader of the tarot.
The seven directions
Seven questions, seven polarities
The book can be read front to back. It comes alive when it is approached as a technology.
- A prism
- Its seven directions are the faces of a single crystal. Look through any one and the others appear inside it. A story in one chapter answers a vision in another, and a lesson glimpsed early returns later in its full form.
- A vessel
- Will describes the writing as channeled. Nothing in it was placed by accident, and many passages written before the age of intelligent machines now read like messages sent ahead.
- An oracle
- Hold a question, open to a direction, and follow the threads wherever they lead. The book answers the way a mind does, making new meaning each time you enter it, and it has more to say the deeper you go.
Beneath the stories lies a practice. The seven directions are a path of meditation and contemplation, and each one holds a question and the tension inside it, waiting to be transmuted into creation.
What is in front of you?Hope & fear
“Ever facing forward, what is in front of you is a bridge drawn by your eyes, upheld by the bond between what you see and what you believe. … Every shape you see has a name. Every name has a story. Every story serves a purpose.”
From “Where Attention Goes, the Future Grows”What are you moving toward? What do you give your attention to? What growth do you seek?
What is behind you?Joy & anger
“You grow into your future. You can only repair your past. There is no growth without repair. We all have a reason to grow. We all have something to repair. The lines you draw between these two write the story of what you do here with your time.”
From “There Is No Growth Without Repair”What are you moving away from? What hides behind you in shadow? What healing do you seek?
What do you rest upon?Pride & shame
““What you rest upon” is the direction of what makes you. It is the ground that holds you. It is the soil of your life, the soil of your land, the soil of your body. It is the soil of your community, your people, your culture. What you make grows from what you’re made of.”
From “What You’re Made of Matters”What is at your foundation? What seeds are planted, and what roots grow in your land and in your body?
What shines upon you?Light & darkness
“Look up. What you call your ceiling today will tomorrow become your floor. Look up even farther and see the height of your aspirations. … The sky has no horizon. The journey toward the light is never complete.”
From “North Stars Change”What activates you? How do you connect with the sacred? What inspires or guides you?
What do you receive?Signal & noise
“Listening is hard. It’s like digging a hole in the sand on the edge of the ocean. You’re trying to open up a space and the waves keep crashing in, refilling it with water and sand. The skill is in the emptying and learning to dig deeper with the energy of what’s coming your way.”
From “We Can Always Listen Deeper”What are you consuming? What stories are you taking in? What environments and sounds envelop you?
What do you give?Push & pull
“Take a breath in and then hold it for a moment until you feel your heartbeat. Notice how even when you’re not breathing, your heart sends its pulse across your skin and out into the air in the subtlest of tiny compressing waves. … There’s no way around it, you are here taking up space and giving off energy.”
From “Your Presence Gives”What is the effect of your presence? What stories are you telling? Where is your energy going?
What is in your heart?Purpose
“If the universe is infinite, its center is in you. You are the center of the universe, and I am too. … You are your own North Star. The story in your heart is the vision that lights the way. You write it as you read it.”
From “The Center Is Everywhere”What do you want to claim as your story? What gives you a sense of both play and purpose?
Praise
What readers are saying
“For years, Will has been bringing his heart and soul to Reddit and helping businesses do the same. He’s the perfect person to write a book like this. Every page offers a unique idea, valuable framing of a familiar feeling, or new view of the world.”
“I wish I'd had Which Way Is North as a companion when I was first creating Reddit because I believe it would've helped me not only build a better product, but also be a better leader.”
“In a world of intersectionality, Cady masterfully explores the relationship between all of the many pieces that make up who we are and helps us reassemble them to become who we are meant to be.”
“Will is one of those rare people who leads with his heart, mind, and spirituality front and center… Which Way Is North is a must read for anyone trying to help restore the soul of business today.”
“We all need a voice to guide our visions through the chaos. Will Cady is that voice.”
“In this era of unease and disquiet, Cady’s Which Way Is North can help us transform our anxiety into our creative superpower.”
“At the intersection point of Adam Grant and Don Miguel Ruiz sits Will Cady and his mind/heart-opening book, ‘Which Way is North.’”
“With Which Way Is North as your guide, you'll gain practical tools to transform anxiety into creativity and find your inner authentic truths.”
Free, every few weeks
The book continues
The ideas in Which Way Is North keep unfolding in Will’s Substack of the same name. Every few weeks, an essay arrives about the stories people choose and the questions underneath them.
Subscribe on Substack Read recent essaysIn print and audio
Buy the book
Ordering 25 or more copies for a team or event? Ask about bulk pricing or pairing the book with a talk.
The audiobook, read by Will
Explore the courseEvery day, the book’s tools feel more urgent. Tarot for Storytelling puts them into practice.
A forthcoming course by Will Cady