Land Geek
host: Mark Podolsky
self-publishing, intrinsic motivation, travel, cultural immersion, marketing, self-actualization, book selling model, reflection, journaling
listen: (download)
Transcript:
Mark Podolsky
Derek Sivers. It is a true pleasure, a thrill. And I know you first emailed me, I had written back to you that this would literally be like your favorite musician emailing you out of the blue.
Derek Sivers
Did you say that? I forgot that. It’s funny because like, I reached out to you first, didn’t I? Because somebody the guy that edited your video, was that Tommy Lee? Was that his name?
Mark Podolsky
Tommy Lee. Yeah. Amazing.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Tommy had edited. Yeah. I was working with Tommy Lee or talking with Tommy Lee about him doing a video for me. And he said, Well, let me show you some of my past work. And he showed me a land geek video or more, I think more than one. I was like, These are great. Who is this guy? Land geek. I love this. So then, yeah, I reached out to you thinking I was like cold emailing you to say, Hey, my name is Derek. I’m a fan of what you’re doing. I think it’s really cool. I love what you’re doing. And and then you surprised the hell out of me with your reply saying, Oh my God, Derek Sivers, I know you. I was like, It’s such a nice feeling.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah, yeah. So, all right, this is not going to be a podcast of me just kissing up the entire time listeners. And so I want to start with a quick question because you seem to be unapologetically clear on your purpose and how you invest your time. How did that type of clarity come about and what, if any, difficulties arose out of it for you?
Derek Sivers
I think it helped. Let me see. It actually changed partway through. That’s why I think I have two different answers. First, I had a clarity when I was really like monomaniacal, laser focused, driven on just one thing. So for many years, well, let me figure out how many. For 15 years, all I wanted was to be a successful musician. So as, like, notoriously focused among my friends. I didn’t hang out. I didn’t go to parties. I didn’t watch movies, or even read books. All I did every minute of every day was just completely focused on becoming a great and successful musician. And I did that for 15 years. Friends would tease me for the fact that I had never seen their favorite movie or read their favorite book, and I wouldn’t come to the parties with them. I wouldn’t hang out. I would just focus on that. And then I started CD Baby. Which was really a complete reversal from changing the focus to being entirely on myself for 15 years, now I was entirely focused on others. So for ten years of CD Baby, every waking hour, seven days a week, 7 a.m. to midnight, all I did was serve my clients with CD Baby. I didn’t want to do anything else. I didn’t travel. I didn’t do anything but work. So then when I sold CD Baby, I was up in the air for a while. But then I think the kind of focus you’re talking about or this how did you put it? Like a strong sense of how I invest my time.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah it’s like how unpologetically clear. Like these are my boundaries. I want to be the best musician in the world. I’m not getting distracted with all of you and your lives. I want to build CD baby, and I’m not getting distracted with anything else. I’m working just with a singular focus, and that’s got to be a very difficult thing, I would think. Because you said, like, my friends hate me. I can imagine other relationships. You know, just people trying to get in and you’re just like no.
Derek Sivers
No it just comes from, okay, it’s not difficult. It comes from a strong sense of yes. Oh, so, by the way, so sorry. I was going to describe the third transition. So kind of post CD baby, when I’ve just been writing, I’ve been much more of a generalist than I used to be. Well, I guess I didn’t use to be at all. I am now being a bit of a generalist, whereas before as laser focused. But I do have this sense of, I know that I’ve contributed to the world and made it a better place. And that’s a cool thing to be able to say to yourself, to know, concretely, I have improved the world. So now when somebody is upset at me for refusing a dinner invitation or whatever, I can just wholeheartedly shrug it off because I’m like, All right, so one person’s upset that I’m not coming to dinner. I don’t care. I know that I’ve done net positive things for the world, so I really don’t care if somebody is upset. That’s a really, really nice feeling. I think that’s where it comes from. It’s like this whole hearted knowing that I’ve made the world a better place. But lastly, the stuff you’re talking about before that, the laser focus, I think anything to whether you want to lose weight or get rich or whatever it may be. You have to have a huge yes that’s pulling you forward to help you say no to everything else. It’s when you don’t have a huge yes that you end up saying these little tiny yeses to everyone else.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah, I love that. And having that clarity of purpose, that huge why, that this is what I want to do. And to be so clear about it, I mean. Where did that come from? Did you have any mentors in your life or any examples who said, Well, this person can do it like this, I can do it like this? Or was it something more organic? And you just looking back, you’re like, Well, this is just what I want to do. This is how I want to live. I’m being useful to other people and good enough sorry, partiers in the rock.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I mean, an early role model for me was Prince, which is funny because when he was my role model, he was kind of famously straight edged, right? Like, if you would read into the details of how he worked, he was like an absolute workaholic. He would stay in the studio for like 38 hours at a time, and they’d have to bring in three different engineers in 12 hour shifts to work alongside him because he just wouldn’t quit. No drugs, no drinking, would kick people out of his band if they were caught with drugs or drinking. And I loved that, like super focus. Because it felt to me like imagine if you were 16 or something and your coach is telling you that you could be an Olympic gold medal winner in your athletic field. If you focus and to be an Olympic gold medal winner is something that a million people want, but only one in a million is going to get, right. So you know that you need to have that one in a million focus, drive and discipline, to be that one that wins the gold, right? That’s how I was feeling as a musician. I wanted to be that one in the million and I was that driven and that focused on achieving it, not just fame. You know, you can quickly get famous by shooting the president.
Mark Podolsky
If it’s not fame, it’s not money. It’s not women. What was that? That intrinsic motivation to be the best.
Derek Sivers
That was it. It was the intrinsic motivation to be the best.There was nothing. Because you want to. I don’t know if you’ve ever made music. I mean, you write, you wrote your book, you write your blog, you created this. You have like a vision inside of how something could be. Maybe you have like the start of an idea for a song in your head and you think, Ooh, if I do this right, this could be great. Like, I’ve got the tiniest seed of a melody and I can kind of hear the groove in my head. Man, if I turn this into reality, right? It’s going to be amazing. And so this song, per song, there’s this intrinsic drive to, like, make this song idea what it could be and then make the recording as good as it can be, and then make your performance on that recording as good as it can be, you know, to sing your best, to perform your best or whatever it may be. And then there’s the bigger picture of like, I think with the right focus, I can become a truly great songwriter or musician or performer or entertainer, whatever your niche may be. If you are fascinated and driven by that goal. Then yeah, its own intrinsic motivation, the desire to be great at something. It’s also like creating beauty. It’s putting something great into the world and then seeing if you can do it. It’s like a personal challenge. Can I do it? Can I become one of the world’s greatest performers? Writers, authors.
Mark Podolsky
Right. But, you know, as someone who has written a book and I’m writing my second book. At some point I have to lock the manuscript. And I have to just live with the fact that this is just the best I did at this time. And maybe I’ll think of something a year from now that would really improve it because of some experience that I had not have a chance to experience yet. Do you ever have that difficult moment of saying, well, it’s time to ship?
Derek Sivers
No. I think I’m always so eager to be done with it. I think by the time I’ve spent some time on it, I’m like, Oh, please, just get this done. I just want to move on to the next thing. Now I want to move ahead. I mean, that said, that’s how I internally perceive it. I’m sure somebody else from the outside would say, Dude, you spent four years on one little book that’s only 118 pages. I think you have a hard time letting go. But I think that’s not what I was doing. It just took that long to explore every angle. Sorry, I’m referring to my newest book, How To Live. It just took me that long to explore all the angles I wanted to explore and edit it down to the succinctness that I wanted. It just took me four years of work to do it. But that wasn’t like a fear of letting go or a reluctance to let go. I think I was super eager the whole time to let go. I really wanted it to be done.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah. Now, Anything You Want, was that 2014?
Derek Sivers
2011 the first time.
Mark Podolsky
Oh.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. And I just have a new actually, I haven’t even announced this yet, that there’s a new 10th anniversary improved edition that’s going to be out any day now.
Mark Podolsky
Okay, great. Fantastic. So that was the first book of yours that I read. But more recently, like the last few years, I started with “Your Music and People”, then “Hell Yeah or No” what’s worth doing. And then my favorite of all favorites and my most recommended book is “How to Live”. Before we get to “How to Live”, in “Hell Yeah or No”, there’s one of my favorite chapters. Whenever anybody asks me about their life or what they should do or any kind of advice. I always say Derek Sivers wrote the most amazing two page chapter on this called “Happy,Smart and Useful”. And it’s a theme I discuss so often with young people, especially, who think in a more myopic way. Can you just talk a little bit about that chapter?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I’d love to. I have to keep reminding myself of this all the time. Sometimes that’s the reason to write something publicly. So that the public can help echo it back to you, to help you remind you of something that matters to you. I very often find myself in a position of asking what’s worth doing. You know, I have three different options on my plate, or ten different options or two options and which one should I do? So for me, I realized it comes down to three things: What would make me most happy? What would be smart and what would be most useful to others?
Mark Podolsky
And define smart
Derek Sivers
Yes, having a smart strategy. Is there another word for that? Effective? Yeah. Let’s say that’s like a synonymous with effective. Let’s do an example of somebody not being smart and this is an easy one to pick at. But if somebody wants to help eliminate poverty. So they are working as a lawyer in Wall Street Manhattan, and they quit their job as a lawyer because they feel that it’s not helping poverty. So they quit and they move to Kenya, where they’re helping to thatch roofs on houses. That might make them feel better and technically they are doing something good. So they’re happy and they’re being useful to others, but they’re not being smart because the most effective thing they could have done if they really wanted to help eliminate poverty is to keep their job on Wall Street. Keep making as much money as they can, and then donate that money to people that are already in Kenya and just use money as the way instead of getting on a plane and grabbing a hammer and helping. So that’s an example of being happy and useful but not smart.
Derek Sivers
So I have to think about that with myself, too. How I’m achieving something. If I want to help people achieve tech independence is like a recent mission of mine. There are dumb ways to do it and smart ways to do it. So am I doing this in a smart way? Am I pursuing this goal in a smart way? Happy is pretty obvious. Doing something that makes you just feel warm and fuzzy happy because you could do something smart and useful that doesn’t make you happy. We all know examples of that. And you can do something that makes you happy and is smart but is not useful to others. So those are those people that just spend all their time on SEO and crap like that, but they’re really just doing nothing of any use to anybody else. But hey, maybe it’s making them money and it’s making them happy, but it’s not useful to others. To me, those ideas ultimately feel empty. So yeah, happy, smart and useful. Trying to find the intersection of all three of those.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah. And then I’d like the idea in the book of the person who’s smart and useful is like that tiger parent that tells your kid, go to the Ivy League school. Get that crazy job on Wall Street, or become a doctor or a lawyer. But that’s not what they really want to do to make them happy. And it saps the joy out of life for them.
Derek Sivers
Then I think it’s also like rusted the engine. The perfect engine would be like a perpetual motion machine. That has no friction. That should just go could go forever. I find that when people do things that are useful and smart but don’t make them happy. Then it’s like a lot of friction in the engine. Like every day is hard for them. They’re doing things smart, they’re being useful, but the engine is grinding. You know,there’s a lot of friction there. So that’s why it’s just objectively important. It’s not being individualistic, hedonistic to focus on your happiness. It’s actually just good strategy because whatever makes you happy will make you into a very effective engine of productivity.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And when I’m doing a project and I’m feeling like, Oh, this isn’t making me happy. I immediately outsource it or delegate. Unless it’s something worth really going deeper with. I’m like, Well, I just have to embrace the suck on this.
Derek Sivers
Right? Because there’s deep happy and shallow happy. Shallow happy can be like this makes me happy right now. Deep happy could be like, all right, this makes me unhappy now, but happy long term, right? So the obvious example is it would make me happy to eat a bowl of ice cream at every meal, but it would make me long term unhappy to be carrying around that ice cream in my belly. And it would make me less happy short term to just have a bowl of sprouts for lunch. But it might make me deeper happy long term to have had that discipline and better health.
Mark Podolsky
Exactly. Exactly. So you write the difference between success and failure can be as simple as keeping in touch. Now, why do you say that? Now you write about your system, but can you expand on that?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. It would help to know that I’m coming from the bias of being in the music business for 15 years. Where it’s a gig economy. Jobs happen because of somebody you know. It’s like because the friend of a friend will get you a gig. Now you’re writing songs for today’s biggest pop stars that can come because of somebody you knew that knew somebody that’s working in the recording studio where that pop star is recording. Different fields are different. But the field I was in was all about who you know. I think a lot of other industries have this as well. It’s over and over and over and over and over again. I would find that the best opportunities came from not only somebody I knew, but somebody I had just recently talked with. So say I hadn’t talked with a friend of mine in three months, a guy I knew, just an acquaintance that works at a radio station or something like that. We meet up, we have a coffee. And the very next day he would say like, Oh, hey, Derek, I was talking with a friend of mine, you know, who’s a booking agent, and he was asking me, who do I know as such? I really want you to meet him. These things would always happen just like a day or so after I had reached out and got in in touch with somebody because I was at the forefront of their mind. When they encounter somebody else, they’re thinking of me because we just met yesterday. So that’s when I realized the importance of not just knowing a lot of people, but keeping in touch with them so that you can stay at the forefront of their mind. So when they’re out there also meeting other people, they think of you and can refer you to opportunities. So that was from a real observation in my own career. That all my great opportunities came from someone I knew. More specifically, somebody I had just recently been in touch with.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah, and I could argue that really applies to every aspect of life. If you want to be successful, whether it’s with family, friends, business, your profession, we’re all interconnected. If you really, truly want to be smart, happy and useful. This is like the ninja tactic that no one does. I was just talking to a buddy last night. I’m like, How good are you at keeping in touch? He’s like, Oh, I’m terrible at it. Like, I’m terrible too. Derek Sivers has a system. Could you talk a little bit about the system?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. So this came by the way, from going to conferences. I used to go to a lot of conferences and I was blown away by the fact that even when I was like a VIP running CD baby, like 100 people would hand me their business cards. Let me turn that around. I would hand out my contact information to like 100 people, and I would only hear from like one or two of them afterwards. To me, they had missed the whole point of the conference, which is like you’re just there to make initial connections, but everything happens in the follow up afterwards. Yeah, you’re just at the conference to make a quick face to face like, Oh, hey, you’re Mark. I’m Derek. Nice to meet you finally. Shake your hand and have that, like, in person thing instead of just for the name and the email box. But then all the real stuff happens afterwards, right? So my system for keeping in touch actually came from a book. Sorry are you talking about the ABCDE thing?
Mark Podolsky
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. So that that came directly from a book. I should give props words too, called Guerilla PR with gorilla spelled G-u-e-r-r-i-l-l-a PR by Michael Levine. And the book is outdated now because it’s actually pre-internet, which is funny how that just changed everything. It’s actually kind of weird to read a book about productivity, concrete tactics that was written pre-internet. But Michael Levine was a publicist in Los Angeles. He shared his method of the the A-list, B-list, C-list, D-List. So he said, The A-list are the people that are the most important to your career. Make sure that you’re in touch with them, like every week or two in some way. He said the B-list of people that are somewhat important to your career, keep in touch with them every couple of months. C-List are the people that are just the rest. So make sure you keep in touch with them maybe twice a year. And the D-List. Let’s say those are people you’ve demoted a bit, but you don’t want to lose touch completely. So just once a year, check in and make sure that you have their current contact info. So I just made this into a system when I was an aspiring musician that I had my A, B, C list and I would just kind of go through and I would just tag like the last time I contacted this person. I’d reach out, get in touch, and then when they replied, I’d say, okay 15th of November. And so I just tag it. So I knew that two weeks later, All right, it’s the 30th November, it’s time to reach out to this guy again because it’s been two weeks. It’s just a good system to make yourself do it. Because we usually don’t feel like it but if you think, Oh, here we go. It’s shallow happy versus deep happy, right? Like immediate happiness yes, you’d rather just watch a movie. Long term happy. I think you’ll usually be thankful long term that you reached out and kept in touch with people?
Mark Podolsky
Absolutely. Absolutely. You have now re-inspired me to set up this system. In fact, I was thinking about it last night and I just texted my aunt Sheri, who I haven’t talked to like three months. I’m like, No, this takes literally a second and meant the world to her. Just a quick update. So it really affects every aspect of your life. Your Music and People, creative and considerate fame. I hate this title. I’ll tell you why. Because you’re excluding all the people that really need to read this book, that art and music. It is one of, if not the best marketing books on the planet. Everyone should read this book if you are marketing. And Derek has the best spin on marketing is being considerate. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Well, first, thank you for the the honesty about the title. I chose that on purpose because long ago I read a book called “The Inner Game of Tennis” that also many people in many fields have said, Oh my God, this is one of the best books on performance strategy. Even though if you’ve never played tennis and have no intention to, but by somebody using the example they know of tennis, you can read it metaphorically and apply it to whatever you’re doing. So yeah, I had written Your Music and People directly to musicians during my ten years at CD Baby. It was directed at them and I thought, I could make this more generic for a generic audience, but no, fuck it. Like, I don’t need massive fame. I’ve had enough. I’m going to keep this niche. I’m going to call it “Your Music and People”. Smart people like Mark will have to read it metaphorically. And if somebody is unable to do that, well, I don’t care. Maybe they’ll leave it to people like you to share out the message to your industry, which is kind of cool. Like you can read Your Music and People and then you can translate it to land geeks. So sorry I forgot the second half of your question.
Mark Podolsky
Well yeah, you definitely answered that question about.
Derek Sivers
Oh, considerate, the definition of marketing is being considerate.
Mark Podolsky
But it’s also in the book, like you want to exclude a lot of people and I think the title is doing that. Which by the way, is great marketing. Then let the people that do get it say, Oh no, this is not a book about music. This is about marketing.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Which I love when people catch on to that. So yeah, marketing is being considerate. I probably got to give biggest props to Seth Godin for this mindset. I used to study marketing a lot and Seth was one of the biggest influences on me. But also there was a whole series of books called called Guerilla Marketing by J. Conrad Levinson, I think was his name.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah, Yeah.
Derek Sivers
And I think that was the underlying theme in all of those as well, which is like the essence of marketing is to think of everything from the other person’s point of view and make it as appealing and enticing and fun and memorable to do business with you. Like that’s what marketing is really about. It’s not about spamming or advertising or any of that other crap that gets mixed in. Like the essence of marketing is to be considerate of others. So I would just apply what I learned from years of studying marketing in general to my work with musicians. And try to show them how they can try to reach people’s hearts and minds better by thinking this way.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah, I love it. And one of the great lessons in Your Music and People is the value of being quirky. Do you have a favorite story where someone was quirky and it really made a big impact, not just on you, but on their business as well? Certainly we can talk, it’s been talked about ad nauseum and probably already knows about. When you’ve got a CD baby receipt. Google the email.
Derek Sivers
Just Google CD Baby Confirmation Shipping email. Which I love, by the way. So yeah, those of you searching for it. It’s 1999, in 10 minutes I wrote a really quirky post order confirmation email. And what’s fun is that yeah, that was 10 minutes of my life in 1999 and still including like yesterday, somebody sent me an email saying, “Dude, I just bought this overpriced toothbrush from this like, boutique toothbrush company and you got to see the shipping confirmation they sent me.” And it was a totally like a spin off on my email. Some people think you should be upset, somebody’s stealing your idea. But I am so flattered. It’s 2022 and some people in a toothbrush company somewhere are still making a version of my email that I wrote in 1999. That is such a great feeling. That is so badass, so no. I love that. Yeah, the email has been spread widely, but even better it’s been imitated. In fact, I live in New Zealand now and I just bought some, what do you call them? Compression socks. They’re supposed to be good for your circulation when you’re exercising.
Derek Sivers
I’d never tried them before. So, like, “All right, let me try some compression socks”. I bought some bothy socks from a company called Lxr, I think. So get the socks and then I get the confirmation email that says like “Your socks have been put onto a satin pillow”. And I said, “Wait a minute, are they sending me this because they recognize my name?” So I had to reply back saying, “Hi, my name is Derek Sivers. You just sent me this email. Can I ask you like, is this the same email you send to everybody?” And she said, “Yeah”. I said, “Oh my God, thank you.” So it’s like it was my email from 1999 coming back at me from a sock company in New Zealand that had like just made a version of my email. I’m sorry. So no, you wanted an example the benefits of being quirky. Let’s do a more concrete example of real world, not just online, is when I used to go to all these musician conferences or let’s say music business conferences and meet a lot of people. A lot of people are just trying to be normal. They’re just like, okay, hi. They shake your hand, they dress well, and they try to have good manners and they look you in the eye and they say, “Well, it was really nice to meet you.”
Derek Sivers
They’re very professional. Every now and then you meet some that just come out, smelling bad, looking over you. Like, “Hey, motherfucker, what’s going on? You look like the kind of dude that likes to party, man. You know what I’m going to give to you?” Like just that kind of outrageous behavior is obviously way more memorable. So I’d go to a conference like South by Southwest. I’d meet 1000 people in a week, and a week later, the only ones that I remembered were the extreme characters. And same thing even when I would get calls on the phone, you know, everybody else is acting professional. And then you have that one guy that’s like, “Hey motherfucker, what’s going on? I’m from Texas. You remember me? That’s right. You remember me! Fucking spit on the ground next to you. That’s why you remember me.” Those people, of course, stand out. So I think when all of us are trying to be professional and thinking this is what we need to do to be successful. It helps to remember that actually, no, in fact, it’s counterintuitive. The ones that stand out with outrageous behavior often have a competitive advantage over those that are trying to be normal.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Okay. So my favorite book of all the books you’ve written is “How to Live”, which is my favorite title, because it really just gets down to the essence of, first of all, I love Stoicism. And really the Stoics were trying to teach people how to live. And somehow it got lost, and now it’s coming back. And so tell us about, how did you write this book and what was your process?
Derek Sivers
Sure. “How to Live” is an homage to a book called Sum, S-u-m by David Eagleman, and I highly recommend everybody read it. It’s my single favorite book of all time, if I had to pick just one. It’s a tiny little book you can read in 2 hours or less. And what I love about “Sum” is its format. Its subtitle is “40 Tales from the Afterlives”, and it is 40 tiny little short stories like little fiction stories all answering the same question: What happens when you die? And so one chapter will say, “When you die, you’re suddenly in this big giant mansion and it’s alone and you walk around for days.” And the next chapter will say, “When you die, you find out that in your last life you chose to be a man. But in fact, you can choose to be any animal you want, any creature you want. So you decide to be a horse.” It tells this great story about that. But what I just thought was breathtaking was the format to have the essence of the book be one question: What happens when you die? And then for each chapter to answer the question completely differently and deliberately conflicting with the other chapters. Right? So you’re like, wait a second, “Chapter three just said,when you die, this happens.
Derek Sivers
Now chapter four is saying, when you die, something completely different happens.” So which is it? How cool to have all of those in one book. It’s like we’re used to each book having one point of view, right? Like anybody who listens to this podcast, you’ve probably seen a lot of books who say, the way to live your life is to have atomic habits. No the way to live your life is to not give a fuck. No, the way to live your life is to do everything in 4 hours a week, whatever it may be. Each book generally disagrees with the rest and says, “No, no, no, this is the way.” And so I loved the book Sum by David Eagleman so much, and I read it twice in two years and shortly after reading it the second time, I just had that like lightning bolt of inspiration. I went, “Oh, oh my God, I need to write a book called How to Live in that same format where every chapter is going to disagree with all the other chapters.” So it’s like the question of the book is how should you live? And chapter one will say, “You should live for the future. Everything is for the future.
Derek Sivers
Serve the future.” Chapter two will say “You should live completely for the present. There is only now there’s no such thing as the past. The past is your memory. The future is just your imagination. All we really have is now.” Then the third chapter would say, “Here’s how to live. Live entirely for others.” Fourth chapter would say, “Live entirely for yourself.” And with this kind of lightning bolt of inspiration, I spent the next four years of pretty much full time work, sometimes like way more than full time, just making that original idea happen. And I think I did it. So I spent two years putting all of my ideas into this, like 1300 pages of a rough draft and then having to categorize them into like how many chapters I thought this fell into, you know, trying to merge these ideas, saying, okay, well, this is all generally around the subject of getting rich or this is all generally around the subject of getting famous, for example, is one chapter. And then I had a big, verbose, lengthy thing that I wouldn’t want anybody to read. So then I spent two more years editing it down to this tiny little 118 page thing that I just adore that.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah. And if you want to see the essence of something in the writing, it is so pithy. Really I mean, maybe I’ll do another podcast, which is reading a chapter. So for people to understand how much wisdom is packed into this little book is really brilliant, and I don’t know how you did it. And my next question is like, which chapters float for you? Which were the hardest to write and did anything not make the cut? I mean these are 27 conflicting answers. And one weird conclusion, which I love the conclusion.
Derek Sivers
I had two. Actually it’s funny, just last week looked at, I remember that I had cut two chapters. And nobody’s ever asked this. The two chapters that I cut was one just about leverage. It was about working through others saying “The way to live is you’re not going to make a dent in the universe by doing everything yourself. In fact, do it yourself is the opposite of how you should live. You should work entirely through others to leverage the labor of others.” And I wrote a whole chapter on that, but there wasn’t quite enough to say about that. So I took its best ideas and I put them into other chapters where they applied. Oh, then I had a chapter that was just on imagination saying, “Your unique human capability in this world. We are the imagining creatures. Beavers make dams. Cheetahs run fast. Humans imagine we can do counterfactuals and thought experiments and imagine things that don’t exist. This is our unique capability in the world. Therefore, this is what you should spend your life doing to be uniquely human. You should spend your time imagining.” But then I realized a lot of my best points in that could fit into other chapters instead. So yeah, those are the two chapters that didn’t make the cut. So up until the last minute. Yeah, it’s 27 now. I think there was a rough draft of a cover that accidentally got spread that said something like, you know, 29 conflicting answers. At the last minute I chopped it down to 27. And even then when I thought I was all done, I gave the book to some friends and one of them pointed out that the chapter on mastery, like, “here’s how to live, like pick something difficult and spend your whole life mastering it.”
Derek Sivers
She pointed out that chapter was almost twice as long as the others, and it felt like I was giving an unfair bias to that one chapter. As if like, “Yeah, yeah, all these other chapters. But yeah, this is the real one.” And I went, “Oooh yeah, I definitely don’t want that.” So I looked again. I went, “Oh God, yeah. I am kind of putting a little more personal bias into that chapter.” So I looked carefully at that, and I chopped that one down to half in length. So now it’s the same length as the others, because I really wanted the reader to feel that every answer was equally true. And so that you’d get caught up in each one so that because that’s how it was with writing it, that every time I’m working under chapter saying, “here’s how to live, live for the future, move to Korea, move where everything is about innovation, where all the new stuff is happening, live only for the future.” Whatever chapter I was writing, I would get so completely convinced that this is in fact the answer. I know that there are other chapters in this book, but in fact this is the one that really has the truth in life. And then the week later, I’d be working on the next chapter, and I felt the same about the next chapter, like “Oh, you know what? No, never mind that last one. This is truly the answer.” You know, follow the pain. The answer to life or the way to live is to follow pain.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah. I’m just like, you know, just for the listeners, just so you guys know how how wise this book is, How to Live. I’m just going to go through the chapters because they’re so good.” Be independent. Commit. Fill your senses. Do nothing. Think super long term. Intertwine with the world. Make memories. Master something.” So this masters something was the one that.
Derek Sivers
Was too long a difficult I indulged in too much. Yeah.
Mark Podolsky
“Let randomness rule. Pursue pain. Do whatever you want now. Be a famous pioneer. Chase the future. Value only what has endured. Learn. Follow the great book. Laugh at Life. Prepare for the worst. Live for others. Get rich. Reinvent yourself regularly. Love” which I want to talk about in a second. “Create. Don’t die. Make a million mistakes. Make change. Balance everything. A great conclusion.” And I do not want to spoil it for the reader and talk about the conclusion. I’d like to just know if you made that weird conclusion, knowing in advance that it was going to be subject to people’s interpretation.
Derek Sivers
Oh, yeah. When I told you I had that flash of inspiration to write this book, I did not know how it was going to end. And for the first year or two, I was kind of flummoxed about “God, how am I going to end this? I know I want to present these different views” but I think the book, Sum by David Eagleman also doesn’t. He just presents the last chapter on “Here’s what happens when you die.” And then the book’s over.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
But I thought, “God, I should do something to wrap it up.” But then I thought, “You know what? No, that’s what all these fucking business books do, is they try to wrap everything up with a conclusion.” It’s actually my least favorite chapter of every non-fiction book is the last chapter that’s trying to wrap up everything. And you’re just looking at it going, I know. You’re not telling me anything new. You’re just doing this because you feel some sense of like “And therefore, that’s why I say once again, I just want to reiterate”, I hate the last chapter of every non-fiction book. So this isn’t a business book. Like this is actually more like art than business. And the best Bob Dylan lyrics, the best films are the ones that leave you going, huh? I think they meant this, but it could mean this. That ambiguity is so beautiful. So, yeah, about two years in, I went, “Oh, I know how I’m going to end this.” And yeah, for those listeners, the book ends with just two images. So after 27 chapters of words on How To Live, the grand conclusion is just two pages long with one image per page. And those two images leave you with my ambiguous conclusion. To wrapping up the book.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah. I love it. Let’s talk about love.NAnd I’m not sustaining to kiss up the whole book. Every sentence is really powerful. But for some reason, every sentence in the “Love” chapter really resonated with me. I tried to just pick one sentence and just have you expand on it. It’s not necessarily my favorite sentence, but I just love this idea. You write: “Work is love in action.” What do you mean by that?
Derek Sivers
Hmm. Okay. The essence of the love chapter is defining love as connecting. And I think I got that idea from Steve Pavlina, who wrote a really interesting book called “Personal Development for Smart People”. I think that’s where I got the idea of like, love is connection. Like when you love somebody, you’re connecting in every definition of the word. You’re like getting into their mind. You’re getting to understand them. You’re giving them your full attention. And so it’s the same thing with say a place. You could go get on a plane and go to Paris and take a picture of the Eiffel Tower and find a McDonald’s and get on a plane and go back home. Or you could go to a place and like really connect with it. It’s like a different way of traveling to stay at somebody’s house. To stay at a local house to try to see everyday life or to kind of live, get away from the tourist circles to try to really connect with a place. To watch films from there, to read books from there and to really connect with a place, to try understand what it is to be somebody growing up in this place.
Derek Sivers
So then with your work. Yeah, you can just kind of like push papers from one side of the desk to the other. You can answer emails or whatever, and you could just be annoyed or you could really connect with your work. Which ideally should be about serving others. Um, doing things that are valuable for other people. Sorry, I guess I’m talking about business work right now, but, you know, doing things that are valuable to other people so that they reward you with this social neutral thing we have called money that is like this neutral transfer of value. So they can say that, you know, “That was valuable to me. Thank you. Here’s money in return for what you’ve done.” Giving your work your full attention is a way of loving the world anyway. If your work is really serving others and you give it your full attention. Like, I’m talking about like you really connect with what you’re doing. Then doing your work is like love in action.
Mark Podolsky
I love it. I love it. Okay. You brought up travel. I know you’ve lived all over the world and you’ve immersed. I am actually planning on going around the world and channeling my inner Derek Sivers. Selfishly. What’s your best tips for seeing the world and immersing? And then we’re going to get back to the Get Rich chapter.
Derek Sivers
Okay, Now, this is fun. I was actually just before, like half an hour before you and I hit record on this. I was talking with an Indonesian friend of mine living in Mexico City about this exact subject.
Mark Podolsky
I was just in Bali, by the way, and it’s so magical. Oh, cool.
Derek Sivers
Oh cool. Yeah. Okay so, my best advice when travelling. Everybody has different goals. A lot of people travel for different reasons. Some just want to like go to somewhere warm. Some want to party with strangers, but my advice for traveling like me is to everywhere you go. First, stay a long time and.
Mark Podolsky
Can you define long time?
Derek Sivers
Well. See, this is like my nomadic thing. Ideally, like six months, I think of everywhere I go as like moving there. I don’t really think of it as travel. I think of it as like, this is my new home. So that’s my biggest advice, is that even if you’re only there for a week. Try to imagine that this is your new home now. This is it. This is where you live. Try to live like a local would instead of staying at the Four Seasons Hotel or some posh thing. Try to live like most people there live and see if you can do like a home. Stay with somebody and have them bring you around on their daily routines to their market and show you their groceries and explain to you the mindset. Every place has its own ways, you know. That’s what I love about going to vastly different places is it’s like a living philosophy. You know, you can read philosophy books by Nietzsche versus Heidegger versus Immanuel Kant or whatever, and you can just read it and furrow your brow at it and go, “Hmm”. But to me till you go to Rio de Janeiro or Singapore or Mecca. It’s like these are living philosophies. Like people in these places have a top to bottom philosophy on life that they are embodying and living every day, and it works for them. And the philosophy of Singapore may not or probably would not work in Chicago. And the philosophy of Chicago would not work in Calcutta. But but these places work. And that’s what’s so cool, is that we grow up in a certain place where we have a sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. You know, I grew up mostly in Chicago, and I felt that this is the way things are done. And you have peanut butter sandwiches and you do this and you drive this kind of car and you live this kind of life. And this is how you live or even just like, say, like the American individualism values this very like me, me, me entrepreneur.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah. I said to the guy in Bali, I said, “Hey, do you want to switch places?” He said, “No, I couldn’t. I could never do my family.”
Mark Podolsky
Yes. Yeah. Even the family thing. Like when I got to Singapore and really made it my home. So yeah listeners, I moved to Singapore in 2010 and I intended to stay forever. In fact, I became a permanent resident, which is just like one step below citizenship. My son was born there. I made him a permanent resident too. I thought that he was going to not only live there, but every male Singaporean has to do two years in the military at age 18. So I thought my son was going to serve in the Singapore Army for two years in the year 2030, and I was committed to it long term thinking like, “This is it, this is my home. This is where my son is going to grow up Singaporean.” But then after two years, my wife just hated it for some reason and we decided to move to New Zealand. So then New Zealand became like, “All right, looks like we’re going to live here instead.” And I’ve been here for years and became a citizen and fully get the New Zealand way of life. Oh, but sorry, but let me go back to Singapore. While I was in Singapore, there were a lot of local values that were really clashing with my American. Particularly the California American values, where I really thought like, “No, no, no, you’re doing it wrong. Singaporeans here, let me show you how to live.” And they finally, you know, my Singaporean friends, I spent a lot of time mostly just with like I had a lot of really, really dear friends in Singapore that I spent a lot of time with and traveled with and really got to know well.
Derek Sivers
And they really slowly explained to me the mindset and it slowly finally made sense. It’s like I imagine it would be really hard for somebody who was born, raised very Catholic to really understand Buddhism or somebody who is raised completely Buddhist, to really understand Islam or something like that. It would be really hard to switch religions, right? And that’s what it feels like going to another culture. And really getting into it like a local. It’s like, okay, show me. Just be humble and it’s little subtle things like saying we instead of they or you. Like, instead of saying, “How do you do this here instead” now you say things like, “Well, how do we do things here?” It’s like this is my home now. This is where I live. So sorry. I took too many little side tangents there. But my main point was my single biggest travel hack to get the most out of your travel is try to live as local as possible. And really try to convince yourself that you live here now, that this is your home now and what you would do if you needed to completely assimilate into this culture. And if you do that even for one week, even if you only have one week, I think you’ll come away with so much of a better, more interesting experience that expands your sense of self and your self identity and your understanding of the world, then if you just stayed at a nice hotel, had some nice breakfasts and saw some wow things and took lots of pictures, you know?
Mark Podolsky
I totally agree with that. And that’s what I’m really most excited about, is just expanding my perspective and learning more about the world, which will then help me learn more selfishly about myself. I think there’s a lot of value to that and just being super aware of these stories we tell ourselves. And I’m this or I’m that. But no, it’s just the way I was conditioned or we were conditioned.
Derek Sivers
Yes, it helps so much to realize not just intellectually but like viscerally in your body to to understand that where you grew up was just circumstance by the fact of where your grandparents happened to be when your parents met. And so that’s where they live and that’s why you believe such and such. That’s only circumstance. It’s not because it’s right or it’s true. It was just the accident of your birth and where your parents happen to live. So it really helps to go somewhere else and really internalize and go, “Oh, I could have grown up here in Zanzibar” and I would have had these beliefs had I grown up here. So therefore, like I could live here now and adopt these beliefs. And these are also right, it helps you put your original beliefs in perspective. And I think ultimately the reason I’m fascinated with all of this is philosophy. That it’s my favorite thing in philosophy is to understand a different point of view that I had never considered. That helps me look at not just my present, but my past and maybe my future in a different way through this new lens. And I think traveling is a great way to do that to immerse yourself in another philosophy.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah, I’ve so many follow up questions because you brought up philosophy in different lenses, but I wanted to be respectful of time.
Derek Sivers
No, don’t worry. Let’s go. Keep going. This is fun.
Mark Podolsky
Okay. All right, well, let’s just talk about that then. Can you think of something recent where you were exposed to a different lens or different philosophy and the light bulb just went off for you? You’re like, Oh, interesting, huh? I never thought about.
Derek Sivers
While traveling or just like, reading or anything.
Mark Podolsky
Either. Anything. Just in your in your life.
Derek Sivers
Oh, I see. Well, here, I’ll just give you the first one that comes to mind and tell me if this is what you were asking about that just a few days ago. Maybe the reason I just gave like two Islam examples as we were talking about travel is I just finished a book called “What Everyone Should Know About Islam”. It was very much like a high level Islam for Dummies. But I learned a bunch of stuff that I didn’t know. And I think it’s fascinating, this idea that it’s like in the year 630 that the Quran was written as like the direct word of God. God told Gabriel this or you know, through Gabriel told Mohammed this. Written down word for word in Arabic in this book and that’s it. That’s the final message. And sorry, that’s not what’s fascinating to me. What’s fascinating is that there are many countries that follow Islamic law where it’s like instead of law being something that’s constructed through popular voting and lobbying and debate. It’s this idea like, no, it’s done. It was decided like, what is written in the Quran is the law of this whole country. It’s done and we all just follow this. I was thinking that it gives a very kind of peaceful uniformity to understanding, to say like, “No, this one book is everything. That’s it, this explains how we live. These are our laws, this is our approach to living. This is everything is answered in this one book from the year 630.” I think that’s fascinating.
Mark Podolsky
And you actually write about it in “How To Live” in the two chapters, “Follow The Great Book” and only read what has endured.
Derek Sivers
It is a combination of that. You’re right. But I think it interested me like politically. Now, I think I understand just the tiniest bit the concept of Islamic law of a country’s laws being just based on the Quran. And even the book explains, like there are kind of four different courts of Islamic law and four different parts of the world because they’ve kind of adapted to local situations, but it’s still essentially following the same stuff. And I think there’s even something in the Quran that says something like, no mistake can be made on something where more than one agree or where most agree, then there’s no mistake or something like that. Whereas to say the four courts of Islamic law around the world may have there’s some other local differences, but they all agree on the core stuff. And so that’s kind of cool to say, like, no, this core stuff is we’re all agreeing. To be clear to anybody listening, like I’m not subscribing entirely to this, but I just found it really interesting, this idea of congruency, whereas, you know, like right now in America, it’s a very incongruent, divided culture politically and how interesting it would be to live in a place that’s just. By definition all agreed on this one book.
Mark Podolsky
And I think it’s fascinating. I wonder if while you were reading it, did you notice any judgments coming up as in, “Oh my, this is really a rigid way of thinking. Why not be more flexible as times change and we evolve? But wow, this is just pure wisdom and this is how to live.” Did thoughts like that ever come up?
Derek Sivers
In short, no, as I’m reading it, because I’m like this with everything. I try to read about cultures that I don’t understand, and so I try with everything to really try it on. It’s like you’re handing me clothes. I’m going to put them on. I’m not going to look at them and go like, “That’s not what I usually wear.” Everything I’m reading, I’m putting it on. I’m going to wear it while I read it. I’m going to try to get into that mindset. So no, I think I’ve done this so much that whether it was reading the book about Islam last week or just a couple of months ago, Jordan Peterson’s 12 More Rules For Life. And today I’m finishing up a book about a guide to Nietzsche. So it’s like I’m trying to understand his mindset. So no, I don’t have the you’re wrong reaction anymore. With everything I read, I just try to go, “Hmm. All right. It’s working for somebody. Let me try to think about this.”
Mark Podolsky
Yeah. And for those of you that are listening, you’re like, “Oh, seems like Derek Sivers is really well read.” He is. And I have a link to all the books that he not only reads, but he actually writes these amazing summaries. And like a lot of the books, if not all the books before I buy a book, I go to your site first. I see how you rated it, like, oh, if it’s four or low I can can skip that. But if it’s five or higher and it’s interesting to me, I read your summary first, I’m like, “Oh, maybe I don’t need to read that based on the summary or I want to go way deeper into this.” And so I always know my next book based on what you’ve read and rated and reviewed. And so it’s just a very easy way for me to keep going with my education. So thank you for that. I was listening to the podcast and I thought, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to bring this up to Derek.” And he says “Everything that feels soulful in life is inefficient from vacations to food.” And he brings up Hinduism. He’s like, Hinduism is this not standardized religion. It’s like this open source religion, and it’s spread through birth. And he says, “Standardization is the killer of soulfulness.” So when you scale, you lose the magic. Think of your local coffee shop where your local burger place versus Starbucks and McDonald’s. And. The reason I wanted to bring that up to you is because from 2014 to 2018, while you’re on sabbatical, you answered 92,354 emails from 33,776 people. This is not scale.
Derek Sivers
No, it doesn’t.
Mark Podolsky
How do you think about things that don’t scale?
Derek Sivers
Well, you brought up three interesting points. The soulful things not scaling. I would push back on that idea a little bit to say that. Some of the happiest cultures in the world are very monoculture. Like Iceland, for example, has like virtually no crime because everybody knows each other. It’s small enough that people know each other and it’s quite a monoculture in Iceland. And I think it’s made them really happy. Whereas some of the most diverse cultures are some of the most conflicted because you have very different groups of people with an idea of what common sense is like. When everybody’s idea of common sense disagrees, you get a lot of upset. So I think standards help very different people interoperate.
Mark Podolsky
I think he’s saying this in the terms of business. Not necessarily of culture. I think he was bringing up Hinduism as a religion, but not in the cultural basis. Just as far as when you standardize something it’s really easy to compete and replicate. But when it’s open source and it’s hard to scale, it’s very hard to compete against that.
Derek Sivers
Okay. Interesting. Okay. By the way, can I ask what source did that come from? Do you know?
Mark Podolsky
That was Kunal Shah and he was talking on the Shane Parrish podcast.
Derek Sivers
Cool. Okay. So the scalability thing to me, first you have to know what’s your idea of enough that. Would you be happy to have $1 million? Would you be happy to have $10 million? Would you be happy to have 1000 true fans or 10,000 true fans? Is that enough for you, or will you not be happy until you’re the most famous human on earth with a mega 100 billion. You have to know that about yourself and be honest about that up front before you set out. Like you have to know why you’re doing what you’re doing, because it’s very different strategies to be a billionaire than to be a millionaire right? So for me, I knew early on that I did not want to be a billionaire. I didn’t want to be even as a company,for example I didn’t want to go public. Like when CD Baby was at its height, people were trying to convince me to go public. I was like absolutely not. They’re like, “But you could make so much more money.” I was like, “I don’t care. I don’t want that life.”
Derek Sivers
Because sorry, it needs to be said sometimes as a reminder that the reason we do anything is to be happy, right? The reason somebody’s listening to this wants $1,000,000 is to be happy, whether it’s because of what the million dollars could buy or what the story that you could tell yourself to say I’m a millionaire or to prove it to people that said you couldn’t or whatever it may be. The real reason is not the digits in the bank account. The real reason is the the happiness it gives you. And I’m defining happiness loosely, you can call it fulfillment, whatever you want to call it. And so along the way, there are some strategies or paths you could take that might not make as much money. But would make you happier. So you asked about my emails. Over 90% of the emails I get are just joy. There are people who say, “Oh my God, I read your book and it made a big difference to me.” It’s just so nice to hear that. Why would I want to, like, shut that off or outsource that?
Mark Podolsky
It is overwhelming. It is 92,354 emails. You are famous. That would be like Justin Bieber responding indivisually to every single one of his fans.
Derek Sivers
Okay. Okay.
Mark Podolsky
By the 100,000 fan at some point. There’s like a law of diminishing returns on that joy.
Derek Sivers
So I haven’t quite got there yet and sorry go ahead.
Mark Podolsky
So you haven’t quite got there yet. Could you imagine a time where if you get there, how would you respond?
Derek Sivers
Okay. Well first, it depends that the kind of quality conversation you’re having. Two, I can imagine if I was Justin Bieber, I wouldn’t want to hear 100,000 times, “Squeal, squeal, squeak. You’re so hot.” You don’t want to hear that too much. But if the people that you’re communicating with are like brilliant in their field, like oh, my God Mark, I’m talking to you. I’m a fan of what you’re doing. How badass that we’re in touch, I reached out to you because I just loved what you’re doing with Land Geek, and I saw these videos and then read the book. I was like, “Wow, this is this is really really interesting.” And so how cool that your email box is open to receive that message from me and how cool that mine was open to see that from you. How cool that we’re in touch now. It’s like what I was doing publicly and hell, I always say like the reason I do podcasts is because of the people I meet when I do. So I’ll just say it now instead of later, since we’re talking about it, that like my call to action always, for everybody listening to a podcast. Please, if you’ve listened to this whole thing and you liked it, email me. Because if you like the stuff I’m talking about, you’re my kind of person.
Derek Sivers
I’d like to know you. And I’ve gotten such joy out of the people around the world that I’ve met. Like, especially the ones that are in strange places. I just decided on a whim to go to Helsinki, Finland, a couple of years ago. Like, really like on a Thursday morning. I was like, “I feel like going to Helsinki tonight.” And so I left that night not knowing what to do. And so then I get in at like Thursday night at midnight in Helsinki, and I reached into my database and I’m like, “All right, who do I know in Helsinki?” And there were like 38 people in Helsinki that had reached out to me over the years. So I emailed the 38 people. I said, “I’m in Helsinki for four days, would you like to meet up?” And I met up with probably like 14 people from Helsinki in the groups of three or one or two at a time. One of them took me to a sauna. We’re sitting there naked in a sauna on the ocean. I’m like, “This is so cool that this person is like showing me the Finnish life.” And this is just somebody randomly that emailed me after reading an article of mine and liked what I said. And so to me it’s like, it’s so damn rewarding having this open communication with the world. But then you’re wondering, I can hear like and to me that’s kind of operationally.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah, operationally. Let’s go to the beginning of the conversation. You’re super, super focused. When you have a project, you’re clear. And now I’m imagining, like, I don’t even want to email you because I’m like, “Oh, he’s working. I don’t want to distract him from his work.”
Derek Sivers
Well, first, I don’t do my email every day. I don’t have it on my phone. I have never had email on my phone. In fact, I’ve never had email or a social media app ever installed on my phone, ever. So I really just use my phone for phone calls and texting friends. So I keep everything on my computer and I only go to my inbox when I feel like it. Like if I’ve had my head down in programming or writing for a number of hours, I need to shake it off. I need to do something else. Then I go answer all my emails, even if it’s like only five days sometimes. Yeah, it might take me a week to reply to an email because I was just fully engrossed in my work for six days and on the seventh day I felt like a break and I’ll do a week of email. But also operationally, it helps that I’ve made a lot of shortcuts for myself. I built my own email system, my own email client, and I built in 36 shortcuts of my 36 most commonly used sentences, you know, So A to Z, it’s 26 characters, 0 to 9 is another ten character. So I hit the backslash key and it opens up a menu of my 36 most used sentences.
Derek Sivers
So usually most emails only take me a few seconds to answer. I read it. I know it takes me maybe 10 seconds to read, 20 seconds to read, and then with four keys I’ve answered it and click send. Like I did communicate with that person. It’s just like I’m a motherfucker of a typer, you know? It wasn’t fake. It wasn’t like those companies where you say, “Sorry, how do I close my account?” And they send you a reply saying like, “Thank you for your business. We appreciate all you.” And you say, “Oh, you didn’t even read my message, didn’t you? You just sent me the wrong form letter.” So I’m never doing that. I’m reading people’s emails. But I’ve just learned over the years that whenever I’ve typed a sentence more than three or four times, I need to assign it a hot key. So that’s how I logistically am able to answer emails in like 30 seconds each and so 30 seconds each, that’s what, 120 per hour. Is that right? Yeah. And so I can go through 500 emails in a few hours and enjoy it. You know.
Mark Podolsky
I think that could be your tip of the week for sure.
Derek Sivers
Okay. Hot keys. You don’t even have to write your own email client. I think most computers, whether Mac or Windows or Linux or whatever, everything has some kind of like hot keys where you can assign a macro key to a whole sentence or phrase.
Mark Podolsky
I use aText and it saves me so much time with doing so many different types of emails. But as far as personal emails, now I’m going to start doing that because there are certain phrases I use consistently and it wouldn’t sound hollow like a big company responding to you.
Derek Sivers
Because it’s your real sentence, it’s the very thing that I’ve said repeatedly. It’s just like when I found that I’ve typed out a sentence multiple times over multiple days or weeks, it’s time to just give that sentence one key.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah, no. Okay, so let’s get back to How To Live, because in the Get Rich chapter you write, “Nothing destroys money faster than seeking status.” And my question is, was this a hard won lesson or were you able to avoid the status trap? And if so, how? Because let’s face it, the first half of life in your twenties and thirties. You want especially, I can imagine in your circles of musicians, you want status. And that could be just signaling to the ladies, “Hey, I got it going on. Check out this car, check out this watch.” Or did you have any influences that helped guide you with this?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, actually. I would be curious to ask somebody why I never had that. In fact, talk about like a culture that I don’t understand. I do not understand people who want status. I don’t get it at all. Like you just said, the thing about the car and the watch need, I don’t get it at all.
Mark Podolsky
Business is based on just status that are billion dollar businesses. Think about I think he’s like one of the wealthiest people in like top three in the world is LVMH that just owns all these luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Gucci. He owns all of those people. That’s third in the world status. It’s huge. You missed it Derek.
Derek Sivers
I mean, maybe somebody could tell me that I’m signaling status in my California style of the t-shirt and ripped jeans through the anti signaling the anti mimetic. Maybe that’s the case. Maybe it’s a product of my times. I actually just recently read an article that was like looking back at the nineties and its concept of selling out and the movie Reality Bites, which was a big hit movie in the nineties, kind of focusing on and they’re saying it’s funny to watch this now 30 years later where everybody’s worried about selling out. It’s like and people reflecting going out. “Yes, selling out is a thing we haven’t really said since the nineties.” And I was thinking, I wonder if that’s because of hip hop, that hip hop put it into the the popular culture, this idea that’s like, get all the money you can, get all the best stuff you can. So we’ll just pick somebody like Kanye West was doing ten years ago would have been absolutely scorned and in disgust in the nineties. It just like didn’t click in with like mid nineties culture of wanting to remain cool and independent and not sell out to the man. Make the cool choice, not the money choice, you know. So maybe I’m a product of growing up or being in those times, but maybe it comes from this thing that I said at the very beginning of the call.
Derek Sivers
That knowing that I’ve contributed like net positive to the world. Makes me thoroughly, to my core, not give the tiniest shit what anybody on earth thinks about me. Because I know that I’ve done my thing. So I have zero desire to signal. In fact, I think of this thing often when somebody is telling me that they’re thinking of doing this thing, whether it’s launching a project or traveling the world or going anywhere. I actually sometimes just ask them, do you still or would you still want to do this if you could not tell or show anybody that you’ve done it? If it truly remained a secret, would you still do it? Because a lot of people are just making their career choices and purchasing choices and everything choices based on how it looks to others. And I think that’s ultimately proven to be a bad motivator for decisions. It’s going to leave you feeling empty or on the hedonic treadmill. So I think you should be very aware of that. No I’ve never understood the status thing. I don’t get it. I’ve never felt the need for it. I don’t know why. That’s my guess.
Mark Podolsky
When you see it happen in your personal life, does it turn you off?
Derek Sivers
Yeah I just don’t understand it. Whether it’s like the the girl posing for Instagram photos or the guy driving the Ferrari or whatever. I just think for who? For what and who are you trying to attract?
Mark Podolsky
There are so many things you could be doing with this money.
Derek Sivers
Right! Or just like the kind of person who’s going to be attracted to a Rolex watch. Do you really want that person in your life? Is that your ideal mate? Is somebody who is wooed by a Rolex watch is that what you really want? I don’t think so. I think it’s some kind of shallow imitation of others. Like you don’t really know who you are, so you’re trying to do what others have told you you should want. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’ve always just been really insular and reflective. I just spend a lot of time in my diary thinking about what I really want, and I don’t spend a lot of time caring what other people think.
Mark Podolsky
Well, what you just said was very wise, because I’m always constantly thinking while reading your books, “How the hell does he come up with this stuff? And then make it so pithy.” I think you might have just answered that question, which is that you think deeply while you’re writing into your own private thoughts in journal. And then I can imagine, because you’re so well read. You’re having all these different influences come to you and then you’re like, “Oh, this makes a lot of sense.” And I can say it in a very pithy way where, you know, someone else might take them through paragraphs.
Derek Sivers
Those are two different things. So the reflecting. Yeah, I spend a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of time in my journal, hours a day, just writing, questioning myself. I’m often asking myself questions like, “Why am I doing this? What am I really after? Is that what I really want? What have I done that in the past? Did I like that in the past? Did I find that rewarding? What do I really want now? What am I lacking now?” And I try to answer all these things and ask more questions and just really reflective a lot. But then okay the craft, once I have an idea that feels like, “Oh, this is an idea worth sharing.” You know, where the craft of being so succinct comes from, I think was my 15 years as a songwriter. Because as a songwriter you have a melody that goes, you know, da da da da da da da. I think, okay, one, two, three, six, seven syllables. I have seven syllables to say what I want to say. In that melody line. No, no, no, no. Ta ta ta. Okay. Damn. So it’s like I’ve got this idea. It’s like every syllable counts. So I did that for 15 intense years of my life. Was just spent writing over 100 something songs. Constantly crafting.
Mark Podolsky
I’ve always wanted to know this. And no one’s ever answered this for me definitively. But you are the one person who could answer it for me definitively. Is it harder to write a great song or is it harder to write a great book?
Derek Sivers
Ooooh
Mark Podolsky
I’ve been thinking about this for years, and I’ve not ever found someone who was written songs and written books. To answer the question for me definitively.
Derek Sivers
Huh? I’m going to say book. It’s funny if you define great as other people love it. That’s a tough thing too. To please yourself versus pleasing others
Mark Podolsky
Let’s define great as pleasing yourself. You’ve pleased yourself, but then you also get that validation from the world not only just like that itself, but like, wow, it does seem to resonate with other people. So I am validated. Because otherwise you just write for yourself and you wouldn’t ship it to the world.
Derek Sivers
It feels like it’s having done both. It feels like much, much, much more work to write a whole book. It feels like writing a book feels like writing three albums worth of songs. You know, having done both, it would almost be like the comparison. It would be a more apt comparison to say, “Is it harder to write a great book or a great album.” That’s a little more apples to apples.
Mark Podolsky
Okay, let’s go to apples to apples, then I’ll rephrase the question. Album or book?
Derek Sivers
Damn. Because to write a great album. It’s funny, we don’t really think in terms of albums so much anymore in this streaming age. But to write a great album you don’t just do the 12 songs that are on the album. Most of the great albums you’ve heard they recorded 40 songs and then picked the best 12 for the album.
Mark Podolsky
I love that Lil Wayne quote. Would it make so much music? Some of it’s even good.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Wait, wait. Say that again.
Mark Podolsky
Lil Wayne has this famous quote says, “I make so much music, Some of it’s even good”
Derek Sivers
I like that. I hadn’t heard that. Yeah, I’d say a great book and a great album. Maybe two albums or about equal. And what’s interesting is that there are crafty things that really help with both. You said earlier in this conversation about keeping touch. You said this thing is so important, but nobody does it. I feel the same way about the craft of writing. I’ve studied like the craft of songwriting a lot. I’m fascinated, if you go to any bookstore and look up Jack Perricone. P-E-R-R-I-C-O-N-E, Jack Perricone’s books on the craft of songwriting. Pat Pattison has books on the craft of lyric writing is two different things. So Jack Perricone focuses a lot on the craft of melody writing, harmony and the structure of just the the melodic musical content. And then Pat Patterson is completely focused on the just the lyrics. If you start with those two, it’s a starting point because they’re first ones that come to mind, because I know both of those guys. There are many other books on the craft of writing great songs, right? So there’s also.
Mark Podolsky
That seems more complex than a book because now you’ve got two different layers.
Derek Sivers
No, but ultimately, you’re doing something that’s still just 3 minutes. It’s almost like writing a great song. It’s like trying to write a great article, like a great blog post.
Mark Podolsky
Well, maybe a great album, though, that has to be completely different. Maybe you can’t use this. There’s a lot of variation creatively that you might be in your head about. Where the book might be a little bit more linear.
Derek Sivers
Mm.
Mark Podolsky
This is a deep philosophical question.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, well some people say to be a great songwriter, you got to have something to say. Sometimes I disagree with that. Often some of my favorite music it’s in another language. I don’t even know what they’re saying, I just love the music. So if they have something to say about the politics of their country, I don’t care what they’re saying. I just love the sound of it. But to have a book, a good book has to have something to say. But okay, I also just finished reading two books about the craft of good story writing. Specifically, they were meant for people writing Hollywood screenplays, but damn they have so many good insights into the craft of writing itself. So good, so inspiring, so fascinating because writing good fiction stories can kind of echo the story of our life and what makes a good life. We tend to unintentionally shape our lives into stories or judge our life as we would judging a story. Did the story have a good ending? Did it go somewhere? We think of ourselves as the hero in our story. So reading these books about the craft of story writing is great. So sorry. The point is, whether you’re trying to write a great book or trying to write a great song or an album, or trying to write a great article. I think most people don’t study the craft enough and try to apply this, do we call it left brain? The kind of very uncreative structure and craft of improving your writing. People don’t do it enough because they think like, “Oh, this idea came through me or this is from my heart.”
Derek Sivers
But God sometimes just changing one single note in a melody can make a song succeed or fail. That you change one note might make this melody fascinating, whereas not changing that note will make this melody boring. And you can’t make the argument like, “Oh, but it’s from my heart.” If we’re really talking about the deal, fail versus succeed is a difference of one note. Well, then craft wise, you should study the craft to make sure that you are keeping your melodies interesting or keeping your lyrics interesting or keeping your books interesting. God, when I read anything by Neil Strauss. When I read anything by Neil Strauss, dude the only times Neil Strauss has put out a book in the last ten years. Each time I did not sleep that night, I picked up this book going, “Oh yeah, I’ve read his stuff, let me check out this new book.” I start reading it at 5 p.m. and I can’t stop. I’m up until 3 a.m. because I cannot put this book down. I’ll miss a meal because oh my God, the guy is such a captivating writer. And that’s craft. I mean we both have something to say, but damn, Neil Strauss has like the most amazing craft as a writer that keeps you gripped. And that’s why we love Paul McCartney melodies after all these years. That guy had the craft of writing melodies that stick in our head. We all have hearts, we all have something to say but those that do it with craft are the ones that captivate us.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah. I think that’s so wise because I just hired a speaking coach, and for years and years and years, I would do my boot camps and I would be good enough. But I knew nothing of the craft of speaking. I’m a land investor, and so I just sort of powered my way through these presentations and I got enough validation saying, “Oh this is good, the content is good.” But when I got to a Hall of Fame speaker and he went through my presentations, it changed everything. Everything has changed. And now I see the world completely differently based on that craft or that sense of the world. But at least the way I was doing those presentations completely differently, just not even being aware that, oh my gosh, there’s a craft to speaking, there’s a craft to writing, there’s a craft to marketing, there could be a craft, everything in our lives. And if we can outsmart it and find someone who’s really done it well and emulate that. It can really make a just an exponential difference in what you do. Do you agree?
Derek Sivers
Totally. I love this. We should never be so proud that we can’t hire another teacher to teach us more, teach us better and study and just be humble enough to pick up a book on the craft of something, even if you’ve been doing it for over ten years to learn more about the craft of doing it and how to improve.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah, absolutely. And I believe that’s one of the chapters in the book about that, that sense of pretending you don’t know anything. And I don’t know if that was in How To Live or Hell Yeah or No, but it’s in the books. You have to get all three books anyways. Which leads me to another question which I want to talk about books that you like, but I also want to talk about the way you sell books. I think I have a bone to pick with you about it. I don’t think I do, but I’d like to discuss it if you don’t mind indulging.
Derek Sivers
Great. Please
Mark Podolsky
Okay,first of all, I as being a huge reader, and because you often pick my next book based on the ratings. If you could only have three books on a desert island for three months, which would you pick from your list and why?
Derek Sivers
Oh, they’d have to be bigger ones so I could see rereading, “Thinking Fast and Slow”, I felt like that was big and dense. “The Guide to the Good Life”, the book about Stoicism.
Mark Podolsky
William Irvine. Do you subscribe to Waking Up app, by the way? William Irvine has a great, great thing in there about stoicism and reframing and all these stoic principles, and his voice is very soothing and sort of grandfatherly, and he talks about things in his life personally. He’s just great. But I digress. Go ahead. So you’ve got.
Derek Sivers
And then I’ll maybe cheat for the third one and I’ll bring “War and Peace” or something like that that I should read. But I think I wouldn’t read unless I was stuck on a desert island for three months. How about that?
Mark Podolsky
That’s fine, because during COVID, I’m like, I’m going to get “Infinite Jest”, start reading it. Start. Loved it. Did not finish it.
Derek Sivers
I haven’t tried, but yeah, there’s some like that that I know that I should. Like “War and P”eace and such that I haven’t yet, but I hear it’s worth it. So, yeah, strategically, that would be smart to bring to a desert island where you’re stuck. You’d have to finally read it. But anyway, sorry. Go ahead.
Mark Podolsky
Okay, Let’s talk about the way you sell books. Okay, so. I buy the book. Included with the book is every format imaginable. Including audio for free. A marketer would have a big bone to pick with you about this. That being said, the people that buy your books absolutely love it. And you make it so easy if you buy the second book. It’s like five bucks or something ridiculous. Four or four bucks. It’s almost like you lose money on shipping. I think you will lose money on the book.
Derek Sivers
It is my break even cost exactly The $4 plus postage covers my break even. That’s all I wanted to do.
Mark Podolsky
So you’re breaking even on the second book, So as a fan, the only books I gift are your books.
Derek Sivers
Cool. Perfect.
Mark Podolsky
But as an entrepreneur. And also someone who wants to sell books. Come on, Derek. Walk me through the logic.
Derek Sivers
Okay. See, this is an example of like time in my journal. This is a real practical example of when I stammered around earlier and I said, like, why do this? What it is, you know, what am I doing? What am I in? So. When I decided to sell my own books. Even the decision to be self published came from a lot of personal reflection, because my first book in 2011 called “Anything You Want” was an accident. I never intended to write a book, but Seth Godin asked me if I would. I said yes. I wrote him a book in ten days, and then he put it on in his own little personal imprint called Domino Publishing. And then two years later, he sold that to Penguin. And the book has sold very well for Penguin. And so Penguin told me that, “Hey, anything you do next, we want it. We want all your future books. Yes.” So here I had a publishing deal with Penguin, and I loved them. They were great. I loved my main contact there. Nicky Papadopoulos was wonderful, but after a lot of reflection, I just thought I’d rather do it myself. I enjoy doing things the way I think they should be done instead of just punting off to Amazon and Audible. So when I asked myself, “How do I want things to be done?” I get upset at this idea of like having to buy a book twice because you want two different formats. To me. I just want.
Mark Podolsky
Want the Kindle version, the audible version, the right hardcover, the paperback, right.
Derek Sivers
So to me, it’s just all of this is just a bit of delivery nonsense, a bit of delivery friction to just get the ideas from your brain into my brain or as a writer to get the ideas from my brain into your mind. That’s all I want to do is share these. Get these words into your mind, whether that’s through your ears, if that’s convenient to you. I even imagine that someday I’ll have like a video movie version of these books because some people don’t want to read and they don’t want to listen to audiobooks, but they will click on the TV each night or the screen and just like watch something that’s their preferred thing is to watch while eating. And for those people, if they’d rather get my words through watching something on video, I’d like to deliver it that way. But the delivery method shouldn’t matter. I don’t really care. I’m not in the business of selling dead trees. I don’t care about the paper. I just want to get my words to you. So therefore, I thought $15 is a fair price to me. For a book’s worth of my thoughts from my brain to yours, how you choose to get them. I don’t care if you want the e-book on a Kindle, if you want the HTML on your computer screen. If you want the MP3 in your phone or if you want a video or if you want the paper book. I don’t really care. But the paper is the only one that costs me money. So then after I hired this woman, Saeah Lee Wood, who’s just amazing. Her website is s-a-e-a-h.com. That’s how you spell her name is Saeah-dotcom is her website. She is a book producer. She’s a total book nerd that nerds out on, like the binding and the edges and the fabric and all that kind of stuff. Yes. Yeah.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah. You know, it feels really nice.
Derek Sivers
Yes. So that’s all things to Saeah. So I let her nerd out on paper quality. She worked with all the printers and, like, tried a bunch of printers to find the best ones. She worked with a bunch of fabric houses to find the the best fabric, even, like, the embossing of the title. So she nerd it out on that. All in all, each hardcover book or paperback or hardcover about the same cost me about $4 to print and take care of everything. So I’m happy to just sell you that for cost because I don’t care it just here, if you want paper, here’s the paper. So then then there’s this idea of multiples, right? So if you want ten copies of one of my book, I don’t think you need to pay me $15 10 times. Because I really just want you to pay me once to get the words for my brand ears. Now, if you want more paper copies, I mean, in theory, you could just download the PDF from me and print it out on your own printer. But if you want my paper, well, then again, I’m just going to charge you for the cost of the paper. So that’s why it’s like after you’ve paid me the $15 for the contents, then all future paper copies are just $4 each. So yeah, you could buy after you’ve paid me the 15 bucks for the contents, you could buy 100 copies for $400 and spread them to 100 friends.
Derek Sivers
And some people have done that. And it’s really fun. Oh! That was it through self publishing. That was one of my discontents with being on Penguin is every now and then I would get a request from like a conference in London, wants to buy 900 copies of my book to give to all their attendees, and they’d say, “Can you do this?” And I’d be like, “Yes, please, here, break even take them.” But because it was published through Penguin, my first book, I’d have to go through Penguin to ask. And they said, Well, just tell them to go to Amazon and order a hundred copies. And I’m like, No, that’s awful. To pay retail price 100 times. No, come on, Can’t we give it to them as a break even? And they’d say, Sorry, we, we don’t do that. So I thought, damn, when I’m self publishing someday somebody wants 900 copies of my book. Damn right they’re going to get it for just basically the price of the paper because that’s spreading my ideas to 900 new people. If somebody wants to gift my book, I want to encourage that because that’s making a new long term relationship with whoever reads my words, then emails me afterwards.
Mark Podolsky
Okay,I am going to think deeply about this new book selling model and see how it works for me.
Derek Sivers
It’s different for everybody.
Mark Podolsky
I love it because to get back to “Your Music and People” right creative and considerate fame, it’s not about me, it’s not about you. It’s what’s best for your customer, your tribe, your audience, however you want to define it. And if you can create your own utopia like that, then yeah, maybe you break even on the book. But the dividends of goodwill, you do not know the payoff of that back end goodwill.
Derek Sivers
Yes. Yeah.
Mark Podolsky
Derek, do you want to speak to that?
Derek Sivers
Sorry, Mark. Yeah. The do you remember in “Your Music and People” there was the chapter about emphasizing the meaning over price, about the live CD example where there was, I think his name was Terry McBride was the manager of this band that told them like, “Do this new strategy, just try this out for me, trust me on this. Instead of selling your CD’s for 15 bucks each at your shows. Yes, put them on sale for 15 bucks, but then tell everybody at the show like, look, before you go tonight, we’ve enjoyed this concert with with us together. You know, you share this this event with us tonight. Please, Nobody here leave without bringing a CD with you. If you don’t have the money, that’s fine. Just come up and tell us you don’t have the money. We’ll give you a free one. If you have the money to spend, you got 15 bucks. We’ll take it. But what matters most to us is that nobody here leaves without a CD. This means the world to us.” And that sounds like a counterintuitive strategy. Like what? You’re giving it away. These CD’s cost you, whatever, $2 each to print up. He said, No, but these people are walking home with a souvenir.
Derek Sivers
They’re going to remember you. They’re going to spread it. They’re going to think of you in the weeks after the show. They’re going to have this thing in their house, keeping you in mind. And then sure enough, as that band kept touring America, every time they would come back to a city where they had insisted that everybody take a free CD. Attendance in those cities doubled, and they were making more and more fans because people left with a free CD. So yeah, I do have this thing where I really just want everybody on earth. Well, okay, no, take it back. I want everybody who likes my writing to have one of my books because I poured my soul into this. Especially the newest one, “How to Live”. I really put my soul into that. That’s my whole soul in there. You want to know who I am? That’s who I am. That book is like, if I did nothing else in my life but that one book, I’d think that was a good life. So of course I want everybody to have a copy.
Mark Podolsky
Yeah. And I 100% agree with you. It is one of those like there’s always transformational books that come around and this is one of them. This is one of those books you could read every day. You might know it intellectually, but until you internalize these lessons and these different varying points of view. It’s hard to actually put into words you have to experience it. It’s an experiential book. The words I would give it won’t do it justice. I don’t know what else I could say glowingly, because again, I don’t want to just keep going on and on in front of Derek, but he’s the author. When you meet an artist who’s actually put out something to the world very, very special and very, very personal and something that can really move the needle in your life. There’s the words really don’t give it justice. So I will not try.
Derek Sivers
Thank you. That’s the best compliment. I really appreciate it.
Mark Podolsky
My pleasure. My last question, and you’ve been so gracious and so giving to spend this much time with me, it is a quote. It says, Abraham Maslow says, “Musicians must make music, artists must paint. Poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What human beings can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self actualization.” My question is. Number one, would you consider yourself self actualized? And number two, what is next?
Derek Sivers
Ha, ha. Oh Maslow was such a bad ass. I love him. I was, like, 16 years old in high school when our high school psychology class mentioned Abraham Maslow and showed that pyramid of self actualization. And I like gasped and it resonated with me. And I’ve thought about it ever since. There have been major decisions I’ve made in life because of Abraham Maslow quotes. I hadn’t heard that one, or if I had heard it, I’ve forgotten it. But that’s really sweet. And it kind of answers your question, doesn’t it, about when you asked, “Where did my drive come from?” Like that single big yes. It was that you just said it’s Maslow’s. It’s our pursuit of self actualization. Am I self actualized? I mean. No.
Mark Podolsky
Maybe carved from the eye as an outsider, you are because you, based on your story, you must create music. You must write. You must create, create, create. You’re not consuming regularly. It’s just you’re creating. And you’re doing it in a way where most people would not have that intrinsic drive of working from 7:00 am to midnight. That’s like an Elon Musk self actualized person because at some point it’s all internal. It’s something you must do.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. And you’re right. That is the real drive. I would do the same thing if it was secret, you know, if nobody ever saw it. I would still do this because it is just completely intrinsic. That said, I really get a joy out of serving others. So that’s why I still answer my emails, is that it makes other people happy and that makes me happy. And actually, you know, my big drive from 7 a.m. to midnight every day for ten years of CD Baby was like the joy of serving others. So there’s some kind of mix in there. I don’t know. It would take longer for me to think about that. Intrinsically motivated to serve others. That’s a weird thing to say.
Mark Podolsky
Well, I think it’s it is a weird thing to say. And I think if you boomeranged it back to me, I would be like, “No, I’m not.” But I think it’s like, when you see it, you know it. And I think you as an individual probably are aware of it. And it’s a great gift to the world when self actualized people give it away and create for us and our other focused. And they’re not just playing in their garage and they’re loving it. They must create, they must create music, but they’re not necessarily sharing it. And so I think it’s one of those things
Derek Sivers
Not sure.
Mark Podolsky
I usually come on this podcast so I could tell you, you’re self actualized. That’s the only reason I’m here.
Derek Sivers
Sorry. Wait. You had one other question.
Mark Podolsky
So given that. What do you what must you do next?
Derek Sivers
I don’t know. I’m still driven by the desire, the Maslow quote, you just said, the writer must write or I must philosophize, I must question. I’m still just so, so, so driven by this desire to understand different points of view, to like embody different ways of living. And then to be the best writer I can be to help communicate what I’ve learned in a succinct and enticing way. That still drives the hell out of me. Yeah, I get up at 4:30 or 5 every morning, no alarm. That’s just when I get up and I come straight to my keyboard and I start writing at 5 a.m. and I’m not doing it out of any sense of like, “I should do this.” You know? It’s just I have this drive to create. So that’s still there. But as far as like, what’s my next consumable output for people, I’m not sure. That’s kind of the lesson of “Hell Yeah or No”, isn’t it? It’s like, you should deliberately leave space in your life so that by not saying yes to little things along the way. Then when you get that big giant thing that makes you go, “Oh yeah, hell yeah, this is what I want.” Now you’ve got time to throw yourself into it. So yeah, that’s what I’ve got right now is, I poured everything I had into the “How To Live” book. And so what’s next? I’m not sure. I’m in the wonderful open space right now.
Mark Podolsky
Well, I love it. And I could obviously selfishly talk to you for hours.
Derek Sivers
That’s a really fun conversation.Thanks Mark
Mark Podolsky
Thank you so much. And dear listener, if you’re getting value out of this, please do me the favor of following, rating, reviewing the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to support@landgeek.com. We’re going to send you for free a signed copy of Dirt Rich, which does not scale because I actually go and sign them myself because I do think that there’s something about me actually doing it that is transferred to the reader, even though I don’t really write much in it. But I do it. So, Derek, are we good?
Derek Sivers
We’re good. Thank you.
Mark Podolsky
All right. Thank you. This has been a true gift. A pleasure. And they say the cliché is you should never meet your heroes because you find out, Oh, they’re just another regular, flawed human being. Derek, I can tell you with 100% authentic honesty, you have not disappointed me. That cliché B.S.. Meet your hero.
Derek Sivers
Thank you.
Mark Podolsky
And thank you so much. Thank you.
Derek Sivers
Thank you. That’s really sweet.