Mark Bouris
host: Mark Bouris
choices for freedom, role models and influence, deep vs shallow happiness, self-reflection and values
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Transcript:
Mark
Derek welcome to Straight Talk, mate.
Derek Sivers
Thanks. You all right? It sounds like you’ve had a hectic hour.
Mark
Pretty hectic. It’s funny. It has some relevance to maybe what I want to talk to you about today. But yeah, we’ve had a pretty mental period here in Australia. I understand you live in New Zealand these days or at the moment at least, and they’re probably going through the same sort of thing. But Australians who have mortgages and are living in a mortgage prison, what I refer to it as and interest rates have been going up here crazy and people don’t know what to do. They feel like they’re somehow stuck. And it’s funny, you know, you are not someone who gets like that. You live a different style of life. And maybe my audience, my financial services audience should be listening to this podcast, to be honest with you. You know, you’ve got what looks like, it seems to me anyway, that you’ve got the ideal life, you know, just chilling and sort of not really in any sort of prison, you know, at least conceptually, is that something you’ve always wanted to do? Has that always been your deal or is that something you discovered about yourself and decided to execute?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I think that can come from every little decision you make along the way. So it’s not just something that happens all at once at the end, it’s something that you have to keep choosing at every little fork in the road. You know, going back to when I was a teenager, I always made the choices that gave me more freedom and chose those over the ones that might have given me more status, more income. And, you know, whatever I might have chosen. But I chose the always chose the one with more freedom.
Mark
That’s interesting because when I was growing up, for me, it was always not so much about status, but making money because I had no money. My family had no money. So I guess what I wanted to do is not live like my family lived. I’m scraping and scrounging around all the time and always worried about recessions and dad losing his job and stuff like that, you know, he worked hard, but there was always a-- he didn’t have any control over his life in a financial sense. So I sort of went the other way. I thought, well, I’ve got to change that for myself. That was a positive affirmation I had in my mind. How is it that someone, when you were a young person like you can make that freedom choice over and above financial freedom, for example?
Derek Sivers
I think it’s because we’ve seen people talk about the rat race and feeling stuck and people who aren’t living the life they want because they bought themselves a big house with a big mortgage. And so now they’re slaves to it. And I was able to see that even as a teenager and just say, I don’t want to live like that. I’d rather earn less money and be free than more money and be stuck. So it also helped that I had good role models. So I joined a circus at the age of 18. A traveling circus, lived in the back of a van for a lot of the next ten years. From the age of 18 to 28, I was the ringleader, emcee of a circus. So the people around me were jugglers and professional magicians and face painters. And I had plenty of role models of people that were living somewhat hand-to-mouth, but yet free. If you had $10,000 saved up, you were all set for a year. So that’s actually what happened. The last time I had a job was 1992. I had saved up $12,000 in 1992. And I was like, “That’s it, I’m free. I don’t have to work a job anymore because I’ve saved up $12,000. I can afford now to just be a freelance, full time musician.” And yeah, that was the last time I had a job.
Mark
I’m listening to that and I think I love the idea of it, sounds really cool, but someone else might say, Yeah, but Derek, when I turn 65, I want to have paid my house off because I wanted to be stable and secure and free, not to have to worry about renting in a place and have to deal with the landlord and blah blah, blah. So therefore I’m going to invest and pay things off for the next 40 years, 30 years. So when I turned 65, I can retire. Let’s call it more free or with more choices. How do you sort of reconcile that sort of stuff? I mean, no doubt you have.
Derek Sivers
I think that’s the trade off you make. If that’s what you really want. You really want to live in a five bedroom house with two cars and all that. Well, then you’re fucked. You’re stuck. That’s it. You’ve made that choice. That’s the trade off. So for example, I’ve never had health insurance for most of my life. I didn’t own a house. Actually, I do own this house now, but I do not like it. And I’m just planning on just selling it and going back to just renting. Just to be free again. I’d rather be in a one bedroom apartment than this house that I’m in. So I just keep making those choices and every now and then I test it, you know, like, when buying this house. I thought maybe it would be nice to own a house for once. And I bought it like, no, I don’t like this. I’d rather be renting a one bedroom. Life could be simpler and freer. So, yeah, everybody has their own preferences and choices, and these are mine.
Mark
That intrigues me Derek. What is it that you like? Like now? Right now? What is it you don’t like? Is it the design or is it that because you own it, you’re sort of tied to it in that? Because I actually understand some of that, I have a few houses and in different places and people say, “Oh wow, how lucky you are.” And I say, “Well, yeah, but it’s funny. I feel like I’ve got to go and occupy them all the time because I’m not using them and I’ve got staff there and nothing goes properly and everything sort of gets overgrown because I’m not there, people do what they bloody want. And sometimes I find it a bit of a burden, to be honest with you. But then I think, well, if I sell everything and we just want to put the money in the bank because I don’t really like banks and we don’t want to give them the use of my money and they rip you off and they don’t pay you very well. So it’s sort of a bit of a quandary. Yeah. Could you just maybe help me out here a little bit? What is it about living and owning a house right now that you don’t like?
Derek Sivers
Well, first I got to say, when you say that you’ve got a few houses, my first reaction is, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. That sounds like what a drag. What a burden. What a weight.” I just have a certain aesthetic that I like having no more than is necessary. I was just on Tim Ferriss podcast last week and we recorded it here at my house, and the first thing he teased me about is he went to pour himself something to drink and I only have three glasses. So he starts the podcast, we hit record and he starts out by saying, “Okay, audience, I need to tell you, I’m in Derek’s house and this crazy mofo has three glasses. That’s it.” And I said, “Yeah, not only that, I don’t even know where they came from. They’re not mine.” So I don’t like having more than I need. That’s reflected in the computer code that I write. I write my code by hand so there’s not a single line of code that doesn’t need to be there. I like that in my wardrobe I only have two pairs of pants because why would you need more than two pairs of pants?
Derek Sivers
And I feel that about housing. So even though I bought this house with an ex and we had a different lifestyle in mind, but now that it’s just me here, there’s like four bedrooms. And one of them is a minuscule little office with just enough room for a desk. That’s where I spend all my time. The rest of the house is just wasted like cobwebs are appearing. And yes, I could hire somebody to clean it. Yes, I could spend an hour a week and clean it myself. But what a drag. Why even have it? I’m not using it. I’d rather just be in a little one bedroom apartment. And personally, I like moving every year or two. I don’t own any stuff, so moving takes me an afternoon and I just like being in different places. So I know anybody listening to this is just like, “All right, Mark’s interviewing a weirdo.” But it’s good to ask yourself what you really want and not just go with the template of what most people around you do. And sorry, I should have just wrapped up there. But there’s one more thing that needs to be said is I’ve also had some good anti role models.
Derek Sivers
So I mentioned that when I was in the circus, I had some role models of people that were really happy and free earning $2,000 a month. But I’ve also had some anti-role models of super rich friends that had three big houses and I would hear all of their woes. And when it came time to sell my company, I talked to a friend of mine that had just sold his company, but the company that bought it paid him extra to stay on as an advisor, and he talked about how much that sucked, that he went from being a business owner to being an employee inside this company. So luckily I heard that tale before I sold my company. So when I went to sell my company, I said, “All right, here’s my terms. The day you transfer that money, I’m gone. Never speak to me again.” And I just made sure to include that because I had the anti-role model of this friend and heard his woes. And I’ve had the anti-role model of friends with many houses telling me that it was nicer in theory than in practice. So I think my actions have been shaped by the anti-role models as well.
Mark
I remember once when I was working in India the very first time I ever went to India, and we had built a business up in India in the early 2000 period, and I used to travel there every six weeks and we had like 500 staff or something like that, which was growing quite quickly. And one of the things I noticed about my employees, no one had any money. Everybody, they were all very poor, but they’re always happy. Always happy. Everybody in India, that is 1.4 billion people. It’s probably different today because the middle class has got a lot larger, etcetera. But I’m going back, you know, 15, 16, 17 years. Indian people, even the people living on the street, even the people who live in little shanties were always happy, always smiling amongst each other. And they look like they’re just happy because they had enough to eat, because the government sort of looks after them as a sort of a communism coalition with another government. So everybody always gets fed. I mean, obviously there’ll be some periods where some of the people don’t get fed.
Mark
But generally speaking, and I was actually amazed at this phenomenon, these Indian people always smiling, always smiling the same. I experienced the same in Sri Lanka. People, they’re always smiling, even though they had the most menial job and earning the lowest amount of money. There was one girl in Sri Lanka. I remember talking to her, she used to travel for hours in the morning by bus to the job and four hours at night, like she’s spending eight hours. She’s sleeping on the bus to go to work. But she was just happy to have a job. A young girl with the biggest, widest smile you’ve ever seen in your life and always happy. Maybe what you’re saying there’s something in that. They’re not role models for me so much, but they’re definitely observations along the lines you’re talking about. The more you got and the more obligations you got, the more responsibility you got and the more a grind life might be is that’s something that you’re drawn out of your experiences. The more you have in physical sense property, shares, businesses.
Derek Sivers
I could have. I think I stopped where I did because I feared that pursuing more would lead to more money, more problems, you know? So my rich friends think I’m a slacker, and my poor friends think I’m hyper ambitious. So it’s a spectrum in between. So I basically sold my company in 2008 and have intentionally not earned a dollar since.
Mark
Have you had a job since?
Derek Sivers
Oh, no, nothing. I mean, even the money I make from other things I do. Like when people buy my books, it all just goes straight to charity. It never touches my hands. So that’s intentionally. When I sold my company in 2008, I said, “This is enough. I will never need more than this for my entire life. I am done earning money. I never want to earn another dollar again for the rest of my life.” I’ll do things that earn money, but then I just make sure it all goes straight to charity.
Mark
So the money you got from the sale of your business prior to this, did you just take it and put it in the bank and just live off the interest? I mean-- well, what did you do? Were you living off the capital like you’re just eating into the capital or how do you live?
Derek Sivers
In short, off the interest?
Mark
Yeah, off the interest. So if the bank pays you X amount of dollars in interest, you can you can live off that. Yeah. Make you rent in trouble.
Derek Sivers
I’m curious when you said bank like my bank accounts only have a few thousand dollars in them. I just keep everything in index funds, in the stock market. So yeah, I just kind of ride the wave of the economy. I don’t do any speculation. I just kind of stick it in three index funds that represent the world economy and just let it sit. I look at it about one hour a year. Yeah.
Mark
So you’re not sort of sitting there obsessed about how the futures index in the US is going or wherever.
Derek Sivers
Not at all.
Mark
You’re just going along. You just cruise along with it and whatever you need to take out, you take out when you need to take it out. That’s pretty cool because I remember when I sold one of my businesses many years ago, I got General Electric chairs shares in return for that. And it was quite a large sum. And you know what happened to me? I can become absolutely obsessed with the share market, the Dow Jones Index, because General Electric was a part of the Dow Jones. And I became obsessed. It could go up one point today and 30 points tomorrow and down 60. And it was like getting brain damage. I’m so glad I don’t have them anymore. But I was getting brain damage and I can sort of relate to what you say. I mean, you’ve got to look at it once a year, as you’re saying. Just take out what you need when you need it and otherwise not worry about it. In your case, fear is the thing that drives you. The fear of having too much to look after is the thing that drives you to living a much more simple life. And let’s call it being more free. Because the opposite applies to people like me and other people I know it’s fear of not having enough that drives us to keep striving. Is it fear in both our lives?
Derek Sivers
No. For me it’s a dislike of waste. So, you know, if you think like an economist, economists are always looking at the marginal value of things. So a thirsty man crawling in the desert, what is a glass of water worth to him versus once you’ve given that man a hundred glasses of water, what is glass number 101 worth to him? I think it’s the same thing with money that first, I don’t know, $100,000 I earned that meant everything to me. That next hundred thousand I earned, that still meant something to me. And after a few more and by the time I got to a million, I was just kind of done, I said, “Okay, well now this just doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. There’s nothing I could do to use it. I’ve paid off all of my debts. I’ve even paid off my parents debts. I’ve paid off my parents mortgages. Any more money I would earn now is just wasted.” And I don’t like waste. Yeah, I don’t like seeing people waste things. I don’t like people who have more than they earn. It’s like hoarders. I don’t know in Los Angeles, I used to see this more. I don’t see it as much here in New Zealand, but, you know, those people that have like a mental disorder and they fill their cars with stuff like they’re just absolute hoarders. Maybe they do it in their homes, they’re just filled with thousands of things they don’t need. They never ever throw anything out. That’s a mental crap. Yeah, it’s a mental disorder. It’s hoarding. And I think that about having too much money, that if you’ve already got more than you’re going to spend, then the pursuit of more money is like a mental disorder. The marginal value of more money is nil. You just kind of need to address your mental problems there. No offense.
Mark
No, no, no. I mean, I don’t really think about making money. I never have. But my thought process is about working and building and creating. I mean, and then if it brings money, I’m happy about that. Not every time does it achieve that, but I’m lucky enough I’ve had a good start, if you know what I mean. So I’m not that pressed for these things, but I have this concept of happy enough and it sort of sounds like you’re talking about that, because people always say, “What makes you happy, Mark?” Or, “What’s happiness to you?” And I don’t really have that concept. How do you feel about that concept of happiness? Or is life all about just enough for Derek? What’s enough for Derek?
Derek Sivers
I mean, there’s a difference between deep happy and shallow happy. So to me, shallow happy is eating an ice cream, but deep happy is being proud of yourself for not eating the ice cream and therefore you have a better body and you’re going to live longer. I think a lot about deep happy and I never or almost never pursue shallow happy, but I’m constantly pursuing deep happy. The happiness of being proud of yourself, the happiness of achievement, the happiness of setting out to do something difficult and succeeding in it. That’s the kind of happiness I’m pursuing.
Mark
I wouldn’t mind pursuing that a little bit more because I find that fascinating. In terms of deep happiness, you’ve made it very clear to yourself. It’s actually a very good way of not eating any ice cream, by the way, because you said that’s shallow happiness and I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in something bigger than that. What are you trying to achieve from that? Like, you want to be healthy, but is that because you want to be better for your family? I mean, do you have wife and kids? Do you have children? So is it because you want to be able to survive long enough to enjoy your children and grandchildren? Perhaps, what’s your purpose of wanting to pursue deep happiness?
Derek Sivers
That’s secondary. I mean, I love my kid more than everything else combined. But the bigger desire for me, the biggest motivation is making yourself proud. I think being proud means that your actions are aligned with your values. I think that is what it’s about. So many of us value one thing, but do a different thing. You know, we value being fit and lean and strong, but we watch TV with a box of cookies and then we’re upset at ourself for acting against our values. So to me, the deepest happiness comes from acting in alignment with your values. I think that’s what I’m really talking about.
Mark
So how does somebody set those values and what do you draw on to set your values? Like would you say, “Yeah, they’re my values.” But once a week I can eat pizza and drink Coca-Cola and eat a box of cookies. I mean, how do you set values? Because a lot of people will listen to this and they think, “Wow, I want to live this life.” But they don’t know how to go about it.
Derek Sivers
It definitely takes a lot of reflection. I put a lot of time into my journal. It’s really how I think. It’s the main way. I think the secondary way I think, is talking with friends. But I really spend at least an hour a day in my diary, my journal, whatever you want to call it, asking myself questions, and then most importantly, questioning my answers, because I think it’s healthy to disbelieve your first reaction to things like you might say, “Why do I want to do this? Because I want to earn money for my family.” And so stop for a second. Like really? Are you sure? Like, is that what your family would say? Is that what matters most to your family is that you make money for them. They’ll never see you. But you gave them money. Then they’re happy. Are you sure that might not be true? Or if you say it’s really important to me to be an entrepreneur, I think, “Well, you’ve had this business idea for a few years you’ve been telling me about, but you haven’t done it yet.”
Derek Sivers
Are you sure this is really important to you? Because if it was really, really important to you, you would have done it by now. I think you might be saying it’s important to you because you think you should or somebody you admire is an entrepreneur and therefore you think that you should be too. But your actions reveal your values. You can look back at your past to see what you’ve done, and it can be an indicator of what you actually value. And if you look back at those actions. And you are at peace with them, then I think they are a good indicator of your values. Or if you look back at those actions in disgust and you’re mad at yourself for acting that way, well then it’s time to do something about it. And first admit it to yourself and say, “I have been violating my values. This is not who I am. Fuck you, old Derek. It’s time for New Derek to take over and act accordingly with what you really value.” And that comes from reflection and quiet thought.
Mark
I get the quiet thought piece and part of the problem, I think, is that most people don’t get it. They get on the hurdy gurdy and they’re sort of running and running and running and running and they’re busy trying to pay the mortgage, pay the school fees, get the kids to this particular private school, “I need this because I’m going with my kids at this particular private school. I need to have this particular type of car to deliver my kids, otherwise everyone’s gonna look at me. I’ve got to wear a certain type of outfit. Oh, by the way, I’ve got to go do a mum’s lunch at a special particular restaurant and I’ve got to drink this type of champagne.” Blah, blah, blah. You know the story and therefore, they never really get a chance to do this quiet reflection. How do you purposefully or have you purposely set time aside in your life and do you talk to people about it or is this Derek doing it with himself?
Derek Sivers
I mean, it’s mostly myself, but say my 7 or 8 best friends in the world, when we talk, we talk about real things. We talk about recent epiphanies and things we’re going through and stuff. So sometimes, actually, I’d say most of my conversations with my friends begin with one of us saying, “Hey, let me ask your opinion on something. What do you think about this?” You know, or, “Hey, I was just thinking this. I came to this epiphany. What do you think?” But oh, my God. Come on, Mark. The example of just like, I need a certain outfit and a certain kind of champagne and attending these events, I think anybody that’s listening to that going, “Yep, that’s my life.” Should ask yourself, what the fuck are you doing? Stop it, like seriously, talk about the marginal value. Like what’s the real value of doing that? Are you trying to impress an invisible jury that you think will give you a passing grade if you do all these things correctly? I think to me, that life is awful for basically anybody, unless you’re really trying to get elected into political office. And you really have to do those things in order to get elected to make the change you want to make. But anything short of that. I have a metric that I wrote a book about, and it’s called “Hell Yeah or No”.
Derek Sivers
And the point is especially if you’re overwhelmed with options. Whenever an option comes your way, you have to ask yourself. “Am I saying not just yes, but oh hell yeah about this option.” Meaning an opportunity comes up, do you say, “Oh my God, that would be amazing. That would be one of the coolest things that ever happened to me. Absolutely. Yes. Count me in.” Well, then you should say yes. But if you feel anything less than hell yeah, you should say no because basically everybody needs more space in their life. When you say no to almost everything, then it means that when that occasional hell yeah thing comes along, when you do get some opportunity that makes you say, “Oh my God, yes.” Then now you have the time and the space to give it your full attention, to give it your all, to knock it out of the park, as the American baseball metaphor says. Because you aren’t cluttering your life with a hundred other shallow little things that were just mediocre yeses. You have room. So I’ve been living by the hell yeah or no principle for, I don’t know, 15 years. I say no to almost everything and only if something really makes me go, “Oh hell yeah. Oh my God, yes.” Then I say yes. And because of that, I’ve got lots of time to journal and have a good life.
Mark
Well, so that’s interesting. So why do you feel-- I don’t know if you felt compelled. Why do you decide to write a book about this? So, Hell Yeah or No, you know, I mean, do you see yourself as a conveyor of thoughts or a philosopher? Because, I mean, it’s coming across to me like a philosophical sort of environment, I feel like I’m talking to Aristotle or Plato or someone like that right now. I really do. I mean that in the most respectful way, too, by the way. But do you see yourself as a conveyor of philosophies and therefore feel compelled or feel like you just want to write a book to put all these ideas into a book so you can share with other people?
Derek Sivers
In short, yes. I used to think of myself as an entrepreneur, but after a few years I realized that my heroes were the authors of these books I read. So anybody listening to this, if you go to my website, it’s sive.rs, which is just my name with a dot before the RS, so sive.rs/book, you’ll see that ever since 2007, every non-fiction book I read, I read with a pen in my hand and I underline or circle every cool important idea in that book. And then when I’m done, I type them all into a text file and I put it up on my website for free. So you can see the last 400 books I’ve read with detailed notes on each one and my heroes are the authors of these wise books. Like these books have changed my life absolutely. So much of who I am is from these books. The decisions I’ve made, the things that I’ve tried that I ordinarily wouldn’t have thought of, came from reading books like this and then reflecting on them, which is what those notes help for, and then acting in accordance with the epiphanies I’ve had from reading the books. So because I realized that these authors who are my heroes, I realized that I don’t actually worship or look that far up to any entrepreneurs, that really my heroes were these authors. And so therefore I realized, I think this is what I do now. I’m a writer, speaker, thinker, kind of dude, not an entrepreneur so much anymore.
Mark
Yeah, well, a writer, speaker, thinker to me is an entrepreneur. To me, an entrepreneur is someone who wants to make change no matter what it is, even if it’s change in thought patterns or trying to move stubborn indented processes, whether it’s the way we live our life or the example I gave you before of the mom’s driving kids to the private school and that sort of getting stuck on that hurdy gurdy, changing their thoughts forever or permanently for good logical reasons. That to me, that’s an entrepreneur. I think you’ve still got the entrepreneurial thing in you, but not inventing something to make money.
Derek Sivers
Wait. Sorry to interrupt. I don’t want to be a bad guest, but somebody who’s an entrepreneur, is somebody who starts a business. That’s what entrepreneur means. There are teachers making amazing change. There are philosophers like, you know, Australia’s Peter Singer who are making great change. There are people going around planting trees every single day tirelessly for 20 years that are making great change. But none of them are entrepreneurs. I think an entrepreneur really is just somebody who starts a business and then if you also do good things with it, then maybe you can be an entrepreneur who makes good change. But at its core, I think entrepreneur just means somebody who starts a business.
Mark
Maybe I think that’s an old school thing, to be honest with the greatest respect, I see an entrepreneur as somebody who believes in making change for good and goes about it like a business person in a business like manner, like with steps and outcomes expected and someone who can measure their outcomes. Like it could be just the number of people who adopt or adapt a certain way of living. That’s probably maybe a better way of saying it. Entrepreneurial spirit as opposed to being an entrepreneur. It’s probably a better way of putting it. So I see someone like you as someone exercising an entrepreneurial spirit in what you actually believe in and how you try to change things by being a philosopher and by being someone who communicates those ideas and thoughts, hoping I’m not trying to put thoughts in your mind. Obviously, I can’t, but hoping that other people might be inspired and motivated or see something they’ve never seen before and start thinking about ways of living their lives. I see that as an entrepreneurial spirit, and that is more in a spiritual sense as opposed to being a hard business person who’s trying to sell a product or a service and make money out of it.
Mark
It’s slightly different, I guess. But I love that spirit is probably what I’m saying. It doesn’t matter where that spirit gets expressed. And for me even like someone who’s like-- I see Greta Thunberg as being entrepreneurial in her spirit, the way she goes about it, fearlessly committed because she believes in something fully and has to employ certain characteristics to make this thing happen, because it’s a big thing that she’s trying to make happen. And I love that about people who like yourself. I find it very attractive. And I’m not trying to ask you out for a date on on the video. But I find it very attractive and I think people find it very attractive. I want to talk about that so people like you attract lots of people. You are attractive in what you profess and the way you live and you live your life, as you said, to your values. Is there a responsibility attached to that?
Derek Sivers
How do you mean?
Mark
Well, do you feel as though you have to continually evolve and live that style of life in order that those people who follow you. And I don’t mean in a social media sense. I’m just saying people who follow your views and read your books or read your notes etcetera. Do you feel some level of responsibility to make sure you don’t ever let them down? So, I mean, are you likely to say, okay, in five years time, I’ve had enough of this life, I’m going to be going back to becoming an entrepreneur like old school entrepreneur, you know? Do you ever feel some, not pressure, but a sense of obligation to those people, or are you completely free and it doesn’t matter to you?
Derek Sivers
No, I do feel that. This is an interesting question. I’ve never thought about this before that. The value. Sorry. Let me just start this by saying I do feel that, but only up to a point. And everybody who has an audience gets to decide for them where that point is. So I have a couple famous friends who feel no obligation to their audience whatsoever. They don’t answer their email. They don’t even look at their email. They are unreachable. They say, “No, you can’t contact me if you’re a VIP, call my agent. I’m not going to bother with the people.” And then you have some people who say, “You know what? Making my fans happy is really, really important. So important. But it’s not the most important thing in my life.” Like, the most important thing in my life is my family or my sanity or something like that. And then you have people that take it too far the other direction. Then continuing on that spectrum of people who give too much to the world, who they drive themselves crazy trying to be what the world wants them to be, and they destroy their personal life and their sanity in the process. And we’ve seen some rock stars or movie stars do that kind of thing. So I think everybody gets to draw their line where it works for them. So I think my line is actually much higher than mos,t I spend like yesterday was kind of extreme, but yesterday I spent 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. nonstop. And I mean, like really only quick bathroom breaks. And I stopped for three minutes to eat.
Derek Sivers
But other than that 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. sitting in a chair, answering emails all day long. I answered 425 emails yesterday. It was hard and I was tired and I wanted to stop, but I was like, “No, 425 people have emailed me. I’m answering these today. These have been sitting here for a few days.” But when my boy comes home from school yesterday. I have an 11 year old son. And so yesterday he was over at his mom’s house, not at my house, but today at 3:00, he comes over here. So no matter what, I don’t care what the world wants from me. When he shows up here at 3:00, I stop everything. Computers off, phones are off. World can blow up for all I care. I’m with my boy. So that’s where I draw the line. And I do draw the line at my sanity. So I can imagine that if a day like yesterday with what is that, 5 to 10? That’s 17 hours. If I had another 17 hour day, sorry if I had too many 17 hour days of answering email in a row, I would say, okay, this is unsustainable. This is affecting my happiness. And I might be likely to say, “All right, world, I have given a lot. I’m done. I’m off to a monastery in India now. See you in a few years, if ever. Good bye.” I’d feel okay doing that. But yeah, we all set our set point where you want. It’s a fun question. Thanks for asking that.
Mark
What do you mean by just so people can to understand, what do you mean by an epiphany? It does have biblical sort of connotations. Well, I think it has its roots in Latin or something like that. But what do you mean by epiphany? Is it just a realization about something that you had been pondering about for some time or never thought about at all?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. A friend of mine who was single and dating used to have epiphanies. Like every couple days she would go on a bunch of tinder dates and, like, tell me about them. And she’d say, you know, here’s an example of a real one, “I just realized that we talk about the love languages, and some people say that, ’What’s your love language? Oh, mine is touch. Mine is acts of service, Mine is words of affirmation or whatever’” She said, “My love language is consistency. Without consistency, nothing else matters.” She said, “I went on a few dates with this guy that was great, the first date, but then like a raging jerk, the second date. But then he was great the third date.” And she said, “I don’t want to see this guy ever again, no matter how great he was for two out of the three dates. He’s inconsistent. And that just makes me feel scared. And I don’t want to feel scared in a relationship.” So that’s just a tiny example of an epiphany. It’s like, “Oh, consistency matters more than any other relationship trait.” You know, epiphany. So little things like that. I think I have those kind of epiphanies, ideally every day, at least every week. Wow.
Mark
Wow. About things you want in yourself or things that you want in relationships as well.
Derek Sivers
Oh, I mean about anything. About life, about parenting, about money. About my house. About exercise. About friendships. About music. Anything. Yeah.
Mark
Again, because I’ve got this project I’ve been thinking about and trying to work on for some time and I haven’t made much of an inroad into it, but I had an epiphany, to use your word. Hopefully this is correct, but maybe about six months ago I was with my 90 year old father. I’m his eldest son, and then I was there at the same time as my son, one of my four sons. And then he had his son there. So there’s four generations. And I was looking at my age and I thought to myself and I’m looking how happy my dad was having four generations of people there and people who he loves and likes to hang around. And we’re all talking stuff and laughing and having a bit of fun. And it was just quite a nice moment. And I thought to myself, “Wow, that’s something I’d like to enjoy one day.” And I worked out the maths and I worked out in order for me to do that, I have to live to 102 to experience the same thing with my younger son because I don’t want to experience just one son.
Mark
I would like for me to experience that with all sons and their kids. So I worked out. I needed to live to 100, and then I thought to myself, “Well, in order to live to 100, I’m 67 now. In order to live to 100, I need to change some things.” And I’ve been following Peter Attia and all the usual people you would listen to about how you change your life around sleep and nutrition and exercise, etcetera. De-stressing your life. And then I started thinking to myself, it was a bit of an epiphany. The thought was a bit of the second part of it, though, was I think, “Well, hang on, am I being selfish by wanting to do that by living to 100. Do you have any thoughts, philosophical ideas around this process? You know, do you think ever to yourself, “I would like to live to 100” or “There’s an age at which I want to live to”, or “There’s an age at which I don’t care whether I live past it. I’ve done everything. I’m happy.” And is it selfish by thinking this way?
Derek Sivers
I honestly don’t think about it. Whenever I start thinking about it, it only lasts 10 seconds. And then I stop thinking about it. So just in general, I try to make decisions that will help me stay healthy as long as possible. And after that, I think that there are some cancers that are out of your control. I do a lot of pre-emptive, proactive health care. I go in for medical checkups every 6 to 12 months, even though I don’t have to. I love doing that. And but other than that, I don’t think about living a long time. I hope it happens, but it feels like it’s somewhat out of my control. Okay, So but the selfish thing, that’s fascinating because I think it’s unfortunate that currently in English, in our culture today, the word selfish is considered negative, has negative connotations. I think it should have positive connotations because it means you are valuing yourself and taking care of yourself. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you are devaluing others or hurting others. I think it just means that you are taking care of yourself. I think when we hear the word selfish, we should think self care, right? And stop thinking that it necessarily implies harming others. So I think a lot of people could do with being a little more selfish. I think a lot of people are miserable because they are trying to be the perfect employee. They’re trying to be the perfect spouse. They’re trying to be the perfect-- I don’t know public figure. When they could use a little more self care and healthy selfishness.
Mark
You know, I think that was sort of the conclusion I arrived at, too. But because I like to take the view that there’s nothing wrong with looking after yourself as opposed to being self centered within your community. There’s a big difference. And I always thought to myself, there’s nothing wrong, by the way, with if that makes me happy one day. Or that thought makes me happy today to think that one day I might be able to do those things my father now does, taking into account that anything had happened, cancer, all sorts of things, then I’m not being selfish by having that thought and living my life that way. And in that regard, I’m fortunate enough I can actually live the life because similar to you, I get all those baseline checks. And I’m a big believer in knowing what’s ahead of me to some extent or knowing what I’m dealing with. I’m not someone who just wants to hope the best is going to happen irrespective of how I live my life. And selfishness leads me to the next question or the next concept. I want to ask you about. What do you think about the concept of love? I mean, how do you how would you define-- and let’s talk about love, because there’s lots of types of love and it seems to cover everything. But these days, especially but to say love in terms of a relationship like your other party, your other person relationship. I know you’ve just mentioned that you have an ex, what does that mean? Because people use that word so loosely today. I love my dog. I love my kids. I love my wife. I love my car, I love my hamburgers, I love my footy team, etcetera. I mean, they come in everything. There’s obviously different parts. So what do you see by that? Because it can impact your freedom if you go about it the wrong way.
Derek Sivers
Sorry, I don’t have that much to say on this. I also get a little stumped when I think of what love means. I think to me it’s a combination of caring about somebody as much or more than you care about yourself, combined with admiration, like you have to love who the person is, though that doesn’t fit for people who say, “I love my dog.” I don’t know. Maybe it does. I think we love our dog regardless of whether we admire who they are or not. But I found that it’s a hard one when you are in a romantic relationship with somebody that you realize that you don’t respect, you don’t admire, you don’t respect their values or something like that. And you have to ask yourself, like, “What am I doing here? Is that even love? I’m not sure.” Sorry. I think that’s about where my thoughts on this end.
Mark
But can you admire someone who has different values to you? I mean, is it important in a relationship, so much so that you’re in a relationship with that individual?
Derek Sivers
I think so, yeah. That’s what’s wonderful about traveling is not just looking at a picture. I mean, not just looking at the Eiffel Tower and taking a picture, but when you really get to know different cultures and you learn that different cultures value different things and you learn like, say, the Confucian mindset of East Asian cultures and you learn say, the French mindset, which values rebellion and why they value rebellion. And you start to understand these things and internalize them and realize these are all working philosophies. It’s like as if you were taking a philosophy 101 course, and they were saying, “Okay, now we’re going to teach you about stoicism. Now we’re going to teach you about cynicism. Now we’re going to teach you about Nietzsche. Now we’re going to teach you about you.” You learn that each of these philosophies can be a congruent way of approaching the world, even though they all disagree, you can choose one, I guess. Like religions too, that you could say that Judaism and Islam are incompatible in their beliefs, but you can choose one and either one works, right? So I think it’s like that with values that you can marry and live with somebody that values different things that you do than you do. An introvert can marry an extrovert. An extrovert who values meeting new people above all, things can marry somebody who never wants to meet any new people ever again. You know, and as long as they can work it out, they can live a good life. As long as they respect each other’s difference in values.
Mark
Are you someone who likes to meet lots of people. Or are you more the introvert?
Derek Sivers
It’s just recently changed for me. I think these things, sometimes we think of them as personality traits, but I think they can be a reaction to our circumstances. So for years I was in situations where I was meeting a lot of people who wanted something from me, I didn’t have that thing to give. And that was kind of post CD Baby. I sold my company for $22 million in 2008, and immediately many people were drawn to me. They came to me looking for how to get rich, and I had no thoughts for them on that, or lots of people that came to me wanting to do business or wanting me to invest in their startup or all these things that I don’t do that I cannot give you this. But so many people wanted that from me that I reacted by going into an antisocial cave. I moved to New Zealand partially to escape all the people that wanted things from me that I didn’t want to give or was unable to give. So I moved to New Zealand where I knew nobody. So I could just focus on raising my son in nature. I moved down here when he was a few months old specifically to give my full attention to raising him.
Derek Sivers
That’s the reason I moved here. And but now that he’s 11 and doesn’t need my full time attention anymore, I’m starting to crave meeting new people. And so just two months ago went to India and I could only go for eight days. So what I did is in eight days I lined up 50 meetings, 1 to 2 hours long each. So that means every single day from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., I met with a new person. Every two hours somebody would come at nine, eleven, one, three, five, seven and nine every day for eight days in a row. And so I had 50 conversations in seven days, and I loved it. It was amazing. It feels like one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life, so much so I just want to do that again and again and again. I want to go to Lagos, Nigeria, and meet 50 people in seven days. I want to go to Nairobi, Kenya, and meet 50 people in seven days. I’d love to go to Jakarta, Indonesia, and meet 50 people in seven days. Like that was amazing. So am I an introvert? I don’t know. It might just be more situational than a fixed characteristic.
Mark
That’s funny. You should do that because I guess my obvious question is, why did you meet 50? Were you trying to inquire about how they live their lives or what it’s like to live in India? Or were they technology discussions? Or how did you choose these 50 people?
Derek Sivers
I was literally making friends. Of all the people I had the option to meet with, I only met with people that felt like they could become friends.
Mark
It’s very interesting. I hope you come to Australia soon and put me on the list. I would like to sit down with you for an hour and a half or two hours and just outside of a podcast, but just talk to you about whatever.
Derek Sivers
Clearly from our hour of talking on air, I think we have a thing or two to talk about.
Mark
Yeah, no, totally. I mean, because I get intrigued by people and I live this very obvious life, the life people see in social is actually my life because I spend so much time doing it. I do have another life, but pretty much is my life. And I get intrigued when I see someone like you who’s completely challenged everything. And come up with answers to everything and is pretty much everything that they’ve challenged and they are happy having done that. And I look at you, you look all clear eyed and I mean, you might have had the worst sleep in the world last night, but you still look clear eyed. You look clear and happy. You look like those Indian people who I used to see in India when I used to go there in the early 2000 period who had nothing but were so happy just hanging out with each other and just living a simple life. I once saw a movie with-- I can’t think of his name, a famous actor, but he had this backpack and he went to give a lecture to a whole lot of people and he took the backpack off and put it on a table, and he started taking things out of the backpack. Richard Gere was in the movie and he started taking stuff out of the backpack, and he was basically using the backpack to say, “The more things you have, the greater the burden is on your shoulders.” In a physical sense, but the greater the burden because you carry this stuff around all of us every now and then, got to take the backpack off and start to take some stuff out and empty it, whether it’s houses or real estate or people in your life or things you’re doing that you don’t like, that you just still keep doing.
Mark
And I haven’t really met anybody outside of watching Richard Gere who actually lives that life like you do. And so to me, it’s been quite a fascinating conversation. I mean, and if you do come, I mean it. I’d love to talk to you more because you have given me-- I’m being very selfish because the audience probably couldn’t give a stuff what I think about. But I’m actually enjoying this conversation whilst I’m doing it for my audience, I’m actually doing it for me. I’ve got a lot out of this by talking to you Derek today and I’ve enjoyed and we haven’t probably talked much about your books and stuff like that. I’m sorry. I apologize for that because I’m out of time, but it probably doesn’t matter to you. Most of my guests would be really upset now that I haven’t talked about their books and what they wanted to promote. But you probably don’t care so much. So I really appreciate the conversation. I’ve enjoyed a lot. I’ve learned something out of it and I actually have gained something substantial out of talking to you today.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, Mark. I appreciate it.
Mark
Thank you.