Conscious Creators
host: Sachit Gupta
beliefs about family, writing as a craft, friendship, creative process in book writing
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Transcript:
Derek Sivers
You just need to know for yourself by looking at past relationships that were the most rewarding to you, was it about the physical presence together or was it about the conversation itself? “I owe my parents my life.” You owe them everything? No. They chose to have you. You didn’t choose to have them. That to me, is just very much a not true belief. If I did nothing else in my life but made that book and then die, I would feel that that was a life well lived.
Sachit
One of the things I’ve always like, admired about your your writing. And I’ve been reading your stuff 15 plus years, right, is how shareable it is. Like, I’ll be in conversations with friends and I’ll start quoting posts. I’ll be like, speed limit or walk the pathways or below average. And one of my favorite posts about that you actually wrote is about speed limit. Where your mentor Kimo teaches you music really fast, right. And you sort of like flirted this discipline of like writing music and then writing books and in a sense also like writing code. So when you’re thinking about the elements that go into the craft of each of those, I’m curious if you’ve seen any like patterns or in the ways you think about it that are similar or different.
Derek Sivers
Ideas need to fit in your pocket. Like you said, so that you can carry them with you. And I always aim to do that with my writing and I don’t always get it. I fail a lot. There have been some ideas that I want so badly to communicate. I think people really could have a better life if they carry this idea with them in their pocket. But sometimes if I don’t express it well enough, it doesn’t really stick. And then sometimes I don’t even realize that something I’ve made is sticky. Sometimes people like an idea like, my “Hell Yeah or No” was one that I just sneezed out in ten minutes back in 2009. And really--
Sachit
And then it became this right here.
Derek Sivers
See how that idea really seemed to stick with people. People really liked this four word hell yeah or no. And I went cool. That was a great feeling to know that that stuck with people. But there have been others that I just haven’t been able to make them succinct enough or vivid enough. If you can make something vivid in people’s minds then that story can stick with them. But I’m always aiming to do that. Yeah. Thank you for noticing.
Sachit
For example, like, is there maybe like a post that sticks out for you where you had the concept nailed out, but then you had to do a lot of work to get it to actually be vivid and be something that’s like, shareable in that sense.
Derek Sivers
It’s actually what I’m doing right now with my next book that’s not out yet, that I’m writing right now. It’s called “Useful Not True”. And it is my everyday challenge that I’m doing, is trying to take this idea that I think is so powerful and so helpful, and trying to make it sticky, trying to make it something that you can keep in your pocket with you and remember on a day to day, minute to minute basis. I can tell you one of my favorite ones of all time is “Whatever scares you, go do it”. I either heard that idea or came up with that idea as a teenager. I don’t remember if I heard it from somebody else or came up with it, but that idea, I carry it with me so often, so that even on a little moment to moment basis, if I notice that something is scaring me, I steer towards it instead of away from it, because that idea is carried with me at all times.
Sachit
This is sort of a Tim Ferriss style question, which is what is the process look like for you when you’re actually doing this refining? And we can take like “Useful Not True” as an example. Do you just show up and just start writing and editing or what’s going on there?
Derek Sivers
I usually fill many, many pages of unfiltered thoughts. I just open a blank text document. You know, the fingers just fly. I go completely unfiltered, let it all out. And then I look at this mess and I ask myself, “All right, what’s the essence? What am I really trying to say here?” Or, and while I’m writing it, was there something that made me go, “Ooh, that’s good.” You know, if there’s just one thing that makes you go, “Ooh, that’s good.” Then what you want to do is put a spotlight on that one idea and don’t bury it in the mix, but instead let that idea stand up on stage and take a solo with the spotlight. Really call attention to the one thing that makes you go, “Ooh.” Because that’s powerful. That’s worth highlighting. So that’s the main thing I do is I try to cut away all the noise so that you’re just getting that core signal without the fluff. But then there’s the goal of making it vivid, making it easy to picture. And that’s where stories come in handy. There’s an old book that I read long, long ago that I just rediscovered. It’s either “You Can Negotiate Anything” or it’s “How to Negotiate Anything” by Herb Cohen. And I picked up this book and I went, “Oh, wow. I remember I read this when I was a teenager.” And this is before I started taking book notes, right.
Derek Sivers
So I started reading through it and it was all so vivid because he tells these stories. There’s the story about his son with the hockey puck and the refrigerator, and there’s the story about his wife at the department store, and there’s a story about his friend who wants to buy a house. And there were so many stories in there that I’m thinking, “God, I remember most of this book because he told so many stories.” Even if it’s just the lamest story of like, “Well, my neighbor came over to me and said that he wants to buy a house, but he likes this house, but his wife wants the other one. And what is he going to do?” And I say, “Well, how important is your wife to you? Ha ha ha.” And it wasn’t even a super vivid story, but just the fact that it had a story to it instead of just an abstract concept. Here I am like 35 years later after reading that book, it still stuck with me. I still remembered almost everything in the book because of those stories. So that’s something I’m trying with my next book, Useful Not True, is to include more stories to help be more like Herb Cohen.
Sachit
It’s interesting that you mentioned sort of like stories and noticing something and then remembering 35 years later, right. And knowing that’s good because part of that is like developing and actually having taste. And I’ve heard you mentioned, I think about Mark Manson, where, I think you’re talking about his book notes and how you usually paraphrase. But in his case, you couldn’t even really change the writing. And I think when you were reviewing Will Smith’s book, you talk about how you were actually able to, like, notice when the writing switches from Mark to Will or something along those lines. So what is that journey been for you in terms of like developing that taste, to be able to even notice those things and like what’s good? Or did you always have that?
Derek Sivers
I don’t know, I think it maybe came from a lot of reading. I mean, I read not to be entertained, but because I want to glean useful information, I want to distill thoughts, mindsets, or techniques I can use in my own life. And so I get annoyed when people use so many words to say nothing. When I have to comb through 50 pages of bla bla bla bla bla bla bla to get two good sentences. It’s annoying to me. I value my time. I’m not trying to pass the time, I’m trying to get good information. So I really notice it when-- I really notice it at the extremes. I really notice it when somebody is so verbose and repeating themselves too many times and telling condescending blather. Okay, condescending blather is when somebody says, I’m just going to pick a dumb example. You know, “It’s good to eat your vegetables because let’s say, you have the option of eating a muffin or a carrot or let’s say a chocolate chip cookie or some broccoli, or maybe you have the option of having a Coke or some almonds. Now, which one do you think would better? I know if I were you, I’d kind of want that muffin, but no, I’d say I need to eat the carrots.”
Derek Sivers
Do you know what I mean? I’m speaking in a writing style that some people do. I don’t know if they’re just trying to fill the pages, or if they really think that we’re all complete idiots, that just needs something to be explained to us ten times in a row. But that writing style is so frustrating to me that even if the ideas in the book are good, a light content writing style can be so frustrating. So conversely, when I’m reading and somebody writes in a dense style that says, “You need your vegetables, here’s why: studies show these are the vegetables with the top density of nutrition.” And then gets right on to the next point. I go, “Oh, how nice. I’m getting useful bits of information on every page that I’m so thankful for this.” So same thing with the sentence level, the number of words in a sentence, the number of unnecessary adverbs. So anyway, yes, Mark, you might have noticed if you’re watching the video, I smiled as soon as you said Mark Manson’s name. Yeah, he’s one of my favorite writers because he makes every sentence as dense as it can be. As clear as it can be, as useful as it can be.
Sachit
This sort of like fits in with this. Another thing that you mentioned on another show, the language of your readers, the most popular language is actually English as a second language. Right? So similar to what you just mentioned, what are other principles that you use or maybe principles that you’ve seen Mark use to cater to that sort of mass audience in that way?
Derek Sivers
In that case, Mark and I do it differently. He is unabashedly American and uses American slang and likes to curse, which I have no problem with. But he’s really, like, made it his thing. It’s helped him sell a ton of books. You know, that title, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck”, was just a wonderful balance. You know, the subtle art just sounds like it’s classy and then of not giving a fuck. You know what a great irony in the title itself. Let’s see, I always try to think of how many readers I have around the world, and the people that I hear from that grew up in Slovenia or Taiwan and don’t know these little Americanisms. So even though I still have them in me from growing up there, I remove them when writing, no, I don’t remove them. I just make sure that I’m communicating to somebody that could be in Peru or anywhere. And in doing so, I find that I get clear because some of these phrases come out of our mouth by habit. We say that, “The last business I started, I really hit a home run with that one.” But then you catch yourself maybe because I’ve been out of America for 13 years now, I catch myself saying these things, realizing that people outside of America don’t know this hit a home run idea. So I think of a better way to phrase that. And just in catching myself and saying it again, I think, “What is a better way to say that that’s more internationally clear.” So I think this process just makes me. A better writer, I hope.
Sachit
Funny that you mentioned hit a home run because I grew up in India and when I first heard it, I was like, “Wait, who’s home are we hitting? And then running?”
Derek Sivers
Oh my God. Right. Hitting a home right. Like ding dong ditch. Yeah. Running away.
Sachit
You’ve recently were in India, and I love the blog post that you did with, like, the 50 meetings that you had. And also sort of like, contrasted like visiting India before and visiting India now. So I’m curious, like for you. As someone who was an outsider, what draws you to India and what changes in evolution you’ve seen from the last time and like now when you visited?
Derek Sivers
Oh, okay. Years ago, I married someone that was born in Tamil Nadu, India. So through that, I got what’s known as an overseas citizen of India, which is basically an India passport. That can’t be used for travel outside of India, but within India I’m treated as a citizen. So through marriage to her. And we have a son who’s obviously half Indian, and he also has this overseas citizen of India passport thing. So India is a place that I’m likely to live someday, and he’s likely to live someday. So I wanted to get to know it better. It’s not just a place to go visit for me. It’s a place to really get to know and consider as a home. That was the extra motivation to get to know it better. But also, I’ve been living in distant, remote New Zealand. Beautiful nature but a little lonely in the mega picture. Even though I’ve got a few local friends, like in the bigger picture of life I was feeling a little disconnected from the world. So that trip I took in February. So listeners, by the way if you go to my site, the address is sive.rs/meet-chbg which stands for Chennai and Bangalore. So at that URL you’ll see 50 people I met. I didn’t intend to make it a blog post at first. I was just going to meet with people. But I recorded every conversation with a voice recorder.
Derek Sivers
And then later, after I was going through these transcriptions, I thought, “You know, people might find this really useful.” So I posted my notes on my photo afterwards. But I was honestly going to make friends. I had no other motivation. I wasn’t doing research, I wasn’t making business connections. I only met with 50 people that I felt most likely would be future friends. Real friends. When I went there, I had the pre notion that Chennai would be more my kind of place, but after getting there I was like, oh man, Bangalore is awesome. Bangalore feels like the new San Francisco to me. That place is great. There’s so much energy, so much creative energy. Not just tech stuff, not just corporate stuff, but like artists moving there, poets and painters and musicians that are moving there from around India because that’s where everything’s happening. And it’s got such a casual spirit too. I’ve been to Delhi and in Delhi things often felt very formal, people kind of showing off their wealth and doing kind of social climbing and dressing perfectly in suits to kind of show how high class they are. And in Bangalore, everybody, you know, showed up in shorts and t-shirts to meet with me. And people just meet up at random little scrappy coffee shops instead of in fancy hotels. So I really liked that kind of California spirit to it.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I’m likely to live there someday. I’m sorry, I forget what your original question was now. But oh, you asked about the difference between what I saw before. I’m actually not qualified to answer that yet because I just did some back to back meetings. I didn’t get the chance to really go out and sniff around, but it’s really interesting what’s happening with the Aadhaar card. Everybody getting their digital ID and then once you have the digital ID, you can open a bank account instantly online. The bank doesn’t need to meet with you to do any KYC stuff. It’s just like the government has already verified you, given you your citizen ID number, and so you can just go on to a bank and just anybody with a rupee to their name can go open a bank account now, which changes everything. And then everybody’s given the QR code for the universal payment interface called UPI. And so people are paying each other cash free for even just again, it could be a single rupee for UPI. So every seller on the side of the road is using that. It’s just it’s really fascinating what a leapfrog that is because it now it’s actually a better payment system than we have in America or almost anywhere else. This UPI is really probably the best payment system in the world today and just happened in India in the last ten years. It’s amazing.
Sachit
Yeah, I went this year after six years, and that sort of transition from cash to cashless was insane. It’s funny that you mentioned how sort of like Bangalore is like SF, because I actually moved to SF around 2010. And definitely like I really enjoyed the casual spirit, the optimism, and it was really actually interesting after that, when I would visit back to India, we would go out in Delhi, I’d be in my t-shirt and like jeans or whatever, like SF. And everyone’s dressed up and they’re like, “Wait, you live in the US?” Because they’re expecting you to be like, fancy and all this stuff. And it’s like, no, I’m from California now. I just wear t-shirts. So it’s interesting that you mentioned that and that spirit.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. My favorite little quote I heard from somebody in Bangalore when I was asking him the differences between the region’s cultures. He said, “In Delhi people say, do you know who my father is? Because Delhi is often about it’s related to the government. It’s about like, you know, I come from this famous lineage.” And he said, “In Mumbai, people say, do you know where I live? Because there’s a huge strata difference between the multi-million dollar residences and the shacks nearby, but it’s often differentiated by neighborhood. So telling somebody where you live gives you status.” So it’s, uh, do you know who my father is in Delhi? Do you know where I live? In Mumbai and in Bangalore, he said, “We say, do you know a front end developer? Because people in Bangalore don’t give a shit about any of that stuff. They just want to make things.” I thought that was a beautiful way of comparing the three biggest cities.
Sachit
It’s actually interesting, like in a sense where in the first you’re describing people playing status games. And in the other one, as you said, it’s about building and making things that’s sort of like is the spirit of the the place.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I mean, of course it was said for a laugh. But with any of these little cultural jokes, there’s a little sliver of truth in there.
Sachit
Yeah, there’s always a hint of truth. Right. One of the things I identified, it was really interesting, I feel like in the entire country there’s this sense of optimism. Which actually, I remember, like, landing, meeting a few people. I was like, “This is just like SF in the 2010s.” So I’m curious if you’ve seen any sort of similarities like that from your time in SF. In terms of the spirit that you’re finding out or the people that you met.
Derek Sivers
Well, just in general, let’s say, places that are considered the developing world or let’s say developing economies have optimism built in because they’re developing. It means that by definition this year is better than last year. And what’s coming in five years is better than the way we had it five years ago. And so people want change. The opposite of that is places like in Europe where people feel that the best times were behind them. The best times were, you know, the whether it was the 1850s or the 1950s, where people want to hold on to the way things were, they discouraged change. When they hear about new changes coming, they go, “No, no, no, no, no, no. We need to regulate that to make sure that things don’t change.” Whereas in the developing world, people want change. So if you think about that in the bigger picture of what you want for yourself, if you are at a time in your life or in an industry or just a spirit that wants change and wants to make change happen, well then you’d be better off in a place that’s considered a developing economy, because people there generally want change.
Derek Sivers
Because change means good. And you wouldn’t want to be in a place that is a fully developed economy where people do not want change because change is considered bad just to geographically shift it. I’m living in New Zealand now, which unfortunately, just in the time I’ve been here, I moved here in 2012 and now it’s 2023. Just in the 11 years I’ve been here, I’ve felt a shift. Where people are feeling like the best times were 20 years ago and are people are starting to not want change here. It’s getting a little more European like that, which is a shame. And so it was really refreshing for me to be in India and hear people talking about how much better things are now than they were ten years ago. That’s really refreshing. There aren’t many places on Earth where that’s the common conversation of talking about how much better things are now than they were ten years ago. I like being in places like that.
Sachit
It’s interesting, because I feel like the same thing is happening in parts of the US, and especially SF, like SF is going down the drain or all these different things, right. I’m actually not thinking of this in the context of your book, How to Live. Because in that book you talk about how sort of like there’s like a lot of these different ways where you can approach life and how much of it can just be dependent on the place that you’re in, or so much of it can be influenced by the place that you’re in because of the context of like, what’s happening in that place.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, we can’t help but be influenced by the waters we’re in.
Sachit
It’s this idea of like, how much are you influencing the environment versus the environment influencing you.
Derek Sivers
Almost no matter who you are, your environment is going to influence you more than you are going to influence your environment. So it’s wise to carefully choose the environment that suits you. I wonder about how many people would be brilliant creators, but are living in places that discourage creation and discourage creativity, I should say. There’s a fascinating little book called I think it’s “The Geography of Bliss” by Eric Weiner, that he looked at different places on Earth at different points in time. Like, basically, why was it that Vienna in 1830 produced Freud and Mozart and these composers and he said, “Well, because at that time in that place, going to concerts was all the rage. That was the most rewarded thing in that culture, was to go to a symphony orchestra performance on the weekend. And so Mozart was highly rewarded by the culture around him for what he was doing. Because as soon as he composed a new great piece, there was so much applause. There was so much social reward, and it was just culturally valued to create a great piece of music, it was rewarded.” I was showing my kid, who’s 11 years old some music videos from the late 80s and 90s.
Derek Sivers
And I had to explain to him that back then, making a great video was culturally rewarded because MTV was a popular channel and MTV used to play music videos. There was a time, it was really just a window of maybe 15 years where music videos got a lot of attention. So if you made a really good, innovative, creative, fascinating video everybody would pay attention to your song and then go buy the album. So there was a good financial incentive and a creative reward. Maybe you’d get like an MTV award for Best Video or Best Direction. So some of the brightest visual cinematic minds were creating music videos back then but not so much anymore. Now it’s a different format now. Now we’re in this era where the shorts, the TikTok and YouTube shorts are the most rewarded thing. So it’s just interesting that you can choose a place like Vienna in that time, or you can choose a field like YouTube, where different things are valued and rewarded. So you have to pick the one, pick the environment that suits what you want, suits what you want to be. Pick the environment that’s going to reward you for who you want to be.
Sachit
And just as you’re saying that, it’s also so interesting how the morals and the economics of whatever you pick end up influencing what you create right. Because if you look at, let’s say for YouTube, for example, it’s mostly driven by AdSense and ad revenue, which is driven by CPM, cost per impressions, which means you’re maximizing impressions. And then on the internet, the thing that gets more impressions is content at the extremes and hate. And because of that, so much of the content that we’re seeing now is people talking on the extremes, because that’s what gets attention.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Incentives are everything. You always have to think of people’s incentives to do what they’re doing, why somebody even believes what they believe, why somebody thinks like they think or acts like they act. You got to ask yourself, what are the incentives for them to do that. And then if you want to make a change in culture, you have to change the incentives. Even if culture means, you know, culture of four people in your little organization, you have to look at the incentives that you’re rewarding.
Sachit
This actually reminds me of there’s this really great post by George Soros on reflexivity and sort of like the human uncertainty principle, where he talks about there’s like the subjective reality, which is all in our heads and there’s the objective reality, and they’re always sort of like-- it’s like a sine curve and a cos curve. So they never intersect except in certain times when they meet, when like objective is the same as subjective, right. Because most of the time we’re living in a subjective reality and it’s driven by our beliefs, which are so personal. It actually reminds me of sort of like the project that you’re working on, which is “Useful Not True”. So I’d love for you to, like, talk about that and the context of, like, how that came about because it relates so well to this.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Sorry. I hadn’t heard of this. George Soros, was this a book or an article?
Sachit
It’s an article.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, that’s right up my alley right now.
Sachit
Quick context on this, which is all of his investing, has actually been influenced by that principle of reflexivity, which he talks about in that article because he’s basically looking for where are the realities, not meaning where is it going. And then where is the money to be made. And then he basically invests based on where the subjective and the objective reality is differ for people.
Derek Sivers
That’s so interesting. I never thought about that angle. This subject is fascinating to me because I found that it underlies a lot of my life and a lot of my writing. A lot of what I’ve said publicly has had this underlying assumption that we choose our beliefs based on how they serve who we want to be. And it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, because I don’t believe that hardly anything is true. The objective reality of physical things, you know there my hand is hitting the desk now. That’s an objective reality. An objective reality is that words are coming out of my mouth now. But the meaning of everything I say and everything I think and everything anybody else says to me is all subjective. The world we live in, unless you’re a scientist in a lab. Most of our world is entirely subjective, but we mistakenly act as if it’s objective. Even some of the stuff we were saying earlier. I said New Zealand is a place where people are increasingly wanting to keep things the way they were. And I said it like it’s a fact and I can even think it’s a fact. But in fact, it’s just one interpretation. Anybody can rightfully argue the other point of view. They can find some examples of how that is so not true. And therefore what I’ve said is no longer true. And I think that’s such a healthy thing to remember, to have deep skepticism, to have strong doubt of everything you hear. And then everything that you think, that’s the other fascinating side to this is realizing how much of what we think even in your own head is not true, that it’s just a subjective interpretation.
Derek Sivers
Like, you could tell yourself that, like, “Man, that thing that somebody just did to me today that was wrong. That was bad. That person is a jerk for doing that.” And you’re saying that like it’s a fact even in your own head, but it’s just a subjective perspective that you could just as rightfully look at that thing that happened today, and find another perspective on it. And say, “Actually, from his point of view, that was the right thing to do because of his incentives to his life or his situation, what that person did to me. From his point of view, I was probably the jerk.” And therefore your previous thought that you said is not true. It was just a perspective. So I’ve been thinking of the world this way for 20 years. And I had never really put my finger on it. It just kind of kept coming up when people would react to something I wrote saying, “But that’s not true.” And I’d say, well, of course nothing’s true. Almost nothing’s true. Physical things are true. But other than that, everything is a perspective. And therefore I think we should creatively take the reins and choose our perspective, choose a belief system that works for you, that helps you be who you want to be, that helps you go where you want to go. And I just thought it’s time that I write more about this, even for my own sake of understanding it better myself.
Sachit
The example that you gave, what’s interesting too is like, a lot of times we make what happened to be about us. So this person cut us off and like, he doesn’t value me and like, blah, blah, blah, right. And maybe they’re just, like, going through something in their life. And it’s nothing about you. I actually remember my first sort of like visceral example of like feeling this was one of the first times I came to the US, and I remember going to a McDonald’s. So I go to McDonald’s and I order, like my burger and stuff, and I order my drink, and the guy basically hands me a cup for the drink and it’s empty. And I’m just looking at it. I’m like, “Where’s my drink?” And he’s looking at me, “I gave you the cup. What are you doing here?” And we’re just, like, staring at each other. And at some point he goes, “Oh, you fill your drink there.” But if you think about, like, what happens in Asia, if you did that in Asia, people would bring cups from home and keep filling their drinks, right. So like in Asia, what they do is they fill their drink and then give it to you and there’s no free refills because people would take advantage of it. And I just went, “Oh, wow, this is so interesting that something as simple as giving someone their drink, it’s completely different if you’re like from two different parts of the world.”
Derek Sivers
Yeah, actually, sorry to interrupt that story, but like I heard a journalist that was born in England but had been living in America for 20 years say, “The reason I moved to America is because I came to visit. And the day I arrived, I went to a diner and I ordered a cup of coffee. And when I was done with the cup of coffee, the woman came by and said, would you like a free refill?” He went, “A what? A free refill.” He said, “I want to live here. This is my kind of country. This is my kind of culture. I want to live in a place that gives free refills.” He said, “That signals abundance, that signals generosity. That means so much to me. This is where I want to live.” And he has ever since, because of free refills.
Sachit
And so much of this like ties to like what we believe about the world, right. I don’t know if you’ve read this book by Robert Dilts, who was one of the founders or early people in NLP called “From Coach to Awakener”, and it talks about how you can basically like bring change about in people. And then he basically talks about these, I think he calls it the neurological levels of change. So for example, you can create change in someone’s environment. You can create change in someone’s behavior capabilities. And then at the top is like beliefs and identity and spirituality. And so many times like people will change their environment and behavior, but if they don’t change their beliefs, they let’s say like they start exercising and lose 40 lbs. They still believe that their the fat kid because they haven’t changed their beliefs.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Sorry. It’s such a big subject for me. This world we live in is so subjective. It’s funny that it’s a contentious subject right now because of politics. When people get political, the people that object to the very idea of my book are the people that are steeped in the media circus of politics, where when I say I’m writing a book about useful, not true, they get mad thinking that other people are going to use this philosophy for evil to say that it’s not true that vaccines are effective. It’s not true that that politician got more votes than that one. You know, they connect it to this fake news calling everything not true, but no, to me. I’m going to have to, like, make it clear up front in the book that there are things that are objective realities. The number of votes or a vaccine preventing further harm from a virus. Things like that are just objective, observable realities that an alien from another planet or a squirrel with a big brain could observe that in a microscope. But almost everything in our lives are so driven by these beliefs, these interpretations of the world. And when you realize that you have the creative ability to choose your beliefs based on the ones that suit you.
Derek Sivers
And detach from the beliefs that you grew up with to think about the things that your parents told you. Like maybe you come from an abusive family that told you that your family is everything, that family is the most important thing in the world. And if they’re also oppressive and abusive then it would suit you to stop believing that to to detach from your abusive family and say, “You know what? They gave birth to me. I didn’t ask to be born. I don’t owe them anything.” That would be a more useful belief if you come from an abusive family. And these situations are, let’s say, loyalty to a company that is not paying you well enough. You think that you owe them your loyalty for some reason. That’s a deep set belief that you’d have to disconnect from and rewrite that belief. What it means if somebody yells at you on the street, is that insulting or is it like a bird singing in a tree. That’s just a human making noise. That’s what they do. Humans make noise. It has nothing to do with me. Yeah. There’s so many ways that you can choose a belief system, you can choose a perspective that suits you better.
Sachit
What’s funny is I just remember that beliefs change perspective. And then I just realized it was from your article, which is I think you talk about playing in the rain and how people are like, “Oh, it’s raining outside, it’s bad or whatever.” And then you had a conversation with your kid and you’re like, “Oh, it’s just rain. It’s just water.” And you made it a positive, right. So I’m curious, like, as you’re writing this book or if people are listening. Are there principles that you help people use or use to make this sort of belief change easier for someone? So it’s not like this crazy thing that I have to do or whatever.
Derek Sivers
That’s actually my next challenge. Going back to the very beginning of our conversation where you talked about ideas being sticky to be effective, to actually make change. That’s my next challenge. I’m actually reading a couple books on how to make change, how to change your mind. To me, I’ve been doing it for 30 plus years, I’ve been deliberately changing my mind on things, so I have my own way of doing it just by stacking up arguments in my journal, basically. But I don’t know if that would work for everybody. So I want to study the craft, the knowledge of how to change your mind on things and help include that in my book, because I think that’ll be a necessary ingredient for people to make this change is how to take something like a deep set belief that “I owe my family my life.” Or, I don’t know, “Big business is bad.” Or something like that. And how do you change your mind about these things? So for me, I’ve found that what I do is very similar to something called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, aka CBT. Which just meant hours in my diary talking through something with myself. Questioning everything I’ve said.
Derek Sivers
Saying things like, “If I were to say Slovenia is a place where I will be happy or Italy is not the kind of place I’d want to live.” Neither of those is true. I was trying to scramble. But then I would question what I just said, like, “Wait, really? Why wouldn’t I want to live in Italy? Why would that be a bad thing?” And no matter what I’d say, then I’d question it. I’d say, “Is that really true? If it were true, would that benefit me? If I were to disprove that. Would that help? And it would. So therefore, how would I disprove it? Well, then I guess I’d find some examples to the opposite. You know, people in such and such place are not friendly. Do I need to be friends with all of them? No. How many friends do I really have in my life? How many do I want in my life? Okay, well, then really, just like if 3 or 4 people are nice. That’s all that really matters, right? It doesn’t matter if everybody else is nice.” I’m just picking one random example because actually, in three days I get on a plane and I’m going to be traveling.
Derek Sivers
So I’ve been thinking about places right now, but this could apply to anything. It could apply to a field of work. You could say that artificial intelligence is the future or cryptocurrency or you could say that digging ditches is boring. The sewage industry is not exciting but AI is. And you could take that, you could reverse those. You could say, “Wait, actually, maybe AI is not exciting because it’s got too many eyes on it. Too many people are focused too much attention on this. In a way, it’s actually boring. But the brightest minds are not looking at the sewage industry right now. So in a way, that could be really exciting, because I’ve spent the last 20 years living in San Francisco online, steeped in these conversations. So actually moving to Kentucky and going into the sewage industry could be really exciting. I’d meet some really different people with some really different perspectives and lives. I know nothing about the sewage industry.” You can convince yourself of a completely different perspective and stack up reasons why something you thought was not true a few minutes ago could be true, or vice versa.
Sachit
It’s funny because I was actually making notes. I was like, it sounds like if I can reflect back, because I think if you’ve been doing this for so long, you don’t even know what you’re doing. If I were to put this into buckets, like, and even in the way that your writing has influenced me, it comes down to either like stories. It comes down to completely changing your environment, which you’ve done, like moving from different places to different places. It comes down to getting counterexamples and what I actually would love for you to contextualize, because I’ve heard it and it really helped me, but listeners haven’t. Is this thing that you were playing with your son about adding now to a statement.
Derek Sivers
The idea is any time you catch yourself stating a preference. Like, I love having coffee first thing in the morning. Or I love a good sunny day or I don’t like opera. It really helps to add the word now after any of these. To acknowledge the fact that your tastes may change. I don’t like opera now. But if the right person taught me the right appreciation of opera. Well, a year from now, I might actually love opera, so let’s just acknowledge that any of your current preferences are very likely to change. Even if you say something that feels foundational, like I’m an introvert now because you might not be. These things can be changeable. They’re not fixed. You are not set in stone. Even some core things of who you are are likely to change in your life.
Sachit
What have been the most impactful changes like that for you over the last couple of years?
Derek Sivers
The one I just said, actually, I’ve defined myself as an introvert for probably 15 years now. Until 15 years ago, I felt I was 50/50, but 15 years ago, somebody asked me, “Where do you go to recharge your batteries alone or in a crowd?” And I said, Oh, obviously alone.” He said, “Well, then you’re an introvert.” And wow, I’m an introvert. And I started organizing my life in such a way that I was making an introverts life a lot of solitude. And it was because I had defined myself as an introvert. This is something I know about myself, I’m an introvert. Therefore, I’m going to move to the middle of nowhere in New Zealand and live this life of creative solitude. And I did it. But I randomly hopped on that plane to Bangalore and Chennai, a few months ago, and I felt this rejuvenation that I haven’t felt in years. I was so happy to be in the world again, and so happy to be meeting so many strangers when, oh my God, I’ve gone and made this introverts life for myself where I’m not meeting strangers and I feel so much better now. I feel more alive than I’ve felt in years. And I flew back thinking, “Huh? Why did I decide I’m an introvert? Why did I decide that that’s a permanent thing?” And I started questioning that.
Derek Sivers
And for example, I think it may just be I dislike shallow conversations, the kind that happen in groups of people. So when somebody asks me that question of, “Where do you go to recharge your batteries? Alone or in a crowd?” When I think in a crowd, I think of, “Where are you from? I’m from here. Oh, what do you do? I do this. Oh. Nice weather today. Yeah. Did you see that thing on TV?” It’s like, ah, this shallow, shallow conversation. Get me out of here. And so I think, yeah, I must be an introvert because I hate shallow conversation. No, it wasn’t that. It was like I hate being in a crowd. I didn’t identify the fact that I think what I hate is shallow conversation. So maybe I never was an introvert. Maybe I miscategorized myself. Or maybe this is just a fluctuating thing, not a foundational, definitional, fixed thing. So yeah, that’s a one that made a huge difference in my life, because now I’ve started questioning that thing that to me felt almost as fixed as anything else about my identity. You know, my name, my height. I’m an introvert. Yeah.
Sachit
When you were describing that, first of all as an INTj myself, and I think you have that same type, it completely sounded like an intjs dream. Let’s see if we can make this connection happen. I was listening to an episode that you did, and you were talking about this sort of like difference between in company leadership, like whether you’re an explorer or whether you’re a leader, right. And when you were talking about explorer, you’re talking about going into a cave and working by yourself, which is, again, sort of like what, like introverts end up doing. And so I’m curious, like when you when you think of that, like sort of like difference between an explorer and a leader and thinking of yourself as an explorer, how much of that actually comes down to just being an introvert? And if changing that position of, “Oh, I’m actually not an introvert, I’m an extrovert.” Might mean I’m also actually a great leader and don’t have to just be the explorer. Or I could explore with other people.
Derek Sivers
I do think that those two things are disconnected, that the solitude and leadership can be the same thing. But somebody can be an extrovert being an explorer in a crowd. So I see where you’re going with that, I’m just going to disagree. So the idea is that an explorer is somebody who just tries lots of things. Let’s try this, let’s try that, let’s try this, let’s try that. And realizing that explorers are hard to follow because they’re constantly trying everything, they’re annoying to follow. Whereas a good leader is someone who’s easy to follow. Well, what’s the easiest thing to follow? Somebody going in a straight line. Somebody telling you this is the destination, this is where we’re going, we won’t be led astray. That person’s easy to follow. And I think leadership by definition, is somebody who’s easy to follow. Therefore a good leader is somebody that is not exploring, that has just decided this is the destination. This is where we’re going. Unless a major earthquake changes the situation, this is where we’re going. Everybody follow me. Even selling the dream, you know, here’s why your life is going to be better when we arrive at the destination. Here’s how we’re going to get there, let’s go. Whether you do that in a crowd or whether you do that from an ivory tower. As a thought leader, you could sit in solitude as a thought leader and say, “Everybody this is how you should think. Stoicism is the way. This is what you must do.” Even a lot of religious leaders. Can be solitary thought leaders. That’s not about-- I should say, being a leader, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re physically around other people.
Derek Sivers
You can be a great leader in solitude. But you can also be an explorer in solitude or an explorer in a crowd. It’s just annoying if you’re an explorer asking people to follow you or getting yourself into a situation where people are trying to follow you, but you keep changing your mind. So that’s what I found at my last company, when I look back at what I did wrong. I was treating my company like my own little personal exploration vehicle, which it was at first, but then I just needed to hire more people to help me make this exploration vehicle function. So it got really annoying for my 85 employees when I would change my mind on things, which I was still doing because, you know, I started it only a few years earlier as just me in my bedroom trying things, and I look back at how annoying it was for people that I kept changing my mind. And my first instinct was, “Well, I changed my mind. That’s how it is.” But then I look back again and I think, you know, if I wanted to be a better leader, I should have just said, “No more exploring. I’ve got a lot of clients, a lot of customers, a lot of employees now. This is the path that this company is going to go on. It’s going to be a slow and steady path towards this destination. It’s not going to dart around and change.” And if I wanted to dart and change, then I’d start a new private thing on the side where I could go explore ideas without asking people to follow me.
Sachit
It’s interesting the way you sort of contextualize that difference between the explorer explorer and how a thought leader can actually be an introvert and reach millions of people in solitude, that was that was really good. On what you said about sort of like, constantly changing. It’s interesting because I’ve actually done that too. If I look back at the last like ten years, I feel like every 2 or 3 years what we did as a company has completely evolved. And I had that same thing where I would be like, we’re doing this, now we’re doing this. One way that I’m actually experimenting with this now is, I interviewed Matt Mushari, who is a CEO coach, and he’s coached Naval Ravikant and a few sort of like, well-known CEOs. And in one of his conversations, he talks about how Naval basically decided he does not want to be the CEO, took himself out of that role, and then basically had someone else be the CEO. And now he’s sort of the creative force right. And one thing I’m experimenting with is whenever we start a new project, I’ll bring on someone who would be like the leader who would be like the, “Oh, we’re just going in this direction and not change.” And basically build a thing with them, get it to a point where I feel satisfied, like I’ve done my creative thing, there’s a good system, and then I just move on to something else, and then that person just keeps running it. This podcast actually being a great example. Kelsey, who you’ve interacted with over email, we spent three months really systematizing how we want to do it and now she runs a system. I come in and do the things that I like, and so I’m not coming in and, like, completely messing up the system as much as I can every few months. So that’s just been interesting and sort of like marrying that explorer with the leader.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Realizing your tendencies, realizing what’s needed, and then figuring out how to be most effective for what’s needed for reorganizing the system so that part of it can just lead and part of it could explore.
Sachit
When you talk about realizing your tendencies. I’m curious, are there specific like tools or books that have been very helpful for you? As you look back at the things you’ve done that stand out for you.
Derek Sivers
As you can tell, I spend a lot of time journaling, but also some dear friends that we have these kind of conversations with each other where we say, what’s on our mind and talk about it. And then your friend can kind of push back and say, “You know, you say this, but I’ve known you for a long time. And I think what you’re saying is not actually true. In fact, you’ve told me quite the opposite a while ago.” And then you might even push back again and say, “Actually, that’s because I when I said it in the past, it wasn’t true. But I realized it’s right now”. And your friend might say, “Actually, no, you said that then too.” Just like, you know, sometimes you can have conversations with a friend that pushes back on your assumptions, helps challenge you, but because we can’t all have a friend like that with us all the time. You could take that role yourself in your journal. And by the way, a journal-- it’s funny, there’s this trend just the last couple of years to try to make the perfect journaling system with the second brain and all of the linked categories and all that. It’s just, honestly just a piece of paper, blank text document. I use a plain text editor. It’s an old terminal thing called vim that’s like 50 years old or something. It’s just plain text, A through Z, zero through nine on a blank dot.txt document. All of my journaling is in there and has been there for 20 years. I just use blank text documents and a raw text editor.
Derek Sivers
No special software needed. So you just dump your thoughts and just in the process of writing and asking yourself question and challenging your thoughts. Even over time, there are things that you might have come to a definite conclusion yesterday. You might say, “You know what? I need to quit my job. This is what I need. Yep, 100%. I need to quit my job.” And then three days later you can say, “Hmm, or I can improve it. In fact, maybe I need to be the boss. Maybe it’s not that I need to quit my job. It’s just that I need to be a better leader than my boss is being. And in fact, maybe I should be the new boss. In fact, maybe I need to talk about doing a company takeover.” You know, sometimes these things happen over days, and you got to acknowledge that part of the process, too. Is that you might come to a certain 100% positive conclusion today. And come to the different conclusion next week, and you’ll take a little time and you’ll know when it’s the right time to turn it into action. Sometimes it’s just really clear right away. I need to take action on this thought right now. I realize I need to do this thing. I’m going to take action now. Sometimes even taking the action is part of the experimentation to see whether this idea works only in theory versus in practice. There are so many things that seem like they should work in theory. And then you try them and you find out that that was a bad idea. Oops. I completely overlooked this huge chunk of reality I forgot about.
Sachit
And it’s cool because it relates to that sort of like thing that you talked about. You’re just trying it now for this moment and seeing if that works or not. You mentioned sort of having friendships and friends that can call you out in certain ways. And I think that, again, the you’re so good at the atomization, I remember the 2 a.m. or 2 p.m. thing that you have, call me whether it’s 2 a.m. or 2 p.m.. And so I’m curious, like, ask someone who’s at least so far identifies as an introvert, likes solitude. What have you learned about finding and then keeping and developing those sort of friendships?
Derek Sivers
I am unusual in that I really like phone friends. My five best friends in the world right now are all phone friends. We’ve hardly seen each other in years. In fact, one of them I haven’t seen in 15 years. One of them I have never seen in person. We have been phone friends for years and years and years, talking every week or two on the phone. With conversations as deep as can be and yet have never met in person. I really like phone friends because no matter where I am in the world we can connect. And it’s about the conversation. It’s not just about sharing space together, going bowling together, drinking together. It’s about the conversation. But that’s what works for me. And I’m saying this from not just in theory, but in practice. That’s what makes a rewarding friendship to me is the quality of the conversation. But you may not be that way. In fact, I just six months ago broke up with a girlfriend that we were together for two years. This was a, what do you call it? Like an incompatibility between us. Is that her core definition of what she wants out of a connection with another human being is just physical presence.
Derek Sivers
She just wants to share space together. Where’s my core thing is the conversation. So she was just not conversational. And me just sharing space with somebody was not ultimately rewarding. It was rewarding on a shallow level, but not on a deeper level. And so after two years together, she felt lonely that I just didn’t want to sit with her for six hours a day. And I felt lonely that she didn’t want to talk with me for six hours a day. And so that’s what broke us up. But it can be the same thing with friendships, is you just need to know for yourself by looking at past relationships that were the most rewarding to you. Was it about the physical presence together? Was it about doing shared activities together, going rock climbing together, going cycling together? going out to bars together? Or was it about the conversation itself? And have you been rewarded at finding great phone conversations in the past? If that’s rewarding to you and you don’t need the in-person, it’s a good thing to notice about yourself. So, yeah, I’ve found some amazing conversationalists and thinkers around the world.
Sachit
Plus wonderful phone friends, by the way some of my-- exactly what you said. Some of my closest friends, literally, I was talking to one of one today, like multiple times. I think we met in person twice at, like two events, and we’ve never met in person since then. She lives in Canada and yeah, we talk almost like every week. So.
Derek Sivers
Love it. Yeah,
Sachit
Completely on board with that. So that’s sort of like the finding and maybe sort of answered it. Like, what have you learned about developing those friendships and making sure they sort of like stand the test of time, especially when you’re not meeting in person?
Derek Sivers
Oh, just calling each other and just being honest. And just every time you do get on the phone, just try to make it the best quality conversation you can. Push deeper beyond the, “How are you? That’s good. Here’s how I am. That’s good.” You get deeper. And it’s also the vulnerability to call each other when you’re really upset. Asking somebody for help. That blew my mind when I broke up with a major ex, actually the one that was born in India. When we divorced nine years ago, and I was at a low point, and the friends that I called in that low state were so happy to help. They were so flattered that I had called them. That was really sweet to see that we think that we’re going to be a burden to our friends if we call on them at a time of need. But friends actually love that. The right friends love that, because I think it also signals that they can reciprocally do the same.
Sachit
It’s funny, I feel like what you just said about feeling-- or not calling friends. I’m curious how much of it again like relates to beliefs in terms of culture? And I actually love to hear your perspective on this, because this is something I noticed when I first came to the US, where in the US there’s this sort of like hyper individualization, right? It’s like a person stands by themselves and they don’t need anyone. And on the other extreme, there’s a really great author, Boyd Vardy, he runs this game reserve in South Africa called Londolozi, and he’s sharing the story of how it’s him and one of his runners that are basically, like, out and they encounter a lion or something. And the runner literally says, I have to save you because there is no separation between you or I, like we’re the same. So it’s just complete, like opposite of the hyper individualization. And so I’m curious, like, as you think about this and, like, just moving cultures and moving countries, what have you noticed about that or around that?
Derek Sivers
I’ve noticed it’s not about cultures and countries as much as individuals. Meaning within any given place, there are people who believe that friendship is the most important thing, that once I am your friend, I am your friend for life. There are some people that are super devoted friends. They make a point of letting you know, like you’re in my inner circle now. You’re family to me. You need anything, I am there, I will drop everything for you. It’s really sweet that I have a few friends, two in particular, that are like that. And then on the other hand, I have some dear friends that are just kind of a opportunistic kind of like I’m enjoying our conversation. I look forward to the next one. And each time enjoying our conversation. Look forward to the next one. But if something happened like and I’ll get married or have some big life change. And it’s like, yeah, yeah, we haven’t talked in years. It’s just, you know, it’s all very light. And so I think that’s that’s not dependent on the country that they came from. It’s really just a personal preference, personal value system.
Sachit
One of the things I’ve also admired about in terms of like your writing and your value system is this is sort of like concept of like zero expectations and not letting go. For example, I’m thinking about the post you wrote about having your son and this idea that, like a lot of people believe if you have kids, your kids owe you something, right? And you come from the perspective of my kids don’t owe me anything. My friends don’t owe me anything. So I’m curious, like what are beliefs like that? That as you’re thinking about your son growing up and as you’re parenting, you’ve tried to instill in him?
Derek Sivers
That’s funny. I think you must have found that on my about page. I never wrote an article about that. That’s pretty buried in my info. But yes, I made sure that my son knows that he doesn’t owe me anything. I just found that a very odorous opinion that I would hear other people say. Like, “You owe your parents your life.” I’d say, “What? That makes no sense. I didn’t ask to be born. How is that logical? I owe my parents my life. You owe them everything. No.” They chose to have you. You didn’t choose to have them. That, to me, is just very much a not true belief. I can see how that belief is useful to teach your children if you want them to take care of you in life. Then yes, it would be useful to train your children with the belief that your family is everything and they owe you everything. And I could see how that would hold together the family bond in an environment or culture where those family bonds were necessary for survival. Sorry. Again my next book “Useful Not True” does this a lot. Any time I say this belief is not true, I try to point out, but it’s useful because it really helps to try to understand why people hold beliefs since they’re not true. Since they’re all subjective. If you understand the reasoning behind it, it helps you empathize and understand, but also at the same time detach. You can both empathize and say, “Well, it’s not true that families everything. That’s just an opinion. But I can see why it helps to believe that. Because that would strengthen the family unit.” I could see why that would help for survival. It helps, it’s funny, empathy and detachment at the same time.
Derek Sivers
So anyway, for my son, yes, I wanted to make sure that I counteracted that message that he might get from any other source telling him that your family’s everything you owe your family, everything you owe loyalty to your family. I make sure that he gets the counter message loud and clear. Just go live your life. You don’t owe me a damn thing. Other ones, I like to let him be a kid to be naughty and mischievous. To almost encourage mischief because I think it has creative benefits as compared to obedience. So I don’t value obedience very highly. I can understand how parents would because it would make their life easier. But I think obedience is a value that is useful to the parent, and it’s useful if you want to train your child to be a good employee in the future. A good slave, but not a good value for creativity. And again, this is my environment. I think that my lucky, privileged child is going to grow up in an environment where it will benefit him more to be daring and creative and bold than it would for him to be obedient. If I was raising him in a different situation, it might be the opposite, and I might encourage obedience. If I felt that his life was going to be such, where obedience would reward him more than daring. So things like that, I’m not trying to prescribe these as universal values that others should do as I am doing. It’s for my boy with his tendencies in his life.
Sachit
And it relates back to the useful, but not true, because it doesn’t have to be true for everyone. But it’s true for you. One of the things when you were describing how you’re sort of like writing this, you’re describing the belief in your finding, and you’re sort of talking about how it would be useful, right. Something I’ve noticed is if you look at like “How to Live” and this and then “Anything You Want”, you’re also playing around with the structure in terms of your books. And you’ve obviously like written all of these book notes. So I’m curious, like if you think about the books you’ve written notes on and the books that you’re writing, how are you thinking about the structure and sort of like how you are actually structuring and creating the book?
Derek Sivers
Yes and no. For my book, “How to Live”, which is my last book and I think my best book. Anybody listening to this, if you haven’t read my book called “How to Live”, you need to read my book called “How to Live”. It is my masterpiece. It’s the best thing I’ve ever made. If I did nothing else in my life but made that book and then die, I would feel that that was a life well lived. That book means so much to me. For that book, the structure was everything. It had to be in that exact structure to make its point. It’s a weird structure. It’s a structure where it’s 27 chapters, where each of the 27 chapters is answering the same question in a different way, and every chapter disagrees with all the other chapters. That format was the point. The medium was the message. Two of my other books called “Your Music and People” and “Hell Yeah or No”, those are really just a collection of essays that were separate at first, and then I put them together into one after realizing a common thread that the “Hell Yeah or No” book, I realized I had written a lot about what’s worth doing and fixing faulty thinking.
Derek Sivers
So I put those together into a collection called “Hell Yeah or No”. And then my first book called “Anything You Want”, was just really a story. It was a a story of how I started, grew, and sold my company. But following the story not just in a chronological but from the lessons learned. So each of those little 40 chapters, now 48, I republished the book in 2022. So each of those 48 chapters is a lesson learned along the way. So the structure can make a huge difference for my next book for “Useful Not True”. I’ve got the structure laid out. It’s kind of, it’s my first one where I’m making a sequential argument that I’m trying to convince the reader of a certain mindset. I’m trying to help them change their mind into a certain mindset, and I need to do it in a sequential argument. So it’s my first time writing this style. It’s a little harder.
Sachit
What is harder about it compared to essays or How to Live?
Derek Sivers
Because it’s stacking up an argument. It’s making each piece rest upon the previous pieces. None of my other books have done that so much. Having to define nice and early, what do I mean by not true? I’m not saying necessarily false, I just mean it’s not absolutely inarguably, supposedly true. If it’s not absolutely, inarguably true. I’m just going to call it not true. But that doesn’t mean false. Doesn’t mean when I say that your belief is not true. It doesn’t mean your belief is false. It just means that it’s not impossible to argue. So I need to stack that up first, and then I need to stack this. And then I need to show an example of how you’re already doing this. You know it can be useful in traffic if somebody’s being a jerk to think, “Oh, maybe that person has a sick child in the back and they’re trying to hurry to the hospital.”
Derek Sivers
It’s probably not true, but it’s useful to change your mind into a more peaceful mindset. And so then I can show somebody that they’re already doing the useful, not true calculation in their head. But now I can show some other ways this can be applied in your life. So it’s hard to stack up this argument. That’s my current challenge.
Sachit
And it’s interesting actually, because as you were describing this, I’m sort of like picturing this Jenga tower because--
Derek Sivers
Yes, I was too.
Sachit
If you want to change something now and you pull one, the whole thing collapses. And I’m actually thinking of the biggest thing that I learned from, like, Tim Ferriss on how to write books, which is what he does, is each book is an independent chapter that can be used as a blog post for marketing if needed. And so he can write one chapter. If he does want to do it, he can go do another one, and then he can like can just sort of like move around them. And in this case, you’re not able to do that at all because you have to get one perfect, then the other, then the almost right?
Derek Sivers
Right. Although I’m trying to also at the same time make each chapter stand alone. So it could be shared as an individual article, but then together even more powerful to have them sequential. So yeah, I’m trying to make it stand on its own. The comparison is a musician who makes a great album. It’s a lost art, a fading art of making a great album that holds together as an album, which ideally is a bunch of songs that stand up on their own. Each song can be appreciated on its own, but boy, if you put them together as an album, it’s even better to capture a certain mood or mindset. So yeah, it’s like that.
Sachit
It’s interesting, actually, that you describe as an album. We’ll end with the question that I kind of started with, which is when you’re writing, are there other examples where, like, you almost think in terms of music and then like make those connections.
Derek Sivers
So Sachit the whole way I write is because of my 15 years as a songwriter, before I started writing articles. As a songwriter, sometimes you have the lyric first, but then you need to make it match a melody. You just sing a lyric, but very often you have a melody first. You’re walking around humming this tune.
Derek Sivers
Da da da da da da da da da da.
Derek Sivers
And you think I really like that melody? What words could go there?
Derek Sivers
You know I don’t want nothing. I don’t wanna listen.
Derek Sivers
And so you have to find the words that match that exact melody, which means you’ve got to take something of meaning to you and make it fit in five syllables and then seven syllables, and you really have to craft every word. I did that for 15 years of my life. I wrote, I don’t know, 150 songs and put, I’m sure, thousands of hours of my life into writing those songs. And so when I write an article, it should be no surprise that I’m still crafting every single word.
Sachit
I think this is probably why it almost when you’re reading it, it flows like music. And that’s why we all can remember the phrases that you’re using.
Derek Sivers
Thank you. That’s amazing.
Sachit
Yeah. And and if people want to check out all of the books, we’ll have all of them linked up. So three quick questions and then we’ll end from there. So one of the things I’m always like, really interested in is like who inspired people early on. And so I’m curious, like, if you think of the arc of your career and if you could give credit or thanks to someone you haven’t had the chance to thank, who would that be?
Derek Sivers
Oh, okay. So I’ve already written about Kimo Williams and what an influence he had. I’ve already written about Tony Robbins and how much that book of his called “Awaken the Giant Within” meant to me. So the two that I haven’t credited are some really old, old timey self-help books from the 1930s that I’ve found on my grandmother’s bookshelf. One was called “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” by Dale Carnegie. But the more important one was called “The Success System that Never Fails” by I think, W. Clement Stone. I think that was the first real self-help book I ever read. I was probably 16 or 17 years old. And I was ambitious. I wanted to be a famous musician. And so reading “The Success System That Never Fails” was so powerful to me, even though it was mostly about being an insurance salesman, but I just translated it to my musician situation. And it got me into such a driven, ambitious mindset. Also, I remember there was a book called “Wishcraft” by Barbara Sher. That made a huge difference for me also when I was a teenager. Got me into a very resourceful mindset that I find others lack. And I wonder if how much of it was because of that book.
Sachit
For you, what does it mean to be a conscious creator?
Derek Sivers
Conscious, to me implies that you’re being thoughtful. And not just following the default. Yeah. I’m reminded of, for some reason when the dude from Coldplay and the blonde actress. What’s her name? Gwyneth Paltrow broke up. They called it a conscious uncoupling in the media. I don’t know why that phrase comes to mind. Because it seems to imply that they weren’t just breaking up as a reaction. That they really thought it through. So, conscious creator. Yeah you’re not just reacting. You’re not just churning out content that you’re being very thoughtful about what you’re putting out into the world.
Sachit
I love that. And by the way, even when you just said, I don’t know, I just thought that would have been a perfect answer, too, because this is actually what this podcast is. It’s my exploration to figure out what it means. And that’s where I started. But I love the thoughtfulness. And it’s certainly clear in, like, every piece of work that you put out. Last one and you can pick the time period whether it’s like six months, a year or whatever. What are you most excited about and optimistic about in the next whatever period you want to pick, whether it’s work you’re doing or what’s happening in the world, could be “Useful Not True” or something else.
Derek Sivers
It is the “Useful Not True” book that mission is overriding almost everything else right now. I tend to have this monomaniacal tendency to focus on one thing at a time. I am not a multitasker when I take something on, I just want to do it all the way to completion. It bothers me to leave something uncomplete. Yeah right now I really just want to finish my book called “Useful Not True” and make it something great.
Sachit
And if people want to check that out, the website is.
Derek Sivers
sive.rs
Sachit
And not only “Useful Not True”, but it has links to all your other books and all these articles that you’ve written that have been a companion for me for, for so many years. So thank you, Derek, for doing this. It’s been just a joy to have this conversation.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, Sachit. I really appreciate it.