Bounce
host: Larry Weeks
career changes, writing process, philosophical beliefs and perspectives
listen: (download)
watch: (download)
Transcript:
Larry
Derek. How the heck are you?
Derek Sivers
Good
Larry
You’re in a sound studio.
Derek Sivers
I am.
Larry
Wow.
Derek Sivers
There were too many times that I needed to record an audio book or something. Or just record a podcast, and neighbor was mowing the lawn or something like that, and I was like, “Well, I’m screwed. I can’t record today.” So I thought, you know, the cost of going into a recording studio versus the cost of just buying a little recording booth just made sense to me. So, yeah, I’m standing in something the size of a phone booth. It’s small, completely soundproofed. They could be setting off explosives outside my window and you wouldn’t hear it in here.
Larry
You’re standing?
Derek Sivers
Yep.
Larry
Oh, cool.
Derek Sivers
It works for me.
Larry
So remember, I book Seth Godin, and I have this automatic email that goes out that I don’t do it anymore, but because everybody’s doing podcasts. But it was just automatic. It went “Hey, make sure the audio quality, you have a mic.” You know. So so Seth sends me this email. His tone was basically, “Larry, I have a television studio in my house.” And I was like, “Seth, it wasn’t for you.” But anyway, very cool.
Derek Sivers
He actually got-- it was really generous of him. He made a nice big, long technical post that was very unusual for his blog, instead of his usual daily shower thoughts that he got really specific and said, you should get this, you should get this kind of camera. You should set up your thing like this. You should put your lights here. It was really useful and--
Larry
I found out I didn’t know he was a electronics nerd when I talked to him. You know, we chat a little bit. It was like, he just loves new equipment and that kind of technology. I don’t know why that surprised me, but it did. Derek. Welcome to the show, man. Thanks for coming.
Derek Sivers
Thanks. Yeah. I love what you’re doing. I checked out your past podcasts. I like your style. I like what you’re doing. So, yeah, I’m not here to promote anything. I come with no talking points. I just wanted to talk with you.
Larry
Podcast brought to you by Derek Shivers. No.
Derek Sivers
Sivers. Not shivers.
Larry
Sorry. See, I thought I was haughty and I thought I had it. I’ll admit that I’ve written, when I was writing stuff out, I had to correct the spelling because I just for some reason, I want to put an H in there. I don’t know why.
Derek Sivers
It’s all right. You know, it’s funny, I was a teenager when my parents said, “Think of it like rivers, but with an S.” And I went, “Oh, you should have told me that earlier. I could have used that as a kid.” Rivers with an S.
Larry
Hang on a second. You had a conversation with your parents about the pronunciation of your last name.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, but no. I had been telling people, like, my whole life. People would say Sievers, Sievers, silvers.
Larry
They’re helping you help others. Oh. Got it.
Derek Sivers
Sivers. But they had never told me to tell people. It’s like rivers. I was like, oh, yeah, rivers. Rivers with an S that makes more sense. That’s more digestible.
Larry
Okay, now I’m curious, what’s the origin of that name? What--?
Derek Sivers
I think it’s British. Swedish. Something either Swedish or British. There’s a company in Sweden called Sivers. So I think it’s a Swedish.
Larry
Okay. All right.
Derek Sivers
All right, now for real. Hi.
Larry
I’m a big fan. I’m a big fan. I just want you to know that and I know you have fans all over the place. So part of, not that you’re asking, but the reason I’m a big fan, is you’re this, I don’t even--. You have this eclectic--. I was going to say eccentric, but I’m not. But this eclectic background. And I’m incredibly curious as to how you got where you are today. Wherever that is. I’m sure everybody listening, at least in my audience, probably knows. But for those who don’t, let me make sure I have this right from your bio. You were a musician then a a circus performer. Then you got into the CD Baby business or the business world. The entrepreneur world. Now I’m truncating, I’m sure. And then to author but I mean, you started as a musician, is that right?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. So the path maybe makes more sense from my point of view. That at the age of 14, I just wanted to be a musician. All I cared about was music. And so from the age of 14 to 29, I just single mindedly pursued this one thing. All I wanted was to be a great musician. So that’s all I did from 14 to 29, laser focused. But then at 29, I was selling my CD at a time in 1997 when Amazon was just a bookstore and there was no PayPal. And if you wanted to sell your own music directly, there was literally not a single business anywhere on the internet that would do it for you. So I built my own website to sell my CD with a little shopping cart, and it was so unusual at the time that all of my musician friends in New York City said, “Whoa, dude, could you sell my CD through that thing?” And said, “Yeah, all right. Sure.” Just as a favor to friends, I set up this website to sell my friends CDs, but with damn lucky timing, it quickly became the largest seller of independent music on the web and took over my own aspirations to be a great musician, which I had been doing for 15 years at that point.
Derek Sivers
So I actually was welcoming a change of pace. So then for ten years, I ran a music distribution company called CDBaby, which was a big success. But then I made a lot of mistakes while doing it. So after I sold the company while the rest of the world was telling me that I was a success. Seth Godin asked me to write a book about it, and so I wrote a little book called “Anything You Want”. That was the story of how I started, grew, and sold my company and the mistakes I made along the way. And then that book was a decent success. And so then people were looking at me more as a writer than as an entrepreneur or a musician. And I realized that all of my heroes are writers, and one of my favorite things in life are books that change the way I think. So I realized that this was my new focus. So yeah, for the last ten years, I’ve been focusing mostly on writing great books, and I’m writing my fifth one right now.
Larry
That is a cool story. I’ve listened to podcasts that you’ve been on and I’m sure I’ve missed a ton of appearances you’ve had, but I don’t think I’ve ever knew the step by step from there to here. Oh my gosh. Now I’m in a--.
Derek Sivers
Sorry, Larry. I forgot the circus. The circus was in the middle of during my time pursuing my music career. At the age of 18, while I was at Berklee College of Music in Boston, an agent called and asked if looking for a guitarist to play at a pig show. And it was my-
Larry
Wait, wait wait wait. There’s a lot of stuff here. Sorry. Where were you attending school?
Derek Sivers
Sorry. I was at Berklee College of Music in Boston. It’s just a music school.
Larry
Got it. Okay. Sorry. And so you’re training okay. School of music. Go ahead. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Derek Sivers
And then an agent actually called the bass player in my band, and he said, “I don’t want the gig.” And he said, “Do you want it? It’s playing guitar at a pig show. It pays 75 bucks.” I was like, “Hell yeah, my first paying gig.” And it was like a $55 round trip bus ticket up to Vermont to play for $75. But that was my first paying gig. I was so excited, and I played at a pig show, and when I came back to Boston, the agent called me on Monday and said, “Yeah, apparently you did a good job at the pig show. I heard good things about you. So look, I’ve got a circus and the musician just quit. We need a new musician. Do you want the gig?” And I said, “Hell yeah.” So for ten years, from the age of 18 to 28, I was hired as the musician. But then they quickly told me that the “musician” was basically the ringleader MC musician of the circus. So for ten years of my life, from 18 to 28, I did over a thousand shows as the ringleader, MC/ musician of a circus in New England.
Larry
Okay. So you performed as a band at a circus, but you also you were the ringleader, you know?
Derek Sivers
So I was the solo. Like, if you were to go to the circus, you would have thought it was my circus. I was the guy that came out like the MC at the beginning of the show. And in between every act. But I had a guitar on and like, a drum set on the ground, like one of those, like street performers that you see where they’ve got both, you know, they’re playing guitar, singing with a drum at their feet. You’ve seen somebody do that, you know. So I was doing that for the circus. I was the one man band ringleader, MC of a circus in New England.
Larry
So what kind of band were you? What were you performing? What kind of music?
Derek Sivers
Oh just, I mean--
Larry
Just whatever, cover?
Derek Sivers
In the circus. I was just playing songs for kids, but like, in my own career. My own music was kind of a cross between James Brown and the Beatles. Funky pop songs. Maybe came out sounding somewhat like Prince. But the life of a working musician in New York City is, you just say yes to whatever pays. So if somebody said, I’m looking for a jazz pianist for an art opening. I’d say, “That’s me. I’m your guy. I can do that. What does it pay?” If somebody says, “Hey, we need a heavy metal guitar solo on this disco record.” That’s me. I’m the heavy metal guitar solo guy can do it, you know? So that’s how you make a living in New York City as a musician, is you just got to be good enough to say yes to everything. I was never a great jazz pianist. I was never a great heavy metal solo guitarist. But I could do enough to get the gig.
Larry
Did the music ever call you or performing ever? Did you ever do it again? Like, was there a temptation when once you had an X amount of success, whether that’s with CD Baby or whatever, to say, “Hey, I’m going to start a band now.” Did you ever or it was just a phase?
Derek Sivers
You know what’s funny? Do you know Mark Manson, who wrote the book Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck?
Larry
I’ve interviewed him. Yep, yep.
Derek Sivers
Okay, cool. So Mark and I were just talking about this last week. A thing we have in common is we both used to play guitar hours a day, like it was our main thing. And then once we started writing. And writing took over our life. We both later went back and tried to like get a nice guitar and start playing again. And it just both had the same experience, like it’s just not there anymore. The fingers can still do the thing. And he said the same thing too. It’s like my fingers still know how to do all those scales and arpeggios, and I still have the physical dexterity. It’s just that it’s not my mode of expression anymore. So yeah, after a few years without playing, I went and got a really nice guitar and I played it for an hour and I went, “Hey, it’s just not my thing anymore.” I’m more fascinated with the thoughts and ideas I’m writing about these days.
Larry
Yeah, well, we’re all thankful for that. But I’m just curious about that kind of life change.
Derek Sivers
It’s surprising to a lot of people. I mean, I do think in a way that I’m a musician for life. It’s a--.
Larry
You’re a creative. And that takes many forms. This is my opinion, that takes that can take many forms. Speaking, writing, acting. Playing an instrument, communicating with people. There’s something about connecting with people but there’s different mediums to do that, I’m guessing.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I mean you’ve had some big career changes too, you know, it’s--.
Larry
Yeah. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Sometimes we take a single mission and express it in different ways. So in a way like I think that I’ve always been looking for alternate perspectives, whether that’s through music. Kind of saying, okay, well, here’s the way the Beatles wrote that melody, and here’s the way they got those chord changes. But here’s the way that Fela Anikulapo Kuti does it in Nigeria, who’s one of my favorite musicians. But now what if I were to kind of take the Beatles approach to melody and mix it with what Fela Anikulapo Kuti is doing. But then I really liked the way that these trip-hop producers kind of mess with the frequencies and cut off the high end, and so let me try to combine those and see what happens. And I’ll do that. Like that’s how I would make music or I’d hear an Elvis Costello melody, but I’d want to mix it with this Bjork style arrangement and sing like Sigur Ros or something like that. And I’d try to mix these things to just try to find a different point of view. But then I start a business by accident. Like I told you, just because people asked me to and I think, okay, well, the way that most people do business is this.
Derek Sivers
But I don’t know, that just seems kind of stupid to me. Why not try it like this? Like, what if I were to give away all the profits in a way. I just find different ways, alternative ways of thinking of whatever I’m doing. It’s like an ongoing experiment. Let’s see what happens if and then now guess I’m writing books. So it’s like, well, most people tend to approach the world this way, but what if we, like, deliberately adopted this belief system and tried this then what would happen? And most people tend to just just sign a deal with Penguin and let Penguin publish their books. But what if I were to do this all myself? How would I like to do it? And so to me, that’s like this common thread of whether it was making music then making a business, then doing my books. It feels like it’s all the same thing for me.
Larry
It’s a medium that you’re playing with. Is that how writing is like? And I don’t mean the ideas because you just expressed that, but I mean the actual phrasing and wording of what you’re writing. Are you thinking of that as well?
Derek Sivers
Oh! Yeah, I’m glad you brought this up.
Larry
What if I said it this way or--.
Derek Sivers
Yes. Oh, it feels like songwriting now.
Derek Sivers
People tell me that my writing style is unusual, and I think it’s because I’m still taking the same approach I took when writing songs, because I wrote over 100 songs over 15 years. And there’s a certain way when you’re writing a song, you’ve got a melody. Let’s say you’ve already got the melody and it’s, you know, da da da da da, and it’s like, uh uh uh uh uh, I’ve got five syllables. And I want to say this. How do I express this in five syllables? Uh, da da da da. Ah, but no, but the the emphasis on the syllable has to match the melody. And so you really kind of craft every single word and syllable. And I did that for ten years of my life for 100 songs at least. And then now as I’m writing books, then. Yeah, I’ve got this idea. But I don’t want to be blah blah blah blah blah and fill 400 pages full of nonsense. That could be an article, right? Like it’s the number one criticism of a non-fiction books is when people read this 300 page book and they go, “It could have been an article.” Yeah, I agree, there’s often 30 or 40 good sentences in a 300 page book. So how can I just write the good sentences and leave out everything else. And so I use my songwriting techniques of sweating every syllable, you know.
Larry
That’s your next book?
Derek Sivers
No. Well, that’s all my books. Honestly.
Larry
The song writing technique.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, right. Song writing and writing, right. No. So my last book, the newest one that’s currently out, is called “How to Live”. And I took that to an extreme. It’s almost like poetry because I was trying to like-
Larry
Express or something.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, almost. It was almost like everything I’ve ever learned in life in one book. So the rough draft was 3000 pages, and I was like, “Okay, there, I’ve said everything I want to say, but I’m sure as hell not going to publish a 3000 page book.” So it took me two years to compress the 3000 pages down to 112 pages.
Larry
You just threw it on the page and and then chiseled. You had this big piece of clay and the book came out of hammering away the unnecessary. Is it? Sorry. I don’t mean to put--.
Derek Sivers
No. That’s right. It’s dead right. Now basically every sentence that’s left in that book used to be a whole page, and I found a way to express a whole page of thoughts in one sentence. So it means there’s not a wasted word in there. So it’s an unusual read.
Larry
Wow. So the majority of your time is on the editing. Is that what I’m hearing?
Derek Sivers
It was about 50/50. I spent two years writing it and two years editing it. And the new book I’m writing now called “Useful Not True”. I’ve spent years thinking this way, but casually. And people kept asking me about it, and I got more and more interested in looking deeper into why I think this way, why I choose thoughts that are useful, whether or not they’re true. And so I spent the last year and a half researching the idea more and kind of thinking how I’m going to write it and dumping a lot of my thoughts, a lot of input, a lot of output. And now, just about a month ago, I’m actually writing the final words that will go into the book. Which of course are very short and punchy, but it’s after tons of unfiltered thoughts put into my notes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.
Larry
You look like you love writing. You look like you love it. Do you?
Derek Sivers
Maybe the reason I became a musician at 14 is I was a massive fan of music at 14. Like, I felt like the sounds coming through those speakers were resonating my soul, you know? And so I wanted to join that effort. I wanted to do that for others and myself. I wanted to make music that was my ideal music first and foremost. And then share it with others. So these days, books are my favorite thing in the world. I’m such a fan of these philosophical nonfiction books that changed the way I think about the world. It’s one of the greatest feelings in life to me, is to feel your brain changing and rewiring upon hearing a new idea, and you go, “Oh, whoa! I never thought about it that way.” Are you high five? That’s funny. Like those of you just listening, they’re kind of put his hand up to the camera. I was like, wait, are you telling me to stop? Oh, no. Good. He’s high fiving me.
Larry
No. Amen. So the best thing that my mom ever-- my parents ever did. But my mom I credit, by the way, my mom, who did not graduate high school read more than my father who did graduate high school. And then she instilled--. You said it beautifully. The books blowing up my brain give me another world. I’m going through a tunnel. I’m in another dimension. What mystery. What don’t I know about what I don’t know? Just this whole turtles all the way down. It’s reading and ideas, man. You know? I love monsters. I still do to this day. Just monsters and scary movies. And instead of race cars as a kid, I collected monster models and spent hours painting them. And I had a six foot poster of Frankenstein on my bedroom door. And I wanted a magazine, it was called Creepy Magazine. It was a comic. It was a black and white comic. All scary stories, you know. And I said, “Mom, can I have this?” She ordered a year subscription and anything that I wanted to read. Luckily I was fairly square kid, but the creepy thing, the monster thing, was kind of weird. She was like feeding this desire because I would spend hours in my room by myself. And now I’ve got libraries of books and I’m nowhere without these books, you know. I would have gotten nowhere, I don’t think. I’m sorry. Books and reading and you touched a soft spot in my heart anyway.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I mean, agree. And you put it beautifully. It’s like the way that it kind of expands your mind and blows up your previous notions when you take in something new. And yeah, it can be a philosophical idea. Like with just one that comes to the top of my mind right now is a great little book called The Courage to Be Disliked, which is a Japanese author.
Larry
I’ve read that.
Derek Sivers
Good. Good.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Alfred Alder. Anyway. But the one little idea in there of saying, the core of all interpersonal trouble is when you are trying to interfere in someone else’s tasks, or someone else is trying to interfere in your tasks, that we each have our own tasks to do. And then he says, you know whose task it is, because it is the one who is ultimately most benefited by this choice or action. And so it was like we have some preset notions, whether it’s through our culture or religion or whatever, that says things like it’s good to help others and whatnot. And so to have this one idea to say no. Trying to interfere in other people’s tasks is the core of all interpersonal trouble. Kind of goes, whoa, hold on a second. Now I have to rethink everything that’s ever happened in my past and rethink the way I’m going to approach the future. If this is true, or if this works, I mean because true is that’s a different subject. But if this lens, this viewpoint works. What are the implications? Oh my God, this changes everything. Okay, so it could be that, that’s to me a philosophical viewpoint mindblower. But sometimes, like you mentioned information, it can just be there’s a world that you know nothing about. Some people feel that way when they learn about poker. They go, “Oh my God, there’s a whole universe here of things to dive into about poker.” And that fascinates them. I just went to the Middle East for my first time this year to Dubai, which ordinarily was a place that would have been my in my top ten list of places I never want to go.
Larry
Is it Alder?
Derek Sivers
Fuck that place sounds so shallow and commercial and crass and sounds like a big shopping mall. That’s the opposite of what I want in life. But I challenged my prejudice and I got off the plane for two days and luckily before doing so, I read three books about the history of Dubai and met up with people that live in Dubai and are from Dubai. And oh my God, now I think it’s the most fascinating place in the world and this whole universe was opened up to me. This part of the world that I knew nothing about before. So yeah, it is one of my favorite things in life. And if if it seems like I’m really excited about writing. Maybe it’s because I’m often disappointed in the verbosity of people’s books, such low information inside all that verbiage and noise. Unnecessary examples. And so then think I want to fix that. I think a lot of creativity comes out of discontent. You know, it was often I’d hear other people’s music and I’d think, “Ah, no, no, you’re doing it wrong here. Here, I’ll show you. I’ll do it better.” And I think the same thing when I read a lot of other people’s books, I’m like, damn, there’s some really inspiring ideas in here. And there’s also a lot of noise. I want to write books that have great ideas and are all signal with no noise.
Larry
Well.
Derek Sivers
Anyway we could change the subject.
Larry
No, no, no, this is fantastic. I also want to note to people just listening to this is that, you know, I’ve heard you speak before, but you are a lit bulb, Derek. You are this happy, this very bright personality. It’s really cool. It’s really infectious. So anyway, just so people know this. He’s not boring to look at at all. He’s very animated. So let’s talk about that, the book. By the way, can I ask you about the book that you haven’t finished yet at the end of our chat here?
Derek Sivers
So wait. So, listeners, Larry asked me a week or two ago like, “Hey, can you give me an advance copy?” And I so badly wanted to. I mean, in the moment when you asked, my first thought was, “Yeah, sure, let me send you this.” I was like, “Oh man, but I’m changing this. Like every day.” I’m actively spending 6 hours to 12 hours a day just writing this thing right now and whatever I would send to you. So I even thought about, like, should I send it to him that morning. But then I was like, “Oh, that’s putting too much pressure on you.” Like an hour before we hit record. So instead, I’m happy to just talk about it for now. I’ve put the ideas out in the world a little bit over the last year as I’ve been working on it so.
Larry
Well, thank you for that, because I would have. Seth did that or his publicist, like, I didn’t even know he had a book. He was coming on, didn’t know he had a new book. And it was one of the first books in about marketing specifically that he hadn’t written about in a very long time. And so I got this pre-pub right before. So all night I was trying to, you know. But I want to I want to talk about “How to Live” because I’m always looking for good advice or salient pieces of information on how other people live and. But I just want to get this straight, because I heard something before you came on. And I’m truncating. I’m shortening this. But you sold CD Baby. And you had a nomadic kind of lifestyle. You did a lot of traveling. And you wound up in New Zealand on a wharf in the ocean. Is that right?
Derek Sivers
Yes.
Larry
So are you still there or?
Derek Sivers
I wish.
Derek Sivers
It might continue to go down in my personal history as the coolest place I ever lived. I loved living on that wharf. It was a wharf that stuck out into the ocean. That used to be a shipping terminal where the the big boats coming in from Australia would land. But then it got kind of old, decrepit, and they were not sure whether they wanted to tear it down. So they turned it into apartments. And there were just maybe 15 apartments or something like that sticking out into the water. And yes, they were luxurious, but I just had a tiny little two bedroom apartment there that I just loved because it’s one thing to have ocean view, then it’s another thing to be ocean front. I was ocean in. I was like in the water and damn, that was a great place to live. I loved it, loved it, loved it. But then, January 2019, we left New Zealand for good. “For good”. We moved to Oxford, England, deciding this is where we’re going to raise our kid. This is it. We became legal residents of the UK. Our kid went to school in Oxford and thought, this is it. This is where he’s going to grow up until he’s 18 or whatever. And so that’s why I sold my apartment on the wharf and thought I was never coming back to New Zealand. But then 15 months later, Covid hit. And we were sitting in Oxford and schools were all closed and you couldn’t travel anywhere.
Larry
England was very strict.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, yeah. And we hadn’t really made any friends there. And New Zealand, if you remember, was one of the only Covid free places on Earth. Nobody was allowed in except citizens, except we are citizens. And so we were just looking at this golden ticket in our hand, the ticket to the magical Covid free place on Earth. And at the time, if you remember, in 2020, nobody knew how long this was going to go on. So we just kind of thought, yeah, let’s go. So we left UK, moved back to New Zealand and then was like, “Damn, I wish I wouldn’t have sold that apartment.” So yeah, now we’re back here for good. Just kind of had to make that family decision. Like, this is where our kids are going to grow up. So I live in New Zealand now till 2030.
Larry
Is that where you wrote this book, How to Live? And it’s my understanding you were pondering all these questions or kind of documenting your life up to that point and then thinking of other ways to live or where to go or travel. Was it?
Derek Sivers
Ah, yes and no. It’s funny, I haven’t talked about the How to Live book in a bit, but let’s see if I can do this in a short, enticing way. When you read books like Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck says you should live as such. And then you read a book like Atomic Habits, which says no, no, no, live this way. And then you read, say, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which says, no, no, no, live this way. And then read maybe a Tony Robbins book which says, no, no, no, you should live this way. You read The Power of Now. And all of these books are like their own little universe where everything is correct if you follow this life methodology, just do what I say. Life will be wonderful, but they all conflict with each other. But they’re all not wrong. And so pause that for a second. If you had to pick one book as my single favorite book that I haven’t written, then it would be the book Sum by David Eagleman. Do you know that one?
Larry
I’ve never heard of that book. Oh, good.
Derek Sivers
Oh good.All r ight. S-u-m by David Eagleman is a tiny little book with a fascinating format. The subtitle is 40 Tales from the afterlives. It’s fiction-ish. And he’s answering the question, what happens when you die. But he’s answering it in 40 different ways. So one chapter will say, “When you die, you’re surrounded by a bunch of little thuggish creatures that are looking at you saying, ’What is answer? What is answer?’ And no matter what you try to say, they just look confused. And they just keep saying ’What is answer?’ And it takes you a while to figure out that you are an artificial intelligence program, that what you knew as your life was actually the running of a program that these creatures wrote to figure out the meaning of life. But now the program is done and they want to know what you’ve learned. But you try to explain everything you’ve learned in life, but they’re just too dumb to understand it because you’ve grown smarter than your creators.” Okay, but then another chapter will say chapters nine, “When you die you’re immediately greeted by somebody that says, ’Well, in that life you chose to be a man. But once again, as you chose to be a human last time, now you can choose any creature to be what would you like to be?’ And this time you decide you choose to be a horse. But as soon as you make your choice, your body starts turning into a horse. But then you start to feel your brain turn into a horse’s brain, and you realize that you didn’t love the simple life of a horse. What you liked was being a complex man, admiring the simple life of a horse. But now that you’re turning into a horse, you’re forgetting what a man even is. And at the last minute you try to change your mind. But all that comes out is. And in the last second before you become a horse. Your final thought is, ’I wonder what kind of complex, beautiful creature I must have been before that chose the simple life of a man.’”
Derek Sivers
So it’s 40 beautiful little short stories. All answering the same question 40 different ways. And I love that book so much. I read it twice, and then one day I went, “Oh! I want to write a book called How to Live in that format.” Taking all of these philosophies in life, saying, “Here’s how to live. Live for the future. Do everything for your future. Your present self is in service of your future self. This is how to live. And if you follow this to the logical conclusion, therefore you must do the following things. And this is is all the reasons why this is the correct answer. This is how to live.”
Derek Sivers
And the next chapter says, “Here’s how to live. Live for the moment. Fill your senses. The past doesn’t exist. It’s just your memories. The future doesn’t exist. It’s just your imagination. All that really exists is this moment right now. Do everything for now. Fill your senses.” And then the next chapter will say, “Here’s how to live. Follow the pain. Whatever hurts you is good for you. So in every single way, every day, whatever hurts is what you should be doing. The pain will guide you to the path you need.” And the next chapter will say, “Here’s how to live. Live for others. Live generously. This is what we’re all here on earth to do is to live for others.” And so my little tiny 112 page book called How to Live, subtitle “27 Answers and one weird conclusion.” So it’s 27 answers to that one question, how to live in 27 conflicting chapters. How’d I do? How was that for a summary?
Larry
Well you did great. And I wish I had known the story of “Sum” as a framework before I read the book. Because now I’m thinking, how would that book have affected me with that. Because I didn’t have hangers to hang the ideas on because they were conflicting.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Deliberately conflicting. It was meant to spin you around.
Larry
Yes, but there was a purpose for the spinning that I wasn’t fully aware of until you just now told me. I mean, I was kind of aware where you’re going, but man.
Derek Sivers
I don’t know much about--.
Larry
You’ve just blown my mind and don’t know it. So first of all, I get the fact. So let’s say there’s a car accident. If you have on a street corner and you have somebody on every corner of that street, they’re going to see something a little different.
Derek Sivers
Yes.
Larry
Same accident right. And life is like that because it’s just this kaleidoscope of things and all of it is life. In fact. Oh, man. Derek, you blew my mind, man. I don’t know. Let me go ahead and see if I can still ask these questions, because, I’m in this weird spot where I’m thinking about what you’ve written with the framework that you just gave me while I’m trying to interview you. I feel like I just took something and I’m like, Mr. Wizard, so this is good.
Derek Sivers
I got that reference.
Larry
Wow.
Derek Sivers
Haven’t heard that in a while.
Larry
So then so give me your perspective of the conclusion. Wait wait hang on, hang on, hang on. Because I’m afraid now to ask about pieces of the advice. But I’m going to go ahead and persist. I’m going to have some courage to ask it. But man, oh my gosh. I think I could have built a different framework for what I’m going to interview, because first of all, I think it’s what you said is fantastic, and I want to read that book. But all right, let me stumble through this. Let me just tell you what what kind of resonated with me, but also want to get some clarity from you for some of the points and where they fit into the whole. So maybe that’s what we do, Derek. If I can ask you about some of the pieces of advice, but then when it strikes you or if there’s a way to expand it as it fits into the whole of How to Live, you know, contradicts with something else, maybe you can address it. So let me start with decisions because you are also very well known for the book. Is it? Sorry?
Derek Sivers
Anything You Want.
Larry
Anything You Want. Right? Yeah. And in that, what hit the cultural jet stream was this hell, yeah or no. What’s worth doing. And you wrote you wrote a book. I think you wrote another book about it. I’ve had other guests on the podcast. We talk about decision making and some of it is very,you know, uses probabilities and neuroscience or statistics and weightings and all this. And some of it is, you know, how you can use intuition and when I first heard, you know, is something a hell yeah or no? And if, by the way, if I’m not phrasing that correctly, let me know. It really resonated with me because I think we’re always going through decisions. But there have been some big decisions I’ve been trying to make, obviously, was trying to make in the past. And I wanted to use the framework hell yeah or no. Something got in the way. So it might have been that it was a no, I don’t know. Reflecting on it, it might have been that it was a no, but I didn’t have the courage to say no. I’m not sure.
Larry
And in this book you talk about, you know, no choice is inherently the best, I think. You touch on decision making a little bit like you talk about delay action. I really like this. You say, “Delay action. You don’t have to respond immediately. You can think through something especially if it feels very important to you.” You said, “Just wait. Maybe to the next day or just delay it.” Which is also a decision framework I heard before from Shane Parrish. He says, “Make the decision, whatever the decision is, you’re going to make it. Make the decision, write it down, but then sleep on it. The next morning, look at it, or the next day look at it and see how you feel about that decision.” So, you know, don’t actually tell the person or pull the trigger on whatever it is you’re going to do, but make it internally and then reflect on it. So is the hell yeah or hell no. Would you modify that at all or is that still a heuristic that you recommend? Is that life advice that you still recommend?
Derek Sivers
Yes, but I’m going to fit it into what we were just talking about before. Which is the format of the How to Live book. The weird conclusion that’s referenced in the subtitle is a picture on the last page of the book of an orchestra seating chart, with 27 instruments in the orchestra. Not coincidence that there are 27 how to live chapters and then 27 instruments in this picture, because I see life philosophies like instruments in an orchestra. And if you were to go to a composer. And say which one is the best? I’d say I disagree with the question. You can’t say the flute. The flute is the best. Or the harp. The harp is the best. It’s like, no, you use different instruments at different times when needed. And in fact we combine them all the time. It’s not that one instrument in the orchestra plays at a time. You know, you have a the harp and the cellos playing, and then the oboe joins them, and then the harp and the cellos drop out and the oboe continues solo for a bit. Then the violins come in. This is how music goes. We use time, and each instrument has its own voice. And so I think of that with any of these philosophies, whether it’s a certain decision making heuristic or a way of living that says delay gratification or live for the moment. These are like instruments in the orchestra. You can’t declare them as right or wrong. You can just decide that this is what you need. As the composer of your life, this is the sound you want right now.
Larry
It’s a menu. This is what it’s on. It’s on the menu.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, it’s a menu and this is is what your life was lacking right now. Maybe you’ve been too diffused. And you’ve been saying yes to too many things. And so you hear, if it’s not a hell yeah, say no. And you think, “Ah, that’s what I needed right now. I need to raise the bar. I’ve had the bar too low for what gets a yes. I need to raise the bar all the way to the top and say no to basically everything that doesn’t thrill the hell out of me.” It’s a specific tool for a specific situation. If you’re overwhelmed with options, if you’ve been saying yes to too many things, well then hell yeah or no will be useful to you right now. It doesn’t mean it’s the answer and that everybody should say hell yeah or no all the time to everything. Of course not. It’s one instrument in the orchestra.
Larry
That’s perfect. Yeah things can be seasonal.
Derek Sivers
Good word.
Larry
You know, I used to think about this like I used to think of Tony Robbins and kind of the motivational frameworks that he would use. And there was a time when I was turned off by them for a while. Right. It was like, rah rah, you know, blah, blah, blah. But then, because I was in a chill, kind of a secular Buddhist phase of, you know, what’s it all about in the mystery of, and everything’s good and equanimity or whatever. Right.
Larry
But I’ve recently found that those frameworks, some of those frameworks and that that rah rah to get over a little hump in my life or a project or whatever that is useful now. Right. It’s like, no, no, let me listen to that. Let me pull that out of the closet or let me pull that off the bookshelf and read that or whatever, you know. It’s appropriate now, because I’ve got some things lined up, you know, either my ducks in a row or what have you. And this is where I need the push or whatever, but a part of me was first discarding versus no, no, this goes into the library. This is not a trash. I think I can go to my library where my physical books are and I can see what I’m going through in my life, you know, based on what I’m reading, you know. Like, “Oh, I was in that phase.” It’s a phase or it’s a growth period or it’s a I’m learning or it’s a setback or whatever it is, or intellectual curiosity. Okay. Great. That was helpful. This may not fit because I love that analogy you know of or the metaphor of the orchestra.
Larry
But would you, I mean. Right now. And circumstances are different. People are in different places of their lives. But could you take the life advice that’s in “How to Live” and is, is there a way to have an 80/20? You know, is there 20% of that advice that you would say, hey, it’s going to cover most situations. And this may be a a difficult question.
Derek Sivers
No. The 27 chapters in How to Live, are a variety of intentionally conflicting ones. Like, you know, the first chapter says be independent. It’s all independence. The most important, all misery comes from dependency. But then the very next chapter is is commit. Here’s here’s how to live: Commit. The way to make any choice great is by committing to it, et cetera. And so it keeps going on with as broad a spectrum as I could think to cover. And that’s why I said that the first draft was 3000 pages. I really took everything I’d ever learned in life and put it in there. And then I even had to figure out how to categorize it. I think at first I had 30. I was trying to get 40 because of it was an homage to the book Sum. And he has 40 tales from the afterlives. So I was trying to make 40 How to Lives to match his. But then I thought, “Well, I’ve really only got 30 categories I think they fall into.”
Derek Sivers
And then in the final couple months of writing the book. There were three chapters that just felt like the weakest. So I cut those three. But I took the bits of wisdom from them and fit them into other categories in the 27 chapters. Point is, I don’t think any one is the answer. In fact, it was wonderfully appropriate that as I was writing it, I had a girlfriend. That she related the most to the chapter that I relate to the least, which was the do nothing one of the chapters is like, “Here’s how to live. Do nothing. You don’t have to do a damn thing.” And she said. “Uh, that’s the one that speaks to me the most. This is the one that I feel”. And I was like, “Well, that’s the one that was the hardest for me to put in there because I relate to it the least.” So now I think everybody’s got their own nature and temperament, something that works for you.
Larry
And again. Wherever you are in your life, at any given moment. Probably one that--.
Derek Sivers
Sorry, sorry to interrupt, but what I’m opposed to is anybody then find that something works for them. Going and telling the whole world that this is what you should do, you know. So if your life was too adrift and you felt that some kind of fundamentalism, you know, following the ancient rules, “This is what worked for me. I was too adrift following these ancient rules to the letter. This gave my life meaning.” Okay, great. That gave your life meaning. But then to go out and say, “Everybody must follow the ancient rules to the letter. And if you don’t, you’re evil.” Well, now there’s the problem just because it worked for you doesn’t mean it works for everybody. So I’m very opposed to picking any solution and prescribing it to everyone.
Larry
Some of the aphorisms or the principles or the rules, I should say that resonated with me. One particularly you write, “Most actions are a pursuit of emotions. You think you want to take an action or own a thing, but what you really want is the emotion you think it’ll bring. The whole experience of life is your mind. Focus on your internal world, not external world.” That really rings true for me right now in my life, but it’s something I’ve discovered over time that. But I’m curious. Are you there in your life or have you been there for a while? Have you been able to notice or have a rich emotional life that’s separate from an action or a thing?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I’ve had to do that partially with my physical location in New Zealand, and I want to be here for my kid. I like being with him every week. His mom and I broke up when he was two years old, and she has a job here working for the New Zealand government. And so she needs to be here. And she also doesn’t want to go more than a week without seeing him. Neither do I. So basically all three of us are bound here because of her job. So there are many things that I’ve wanted to do that would be best done by being somewhere else physically. Whether that’s New York City or, I don’t know, Tanzania. And think, “Well, I can’t. Okay, what was it I wanted out of that experience? Why do I think I need to be in New York City to do such and such as well as because this and well, I can’t do that. So therefore.” And I just find another way to do it. In my head, I try to go directly for the emotion I was hoping to get instead of thinking I need to do that. Of course I do that with physical things too. Minimalism. I don’t even need the ism on it. I’m just happier when I have less stuff. Owning stuff makes me feel like a caretaker. The more stuff I own makes me feel like I have to take care of more things. So there have been times when I’ve been tempted to get a thing.
Derek Sivers
To achieve a certain aim. And I stopped myself and I go, “Wait, hold on. Why do I think I need that thing to do what I want? What is the end result? Okay. Is there a way to do that without the thing? Of course there is. Is there a way to just get to that point without needing the thing? Of course there is.” See, I do this all the time because of physical location and not wanting physical things. But even just paths. You know, a lot of people want to get rich so they can be free. But they’re just choices you can make along the way to be free without needing to get rich in between. You know, I got a question just like a couple days ago. A woman said, “I want to make a lot of money. Please teach me how to make a lot of money because I really want nice things. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Russia, but I love really nice things. The things I like are expensive and I love these expensive things. So I need to learn how to make a lot of money.” And I said, “I think what you’re saying is there’s a big hole in the bottom of your boat. And you’re asking my advice on making a better sail. So I think you need to patch that hole in your boat. Otherwise no sail.”
Larry
The need.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, the craving for the expensive things. You could just address that directly. Instead of thinking you need to make a lot of money to fill it.
Larry
So another line and I wrote a few of these down here is, you know. And this one is a head scratcher for me,” Choose a life where you choose nothing. Let the random generator decide what you do, where you go, and who you meet.” On the one hand, there’s a spiritual part of me that resonates with where, you know, a form of letting go. But I’m not sure I get that. I’m sure I need to take it on face value, but how would you do that? What’s the random generator?
Derek Sivers
I was trying to keep the book timeless, so I didn’t want to point to specific URLs and quote specific names. But there is a guy, if you search out there, I forget his name right now off the top of my head, but it’s in my notes. There’s a guy that made this his life’s mission to choose everything randomly, and he’s got a wonderful philosophy behind it. And so he uses a random number generator, and he opens up his randomness to the world, where he lets the world randomly pick where he’s going to live. And then he moves to the place that the internet picked randomly. And then when he gets there, he uses a random thing to help guide him to where he’s going to stay for the night, which he didn’t plan in advance. And he has a wonderful philosophy about, like letting chance lead you to discoveries that your determinism would never have led you to because we have a certain path in life, whether it’s if you think that there is no free will or that we just have certain tendencies that are always going to steer you a certain way. You could accept that and just go with your tendencies and accept that your life is written in advance, for the most part through your DNA and preferences.
Derek Sivers
Or you could kick and scream and resist that by almost obediently and blindly following what some other randomness picks for you and doing that thing. It’s a beautiful way to live and think. Part of why I had to make sure to include this in the book is, I think so many things that happened in my life were so random, and I think most of us can say the same, that there’s some major things in most of our lives that were so random. You just happen to get this job because you just happened to know this guy at the moment that somebody else was hiring and asked this guy that you knew that you only met him because you happened to go to this party once, but then he recommended you, and suddenly you have a big, important job that changed the trajectory of your life. But then because of the timing, you know, because somebody in Wuhan, China, ate a bat or whatever, you know, now you got now that company went out of business, which sent you on this. But like, it’s acknowledging how much randomness there is in our life and how so much of our life isn’t chosen by us, but instead deciding that’s wonderful and deciding to emphasize and lean into that even more. And there’s a methodology for doing so. I think it’s beautiful.
Larry
Yeah. I was listening to somebody talk about trying to get magic back into their life, just this sense of magic. And I was thinking, well, and they’re not science deniers by any means. They’re fairly secular. But this person started using the I Ching and got an app on their phone and would would ask questions for decision making and let the the I Ching roll the stack up the the dominoes for the answer or interpret the answer. And so I was like, well that sounds kind of cool. So I downloaded to my phone and I just started asking questions, things that were really was trying to decide on, because on my laptop I had spreadsheets and weightings and, you know, boom. Then I would go, “Well, let me play with this.” And it was really interesting and enjoyable to be open to this randomness as you said. And it wouldn’t be concrete. It would be very esoteric kind of advice, you know, that you could kind of project your own feelings into. But there was something very cool about it. And being more open to that kind of--. And this is how I’m reflecting on this random, you know, being open to randomness that you’re right. It’s just controlled chaos. But we have this illusion of control and maybe we certainly have some influence but to accept, you know, what’s coming and go with it. Go with it rather to fight life rather than white knuckle it. Right.
Derek Sivers
White knuckle. Yeah. Anybody who’s interested in this. Go search the web for Brian Eno Oblique strategies. So Brian Eno is a record producer that’s produced some of the greatest rock records of all time, from Talking Heads to U2 and Coldplay. And I don’t know what else. Lots of David Bowie. Lots of the best David Bowie albums were produced by Brian Eno and I like his music, but I love his theories about music. So one of his theories was that when producing records, we need to introduce a little more randomness. So what he did is made a deck of cards where he put a bunch of directives on the cards like remove an important ingredient and double down on the most necessary thing or now do it backwards. Things like this. They’re ambiguous directives. They put 50 of these into a deck of cards. And then as he was producing records he’d be there working with an artist in the recording studio, and at a certain point they’re like, “Well, let’s ask the deck of cards.” And the game was you have to do what it says, shuffle it randomly, pick a card. And here it says, “Make it scream.” So he’s like, “All right, let’s find a way to make that. I never would have proposed that myself. It does not seem to apply to our current situation, but let’s try it.” And so it became a bit of a creative inspiration for him. So think of that, the deck of oblique strategies applied to life. There are times in life where it’s like, “Well, could do this, could do that. Let’s ask the I Ching. I’ll just do what it says. Even if it seems like the wrong answer, nothing I would have chosen. Who knows where it may lead me? Let’s find out.”
Larry
Yeah. There’s something that in my experience draws out of you and where you’ve made some connections. There’s something about this like a random generator like the I Ching, or maybe those deck of cards where there are ideas spinning around. Or convictions or leanings or what have you, that you may not be aware of. And it seems so far in my experience, that the things like this where it’s giving you a subtle hint of a decision or recommendation, but it’s pulling out of you probably what you really want or afraid of or other things that you haven’t looked at. I don’t know, this is just-- it’s really fun to kind of play with these things. I’ve got one more thing here before we leave this book here. And thank you so much, Derek, for over indulgence.
Derek Sivers
Thanks for reading this book. I’m impressed that you dug into it so deep and have thoughts and questions. Thank you.
Larry
The practice of storytelling to friends you mentioned in the book. But you say when storytelling to self, you can cut painful memories to like one sentence. So, you know, if if there’s something that’s unpleasant you have a memory about or story around that you tell yourself to get it down to one sentence. That sounds incredibly useful. But could you give me an example.
Derek Sivers
Such an interesting subject. It’s the reason why it feels good to talk to a friend is, inside your own head and heart you have a bajillion scrambled thoughts and feelings all churning together, often in an unpleasant way. If you’ve got something going on that you need to talk with a friend, but then you talk with a friend who you know cares about you but doesn’t have infinite patience. They won’t listen to the nine hour version of this, but they’ll listen to the 45 minute version of what’s going On. So you find a way to try to summarize your situation into a 45 minute conversation with your friend, or into a 45 minute monologue, you know, and just the act of doing that simplifies it a bit, which helps you feel a little more tranquility. Because you’ve simplified it now. I have not attended group therapy. But somebody who has said, that’s what’s wonderful about group therapy is now you’re in a group of ten people that have come here willing to listen to other people’s problems. But again, now we don’t have 45 minutes for one person. We have maybe ten minutes that each person can hog the mic. So now you have to take your thing that’s a bajillion churning thoughts inside of you, and think of how to summarize it in ten minutes. And then you see yourself through their eyes. And that’s so useful. Because we’re the protagonist of our own life. But when you see yourself as just merely a bit player in somebody else’s story, it helps you again make you realize that your problems are not so big. And in fact, they’re quite small and manageable if you look at it from the outside.
Derek Sivers
And that can be so useful. Then you realize you can do that to yourself. That everything we’ve just said if you don’t have access to a dear friend right now, or a therapist or group therapy, you could just open up a diary and start writing. And think, okay, what am I really upset about? What’s really going on here? How can I summarize this? What’s essential, what’s the core of what’s upsetting me? You can ask yourself these questions and make it simpler, and then you can look at that and go, “Oh, that’s what it’s really about, isn’t it? I’m really just upset about this thing that’s not so complex after all.” And you can do that with your past if you feel haunted by something you can think of a simple version of the story, so it’s not haunting you anymore. In fact, now it’s just a little plastic statue of a ghost instead of a terrifying spectre. You can do that about the future. If you’re feeling a lot of anxiety and a future decision feels overwhelmingly important and crucial and complicated. You can find a way to summarize it for yourself. So it essentially boils down to what matters. And you go, “Oh, now that I realize I’m thinking about it on this axis. Well, that’s not so big and complex anymore.” So I think that this process, whether it’s talking to a friend on the phone, going to group therapy, talking to therapists, writing in your diary. It’s simplification, summarizing. Can help make everything smaller and easier.
Larry
Yeah. There’s this other technique or tactic where you look at something like from a third party, you look at, let’s say a situation or a conversation or a fight or whatever it is. Right. Something that’s got a lot of negative emotion around it and it rolls around in your head. But if you could look at it as just a camera recording something kind of objectively, just with film, super eight film running the camera and recording it. And if you could look at it from that perspective, the camera records it. And you’re just kind of taking this feeling, amplification kind of away from it. Because I was trying to think of something that was in my past that occasionally raises its head and bothers me. And then I was looking at your advice, and I’m like, “Okay, how would I boil this down?” And it was almost silly because it was like I walked into a room, sat down, had a meeting, he talked, I talked. I mean, in reality, that’s really what happened, right. The conversation was difficult, but at the end of the day, it was a conversation, you know. And so boiling something down and stripping it of its emotional valence, really it is helpful. It’s like, because when I was trying to do this before I talked to you, I started laughing. I was like, “Well, that is helpful.” Look, it’s still right. You know, the thoughts can still-- but at the end of the day, it was a conversation. What the hell? You know.
Derek Sivers
This may sound crazy. I’m not Jewish, but I lived in New York City for ten years and most of my friends were Jewish. And I picture the cliche of the rabbi with the long white beard. And no time for your shit. He’s a very practical guy, and I imagine going to-- like, I didn’t actually do this in real life. But in my head, I often imagine what would the rabbi say? And like, I’ve got this big, complicated thing. And if I were to go have five minutes with the rabbi or ten minutes and I’d like go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, here’s my situation. And I always imagine the rabbi would go, “So what you’re saying is you tried it once and you were disappointed. So that’s it. Okay. You tried it again. No. It sounds to me like you need to try it again. Okay? Don’t bother me.” It’s like the guy that doesn’t have time for your shit and just boils things down to their most practical essence. It’s really useful. And you can just do this all in your head, you know?
Larry
I got married much, much later in life and wasn’t married long. And most of my friends have been married 20 years or longer, and I’m going to work with one of them one time, and I tell him I had a fight with my wife. I said, “Man, last night I had a fight with my wife. I was upset.” And he said, “Did anybody throw anything?” I said, “No.” He goes, “Rookie.” He was like, “This is normal Larry.” It was the rabbi kind of response. Come back when you have a fight that doesn’t qualify. Okay. Derek, can we before we sign off here, by the way, I wanted to ask you where the music industry--. I don’t know if you’re still in it or think about it or investigate it.
Derek Sivers
No,I might even need to interrupt this question. I don’t know anything. When I left CD Baby, it was--.
Larry
Because the world has just changed.
Derek Sivers
I actually realized even while I was still at CDBaby, I was put up on panels in front of big audiences with moderators asking me about the music business, and I heard myself saying things out loud that were true a few years ago, and I realized, like, “This isn’t true anymore, is it? I’m full of shit, aren’t I? Don’t know what I’m talking about, do I? No, I don’t, I need to stop doing this. I need to stop having any opinions about the music business because I don’t know anymore.” And so then I sold the company the next year, and I deliberately looked away from it, thinking, when I’m ready to get back into it someday, if I’m ready to get back into it, someday it will just have to be with fresh eyes like I’m 16 years old again and I know nothing because everything’s changed. So sorry.
Larry
No, no, that’s quite all right. I have a lot of friends who listen to the podcast, and they’re musicians, and they’re doing things here and there, and I’m sure they were would want me to ask, but--.
Derek Sivers
Well, it’s funny, you know, I wrote a book called Your Music and People, which was, again, my culmination of every timeless lesson I had learned in my 15 years in the music business. Sorry, my 15 years as a musician and then ten more years being the music distributor, the seller, being the guy behind the counter. So basically, I guess I was in it for 25 years in the music business and I tried to think what lessons are timeless. Like what book could I write now that people could still read in 30 years and it would still apply. So my little purple book, I.
Larry
I don’t think I saw that. Maybe I missed it
Derek Sivers
It’s called “Your Music and People”. It’s just 100 pages or so and it’s the little timeless lessons learned from my thoughts on getting your music into people’s hearts. But this is going to sound like a humblebrag for a second, but a real marketing nerd I know who is just like an absolute fanatic about marketing and lives and breathes marketing was really honored that he read it and read it metaphorically. And he said, “Dude, this is one of the best books on marketing I’ve ever read.” I said, “Thank you.” It’s written to musicians, but it’s also meant to be read metaphorically. I guess it’s about humanistic, considerate marketing.
Larry
Kind of like Seth Godin.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I was gonna say any fan of Seth Godin.
Larry
The show is about Seth Godin, basically. Derek, can you just tease us with the new book that’s not done yet or about to be done?
Derek Sivers
No, I’m still actively. I’m about a third of the way through writing what feels like the finished words. Over the years,let’s just say influenced by Tony Robbins. If any listener actually read his 1990 book called Awaken the Giant Within. So many--
Larry
That’s so weird you mention Tony, because I’ve just been thinking about Tony lately.
Derek Sivers
You mentioned him earlier in the conversation. So that’s actually part of why I felt okay to bring it up, because you had mentioned him earlier, but I went and reread Awaken the Giant Within recently, and I thought, “Oh, this is where I got so many of my beliefs.” It’s a life philosophy that I read at 19 that changed the way I looked at the world. And I read it again at 21 and again at 23, and then again at 53. And I hadn’t read it for 30 years in between. And I went, “Yeah, okay. This is part of why I think this way.” He really advocates a deliberate choice of adopting a belief system that works for you now. Right. So I’ll just tell you one that worked for me recently, so I have a tendency to procrastinate exercise. What a surprise. I think I’m the only person on earth that does that. But then I heard one little idea, which is we are all temporarily abled, and it was written by a woman that got into an accident and is now paralyzed from the waist down. I might be getting the details wrong, but doesn’t matter. That said, let’s all remember that at some point in our lives you are going to be not as able bodied as you are now. Whether it’s through old age or accident or something. So just remember that we are all temporarily abled. And for some reason, Larry, when I hear that thought, I’m like, “Oh hell yeah, I’m lifting weights right now. Hell yeah. I’m getting out into the forest to go on a run right now.” Because you.
Larry
Because you can or because you’re preparing for when you’re not able. Or both?
Derek Sivers
Both. Like I’m temporarily able to right now. I can live it, like I need to do this while I can. That belief is not absolutely, objectively, provably, empirically true. It might not be true that I am temporarily abled. I might die at full health suddenly. But believing that I’m temporarily abled for whatever reason, that works for me, that gets me to do the action I need to do that helps me be who I want to be. That helps me do what I want to do. And so that I choose to adopt that belief because it works for me. Now, you might argue and say, but Derek, that’s not true. I don’t care if it’s true or not. It works for me. So in short, that’s what my next book is about. It’s called Useful Not True. And it’s about first showing that all these things that people say like facts all day, such as, you know, “This is a great place to live, or you did a bad thing, or my ex was evil.” People say these things as facts, but almost none of it is true. It’s all just perspective. Then second, you have to realize your own brain does that to almost everything your brain thinks, it thinks is a fact. But no, it’s just one point of view. And so once you’ve got complete skepticism and doubt for everything and everybody says and everything, your brain thinks, well, now you get to just ask yourself instead of judging anything is true or not. I’m going to adopt the beliefs just because they’re useful to me now. Because this is what I need to help me be who I want to be. Go where I want to go. Do what I need to do or find inner peace. Lastly, deliberately adopting those philosophies, those beliefs.
Larry
So these are beliefs you’ve collected over the years. You’re looking at a spectrum of--?
Derek Sivers
No, I don’t get into my beliefs I’ve adopted. The book Useful Not True is basically first pointing out how almost nothing people say is true, then pointing out almost nothing you think is true, then suggesting that we judge ideas by whether they’re useful or not, not whether they’re true or not. And then lastly, adopt more empowering beliefs.
Larry
All right. What’s your projected? Do you have a goal for when this book will be in the world?
Derek Sivers
Oh, six months ago. Soon. I thought I was going to be done six months ago. I’m glad I didn’t. I kept learning more information, I kept learning more insights, and I’ve been reading a ton. I never knew anything about religion. I learned a ton about religion in as a way of thinking about this book, because that is the oldest belief systems. And so--
Larry
It sounds interesting as hell. So yeah.
Derek Sivers
Thanks. It should be done very soon.
Larry
How do you get yourself out of a bad mood?
Derek Sivers
Ooh!
Larry
Or do you just let it? You know, don’t mess with it.
Derek Sivers
You know what I love you?
Larry
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Sorry. Actually--
Larry
Or you never get into a bad mood. I can’t see.
Derek Sivers
I do. It’s one of those chapters that got cut when I said that I narrowed it down to 27, and there was a chapter that didn’t make the cut was choosing a funny life. Andy Warhol had a beautiful way of having funny philosophies in life that he was following--.
Larry
Andy Warhol, that guy does not seem funny at all.
Derek Sivers
No, it’s all dry. But like, read his autobiography called “From A to B and Back again” and he’ll just say little dry things like, “My favorite piece of art is no art at all. In fact, the most beautiful dream I can imagine is I walk into an empty room, and on the other side of the room is a little hole in the wall, and I look through that hole in the wall and there’s another empty room on the other side.” He said, “I’m doing a terrible thing by putting so much art into the world, because I think really, any space would be better if it had no art at all.” So that’s just like a funny Andy Warhol thought, right. But one of his is--
Derek Sivers
To get back to your question, he said, “I love a good rut. I love when I’ve fallen into a rut. Friends try to lift me out of the rut and I say, stop it. I’m enjoying my rut. Leave me in my rut.” And so I think that when you’re in a bad mood. Yeah, you could say, how do you get out of it? Or you could do the Andy Warhol thing and say, oh yeah, awesome. I’m in a bad mood. I love being in a bad mood. Great. Leave me to it. Anyway, what do I personally do? Actually, I journal. I’ve done this for years. Whenever I’m feeling really foul or resentful or angry, bitter, anxious, fearful. I turn to my diary and I break it apart and I’m like, “Okay, what’s really going on? Why am I feeling this way? What’s really wrong? What’s the point of this? Why is that wrong? What do I wish would have happened? How would I like it to be?” Yeah, and I write it all down. So I’ve been doing this for like 30 years. And only two years ago, I learned of something I’d never heard before called cognitive behavioral therapy. Never heard of it, never heard of it. And so I got a little book called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for dummies. And I went, “Oh, this is what I’ve been doing in my whole life.” Like basically what they’re prescribing and people say it works well is what I have already been doing for 30 years. And so I think that’s a lot of who I am is because, you know, for all my foundational years since I was a teenager, basically I’ve been doing hours a week of CBT without knowing that’s what it was.
Larry
Yeah that’s hilarious.
Larry
Well, I had David Burns, one of the pioneers of CBT or certainly the popularized.
Derek Sivers
The musician?
Larry
No. David Burns, the medical doctor. He’s a pioneer in cognitive behavioral therapy.
Derek Sivers
Okay. Wouldn’t that be interesting if you’re like, yeah the singer of the Talking Heads. Yes is the pioneer of cognitive behavioral therapy.
Larry
Well, that threw me.
Derek Sivers
You may ask yourself, what is this beautiful thing? You may say to yourself, what have I done? I can see David Byrne. Cognitive behavioral therapy. That works. Anyway, sorry.
Larry
Derek. Thank you so much for for coming on, another question. Sorry. These things are coming randomly. Is that are you’re a programmer right. Or you came out of technology and digital distribution and the whole nine yards.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I mean well not really I mean, I was just a musician that set up a website and I taught myself programming out of necessity. I didn’t go to school for it or anything like that. So I’m a very practical programmer.
Larry
That’s cool though, but still wow. All right. That’s even more impressive to me, I love it.
Derek Sivers
I’ll just interrupt to say many times I think, “Yeah, I’m getting old. I’m writing books now. I should hire somebody else to do the programming. I should quit trying to do all the programming myself.” Okay, but love it so much. You know, every single line. Even, in fact, cdbaby.com every line of that code was me. I did it all myself. I didn’t have a team of programmers. I had 85 employees and none of them was a programmer. It was just me.
Larry
You’re crazy.
Derek Sivers
I love it, but it makes me happy. Every time I try to delegate it away, I get really sad.
Larry
You’re creating, you’re creator, you’re making. And it’s something.
Derek Sivers
It’s philosophical too, like when you’re programming, you are deciding in every line of code. You’re making philosophical decisions about what we’re actually doing here. What’s the point of it all? So yeah, love programming.
Larry
Are you playing with AI or are you playing with it?
Derek Sivers
A bit. I have started keeping, chat openai.com open as I’m writing. I never have it generate text for me, but I use it like a sounding board.
Larry
That’s what I do.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, yeah. Thesaurus. Sometimes I use it as a thesaurus. Sometimes I’ll ask it. Like yesterday, I just asked, “List some examples of religions that contain no beliefs.” And so it said Zen Buddhism and a certain sect of Jainism, and a couple other ones that I hadn’t heard of.
Larry
Was Hinduism in there?
Derek Sivers
No.
Derek Sivers
I’d say actually, Hinduism, from what I’ve learned, seems to be more about the beliefs.
Larry
Okay.
Larry
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Derek Sivers
So then I’ll say, okay, please list the core tenets of, say, Hinduism without naming the beliefs, but only the actions prescribed. And it’s really good for this stuff. And again, don’t know if it’s true or not, but that same question I’d have to sift through so many web pages of puffery and ads and clickbait. To get that information. And I really appreciate OpenAI for just giving me a paragraph of information of plain text. It’s so appreciated. Yeah. Anyway. But yeah, for when I’m done with this book, I’m going to put aside some time into playing with it for my own use.
Larry
I have a platform I built out for-- I just built it for me to start now. It kind of took off. I think I’m going to sell it next year because I’m not a software guy, but this it’s distracting at this point. But it’s really been cool. I’ve added some augmented kind of features, but to your point, OpenAI is cool because I was watching something on CNBC. It was about interest rates and some derivatives with some subject I didn’t know anything about or I knew a little and I was so curious. I just opened up chat and I went. And this thing tutored me in ten minutes. It was so cool. I’m having this conversation. I’m like, well, then what does that mean?
Larry
Boop boop boop boop boop boop.
Larry
And I was like, “Holy shit.” This is Think about kids and think about, you know, but it’s infinitely patient, right. Plus, with the NLP, it gets what you’re trying to get at. Better than you.
Derek Sivers
You might find this a little interesting. My kid. I’ve told you, he’s 11 years old. So he’s heard that ChatGPT is, like, the smartest computer ever. And you can ask it anything, and it knows everything. So his mom is Indian, so he’s half Indian. And he opened ChatGPT. And his first question was, “Who invented racism?” He was disappointed that there wasn’t a concrete answer he was looking for, like, whose fault is this? Who started this?
Larry
That’s a cool kid question. Learn from children. Wow. I like that? Yeah. Derek, thank you for coming on and taking the time.
Derek Sivers
Sorry I felt like I interrupted you. You were going to ask a question, and I interrupted to say I love programming. But you’re going to--
Larry
Yeah. It’s gone.
Derek Sivers
I’m sorry.
Larry
No, no, it’s all right.
Derek Sivers
I just have to make this choice whether it’s the right thing to do to interrupt or not.
Larry
No. You’re a Pandora’s box. It’s like, you know, you answer a question, another question comes, you know, and I’m like, what? Where is that? So you and AJ Jacobs are one of the most interesting people.
Derek Sivers
Oh, I love that dude. Oh, I actually namedropped him in the book. He’s one of the few people where I named a specific name.
Larry
I love AJ.
Derek Sivers
Me too. I’m such a fan of what he does and his approach to life. The pioneer testing self.
Larry
Yeah experiment get out there. Derek thank you so much man. I don’t know you, but you seem like a great guy. And I hope you don’t mind if I occasionally send you an email and check in and say hi or what have you. And I’d love to know about when the new book and when that’s going to come out and what have you. Thank you again, man.
Derek Sivers
I like the way you think. I love your questions. I love your ongoing push to expand your mind as we nerd it out on earlier with the books that we love. So, yeah. Anybody listening to this go to my website. The reason I do these interviews, as you can tell, I’m not here to promote anything. I like the people that I meet.
Larry
Yes, You seem like you want to help people or something. Something in that.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I like knowing people. I like learning from people. So it’s one of my favorite things in life is when somebody says, “Hey, I just listened to Larry’s podcast and this is me and I live in Germany and I’m doing this,” or, “Hi, this is me, I’m in Mexico and I build guitars and I think you should such and such. I just want to say hello.” So I really like the people that I meet because they were listening to your podcast. So anybody go to my website sive.rs.
Larry
It looks like you’re off Twitter in a sense you haven’t posted.
Derek Sivers
Basically.
Larry
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Is that personal?
Derek Sivers
No I’ve never had a social media app on my phone in my whole life. And I used to use their API from the command line. And then when Elon Musk came in and somehow changed the API and now it just doesn’t work anymore. So I’m like, nah, I just stopped. I haven’t gone in to fix it. Maybe I can, but I don’t care enough.
Larry
Okay. All right.
Derek Sivers
My email inbox. Somebody actually just said yesterday, “I think maybe the reason why you’re good at answering your emails is because you’re not on social media.” That’s true. Like maybe most people might spend an hour a day, maybe between TikTok, Instagram and Twitter or something. I spend zero minutes a day a year on social media, and so I spend a couple hours a day in my inbox answering emails from strangers. And I really like that it’s more meaningful to me. I find it enjoyable. There’s no ads, there’s no hype, there’s no twisted agendas. It’s just one on one communication with people. And I really enjoy that. So yes, I answer all my emails and I really enjoy it.
Larry
You love emails, you answer emails. Boy, that is a--.
Derek Sivers
It’s a nicer world.
Larry
I hadn’t thought about it that way. Yeah. You have time to reflect. Yeah. And you’re not wading through well. And let’s all go back to email. Let’s drop some--.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Exactly.
Larry
Derek, thank you so much.
Derek Sivers
Anyway. Thanks, Larry.
Larry
Have a good one. Take care. Bye bye.