Craig Harper
host: Craig Harper
cultural differences in values, truth vs beliefs
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Transcript:
Craig
Good day team. What is it? It’s Wednesday. It feels like a Monday Tiff doesn’t it?
Tiffany
I think it’s so weird because I don’t do or have public holidays, but yesterday felt weirdly like Friday. I get confused.
Craig
Well, for all our non Melbourne and Australian listeners, of which Derek is one, yesterday in Victoria was the Melbourne Cup, which is just a fucking horse race, but you’d think it was the end of the world. Like everything comes to a standstill in Australia and it’s the race that stops a nation. It doesn’t stop my fucking world, but it is overwhelming. And where I live, it was dead. It was like Christmas Day. Nothing was open. And have you heard of the Melbourne Cup, Derek?
Derek Sivers
I actually hadn’t.
Craig
There you go, dude. See? See over here? It’s like. It’s like the Superbowl. It’s like if you’re an American, it’s like the Superbowl of the AFL Grand Final and the Melbourne Cup are probably the two biggest sporting events. Although a horse is running around on grass. Is that a sport? I’m not sure. Let’s not open that door anyway. Derek, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.
Derek Sivers
Thanks. You know, those days are so good for traffic. Meaning, like, the best day to ever drive around Los Angeles, which is usually undoable. But if you do it on Super Bowl Sunday, it’s really nice to just drive around. It’s empty. So here in New Zealand we just had the All Blacks versus South Africa. But I didn’t even know about it right because I don’t follow this stuff. So I just went out on a Sunday. I was like wow it’s extra quiet today. It’s so nice. Nobody was down at the farmers market is all empty. And then somebody told me, oh yeah, man, you know the World Cup is on. I had no idea.
Craig
Yeah. Well New Zealand and Australia, well and the US but New Zealand is, I reckon pound for pound maybe the best sporting nation in the world because 5 million people there, not a lot of people. And they in terms of cricket and rugby they’re probably well historically have been the best rugby union side in the world. I know that means fuck all in America, but like pound for pound amazing athletes. But you haven’t been swept up in that.
Derek Sivers
Not at all. It’s interesting. So I moved here 11 years ago from Singapore and I moved to Singapore from California. And it’s interesting to see how each place has its own thing that’s culturally valued. Right. So like in California, personal expression, creativity, entrepreneurship. That’s very valued. And then I went to Singapore and they asked me to speak at a business school, and I spoke to a room of 50 business school students and said, “Okay, who here wants to start their own company?” And like, not a single hand went up and went, “Okay, come on. Okay, you guys are just shy.” So I started picking on them one by one. And no, they weren’t just being shy. Nobody in that room wanted to start their own company and I asked them each one by one. I went through the room and they said, “Why would I take the risk? You know, my parents took the risk so that I could have a good life. I just want to get a good paying job.” So they were all in business school to get a six figure salary for a multinational somewhere. And so in Singapore, also, I lived there for years and nobody talked about sports once ever, right. So then I moved from Singapore to New Zealand and suddenly the value system changes here. So everybody’s asking me about the game. And did I see this and and are you going to get your son involved in sports and I went, “What? Why would I? What?” Now it took a while to realize, okay, this is what this culture values. You know, I’m sure if I went to, whenever I moved somewhere next there will be a whole different set of things that culture values.
Craig
Yeah, it is interesting. And it’s also like what the culture values. But what resonates with us as individuals, like I set up the first personal training business in Australia in 1990. I started doing personal. So my background is exercise scientist, originally. So I started working in gyms in 1982, and by the time I was about 20,21, I was a gym instructor, gym manager, really fundamental, didn’t know much, was making shit up as I went. But I realized really early, I don’t want a job like I want to work. I want to create stuff, you know? And I’ve subsequently done creative stuff and science stuff and business stuff. But I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I didn’t want to, “go to work for 45 years and start at nine and finish at five and clock in and clock out.” And not that that is bad. That’s not a bad model, but it’s a bad model for me. But having that realization in the mid 80s going, okay, so I know this, but now what the fuck do I do though? Because I don’t know anyone, there’s no pathway. And then that subsequent, you know, for me, like I employed 500 trainers, I built this whole thing. I had the first three centers in Australia. I wrote the first course. There was no course, there was no industry, there was no insurance. It’s like it’s not a thing. And it would have happened despite me anyway. It’s just it was right place, right time. But I think for some people, maybe you definitely Tiff and definitely me. She works for herself. She does stuff for me but works for herself. That whole what do I want to do, be and create? Like what’s that intersection of work and creativity and passion and fucking joy and curiosity. Like what’s in the middle of all of that? That’s what always lights me up.
Derek Sivers
Nice. So, Craig, would you rather live in a culture that is aligned with your values, or would you actually like to live in a culture that’s deliberately unaligned with your values? You know what I mean?
Craig
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think for me it’s more not just culture, it’s situation, circumstance, environment.
Derek Sivers
Yes.
Craig
You know what I mean. Where I physically live right now. I fucking love you know, I live in a beautiful place in a beautiful area. Great people, great culture, great climate. And I guess the culture is a combination of stuff, but I’m a lifelong teetotaler. I’ve never been drunk, I’ve never been high. I’ve never had half a glass of alcohol in my life. And so I am socially and culturally and kind of behaviorally not better or worse, just different to the average.
Derek Sivers
Right, right.
Craig
Like I’m weird. I’m an outlier, you know, and not better or worse, just different and never been married. And that’s not good or bad. That’s just my journey. And so because we grow up thinking, especially in Australia, “Well, you’re a dude. You better drink beer because what the fuck is wrong with you if you don’t, you better follow the football. You’ve got to get married. You’ve got to have 2.3 kids and you get a good job.” So there’s all these and that’s not direct, but it’s indirectly. That’s our programming.
Derek Sivers
Right. So that’s a really interesting example. So in some microwaves you don’t fit with Australian culture and in other microwaves you do. So even just your emphasis on physical fitness and sports that actually is in alignment with Australian culture. Whereas if you went to say Singapore or Hong Kong, that would be out of alignment. Whereas on the other hand, in Singapore and Hong Kong, drinking is not a big thing. So it’s like wherever you go, different aspects of yourself are aligned or not aligned with your surroundings. That’s really interesting. I hadn’t thought about that.
Craig
So my PhD is on a thing called meta perception and meta accuracy. But underlying all of that is another thing called meta cognition, which I’m sure you’ve heard of, which is just thinking about thinking. And I love just, you know, that awareness of, “Oh, fuck, why do I even think this way about this thing? Why is that my belief? Did I choose that belief, or is that belief just a byproduct of my programming and my childhood and my parents and my school?” You know, where we start to put our own mind metaphorically under the microscope, or perhaps in a more mechanical sense, up on the hoist and have a look at it, which is almost like opening the door on self-awareness. Why am I the way that I am? How much of the way that I think is about my genetics, my brain chemistry, and how much is about all the other shit? You know that excites me.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, well, in that case, the question is the fun bit. If you actually try to answer it, why am I the way I am. You’re just going to lie to yourself because you don’t know. Because most of who we are is just unconscious anyway. You know, we pick up things here and there that influence us, that we don’t even realize that we’re taking into our senses and our value systems. So I hope that we don’t believe our own answers.
Craig
I’ve access to a few smart people and you are one. Do you think that objectivity like everyone thinks they’re objective and open minded. Do you think that’s even possible?
Derek Sivers
It’s actually the subject of my next book that I’m writing right now that I was working on until five minutes before I stopped to come down here and hit record on this phone call. My next book is called Useful Not True, which is about exactly this. Which is saying that really basically, almost nothing is absolutely true. If you define true as meaning like objectively, absolutely, in every situation, from every perspective, inarguably true. Well, in that case, almost nothing is true. Almost everything that people say as a fact from whether this is a good country or everything happens for a reason or whatever, or my ex was a jerk. Everything people say, they state them as facts but every single one of these things that people say is just one perspective. And the reason I think it’s important to define true as narrowly as possible is because once you call something true that closes it, end of conversation, no further discussion. This is true. And when you say not necessarily true, now you’ve opened it, now you can start to consider other possibilities. So I think one of the best skills anyone can have in life is the ability to take what people are saying is true and say, well, that might not necessarily be true. Even your own thoughts, your own thoughts. You catch yourself thinking, I did a bad thing or you know, today’s going to be a great day or whatever.
Craig
Or I could never run a marathon. I could never whatever.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, Craig. That’s a much better example. Sometimes I come up with fun examples off the tip of my tongue. Sometimes I don’t. That time I didn’t. So thanks for a better one. But yeah, catch yourself even your own thoughts, but especially the stuff that other people say and say, “Well, that might not necessarily be true. So in that case, what might be some other options?” And I think that’s one of life’s greatest skills to be able to do that. So that’s what my next book is about called Useful Not True.
Craig
I want to dig into that in a moment. But even that coming back to that true, I would say true for who? Because I’m a bit like you and a bit like your friend Mark. In fact, Mark Manson, who wrote “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck”, which is a great book, everyone, when I first saw the title of that so that was 2016 and I wrote a book here in Australia in 2010 called “Stop Fucking Around”, which was not totally dissimilar. You know, I don’t know if it was thee, but it was one of the first books. Right. But one of the interesting things about that is I’ve written seven books, and that book outsold all the other books put together, and it was a really fundamental book. It’s only 18,000 words. It’s 30 principles. It’s not a literary masterpiece, but it’s easy to read and understand and execute if you want to do the work. But it’s funny because for every ten people that went, “I loved it. That was great.” Or maybe every 20 people, there was one that went, “I found it offensive. I find you offensive. I find that word offensive.” And I’m like, cool. And so, like, even something as meaningless as a word, which is just four letters assembled in a certain way. Somebody will literally for them the truth will be that is funny. And for them, the word in that context, it is funny and they laugh for somebody else it’s confusing that you use it in that context, and their truth is confusion and that is real. And then for someone else, that’s a fence. And for them, all of those experiences relative to that particular stimulus that we call fuck or four words assembled, each of them live in their own truth. But none of that is universally true.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Here’s a fun question to ask anybody, what time is it? Because, you know, they’ll tell you the time, but say time for what time is it for who? You? Yes. Because what time it is in Melbourne is not what time it is in New Zealand. So you could say, well, what day is it. All right. Well for Craig and I, it’s Wednesday, but for my best friend in California it’s still Tuesday right now. And so you could even say when is winter? Down here it’s in July, up there it’s in December. Have you ever been to Fiji?
Craig
I have.
Derek Sivers
Have you been to the island of Taveuni?
Craig
I have not.
Derek Sivers
It’s where the International Date line, it’s one of the few places on earth that the International Date Line crosses somewhere inhabited. So they actually put a line on the ground that you can step back and forth across. Like my right foot is in Saturday. My left foot is Sunday, which reminds you that even dates aren’t true. And so whenever somebody says something like that book was offensive. Or it’s crucial that you call your mother or, you know, it’s good to be selfless. Any of these things, it’s their metaphorical time zone. What they’re saying is not wrong. It’s just not the only answer.
Craig
Yeah, yeah. And even down to like understanding that time, the way that we define it and break it up. And, you know, my left foot is in Tuesday and my right-- like all of that is a human construct as well. You know, countries like New Zealand and Australia. Well yeah sure, it’s like that separation and that difference, that country is that this country is this all of that is to a point a human creation as well. You know, where this invisible line that divides Victoria from New South Wales, New South Wales from Queensland, it’s some fucking imaginary line. And we have a sign that says “This is Queensland”. Two metres ago that’s New South Wales, two metres forward, that’s Queensland. And then we all just agree on it. Like think about-- I know we’re opening a weird door now, but like the fact that we all agree that a dollar is worth a dollar. Imagine if everyone went “No, fuck that. I don’t believe in money.” Or like when Bitcoin came out I was fascinated. I’m like, this is not going to work because this is bullshit, because it’s not real. And then I went, oh, well, hang on. But then if enough people believe it’s real and enough people perceive that as value, then it becomes genuinely worth something. And again, that’s really an exercise in psychology, right?
Derek Sivers
Oh, not just that, but the power of stories. Just six weeks ago, I spent a week in Israel, a place that was created on stories. And before I went there, I read a book on the history of Israel, and then next to it, a book on the history of Palestine. And it was interesting that both of these books were kind of trying to delegitimize the other. So the book on the history of Israel said, “Palestine it’s not even a real thing, you know, they say that it’s existed. It’s just a made up word. It’s just a new concept, really nobody said the word Palestine until the 1940s.” And the book on the history of Palestine said, “Israel they say that they escaped from Egypt or the original Jews escaped from Egypt 4000 years ago. There is nothing in the recorded history of Egypt ever mentioning that there were Jewish slaves there. This is just a story that was added thousands of years later to legitimize their claim to this.” And it’s so funny to think that either one, maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s not. We don’t know. But you got to acknowledge the power of stories. So acknowledging the power of a dollar or this paper money. It’s an agreed upon story and I thought that to me was the most interesting thing. Reading about the history of Israel is that they made an amazing story, you know, so the combination of stuff that was going on in like the 1910s, 1920s and then after World War 2. This like, okay, now it’s like the time is right to like, take this story and this history and this place, you know, getting some catchy slogans, a land without people, for a people without land. It’s like, oh, that’s catchy. And so people could communicate that story in a catchy way, and then that story spread and made a fucking country out of that story. It’s amazing. Yeah, I’m a fan of stories.
Craig
But for somebody like me who didn’t know what you just told me, like I didn’t know most of that or in that depth, you just look at Israel because Israel has been around as long as pretty much I’ve been alive. And you just go, “Oh, it’s Israel.” And you think of it in the same way as you think of Egypt or whatever. You know, but you don’t question things like, I’ve told this story too many times on this show, but I grew up in a very religious model, which was very Catholic and very, you know, mass every Sunday. And like my house always had priests and nuns at it, mom and dad, and very intertwined with the church and only Catholic schools and primarily Catholic friends. And you grow up in this echo chamber of thought and belief, Derek, where by the time you’re ten, you know that you are the one true church. You know, right. You know, you’re the one true religion and you know that all your friends who don’t believe like you are going to hell, which is sad and that hell is hot as fuck. And there’s an eternal lake of fire. You know, there’s all this stuff that because you are so indoctrinated or programmed or whatever the word is, and it could be with veganism, it could be with Manchester United, it could be with any. It’s not about whether or not it’s religion, it’s just about a way of thinking. But you don’t realize, like having an awareness of your own programming is a real challenge.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Craig
Like to recognize where does my programming conditioning training finish and where do I start. The blank canvas. Where am I in the middle of all of that. Because I’m not an ideology and I’m not a body and I’m not a brand and I’m not a job. Where’s me.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I think one of the most useful things about moving to the other side of the world somewhere, not just traveling, not just going to take some pictures of the Eiffel Tower and partying in Berlin one night and going back home. But to actually go live somewhere else and really make friends. It’s the word indoctrinate to become a local, you know, to really make friends with people there, people that you get to know and care about that have very different beliefs from you. I had been living in Singapore for a year. When I was talking with one of my really good friends there, Celestine, we’d hung out many times and she seemed like kind of-- she’s like my home girl, you know, just like we were just really good friends. We were very similar in many ways. And she asked something about when I moved out of my house and I said, “Well, I went off to college and I was 17, and I never went back.” And she went, “Oh, oh my God.” She goes, “That’s so insulting.” I said, “What do you mean?” She goes, “Weren’t your parents devastated? I mean, that’s just really a slap in the face.” I said, “Wait, what?” She said, “That is like the most offensive thing you could ever do to your parents is to to leave home at 17.” I said, Wait, I don’t know? Are you being sarcastic or serious?” She said, “I’m being serious.”
Derek Sivers
She said, “For you to just leave home at 17 and never go back. That’s like the biggest insult ever.” I said, “I don’t understand the logic here.” And she tried to explain it to me. She said, “No. Here in Singapore, it’s totally normal to to live with your parents until you’re 30. It shows that you love them. If you were to leave home at 17, it’s like a big fuck you. It’s just like, I hate you. You’d only do that if you hated your parents.” I thought, “Wow. You and I are similar in many ways, but that’s a pile of meaning on this thing that I’d never heard before.” But I love that any of these things help you look at your own upbringing and realize that everything you were told as a kid, that whole collection of values is not true. It’s just one perspective. And across the earth somewhere is a thriving, flourishing culture that has a completely different set of values. That is not wrong. It’s just different. It’s almost like each country or culture is like its own living philosophy. You know, like stoicism isn’t wrong, hedonism isn’t wrong, existentialism isn’t wrong. They’re just different ways of seeing the world. And, you know, Brazilianism isn’t wrong. Germanism isn’t wrong. Singaporeanism isn’t wrong. It’s just a different way of seeing the world. That’s why I love living in different places.
Craig
I love that. Do you think one of the challenges, Derek, is that we don’t like being wrong. We humans love certainty. Humans love predictability. Humans love familiarity. Humans love knowing. And that means I’ve got to say, look, this is what I believe. But I could be wrong. You know we don’t like that because that’s ergo the echo chambers and the silos and the confirmation bias. And you don’t think like me. So we fucking hate you. And we’re enemies now.
Derek Sivers
It’s a fun question. Believe it or not, I had never thought about it that bluntly.
Craig
Yeah, we don’t like being wrong, you think about how many times have you seen someone arguing with somebody and one person goes, “You know what, I am wrong. You are right. Thanks for enlightening me.” It just doesn’t fucking happen because nobody’s having a conversation. They’re just trying to force an opinion.
Derek Sivers
So, Craig, you know, it’s funny. All right. I’m going to get selfish for a second. When people interview me on their podcasts like this, I very often hear people say things like, I’m different, I’m weird. That my point of view on the world is weird. Because I’m just me. I don’t understand, like, people tell me that my views are weird. I think you might have just put your finger on something that selfishly it just helped me understand myself a bit better because my single favorite thing in life. More than chocolate. More than anything else you could name.
Craig
Don’t be ridiculous.
Derek Sivers
Is being wrong. When I find that I’ve been wrong. It’s like my greatest joy. That’s why I love seeking out books from different points of view. And I love when I’m reading something. And suddenly I go, “Oh, oh, oh.” Either I’ve been doing business wrong or I’ve been managing people wrong, or I’ve been thinking about my past wrong. I’ve been thinking about obligations wrong. It’s one of my greatest joys in life, is to find out I’ve been wrong. Because you just feel all those little wires in your head unplugging, replugging, rearranging. And it’s like it tickles. It’s one of my greatest joys. So maybe that’s what’s weird about me.
Craig
I can extrapolate on that a bit if you want. I think--
Derek Sivers
Tell me about me, Craig.
Craig
Well, I can tell you about everyone else, but you’re not weird. Like you’re interesting and you’re curious, which is great. Well, it depends what room you’re in. And some rooms you’re going to be normal. Some rooms you’re going to be a complete fucking freak. It’s contextual, right. Same with me. Some rooms, I’m a smart. Some rooms, I’m a moron. I try to go to the moron rooms as much as possible. But I think that the ever present challenge is that quite often our identity is tied into what we think and what we believe. And so if my beliefs and my identity are inseparable, when you question me or challenge me or challenge my belief, then you’re challenging my identity. And so much of my self-worth and self esteem and confidence and certainty and comfort is knowing that I’m right. Like, that’s where I get my everything from. You know, when it dawned on me as a young teenager, 14, 15, that maybe some of the things that I’ve been taught are unequivocally just truth might in fact, not be truth. That was fucking terrifying because, well, I don’t know what the world is now. Like, what do you mean? It’s like all of a sudden, so, you know, the sky is blue. It’s not bro. It’s yellow. We just fucked with your head for 15 years, right? And it’s like that. So when your sense of self and self-worth and identity is tied into a certain belief, anyone who argues with or has a counter opinion, that kind of fucks with you. And that’s why I think it’s definitely a great goal to be as open minded and as okay with being wrong as you are. I think it just makes you more teachable. Like being willing to unlearn as well as learn is paramount.
Derek Sivers
I like that.
Craig
Yeah, that’s my theory. Tell me about your book. So Useful Not True, is it out yet, or is it on its way?
Derek Sivers
No, no, no, I’m still writing it. No, I didn’t mean that to sound like a plug. No, it’s just what I’m working on right now. It probably won’t be out till next year, so--
Craig
Tell us about the thinking behind it.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Just realised that it was underlying everything else I’ve written and talked about. Like, for example, I often think of beliefs as chosen to deliberately counterbalance, erroneous thinking, faulty thinking. So think of the bowling metaphor, right. So everybody listening to this, you’ve gone bowling at some point. And what’s probably happened to all of us is you aim for that middle pin, you’re trying to make a strike and it curves to the left. So maybe you try it again. You’re like, oh man, I must not have aimed right. You try again, you aim for the middle pin, it curves to the left. So what you tell yourself is, all right, what I need to do is I need to actually aim to the right, which is going to mess me up because I’m going to aim for that far right pin, and I’m going to have to trust that it’s going to bend into the middle and then it works. Which is weird, because then your rational brain is overriding your instincts. Your instincts want to aim for the middle pin, but you’re smarter self has to aim for the right pin in order to make it hit the middle. So I’ve been doing that metaphorically with my thinking for decades, where I notice if I have, say, like a tendency to think that men and women are very different. And then I catch myself going, wait, I need to counterbalance that belief system. So then I’ll deliberately say, “That’s it. I’ve decided, I need to believe that men and women are exactly the same.”
Derek Sivers
And choosing to believe that will be that counterbalance so that it’s not true that men and women are exactly the same. But choosing to believe that will help steer my thinking more correctly. I do that with blame and fault is I used to catch myself at some points in life, blaming other people for things. At my old company I said it was those employees were terrible. They this, they that, and I was mad at my old employees for a couple of years. And then one day, something snapped in my head went, “Oh wait, what if everything was my fault?” And that felt so much better to go wait, I created that whole situation. Everything bad that happened at the company was all my fault. It was entirely me. Now, the truth is, it probably wasn’t entirely me. It was probably a mix. But counterbalancing my tendency to blame others by assuming that everything is my fault, that helps steer my thinking closer to the truth. So I’ve been doing this kind of counterbalancing thinking for years, but whenever I would talk about it publicly, whether I’d say, you know, men and women are exactly the same or everything is my fault. People would say, “But Derek, that’s not true.” And I’d say, “I don’t care that it’s not true. It’s useful. It’s useful for me to think this not true.” And that was always underlying all my thoughts. So I thought, you know, this is my fifth book now. This is something I think about a lot. Care about a lot. My next book is going to be called Useful Not True.
Craig
And I think that it’s like not only are men and women the same, but also different. But even women and women are different. Like, not all women are the same. Not all men are the same. I don’t know why we are so driven these days to compare. Like, I don’t know, I understand with certain things, like when we’re talking about wages and equity and I get all of that. But in terms of between different groups, whatever the division of group is, you know, I don’t know that’s always healthy, but I understand the thinking. So I have a very specific question for you. And this is really relevant to my research. What do you think it’s like being around Derek Sivers? What do you think the experience is like for an audience, be that a person or a thousand people in an auditorium or a reader of your stuff, like, have you ever thought about what is the me experience for others?
Derek Sivers
I don’t. I guess we just go on what people tell us, right? So any answer I’m tempted to give you right now would be me echoing what others have said, right?
Craig
Have you ever had any feedback? And you went, “Oh, fuck.” Like I’ve heard that so much. This is almost like the driver for my curiosity. Is where people would say, you know, whatever, like you’re offensive. When I used to lecture fitness students back in the day, when I was a 30 year old bodybuilder with muscles on my eyelids and shit, and I’d be teaching 18 and 19 year olds. Some of the feedback was like generally nice, positive, but periodically Craig’s intimidating. And I used to think, how? Like nothing in me wanted to be intimidating firstly. Of all my list of things to be and do, that wasn’t on my list, but it was quite consistent. It was probably 1 in 10 said yeah, like he’s cool, but I was scared of him for the first three weeks. I’m like, “Oh, what am I doing? Like, what is that?” Because you got to get to the point where you go, the only person who sees me like me is me. And the only person who sees the world like me is me. Right? And so understanding that I’m not seeing the world, I’m just seeing my version. And then that trying to understand the mind of others and then specifically the mind of others about me. Not from an insecurity or an ego point of view, but like for me, I’m a communicator, I’m a teacher, I’m an author, I’m a podcaster, I’m a researcher. I want to understand how people understand me so that I can create better interpersonal stuff, you know?
Derek Sivers
Nice. So my background is in this in the music business?
Craig
Yeah, I read.
Derek Sivers
So think if you were a musician that wanted to get famous. You have to think of yourself from the other person’s point of view. Otherwise you have what’s known as the starving artist problem. The cliche of the starving artist is the person who’s pouring out their heart and soul into this dirge, strumming a chord and going, “Why did you leave me.” And they’re going, “Why doesn’t anybody appreciate my art?” But it’s because you’re valuing your art because you value it. Whereas you’ve got to look at yourself from the outside, is this dirge about your ex valuable to others or only to you? If it’s only valuable to you, that’s the starving artist problem. So I think I’ve been in this mindset for a long time of forcing yourself to think of yourself kind of as a product for other people. In fact, you know what? This is why I tend to write so succinctly. I read other people’s books and they’re very verbose, giving too many caveats, just saying, like, “Well, I’m not saying that this and this and that, but, you know, in certain situations.” Whereas I’ll just say this is that. And the reason I speak like that is because I know I’m just one little voice in the choir. I know that nobody does what I say. I know I’m not the be all end all. I think of myself as very small from other people’s point of view. So therefore I might as well speak very bluntly and succinctly to just be one voice in the choir. Did that make sense? And now I feel like I’m getting too abstract.
Craig
Not at all. Well, I think the thing is that, like even with this show. So I did three shows, three podcasts before this project that essentially didn’t work. As in, yeah, we had listeners and so this is hopefully a vehicle for inspiration, education, information and all that. And we don’t charge our listeners and they’ll never pay because we have great sponsors. And we are partnered with an organization called Nova Entertainment. So we have it great. But it took me three podcasts and then 500 episodes of this show before we really made a dollar, before it was viable. So that was the best part of three years. And so that for me, that whole time was thinking about, okay, what do people want to hear that aligns with who--. I don’t want to just put out something because I’m just trying to make a buck, because if it was all about that, I would have fucking thrown it in forever ago. But, you know, these days it’s great and we’re very fortunate and it’s financially viable. But we essentially were spinning our wheels for years. But I’m always like, even now with you, I said to you before we started, “So mate, very conversational, less interview, more chat.” I had a look at you talking to Mark Manson.
Craig
I read a bit of you, but I try not one because I’m highly lazy, but two, I try not to get too much because I don’t want to ask you shit I already know. I want it to be organic and real. So whether or not even in the moment I’m talking to you and I’m trying to be fully present, I’m also thinking, what is this like for our 20,000 listeners or whatever it is like for the thousands of people now who are listening to you and me, what is it like for them? Do I want to keep listening? Do I understand what the fuck they’re talking about? Is it relevant? Is it broadly relevant or am I making it about Craig? You know, am I talking too much? Am I asking? You know, I always have this. It’s not anxiety, it’s curiosity and awareness. Because I want the thing, you know, whatever you write, you want people to enjoy reading it. You want people to connect with your thoughts and ideas and probably not the primary driver, but you want to sell heaps of books. Of course you do. Me too. But in the middle of all of that, it’s still about how do we connect with people. Because if you’ve got the best ideas and the best stories and the best information and the best anecdotes, but the way that you communicate doesn’t connect. It’s redundant.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. You know, I don’t usually talk meta like this, but since you’re getting meta, when people do interview me and they ask questions like, how did you start your business? I always have to translate quickly in my head. He’s not actually asking me how I started my business. What he’s really asking is, what lessons can our listeners learn from your experience and I have to quickly translate that to remember like, this isn’t like I’m not on a date. You’re not like getting to know me. Or even I mean, we could get mad about that, too. When you’re on a date, they’re not even necessarily asking about your past. They’re asking, will you be compatible with me? Will you make a good partner for me? But so it’s the same thing with when you’re doing a public interview. I try to constantly remind myself, this isn’t about me. I’m being used as an example for the listener to reflect against whether they are going to disagree with me, or adopt some lesson I’ve learned, or use me as a weird example for their own lives. Like everybody’s listening to the show out of self-interest. It’s fun to remember.
Craig
Yeah. And I think also like, this is going to sound weird, but for me, I enjoy talking to people. Sometimes the take away for me is, I really like how Derek thinks. That’s it. It might not even be a particular thing that you said, but I like his way of looking at the world. I like his way of talking about truth and talking about what is real. I like the fact that he’s not in a box. He’s in all the boxes and no boxes. You know, I like that. And so like this is going to sound self-indulgent. I don’t mean it to, but a thing that I get people say to me. Apart from some shit things as well, but is, I like how you think and I like how you explain things and it resonates like how you think resonates with how I think. And I’m like, well, that’s a compliment, because especially when you’re talking about human behavior and psychology and all the shit that kind of fascinates me. It could be really self-indulgent and irrelevant and share out, put out data and research and have two listeners. Or you can go, how do I talk about this potentially complicated thing in an uncomplicated way and not take 20 minutes to get it out?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I’m going to take a tangent spin on that. The way you think is your life after death.
Craig
Wow.
Derek Sivers
When you die what’s left is how you think. The people that knew you will remember how you think, that your personality is kind of the culmination of how you think. Like, we could use that. The common word is personality and that’s what’s left when you die, is people remembering your personality, which is essentially how you think. And so therefore life after death is sharing how you think with the world.
Craig
Wow. What will people say about you? What are the things that people will remember? I don’t mean standing at your funeral getting shit faced, but in terms of how you think. What do you think your thinking’s impact is on others?
Derek Sivers
I think it’s different for different audiences. For years I only spoke to musicians. I was just the guy that started CD Baby, this music distribution company, and the only people that gave a shit of what I had to think were musicians that wanted to know how to get famous. And then right after I sold the company, which was personally a failure of mine, I sold out of failure. Meaning like I thought I wanted to run this company for the rest of my life, and I basically fucked it up so badly I had to sell. Which was then weird because people would say congratulations, and they treated me like, I had been a successful, a big exiting entrepreneur, you know? But for me, it was a personal failure. But because I exited with a big exit, the TED conference asked me to speak a few times, and I tried to rise to the challenge and speak to things that I thought the audience might find interesting. Because when you’re speaking at Ted and I’m not talking about like TEDx talking to some college students, I mean, like the main stage TED, where it’s like there’s Bill gates, there’s the guys that started Google, there’s the guy that invented Unix, there’s Al Gore, there’s Tony Robbins, and they’re sitting in the audience like, okay, teach me something. Damn, dude, that’s high pressure.
Craig
That is all the pressure.
Derek Sivers
I gave three three minute talks at three consecutive TED conferences. None of them had anything to do with me. I just thought it was like the most interesting thing I had learned in the last few years presented to a room of geniuses. Right. So then people wanted to hear my thoughts because I was the Ted speaker. But then Seth Godin asked me to write a book about how I started, grew and sold my company. So even though I never intended to write a book, I adore Seth, so I’ll just do whatever he says. I like the way he thinks. He’s a person that comes to mind a lot when you say, you know, I like the way you think. I like the way Seth thinks. I often ask myself, “What would Seth do? How would Seth think about this?” So anyway, Seth asked me to write a book. So that’s the only reason I wrote a book. I wrote it in 11 days. It’s called Anything You Want. Just quickly told my tale of how I started, grew and sold my company. And then people really liked that book, and they started calling me an entrepreneur. So suddenly people were looking at me from a business point of view. So what I’m getting at is, sorry, I don’t know. Musicians looked at me for music business advice. TED fans of lateral thinking would look to me for that kind of thought process. Entrepreneurs liked some of these startup kind of advice I was giving and look at me for that. But because I don’t even know my audience anymore and now I just have to kind of talk about whatever I find fascinating and hope that other people do, too.
Craig
Like, you’re interesting because you’re a bit of an intersection for me anyway. I don’t know you well, but like creativity, philosophy, business, curiosity. It’s like you’re this composition of a bunch of things, like, what do you do?
Craig
Like, my academic stuff is all in science, but ironically, I’m not. I’m okay at science. I can do it. But I’m more of a creative. My dad is a creative. My mom quite creative, but my grandmother was very creative. And so, I find creative things more-- they come more easily, whereas researchy stuff is just a grind and even now, like I haven’t owned a gym for nine years, but I still get paid to come and talk at fitness conferences. Even though I work as an exercise physiologist, like, I’m still really well known in the Australian fitness industry, despite the fact that I don’t work in the Australian fitness industry. Right, so you carry that brand despite and it’s like when I first wrote a book, people are like, you’re not an author and then you write seven and it’s like, “Oh, here’s that author.” So how do you identify and how do you think people see you?
Derek Sivers
I don’t know. Dude sorry. I feel like you’ve asked me that question like, four times. Just don’t know the answer.
Craig
Okay. What about your identity then for you, do you see yourself primarily as a creative?
Derek Sivers
I like to find a different point of view. That thing that I said earlier about like my favorite joy in life is I love being wrong. It’s why I love traveling. I don’t take any photos when I’m traveling. What I’m looking for is to change my mind. I’m looking for other working philosophies that can show me another way of being in the world, and another way of thinking about whether it’s family or responsibility or food or, I don’t know, death. I’m out searching for other ways of thinking. But even when I was doing music. Yes I was doing the craft of music. I was writing songs. And I liked that craft the same way that a woodworker admires the craft of a well-built chair or something. But along the way, I was finding it fascinating to find different ways to think of putting my music out into the world. You know, because that’s what I loved about Brian Eno. Brian Eno is a fascinating music philosopher, and he was inspired by John Cage, who is known for his four minutes and 33 seconds of silence, which was a wonderful philosophical take on a composition and how we listen. And so then Brian Eno did that kind of thing with pop music, where he had his deck of cards called the Oblique Strategies, which was like, hey, if you’re producing a record and you’re not sure what to do next, shuffle this deck and pull one out and you must do whatever it says.
Derek Sivers
He got philosophical with the craft of making pop or rock records, and these people were my biggest inspiration musically. And then I accidentally started a business and I found it fun to think about business in different ways. You know, I saw business as a tool for generosity. Like my main role in my business was to give, was to serve. And as long as I was breaking even, I was happy. I wasn’t out to make any money. I just didn’t want to lose any because then the whole thing would collapse, right? So profit wasn’t anywhere in my list of priorities. Number one was just serving and giving. And so that was like a different way to think about business that I found served me very well. I thought of it like the Dao of business, where if you put your client’s needs above your own, you’ll actually end up doing well business wise, even though that feels counterintuitive for people that are approaching business selfishly. So you’re probably catching the common thread in all of this, which is I like just finding different ways to think about things.
Craig
All right, let’s wind up. So what’s your day to day now? What’s your job? When someone goes like you’re writing, I know you’re writing. How else are you making a buck?
Derek Sivers
Oh, I haven’t made money in years. I haven’t made money since 2008. I haven’t made a dollar since 2008. I sold my company for more than I could spend in a lifetime, and gave most of it to charity. I mean, actually gave all of it to charities, just that the company was profitable before I sold it. So all the money I sold the company for all went to charity. The money I had left before I sold, I’m still living off of that and will for the rest of my life. So no, every time I write and sell books, all that goes to charity, anything I do is not for the money. I just do things just for the interest of.
Craig
Well, now I’ve got a crush on you, as has Tiff. What took you to New Zealand?
Derek Sivers
My kid. I was living in Singapore when he was born, and I was a permanent resident of Singapore. I find that little place fascinating. I love it with all my head. I thought that’s where my boy was going to grow up. And we made him a permanent resident at the age of three months old. And then when he was like six, seven months old, I started realizing. And maybe it’s just a belief it’s useful, not true to believe this, that kids need nature. You know, feet in the river, hands in the mud, climbing trees, the natural world. And I thought that was really important for a kid to have a connection with the real physical, natural world. And so I thought, well, ideally he would grow up in New Zealand. So I did nine months of paperwork and moved here really for the sole purpose of raising him in nature.
Craig
You did a good job man. And you picked a good country too. So we’ll say goodbye off air. But your most recent book that people can buy is “How to Live 27--”
Derek Sivers
How to Live. It’s my masterpiece. Sorry, sorry to interrupt.
Craig
No, no, no. 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion. Can you give us a two minute or as many minutes as you want snapshot of that before we go?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. It’s more art than business. Just imagine chapter one says, “Here’s how to live: Be independent.” Chapter two is like, “Here’s how to live: Commit. Commit to one place. Commit to others.” One chapter says, “Here’s how to live: Live for the moment. Just fill your senses for now.” And another says, “Here’s how to live: Live for the future.” And it’s the experience of reading a bunch of non fiction books that all disagree with each other, except in this case, every chapter disagrees with every other chapter.
Craig
Wow.
Derek Sivers
But then it comes to one weird conclusion that I think ties it all together. In short, it’s my masterpiece. It’s the culmination of everything I’ve ever learned in my life, put into just 112 pages. It took me four years to write it, because I put everything I’ve ever learned in my whole life into what was a 3000 page rough draft. And then I spent two years editing 3000 pages down to 112 pages. It reads more like poetry than prose. You’ll see.
Craig
Dude, 3000 pages, are you kidding me? That would be like the best part of a million words.
Derek Sivers
My fingers were flying for two years. I was just really dumping everything I’d ever learned in life. But then nobody wants to read that. So yeah, my task was to make it extremely succinct. That book is, I think the only book I’ve ever seen in my whole life where you couldn’t eliminate a single word. Every single word needs to be there. You’ll see.
Craig
Congratulate. And that’s on audible, I assume.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. It’s everywhere. It’s audible. Your best place. Just go to my website, sive.rs. If you buy through me directly, then you get every single format included. Well, everybody should email me if you’ve listened all the way to the end of this show. Go to my website and send me an email and say hello.
Craig
That’d be great. Well, we appreciate you. We’ll say goodbye off here, but for the moment, Derek, thanks so much for being on The You Project.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, Craig. Thanks, Tiff.
Tiffany
Thank you.