We Are Podcast
host: Ronsley Seriojo Vaz
entrepreneurial journey, being of service, personal branding, belief systems, writing process
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Transcript:
Ronsley
Derek, thank you. This is cool. I mean, I know you must get this a lot where people have consumed your work and obviously, you know, have interviewed you and you do these a lot. For me this is huge. I appreciate your time. I appreciate you making the even-- I know how much this means. I know that you. It’s either a hell yes or a hell no.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Ronsley
Yeah. Thank you, I appreciate you.
Derek Sivers
Well meeting you was a hell yeah for me. Yeah. When we started talking on the back of a boat in Noosa, and you were telling me about Dubai and your background and Goa, and now in Australia, I was like, “Oh, man, we have so many things to talk about.” So yeah, I’m excited to talk with you.
Ronsley
I love having conversations, and I know you do, too. I love everything about the way you operate, from the frameworks you use to your daily habits, the way you show up to how you have curated this audience as well over email. Even being part of that was, you know, for the first time has been absolutely like, wow. What do you think when you look back at your entrepreneurial journey? Maybe it’s not in the bio. When you look back, what are the highlights that pop up? What are the ones that you go like, “Wow, that that was so cool that happened.”
Derek Sivers
It’s a fun question. I think the single biggest wow for me was being useful to others instead of doing things for me. And to explain, if you see my context, that I was determined to be a successful musician ever since I was 14 years old, I think I started playing guitar around 12, but somewhere around 14 I went, “Oh yeah, this is it for me. This is all I want in the whole world.” And I just gave it 100%. I was all in. I cared about nothing else but my music, and every time I would put on a show, it was me, me, me, and of course, everybody standing up on stage into a microphone, right? It’s all like putting your personal feelings into a public address system. It’s a very self-centered thing to do, to try to get a whole room full of people, to listen to your thoughts and it was all about me. And I did that for 15 years. From the age of 14 to 29, all I did was music. I was just a full time musician and I made a living of it. I ended up going to Berklee College of Music. I got a degree in music, graduated college at 20 years old, moved to New York City. I was a full time musician in the music scene in New York City.
Derek Sivers
Did over a thousand gigs on stage, performing my music. And then at the age of 29, while I was selling my CD, some of my friends in the music scene in New York City said, “Whoa, dude, can you sell my CD through that thing?” And I went, “Yeah, sure, I guess.” And as a side effect of selling a few friends CDs. Then word got out that there was this guy named Derek that would sell your music, and just my little hobby quickly became the largest seller of independent music online at the time. And this is the late 90s. So to answer your question, the biggest wow was feeling the difference between doing things for me versus now I was like in service of others. I was like a public servant. I was just there to serve the musicians of the world. And that was a huge wow. That was just a complete difference in feeling. Kind of like when people talk about, like, how it feels to have your first kid and suddenly life is not about you anymore. Like, I got that at 29 when I started my business, suddenly life wasn’t about me anymore. It was about them.
Ronsley
You know, super, super fascinating to hear you break that down, because over the last maybe I’d say 18, 20 months I regularly do this meditation in the morning where I say, “I just want to be of service. Like, can you guide me?” You know, because I feel similar. I feel I just want to be of service. I want to be useful to your point. And that’s why I love the way you show up and how we have these conversations and of course we can talk about Goa and and India and Dubai.
Derek Sivers
No, we don’t have to. That was just my personal interest. I don’t know if it’s of interest to our audience. No.
Ronsley
But I want to talk about the book because I have consumed it.
Derek Sivers
So before we go there, hold on. You just brought up something really interesting. When you say like a morning meditation, you said you like, “Can you help me?” So can you tell me about that? Like, who are you addressing or how does that turn into action?
Ronsley
When you explain that. So say that again. So when I said.
Derek Sivers
You said you have a morning meditation and then you said I ask, you know, “Can you help me be of service?”
Ronsley
Yeah. The universe or the life force, I suppose that guides and the connection between each and every one of us that exists, which is unseen and is full of magic. And I suppose no one’s ever asked me that question. So to to answer you, you know, that’s who I’m sort of referring to. Because there’s a lot of times I say things that I’ve never heard before and people are like, “Wow, that’s amazing.” I’m like, that’s not me. I’ve literally heard this for the first time, as this just comes out of my mouth and there’s this guiding force I feel and interesting you asked that question. How come you picked that up?
Derek Sivers
Oh, I just wasn’t sure. We didn’t really get into religious beliefs on the back of a boat in Noosa, but I was just curious that when you, when you meditate every morning, I mean, yes, I was half curious about who is the “you” you were addressing because you just kind of said, “Can you help me be or can you show me how to be?” But then the second half of that was, how does that help you? Does it make you more useful to others? The fact that you put aside time in the morning to think, to get your mind into that terms. Does it help you find ways to be more useful?
Ronsley
Oh, wow, I love what you’re doing. And you know, what you’re doing is thank you. Because I could do this for my framework as well. So yes, to your point. I’ve been on stage since I was a kid. I was like captain of the debate team, and I’ve been elocution and on stage since I was in school. So getting on stage has never scared me until someone said at University of Queensland, “You’re selected as one of the 15 or 12 to do a Ted talk.” And then I had this-- I don’t know, for like six weeks and three days. I had this like insane fear and it was just gripping me. I would have all these weird visions of weird things happening on stage, including just, you know, defecating on stage, including, like, really weird, like, just not even possible, sort of. And in three days before I met a dear friend who runs a non-for-profit in Cambodia that saves girls from being sex trafficked by keeping them in school. So she was like, “How’s the preparation going for the TedX talk?”
Ronsley
And I said, “I’m just nervous. It’s really weird.” And she heard me like, talk about this for like two minutes and then goes, “Ronsley, you know, this is not about you, right?” This was in 2017 and ever since then that has been one of the best gifts that Nikki could have ever given me, because I’d never considered that until that point. It was all about me, I suppose. And then when it became, “Wait, it’s not about me. What are you doing this for?” I wasn’t nervous anymore, like I wasn’t. It didn’t become about me. So since then, I’ve been doing that and that’s why it’s been serving me. Because there are days where I go, “Should I be here?” Like, you know, and there’s so many different things that I could be doing, like, should I actually be here? So guidance, I suppose, in that way does help because I feel that I’m one of the lucky ones. That has the freedom to do whatever they want. And because I’ve been given that freedom I really want to use it wisely. Did that make sense? I mean, it’s weird that you’re interviewing me instead of me interviewing you.
Derek Sivers
No. I mean, I don’t know if you saw my jaw dropped a few seconds ago, as you said that, I realized. I wonder if that’s the heart of imposter syndrome. I’ve been wondering about imposter syndrome for years because I’ve never felt it. And I hear people talk about it, and I don’t understand. I don’t even understand the thought process that would make them feel like I don’t deserve to be here. And I think you might have just helped me realize what it might be, is it’s assuming that it’s about you. Like if you’re on stage thinking that people care about you because you’re on stage. Whereas maybe I never assumed that. Maybe I always assumed that I’m just the the object here. They are the subject of their own verbs. And I’m just the object. They don’t care about me. I’m just a a random person on stage that they didn’t think about it a minute ago, and they won’t be thinking about it an hour, and I’m just providing some music, or I’m just providing a 15 minute or a three minute Ted talk for some intellectual entertainment. They’re just here at Ted to network with other people. And hear some new ideas. Nobody cares about me, this isn’t about me. So maybe that’s why I never felt imposter syndrome. And maybe the reason people do is because they mistakenly assume that it’s about them. Are you saying, is that the switch that helped you stop being nervous right before the Ted talk?
Ronsley
Yes for sure. Like it wasn’t about me and and it’s interesting you say imposter syndrome because right now in the AI space, I feel no imposter syndrome. I did feel imposter syndrome in the podcasting space because I learned to do it. I did it myself. And yeah, I had an audio background and a tech background, and a lot of the stuff came easy to me with XLR cables and stuff like that. But, you know, I was still learning myself and I was kind of going, “Why are these people paying me? Like, why is this hype so big?” Especially at the back of my mind, not forefront of my mind, my forefront, I was like, “The podcasting is the best thing a business can do.” Which I totally believed in. But now in the AI space, I’m like, catch me off guard, I want you to catch me off guard. I want to know where my holes are, like I want you to give me something in the spur of the moment so that I can think about it. And so that imposter syndrome is kind of different. And you’re right. When it stopped becoming about me, which is hard to do when you have the personal branding happening around business and entrepreneurship and how your message and your vision gets to different people is very much about us. Right. And us as a personality. How do you navigate that? Like it’s useful for us to have this personal brand and for us to talk about ourselves. And, you know, depending on which part of the world you come from, you either don’t talk about yourself or you hope other people do, or you talk too much about-- so you know what I mean. So how do you navigate that useful but true scenario of personal branding versus like value and worth and saying, this is what I can do.
Derek Sivers
Were you ever a musician?
Ronsley
Yes. The three years Trinity College piano I played on stage the guitar. And I did rhythm for a few years. But not to, you know, obviously, the extent and I haven’t touched an instrument in in a decade at least, so. But yes, I was one time.
Derek Sivers
I was going to say as a musician, the musician. Well, I guess I can relate to two sides now, being a musician and being an author, you ask, how do I navigate it? I think of it from my point of view as somebody that occasionally wants music to listen to, or wants a book to read, or, let’s say, new ideas to read or useful ideas to read. When I want to put on some music. I’m not bringing the whole and complete person making the music into my home. I’m just bringing the thing they created into my home. That’s all I want, not the whole person. I just want that thing. I don’t really care about the real person so much. Unless you really become a super fan of a musician and find yourself starting to care. Like the way that I’m sure a lot of Taylor Swift fans are getting really into her personal life and caring about her as a person. That would be a tough, blurred line, but let’s just assume most of us are not there. Most people don’t cares so much about the personal lives of the musicians whose music they listen to. And same thing with books. Most of us just want a book, say on large language models, or investing or abstract philosophy or whatever. And if somebody wrote a well-reviewed book that people say is a good book on existentialism, and that’s something you feel like learning about or Chinese culture or whatever, then you get that book, but you don’t really care so much who the author is.
Derek Sivers
You might want to just quickly make sure that they are not a Kindle scammer, but they’re actually somebody who knows what they’re talking about. But beyond that, we don’t really care so much. But yet, it is wise as an author or a musician to help people remember your name and help them be able to find you, and maybe have an identifiable thing so they can recognize that’s this is the same person whose music I liked a few years ago, or whose book I liked a few years ago. I recognize this name. Or maybe I recognize that photo. I recognize that face. I think that’s part of being considerate, honestly. I wrote a whole book about this called “Your Music and People”, where essentially I think that marketing is just another way of being considerate. It’s not about tricking people, it’s about helping people. It’s about helping them remember you, helping them tell their friends about you. It’s trying to make things easier for them. So, I can simultaneously brand myself and try to make it easy to remember my name and find me and get my books. But also know that this isn’t really about me. I’m just providing ideas for people to chew on.
Ronsley
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
I’m giving them chew toys.
Ronsley
I mean, it’s really interesting. I love that perspective for a variety of different reasons. Because one of the questions I really wanted to know is, how do you decide that’s the concept you want to spend time to write about and research and give so much of your life towards? And what does that process look like for you to write a book? Oh, yeah. Like, how do you start?
Derek Sivers
It’s funny, I just literally two minutes before we hit record, I got off the phone with my old music teacher that changed my life when I was 19 years old. Kimo Williams. He and I were just on the phone and I said, “Oh, sorry, it’s 10:58, I gotta go.’ So, he and I were just talking about that making your art, whether that’s words or music or whatever, doing it for the marketplace versus doing it just for yourself. So Kimo and I have always both been in the camp of you just really got to please yourself. So you make the music that you wished would exist. I write the books that I wish would exist, and if somebody else likes them, well, lucky me, if nobody else likes them, that’s fine. Like I did it. I made the book that I always wanted to exist, but did not exist until now. So that’s one approach. Other people can take the opposite approach and do what the market needs. So one of my best friends is a Kindle author that has written over 100 Kindle books, and she decides what to write based on running Amazon ads and seeing what gets clicked on.
Derek Sivers
And she said, “Oh, a bunch of people are clicking on this idea. You know, I’ve been running hundreds of ads. This one is trending. I’m going to quickly write a Kindle book on this subject.” And she’ll quickly work with some experts and some ghostwriters and research assistants or whatever, and quickly write a 100 page book on that subject and get it on to Amazon store quickly to satisfy the marketplace. And of course, there are songwriters that do this too. They look at the current trends. What kind of hooks, what kind of intros, what kind of beats, what tempos, what subject matters. And they will quickly pop out 50 songs a year that have commercial potential. Whether you know it makes their heart sing or not, they’re doing it as a business. So these are just two of the many different approaches one could take to this. But yeah, mine is just I will write about something I find fascinating right now.
Ronsley
And then when you came to this concept of Useful Not True, did you already know that you were going to call it that? And how did you break it down? So this whole idea of long term vision versus short term action and writing a book is one of those projects where you really wanted to do well, not only from a writing perspective, but also from someone consuming it perspective. It’s great to have the art, but if no one appreciates the art, so what is your process like? How do you-- like do you have mind maps? How do you show up every day? What does that look like? Or do you have random blocks that you have in the calendar where okay, this is my time to focus, and then you have a time to focus and you have a certain way to get focused, like what is your method?
Derek Sivers
Well, first “Useful Not True” was an idea that just kept coming up for me. There are many things that I choose to believe. And I would share that thought with the world, and somebody would retort back in the in the comments, “But that’s not true.” And I’d say, “I don’t care if it’s true or not. I believe this because it’s useful for me to believe this. It helps me take action in the way, I want to believing this either gets me peace of mind, helps me be who I want to be, or do what I need to do. That’s why I choose my beliefs. Not because they’re true. What the fuck is true anyway?” And I’d been saying this for years, and after I finished my last book called “How to Live”. I had a brief little gap of time where I didn’t know what I was going to write about next. But then once again, this idea of useful, not true came up. And I thought, “You know, this is a really interesting subject. And in fact, I’ve been saying that I choose my beliefs because they’re useful, not because they’re true. I’ve been saying that for years, but I’ve never really dove into that subject.” And I thought, “I’m sure smart people have thought about this already. I’m sure philosophers have addressed this subject. What is this?” And so I spent a year and a half learning more about this subject. That’s where I read the Bible, we were talking about that when we met, and that’s where I started learning about other religions and why people believe what they believe.
Derek Sivers
What do they get out of that? Is it just because it’s absolutely, positively, objectively true? Or are there useful reasons why they believe what they believe? And, yeah, I read lots of books on philosophy, cognitive behavioral therapy, pragmatism, utilitarianism, existentialism, nihilism, and all these things combined. I started to understand this subject of “Useful Not True” more. Then to me, the challenge was to not try to say everything I have to say on the subject, but instead I wrote these cute little fables and stories. So, yeah, the average chapter length is only 20 sentences. And you saw it. So by the way, audience listening the reason that Ronsley and I met is I was on stage at an event in Noosa, Australia, two months ago where they hired me to come share the idea of the “Useful Not True” book. And it was my first time ever doing it in public. So I basically got up on stage and I’d say presented the book. I didn’t read the book. I didn’t read it word for word. But I presented all the little stories from the book. And so Ronsley was one of the first 30 people to ever hear it. But yeah. Well, that’s your first question. That’s where the “Useful Not True” idea came from and how I decided to dive into it.
Ronsley
And I definitely want to get into the process of writing the book. But apart from me dissecting every piece of what you presented, I got a copy of “Useful Not True” yesterday, and I have consumed it and in as much detail as I possibly can, you know, for this conversation because I really want to break that down. So okay now you have this idea that you want to explore and you’ve done a literature review on all the different ways this could be seen. How do you say this doesn’t belong here? How do you make those decisions.
Derek Sivers
Oh, that’s a good question. Dude. I spent a year trying to write the first draft of this book, trying to think of what I had to say around this subject, and I wrote these long, long, long text documents with so much to say. And every time I just thought, I can’t put this out into the world. I can’t even put a version of this. This is so much, this is too many ideas, too many words. And a year and a half into working on this book, and I’d even publicly announced to the world my next book is called “Useful Not True”. Oh, you asked that to the the title did come right away. Yeah. Because it’s the phrase I had been already using for years to tell people like, “No, I choose my beliefs because they’re useful, not true.” And then it passed the girlfriend test I mentioned to a girlfriend once. I said, “What do you think of the title Useful Not True?” And she goes, “Oh, that’s a really good title.” Okay, good, I thought so. So there you go, that was solved. But yeah, I’d already publicly announced to the world that I was writing this book called “Useful Not True”. And I had just too many ideas and too many words. And after a year and a half. I put it all aside and I opened up a brand new text document and I wrote this tiny little fable.
Derek Sivers
It was just 19 sentences long, and it communicated one of the ideas in “Useful Not True” in a very visual, memorable way. And I went, “Ooh, that felt good. That was cute. Let me write another.” So then I wrote another little fable. It was just like 21 sentences. And again, almost like an Aesop’s fable, just like something visual and memorable, describing a scene. This happened, that happened, a little irony, a little something unexpected happened, there. And it also communicates when you have the ideas I was trying to get across. Oh my God, this feels good. It’s what a better way to communicate an idea, instead of just saying it is to make a visual story that people can picture in their minds, and it sticks with them, and it’s short so they can retell it to their friend. They can just be over drinks or dinner or something and sitting with a friend and say, “You know, I know this guy once. You know, he was in a car accident and he thought he broke this woman’s back, but years later went to go meet with her, you know?” And I think this is a better way to communicate this idea, instead of just blathering on about it, is to make short little tales about it. So hence the format.
Ronsley
There’s some beautiful tales in there, and I love how you’ve taken those personal anecdotes and put meaning more meaning around them, even though there was so much meaning to you about those stories. Right? You’ve taken that and extrapolated this new idea on top of that and communicated that in 21 sentences or less.
Derek Sivers
Does that answer your question, though, about like choosing what to leave out? It’s always hard I’m sure. I have such sympathy for Hollywood editors, where, say, the director spent millions of dollars and had a cast of, you know, five famous actors and a crew of 80, and they spent $4 million in two weeks shooting a shot in the editing room. They have to go, “Yeah, this isn’t working. Cut.” You know, and they chop out that whole section. It’s hard. But then what you really care about is making the best end product, no matter how much time you spent working on it beforehand. So yeah.
Ronsley
No, it totally makes sense. And I love that because that’s how I make podcasts. I don’t think that the whole recording needs to be published, like the recording is separate from the editing and the publishing phase. Because I have this great conversation with you, does not mean the audience needs to listen to the whole conversation, right? I can remove pieces that are really consumable and make it useful, and make this conversation useful for a different audience. While I make this useful for you and I, you know. So that’s always been my thesis around podcasting is such a beautiful medium. And when you realize that. You know, not many generations ago, we didn’t have the opportunity to just switch on a microphone and say whatever we wanted to say, whenever we wanted to say it and transmit these ideas and being useful, finding out whether what we believe in is true or useful, I suppose. So in your book you mention conflicting belief systems and how we have them in different parts of the world. And you have this everywhere you know, you have the states, the blues and reds. You have hunger and obesity, which just is something that I’ve said for years. I can’t believe this dichotomy exists, that we have hunger and obesity on the same planet. With this, I’d love for you to get in and explain that in the best way you can and and with about conflicting belief systems. But what happens when those conflicting belief systems are within us? Like there’s an internal part of us that believes something entirely different when we are showing something entirely different up front, you know, the subconscious is working differently. Is that something that you’ve thought about? So I’m just going to put that out there on conflicting belief systems.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. It can be very human to just let them conflict, to let them both sit within us. The first thing that comes to mind when you ask is the girlfriend I broke up with a year and a half ago, and I will always have mixed feelings about that. She was a really, really, really good person, and she was devoted. We were engaged to be married, and for reasons too private to go into here, I had to make the very lucid and solemn decision to break up. And it was the right choice. But I will always have mixed feelings about it. And I’d say that about 10s a day. I give a piece of my mind to that other side. You know, the devil’s advocate or whatever you want to call it, that thinks that I shouldn’t have done that. That I should have found a way to work it out. But ultimately I know it was the right choice. But it’s interesting communicating that with my kid, who’s 12 and knew her very well. Actually, he still sees her more than I do. And communicating that I will always have mixed feelings about it. And that’s life, there are multiple ways to think about anything. There’s not one true right answer. There are always different viewpoints and that’s why you just could acknowledge that you are choosing this viewpoint, that it’s your choice. Not because it’s some objective truth but because this is the way I’ve chosen to feel about this. I’ve decided to take this stance because it serves me, because it brings me peace of mind, because it improves my actions.
Derek Sivers
I’m going to choose this way of looking at it. And it’s tough when people change partway through. Let’s pick the topic du jour of Israel and Gaza. That October 7th last year, Gaza attacked Israel unannounced and I think a lot of the world instantly kind of made an opinion on that. And then months pass, and a lot of the world has to change their opinion on what’s happening now. It’s like, well, “Back on October 8th, I believed this, but now what are we, May 8th, I believe that.” And somewhere along the line, you know, you could have continued seeing it the way that you’d saw it on October 8th. But people change their point of view or change your point of view on a romantic relationship you’re in. You know, at first I thought it was good. And over time, I’ve had to change my stance. And now I’m choosing this point of view. And yeah, this can apply to anything, business. You know, even what you said about seeing yourself as in service. Oh my gosh, perfect example. Two days before your Ted talk, when the woman in Cambodia, the friend said one sentence to you that helped you switch how you see it, and of course you can call to mind the way you were seeing it the day before. But now you realized the way that she mentioned I could see it. This is a much better way to see it. This works for me. And so you just choose that perspective.
Ronsley
And it’s so useful because what could potentially take so long, a shift in perspective could take seconds. It’s happened.
Ronsley
It’s happened so many times, Derek. It’s happened in moments of forgiveness as well. Where-- I mean, again, this is private, but I think I’ve never shared this before, but there was a period where I was not in communication with my parents, and it really hurt me and I’m sure it hurt them as well, it did. My mom and dad and there was this moment from not wanting to talk to my mom. To like instantly shifting. I can’t explain what it was. I was in a yin yoga position. That’s the only thing I can say in terms of the moment. And it flipped. And I reached for my phone, which I don’t normally do in middle of anything. I normally don’t sort of break what I’m doing, and I sent my mom a message saying, “Hi mom, how are you? I miss you. It’s a perspective shift, which even today I don’t know what happened. So it was it was that useful, not true. So I want to bring that idea to artificial intelligence, because I feel that’s an interesting conversation, especially with the way things are happening now and how everyone sees it. And also because of your a tech background, I mean, you know how the machine thinks, which is very important. And logic is obviously very important when it comes to these things. So maybe to start off that conversation, if we could sort of define what it means for like what is an AI system look like when it’s true or useful? Like if you want to jam on that for a little while, that would be interesting.
Derek Sivers
I don’t have that much to say about it. Keep in mind it is May 2024 and I’ve been working on this book for two years, so think of how much has happened in AI between May 2022 and May 2024. And for this whole two years, I’ve been trying to ignore it because I said, I can’t dive down that rabbit hole right now. I’ve got to finish what I’m doing here before I can dive into rabbit holes. So I have not given AI that much of my mind. But I use Claude and ChatGPT as like an assistant in the room. I really just do use them as if somebody was sitting in the room with me. And as I’m writing a couple times per hour, I’ll say, “Hey what’s an example of some other professions that use a toolbox?” Or, “Hey, what’s a word that means to have regret but not very much regret or something like that?” And I’ll just ask an LLM about that. And it might list a word that makes me go, “Oh yes, good word. Thank you.” Or you know, like I said synonyms, things like that. So I think it is funny that LLMs generate text that is useful, but not necessarily true. And I thought about making a joke about that in my book somewhere, but I didn’t. But there is a harm in treating the words that LLM generates as true. But even though they’re not true, they can be useful.
Ronsley
So well, that’s you know, that’s my point. And my point is not to necessarily do AI entirely at at all and just sort of put rubbish out. But my point is we can augment our human intelligence. Because when you think about like, if we broke it down, step back a little bit. And when we say someone has IQ of 150 or whatever, that means that that person can hold that much of data when they’re making decisions. So in their brain they have that cognitive capacity. We can augment that now with an LLM or AI in a ways that is just unprecedented. And I wonder like so that’s the whole it comes down. So in my book, which is coming out on the 13th of September, Friday the 13th. One of the first chapters is about our level of consciousness, so we can see the same event in a different manner depending on our level of consciousness, you know? Dr David Hawkins has the Map of Consciousness from Power to Force. Have you heard that?
Derek Sivers
No.
Ronsley
Really, you’d love it. I think you should definitely check it out. Dr David Hawkins “Power vs Force” is the name of the book, and he calibrates power versus force. And he says from 0 to 200 is force, and then from 200 to 1000 is power. And we all have this vibrational frequency that we all vibrate at and we could take like a cup of coffee. If I was stepping out and going to buy a cup of coffee if I was vibrating at the lower frequencies of guilt, shame, fear, anger. I would see that differently to someone vibrating at reason, love, you know, it’s the same act can be seen differently. And in your thesis of “Useful Not True” it is similar because you could change the way you see true depending on how you’re vibrating right now for it to be useful.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Then the challenge is to choose a stance when you’re feeling at your highest self, highest vibration, highest self. It’s funny that both of those have the visual adjective of highest. You can choose a stance on something and then decide to stick with it whether through journaling, talking with friends, announcing it to the world, tweeting it, whatever the hell you want to do to choose that this is the way you’re going to think about this. I like the little reframing parable of Gandhi stepping off a train and one of his shoes falls off and a thief quickly grabs the shoe and runs away, and Gandhi quickly takes off the other shoe and throws it after him and says, “Hey, one shoe is useless if you’re going to take it, just take both.” And that’s who knows if you know, again, it doesn’t matter if it’s true. What a beautiful, quick reframing. Instead of being angry about it, just choosing to see it from that other person’s point of view. Like, come on, one shoe is no good for you here.
Derek Sivers
Please, just take both. It’s fine. Because one shoe was useless to me, too. So I love that we can be angry, revengeful, jealous, selfish. But then occasionally somebody can say something to you, or you can hear an idea or even just think of it yourself that makes you see a better way of thinking of this. Again your friend in Cambodia two days before your talk and making you go, “Ah, oh, that’s good.” And you can tell right away that feels better or that serves me better. And then the trick is to remember it, to adopt it, embrace it, tattoo it on your eyelids, to remember to think this way. And I think that’s where the social aspect comes in well, is that by telling friends and your friends then echoing these things back at you. It really helps you feel like, “Yes, this is how I’m choosing to think about this. I am now in service of others. This Ted talk is not about me. If somebody needs my shoes so badly, they can have both.”
Ronsley
Yeah. You have a great reframing framework in the book, and you break that down really well in terms of recognizing the limitations of the truth and then shifting the focus and then remembering how it’s done and generating alternative perspectives. When you’re trying to generate those alternative perspectives in the reframe. What do you find the hardest, especially when you’re not in a state where you can see the other side? And is there a way to change the state before that? For example, like if you know that the idea that you cannot solve the problem with the same mind that created it.
Derek Sivers
Ooh. Good one. I forgot about that idea. Yeah.
Ronsley
So if you’re trying to reframe with the same mind that created it, like are you going to solve the problem? So could we potentially shift our state before that reframe and would that be useful?
Derek Sivers
I think just the act of asking yourself, what are other ways to think about this. Is the shifting of the state. I’m not a very visual person, but I can’t help but think of the visual comparison of looking at something from another point of view. So I have this thing here. I can look at it like this and it looks like a perfect rectangle. I can look at it like this and now it’s a thin rectangle. And if I hold it like this, it’s kind of a strange parallelogram, you know. Or I can open it up and I can see. So it’s the act of asking yourself, “What’s another way I could think of this?” I think, is what changes your state. Like changing your stance, right? Like maybe in order to look differently at a tree, you have to lie down on your back. Yeah, I think that’s my answer. Reframing is the changing of the state.
Ronsley
So even just asking and remembering to ask the question is the changing of the state? Because I think that space as well doesn’t it?
Derek Sivers
Sorry I missed that sentence. That allows what?
Ronsley
That allows the space between how you’re feeling about it versus the actual act or the event.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, right, I guess. Okay, so I think you were asking. Does or could the state come first and the ideas flow from that state? Whereas I’m suggesting that you can force yourself to think of different ideas first, like a brainstorming exercise, and then the state comes from the idea.
Ronsley
I see, I see, I understand, I understand. So I do want to talk about this whole idea of what comes out from an artist’s perspective, right, from a useful, not true perspective. Because right now AI art is generating like lots of money. People are paying thousands of dollars for AI art.
Derek Sivers
Really? I didn’t know that.
Ronsley
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, 100%. And there are brands that are paying graphics designers thousands of dollars to generate AI art for their brand, in alignment with their brand identity and guidelines and so forth. As an example, Derek, like if I had a product that I needed a photoshoot in Dubai, I would have to fly a camera person, a model or whatever and get it done right so that now is a couple of prompts away if you’re really good. If you’re bad, it’s probably an hour of work, and if you have guidance, it’s probably somewhere in between. So what I’m trying to say is that art from an artist’s perspective. I mean, I can see how artists could get very offended by that. And I could I feel that way about programming. It’s a really interesting thing. I just made that connection because now there’s no code platforms means anyone can. So the fact that I can program in 21 languages means makes me kind of useless in that field, right? So I have the same feeling, like I suppose that artists would probably have to their to an AI art being generated and money being paid for it. I wonder whether you had any thoughts around that and whether get any brainstorm on that.
Derek Sivers
I don’t have much, but I’m kind of old. So I remember the mid-nineties when Photoshop became controversial and people were doing things with Photoshop plug-ins, and now you didn’t need to have, say, your Dubai example. I wouldn’t think that even needs AI. I think that’s sounds to me like exactly the same thing we were talking about with Photoshop in the mid-nineties. It’s like, oh my gosh, now you can just take a stock photo of Dubai and you can just photoshop somebody into that photo. Now it’s cameramen are gonna be out of work, and photographers won’t be able to make a living. But now instead people just used the Photoshop tools as they have been for 30 years now. And so I guess in that sense, I see AI as just kind of like a the newest, most advanced plugin for photo editing. Except it’s generating the pixels for you instead of you having to take some real photos. But it just seems to me like the obvious next evolution. It doesn’t feel to me like this changes everything.
Ronsley
Is it in terms of AI, it doesn’t change everything is that what you mean?
Derek Sivers
In this case. I guess I just see it as the natural evolution of just a more advanced plugin that people have already been using Photoshop for 30 years. And I remember that the same questions people are talking about destroying the livelihood of photographers 30 years ago. The same arguments are being made today, and it just feels like this is nothing new. Yeah, it’s a more advanced version of what we had before.
Ronsley
When we were talking, one of the things that came up, obviously, was religion, which I think is a very interesting topic because in my TedX talk, I do mention that the two things we should be talking about is politics and religion, because everyone stops talking about that. And so we don’t have this deep conversation around those two topics, and we don’t have the opportunity to give our thoughts and audience, right. When you were reading and you were looking through, you know, the Bible and Islam was another interesting conversation that we had. So what came up, that you went, “Oh that is so interesting. I never thought of it that way.”
Derek Sivers
Oh, wow. I think it’s interesting that both Judaism and Islam are kind of a top to bottom recipe for life. Here’s what to do. Here’s who to marry. Here’s what to eat. Here’s how to live your life, and neither of them is that concerned with your beliefs. It’s about the actions. Whereas growing up in America, which feels like a mostly Christian country. It’s all about your beliefs. And this idea that your actions, well, your actions can be forgiven. But what’s important is what you believe. And it took me a while to realize that Judaism and Islam were saying, “Okay, we’re not going to concern ourselves with what we believe, but it matters very much what you do.” Okay, so that was interesting. Well, it is fun to talk about this. I’m so naive. I know so little about this subject that this subject for most people is so deeply ingrained since childhood. I just wasn’t raised with any religion. So I’m 54 years old coming at it now, like, “Oh, hey.” I’m trying to understand the Bible. I feel so naive and I talk to people that grew up with it their whole lives.
Derek Sivers
So one example is, so I read the whole Bible and there was nothing in there about, say, confession. And I asked somebody about that, I asked an Irish guy about it and he goes, Oh, well, confession, that’s Catholic. That’s not in the Bible.” I said, “Wait, what do you mean it’s not in the Bible?” I said, “Isn’t it? How can something be part of a religion if it’s not in the Bible?” And he looked at me like, how can you not understand this? And he said, “Well, you know, the Pope continues talking to God.” I went, “Wait, what? I had no idea.” I said, “Oh, wait. So because otherwise it’s just man made, right? I mean, if this isn’t coming from God, some people made this, then why are we observing this thing? How is that religion anymore?” And yeah, it was really interesting to me, seeing how much of the what I thought of as Christianity is not in the Bible. It was added later by people, whereas I thought that this is like the definitive document. This is the manual.
Ronsley
That’s super interesting you say that because I was brought up Catholic and I was very pious Catholic until I read the Bible. Until I read the Bible, and I started to ask questions. And the most frequent response I got was, “You’re not meant to ask questions. You’re supposed to have faith.”
Derek Sivers
Yes, yes. Well, and even that somebody described to me as the difference between Catholicism and like other maybe what was the Protestant is they said that in-- a woman also from Goa who was brought up or Catholic said, “Oh yeah, you’re not meant to read the Bible. You’re meant to have the elder, wiser people tell you what it all means. You’re not meant to read it directly.” And I guess maybe that was kind of the core of Protestants, I don’t know.
Ronsley
Well, that’s fascinating because I asked questions like if Jesus was killed today, would you wear an electric chair around your neck? And that drove people crazy. You know, because I found that insane. I mean, I found that, I mean, that was the time. So it was like it was I was not trying to piss anyone off. I’m just genuinely asking the question. But the fact that they got pissed off was like red flags everywhere.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Ronsley
And to your point about beliefs, don’t question my beliefs because you’re offending me. And I was never questioning anyone’s beliefs. I was just questioning mine. But my whole life if I ever got in trouble was because I was questioning my beliefs. And it encroached on other people’s beliefs, which I suppose if they challenged it would make a lot of things not true that they probably believed in before. Is that why we don’t even challenge it in the first place?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Also, maybe it puts people on the defensive. Most people, I think a lot of religious people are used to being attacked for their beliefs as soon as they are around other people that aren’t in their circle. Which means like, “Oh man, now I got to put on the armor and grab the spear. Really? You really want to fight about this now?” I can imagine that’s how it must feel. To feel this need to defend your beliefs or to question them. It’s like, “Oh, great, you’re gonna. I’m just trying to make dinner. Now you want to talk about whether I’d wear an electric chair around my neck? Oh, man. Come on. No, it’s a cross, that’s it. Can you leave me alone? Shut up. I’m trying to make dinner.” Yeah, a lot of people don’t like thinking and questioning, but as you saw, it’s buried two thirds of the way into the book. But there is a chapter about that, that may be the more emotional the belief, the less likely it’s true that when people hold on so tightly and so emphatically to their beliefs. Maybe they’re using that word belief to mean my identity depends on this. And so when you start questioning those beliefs, you’re questioning their entire identity. And they do not want to face that right now.
Ronsley
Yeah. I mean, I found that to be true, especially being a little bit blessed coming from different parts and experiencing two different cultures or three different cultures in a lot of ways.
Derek Sivers
And by the way, thanks for bringing this up. It’s such a fun subject. I feel like such a nerd. I’m usually the one that has to bring up some dumb religious question, so it’s really cute to hear that you were the one asking about. I really like that electric chair question. It’s a totally valid question. It’s not meant to be offensive either. It’s just trying to understand better.
Ronsley
And there’s another thing that really got me was how come the Vatican has so many secrets? Like why it has the most secrets on the planet? Why do we have an underground library? Why are things not open? Like what is being hidden? What don’t we know? And no one could really answer those questions, you know. No one was really willing to even participate in a conversation at the time in Goa, they were just like, “Let’s get an exorcist to remove the demon that exists inside Ronsley.”
Derek Sivers
Right. So you would have loved this conversation. One of the most interesting conversations I’ve ever had in my life is when a super hardcore Christian introduced me to a muslim Emirati man and the three of us in this room, Christian dude, Emirati dude, and naive me as the outsider, was just enjoying our conversation and I was asking them some of these questions. And when I said that thing I said ten minutes ago about confession and not understanding that Catholicism was kind of added on top of what is in the Bible. The Emirati dude said, “That’s kind of like the difference between Sunni and Shia sects of Islam.” He said, “The Shias are kind of like the Catholics that have clerics that continue talking to God, whereas the Sunnis believe that it’s a direct connection, that there’s nobody in between me and Allah.” I went, “Ooh, see, I didn’t know this, okay. I had no idea.” So it’s fun hearing these comparisons and just constantly learning more and asking dummy questions and trying not to offend.
Ronsley
It’s totally true, though, because even in the Catholic faith, you pray to the saints and to Mother Mary to intercede for you. Oh, so I never thought of that. But yeah, that’s why they are part of the equation.
Derek Sivers
In the room that day was the three of us. It was in Dubai at the Emirati guys office. He said-- okay by the way, the hardcore Christian has been living in Muscat, Oman for ten years and speaks fluent Arabic, so that’s why he introduced us. And so such a fascinating dude to continue to be Christian, but living in a muslim world and speaking fluent Arabic and understanding the culture deeply, but yet holding on to his beliefs. And so he super simplified it by saying, “Essentially, the only difference between Christianity and Islam, is I talk to Jesus who talks to God, whereas is at least Sunni Muslims talk to God directly.” And that was his super simplification for me.
Ronsley
Yeah, super, super interesting. Well, I love our conversations, but I don’t want to overstep on time.
Derek Sivers
You’re going to edit all of this out?
Ronsley
I’m sure I’m going to make two pots of this. I want to ask you, before I land this plane, I want to ask you this question because when you see the effort and all the work that has gone into “Useful Not True” and now it’s coming out. What are your best hopes? What do you what would you love to see? From an intention perspective.
Derek Sivers
You know in English we say, “I’m going to release a movie, I’m going to release a new album. I’m going to release a book on Friday the 13th.” I like the double meaning of release that it also means to let go, right. So what happens to it after I put it out? I’ve never really cared that much. I’m at an unusual place in my career in that I don’t want any more money, and I don’t want any more fame. So I even have my self-publishing set up so that all of the money goes into a foundation that goes to charity. None of it comes to me directly anyway. So it’s not about the money. I have enough fame. If people benefit from this idea, that would be nice, but I won’t really know that directly. So part of me wants to get this idea into a lot of people’s minds. But part of me also just kind of shrugs like, “Ah, well, there it is if you want it.” I don’t care that much. I mean, it’s why I chose to self-publish. My first book was on Penguin and Penguin told me they love working with me and would love to publish anything I put out in the future. And I said no, I really like self-publishing better. I like doing it myself. It just makes me happier even though, I know they could maybe help me have a bestseller. But I feel pretty detached from it. It feels released once I’m done with it, and if people want to share it with their friends, that’s fine, but I don’t care that much.
Ronsley
It’s again a very good reframe because, you know, it’s the lag measures versus the lead measures.
Derek Sivers
Oooh. Wait, sorry, I don’t know that term. What’s a lag measure? What’s a lead measure?
Ronsley
I’m finding this crazy that I’m saying things that you’ve never heard about before, Derek.
Derek Sivers
Lucky me. It’s more interesting to me, you know, imagine if you just asked me, had me on your show, “So, Derek, tell me how you got your start. Well, here’s how I got my start.” That would be dreadfully boring for me. So this is wonderful when I learn. So sorry. Lead measure and lag measure.
Ronsley
Lead measure and lag measure. And I love those two measures, especially when you do business goals or personal goals or any goals. So a lag measure is this is the goal that I want to get. So you can use Smart goals and whatever else to make sure it’s very specific and measurable and actionable and so and so. But it’s a lag goal. It is like I want to lose 20 kilos, right?. It’s a lag measure. 20 kilos is the lag measure. Your lead measure is what do I need to do to get that lag measure. So what are my actions. So what are my lead actions. So for example it’d be maybe it’s every day 45 minute walk as the minimum lead measure. So that’s my lead measure. So I’m measuring my actions rather than just the goal, which is my lag.
Derek Sivers
Wow, it sounds like a business school way of saying actions and results.
Ronsley
It’s the actions and results. Yes, yes. Like an OKRs. Yes, objectives and key results. But then the results are this is the results I want to get, what are the your recurring reps to get those results. So I use RRR, regular recurring reps. So what are your daily weekly monthly reps that you’re going to do to get your goal. Whatever that is, whether it’s running or business or webinar or book publishing or writing or whatever it is, right. Your your lag measure is, I want to have a book or whatever, and then your lead is, okay, I’ll write for 20 minutes every day or whatever that looks like.
Derek Sivers
Cool. Cool. Yeah sorry, I’d never heard that term, I like that. Because then it’s a system to measure how well you’re upholding the actions and measure the the results. By the way, since you’re going to edit this anyway, did I answer your question okay? About the process of writing a book for me, I maybe skipped it because there wasn’t anything really interesting on my side that-- I’m mostly raising a boy right now. It’s, like, almost a full time job. I spend about 30 or 40 hours a week, just one on one with my son. And I feel that writing books is something I do in my spare time, the hours that I have while he’s at school, when I’m not with him. So, I just use whatever’s I can when he’s at school or when he’s asleep. And I answer a lot of emails, and I write when I can, but not a set routine. And I don’t have that much interesting to say about it, but I just want you to know I wasn’t ignoring your question. I just felt like I didn’t have that much to add to that.
Ronsley
No, I actually got-- I don’t know whether you’ve ever spoken about the, you know, that whole idea of how you broke down the “Useful Not True” piece. I’m blanking right now because there’s a piece in there that you mentioned and. All the water remove out. Sorry.
Derek Sivers
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Ronsley
That was extremely valuable, I thought cool. I wondered whether you had, like a Wayne Dyer method, like, you know, wake up in the morning and do a meditation and you know, you recite this, visualization or whatever, you know, I wondered whether you had any of that.
Derek Sivers
No, none of that. And I don’t do mind maps or. No, none of that. No.
Ronsley
No, I mean, thank you for this conversation. Just even to have these. To give my thoughts and audience along with your ideas and being exposed to this work has been so cool. Even some of the ways that you’ve helped in the book, like when things go wrong, ask these questions. So useful.
Derek Sivers
Really? Oh, okay. To me, that was just such a no brainer. You’re the first one to talk about this because, you know, the book’s not 100% done. So yeah, that chapter where I say, well, here’s some questions you could ask. I kind of put that in there as a duty. But to me, all of those are no brainers because I’ve been doing this for too long. So maybe I should look again at that.
Ronsley
Very on point because you think about everything now are prompts in the world, prompting. It’s like there’s so much information. What’s the right prompt for the right occasion?
Derek Sivers
God, that would be interesting to use an LLM to say something like, “I’m really sad that my dog died. What are some what’s what are some upsides to this?” And then let an LLM come up with ideas, a brainstorming tool for you.
Ronsley
I have one which I call it shifting my perspective. And it uses Feynman’s first principles, and it just breaks everything down and gives you a different perspective and just changes everything. And you’re like, “Holy shit, I did not.” Another thing that I use it for, which when I’m speaking, I use a lot of analogies and metaphors and I forget that I said them. So now the team has got a prompt which they take a transcript through, and we now have a library of the analogies that I have, which we’ve never had before, you know, which is useful.
Derek Sivers
Thanks for having me.
Ronsley
Well thank you. Thanks for making the time. I appreciate you very much.