Andrew Wilkinson
host: Andrew Wilkinson
useful beliefs, writing, personal growth, overcoming prejudices
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Transcript:
Andrew
I’ve got a bunch of questions and stuff, but, like what are you interested in right now? What are you obsessing over?
Derek Sivers
Oh, my “Useful Not True” book, not for the sake of selling a book. You know, I don’t care about that, but just the subject of choosing beliefs because they’re useful, not because they’re true. Last night I spent hours writing and thinking about what is it that makes beliefs useful? Like what do useful beliefs have in common? And I came up with some traits. Things like-- you know, instead of getting into specific beliefs, traits like, they helped me go directly for what I really want instead of some roundabout way. Right. I mean, this is kind of the “Never Enough” theme, right? That if you’re thinking that you need a college degree to get status, well, then maybe there’s a more direct way to go directly to the status instead four years of college. And another trait is, useful beliefs are often selfless. You kind of zoom out and realize you’re just one of many billions on Earth, and what’s better for them is the greater good than instead of something that only benefits you and none of them. And things like that. So this has been on my mind a lot, the general theme of beliefs that are Useful Not True.
Andrew
I just did an interview with Mark Manson, and I was reading his book before the interview, the latest book. And he basically says, “Look, the world is pointless. Life is meaningless, but you need something to hold on to.” Is it that sort of thing like inventing truths for yourself, even though they are not necessarily inherently meaningful and life doesn’t matter?
Derek Sivers
Could be. See, I think Mark is just projecting his value there saying you need something to hold on to. I’d say that’s not true. That’s just him saying this works for me. And I’m going to prescribe it for others because I think many could benefit from this. But it’s not necessarily true because, for example, I don’t need something like that. I don’t need something to hold on to. So that’s not an absolute truth.
Andrew
How did you come to write that book? What was the thought you kept coming back to?
Derek Sivers
It was more that the subject was underneath everything I had been talking about for years. Like, you know, my “Anything You Want” book. I’m saying things in there like, “Business is not about making money. Business is a way about making a little utopia where you can make everything the way you want it to be.” Well, that’s not necessarily true. That’s just one point of view that helps me. It helps me get more intrinsically interested in creating a good business because money itself doesn’t motivate me. So I’m sharing a perspective that I’m choosing to adopt because it works for me. But the harm is in declaring it to be absolutely true, like everybody needs to do this. So I’ve always been sharing beliefs that are useful to me, that are not necessarily true. And every now and then people would push back on one saying, “Hey, that’s not true.” And I’d say, “I know it’s not true. I never said it was true. I choose beliefs because they’re useful to me, not because they’re true.” And after saying this for years, I thought I should write a book about this.
Andrew
Is that generally how you come up with your book topics like how do you differentiate between what you would do as a blog, or just mention on a podcast or a book?
Derek Sivers
This is book number five for me and the five books have come from four different motivations. So the first book, “Anything You Want”, for one I never intended to write a book, but you know, Seth Godin called me and asked me to. So of course I said yes. But that one, I just wanted to be done with the subject. Like, this is something I did in my past people keep asking me about, I just want to tell my tale and close that chapter of my life. The next two books were collections of articles I had already written on my site. And I wanted to put them into a book because I knew what was coming next. And so my fourth book, “How to Live”, was a flash of artistic inspiration. Like, it was almost like an art piece that took me four years to make. Like I had this idea for this thing I wanted to exist, this book where it had 27 chapters, each with a strong opinion of how to live and each chapter disagreeing with the rest.
Derek Sivers
I had that moment while driving down the road where I went, “Oh my God, I want to do that.” And it just took four years to make it happen. But I knew chronologically it was going to take a few years. So that’s why I wanted to put out “Your Music and People” and “Hell Yeah or No” before that book came out, so that my books could be at least somewhat chronological. And then this new book “Useful Not True” like I said, there’s just an idea that just kept coming up kind of in between the lines or under the surface. And I just thought, there’s something more here to dive into. So I spent the last two years learning more about the subject. I went and read 20 something books about pragmatism, nihilism, religion, cognitive behavioral therapy, and all of these subjects around the idea of choosing beliefs that are useful to you, not because they’re true, and just learned a lot more about the subject and then now I’m sharing what I’ve learned.
Andrew
Do you think that you write to sort out your own ideas, like are you doing self therapy or are you doing it for others so they can benefit from things you’ve already realized?
Derek Sivers
That’s a good question. The books are for others. Oh, well, I don’t know. Let me refine that. That book, “How to Live”, that was just for me. Meaning I needed this thing to exist. I thought it was the most beautiful idea. I was doing it to put into the public. I knew it wasn’t just going to stay in my private diary. But if even if nobody liked it, I wouldn’t care because I was so happy with it.
Andrew
Do you do it to codify an idea and then do you revert back to it? So do you say like, “Well, this is how I live.” Do I go back to my own values or do you just change? And in ten years that book won’t relate to you?
Derek Sivers
Well, that book in particular, I think will always be relevant because it has these 27 conflicting. But the new book “Useful Not True”. Yeah, that one did have a different motivation where I was doing it to help me solidify my thoughts. How would you say codify something like that my thoughts on this subject. And that might be interesting to go back to and refer to in the future.
Andrew
Do you look at any of your writing and cringe? Like do you go, “I can’t relate to that person anymore.”
Derek Sivers
No. Do you? Have you ever had that?
Andrew
No, I think I’m relatively stable. Like, I look back at old blog posts and I still generally agree, although I know that I’m different and I have different motivations. On that topic, I’m actually really curious. I’m 38. You’re, I believe 54. Is that correct?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, 54. Yeah
Andrew
I was curious what was 38 to 54 like? So, you know, going from the period where you’re making money and you sell your business and all that, what’s the last 15, 20 years look like for you and how have you changed?
Derek Sivers
38 was the year I sold CD Baby. So the last 16 years have been a lot of exploration. I think about the difference between an explorer and a leader. Where if you think of the classic case, you know, I’m here in New Zealand, which was the land that was, I think, most recently discovered on Earth. So you think about the classic case of an explorer goes off to this new uncharted land and just starts poking around, taking every little turn, following every little creek, going up hills, going into valleys, just looking around. But an explorer is a pain in the ass to follow. Because the explorer may change his mind daily about what’s worth doing. But that’s part of being an explorer. But then when the explorer finds, say, a harbor that looks like a great place to set up a town or a port, then the explorer sends a message back to the Queen, who will appoint a leader, to get people to set up a port in this new harbor that the explorer has found. And a leader goes in a straight line. A leader says, “Here’s where we’re going. Here’s why it’s great. Here are the benefits that you’ll get from going there. Here’s how we’re going to get there. Follow me.” And a leader does not explore. A leader just goes one place. And that’s why a leader is easy to follow. And I think about that internal metaphor. Were there are times in our life when we’re head down like a leader, going one way, doing one thing. And there are times in our life when we lift up our head like the explorer and just poke around and try lots of stuff.
Derek Sivers
And so I had God, 15 years of my life more. No God like 20 years of my life, 24 years of my life. From age 15 until 38, I was head down and focused on one thing. I was not an explorer. I did not read books. I did not care to learn new things. I spent 15 years head down saying, “I’m going to be a successful musician. That’s it. Don’t distract me with anything else. I don’t care to hear about your stupid travels. I don’t care about your stupid philosophies. I’m here to be a successful musician.” And that’s all I did for 15 years, from age 14 to 29 was head down on this one thing. Then at 29, while selling my music, I accidentally started my company. And then I just put my head down for ten years on that one thing. I was like, “I’m gonna make the best damn little record store.” And I did that for ten years. And so it wasn’t until I was 38 that I really lifted up my head for the first time in my life. You know, I kind of where am I? What’s going on? And I started doing things the opposite of whatever I had been doing at any moment, on just day to day basis. If everything in my instinct was telling me to turn left, I would turn right. And if everything in me was telling me to stop, I would go. And I did that to deliberately scramble my patterns. And force exploration. So I feel like that’s still what I’ve been doing for most of the last 15 years.
Andrew
Incredibly well put. When I met you, I hadn’t seen you. I don’t think in 15 or even 20 years. I think we met at the Ted conference.
Andrew
In 2008 or something like that. Yeah and I looked you up. I was in Wellington and we had coffee, and I was kind of going through a challenging time, trying to get my head straight, trying to figure out what my second mountain was. Was I going to be a leader or an explorer myself. And you said something really interesting. You said, when you sold your company, your urge was to do it again to prove to the world that you were not a fluke. And you said, “I ended up deciding that I wasn’t going to play the same game that I’d been playing, that I’d already done that.” Can you speak to that a little bit?
Derek Sivers
Yeah,
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I optimize for personal growth. Not for bank account growth or status growth. So when I sold CD Baby. Yeah my first thought was, “I can leverage this. I’m going to go to Silicon Valley right now and jump into the middle of that thing and be a serial entrepreneur. And I’m going to do it in the place where it all happens.” And I got just a few months into that, and I realized that if I were to do that, it wouldn’t really be personal growth. It would be bank account growth and status growth. But I’d be doing the same shit I had been doing for ten years. I’ve just swap out the company name over my head with a different company name, but I’d be doing the same thing. I thought, “Well, real growth would be to do something truly different. Not doing the same thing.” Sorry, I’m reminding myself of a lovely little quote I heard once that, “Real rebellion is not wearing black like everyone else. Real rebellion feels like wearing a clown suit to high school like that would be true rebellion.” So I think the same thing with personal change. True personal growth is not doing the same thing you’ve been doing, but a little more.
Derek Sivers
Real personal growth, at least for the kind I was looking for, was to do something truly different. And as soon as I realized that and felt it. I halted my plans completely. I left Silicon Valley and I went to India and Iceland and started traveling the world. And like I said, I just deliberately made myself do the opposite of what I had been doing. I went to New York City. I was dating this girl for a while. She said, “Well, I come from a really strict religious family. I can’t travel with you unless we’re married.” And everything in me said, “Fuck no. I don’t even know you. It’s only been a few months.” So I was like, “Oh, all right, sure, I’ll marry you.” Because it was the opposite of what my instincts were telling me. And I could say that some of these things are regrets, but in the bigger picture I’d wonderfully scrambled my life. And I don’t regret it in the bigger sense. I think it was the right thing to do. It’s led to a much fuller life and I hope to keep doing it. I hope to keep scrambling.
Andrew
When we met, you used the term burning the boats. You talked about how you took radical changes to enforce that you would not continue down the path of money and business. How did you do that?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, well, the most direct radical one was renouncing my US citizenship, which again, came from this process of saying, “I love America. It’s my comfort zone. California, New York City. Most of the stuff in between. I just love it. Therefore I’m going to ban myself from going there anymore.” But I had said that to myself once before in 2007/8. But yet, as soon as things got a little difficult overseas, I retreated back to America. So this time I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t retreat again. So I used the metaphor of burning the ships. Which was an old legend, apparently true. Who cares? Of the Navy general with, say, 100 men on three ships landed on enemy shores and there are thousands of enemies waiting to kill them. And so he turns to one of his men and he says, “Burn the ships. No retreat. We must push forward.” And it was a way of preventing retreat. So I renounced my U.S. citizenship as a way of preventing retreat for myself and it’s worked. There were a couple times in the years afterwards where I felt like, “Ah, I’d like to just go back to L.A., go back to New York.” And I thought, “Well, I can’t. So that’s that. I have to keep pushing forward.”
Andrew
And you also did that with your finances. I remember you told me that you sold the business and you burned the boats there. What did you do there? Because I think it’s very, very unique. I think it’s very counterintuitive.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Thanks for that reminder. I hadn’t really thought of that as a burning the ships. But oh my God, you’re right. Yeah, selling my company. I had this-- to give context to the listener. I already had about $4 million in my personal bank account as net profit. I was the sole owner of the company. It was a profitable business. No investors, just bootstrapped with $100. And I had 4 million in profit. And at that point, then I had this agreement to sell the company for $22 million. And I thought through about what I would do with $22 million. And I just thought, “I just don’t want it.” I mean, the $4 million I had saved up was after expenses. I had already bought a car and bought a house. I mean, what else are you going to do with it? Anything you do with it after that is pretty stupid. Sorry, Andrew. So I thought I’m just going to give it away. I mean, there are people, like, literally dying because they don’t have money. And I’m sitting here trying to figure out what to do with my money.
Derek Sivers
Well, duh, give it to people who need it. So luckily, I had a lawyer that had a background in tax law, and luckily he just happened to ask me, “What are you going to do with the money?” And I said, “I’m just going to give it away.” And he said, “How serious are you?” I said, “Very serious. Like irreversibly, permanently serious. Like, no going back?” I said, “Yeah, that sounds great.” And he said, “All right, well, if you’re really serious, we haven’t done the deal yet. We can structure this so that you can transfer your company into a charitable trust now. And instead of the the company paying you $22 million, you paying a third of that to the IRS and you giving away 15 million to charity. We can structure it so the entire $22 million goes to charity.” And I said, “Oh, I like that.” Because then the money never touches my hands. I can never be tempted with it. I can never go like, “Oh, I’ve changed my mind. I want a big stupid boat.” You know, I can’t. I thought, yeah, I like that a lot. So that’s what we did.
Andrew
And how do you live now? What’s your income?
Derek Sivers
I mean, like I said, I had that $4 million and that has grown since then. I just stick it in ETFs in a Schwab account, and it’s grown a lot since 2008. And then I got really lucky with timing where, what did I do? I bought a house in England. And then I sold the house at a point. And I put everything back into ETFs right in like February 2020, when Covid had sent the stock market on a deep, sharp dip that just with lucky timing, ended up to be the day that I got back into the market and that cash like it almost doubled within, you know, a year from the day I put it in. So yeah, things like that just pay my cost of living and that’s fine. I really occasionally turn to my private journal and I ask myself. Like, “What would I do if I suddenly had $1 billion?” And every time I really think hard, I just can’t think of anything I would do with it. Like, there’s nothing I want.
Andrew
You’ve got a lot of friends that are very, very wealthy. How do you see wealth negatively impact their life?
Derek Sivers
The biggest downside I see, is not that much of a downside, but it seems to throw off perspective. My first anti-role model on this subject was a year before I sold my company. I met a friend who had sold his company for 30 million a year before mine. And he talked about how he bought his house in London, and he said, “Yeah, it was a nice house and it was only £10 million.” So he thought, yeah, why not? And I was like, “God, I hope I never say that. I hope I never say it was only £10 million.” I think that’s harmful. I think we should never lose perspective on how much fucking money that is and how much that money could be doing for the world. And sorry if I sound like a hippie like this. Like, I don’t see a big distinction between me and others. Like, I don’t think I’m so much more important than other people. So I’m often thinking in these terms of like, “I’m already good. My basic needs are met. What does the world need?” Like the world doesn’t need me to have a boat. The world doesn’t need me to have a six bedroom mansion. What does the world need? And, yeah, I think in those terms more. And I know that it’s like the goose that lays the golden eggs. You don’t want to sacrifice the goose. So I do look after myself. I’m not sacrificing myself. But after that, it just doesn’t make sense. So anyway, sorry to answer your question. I think the only downside is people who kind of lose perspective on how much money that is.
Andrew
Did the money that you put into the foundation become a burden at all? Like, I mean, that’s a lot of money, $22 million to give away. How did you give it away?
Derek Sivers
Oh, no. Okay, yeah. So if it would have been one of those public foundations where people would have come to me all the time going, “Please give me some. Please give me some.” Fuck that. No fucking way. I would hate that. Oh, God, wouldn’t that be awful? It would be like choosing to live on the street with all the homeless people. Like it would be choosing to subject yourself to that every day. It’s like, “Oh God, God, this is making me feel awful.” So no, no, no, I set it up so that while I’m alive, the charitable trust keeps that $22 million and it invests it and compounds it. And so when I die, hopefully it’s like 100 million by then. And that’s when all the money goes to charity when I die. So I’m not even the trustee. It’s out of my hands. There’s another trustee who handled it. It’s totally out of my control, out of my hands. When I die, it all goes to charity. So no, it’s no constant handout.
Andrew
One of the things that I hear from people who do philanthropy, though, is that it makes them feel good to do it while they’re living and enjoy that giving. So you’re not going to get to feel that. Is there a reason why you did that versus just like, giving it all away to a charity and getting to enjoy that feeling of giving it away versus it happening after you’re dead. Or is it just the burden of it?
Derek Sivers
There’s one practical reason, so it’s a US structure called a Charitable Remainder Unit Trust, which pays me out a trickle per year for the rest of my life. So I did still have this--
Andrew
It’s like a safety net.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I had this underlying insecurity that, like, what if-- I mean, let’s pick an extreme example. That’s not that unlikely. What if a hacker cracks into my bank account and empties everything and suddenly I’ve got nothing. Then I go, “Oh, fuck, I’ve made a huge mistake.” So the way the charitable trust works is for the rest of my life, it just continues to pay me out this little trickling expense. Yeah. Which it’s more of a trickle than I would have preferred. But the the US law says the minimum you can pay out is 5%. So I end up reinvesting most of that into other things anyway. For some reason I don’t get that much joy. No, I don’t really get any joy from-- no let me go back to what I said before. I don’t get that much joy from charitable giving. I get a little. It’s more just it feels rational, like, “Well, here, I’m not using it. You can use it.” I don’t think it makes me a good person. I don’t get warm and fuzzies from it. It just feels like. All right, well, it’s just logical, “Here I’m not using this money. You guys need it. Here it is.” That’s it. But like I said, the reason I made that example, I feel bad about saying that. I never said that before this idea of choosing to live on the street with all the homeless people begging. What I meant is--
Andrew
What’s a different type of burden? I remember, I had a very wealthy client when I was running my web design agency, and I met with them on a day where there was a school shooting, and it was a really sad event, but this person was so affected by it, and they were working on gun legislation. They were trying to do an assault weapon ban or something in the United States. And the exact weapon that they had been trying to ban was used in this school shooting. And so they felt the weight of the world on their shoulders. And I often think for, you know, philanthropists are basically saying I can solve the world’s problems. And I think that’s incredibly stressful. You know, you’re holding a boulder up.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. The moment I was trying to avoid is having to make the moral decision of saying yes or no to people that are asking for money. That’s what I didn’t want to have to do. People coming to me saying, “Please, we need this, it’s for the children.” And somebody says, “Please, we need this. It’s for the people dying of this disease.” And then somebody else might say, “Please, we need this to preserve our heritage.” It’s like, well, I don’t know, where do I draw the line? Fuck your heritage, but save the kids. Fuck the kids, but save the disease. I don’t know, I wouldn’t want to have to spend a minute of my day thinking like that. I’d rather just get back to doing what I am intrinsically motivated to do. So I was trying to more avoid the confrontational decisions all the time. So that’s why I kind of like just put it in a trust. That goes to the ETFs. When I die, it goes to givewell.org. They’ve already done their nerdy calculations of what is the best usage of money to save the most lives. I get to stay out of it. I don’t play favorites. I don’t say, “Well, this is the cause that I believe in, and this cause moves me in that one doesn’t.” Instead I just say, “All right, they’re just none of this really moves me. I’m actually not that interested in it.”
Andrew
And now what does a day in the life of Derek actually look like?
Derek Sivers
A day in the life?
Andrew
Day in the life. I mean.
Derek Sivers
A typical day for me is, I don’t know why I wake up at 4 or 5 a.m., I wish I didn’t, I wish I slept more, but for some reason, every morning about 4:30 or 5 in the morning, my brain goes, “I’m ready, let’s go.” And I get up and I start writing. And I am either writing diaries, books, code, emails. Basically finger on keys, writing from 5 a.m. till about 10 or 11 p.m, with some short breaks to eat. Maybe take a walk in the forest, play with my kid. But for the most part, 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. is writing. And that’s my day. And then I do it again.
Andrew
And you have a newsletter. You have books, you blog. How do you look at each of those different things and what does it do for you? What are you exploring in each of those realms?
Derek Sivers
I don’t really have a newsletter, to be fair. I have my blog and I have my books and that’s it.
Andrew
I thought when we met, you were like, “I just got back from India and I had, you know, 14 random people that were from my newsletter that I just met up with for the fun of it.”
Derek Sivers
I have an email list of people that have emailed me over the years. So there’s like a quarter million people that have contacted me, but it’s a two way conversation. It’s not a newsletter blast. It’s people who have contacted me over the years and introduced themselves. And we email back and forth. And then when I’m coming to wherever they live, whether it’s, Uruguay or Helsinki or Brazil. Then I’ll email them and say, “Hey, I’m coming to Montevideo. Would you like to meet up?” And that’s where I kind of meet people that have emailed me over the years. But I just want to be clear. It’s not like a Substack newsletter, I don’t have a stream of content like that. So I diary a lot to sort out my thoughts, which sorry, I don’t know if I really answered your question from 20 minutes ago.
Andrew
It’s okay. We’ll patch it together.
Derek Sivers
I diary a lot to sort out my thoughts on various things. Whether it’s programming or just life decisions, or just thoughts about random things that come up in life. I do most of my writing privately. When I come up with something that seems worth sharing. I’ll make a version for the public, which is much more succinct than my rambling thoughts in a diary.
Andrew
So you might spend like 16 hours and you’re just dwelling on a problem that you’re thinking about. And what kind of writing tool are you in?
Derek Sivers
Oh I just use vim in the in the terminal. Yeah, everything’s in terminal and in vim. The Linux actually, I use OpenBSD, which is like a Linux cousin.
Andrew
That’s interesting because if you’re spending 16 hours a day writing and kind of being on your own, are you introverted?
Derek Sivers
Yes and no. I am super, super interested in people. It’s actually a bit of a circumstance that I am where I am in New Zealand. Because I moved here to raise my kid. But the thought was that we would leave here by the time he was 7 or 8 to go to somewhere more cosmopolitan, more multinational. And instead, his mother got a job at the New Zealand government. And this is where all her friends are, and she just didn’t want to move. So I never intended to be here more than a few years, but I both fell in love with the country and have this circumstance of my boy’s mother needs to stay here. So I would much rather personally be living in a super multicultural place like Dubai, London, something like that, where I’d like to be meeting with more people from around the world and getting to know different viewpoints. But since I can’t do that in person, I think that’s why I keep my email inbox open. And I love hearing from people around the world and emailing with them every day.
Andrew
So you’re seeing people. You’re just doing it digitally and via writing.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Andrew
That’s interesting. So you wrote a whole book called “Hell Yeah or No”. I’m curious, what are some of the things that you are hard no on, what are rules you’ve created for yourself to prevent yourself from going in bad directions?
Derek Sivers
Never do heroin. Um,
Derek Sivers
Let’s see, what else.
Andrew
That’s a good one.
Andrew
Never do heroin.
Derek Sivers
I avoid all things that lead to addiction. I’ve actually never had coffee until last year. I was in Dubai at the home of an Emirati man that gave me a cup of coffee that he had made. And it is like Emirati tradition that all guests must have a cup of coffee. And I said, “Oh, I don’t like coffee.” He said, “You must have the coffee.” And so I tried the coffee, and that was honestly my first time having coffee in my whole life. The reason I avoided it is because I saw that so many people seemed addicted to it. They do that whole like, “Oh, I’m just nothing without my morning cup of Joe.” And I would just look at that thing, I never want to be that. So anything that looks like addiction, video games I avoid. Okay. Sorry. But let’s see, you asked what’s a hard no. You know, here’s one. Sorry how many kids do you have?
Andrew
Two.
Derek Sivers
Okay. How old are your kids now?
Andrew
They’re five and seven.
Derek Sivers
Okay, a few people have asked me when I say something like, “Oh man, I just went to Dubai for my first time.” And by the way, we should talk about that later, because it’s one of the most interesting things that’s happened to me in years. And I’ll say, “Oh man, I wish I was in Dubai.” And every now and then somebody will say, “Well, why don’t you go then?” And I’d say, “Well, because my boy’s here.” And they’d say, “He’ll be okay without you.” And I’ll say, “No, no, no, hold on, you’ve missed the whole point.” And this is the answer to your hard no question. There are a hundred other things I could be doing right now. But I’ve made a really clear decision that my boy is my top priority. I’ve only got one kid. This is it. I’m not going to have others. He’s my top priority above all else. So even though there are other things I’d like to be doing, number one is I want to be with him. He and I talk almost every day. I’m a part of his life. We’re like best friends. And he wants me to be here in his life, and so I want to be here where he is. Even though I know I could just hand him off to his mother and go be somewhere else. He’s my top priority. So I think my only real hard know in life is anything that would hurt our relationship.
Andrew
But you’re separated from his mother. You guys do custody, like, do you have a week off? And that’s when you could travel and you won’t travel in that week.
Derek Sivers
We’re like half week each every week. So you know, half the week with me, half the week with her. But then, yeah, if I do want to go somewhere for two weeks and sometimes she goes somewhere for two weeks, then yeah, we’ll have him to ourself for two weeks. So that’s how that works. But yeah, the most important thing is the value call. It makes decisions easy that what I do is generally whatever is best for our relationship.
Andrew
I like that a lot. I just unintentionally had a trip and it was the week I didn’t have the kids, and I planned a trip with a bunch of meetings and, you know, stuff for the book and talking to reporters and all this stuff. And then I realized that my son’s grade one graduation was on the day that I had a meeting with the Wall Street Journal, and I did the Wall Street Journal thing, and I completely regret it and feel really sad about it. And so hearing you say that, I think, is reaffirming to implement that rule. I think that’s important. It’s one of those regrets of the dying kind of things.
Derek Sivers
It depends how much it meant to him.
Andrew
I don’t know if he knew. I don’t know if he cares. It’s hard to gauge. But, you know, when you’re in grade one, like, you don’t really emote to that degree, you know.
Derek Sivers
Because let me do a flip side and this matters because my kid is 12 now, so he is able to articulate things. There was a time, six years ago, let’s say. Where I had the opportunity to go to the Ted conference that was going on in Arusha, Tanzania. I’ve never been to Africa, and here I was supposed to attend Ted Global in Arusha, Tanzania. I was so excited. I know they’d been sending out their announcements about Ted conferences in, you know, England and Vancouver. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, “Holy shit. Arusha, Tanzania. Yes, absolutely. Holy crap. Hell, yeah.” Signed up, paid. Booked the flights. Booked the hotel. Not only that, I was going to go to Tanzania a week beforehand to the island of Zanzibar, where I was going to be staying at the house of a musicians collective in Zanzibar. I was like, “God, I’m so excited.” I was so excited to do this. But then a week before that trip was this Esperanto conference I went to in Seoul, Korea. So I went to the Esperanto conference in Seoul, Korea. And then as I was in Singapore for a couple of days, about to fly to Tanzania. I talked to my boy on the phone back in New Zealand and he said, “Am I ever going to see you again?” And my heart just sunk at that.
Derek Sivers
And I thought, oh no, I’m hurting our relationship. I was like, nothing’s worth it. I walked away from my $7,000 Ted ticket and I think I got a half of a refund on the flight, the hotels. I’ve still never been to Africa. I blew off the whole trip and flew straight home to New Zealand, scooped him up into my arms and we went out to the forest to go play. So that was about six years ago, right. So about two years ago, he and I were talking about it. And he said, “Dad, I really wish you would have gone to Africa.” I said, “Why?” And he said, “You know, you and I are great. We’ll always be great. If you would have gone to Africa for two weeks, I would have missed you for two weeks, but that’s okay.” He said, “I was just asking if I was going to see you again, but if you would have said yes, I’ll see you in two weeks and I’ll have so many stories to tell you about Africa.” He said, “I think that would actually make me happier to know that you went to Africa and could tell me all about it, instead of knowing that you didn’t go because you were worried about me.”
Derek Sivers
So he said, “Next time that comes up, will you please go to Africa?” I said, “Yeah.” So your boy might never cared about first grade graduation. I mean, what the hell is that, anyway. I think there are ways that you can have real quality time, probably means more to him if you were, you know, down on your hands and knees playing hide and seek. Instead of showing up to first grade graduation, that probably means more to parents than it does to the kids. Or maybe not you know, it depends on the kid. So that’s the counterargument that he’s now specifically said he wants to make sure that I go to all the places I want to go. And so actually, what we found out now is we just do it on his school holidays he goes with me. So we just went to Shanghai, Taiwan and Hong Kong. We went to the Middle East in January when we went to Oman and UAE and Japan and Singapore. And so now I take him to the places that I want to go on his school holidays, and we do it together.
Andrew
And do you think that once he graduates, once he’s older, you’ll leave New Zealand?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I love New Zealand but this is the longest I’ve ever stayed anywhere in my whole life. I have nomadic blood. I really like moving every two years. It’s been really hard for me to be in one place for 12 years. That’s a long time for me. So yeah.
Andrew
When I visited New Zealand, I loved it and I felt like it was somewhere that I could move or live. What do people that visit miss about it? What is what is like? What is it missing?
Derek Sivers
Oh, how do you mean? What is it missing?
Andrew
Yeah. What is it missing in terms of you mentioned multiculturalism, but what else are what do you crave being there?
Derek Sivers
Oh, that’s about it honestly. No, I don’t think it’s-- sorry it’s nothing against New Zealand when I say that. Even if I lived in the most exciting place in the world. Still, after two years, I’d be like, “Okay, next.” Like I just have this yearning desire to just keep seeing things from a different points of view. Kind of like my book, “How to Live”, which is like every chapter says, “No, here’s how to live. Live entirely for the future.” And then the next chapter is like, “Here’s how to live. Live entirely for the present moment.” I really like continuing to change my perspective. So even when I’m living somewhere that I love a lot, whether it’s London or New York City or Los Angeles or Singapore. Then no matter how happy I am, like after two years, I feel like, “All right, that was great. Now I want to do the opposite.”
Andrew
So from the outside, people often ask me, who do I want to be like. And I used to want to be like Warren Buffett or Steve Jobs or someone like that. But increasingly I find myself wanting to be more like you, or even someone like Nick Gray. You know, Nick gray?
Derek Sivers
Oh my gosh, the museum guy?
Andrew
Yeah, yeah.
Derek Sivers
Wow, cool.
Andrew
He’s a fellow explorer, right. So he spends most of his time connecting people and meeting interesting people and doing interesting things. And I’m very drawn to that. I find that really fascinating. And it’s an alternative model. There’s not that many of you doing this, this explorer thing and actually saying, I’m done with business and making money and, you know, building a new chapter or whatever. So you guys both present this great picture from the outside. I’m curious, what areas of your life are you still working on? Where are you struggling? Where is your stress and anxiety coming from other than being trapped in New Zealand, which is a great problem to have, all things considered.
Derek Sivers
Yes, yes. Let’s not act like that’s a big problem. Huh? Where is my stress and anxiety? I’m not sure I have any. I mean, I have this this self-imposed pressure on projects like my new book. I feel ten months pregnant right now with my new book. I feel like, “All right, come on, get out. Out.” I’m just making last minute changes. I was working on it until minutes before our call, and two minutes after we hang up today, I’ll be back at work on it. And, you know, as soon as I bounced out of bed at 4:30 in the morning today, two minutes later I was writing on it. I’m feeling a lot of pressure to get that done and out.
Andrew
Do you crave the-- like you’re kind of internet famous. Like I talked to lots of people and they know who you are and you’ve been on lots of big podcasts and your writing is very well known within certain circles. Do you enjoy that, that sense of notoriety or fame or the excitement of launching a book? And you like that?
Derek Sivers
Okay, well, those are two separate things. Let’s go in reverse order, the motivation to get the book done and out is because I’m yearning to do other things. I’ve been doing just this for two years. And it’s been great. Well, I’m just noticing a thread like wanting to move every two years, wanting to be done with a project every two years. I really just want to get this out. I’m actually yearning to be programming. I’m really missing programming lately. I’ve been reading programming books. And I want to start programming again, but I go, “Let me just finish this book first and then I can start programming.” So that’s my main motivation right now is to just move on to get it out there. I feel like I’m just refining it right now. I’m trying to make it the best damn little book I can, but all the thoughts are already there.
Andrew
The fame, do you enjoy?
Derek Sivers
Oh, yes. Thank you, thank you. I got distracted thinking about programming. That was funny. I do enjoy it. I feel like we’re not supposed to admit it, but fuck it. There was this thing in 2015 where on my website, I started a page that at the address of /now. So it was like sive.rs/now said, “Here’s what I’m doing now.” I put a date and say, as of this date, I’m in this location. Here’s what I’m focused on. And it was just a way so that if I hadn’t talked to a friend in months or an acquaintance, they could just always just check in on my now page to see what I’m doing. And it’s something that I wished that my other friends would have had that I’d want to check in on and somebody else saw that and put one on his site. Then he announced it. And then six other people jumped in that day. And pretty soon we have like 2000 something people that have a now page on their personal website. And I was touched actually, just this morning when I came across an article that was like essential pages that every website must have, and it was like, “You must have an about page and a contact page.”
Derek Sivers
And then it said, “The now page, which was invented by Derek Sivers.” I was like, “Oh, I’m like listed on some kind of list of standards.” I was like, “That’s really touching.” Because I really love the non-commercial internet. I do not love the the mega commercial social network advertising, blah blah internet, but the intrinsic non-commercial internet where just connecting minds has been a really sweet place. And I am super, super touched that like, say, articles of mine or things that I’ve invented. I didn’t mean to invent the now page, but that’s really cool that I did. Or really cool to hear that I did. That actually does mean a lot to me. There was a moment again, this is super transparent. This is almost embarrassing to admit. There was a moment right after I sold my company where I just wanted to crawl into a hole. My 85 employees really gave me a lot of hell, and I just wanted to have no responsibility. I seriously, very seriously looked into legally changing my name and doing the whole disappear like get off grid, go invisible thing for good. Like, I was just going to basically just, you know, a few dear friends and family could maybe know where I was and that’s it.
Derek Sivers
I was just going to make a new group of friends. I was just going to be an open source programmer, live in Europe somewhere, change my name to something completely different, and nobody would ever know what happened to that CD Baby guy. And, I was really going down the path of this, and then I had this moment where I was about to basically pull the trigger and make it happen, where I realized that I did like my fame at the level I have it. I don’t want to be more famous. Like, I think even like Tim Ferriss is too famous, right? This whole, like, having to carry a gun because you have stalkers. Fuck that. But I like the level of fame I have because I like how it opens doors so that I can meet interesting people. And like for example, when you came to me in Wellington, after I hadn’t seen you in, whatever, 14 years since this random little like hello at a Ted conference in 2009. That’s so cool that you’re in Wellington and you think, “Oh, let me call Derek Sivers because he lives here.” Whereas if I was just some anonymous Jeff in Berlin, that wouldn’t happen.
Andrew
Well, an interestingly, I would never have remembered you if you hadn’t stayed on my radar because I was buying your Kindle books. I was reading your blog. I was always looking at your reading list, which I love, by the way. That is one of the best inventions ever. You basically invented Goodreads before it existed, and it’s given me many great books. What was I going to ask you? Fame.
Andrew
Where were we? What were we talking about?
Derek Sivers
Well, I’ll just close that little tangent to say that when I realized that and I was literally, like, on a plane about to go to a friend’s wedding. And I had that epiphany while sitting there going, “Oh my God, I actually do like the fame.” I decided to lean into it. I figured as long as I can just keep the boundary where I want it. Then I do enjoy it. That’s why I decided to lean into it. That’s why I decided to become a TEDx speaker, and I made it my mission to get on stage at TEDx and be more of like a writer speaker thinker kind of guy. That was a very deliberate decision to lean into the fame instead of running from it, and I’m glad I have. I’m very happy. I think being in New Zealand helps. When I was living in Singapore, it was such a social place for me and everybody knew I was there, that I was having invitations like every single week to come to this, come to that, come to this, come to that. Can we meet? Can we meet? Being here in New Zealand, it’s so remote. Nobody asks. So that’s helped.
Andrew
So as somebody who writes and programs for a living, are you scared about the idea of AI getting as good as humans at the thing that you love to do? Does that matter, if it does, like, how do you feel about that? Because as a designer, it’s been kind of scary. My, my feeling has always been that, you know, I can always go to my happy place with my headphones on and design something. But when a machine can do that ten times better, I think it can take away some of the joy and the prestige around that. How do you feel about that?
Derek Sivers
Now you’ve got me curious about your take on it. I’ll answer mine first, but I’m curious what you mean about how that would take away the joy for you. For me? No. I am actually doing something right now to make sure that all of my transcripts of conversations. I’m trying to put them all on my website in a machine readable way so that everything I’ve ever thought publicly said publicly, I should say, is available to the AI. So like, I’m not going to get all sci-fi and put my brain into a-- know, digitize my brain. But I like a version of that. I like knowing that all of my thoughts are just out there. I don’t think that AI replaces anything I’m doing because I’m doing it for me. I’m doing it to sort out my own thoughts on things. And yes, if I find something interesting, I share it with the public. But it’s not like I’m trying to write AP news headlines. You know.
Andrew
Let’s say that you love, you know, woodworking or something like that. And you know, you go about building a bookshelf or something like that and it takes you 12 hours. But if you just pressed a button, a robot could build it perfectly. You know, would you still derive the same level of satisfaction out of it, or would you just move on to other things? Right, i mean, people still weave baskets and make clothing and do all sorts of things that machines can do better. But I do think that, you know, if the internet was flooded with insightful posts by AI that sounded and felt like Derek Sivers, would you feel irrelevant or drowned out? That’s what I kind of wonder about, is, like you have a unique voice. But then I think AI magnifies that by a million potentially.
Andrew
And you know, like social media already has pulled us away from blogging and all the the parts of the internet that you and I love. Right? The old internet, the 90s and early 2000s internet, before everything was in a social network. And I think it just goes more and more insular after that.
Derek Sivers
Well, there’s two things. I would enjoy doing something, even if I could press a button and have a machine do it better. I think I’d still enjoy the doing. It’s the reason why I don’t outsource my programming even though I could. And a few times I’ve tried, but as soon as I’m about to hand off a programming project to somebody else, I go, “Oh wait, no no no no no, I really like doing this myself.” I really like figuring out the problem for the same reason people play Sudoku or 2048 or crossword puzzles. It’s the figuring it out yourself that gives you this joy. I mean, God, people play video games in order to create challenging situations for themselves to overcome. Oh, “Let me see if I can kill the boss.” You know, to me it’s like, “Oh, how can I? I’m trying to get my data, but try to make it in these columns and put it into something. It’s like, how can-- but I want to put in a parameter that’s oh my God, wait. Oh, I think I got it. Yes. Oh, here’s a bug. Let me get a fix. Yes, I did it. Whoa! It works.” It’s like, that’s such a great joy to do it yourself.
Derek Sivers
Even though I know I could just press a button and have it done. Chess players. People still play chess even though a machine can do it better, they enjoy figuring out the chess situation that they’re in and beating another human. Even though we all know you cannot beat the computer at chess, they enjoyed doing it anyway. They enjoy playing anyway. For me, like designing as you said building something out of wood, programming, writing. I’d enjoy the process regardless. I don’t care if a computer can do it better. Actually, I hadn’t thought of the chess example before, but it is a good comparison. But then if you’re talking about the prestige, well, then you have to ask yourself, well, who am I doing it for. And if you really were doing it for the public and that’s why you’re not needed anymore, then honestly, my thought is, “Well, good. One less thing to do.” There’s something else on your list of things you could do to live a full life that you could go do now, since the public doesn’t need you to do this thing for them anymore. I really do think about it like that. I’m not trying to sound like I’m just spinning it positive on purpose.
Andrew
No, I think that’s very true. And I think you know I could see a world where people are still designing websites because it’s fun even though you can use Squarespace. I mean that already is a thing.
Derek Sivers
Oh God. Yeah, dude, if you ever view source on my server’s website, every single open bracket and closed bracket, I typed every one by hand. I do not use any code generation. I love doing it myself. I hate those tools that spit out hundreds of lines, or thousands of lines of crap that doesn’t need to be there. All these unnecessary nested divs. No, I just like doing it myself.
Andrew
I miss that, I remember I used to do CSS and HTML and Photoshop and I loved what you’re describing, the process of building and making it work and going brick by brick. And I do think a lot of the joy of the craft has already been abstracted away. And it continues to be and it’s going to be it’s already wild. I was talking to a friend yesterday and he said, “I just went to ChatGPT and I said, ‘Make me a logo for my company. Here’s a couple ideas.’” And he had something magically that was really good. Like it had soul. It was kind of a irreverent image. And it was something better than what I might have been able to do. And it was kind of a weird, humbling moment. But I don’t know how that plays out for creative people. I’m curious, so I’ve been asking. Sorry go ahead--
Derek Sivers
Well, it’s funny that that’s two different things. I’m really glad you mentioned that idea at the end that if the logo that at ChatGPT came up with is actually better than something you would have done yourself, that’s a tough situation if it actually meets your aesthetics. Because what I was talking about with co-generation, it’s like when I do view source on a WordPress site, I go, “Oh God, what the fuck is this garbage?” I know technically it works, but God, what a mess. And I instantly think, “No, no, no, I can do it way better.” And I still, whenever I’m doing anything for the web, I start with a blank text document and I do the open bracket, exclamation point, doctype, HTML, close bracket, open bracket, head close bracket, open bracket style. I type my CSS by hand or close style head body tag H1 and then I write. Even all my books, I write them in HTML by hand. And I love that. To me, it’s like peaceful and centering in the same way that, you know, the Japanese tea ceremony. You pour in the tea and it’s like, this is kind of my centering process to do the header tags of an HTML page as I’m collecting my thoughts. But yeah, if a computer was able to do all of that cleaner and better than me. I get that that might be a little sad.
Andrew
Well, not only that, but you might be able to train a computer on all your past code, and then it can just do it the way you like it perfectly, right. Or find the bug and it takes away the challenge. It’s a little bit like, you know, we used to have to build shelter for ourselves and cut down trees and go hunting. And now we just pay other men to tell us to work out in the gym, right. It’s like a very odd-- you know, we simulate labor and I wonder where where that energy goes or if we can still just practice the craft quietly, in the same way that people do pottery and putter around.
Derek Sivers
Cooking. Yeah pottery is a good one.
Andrew
Yeah all these things are things that.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, we don’t need to do our own cooking anymore. But sometimes we still enjoy it.
Andrew
Well, there’s still not a cooking robot. I think if there’s a cooking robot that’s as good as any chef, that will be a very interesting moment for cooking. I’m curious about what some of your favorite things are? So these could be books, services, software, a pen, a piece of furniture, anything that you’re really, really excited about that you’ve been getting into or excited about lately?
Derek Sivers
Sure. I got to tell you-- you called it the old internet. I think of it as the non-commercial internet because it does still exist, probably in about the same size as it still was in the 90s. But now there’s a mountain of crap around it. But the old style internet is still there, and people are still making personal blogs with no ads on them sharing their thoughts. And I still love that internet. Because it’s non-commercial. It’s not trying to sell you anything. There’s not even the stupid pop up, like sign up to my list. It’s just nerds sharing their interests with other nerds. I still love that. And when I hear this like you know, “Hey, what’s an item you got for under $100 that’s changed your life?” To me, it sounds like okay, here we go with the affiliate links. Yeah. You know, “Oh, God. Here we are in the commercial internet.” So I find myself rebelling against the concept of trying to tell people that there’s some thing that they should get that will make them happy. It seems like the rest of the internet says that. But I think your question was meant not like that.
Andrew
It could be just something that’s bringing you joy. So it could be an idea in a book. It could be a pot you got for a plant. It could be a anything.
Derek Sivers
Okay, so I do have something good for you. I haven’t written about this yet. But I think I’m destined to. The deep joy of overcoming prejudice or reversing prejudice. In the past one year, I reversed three prejudices by accident. It wasn’t deliberate. Dubai, python, rats. If you would have asked me a year ago, “Do you want to go to Dubai?” I would have said, fuck no. Absolutely not. That sounds like my idea of hell this awful overcommercialized Instagram hashtag influencer millionaire pandering bullshit place. No. Yuck. Absolutely not. But I had a layover that would have been a couple hours, and instead I turned it into a three day layover because I noticed my prejudiced against the place. I thought I should probably take a look at it because I’m so against it. And I went and I got to meet some really wonderful, amazing, welcoming Emirati people that showed me their local culture. And I read three books about it. And now I absolutely love it. In fact, I kind of want to move to Dubai. It’s one of my favorite places on earth right now, because it’s so multicultural. It’s so heart driven. It’s just wonderful in so many ways. So I think it’s really cool that this place I was prejudiced against now I’m. For.
Andrew
So you did your thing that you talked about before of doing the opposite. So you have an instinct to not do it because you’re scared of it or whatever it is, you leaned into it and said, “No, I’m going to go there.” How did you make that trip so great for yourself? How did you meet these amazing people? Because one thing I think I struggle with, and a lot of people struggle with, is they go to the place, but they don’t know how to live like a local or connect with interesting people. What did you do?
Derek Sivers
Well, first I read three books about it before even going there, so that helped a lot. Especially a book called “City of Gold” about the founding of Dubai. Oh my gosh, it’s a riveting page turner. And before I even landed, I was excited to see this place because the story of how it exists is so amazing. It was against all odds and really just one stubborn visionary made it happen. Yeah, amazing. So once the flight was booked, then I went into my database and said, “Okay, who do I know in the United Arab Emirates?” I knew a couple people in Abu Dhabi, a couple people in Dubai. I knew one guy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that had actually met with me in Oxford, England. And I’m so glad I emailed him to tell him I was going to be there because I said, “You know, I know Riyadh and Dubai are close. By chance, will you be in Dubai during these days?” And he said, “My friend, cancel your hotel. You’re going to stay at my home in the Burj Khalifa.” I said, “That’d be great to see you.” And he said, “No, no, no, I won’t be there.”
Derek Sivers
He said, “My uncle is going to pick you up at the airport. He’s going to give you the keys. My home is your home for as long as you want. Come stay at my home. It would be my honor.” I went wow, okay. So I stayed at the home of an acquaintance, a Saudi man that lives in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I stayed in his home in the Burj Khalifa for three days, so that was amazing, number one. Then the other people that lived in Abu Dhabi and Dubai gave me specific things I must do. So number one, they said, you have to go to the Al Shindagha Cultural Museum and I’m so glad I did that on my very first morning when I landed. That also helped get me into this thing. And then I smelled the perfume house, which is like, oh my god, unforgettable. Every time I go to Dubai, I have to go to the Al Shindagha Museum, to the perfume house in the museum. There’s nothing else on Earth like it. And then yeah, there were a couple other things that people that lived there-- well, first, they just also invited me into their homes and I had this Arab hospitality that I had never experienced before and I didn’t know existed.
Derek Sivers
And they also told me other books I should read to help understand Arab culture. They told me some things. And yeah, I did none of the glitzy look at me, Instagram-y things. I just went under the surface, which is the same thing I had done years earlier with Singapore. The first two times I visited Singapore, I just didn’t know where to go. So I went to Orchard Road like the marketing crap tells you to do. And I hated it. And it wasn’t until somebody had me over to their home in Singapore and then had a party at their house, and I got to meet their friends. I went, “Oh, now I like this place. Now I see what a wonderful, creative melting pot this is.” The shopping malls wouldn’t show you. So that’s what I did for Dubai. And then Python. I had always been irrationally prejudiced against the Python programming language because I’m a Ruby guy, which is close enough. And so anytime somebody talked about something in Python, I would look the other way deliberately not interested. I wouldn’t even look at Python. And then finally, after all these years, I was starting a new project and I was evaluating which programming language to do it in. And I was looking at like 12, 13, 14 different languages.
Derek Sivers
And I had considered almost every viable language. I realized I had not yet looked at Python, not going to look at it. I was like, “All right, I guess I better look at Python.” And I went and got a book on Python and started going through it. I was like, “Oh my God, it’s gorgeous. It’s beautiful. Why was I prejudiced against Python all these years? Wow, what a beautiful language.” So now I love Python. And that felt really cool to reverse that prejudice. And then lastly, the new one happened just two months ago. My boy asked if we could please get pet rats, and I thought he was kidding. I was like, “What? Rats? No, we’re not getting rats.” So I was like, “Wait, are you serious?” And he said, “Dad, go look at YouTube. Look how cute and cuddly they are.” And so we watched videos together of like, people with pet rats on YouTube, and they’re adorable and they’re great. I was like, “All right, let me look around.” And so I found a rat breeder in Wellington, and we adopted two pet rats a month ago. And they’re so sweet. They’re little, they’re like quarter sized kittens. They’re all, like, cuddly and affectionate. And they lick my fingers and they just curl up and they fall asleep in my arms. And they’re the sweetest little pets. They’re so sweet. Yesterday I took them on a walk in the forest for an hour. In my pockets, not on a leash. And I love them so much. And I was thinking, “Wow, I was completely against rats just two months ago.” So I was thinking about the deeper joy of reversing a prejudice.
Andrew
And this is what you’re going to write about? Because I was going to say this is a really interesting idea. I’m doing something called dialectical behavior therapy. Do you know what that is?
Derek Sivers
No. What’s that?
Andrew
The way I describe it is therapy for nerds who like systems. So everything is a flow chart. So it’s like, “Oh, when you get mad, here’s the flow chart.” You know, check the facts. So if I’m upset, check the facts. Is it reasonable that I’m mad because I’m in traffic or something. And then the next step is, do the opposite. And it reminded me a lot of what you were talking about, where the urge might be to get upset and have road rage and slam your hands on the wheel and get annoyed at your wife who’s sitting next to you, but instead you smile and say, “Oh, we’ll make the most of it.” Or whatever it is, and you’re basically doing that over and over and over again in your life. Have you written about that? Just that idea of just taking the opposite path, always. It’s like that Joseph Campbell quote, “The treasure you seek is in the cave. You fear to enter and you keep entering these caves.” Yeah. That’s good hey
Derek Sivers
Ah. I mean, I’ve had a rule of thumb since I was a teenager of, “Whatever scares you, go do it. Because then it won’t scare you anymore.” It’s always the not doing it that scares you. Once you do it, you go, “Oh, what was I scared of? But I hadn’t thought about this. Sorry, what did you call it?
Andrew
Dialectic behavior therapy.
Derek Sivers
Cool. Thanks, I hadn’t heard of it.
Andrew
Check it out. It’s quite cool. There’s a big workbook and you can see all the flow charts and stuff. It’s quite interesting.
Derek Sivers
See, I was just going by the value system that I described earlier, like after selling my company. Of just wanting to expand myself, expand my experiences in life, expand my viewpoints that I understand. And so I thought that whatever is my instinct is the way that I have been doing things. It’s a habit. So if I just deliberately go against that, I’ll be constantly experiencing something which does not already come naturally to me, and therefore I will be expanding myself. So that’s the way I was thinking of it. Now, you got me very curious about this dialectic therapy.
Andrew
Check it out. So, Dubai is one thing you’re really passionate. Any other stuff that you’re obsessed with digging into lately or you’d recommend?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Get pet rats. By the way, I should add one more thing. It’s not just that I love the pet rats, it’s that I hated rats in the past. I lived in a basement apartment in Boston that was next to the garbage room. And so very often when I’d come home to my apartment down the little narrow stairwell to the basement apartment, there would be rats on the stairs that I’d like have to jump over. And I hated them, and I killed many of them in traps and glue. And sometimes, just like chemicals in a box, would just do whatever it could to kill those rats. And I just think about like, how much I hated rats in the past. And now I’m like, well I wake up in the morning I’m like, cuddling with little rats. They’re so cute. So it’s such a joy to realize that something you used to be against, you’re now for. Types of food, types of music, people. Yeah. Anyway, I think it’s such a great joy to see that reversal in yourself.
Andrew
Do you have one you’re working on now?
Derek Sivers
A minor. Minor one, the Go programming language. I was initially very against it. It looked ridiculously verbose. Now I’m seeing the simplicity in its ways and I might do my next project in Go. What else? China. Yeah, oh my God actually, I should have put that fourth on the list. 14 years ago I went to Guilin, China for one week and it was rough. Wait, have you been to China?
Andrew
No.
Derek Sivers
Okay. 14 years ago, I went to Guilin, China, which is out in the west, and it was rough. It was dirty and stinky and the air was bad and there was rubble everywhere. And it was a lot like Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. It was a rough place. And so I just thought all of China was like that. And I would find comfort in the super clean, pristine cities of Singapore or even Taipei. And like I said, my boy also wants to travel. So when he said where he wanted to go for his school holidays, he said he wanted to go to China. Oh, interesting. Okay. China. And a month later, he still wanted to go to China. So I said, “All right, next school holidays in April, we’ll go to China.” So two months ago in April, we went to Shanghai. And Andrew, it was so nice. It was pristine. Everything worked. It was silent because the vehicles are 100% electric. There are almost no petrol, diesel cars on the road, except for maybe some trucks. So silent, so clean. Everything works. People were nice.
Derek Sivers
It was just really, really pleasant. And then there was this neighborhood called the the Former French Concession. That is one of the nicest neighborhoods I have ever seen in any city, anywhere in the whole world. I love that place so much. And I was going, “Wow, I was prejudiced against this place.” Until we arrived, because I just was expecting it to be really nasty and rough. And I think they were prejudice about Chinese people that spit a lot. And, yeah, there were a couple people that spit on the ground, but just all in all, everybody was really sweet and wonderful and the place was great. So it made me want to learn Chinese and get to know it more. Uh, and I think it’s actually a shame that a lot of the world treats China as an enemy right now. And I can understand how strategically that armies have to think in terms of enemies and stuff. But just because the government is looking out for their interests about a potential government enemy doesn’t mean we need to make enemies of the people. And--
Andrew
I think for me, it’s a little bit like, if you had never been to Mexico before and you just watched Sicario, you would be terrified to go to Mexico because you think it’s the cartel running everything or whatever. And I think for me, China, it’s all about you know, autocracy. And Xi Jinping is seizing control and they’re, you know, taking political dissidence and putting them in camps and all that kind of stuff. But you know, I assume that it’s still a fascinating place to go to regardless. But I have that in my head. There’s a resistance to going to China for that reason, almost a fear of like, “Oh my God, will I be randomly taken to a camp? Or will something terrible happen?” I don’t know why.
Derek Sivers
Those things can be true. Both those things can be true, let’s say. One of my friends in Los Angeles when I lived there was an Israeli guy who said that when he said, “Mom, I want to move to America.” She was so worried. She’s like, “Oh my God, honey, they’re just going to kill you as soon as they see you they’re just like-- everybody’s murdering on the street. And they just they road rage and they kill everyone. And honey, no, just stay here in in Israel, where it’s safe. Don’t go to America.” And, you know, he said, “Mom, I need to do this. I want to be a drummer.” So he moved to Los Angeles, to the dangerous, dangerous land of Los Angeles, where, yes, those things do happen. There is road rage and people do shoot strangers. And yes, people seem to often grab guns in America and shoot down grade schools. And yes, those things are true. And you probably won’t encounter it. And it’s not the norm. And so I think all the bad things we hear about China do exist. But you know, oh my God, 1.4 billion people. I mean, it’s like a quarter of the earth is China.
Andrew
Okay, I’ll go.
Derek Sivers
Some bad things exist, but go to Shanghai and I’ll even give you the name of the hotel as I was riding my bike around, I saw this hotel. I’m like, “Next time I come, I’m staying here.” Because there’s this one hotel that’s in the absolute best part of the best neighborhood. So before you go, let me know. Go to Shanghai and look for The Former French Concession and email me and I’ll tell you the hotel that I’m going to stay in next time, because it’s got the best damn location.
Andrew
Okay, deal. Well, Derek, this was awesome. I really appreciate you taking the time. I’m always so inspired. I always feel like talking to you is like, going to therapy because I pick up on these ideas, like this idea of taking the other direction. You’re so so clear in the way that you put these ideas. And I think that is obviously a benefit of writing for 16 hours a day. I think that’s a very unique way of living. And I think your ideas are fascinating as a result. So thanks so much for coming on. Appreciate it.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, Andrew. I love what you’re doing. And I love your “Never Enough” book. And that even that you took that angle, which I love how it even developed after we met in Wellington and you had already started working on the book, and by the time you sent me the draft. Whoa. You really took a twist in that. And I really appreciate what you’re doing and just the message that you’re sharing, coming from the background that you’ve had recently in the way that you could have taken that and the way that you said like, “No, I thought about it.” And yeah, you’re putting--
Andrew
I still I’m not as brave as you. I haven’t put all my money in a trust yet, but I’m very inspired by it. And maybe someday. There’s still the resistance. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
No, don’t don’t. Do something different than me and we’ll see how it goes. You know what? I’m going to add one last thing at the end of this, that somebody came up to me recently doing this kind of style of philosophy where you’re trying to make the moral choice about what’s the right thing to do. You know, “There are five people on the train track and a train is coming their way. You can pull the lever and it will kill one person on the train track instead. Would you do it?” And I said, “Yes.” And he said, “Okay, you’re in a hospital. There are five people that are going to die if they don’t have an organ transplant. A healthy man walks in the door of the hospital. Do you kill that man to take his organs to save the lives of these five people?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Huh? You’re being incongruent. It’s the exact same thing. You need to decide which is the right answer.” And I said, “No, I don’t, because I know my right answer, which is I want to live a full life. I want to try different ways of doing things. I do not declare one to be right and one to be wrong. It’s just experiencing it. So I would, yes, be totally okay pulling the lever on the train tracks yet not killing the man that walks in, realizing that those are two very different ways of doing it. But now I would have experienced both. I would watch these five people die because I didn’t kill the healthy man, and I would watch the one innocent person on the train tracks die because five people lived, and I would get to experience both scenarios. I’m not judging which one is right or wrong, and I would never say what anyone else should do, but I’d get to experience both.”
Derek Sivers
And he just looked at me like, “No, you need to decide.” And so even sorry to interrupt your nice closing comment, but even what you’re saying about like, “Oh, I should give it away or I’m not ready to do that.” But I’m not saying that what I did was right. It was just one thing I want to do experience. I think what you’re doing is wonderful. I don’t think that you should feel that you should be doing anything else than what you’re doing. I think it’s great. So yeah, it’s.
Andrew
Yeah it’s like here’s the numbers I used to win the lottery, right. Like, you know, that worked for me. It’s not going to work for you. Totally, totally.
Derek Sivers
Here’s how to get rich, kid. Pick 37, 17, 28. That’s how you’re going to get rich, kid. That’s what worked for me.
Andrew
It’s very inspiring, though. And I think that you know, this idea of not allowing yourself to do the addictive behavior, playing different games and then always going left. Those are three takeaways for me. So thanks, Derek. That was awesome. What are you going to do for the rest of your day? Are you just going to write?
Derek Sivers
Yep. Back to finishing “Useful Not True”.