Built Not Born
host: Joe Ciccarone
“Useful Not True”, decision-making frameworks, beliefs, pragmatism and skepticism, impact of emotions on decisions
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Transcript:
Joe
Derek Sivers. Welcome back to the show.
Derek Sivers
Joe, thanks for having me back. Audience right before we hit record, I told Joe, this is only, I think, the third time ever that I’ve been on a podcast twice. So I’m honored that he had me back.
Joe
Derek, honored to have you. I know you do not say yes to a lot of these, so I appreciate you. For those who want to get to know a bit more about Derek’s background and CD Baby, and you know, just the story where he came from. I’m putting you back to “Built Not Born” episode number 66. We titled that one “Hell Yeah or No” after one of Derek’s epic books recorded that back in October of 22. But today, I asked Derek to come back for his great new book, “Useful Not True”. Derek, like all your books, man, made me think, changed my mind like 4 or 5 times reading that book. Let’s start with this question, man. How do you decide it was time to write a book like that? First describe “Useful Not True” like the concept of the book. And how do you decide to write that?
Derek Sivers
Sure. So the basic idea is that we choose what we believe not because it’s absolutely true, but because it’s useful to believe it. Right? So whether it’s believing in an afterlife, you know, there’s no proof that it exists, but it’s useful for you to believe that maybe it guides your actions in a better way, or makes you feel not so terrified to die. Point is, instead of people arguing about whether that’s absolutely true or not, I say you could just skip the whole argument. Because true or not is not the question. The question is, is it useful or not? And once you realize you’re doing this, you can do it deliberately for the sake of motivation, for the sake of effectiveness in strategy in whatever you’re doing. You can choose beliefs because they guide your actions in a better way. End of story. No need to argue even to yourself about whether this belief is true or not. So I’ve been thinking this way for years, or maybe my whole life, I don’t know. And I kept getting pushback from people when I’d say in my previous books, I’d talk about business or I’d talk about, you know, like you said, hell yeah or no making decisions. And I would say something like, “Business is a place where you go to be generous. Generosity is the key to business.” And somebody would say in the comments, “But that’s not true.” I’d say, “Well, I never said it was true. That’s not the point. Is it useful if you think that business is a place to be generous, does that guide your actions in a better way and make you run your business in a more considerate way? Yes. So therefore I’m going to choose to believe this because it’s useful to believe. I don’t care whether it’s true or not.”
Derek Sivers
So I had been saying that between the lines for years, and saying that occasionally in emails to people that push back and say, “Hey, you know, you said that men and women are the same, but that’s not true.” I know it’s not true. I never said it was true. I said, “I choose to believe it because it’s useful to me.” And eventually I thought, you know, this is a fun subject. I should write a book about this. So unlike my other books, I didn’t know what I was going to say in advance. I felt I had a lot more to learn about this subject. So Joe since you and I last talked two years ago. I’ve spent most of that last two years learning a lot about this subject. So I contacted a philosophy professor and I said, “Hey, I’ve been thinking this way. I know I’m not the first person to think this way. Who else has written about this kind of thought process?” And she said, “Well, it sounds like you’re talking about pragmatism.” So I got five books about pragmatism, learned a lot about pragmatism, and said, “No, that’s not quite it.” And I looked into skepticism and nihilism and all of these other isms.
Derek Sivers
And then I thought, well, a lot of belief starts with religion for people. But I wasn’t raised with any religion, so I had to go learn about religion. So I read a few different books about religion in general. What is that called? Theology. I learned about Theology, and then I thought, well, I’ve never read the Bible cover to cover. So I read the Bible every single word on every single page. And then I read a few books about Judaism, a couple books about Islam, two books about Hinduism. And just through all that, I was kind of digging into the subject of why we believe what we believe. And the end result could have been a big, giant, boring book. But instead, you know, my writing style is, I always challenge myself to be as short as possible. So this is now officially the shortest book I’ve ever written, despite all I’ve learned. I did feel stuck on it for quite a while, trying to dump everything I learned about this subject into a book, but it was really boring. So instead, I started from scratch, blank piece of paper, and wrote a little fable that was 20 sentences and communicated a point really well. And I went, “Oh, that felt good.” So now the book “Useful Not True” is just a collection of little tiny, tiny fables and short stories around this subject of choosing beliefs that are useful not because they’re true.
Joe
So there’s so much to unpack there. First off, about short books. I think one of the reasons why I’m drawn to your writing is because there’s so much thought, like there’s so much that makes me think in a short amount of book where Guy Kawasaki, who started Apple with Steve Jobs, he was a guest a few weeks back, and he purposely said his books are short, and he would say like, “Hey Joe, get up early. If you get stuck, pivot. Eat healthy.” He goes, “Joe, I just saved you 6000 pages of books and health books and business books right there. I gave you three sentences and you could write 6000 pages. But that’s what they tell you. Get up early, plan your day, eat healthy.” Like short books are useful, right? And they’re so impactful. But for some reason the books are getting bigger now. Harder to read and harder to understand. But your books and like Guy’s books are so impactful. They pack such a punch and they’re short and concise and that’s great. One, I thank you for that. And two, you know, it’s a good book when it leaves you wanting more like--
Derek Sivers
Yes!
Joe
Usually like I feel accomplished when there’s a big long audiobook I finished and it’s 18 hours and I’m like, “Wow, I finished it. Like, I feel like I needed, like, a medal or a trophy, or I get a t-shirt, like I finished so-and-so’s book was 18 hours on audible.” But like your book and Guy’s books they leave me wanting more. Like I’m pissed when it’s over. I’m like, “Damn, I wish there was another chapter.” Does that make sense?
Derek Sivers
Because hopefully then your brain, in wanting more fills in the gaps yourself. So you think like even subconsciously you’re thinking, “Well, what about this then? Well then, well, what about in this case?” And then your own brain answers that for yourself. So instead of the author trying to give you the definitive answer, like, let’s make this the definitive book on this subject and tell you everything you need to know. No, instead, open the subject, create some questions in your head, give some ideas, and then shut the fuck up so you can finish those ideas yourself.
Joe
Instead of telling you what to think, you’re teaching people how to think, right?
Derek Sivers
Yeah or just bringing up a question that they can answer themselves. You don’t need me to answer everything for you. And it’s more effective and impactful and powerful for you to answer it for yourself. Because I don’t know you. I don’t know the details of your situation. So I can share a little bit of what I’ve learned, bring up an interesting subject and then you can complete it for yourself as it applies to your life.
Joe
So you mentioned you read the Bible and the Torah and all the different books and religion. First off, how long did it take you to read the Bible?
Derek Sivers
That was rough. That was hard. I think four months of every day. Yeah.
Joe
That’s legit.
Derek Sivers
And that was hard. Because I didn’t want to skim. You know, you can’t skim. I wanted, like, every page is like, “Okay, wait, let me make sure I got this.” Okay. And then, of course, some of these chapters are just, you know, travel logs of, you know, every landowner. I mean, especially, you know, the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament was a lot of this kind of journal. It was really fascinating what a massive change in tone when it comes to the New Testament, which is like tacked on 2000 years later. I didn’t really understand that. And just everything changes. The voice, the everything. And you understand, it’s like a thousand years have passed now, and then we switch and everything changes. It’s amazing.
Joe
What was your biggest surprise or takeaway reading the Bible? That book is just like you said, spread over a thousand a year, so many authors. And then when you start it and finish it, what was the biggest surprise or what was your biggest takeaway from reading the Bible?
Derek Sivers
Probably that thing I just said. Okay, two things. For one, that massive change in tone. I had heard that Old Testament and New Testament. Well, even just saying Old Testament is, you know, a marketing rebranding. But I had heard that they were different books with a gap in time. I didn’t realize that they were going to be that drastically different. The other interesting thing was that the story is told multiple, oh, sorry, New Testament story. It’s like the story of Jesus is told like four different ways by four different tellings. And it’s like, “The Gospel according to.”
Joe
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
This guy. Now, the gospel according to that guy. And even that, because I was obviously reading this before writing a book called “Useful Not True”. I mean, knowing I was about to write a book called “Useful Not True”. I had the title immediately. I knew where I was going with this, and even that was fascinating to say, “All right, well, now let’s hear this guy’s version of what happened. All right, now, let’s hear that guy’s version of what happened.” That was interesting that that’s the core of the New Testament. It’s this telling the story four different ways, and then the ongoing evangelism by this guy, you know, Saul became Paul, who seems to me almost like the initial troll.
Derek Sivers
You know, I noticed this when running my business years ago, a few different times, somebody that was our loudest attacker/critic, somebody that you know, had a big sword in their hand trying to attack me and just loudly attacking what I was doing. Talk to him for a while on the phone. He starts to get what I’m doing. Gets what I’m doing. And then he goes everywhere and telling everybody that I’m the greatest thing loudly. So there’s some people that are just loud. They just want to be up in everybody’s face. They want to be the center of attention. And it’s interesting that those people can turn from troll to evangelist. And it felt like and again, I’m talking out of like complete naive non-expert. But it felt like Saul was like the initial famous guy like that, that was this big giant critic and then went, “Oh, okay, I get it now.” And then became the loudest evangelist. That was just fascinating.
Joe
Yeah, your worst critic becomes your best customer. You know what I mean?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Yeah.
Joe
That’s wild. How about just a couple random ideas I’m jotting down. You’re one of the guests that I’m excited to have you on, but I know it’s going to be a lot of homework. It’s a lot of prep work because there’s just a lot of ideas floating around. One of them, you wrote down, “Emotions decide. Facts rationalize.” And I find the big thinkers, even though the subject matters are completely different. But like, are you familiar with Jeffrey Gitomer? He wrote the sales Bible?
Joe
He’s an American author. He has like maybe 20 books on selling. If you go to Amazon, he’s probably the top sales author out there. And he says, “People decide emotionally but justify logically.” Right? So they use their emotions then they’ll find all the facts that justify their emotions. I’m like, “This is exactly what Derek’s saying in the book about when you’re talking about ‘Useful Not True’.” Can you go on what you mean by like, “Emotions decide. Facts rationalize.”
Derek Sivers
No.
Derek Sivers
Oh, I’d probably just say the same thing that these guys say. I mean, I think I heard that idea first from a book by a neuroscientist about how we make decisions. And yeah, he said that no matter what rational thing you say, I guess they’ve studied things like, fast cameras that record the milliseconds of decisions and even have like, neuro sensors in the brain. And they can tell that a decision is made instantly and emotionally, before the logic kicks in to try to justify that decision. So even neuroscientists are finding this at a low level. People doing sales, of course, like you said, tap into this. I’ve heard it so many different times and places, so I just thought it was important in the context of Useful Not True to introduce the idea if you’ve never heard it. And then even if you have heard it, remind yourself that this applies to you. This isn’t just something you think of for your customers when in sales mode, but even for yourself, for the things that you straight up feel are absolute facts, like why you chose to do this, why you want to make, whether it’s a major life decision, why you chose the career path you chose, why you want to buy that bicycle or whatever it may be. You have these rational reasons and you’re completely convinced that this is why. And it’s a nice reminder that, no, that’s not why you’re even fooling yourself. You made that decision for irrational emotional reasons you may never know. You should disregard your logical explanations.
Joe
Yeah, that’s so true. And I think the book “Useful Not True” I find like 80%-- tell me if you agree with this. Like first 80% it’s like a mindset shift book. Like Seth Godin kind of says like a goldfish, like there’s water, you can’t do anything about it. But it’s useful to know that it’s there, like the water around you, it’s like the thought process. Like you do this subconsciously with “Useful Not True”. Like you do things emotionally, but then you find the facts to back up your decision. Then after that, the second 20%. I find it almost like a philosophy book. It’s like almost like a Stoic philosophy book where, like Ryan Holiday could have wrote some of this, where you’re mentioning things like how to control your thoughts or be controlled by them. Choose your perspective or be controlled by your moods. Notice your moods. Like, I find that very, very Stoic like. The last 20% could almost be like a Stoic philosophy book. What do you think about that?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I love that. I like talking about the core ideas or the practices meaning like, just tell me what to do without needing to get into the isms and the ancient people in the history and the calling things of names and memorizing stuff like that, but instead just getting into what this is really about. So the bits at the end, I added a reader’s request. When I sent out rough drafts at first, it was more just of a mindset book than so many people said like a cliffhanger. Like, “Okay, yeah, so what? So then what? Went, “Oh, right, okay. Yeah, let’s get into what to do about it.” So the last bit of the book is what to do about it. But then again, like you said at the very beginning, I had to not try to be the definitive word on this because of course I could have made this into a workbook, you know, like, “Okay, now I’m going to give you some blank pages where you can write down your ideas.” But that’s silly because a lot of people are reading on a Kindle or listening to the audiobook.
Derek Sivers
I could have tried to list a hundred questions to ask yourself, but then that’s annoying because I’ve come across some books that do that where I’m reading a book and I want to read the whole book. And suddenly halfway through, they’re saying, “Now ask yourself these questions.” And I’m thinking, “Well, fuck, if I’m going to stop and ask myself these questions, you’re asking me to put aside a few weeks here. These are some deep questions. It’s going to take a long time to give these my full attention. Do I really stop reading this book halfway through to answer these questions? No, I’d rather just keep going.” So instead, I combined all these ideas and realized the book does not need to be the final word. We all have an internet connection. So instead, at the end of the book, I say, “All right, instead of listing 100 questions and asking you to stop here, just go to sive.rs/u so sive.rs/u. And there I will have an ongoing list of useful questions to ask yourself to help yourself reframe any situation for your advantage.
Joe
So let’s skip to that. I was going to get to that in a little bit, but there’s a couple killer questions at the end. First, I love your concept there because if someone’s like in the middle of the book, you’re in the flow. You’re reading it before you go to bed and like, “Oh, now get a piece of paper out and write six things you want to do next.” Like, I’m reading in bed. I’m not going to go get a pen and paper. Like it kills the flow of reading.
Derek Sivers
Yes.
Joe
And like, I feel like I’m not doing the job, and I feel like I’m not doing a good thing now because I’m reading the book and I’m not doing what the book says. And sometimes I just put the book like that down because I get like, anxiety attack.
Derek Sivers
Yes. Same.
Joe
So I like at the end, you get it at the end where you can just keep reading. You don’t have to stop and do stuff. But at the end, like I love questions that make you think. And let’s jump to a couple of those. Here’s a couple that I kind of cherry picked that I find very helpful. So you go, “When something goes wrong in your life, here’s a question you could ask.” To me it’s a mindset shift question, “How can I use this to my advantage?” And to me, that sounds so Stoic. It’s almost like the obstacle is the way, right? Like when something comes at you, how can you make that fuel to your fire? And I guess my question is, why is that so hard for initially a human being to think of? Like when something comes bad, it’s like, woe is me right away, right?
Derek Sivers
Because of mental state. I actually learned this from Tony Robbins. So much of what we do is completely controlled by our emotional and mental state at the time. State is everything, even for athletes. A big part of the job is to get yourself into the right mental state when you’re playing, because you have to be completely present in the moment. You can’t be thinking of other things, or you can’t even be feeling like, “FML. Get me out of here.” You have to be in the right mental state. How can you deliberately create the right mental state to be in? Negotiators, even just, you know, let’s say customer service, if you were in some kind of customer facing job, whether it’s online or in person, and you’ve got to be generous in that moment so that when somebody comes at you complaining and dumping their crap on you, that might not actually be about your product or service, but just about their life. You know, they might just be in traffic and be mad at the world, and you’re the person they’re going to let it out on. You have to be in the right mental state to not let that bother you, to almost be like taking care of a crying baby that you love, you know? Like, other people’s babies might bother you.
Derek Sivers
But if you have your own baby that you love and adore and it’s crying because it has a fever or something like that, you don’t get mad at the baby for having a fever. So it is possible to be empathetic and generous when somebody is upset, even if it’s seems like it’s facing your direction. It’s about being in the right state, right? So it is possible to change your mental state. I love this example of somebody who’s angry and yelling and upset, and then the phone rings and it’s their best friend on the phone that they haven’t heard from in six months. They’re like, “Oh my God. Hi.” And they’re just like, “Hold on a second.” You know, giving the angry finger to the person that’s in person but happy on the phone to their friend. And then they hang up the phone and they get mad again to resume the fight. Right? It just shows us that we are all able to switch our mental state. It’s just that we don’t usually do it so deliberately. But you can. And so when something bad happens, you know, let’s just use a dumb example. You’re carrying a plate of food, and the whole thing falls and spills in your spaghetti and pasta sauces all over the carpet that you could, in that moment go, “Ah, I hate my life.”
Derek Sivers
You could just yell, you could be mad, or you could just look at this thing and just decide to switch your state. Getting mad isn’t going to make it any better. You could decide to just laugh at the situation. You know, you could choose to. But our emotional state kicks in first. You have to make a deliberate choice in that second between your impulsive response to something and your actual considered response to something, you have a second in between those two?
Joe
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Where you can feel that quick emotional impulse and then go like, “All right, how would I like to respond to this?” So even though I’ve been doing this for decades, I still feel that quick upset when something bad happens. But then I catch myself. Now it’s like I’ve made a habit over decades now. 35. Wow. Hold on. Yeah, for 35 years. I’m 54 now. For 35 years, I’ve been practicing when something goes wrong to interrupt my response and ask, “What’s great about this?” And my first response is still always, you know, “Nothing. This is just bad.” But then I say, “Okay, keep asking. All right, what could be great about this?” And just by making yourself continue to ask the question. You can find something great about any situation.
Joe
There’s a silver lining in everything. And few moments back you talk about that space between stimulus and response. I think it was like that Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for meaning, he’s like, “Between stimulus and response, is your destiny.” Like that space in between, the world comes at you, you can’t control, and then you have a second before you respond, which is totally in your control, your response to what happened. And you want a little bit of space. So you’re not controlled, but you can feel your emotion, but you don’t want to be controlled by them, right? And you want to have a response that’s positive to maybe a very negative stimulus from the world that you can’t control. Right? You lost your job, you got a bad diagnosis, your girlfriend broke up with you, whatever. But you haven’t had that stimulus where you can go off the rails and go crazy, get angry, get mean. Or you could try to put it in a positive step forward, right? Like your response. You want a positive response. You want to act positively to the negative stuff coming at you in the world, if that makes sense.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. And let’s not even let anybody mistake that we’re being all kind of hippy, lovey dovey rainbows and happiness. It actually makes you find a smarter strategy. And I think the action movie heroes that we admire are the ones who, in the face of danger, don’t just freak out and have an emotional response, but they keep their wits about them. And, you know, they look over there and they see that even though everything’s exploding on that side, you know, there’s a little tunnel over there that if I dive in right now, I can escape. And we admire, even though it’s fiction, we can learn something from that is choosing to find a benefit in any situation makes you find a smarter strategy. It’s about ultimately your personal success in whatever you’re trying to do in life. You will be more successful in whatever you’re choosing if you control your response and instead of losing your shit, interrupt and ask yourself, “What’s great about this?” Or, “How can I use this to my advantage?” It just helps you find a smarter strategy because it puts you in a better, more resourceful state of mind.
Joe
That is so simple but hard. But like it changes your life. I’m getting back to Tony Robbins. You mentioned Tony, what you learned from Tony Robbins. One of the courses I took from him, people say, “Oh, you’re so motivating. You’re so inspiring.” He goes, “I don’t want that. I want to be known as a strategist. I want to be known as a strategist. I give you strategies for life. I don’t want to be known as a motivator because motivation, leaves like a cup of coffee 20 minutes later and the effect is gone”. And yet he gives you the strategies, gives you the ability to strategize about that. That’s fantastic. How about this, “When things like change direction in life, right?” A lot of us are held back by our old beliefs. I love this question that you state, “Which of my old beliefs are no longer serving me?”
Derek Sivers
That one comes up a lot for me. Yeah.
Joe
Go ahead. There you go.
Derek Sivers
Oh, that one applies a lot in anything technology related. There might be things that made sense for you to do 20 years ago, that don’t make sense for you to do anymore. It takes a while to admit that things have changed, or to realize how much things have changed. It can happen for, say, career strategies. There are times in your life where the right strategy is to be selfish, and then you hit a certain point in your career, say, where actually the more effective strategy at this point is to be generous. But maybe you’ve got a habit of thinking in selfish terms, and you realize that strategy isn’t the most effective one for where you want to go next. Over and over again. Yeah, this keeps coming up that the you might have some outdated habits and strategies that were very effective for you, even a year ago. Sometimes things change that quickly. Something that made sense for you to be doing a year ago doesn’t make sense for you to be doing anymore, and you have to stop and catch yourself like, “Am I just doing this because it worked for me before? Or is it actually still the right thing to do now?” So you have to kind of wipe your mind clean, forget everything you know for a moment, stop and look at the situation and say, “Pretend I was just born in this second. Looking in this situation, what is the most effective strategy now?” Try to forget the way that you usually do things. Sorry, that’s my take on it. What’s your thought?
Joe
Oh no. It’s great because I think you have two things to do that one, you need awareness that there’s something that’s like an old belief that may have worked five, ten, fifteen years ago or maybe ten weeks ago, but it’s not working right now. You have to have that awareness. But then you need the courage and the guts or the balls to move forward and take action and change it, because it could be tradition, it could be your culture, it could be, “Oh, everyone in my family does it this way. Everyone in my work does it this way. Everyone in my community does it this way.” And you’re doing something a little different because that no longer serves you and that you need the courage to act. And sometimes you’re the outlier. You might go first and maybe if you went first five years later, that’s kind of norm to act that way because you broke the trend in your little community. But to go first sometimes is scary, isn’t it?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. You know, you just reminded me, a guy asked me recently about how he can explain what he’s doing to his grandfather. Apparently he’s close with his grandfather. He’s from somewhere in Europe, I think, Belgium. And he said his grandfather constantly kind of criticizes him, almost scolds him, or at least just has a doubt and disbelief about what he’s doing because he doesn’t have a typical 9 to 5 job. So his grandfather is like, “Why can’t you get a job?” And he was asking my advice on this. And I said, “You know, it may just help you to stack up the logical reasons why your current strategy is effective and is smart, because maybe your grandfather is just thinking of things in the terms of the 1970s or something. And in in that era, what you’re doing now doesn’t make sense. Maybe you can just help him see instead of just saying, ‘Oh, come on, leave me alone. This is what I’m doing.’ Maybe you can explain the thought process and say, ‘Actually, in 2024, the number of people going freelance, whatever, the effects of post Covid, where it’s more remote work than ever.’” And you know, you could even stack up the logical reasons, like, I love that a businessman explained to me once that employees are undervalued by definition, because the difference between what you’re paying the employee and the profit you get from them is why you have employees.
Derek Sivers
Because for everybody that you pay $100,000 to, you make at least $101,000. That’s why you have them there. He said, so therefore, any employee is worth more than they are being paid, and would do better to capture that value themselves as a freelancer. He explained this so logically, and I thought you could explain that to your European grandfather in a very logical term that would help him understand. And then the whole point is we can also do this to ourselves. Like you said, it’s really tough. It takes balls and courage to make a change, but you can also just lay out the argument for yourself, say, “Okay, reminder, Joe, this is why I’m doing this, because I used to do things that way. But now that doesn’t make sense anymore. Here’s why this new plan makes sense.” You can stack up your rational reasons to help keep in the pocket of your mind as a reminder why you’re doing things this way.
Joe
Absolutely. And next set of questions you put that really hit home with me, “Questions to ask yourself when you’re stuck.” And you remind me of two of the influences I like to read a lot Steve Pressfield and Jocko Willink, the Navy Seal. One of the questions is from Pressfield. I think Pressfield could write you put, “When you’re stuck. A question to ask yourself is, what am I doing now that’s actually a distraction?” And I’ll tell you why I’m going with this. With Steve, to me when I’m doing something I’m distracted to me, I’m being distracted from the real work I need to be doing. Steve would call that resistance, right? That’s Steve’s magic word, resistance. And I find myself when I got to edit a podcast or write a report for work or something, I’m emptying the dishwasher. I’m like, “Oh, I didn’t get the mail. Wait a second. I wonder if the electric bill’s posted online. I need to pay it.” Like I look for every little thing and I’m like, “Stop, get to freaking work. Start typing.” You know what I mean? Start editing. Start writing the show notes. Like I start procrastinating. And it’s pure resistance where it’s just I want to move off from the scary work that I need to do. So when you say, “What am I doing that’s actually a distraction?” I guess the question is why are we so distracted?
Derek Sivers
Oh, well. Because doing the thing you need to do is probably hard mental work. Whereas it’s easier to whether you say like go get a snack or even like, “Oh, what was that? When’s the new Apple Watch coming out?” You know, that’s easy.
Joe
Got to get that.
Derek Sivers
You can get curious and just, you know, reading the news is easy. Looking at a social media stream is easy. It takes no mental work. But the thing that we need to be doing is usually like some heavy mental lifting.
Derek Sivers
We so often just flip over to the easy thing. What I’ve started doing to catch myself, honestly, when I know I need to do some tough mental work, and I know in advance I’m going to have some desire for distraction because this is some tough shit I need to do. I will actually go into the closet and turn off the broadband modem, like unplug it from the wall, say they’re like. Because my main computer that I use all day in and day out is a desktop computer, so I don’t use my phone for work. I mean, I have the phone, whatever, so my kid can always call me. But just by turning off the internet, it means that, like, no, everything I need to do is right here in front of me. And if I ever get that little impulse, like I said, you know, “Oh, when’s the new Apple Watch coming out?” It’s too easy to just flip open that browser tab and and type in and ask. And if it comes up going like internet, no network connection. I go, “Oh, right. Yeah. Okay. I didn’t even realize I was doing it again.” It’s kind of like somebody putting a mousetrap in the cookie jar, you know? It’s like, “I’ll just get a snack. Oh, what the hell? Oh, right. Oh, I didn’t even realize I was trying to eat a cookie.” Sometimes we do these things without thinking.
Joe
Yeah.
Joe
Yeah, because if you don’t shut the internet off, you look at the Apple Watch and then me, like, six minutes later, I’m watching Steve Jobs commencement speech to Stanford. You know what I mean? Like, you go to Steve Jobs, then you’re like Steve Jobs launching the Mac, and then you’re at a Guy Kawasaki video and it’s like 40 minutes later and it’s like, “Oh my gosh, I just went down a rabbit hole.”
Derek Sivers
Yeah. What just happened?
Joe
What just happened. It’s crazy. My time is up and I got to do something and it’s like I can’t do the work anymore. That’s great. Those little hacks like that are big. If you have the awareness. Like you said, it goes back to that awareness factor. First you have to have the awareness. You have to have the guts to take action. I think the the first one we do like how can we. First you need to have the awareness and have the courage to act. You have the awareness like, “I’m going to get distracted here or tomorrow I know I’m going to get distracted.” Then you have to have the guts or the courage or just, you know, the initiative to shut the broadband off. Like I’m shutting the Wi-Fi off.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. And Steven Pressfield, I like that he pointed out in one of his books that even something like, “I need to have a good ergonomic chair or I need to have a really, you know, good mouse or a typewriter.” That focusing on the tools in itself is a disguised distraction. It’s like, no, you don’t need the most ergonomic chair. Shut the fuck up and do your work. You don’t need the newest thing. Shut the fuck up and do your work. You don’t need to find out what new optimizations or software updates. Shut the fuck up and do your work. People have written amazing novels with a pencil in a spiral bound notebook. There’s no excuse about why you think you need the newest, bestest tool. All of that is just a distraction, I love that a successful author pointed that out, you know, and it has to be a successful author pointing that out. Again, if your grandpa told you that, you might say, “Ah, grandpa, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I need the new tools.” We’ll just pick on grandpa’s today.
Joe
Yeah, over, 80. You might have the title of your next book “Shut the fuck up and do the work”. That would be a great title, I’d buy that one. And, Seth, I know you and Seth go way back. He’s been on the show, I think, three times. And if you want to, Seth, to not correct you, but to stop the interview and say, “Dude, you’re off base.” Is saying, “Hey, Seth, what pencil do you use? Or what time of day do you get up, and where do you do your writing?” He’s like, “It’s irrelevant. Go do your work. Like it’s on me. You’re you. And don’t worry about what I’m doing. Like, don’t use me as an excuse.” Because just like Seth will say, “Oh, I go to my table by my bay window. You know, I don’t have a bay window, so I can’t write.” You know what I mean? People use excuses that way.
Derek Sivers
Exactly. Although, you know, it’s funny, since you mentioned Seth, it is thanks to Seth that I’ve got this camera set up that we’re working on now. Because even though Seth doesn’t usually talk about this stuff, he likes to stay abstract and say, “No, no, no, don’t, don’t get distracted with what tools I use.” One day I think it was during Covid, he said, “Here’s a better setup for zoom calls.” And he talked about having a teleprompter with a diagonal glass and having the screen and then the camera lens behind the teleprompter. And he gave some really specifics like, “Get this teleprompter, here’s the camera I use. Here’s a picture of my setup.” And I saw this blog post from him. I went, “Whoa, Seth never does this.” I was like, “Wow, this is actually really useful.” Because we know that Seth nerds out on this stuff and has done the research and done the work, and he picked this setup. I was like, “Cool. He just saved me some time. For one, I didn’t even know about this.” It’s funny that when he broke character and recommended something really specific, that it was actually really helpful.
Joe
Yeah. That’s great. That’s awesome. The thing about when stuck question I loved, this reminds me of Jocko Willink. You wrote, “What is my one top priority right now?” Right and that is so helpful. Like, Jocko has the laws of combat. And the first one is prioritize and execute. So like, if you have a billion things coming at you. What’s the number one thing you need to do right now? Right business, life, warfare, whatever role you’re playing in the world. But like you could take your day 16 different ways. But if you stop and give some consideration. What is the most important use of my time at this moment? I think that is so killer. What do you think?
Derek Sivers
Well, yeah. And it was funny that I wrote that when writing that book, because for two years since we last spoke, I was doing that one thing. And Joe, over and over and again, things would come into my mind like, “Oh, I want to do this, or I want to learn about this thing. I want to learn this language. Oh, look at this new technology. Oh how interesting. African history, wow.” Other things come up that are tempting to dive into. And I had to keep asking myself, wait, “What’s my top priority right now is finish the book. I just have to finish this book. Everything else can wait until I finish the book.” And I had to tell myself that for two years. And I don’t mean like I didn’t hang out with my kid. Of course I hung out with my kid because that’s actually always the most important thing for me that will come over writing a book. And I did occasionally quickly take care of urgent things. I mean, people email me and I like having an open inbox. But over and over and over and over and over again, I’d say at least 500 times in one year, or let’s say in two years. I had to come back to that question in my daily journal like, “Wait a minute, what am I doing? What’s the most important thing right now? Finish this book.” And I needed that in order to finish it. Yeah, because I could have gone on with that book for years, but did it in a mere 20 months, which was still pretty damn long to be doing one thing, you know?
Joe
Absolutely. And your one thing, there might be multiple one things a day, like when you’re in work mode, your one thing was this book. But like when you were, I don’t know, I’ll make Sunday afternoon when you’re with your son. Your number one thing is with your son. You’re not writing the book. But like when you’re in family time, that was with your son. Like you have your one thing at each phase of your day. Yeah. That’s great. How about this last section of the questions you ask. I love you say, “To make peace with what’s out of our control.” And you have a couple questions to ask yourself when something happens. How to make peace with something you can’t control. There’s a bunch of great questions. I’ll just focus on one. How about this? I love this one. “How can I be okay no matter what happens?” And I found that to be so deep. Because you could go, like, if I lose my job, what if my sick dad passes away or something like that. Like, how can I be okay? And it puts you in a mindset where you’re not a victim, where you’re feeling things, you’re a human being. You have, like, empathy. You’re in the moment. You have feelings, you care, but you’re going to set things up no matter what happens, I’m going to be okay. You’re not going to crumble, right? I mean, what could you add to that?
Derek Sivers
Do you have an example of that for your own life? Did you use that?
Joe
That is a great question. Wow. Well, okay. No matter what happens. Right? I guess you could go not important, but like relevant. Like, would it be okay if you went for a promotion and didn’t get it? I’ve been in that role before where I really wanted a position that I went for and didn’t get it. And you know, you’re like, “All right, I’m going to be okay.” At some point I try to give myself a five minute rule. I could be depressed and down for five minutes, and after five minutes I got to turn it around. At the six minute mark, I got to figure out, like, how can I be glad that this happened? And after about five/ten minutes I start to get in that mode. I’m not totally there, but usually by the end of the day I’m there. Yeah, like, you know, your kids go through some things you can’t control, especially I have teenagers now. They go through some crap and like you’re waiting to hear how something turned out and you’re like, “You know what? No matter what happens, I’m going to be all right. I’ll be there for him and we’ll make it through.” You know what I mean? You kind of just put your faith in the system and, like, whatever happens, happens. And as long as I’m breathing and kicking, I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. We’ll find a way through.
Derek Sivers
I like that. Yeah, it might be an internal, emotional thing that you got to just figure out that you’re going to be okay no matter what.
Derek Sivers
Like actually change your actions. So okay, one way of looking at it, investors try to diversify their portfolio so they don’t go all in on tech stocks. They have some tech stocks, some good old fashioned Dow Jones stocks, some real estate investment trusts, some foreign small cap growth stocks I don’t know and some commodities. And they set it up so that if suddenly tech stocks take a dive well they’re not all in on that. They’ve got real estate. They’ve got commodities. They’ve got international stocks. So that’s one way of looking at a way to be okay no matter what happens. How to be okay as an investor no matter what happens in the market. Commodities dive. You’re not ruined. Stocks dive. You’re not ruined. Here’s an example from my personal life is, in 2019 we moved to Oxford, England, mostly for school for my kid that I was like Oxford, not besides, the famous university just has great schools in general, and it’s in a really great place where it’s surrounded by nature, but it’s a really smart community. And you’re also right next to Europe with all this diversity of thought. And so I thought it would be a really smart, strategic place for my kid to grow up. So I did nine months of paperwork and did everything I needed to do to become a legal resident so that I could live in Oxford so that my kid go to school, could go to school there. And just a few months after he got into the best school in England, Covid hit and the school was closed and the airports were closed.
Derek Sivers
We hadn’t been there long enough to make any friends, so we were just sitting alone in this little tiny house in Oxford, England, going, “What are we doing here?” And New Zealand was Covid free and we are New Zealand citizens. So we made this big family decision like, “Well, despite everything I had planned for and wanted for this life, we don’t know how long this Covid thing is going to last. It just makes more sense to go back home to New Zealand.” So we did. But the schools here suck. They don’t teach anything. They’re terrible and so I’ve had to think of how to be okay with this situation because we’ve lost our UK visa now, so we can’t just move back. So I thought, well all right, in this life, he won’t learn the stuff he would have learned at Oxford. But hey, you know what? Maybe in this era of supercomputers getting better by the minute and smarter with AI and whatnot, maybe the stuff that New Zealand has to offer will in his lifetime end up being more valuable than the stuff that Oxford has to offer. So here in New Zealand, he can learn camping, fishing, hiking, he can learn to fly an airplane, he can learn to survive in the wild, sailing. I don’t know these kinds of things that he couldn’t learn in Oxford. Well, it would be more difficult to learn in Oxford. Might end up being more valuable in his lifetime. So it’s all right. Here’s another strategy for how to be okay no matter what happens. So that’s a tiny example from my life.
Joe
And you could also probably learn how to make amazing Sauvignon blanc, right. That’s Sauvignon blanc is no joke from Marvel. Yeah. That’s so good. Oh my God.
Derek Sivers
Dude, where are you living right now?
Joe
I’m in Philadelphia. East coast. Philadelphia.
Derek Sivers
Before I moved to New Zealand I was living in Union Square, Manhattan. And I would have guests over for dinner every Monday night, and I’d always get the exact same wine. And it was a “Marlborough Sounds Sauvignon blanc”.
Joe
It’s my wife’s favorite. There’s not a bad one on the planet. Like it if it says “Marlborough”, it’s just so good. I think we’re on a Kim Crawford kick right now.
Derek Sivers
Nice. Yes.
Joe
It’s so good. It’s just magic and there’s no other. So we’re in Princeton. We’re right by Princeton, and we go right by the college there’s an amazing wine store. And we go in. There’s like a sommelier, like, greet you at the door and be like, “Hey, what do you like?” And we’re like, “We like Sauvignon blancs.” And the sommelier is like, “Then you should buy Sauvignon Blanc because there’s no wine like that in the world. There’s nothing anywhere in any country that tastes like New Zealand. Sauvignon blanc, like from Marlborough. That’s so unique that I can’t give you something that sort of tastes like it because it’s so unique by itself.” So that’s pretty cool. That’s awesome. So I was hoping to do, when I have noted guests like you, Derek, on for the second time. I have a couple fun, rapid fire, wrap up questions just so our listeners get to know you a little bit more kind of fun questions got thrown at you.
Derek Sivers
Although what I love about our conversations, Joe, is that they end up being kind of a fun tangent. I like that I was just sitting here smiling, thinking about, you know, now we’re talking about Sauvignon Blanc from Kim Crawford, which is a place that I’ve been to that winery on a bicycle. If you go around that region. I used to live in Nelson, which is like the next, not exactly the next town over, but, you know, half an hour down the road. And so the thing to do was to go around the vineyards on your bicycle, because that way you can do the wine tasting without driving a heavy machinery.
Joe
That’s fantastic. Oh, that sounds like a great trip.
Derek Sivers
It is.
Joe
All right, so here’s a couple rapid fire ones coming at you, Derek. How about this. Start off with this one. Derek, what purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life?
Derek Sivers
I disagree with the question.
Joe
Okay.
Derek Sivers
I think too many people think that way. They think that getting something is going to improve their life. I challenge anybody who thinks that way, which almost everybody does, to try to flip it on yourself and look around you and think, “What things could I get rid of around me here that would positively influence my life?” So use eBay or whatever. Look around the room. I’m sure there is something around you that would make you feel better. Buy it. No longer being around you. Get rid of it.
Joe
It’s almost like that question that like, what old belief am I hanging on to I got to let go. Like, what crap am I hanging onto?
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Joe
So true.
Derek Sivers
If this crap holds you back.
Derek Sivers
There’s my next book title “Crap holds you back”.
Joe
So true.
Joe
“Crap holds you back” by Derek Sivers. So good, I love that that’s. Thank you for just constantly making me think, man.
Derek Sivers
Well I live in New Zealand, we have a service called Trade Me, which is like eBay because we don’t have Amazon here. Imagine a world where Amazon never existed, eBay would have been bigger, right? So here in New Zealand it’s like that. Everybody has a Trade Me account and so everybody puts all their used stuff on Trade Me and people actually buy it. There’s actually a big market for buying used things, maybe because we’re a remote island in the middle of the ocean. Instead of buying things new from overseas, it just makes sense to find somebody selling it used that’s already here. So I love that constantly I’m just looking around just saying like, all right, you know what. Even just minutes before we hit record today, I found my old Bluetooth headphones. That one ear stopped working on it. I was like, “They’re still here.” I was like, “What am I going to do? Like, try to get them fixed? No.” I was like, pop in the garbage. It’s just like that felt so--
Joe
It feels good, doesn’t it?
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Joe
That’s great. How about this, I stole this this one from Tim Ferris. I heard him ask this, and I love this question. What is the best or most worthwhile investment you’ve ever made? Could be time. Money, energy.
Derek Sivers
My current bias, I’d say learning computer programming.
Derek Sivers
You don’t have to put aside years of your life to become an expert, but just learning a little basic. Say you just learned some Python or JavaScript to just help automate some simple things that come up, even if it’s just keeping track of all the people you know or making an app that you wish would exist. It’s not that hard. And especially with the help of AI tools these days, you can ask it questions. It doesn’t always give you the perfect answer, but sometimes it can get you close enough. Learning basic programming has made the biggest difference in my life.
Joe
Really?
Joe
That’s great. How about this? You’re such a thought leader to many, and people steal ideas from you all the time. Who do you steal ideas from?
Derek Sivers
Seth Godin, Mark Manson, Tim Ferriss in his approach to things. Mark Manson more in terms of his writing. Seth, in terms of his holistic, generous outlook on the world, very, very others focused, very, you know, always thinking of others in the greater good. Tyler Cowen asks wonderful questions. Do you know that podcast Conversations with Tyler?
Derek Sivers
Okay, great.
Joe
Yes.
Joe
I mean, I know Tyler, I’ve listened to a few of them, and he’s a cool dude.
Derek Sivers
Anybody listening to this there was a pretty recent one I just heard yesterday. So the podcast is called “Conversations with Tyler”, and he’s interviewing Paul Bloom. And what I love about Tyler Cowen is that he asks really directed, thoughtful questions that kind of are like niched expertise, you know, the way of like, think of whatever expertise you have and if you were talking to another expert in the field, you’d be able to ask a really pointed question that a stranger at a cocktail party would not be able to ask that person. And then you could get into the really good stuff if you get past the shallow and into the deep. So Tyler tries to find those questions and that influences me just on a day to day basis, just thinking about life and trying to ask better questions of it.
Joe
That’s great. You mentioned Tim and I love your episodes on Tim’s show. There’s a part of the book remind me of Tim. I kind of skipped over those questions, but you mentioned about testing an idea first, renting before you buy it, before you quit, take a break. Like, kind of like Tim’s experiment mindset. Like he’s not doing it forever. He’s going to do five episodes and see what happens. And then a billion downloads later, he’s still going, you know what I mean?
Derek Sivers
Yeah,
Joe
Yeah that’s great. No, I appreciate that. I have to listen more to Tyler’s podcast because he’s a big thinker. How about this. Derek, when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
Derek Sivers
Well, shut off the internet, journal.
Joe
Nice.
Derek Sivers
It’s one of the most constant things about me. I’ve journaled every single day for at least ten years. That’s when I turned into an everyday practice. I can go back 25 years, and I would only journal when I was confused or upset about something. I’d turn to my journal to straighten out my thoughts. But still, I find that the most powerful use of it is to go to your journal when you’re feeling overwhelmed, confused, lost. I just kind of disconnect, open a blank document and just start writing things like what’s going on? Why am I feeling overwhelmed? What’s going on? And I just write down my whole thought process, as messy as it is, and just in the flow of doing that, it starts to sort itself out. I’m able to look at it in front of my face and see, “Okay, I’ve got these 15 things that no wonder I’m feeling overwhelmed. Well, now that I’m looking at the 15 of them, this is ridiculous. I’m not going to get 15 things done. I have to start with one thing. What is the one thing?” So just whatever it may be. In short, journaling helps the most.
Joe
That is so good. If someone asked me, I think our guest a couple of weeks back through the quest, the first question back to me what purchase of $100 or less most impacted your life? And I would say the blank journals I buy for $15 at staples here in the U.S.. I do the same thing. Like the world’s coming at you. And it’s gibberish. Like it’s not for anyone, no one’s going to read it. It’s not for publication. It’s not Marcus Aurelius, where a thousand years from now, people are going to read it. It’s not going to be “Meditations”, but it’s just like, “This is going wrong. I messed up here. This is a mess. This is my fault. What can I do next?” And it’s almost like when you hear it takes the emotion out of it, because it’s almost like two people, you’re unattached. You hear two people at Starbucks talking about a really tough situation, and they’re so emotionally involved. And sometimes you can’t see the simple answer because there’s so much emotion. I won’t say prejudice, but bias in that conversation and you’re like, “Oh, they should just leave, or they should sell the house or they should sell the car, or the kids should change schools.” I mean, you’re listening to it in 30 seconds. You’re like, “I think I have a decent answer.” And they can’t come up with it because they’re so emotionally attached to what’s going on. But the journaling kind of takes the emotion out of it. And you kind of look at yourself in the third person. Does that make sense? And it helps you make better decisions.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. It’s like somehow by switching it from inside your skull to in front of your face, you get just a little bit of separation and you’re able to look at it almost as if it was an email from a stranger to you going, “I’m confused. I’m lost. I’m feeling overwhelmed. I don’t know what to do. I’m stuck.” And you can look at this email and go, “I think I can see the problem now.”
Joe
Yeah that’s great. Before we wrap up, you mentioned that you were in Oxford and now you’re in New Zealand been there for a while. And I know you kind of like bouncing around. You spent some time in India I think you mentioned the last time we spoke. What are your plans? Are you going to stay in New Zealand with your long term plans? I know you like bouncing around. What’s next for you?
Derek Sivers
Well, bluntly put, living around the world is the second most important thing in my life. And now you’re supposed to say, “What’s the first, most important thing Derek?” But I think you already know the answer is my kid is the most important thing in my life. His mother works here at the New Zealand government. So here we are, he’s 12. When he’s 18, I’m out of here. I love New Zealand the most. I think it’s a great country, great home. I’m very thankful for it. But I want to challenge myself to go live in China. I want to live in Africa. I want to live in India. I want to inhabit these other worldviews. So that’s what I plan to do, but probably not for another six years.
Joe
That’s great. Well, and you’re a good dad. And two, I love the thought process. I think that’s totally right on. Like you said, we talked what’s the main priority? Like all the stuff coming at you what’s the one thing you got to get right today? And that’s the one thing you got to get right and you’re not going to the park. So congrats with that. Last question. Derek, we talked about your new book, “Useful Not True”. You know, the mindset of decision making and just perception, philosophy. Derek, if you could have everyone listening, take just one lesson away from everything we discussed, what would that lesson be?
Derek Sivers
There’s always another way to look at any situation. That’s in short, my definition of not true doesn’t mean false. It means it’s not the only answer. True means like, you know, a square has four sides. That’s just true. If it’s three sides, it’s no longer a square. But almost everything in life, we catch ourselves thinking that there’s one way to see this, you know, something happens that’s just bad. This situation is good. This is the better choice. It’s very efficient to think that way. But it might not be the best route for you. So I think you got to remind yourself that it’s not the only way to see things. There’s always another way to see anything. So you can stop and ask yourself, what’s a better way to see it?
Joe
There is always a better way to look at a situation in a better way to see it. The guest is Derek Sivers. The book is “Useful Not True”.
Derek Sivers
The host is Joe. The show is “Built Not born”.
Joe
Derek, so awesome to speak with you. I wish you nothing but continued success. Derek, if people are looking for you and all your great work online, where can we find you?
Derek Sivers
In New Zealand? Haha, no. Okay, go to my website. I’m not even on any social stuff because I just don’t like it. So just go to sive.rs is my website. Search the web for my name. Everything is on my website. It’s all there. And I actually really love hearing from strangers. I actually really enjoy my email inbox. So anybody listening to this should go to my site and click contact and send me an email and say hello.
Joe
I will put that in the show notes and it’s awesome. The ones at the top of the game don’t need social media. It’s so awesome. I appreciate it man. That’s so great. Derek thanks so much man. Just keep rocking. Let’s keep in touch. And next project man we’d love to have you back on man. It’s always a pleasure.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, Joe.