Talking Billions
host: Bogumil Baranowski
childhood upbringing, identity development, impact of memory, perspectives on truth, reframing beliefs and death
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Transcript:
Bogumil
I want to kick it off with some of the questions I have. I want to ask you about the early days, about your childhood upbringing, and how do you think that time shaped you, shaped your career, your interests? And I have so many questions related to that. But if you take us back to those early days, how much you remember and how much you’re willing to share with us.
Derek Sivers
I’m willing to share anything. What’s actually interesting is a smaller subset of what I’m willing to share. The interesting bits are probably the fact that I moved around a lot the first six years of my life. We moved every year. And most importantly, at the age where I started making memories. When I was five years old, we moved to England for a year from California. So I was like in this hippie school in California, where I was born. And then we moved to England for a year, where everybody was wearing uniforms at age five, and the teachers were really strict, whereas I’d been used to these extremely permissive teachers. And I developed this identity of, “I’m not from here.” I was very happy to tell everybody, “I’m not from here. In California we get to eat whatever we want for lunch, and in California you can play outside and nobody punishes you”. And so I was telling everybody in England that I’m not from here, I’m from California, but I was five years old, so I accidentally adopted a little English accent, not little, a complete English accent. So then we moved to Chicago when I was six, and everybody called me the English kid. And I said, “Mommy, I’m not from England, I’m from California. Tell them, oh God, no, I hate England.” And so it developed this identity in me that I’m not from here. Even when I moved to Chicago, I’m not from here. Everybody told me I’m the English kid. I’m like, well, I’m not from England, but I’m not from here. So I think I grew up as a little kid thinking that the rules don’t apply to me since I’m not from here.
Bogumil
I love it, and I’m finding you in New Zealand. So you kept on moving and finding new homes?
Derek Sivers
Yes. I think it also shaped what I felt was the normal pace of moving, maybe. Or maybe I’m just blaming this unfairly, but I still feel this inner clock of like every year or two I want to move. I hate staying in... Well, no, I don’t hate. I don’t like staying in one place for more than a year or two. After a year or two. It just feels like, “Okay, great. I loved this place. What’s next? Let’s go to another place.” Or let’s look at day to day life from another point of view, from another type of... Even if I’m in the same city, just moving to a different home or a different part of that city.
Bogumil
I love what I’m hearing, and it’s a wonderful way to start talking about your book that I loved the most recent one called “Useful Not True”. What a powerful title. And we were talking about the past and your childhood. And early in your book you write, “The past is not true.” And I want to bring a story that might be an emotional story. I hope you’re okay with me bringing it up, but at the beginning of the book, you share what happened to you when you were 17, and it sets the stage beautifully for the topic we’re going to talk about. But can you take us back, what happened? And you went back and figured out that your memory of what happened and the consequences of what happened were not exactly what you thought they were.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. When I was 17, in Hinsdale, Illinois, I sped through an intersection without looking and crashed into an oncoming car. And you know, both cars trashed and totaled, and I was taken away. But the next day, somebody told me, “Yeah, you know, the woman you hit, you broke her spine and she’ll never walk again.” I was like, “Oh God.” I was devastated. But this was just a few weeks before I was going to Boston for college, so I just kind of all right, went on with my life and I packed. But for 17 years I held with me this depressing, heavy idea that, “Oh, man, somewhere in Illinois is a woman that will never walk again because I blew off an intersection. Oh, man.” And so in my mid-thirties, I went back to go find her because I just happened to be back in Chicago. So I said, I’m going to go find that woman. So I looked her up, found her address, knocked on her door, and as soon as she answered, I was probably part nerves, but a lot of the burden I’d been holding for 16 years. I said, “Hi, my name is Derek, the one that hit you in the car 16 years ago.” And I started bawling on her doorstep. And she goes, “Oh, sweetie, sweetie, come in, come in. It’s fine.” And then she walked me into her living room. I went, wait, “Walked what?” It took me a second to process.
Derek Sivers
Wait. She’s walking. And so I said, “Wait. They told me you would never walk again.” She goes, “No, no, no. Yes, I broke a vertebrae in my back. But no, I’ve been walking. It’s fine.” And she said, “In fact, that accident was good for me because I was a compulsive eater. I was eating while driving. And that’s why I hit you. And I’m so sorry for what I must have put you through.” And I said, “Wait. No, you didn’t hit me. I hit you.” And she goes, “No, sweetie, you were doing fine. I hit you because I was eating while driving.” And then she goes, “Wait, all these years you thought you hit me?” I said, “Yeah.” And then she started crying, “Oh, it’s so stupid, these stories.” And it was just so interesting thinking how we both got a bit of incomplete information and held on to that as the past, the story. And then I of course, think of how many of us do this, that we maybe even choose one perspective. Like that person wronged me. That person was an asshole for what they did to me. What a jerk. Well, we might have just gotten incomplete information or just chosen one perspective on the past and held on to it as the story of what happened. But yeah history is always one person’s telling.
Bogumil
We try to learn from history, and then our own little history might not be as accurate as we think it is, right? We make some decisions and even choose careers based on an experience we had when we were seven. And maybe it wasn’t really true whatever happened. In your book, “Useful Not True”, you write that, “Facts can be true while the perspective is not.” What you just mentioned and you add that, “Almost nothing people say is true. Even time is a matter of perspective.” You talk about time zones. You and I are hours apart. I try to remember exactly when this call is supposed to start, not to miss it. But tell me more how the book came about and what can we expect to learn from it, and how it can help this idea of useful, not true, and kind of questioning everything a little bit.
Derek Sivers
I’ll give the purpose of the book, and then we’ll define the word true, because it’s because of the purpose. So when you consider something true, it’s closed in your mind. It’s just a fact, and that’s that. It’s when you consider that something is not necessarily true that your mind says, “Okay, well, if that’s not necessarily true, then what’s another way of looking at it?” And that process is called reframing. The idea of looking at something deliberately from a different point of view, saying, “Okay, well what’s another way to look at that?” And this can come into day to day life on the personal level, like a little story we just told or even just work strategy, business. Say the the job of sales is to go find more customers. And you can say, “Well, that’s not necessarily true.” What if the goal of sales is to generate more new business? And they say that one of the best places to get more business is from your existing clients. Instead of trying to find new ones, which is less efficient. So maybe the job of sales is to go really impress your existing clients and ask what else you can do for them. Okay, so even that, that’s just one silly little example. That’s one tiny reframing. And that was just one, if you were in sales I’d probably be doing this all the time of going, “Well, what’s another way of looking at it? What else is a way of being graded in sales.”
Derek Sivers
I’d keep pushing beyond the first, second or third idea and keep going because that’s where you get into not just the unique insights, but the insights that are custom tailored for your situation. Because you might just be buying a suit off the rack that does not fit you very well, and you just say, “Okay, I’ll take it as is. Fine. I’m busy.” That’s what we do when we adopt other people’s techniques. When you say, “Well, I’m listening to a podcast, how does this person do sales? Okay, well, it works for them. They’re a big performer making big money. I’ll just do what they’re doing.” So you try to imitate somebody else, like taking a suit off a rack and just, “Fine. I’m busy. I’ll wear his suit. It works for him. It’ll work on me.” But then you’re wearing clothes... I’m speaking metaphorically, in case that’s not clear. You’re wearing clothes that don’t fit your situation exactly. And you wonder why you’re uncomfortable or you’re not making the impression you want to make. It’s because you’re wearing somebody else’s clothes. And so reframing is a way of custom tailoring to your situation, to you, to your life. So the purpose of the book is to point out how many things in day to day life and even on the big scale, are not necessarily true, so that we open them up for questioning. So now that’s why we have to define what does true mean anyway? So right there in the first page of the book I say, all right everybody, I’m going to be using this word true a lot.
Derek Sivers
It’s even in the title of the book. So we have to decide what we mean by true. So I just want you to know that, “In this book when I say true, what I mean is absolutely, objectively, necessarily, empirically observably true. Meaning it is true for everyone, everywhere, always, any creature or any machine could observe it and agree.” Only in that limited case do we say something is true, because those are the few cases where something is closed. There is no more discussion of this, it is true, it’s a fact. It’s that, it’s that and that’s done. It’s closed, no questioning. But everything else is up for questioning and is up for reframing. So that’s why you hear me say things like, “The facts can be true, but their perspective is not.” So a fact is a some people are unhappy with the current state of things. That doesn’t mean the world is unhappy with the current state of things. It doesn’t mean the current state of things is bad. It doesn’t mean that the current state of things is getting worse or getting better. All of those other things are perspectives. The only true fact is that some people are unhappy about some things today. If you drill down into the actual facts, it lets you see more clearly the separation between the very few actual non-negotiable hard facts and how everything else is interpretation.
Bogumil
I have so many things to say, but I’ll focus on one. The premise and we’ll come back to it is what I find really fascinating, that some things that are actually not true, they can be useful and we’ll come back to it. But I think that’s a very powerful lesson, because we obsess about perfection on one hand and the truth on the other hand, but sometimes some simplified ways of looking at things that are not exactly true, and I’ll come back to it in a minute, are actually helpful. And you pointed out in your book, before I get there, I wanted to bring up Chris Mayer and general semantics. Are you familiar with general semantics?
Derek Sivers
No.
Bogumil
I’ll share more after the episode, but I’ll just bring up... Chris Mayer is an investor, but he wrote a book about general semantics, which is basically a way of building out the map of the world understanding. And one of the ideas from the books on general semantics is English without absolutes. And when I’m listening to you, that’s what I’m hearing. That rhymes with those ideas that when we talk about the world, we say, everybody goes there now or nobody goes there. Or this person would never buy. My sister would never buy those shoes, right? It’s never, always, everyone, no one.
Bogumil
But that’s how we communicate. And if you look closer, you realize the world is much more nuanced than what you were just describing. We’ll come back to it. I want to bring up something you talked about, perspective, and there’s a story in your book. There are so many stories, but I want to highlight a few of them. You talk about a friend who joined a protest 30 years ago and then was trying to enter Australia and was very honest about his past and wherever on the form he declared that he was arrested back in the day for that protest and that caused some trouble. And you reminded us through this story, and I’d love you to share it with us. How the rules are made up by governments, businesses and you call them a children’s game. They’re created in a similar process, right? They are not given by God in any way. Can you talk about this idea? You know, the perspective changes and something that seems like you know, unforgettable, unforgivable crime that will not allow you to enter Australia. Actually, if you knew the context, he didn’t do much. That would be punishable.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, well, the story itself was just a guy I’ve known. You know, forever that when entering Australia with his wife from Chicago, he ticked the little box where it says, “Have you ever been arrested?” And he said, “Well, 35 years ago for one night after a student protest.” So just being honest, he ticked the box and did the usual entering Australia here for my two week vacation. Excited to go to the beach. And the guy at the airport, the border visa control guy said, “All right, yeah, look, we’re not going to let you in, you’ve got to get back on the next plane. We’re not going to let you out of the airport. There’s a flight leaving for Chicago. You’re going to have to get on that. You’re not allowed to enter the country.” And, you know, he was devastated. His wife said, “What are you talking about? Hold on. Wait, what’s going on here?” You know, and it’s because he ticked the box saying, yes, he’d been arrested. They weren’t letting him in. But what’s fascinating is what happened next. After the guard sent him away, he said, “All right, so here’s your passport.” And then as he was walking away, the guy said, “Hey, mate, next time make it easier for all of us. Just tick no. And actually, you know what? There was one more sentence I didn’t include in the book because I felt it was unnecessary.
Derek Sivers
By the way, anybody if you haven’t read my books, I eliminate every unnecessary sentence. I try to make my books as short as they can possibly be. Anyway, the guard also said, “You give us the papers we want, we give you the papers you want.” And I kind of liked the poetry of that. It’s like, make the paper the way we want to see it, the visa form. And we will give you the paper you want, the visa. So yeah, I edited out that sentence, but I think that’s also beautiful. So it reminds you that rules have a purpose. Rules are for social harmony. People playing the game. They’re they’re meant to match most situations. If you’ve been in prison for 20 years for murder, and now you’re out and trying to go to Australia, they don’t want you. If it was a student protest 35 years ago for one night, maybe they don’t need to know that. You just give them the papers they want. And you get to see that rules themselves are useful, but not hardline. They’re not absolutes, like you said. They’re not dictated from God. Some would argue that some rules may be these ten or that book was dictated from God. But the Australian border control rules are not.
Bogumil
As I’m listening to you and I spoke with somebody earlier today about AI, and I’m thinking for computers, it’s a yes or no. It’s a 0 or 1. Humans are much more nuanced. Well, you’ll argue probably against what I just said, but I’m curious.
Derek Sivers
Well, I thought because I thought you were taking the AI angle that computers were right or wrong. You know, a function written in the Haskell programming language either passes or fails. But what’s interesting about LLMs and AIs is that that’s no longer the case. Now they’re giving these kind of wishy washy answers that might be useful, but not true.
Bogumil
They actually can outright lie to you. I mean, you brought it up, so I’ll share it. But I’m looking for a book that I read when I was in college and I can’t find it. It’s a book about a family that was rich for many generations. I manage money for families that have multi generational wealth. And there was a book that I read when I was a student. I can’t find this book again and I asked AI, I gave all the details. Derek, AI made up the book.
Bogumil
The title, the story, the year when it was published and, and the author, it made up everything and I couldn’t find the book that it made up. And then I told AI, this is not a real book. You know what it said?
Derek Sivers
What?
Bogumil
“You’re right. It’s not a real book.” Well, why did you tell me it exists? Why did you make up so many details about the book that I was really looking for? But that’s an interesting and slippery road. I don’t know where it’s going to take us, but I think it’s fascinating.
Derek Sivers
Well, let’s skip AI and go back to humans and books. When I was 22, I read something in the book “Island” by Aldous Huxley that got me so inspired that I quit my job, and I moved across the country to embark on a major new life path because of one idea in the book Island by Aldous Huxley, and it was the idea where a man is shipwrecked on this island, and the people of that island are teaching him the local culture. It’s kind of this Paradise utopian culture. And this is a British man that’s shipwrecked there. And so the people are showing them culture, and he’s watching a bunch of people mountain climbing, and he’s watching the instructor and they say, “Actually that instructor used to be my physics teacher.” And the British man said, “Oh, wow, what a surprise that somebody that used to teach physics is now teaching mountain climbing.” And the local looked at him and saying, “Oh no, we all do that. Nobody’s allowed to work at a job for more than two years. We find that that causes people to be too insular in how they see the world. In our culture, we find it very important to change what you’re doing at least every two years, ideally to something that’s the opposite of what you were doing before.”
Derek Sivers
So if you’ve spent the last two years teaching physics, maybe now’s a good time to be a mountain climbing instructor. And if you’ve been a mountain climbing instructor for the last two years, maybe now’s a good time to be a librarian or whatever. And I read this idea and I went, “Man, I’ve been working in midtown Manhattan for two years. I’ve learned a lot, but it’s time for me to go do the opposite now. Wow. Thank you, Island by Aldous Huxley.” So that idea changed my life. Here’s what’s fascinating is that just a couple of years ago, I went back and I bought the book Island again, and I went to go find that passage, and I can’t find it anywhere. It doesn’t appear to be anywhere in the book. I misremembered that idea, which was extremely useful to me, but it seems that it wasn’t true. It’s not actually in the book. So the misremembering worked in my favor.
Bogumil
How do you explain that? How did you misremember it? Was it in another book?
Derek Sivers
I don’t know. I have no idea. I’ve read through it so many times going, “Where?” I don’t know, maybe is this a new edit? Is this a different version? I don’t know, did I read an old draft of his that Penguin published and then later they corrected? I don’t know,
Bogumil
But it sounds like an idea that would be in that book from what I know.
Derek Sivers
I see the part of the book where it would be there, but it doesn’t actually say that. So maybe I just interpreted that. Anyway it doesn’t matter because...
Bogumil
It changed your life.
Derek Sivers
That’s my thing, it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. It was useful?
Bogumil
It was useful. Is this story in the book? I don’t remember it from the book.
Derek Sivers
No. I’ve got so much that’s not in the book. I love this subject so much. I could just talk and talk and talk about this subject for years. But I don’t like big fat books. I like short books that are easy to gift to somebody without burdening them, that are easy to gift to yourself without burdening yourself. And so at a certain point, I cut it off. I said, “Okay, I’m putting out the book now, as is.” And there’s more to say that I’ll just keep adding onto my site or telling stories like this.
Bogumil
I have to ask you about the future. We were just talking about the past, and a lot of our thinking and decision making relates to the future, but you write that by definition, the future doesn’t even exist. Tell me more.
Derek Sivers
Well, I mean, that bit’s obvious, right?
Bogumil
Is it?
Derek Sivers
The future. It’s by definition, the future is what we call what hasn’t happened yet.
Bogumil
Can we make it happen?
Derek Sivers
Sometimes. But just the fact that that’s not absolutely, positively, necessarily, objectively, empirically true means that it’s not true that we can predict the future. I mean, when we say, “The future.” It’s this commonly agreed upon idea of things that we feel pretty certain about. But other people disagree. You can say, “Well, it’s obvious who’s going to win this next election.” Somebody else could say, “Not necessarily.” Let’s pick another one. Somebody says, ‘Well, AI is going to take over the world. That’s just certain. That’s obvious. I’ve looked at the trajectory. Friends of mine work inside anthropic and OpenAI, and I know this industry. It’s clear where this is going. It’s going to take over the world.’ But that’s just a prediction that might not necessarily be true. That’s what people were saying about cryptocurrency five years ago, and about virtual reality 20 years ago. And there have been many times people were very certain, people in the know were very certain about how technology will play out. And they have been wrong. Not always, but sometimes. And so you kind of need to catch yourself even on a personal day to day level. Even things as small as this meeting this afternoon is going to suck, right? That’s a prediction that might not be true. And it really is to your benefit to realize that that’s just a prediction and not necessarily true, because then it opens even the future up to reframing yourself to acknowledge that you are not 100% certain about that. And as an investor, you know the importance of that, to acknowledge that your certainty is not 100%. Well, what is it? Is it 80%? 70%? Well, then maybe you should adjust your investment into that future accordingly.
Bogumil
I like to say that I want to be the least wrong. So when I’m thinking about the future, I’m thinking if nothing lines up the way I expected, can I be still okay and not coming from a place that everything has to be exactly the way I want. To be an absolutely right, and I think it’s helped me a lot because the future will surprise us. I want to bring up two things. One is that once that future arrives and becomes our present, and if it’s not what we want it, it might actually be better for us than we thought. That’s one thing that can happen.
Derek Sivers
Well, okay. Sorry to pause this idea for one second. You say, let’s be clear that even your approach of saying I want to be the least wrong is not necessarily the best approach. You should not go out and tell the world, “Everybody stop what you’re doing. This is the right way to approach. Investing in life is to be the least wrong.” That’s not the only way.
Bogumil
Has worked for me, but might not work for somebody else. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Because other people have been rewarded by doing stupid, crazy things that sometimes work out. Yeah.
Bogumil
Well, I call it useful, but not necessarily true. Just like your book, for me, it’s useful. Might not be useful for somebody else, but it has helped me. I want to bring up something that somebody shared with me. It’s basically a quote that says, “Kids don’t listen to parents. Everyone is awful. And the end of the world is near.” And underneath that quote, it says that it was translated from a clay tablet from 5000 years ago. I was thinking a couple of things. One, somebody had a really bad day 5000 years ago, but if you put it as a tweet, you would probably get a lot of likes and everybody would say, “You’re absolutely right. This is how I feel about today.” So in a way, when we’re talking about the past and the future and both are abstract and not real or not true, somehow they rhyme and they keep coming back. And some of those stories kind of repeat and repeat. And you will find somebody today that thinks that the end of the world is near. And there was somebody that thought that 5000 years ago, and I’m guessing 5000 years from now, somebody will think that. I think the human nature and the human behavior behind it all is the one thing that seems to be subject to the least, you know, change here. Yeah, we worry about it.
Derek Sivers
And you just did something beautiful. You pointed out the flawed thinking of somebody else first. It’s easier to point fingers at somebody else and say, “Ha ha ha, look at that person 5000 years ago. They’re the old person. They are the previous generation saying the next generation is bad.” And only after we notice flawed thinking in others can we go, “Oh wait, I do that too.”
Bogumil
We all do it.
Derek Sivers
But it really takes that sequence of events, of noticing it in others first, where you can see it clearly because it’s outside of your own head, and only after observing it, seeing it, understanding it, noticing it, then you can go, “Oh, I do that too.”
Bogumil
I think we learned that the truths that we hold and I’m going to talk about beliefs in a second that’s in your book that they’re not as absolute as we think they are, and you share something really important about beliefs. You write that, “Beliefs don’t exist outside of the mind.” You ask, “Have you ever seen one in nature?” Running around, I imagine, and we haven’t. And you say that, “All beliefs are make belief and when someone believes something that seems crazy to you, consider what incentives from their point of view they have. What makes that belief useful to them.” I think it’s really powerful on one hand, beliefs are just made up and then ask the deeper follow up question, why do they believe what they believe? Can you talk about that? I find it fascinating.
Derek Sivers
Thanks. By the way, you’re the first one to quote that line about the, “Have you ever seen one in nature?” That was one of the few lines in the book that I waffled on back and forth, like, is that too cheesy? Should I leave that in the book? Should I edit that out?
Bogumil
I imagine the bunnies jumping in the woods, right? I’ll tell you about a bunny. And you say, “Have you seen one?” I say, yes, I have seen one. But if you ask me about beliefs, no, I haven’t seen one, jumping around like a bunny in the woods.
Derek Sivers
It’s not a thing. It’s not observable. You know, that definition of truth I made earlier where, like, any creature or machine could observe it and agree. Well, beliefs don’t pass that test. They’re in your head. Anything that you’re saying, “I believe...” Anything you say next is not necessarily true. The reason you’re having to say I believe and even communicate it, is that it’s a point of view. You’re letting someone else know how you see things, which then, just by their definition, means that it’s not an absolute truth. Otherwise there would be no need to say, “I believe.” You could just point to the data. You could say, “Well, there no need for me to interpret this.” There are the facts you don’t have to say I believe, we say, I believe to let somebody else know our perspective, which then just reminds you, just in the process of realizing something is a belief or saying, “I believe” that somebody somewhere, believes differently. Which means what you’re saying is not necessarily true for everyone, everywhere, always. And back to those nuances you said.
Derek Sivers
Or the lack of absolutes might require you to say, okay, well, for me, for now, for this situation, this works for me. And then back to your question, it helps to realize that when parents are saying things like, “Your family is the most important thing.” It’s like, well, that’s useful for you to say as the person that would benefit from that belief. But there are some people that are really harmed by that belief. There are some people in abusive families that have bought into their parents declaration that your family is everything, and they’re really harmed by believing that to be a fact, and they’d be really benefited to realize that’s not necessarily true. Just because your grandparents said that to your parents and your parents said that to you, doesn’t mean that for you, that’s necessarily true. It may just be that your family is not the most important thing. And maybe the most important thing is breaking away from your abusive family. You know, you’ve got to consider it for your own situation, but also empathetically see why somebody is incentivized to believe what they believe.
Bogumil
It’s fascinating because as I’m listening to you, I’m thinking of the stock market as such. You have people that come in with very different perspectives, with different time horizons. The money they invest means different things to them right. And then we come up with a price. The stock market closes and Coca-Cola closes at $45. But what does it really mean? Right. It means that all of those people express their beliefs through their actions throughout the day, and decided as a crowd that Coca-Cola, for it to clear all the trades should sell at $45. But they came not with one single perspective opinion, belief, time horizon, even emotion around Coca-Cola itself and the money they just spent to buy or receive for selling. It all brought them together as a fascinating, you know, phenomenon of a market. One of many that we have these days. But I want to explore it. Go ahead.
Derek Sivers
I love that subject so much. I like applying the investment portfolio metaphor to thinking itself. I was recently in a group of people that were all from California, that were all in that world of Silicon Valley, that we’re all kind of they knew each other. Were all friends of friends. And it was really disappointing to me that everybody was thinking alike, that no matter what subject you could bring up, everybody agreed. I went, “Huh, this is no fun.” I like it when people disagree. I like to be surprised by someone’s point of view. It’s so disappointing when you’re not surprised by somebody’s point of view. So I thought about the metaphor of the investment portfolio that should be diversified, that you don’t want to be all in on California tech stocks. In fact, you don’t want to be all in on U.S. stocks at all. I mean, that’s a little diversification to, you know, have U.S. commodities and U.S. real estate. But ideally, you should be holding a broad portfolio of international commodities, international real estate, small cap, large cap have these and then stuff that’s some people were hoping that Bitcoin and whatnot would be uncorrelated with the US dollar. So now if you apply that to the way that we think and the beliefs that we hold and the perspectives that we see, wouldn’t it make a lot of sense to deliberately diversify your thought portfolio. To try to take in the thoughts of, say, Persian philosophers and Chinese thinkers and Indian musicians and whatnot, and bring these worldviews into your own so that you deeply understand them and maybe even subscribe to them so that you can hold them in your personal thought portfolio. So when any given subject comes up, you don’t just see it as your neighbors do, but you can also see it from the point of view of somebody that sees the world very differently. You can have a diversified thought portfolio. I like that idea a lot.
Bogumil
You brought up something really interesting, and in my investment experience, I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I remember recommending stocks and sitting at a long conference room table, and I would bring an idea that I got excited about. Just as you got excited about the idea we started this conversation with, and if everybody around the room would agree with me, I felt very uncomfortable and I thought, if everybody agrees, I think the opportunity is not there. I’m looking for something that would make others uncomfortable, because it makes me feel like I found something that other people are missing. But if everybody agrees, like the group of people you were interacting with in California, I feel like where is the opportunity? If we all think the same, feel the same, and comfortably would buy this stock. I’m looking for something where everybody would call me almost, you know, borderline crazy. I think that’s when I found something that’s worth talking about. And there were moments like that, and these were the moments where I felt like I found something.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Bogumil
Am I right, am I wrong? I don’t know, but I found something that stirred up a conversation that’s a lot deeper than everybody nodding and agreeing with me. And I really like that. So I can relate to it.
Derek Sivers
Even as a writer or as somebody that puts any ideas out into the world through whatever medium you want to find what is surprising to people. Because if it wasn’t surprising, well, then they didn’t really learn anything.
Bogumil
True.
Derek Sivers
When the Ted conference asked me to give a talk that first time in 2009, I was so nervous and I proposed just to do a three minute talk, because I didn’t think that to that audience of geniuses. I mean, there’s Bill gates, there’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin sitting in the audience. There’s Al Gore, there’s Tony Robbins, there’s you know, Bill Joy and the people that invented Unix are sitting there in the audience going, “All right, teach me something.” And you don’t want to bore them with something that they already know. You have to only deliver what’s surprising, what’s counterintuitive, what’s unexpected. So I like this idea of only leaving in the unexpected bits and editing out what’s not surprising. So I don’t get up there and say, “Well, let me tell you about my background. Now, I grew up here..” Because, oh, come on, that’s that’s not surprising. You just get to the core idea of what’s surprising, what’s interesting, what’s counterintuitive. Edit out everything else and you’ll have a good talk or a good article.
Bogumil
That’s how you write your books. And that’s why I love the way you write. And I do have a question about the writing process, but I do want to explore the belief idea.
Bogumil
I have a quote from your book that builds on what we just talked about, it’s a question, which belief is right? And you say it’s a wrong question. You say, “Which belief leads to the action you need now? Which story helps you do what you need to do. Be what you want to be or feel at peace. Meanings are entirely in your mind, but their effect on you is real.” It gives me chills reading that quote, because I found this is really something you’re onto something, you want to share more how you think about it?
Derek Sivers
Oh, sure.
Derek Sivers
Ooh. Well, I liked the bits you just pulled out there. Once you realise that very few things are absolutely, necessarily, objectively, empirically, observably true, and you realise that everything else is just your perspective. For some people, that can make them fall into nihilism and say, “Well, fucking man, if nothing means anything, I’ll just sit here and eat ice cream and watch junk TV.” But that’s not useful. So the next stage then is to say, well, okay, if nothing is necessarily absolutely true except for some core hard facts, you know, I’m snapping my fingers right now. That’s true. Including, to be clear, I’m not being a... What do you call it, a denialist. The people that deny facts that, you know, deny the number of votes that were cast for this candidate versus that, or deny the fact that you can look under a microscope and see a vaccine working. Those are observable, absolute facts that any machine or creature not in a human mind could observe this and agree. So we’re not talking about being a denialist and denying the facts, and try to convince people that what is true is not true. That’s a different thing. And I’m not going to go there because I don’t give a shit about that stuff. That’s not useful to me. I’m not involved in fighting in social media political battles. But what’s useful to me is whatever perspective helps me take the action I need to take now. So in the morning, it is one belief system that you use to get yourself out of bed and say, “Gotta get up, gotta do this thing. Those dishes aren’t going to wash themselves. That book is not going to write itself. I got to get up and do this.”
Derek Sivers
And it’s a different belief system that you need to fall asleep at night to say, “The book will get done tomorrow. I need to sleep now. That’s more important. It can wait until tomorrow.” So even in one day, in one person, you can deliberately choose beliefs that are what you need now. You need this belief to get you out of bed. You need this belief to get you back in bed. You need this belief to... Okay. Sorry. I was going to take it some sex angle. I was going to say you need this belief to, stop working and take off your clothes and jump into bed when the opportunity arises, anyway. And this is how I think you should judge perspectives, is by selfishly asking yourself, bringing it back into reality, what actual concrete action would this belief produce? That if this belief helps me exercise and this belief helps me eat well. These are concrete actions that we could sit there and argue about what belief is, true or not. But ultimately, that’s not the the measure that matters. The measure that matters is what creates the action in yourself that you need right now.
Bogumil
It resonates with me on so many levels. I had Doctor Zinser on the show. He’s the former coach to Eli Manning, and he has this idea of winning in your mind first. You go to a battle sports, whatever it is, a board meeting, and in your mind you already won. It went exactly the way you want it. You already performed the way you want it. And then you go out and perform. And through the vocabulary that you propose in your book, you and I would agree that we’re talking about the future, and none of it is true. Right? It’s a belief, but it’s very, very useful because if I believe that this meeting will go very well, or this podcast will be the best recording I’ve ever made. I show up in a different way. Right. My whole energy, my body, my chemistry, everything. I show up even more confident, even more prepared, and even more alert. So many things happen. It’s very, very useful to me. Right. Or you could poke a hole and say, Bogumil, but it’s not true. You don’t know that. But it’s very useful. That’s the essence of your book. Am I on to something?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, but that thing that he said about, it’s useful to imagine it going really well. I’m a gymnast and I can picture myself right now doing the perfect flip on the high bar.
Bogumil
There you go.
Derek Sivers
That’s the idea that I grew up with as a musician, and I read this book called” The Inner Game of Tennis” that argued that. It talked about the the inner game, the relaxation, the trust and how musicians use that same approach for the inner game of music to practice and practice and practice, but then relax and get into the moment with your piece. Imagine yourself on stage performing this beautifully. What was surprising to me is that’s not necessarily the best way to approach it. What was his name? I forget the psychologist at New York University. I wrote an article about this. I know the URL. It’s sive.rs./zip it. Where Peter Gollwitzer, that was his name. Peter Gollwitzer at NYU did these tests and found that those who announced their intentions, who announced their goals and received the social reward from others acknowledging that they were telling you what they were going to do in the future. You were telling somebody what you were going to do in the future. Once you felt that social reward. You were satiated somewhat and now less motivated to go make it happen, to do the hard work necessary to actually learn Chinese or to actually run a marathon. If you tell somebody, “I’m going to run a marathon.” And your friends say, “Wow, man, that’s cool. I’m so jealous of you. I admire your spirit. Wow, that’s great man. You’re going to run a marathon. I’m proud that you’re doing this. Wow. You’re awesome.”
Derek Sivers
Now you’re less motivated to actually do it. And if you tell somebody I’m going to learn Chinese, they go, “Wow, man, you’re so smart. I wish I could be smart like you. Learning Chinese.” Well, you haven’t actually done anything yet, but you’ve felt some reward as if you had. And so what Peter Gollwitzer found is that announcing your goals makes them less likely to happen. So in some ways, you could say pessimism can be stronger than optimism in some cases. And for some people, it may just be that you hear this Peter Gollwitzer NYU study and you decide, “No, that’s not for me. I’m more inspired by telling everybody my goals. And I feel a strong sense of accountability to be congruent with what I’ve announced. This works better for me.” Or you can hear about the Peter Gollwitzer study and go, “Oh my God, wow, I’ve felt that many times when I go tell people about my goals, I’ve felt myself less motivated to go do the hard work to make it happen. Whoa.” So for you, this approach may work better and for that person, that approach may work better. This is all coming back to the custom tailored suit metaphor, where you’ve got to find what’s best for you and not just use other people’s clothes.
Bogumil
I love that, and it’s more nuanced than one would think and find what’s really useful to you. I immediately thought that if you start to believe that the disclosure of the goal will undermine your, you know, willingness to take the risk and actually deliver, then don’t disclose it. Like some people have rules that they actually don’t share in the investment profession. I know investors that buy a stock and don’t share it with anybody for many reasons. Not just that somebody could buy it, but the minute you say you bought it, you have this, you know, social proof and a social baggage with it that if you change your mind, you feel bad about it. So you’re going to hold on to a losing stock because other people know that you bought it and everybody knows, “Oh, it’s his stock. Why would he sell it?” So you have to choose the most useful way of dealing with that. But I think it’s fascinating to see what has worked for other people and then cherry pick the angle that works for you. I don’t think you can copy exactly what worked for Eli Manning, but you can see and realize, oh, this, this actually works for me, or this doesn’t work at all. I’m very light on the disclosure part.
Bogumil
I feel like some some goals are worth sharing just with a handful of people. I don’t have to post it anywhere, but if I accomplish it, then somebody asks, I’ll share it. But other than that, I feel motivated enough without getting, you know, the social reward of people already congratulating me on something I haven’t even done. I think it can lose its charm. This brings me to actions that you write about in the book. It’s a beautiful transition and I’m glad that you brought it up this way. You say see, “People’s motives are unknowable even to themselves.” Which is, I think I’m going to say it’s true. It sounds true to me, “Let go of the need for a reason. Ignore their explanations. The only true facts are their actions.” I absolutely love that. I think it’s very helpful to actually observe people’s actions instead of trying to analyze their motives and so on. Just see what they actually do and how they operate. Evaluating managements of companies that I invest in, I just want to know not what they told me. I’ll read it. Yeah, but what do you actually do? Especially in tough times. How do you manage this business in tough times? Just let me look at your actions.
Derek Sivers
Well, you must know, then, that Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a cute quote where he said, “Yeah, blah, blah blah. Show me your portfolio. Don’t tell me what you think is going to happen. Show me your portfolio. Then I will see what you actually believe in.”
Bogumil
I think the way we spoke before, how, you know the effect can be real of our beliefs. And here the actions are the only real thing. I think it’s very helpful because I think we spend too much time trying to analyze other people, and they might not even know why they do certain things.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, and there’s a story in the book maybe not worth diving into here. But in short neurologists have studied brains and found that things that we even believe for ourselves to be absolutely true. Like, say, the reason why you did something, especially explanations and reasons. Why did you get up to walk around the room? You think you know why you did that. You think you just needed to stretch your legs. But then you find out that no, actually there was a subliminal message that you were unaware of that made you do this. Derren Brown, the British magician, has a beautiful video that you can find on any video platform if you search Derren Brown “Subliminal advertising”. He did this great test where he hired a couple advertisers to meet with him at his office, and he sent a car to go pick them up from their office to bring them to his office. And then in his office, he said, “I’ve got an idea for a business. It’s a taxidermy business. That’s all I know. I want you to come up with the name, the logo and a slogan for my taxidermy business. But before you do, I’ve got this envelope sealed. I’m going to leave it under a weight here. I will not touch it. I’ll come back in an hour and see what you guys came up with.”
Derek Sivers
He came back an hour later. The advertising guys... And you got to watch them work on camera. The whole thing was recorded. You got to see their ideation, the ideas they came up with, they came up with said creature heaven. And it was a bear playing a harp. And and it said something like, “Where the best animals go to die.” And they presented their idea. And he said, “Gentlemen, I am so thrilled that you did this he said, “Would you mind looking at that envelope that’s been sitting next to you for an hour?” They opened up the envelope and it was, you know, creature heaven with a bear playing a harp. And wehere the best animals go to die. And they went, “What? How has that been sitting there? We came up with these ideas. How did you predict exactly what we’d come up with?” And at the end, he reveals how he did it. Is that as he had his car pick them up at their office.
Derek Sivers
He had placed subliminal messages on the road and in windows of shops in between their office and his, and he had his car drive a specific path. So just by placing subliminal images a bear playing a harp, a slogan, “Where the best creatures go to die.” Animal heaven, just by placing those images in shop windows between their office and his, he was able to control their thoughts that they thought they came up with. So over and over again, there’s so much proof that we don’t know why we do what we do. We don’t know why we had this idea. We lie to ourselves without realizing we’re lying. We tell ourselves, “Oh yeah, well, this is why I did this. This is why I had this for breakfast, or this is why I feel like leaving now. This is why I don’t like this person.” But those are probably not the real reasons. So therefore we can ignore them in others, we can ignore other people’s explanations, and we can ignore our own explanations. And when asked to give an explanation, you can sound like a nerdy philosopher and say, “There’s no knowing why we do anything. Who knows?”
Bogumil
So in this story, you had an actual magician manipulate the guests, the participants. Do you think there is and let’s use the word magician out there that actually speaks to us. I’m thinking of all the ideas that pop in your head and where the inspiration comes from. How do you look at it? There are moments where it feels like the ideas are meant to be heard by us, and we’re going to do with them whatever you want to do with them. I’ll mention a quick story. I was listening to a podcast and at the end of the podcast, the host had this monologue and he talks about Ulysses and the sirens. I’m sure you know the story, how he asked to be tied to the mast so he will not jump into the water and drown as the sirens are singing. And I had this image. He was talking about investing. But the next day I’m talking to a listener of my podcast, somebody I got to know. We’re talking about something, our first conversation, and he’s showing me a painting that he gave to another investor that he admires, and he pulls up the painting. And Derek, I’m not kidding. He pulls up the painting of Ulysses and the sirens the day after I listened to that podcast and I said, somebody wants me to hear a certain message because those things are coming back and coming back. And it was so random that he couldn’t just mention Ulysses and the sirens. He had to pull up the painting, put it in front of his camera so I can see it on the zoom call. It’s like it’s some magician out there making me see it. I don’t know where I’m going with it, but do you have some thoughts about how ideas come to us? They don’t seem to be as random as we think.
Derek Sivers
Okay. If you really want to nerd out on this a couple things, you might find it useful to think in spiritual terms that there’s an energy or an entity that is pulling the puppet strings that is guiding you this way. That might be a really useful way for you to think about this, to look for patterns and deduce intentions that might be leading you a certain way, that belief might lead you to take better actions or feel better. Like I forgot to mention this earlier, but when thinking about this subject and the importance of actions, we need to understand that at least in English, we don’t consider feeling at peace to be in action. But in a way it is. It is a result. It may just be that certain beliefs make you feel better. Even if they didn’t change your physical actions, it changed your internal state for the better. And you could say that that’s useful to feel at peace. But you deal in an industry, or you are in an industry that deals with randomness, and you know that true randomness sometimes creates more patterns than artificial randomness. Uh, and that sometimes these patterns happen. So just through randomness, you happened to think of one literary work the day before that literary work was mentioned to you. Wow, how cool that randomness works like that. That I could just randomly be talking about the book Island by Aldous Huxley today. And then maybe tonight you’re going to be in a bookstore and pass the book Island by Aldous Huxley.
Derek Sivers
You’re like, “Whoa, Derek just mentioned that a couple hours ago. What are the odds of that?” So some people take that question, “what are the odds of that?” and they enjoy thinking magically about it. They find it makes them feel alive or romantic or special, or it fills them with wonder to think magically, to think, “Whoa, what is the universe trying to tell me?” And that question itself might be useful to you, to say, what is the universe trying to tell me? And then you come up with an answer, and maybe that’s useful to you, but it may be something called apophenia, a fun word I learned. Which is finding patterns where none exist. It’s when your toast burns and you see the Virgin Mary in your burnt toast. Whereas it’s because you’re attuned, say, like a Catholic person might be, like, attuned to the image of the Virgin Mary, that they will see it where most other people would not. You could ask 1 billion people in India, “Does this toast resemble anything?” And 1 billion people would say no. But one Catholic person in Venezuela says, “Yes, this is the Virgin Mary.” Because she’s more attuned to that. Finding patterns where there might not necessarily be any might be not necessarily true, but might be really useful to you if it makes you feel more magical or wonder more. To me for some reason, I get more joy out of marveling at the randomness than I do out of marveling at the chance that it’s all divine.
Bogumil
Whatever word you want to use. But I was thinking, as I was listening to you, I had William Green on the show who wrote “Richer,Wiser, Happier”. And one of the ideas he brought up is that you can look at the world as if everything was a miracle, or as if nothing was a miracle, and it’s also just a belief, and whichever one was going to make you feel better or happier, or make you get out of bed and run out and have this podcast recording whatever it is, right? I kind of like to look at the world as if everything was a miracle. Isn’t it nicer? It works for me.
Derek Sivers
The Czech author Milan Kundera had that quote. He wrote a book about writing and he said, “People tease...” He used the word chide. I like the word tease, “People tease the novelist for conjuring situations of ridiculous circumstance.” And he said, “I tease the non authors for not noticing that situations of ridiculous circumstance are around us all the time.” So I personally get a greater joy from thinking that things are not a miracle. Is that how the phrase was put? Miracle. Okay, so for some people, the idea that things are not a miracle would like drain the joy from their life.” No, it’s not a miracle. It’s just chance. Yeah.”
Bogumil
But that’s not how you look at it.
Derek Sivers
But to me, for some reason, I’m like, “Whoa, that’s so cool. That randomness can make something that seems intentional. That’s amazing.” This idea, to me, fills me with more excitement and wonder and joy than the idea that it is literally a miracle. And I’m like, “Oh, there’s like entities controlling life.” I think it’s more exciting to think that it’s randomness creating patterns. How cool is that?
Bogumil
Have you ever been... Well, I know you’ve been to Grand Central, and if you walk up higher nowadays, I think the rush hour is different. But ten years ago, you would look and you would see people running in directions that made absolutely no sense. Somehow they don’t run into each other, which is a miracle, I think. And we all know because if you just looked at it as a martian, you just showed up and you see people in the building, beautiful building with a beautiful ceiling running in directions that make absolutely no sense. You would think this is madness, but you and I know that everybody is on a very clear, individual mission from an office to their home. And this just happens to be the space where they all meet. And they’re all those train tracks, and there’s a coffee stand and they’re all on a mission to pick up coffee, get a newspaper, run to the train. So if you don’t know what’s going on, you would say, “this is random chaos, but it’s a very well organized chaos, and every participant has a reason to be going on the path they’re going? I don’t know, I think... Yeah. Go ahead.
Derek Sivers
Like natural selection. Like Darwin’s proposal. That yeah, the chaos of individuals trying to get worms out of trees or pollinate flowers over many generations can create things that seem beautifully designed, that seem intelligently designed, even though it was just the result of chaos and self-interest.
Bogumil
The New York Stock Exchange these days, it’s a very quiet building with computers running things and a newscaster reporting what’s going on. But I was there also 20 years ago, and it was a very busy space with people actually running with paper tickets and trading, and it looked like a total chaos. But it’s just like Grand Central, everybody had a purpose and a reason and was executing a trade they were asked to do. So there are moments where, for an untrained eye, Something looks like chaos.
Derek Sivers
Dude, AI, even people working inside... Let’s say no, even the scientists, the computer scientists that are creating large language models say we don’t quite know why this is working. We have so many layers here in between the input layer and the output layer. And it’s doing so many things. We don’t quite understand how it’s coming up with Python code that works. That there are some people like seeing the Virgin Mary in burnt toast, that look at that and say, “It’s alive, it’s alive, it has intention.” And there’s somebody else that looks at that and says, “No, it doesn’t.” But isn’t that amazing that a computer program with just many layers of neural nets, or whatever you want to call them, are coming up with words that make somebody cry or make you think that it’s falling in love with you. And then what does that say about life itself? You know, anyway, I’m just realizing I was not expecting this conversation to go there, but I’m just realizing the other implications of this idea of finding patterns or prescribing or seeing miracles where some people see none and may be choosing to see life as a miracle, or choosing to see AI as a miracle, or choosing to see evolving biology as a miracle versus not. That for some people seeing it as not a miracle is sad, and for some people, seeing it as not a miracle is exciting.
Bogumil
I wanted to move on to the next question, but I’ll share one thing that I popped in my head as I’m listening to you. If you took an iPhone from today and put it in the hands of somebody in 1924, which is actually something that one of my guests brought up today or yesterday when we spoke. They would think that this is a miracle, using this language of the last few minutes of our conversation. But you and I know that it’s technology, it’s software, hardware and building on on decades of experimentation. But it’s not a miracle. It’s a machine. It’s doing things it’s supposed to do. It can be a calculator, it can be a flashlight, but it can be taking calls, making calls. It can send messages, take pictures. It’s a tool, right? But in 1924, I mean, I’m not going to even mention like 1524 in the wrong place on Earth you would be in real trouble holding a device like this. Right, so it all depends also on the historical context, maybe what we see as miracles today would be something down the road that we understand. A simple, you know, weather climate, hurricane coming. These days we know that the hurricane will be in the Caribbean seven days ahead of time. Do we know how big? We don’t know. Do we know the exact direction? No, but it’s not a surprise that it’s coming. They’ve been watching it since it started forming over Africa, when it picked up the dust from the desert. And it’s been floating all the way across the Atlantic to come to the Caribbean. Right, we know that. Now 200 years ago, the hurricane shows up. It looks like an unwelcome miracle. I don’t want to tire this topic to death, but the more we know and the more we understand, and I think maybe it’s down the line of the belief that you’re sharing is that fewer things will prove to be miracles. Maybe we’re bursting some bubbles here, but...
Derek Sivers
Demystify.
Bogumil
Demystify.
Derek Sivers
Okay, so I love this word demystify. So I like that at least in English, that both spellings are relating. So missed, like mystery and mist like foggy haze. This idea that when you demystify it helps you look through to reveal the mystery or to reveal the source of what seems like a mystery, to make known what was unknown, or to see through the mist more clearly. I think one of the most useful things we can do for kids and I say kids, I mean, anybody learning something, actually. So let me take away the age limit there. Well, something that’s great to do for learners is to demystify something. So I don’t think it’s just nepotism that makes the kids of Hollywood actors and producers go into the business of making Hollywood movies because the process has been demystified for them, having grown up inside of it. They can see how movies get made in a real, concrete way that this person calls this person. They pitched an idea to somebody. This person has the budget, they make this happen. And you know, this person knows how to make this. And they got the people with the cameras and the script and they make it happen. Whereas for a person far outside of that, it is mystified. It is like, “Oh my God, that’s an amazing movie. That movie is magic. I have no idea how they would do that. It’s just magic to me how that movie gets made.”
Derek Sivers
But for somebody inside it, it’s not. Same thing with computer programming. I think it’s really useful to demystify computer programming. So it’s not just, “Oh, I don’t know, the computer is doing this thing.” But to understand why it’s doing that. And then even servers themselves, the computers themselves, that dish up that web page to you or hold the database. Well, let’s demystify that here. Here’s a piece of hardware. You stick this motherboard here, you stick the CPU here, and now it does nothing. But if you install Linux on it, or OpenBSD or Mac or Windows or something like that, well, that’s an operating system that does these things. Now you can install a database, and then you have a web server that receives HTTP requests and see it responds with this and that. So now you understand how this is working. It’s demystifying that. So Darwin in a way demystified the idea of why are some animals like this and some animals like that? Instead of leaving it as like I don’t know. He turned it into a process that demystifies how this happens. And I think what’s fascinating about the investment world that you’re in is that you can demystify how even that price. You said Coca-Cola is $45. You understand how that happens.
Derek Sivers
Or why some people’s portfolios go up and some people’s are explode and others don’t explode. I should say collapse, because explode could mean either direction. Demystifying is so useful. But again, there might be some things that you want to leave mystified. Maybe romance, maybe Hollywood movies. Maybe you’d get less enjoyment out of great movies if you knew the nuts and bolts of how they were made. Music, I mean, oh my God, I grew up as a musician. To me, somebody can hear a song playing behind us in a cafeteria as we’re talking. And to them it’s like, “Oh my God, that song. I just love that song.” Unfortunately, I went to music school and I’m very, very trained in music. So sometimes it’s a little sad that listening to music is demystified for me. Whenever I’m listening to music, I know exactly how that recording was made, how that person wrote that song, what their influences were, why that chord changes the way it is. Because I know who that songwriter listened to and where they got that chord change. And I even know what equipment they used. And it’s like, it’s completely demystified for me, which I find useful for making music, because then if something’s demystified for you, you know how to do it yourself. But it might feel less magical because something’s feel nice to leave them feeling magical.
Bogumil
I love it, and I was I was thinking how... And I didn’t know if I wanted to share it, but basically, sometimes you don’t want to know how the sausage is made. I think that’s the bottom line. I think that’s the best way to put it. I want to ask you about us and the world. I wrote it down to myself reading your book, and there’s a quote you say, “You are what you pretend to be. You’re outside doesn’t need to match your insight.” How do you think about that?
Derek Sivers
If you combine all the stuff we’ve been talking about that you don’t know your own intentions. I mean, sorry, you don’t know why you do things. Other people can tell you why they do things, but they might not know for sure themselves. So it doesn’t really matter what they say. Then all that’s left are the actions. The actions that somebody is doing are true. That action is happening. The reason why they’re doing it, the background behind it, the predicted implications, the moral judgments of that action, all that other stuff is not necessarily true. The action itself is true. That’s the only thing that’s true. It’s just the physical action. So then through that lens or in that spirit, your actions are all that matters. So if you feel that you are pretending to do something, that’s just your bullshit story to yourself, that what you’re doing is not authentic. I’m just pretending to be nice. I’m actually feeling inhospitable inside but my actions will be generous. I’m pretending to be generous right now. Inside, I’m not feeling it. Well, you see, what’s the real thing there? If you’re pretending to be generous, then you are being generous. If you pretend to be social. You are being social. Even if you’re an extremely shy introvert, just pretending for 1 hour or 15 minutes in a cocktail party, you’re going to go into a cocktail party for 15 minutes because somebody says you have to do it, and somebody’s going to be upset if you don’t. So you decide, all right, I’m going to go into this thing for 15 minutes.
Derek Sivers
I’ll pretend to be social and charming and interested. And by doing that for 15 minutes, you were charming and social and interested. Well, interest is a tough one, because you might even be pretending to be interested, but it still has the effect of somebody who’s actually interested. And I think that’s something that was interesting about that wave of books. About 15 years ago, there were a few books in a row that sold well, about pick up artists and dating strategies. And I read one of them. And it was fascinating because it’s a book about how to pretend to be an interesting, interested person. And I just thought, wow, this is fascinating because by pretending to be, some people can say, “Oh, that’s such disgusting bullshit. Somebody’s pretending.” And maybe it is disgusting in its intention to just get the girl into bed, which let’s forget about that less admirable or less useful part of it. But the interesting bit for me was that just by pretending to be interested, you become interested. You can actually go up to a stranger and pretend to be interested in their life or what’s on their mind. And through the process of pretending, it becomes self-fulfilling. You become interested by pretending to be interested. And by pretending to be kind, you are being kind. And by pretending to be a good person and doing good actions and being generous, you are being generous. I find the subject fascinating. So I butchered an old Kurt Vonnegut quote. I don’t remember exactly how he said it, but my version is, you are whatever you pretend to be.
Bogumil
I was thinking, listening to you. This is the essence of growth and change and learning, right? You go surfing for the first time like I did not long ago, a few years ago. And the first time you could say you’re pretending to be surfing, I fall, I look miserable, I’m humbled by every fall. I’m pretending. But eventually my competence catches up with the reality of me wanting to be surfing. And eventually you become what you want it to be. And you know, there’s this talk of authentic self these days quite a bit. How we pick up on people being authentic. You’re shaking your head. I’m curious how you think about it. But eventually, even in an easy, flowing life, you would like the insight to be matching the outside, right? You are confident and be confident or you became confident through pretending to be confident, but eventually you are confident. You pretended that you can speak English. Eventually you can speak English. I actually memorized all those lines. I don’t know what I’m saying right now, right?
Derek Sivers
It’s a great example.
Bogumil
There’s a comedian, Kathy Molly, who is French, born in Algeria, and he was giving you know, him. You know who I’m talking about?
Derek Sivers
Jerry Seinfeld had him on his Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee show once.
Bogumil
But he was very famous in France and then moved to New York. And I actually met him at an event in New York. But one of his jokes and one of his stand ups was halfway through his performance. He says, “I memorized all of it. I don’t know what I’m saying. I just pause when people laugh.” And people laughed and I thought, how brilliant is that? Because you could be pretending that you speak the language. How would they know that you speak it or not? Right, I don’t know, I thought of it looping back to your linguistics and translation that we started with. Derek, I want to ask you about something serious towards the end of your book you talk about death and reframing death, and I’d love to bring up this topic. It might be a hard topic to bring up, but it’s something we don’t talk about easily. And you propose some useful beliefs about that topic that might help us reframe how we think and talk about death.
Derek Sivers
Oh, did I? That chapter was added at the very last minute, after I’d been working on the book for two years and had gone through many rounds of editing, and I was basically done.
Bogumil
You had a companion?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. And the whole time I was working on it. Right. Let’s say the last year I was working on it, my boy’s pet mouse was on the table next to me. And mice usually live to be 1 or 2 years old. But she was three and a half, so she had outlived her siblings by a whole year. So this poor mouse like mice are social creatures. They say, we will not adopt you one mouse because mice need companions. So we adopted three mice, three sisters. They lived their whole life together. But then two of them died within a month of each other at the usual age of two. And then this one mouse held on for an additional year and a bit. And it was so sad that like so, I just kept her next to me on the desk. It’s like, well, I don’t want to go buy another mouse just to keep her company because, I mean, what is she going to last another week? Another month? And then like every month went by and oh my God, this poor little mouse is still alive and lonely. And like my heart went out to her. I just felt so much empathy or sadness in a way that she was still alive and all alone, just sitting in this little Tupperware container next to my computer screen. And then just as I was finishing the book, she died, and God, I sobbed and I sobbed harder than I’ve cried in my adult life. Let’s just say that’s the hardest I have cried in my adult life is that day that she died.
Derek Sivers
And it’s as I was literally sitting there, like typing out the final notes of the book and finishing, and I thought, “Wow, this is an interesting example of useful, not true, that it’s useful for me to project peace onto her right now.” I see that the last year of her life, she was so kind of like arthritic and looked unhappy. And I was telling you that this poor, lonely mouse that needs companions and has none and has outlived her siblings by a whole year. I was projecting sadness onto her then. And then when she died, she looked relaxed and peaceful. And so I was projecting peace onto her. And I was thinking, “Well, that’s not necessarily true. Maybe I’ve got it backwards. Maybe she was really happy when alive, and maybe she’s really miserable as dead.” But it’s useful for me to think that she’s at peace now. Doesn’t that feel nice to think, “Oh, she’s finally at peace. She’s no longer in pain. She’s no longer lonely.” I was thinking, “Wow. So even death, we keep doing it.” We prescribe or we give meanings to death that are useful for us to believe because it brings us peace. Or it helps us try to make sense with the unknown. And so I was thinking, yeah, that’s one of the first things that ancient cultures do, apparently is put meaning onto death or, you know, the oldest recorded meanings of things or the meanings they put onto death.
Bogumil
The history of burial ceremonies going back long before we had written word, we were organized in small societies. I want to ask you about your definition of success, but I want to bring up a question. So in your book, you share a list of questions. It’s a link that I understand that you keep on adding. But there’s one question that I want to ask you. That’s one of your questions. And the question is what have you strongly wanted for the longest time? And I’m very curious, what was it for you? You’ve done so much in your life. We haven’t brought it up. Cd Baby founder .com bubble. Very successful on so many fronts. I missed the whole introduction, which I’ll record separately of the things you’ve accomplished and obviously a best selling author. But what was the one thing that you strongly wanted for the longest time?
Derek Sivers
Do you know yours?
Bogumil
There were many things.
Derek Sivers
I’ll tell you mine. If you tell me one.
Bogumil
I’ll tell you the biggest one that... I had a dream of living in New York at some point and working for an investment firm. I was a student in Brussels. I was born in Poland, went to school in Brussels and Paris, and I picked up one up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch. And I made up my mind, Derek. I have to be an investor and I had no connections. You talked about nepotism and kids in Hollywood. The investment profession rhymes in some way. Not exactly, but it’s not that easy to get in if you’re an outsider. So I wasn’t born in the US. I never went to any school in the US, and here I was trying to apply to an investment firm in New York City, and I applied to probably hundreds of them, and a couple responded, but one was serious and I got to meet one of the partners and he said, “Come this summer and work with us.” And I spent 11 years with that firm. And here I was in New York a couple of months later, sitting at the beginning of a long conference room table, and I looked around and I thought, “I’m recommending a stock, and I’m the only person that never went to school in this country. This is not my mother tongue. And I just got here three months ago.” And I thought you could only do it in New York and America. And I don’t think of any other place immediately at the time that I could do that, where I was so welcomed and embraced and allowed to take risks. That brought me here, having this conversation with you.
Derek Sivers
Cool. Thanks for that. Are you trilingual? You speak fluent French too?
Bogumil
I do. I went to school in Paris.
Derek Sivers
Have you seen the movie “The Double Life of Veronique”?
Bogumil
A long time ago. A long time ago.
Derek Sivers
Oh, okay.
Bogumil
Yeah. I would have to refresh my memory. What about it?
Derek Sivers
Oh, because it’s a Polish French movie. It’s half in Polish, half in French. And I just found out last month from a film composer when I mentioned that film and he said, “Well, do you know the meaning of her death?” And I said, “Wait, what?” And he said, because in one third of the way through the movie, the main character dies. And then basically her spiritual identical twin picks up in Paris and continues with great sadness. And he said the director moved from Poland to France, and her death signified his death as a Polish filmmaker into being a French filmmaker. I was like, “Oh my God.” I started like crying when he told me that. I was like, “It’s so sad.” Like, yeah. Anyway.
Bogumil
Very powerful.
Derek Sivers
It’s one of my favorite movies of all time. I just love it so much. Anyway, what have I wanted for the longest time? Is to be homeless, is to be fully nomadic and to live around the world ongoing. That’s the path I was on in 2010, when I met my now ex and told her, this is the path I’m on. And she said, count me in, let’s go. But then that was in theory, not in practice. She didn’t like it in practice. She said, “I hate moving.” And then she got pregnant. And so for 12 years now, my boy is 12, maybe for 13, maybe 14 years now. For 14 years now, I have wanted for the longest time to be fully nomadic but have not yet done it. So I continue to want it for the longest time.
Bogumil
New Zealand is home for the time being, I can tell.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Bogumil
Derek, I could keep you here all day, but I want to ask you about your definition of success. You’ve done so much. So many accomplishments. And I’m thinking that your definition must have evolved over time. But how do you think about it today?
Derek Sivers
Sorry. My definition is kind of mundane and boring, but I think success is just achieving what you set out to do, and that’s it. If you set out to live a quiet life with a dog and two kids, and you successfully live a quiet life with a dog and two kids, then you are a success by your own measure. If you set out to be a billionaire and you become only a hundred millionaire. Well then you are not a success by your own measure. And I think that’s part of the danger of setting huge goals, is that it might objectively get you further than setting low goals, but it might make you feel worse about them.
Bogumil
How do you think about being directionally on the right path instead of having a destination? I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and as I’m listening to you, I had a discussion with somebody about the destination versus a direction. So let’s say that you’re on a boat, you’re sailing, and you know what your destination will be for the night. You’re going to be at that port. That’s a destination, right? But throughout the day, your direction swings left, right. You’re tacking, there are winds, you move around, you go around the squall. You go around an island. So your direction keeps on changing. But more or less, you know you’re going northeast. And I think in life, we’re obsessing about the destination, “I have to be in New York. I have to work for this kind of firm. I have to have a corner office and I have to have this.” But then we realize if we had a more relaxed way of looking at it and thought, “I’m going more or less northeast for the next 12 hours, once I get closer, I see the lights. I’ll go into the port.” But the directional way of looking at things, maybe it’s more helpful than saying I have to make it there. You said becoming a billionaire. I mean, if you make it to 950, I’ll still get you a bottle of champagne.
Derek Sivers
By the way, I think it’s no coincidence that as an investor, you chose northeast. Northeast is the direction we like to see charts go up and to the right.
Derek Sivers
So, William Bernstein, in one of his books on investing, made the comparison of a man walking his dog at approximately four miles an hour heading northeast. But if you were to watch the dog, you’d see that the dog stops and starts and goes down and left and and halts at that fire hydrant for a while and dashes off to the left before going to the right. But if you stop watching the dog and just generally look at the direction the man is walking his dog, you’ll see. So he’s saying it’s unwise to look at the dog and try to make any calls. So why to not watch the daily investing news? Because they’re watching the dog, not the the man. My only thought on this is that you need to ask yourself if on each particular thing you’re doing or reflecting on, is it a destination or a process? Is the destination the point or not? It might be the process. In the book, I make the comparison between the explorer and a leader that for an explorer, the exploration itself is the point. They do not have a destination in mind when they are exploring. They’re looking for new destinations. But then when the explorer finds a suitable harbor that would make a good new city or a good port and reports back to the Queen. Well, then the Queen appoints a leader who goes there with a very narrow minded.
Bogumil
Probably.
Derek Sivers
“This is the destination. This is where we’re going. We’re going to set up a new port here at this place. Here’s exactly how we’re going to do it. This is the plan. No wavering.” And a leader is not an explorer. He has the blinders on. He’s got a goal on that destination. There are things we’re doing in life where we might even say or think we have a destination, but actually, the path is more of the point. We like wanting, we like pursuing, the wanting and the pursuing might be the point, but there are other things in life where the destination really is the point that you just want that end result. And in that case, it can be really helpful to ask yourself, “Am I going straight to that point? Or what is the most direct way to that point? Because maybe I was planning on going all the way around South America to get from this side of Mexico to that side of Mexico. Maybe the more direct path is to get off this fucking boat and get in the car and just drive east.” It can completely change your strategy. I like that little metaphor I just came up with. Get out of your boat. It can completely change your strategy if the destination is the only point. And you realize that you were doing a an inefficient strategy. So you got to ask yourself if sailing around South America is the point, or if getting from west to east is the point.
Bogumil
Let’s all be explorers.
Derek Sivers
Not necessarily.
Bogumil
No?
Derek Sivers
Sometimes the destination is the point. There’s so many times where say... I’m sorry, but this comes up in programming a lot, where I’m trying to make an app that asks people I know where they live. I could use 100,000 lines of boilerplate code to do that, or all I really need to do is to populate city, state, country in my database. I can do that in like 20 lines of code. I don’t need all of that. So with programming, I’m constantly saying, “Well, what’s the real point? What’s the real destination? Let’s just get there.” Even in my writing, the real point is, say, for this last book, I’m trying to help the reader see that the things they hold as true, or that other people say are true, are not necessarily true, and therefore open to reframing. I could take a thousand pages to do that. But if I can do that in 90 pages, I think it’s better for everyone and more effective. It’ll reach more people. If it’s a 90 page book instead of a thousand page book. So it’s to everyone’s benefit. If I try to persuade you of that mindset in a more direct way.
Bogumil
I love the sound of that. It sounds like it took an explorer to come down to that 90 page end product. I think the two had to coexist. You went on an exploration to take us as a leader on this journey where we were on today.
Derek Sivers
I’m so sorry to say a quick goodbye. Somebody knocking on my door right now. So we’ll have a quick goodbye. Bye audience. Anybody listening, go to my website and send me an email. I love talking about this subject. Go to sive.rs and email me and say hello and.
Bogumil
Thank you so much for today.
Derek Sivers
Thanks.