Big Mistake
host: Miriam Chancellor
mistakes, personal growth, minimalism, investment advice
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watch: (download)
Transcript:
Mirriam
So Derek Sivers, when I say big mistake, what comes to mind?
Derek Sivers
Haha. I have a tendency to overthink things. I’ve gotten great benefit and joy in the past from diving into things that seem simple and trying to get underneath them, going, “Well, what’s the whole point of that anyway?” You know, and that can just be for day to day questions like a privacy policy on your website. You think, well, what’s the point of that anyway? Why even have that? I think it’s maybe my minimalist tendency to not have anything I don’t really need. So I actually spent a few hours thinking of this question of what’s your biggest mistake? Because I don’t think that this interview was about me personally, or listeners are tuning in to learn about Derek. I think that listeners are probably tuning in, I’m guessing, to try to avoid a big mistake in their own life. So they figure, “Oh, I’ll listen to a podcast about big mistakes in order to avoid making big mistakes in my life.” What do you think so far.
Mirriam
Yeah, let’s roll with that. I think that’s probably close enough or they just want to hear Derek Sivers because he’s awesome and they want to hear about him. But carry on. Carry on.
Derek Sivers
Probably not. I mean, everybody’s way more interested in themselves than they are in any of us.
Mirriam
Yeah.
Anna
Well, you say that. So I had an issue, and I was torn with this interview because Miriam was very excited and she’s the biggest fan of yours. And then I started thinking to myself, well, I know of you from the Tim Ferriss Show, but I haven’t done a deep dive of research, and my ethos is always, I just want to know the person as they are today. And the issue with research is that I would know things and anticipate answers, which would take away the joy for me of discovering the person as they are today. So I had to really reflect on that, whether I was going to listen to everything he produced, read the books and go from there, I decided I would, and I am actually really pleased I did, because I hope that it means that the questions and the way that you discussed, I have questions to expand on points which you just brushed over, and I want to get more out of it from that. So I was glad I did that.
Derek Sivers
All right. Cool. Thanks for that. I love the the meta. I do that with my friends too when we get into the the about stuff. That’s funny. I found out that the word meta means about in Greek, that that’s the origin. I never knew that. So all right, the bullet points I wrote down when thinking about this, like my little notes to self. And again, I never usually do this like bringing notes into a podcast. But you guys asked a really interesting question. So let’s see how many I have here. Eight bullet points, distinguish between an accident and a mistake. A mistake has bad consequences that cause harm. For example, having my son was an accident, but not a mistake because we weren’t planning on having kids. So he was an accident, but not a mistake because the consequences have been wonderful. So distinguishing between a bad decision and a bad outcome. Mistakes are how we learn. Therefore we should make more mistakes, and mistakes of omission are harder to see, what you should have done in a case where you did nothing or something didn’t happen, and maybe that was the mistake if something didn’t happen. And your follow up question about what’s the worst advice you’ve ever received? I have two ideas from that. Is that noticing when advice is not useful because it doesn’t make you take action, and also separating a business mistake from personal joy.
Derek Sivers
So I had a really tough time with your question, because I know that this podcast is mostly focused on business, so people probably talking less about, you know, a failed marriage and maybe more about a failed business decision. But there are times where I made a business decision that lost a lot of money or cost a lot of money, but it made me happier. So I wouldn’t consider that a mistake because I had no investors. The business was just me. I wasn’t doing it for anyone else and if it made me happier then it was not a mistake for me. Even though objectively, somebody could look at that and say, “That was a business mistake.” And I’d say, “Sure, okay, it was a business mistake, but it was a Derek success.” So that’s what I got so far. But we could start to dive into the bullet list, or you guys asked me to prepare something to read. So I’ve actually got a whole chapter of my book. Sorry and when I say chapter, my chapters are short. I have a whole chapter in my book specifically about mistakes, so I’ll leave it up to you as the curator and guide of the show. Do you want to lead in with a reading about mistakes, or do you want to save that for later? And we’ll dive into bullet points?
Anna
I’ve got some questions already of what you just said, where you said you lost money and it made you happier. Is that only because you had money? Because I would argue that if you don’t have money and you don’t have a backup plan, and you’ve got children that rely on you and a mortgage and a house and you’ve got lots to lose, that losing money might not make you happy and it might not be an ultimate success.
Derek Sivers
Okay, so fractions have two numbers. There’s the number on top that they call the numerator I think and the number on the bottom which is the denominator. And a lot of people focus on that top number which if we convert fractions into money then let’s say the top number is what you have. And the bottom number is what you need. So your real wealth is like what you have divided by what you need. So my whole adult life I’ve grown up around people that need very little. I went straight from college into a circus where for ten years I was a ringleader in a circus, and the people I was surrounded by for over ten years were professional jugglers and magicians and musicians and face painters and artists and my girlfriend of many, many years. I mean, we were practically married, came from a family where her parents had never had a job. They were kind of like 60s hippies that did various odd jobs, and their cost of living was under $2,000 a month, and they put her through college that way. And these were the people I was around. So I think my bottom number has always been small, and I’ve always focused on making it as small as possible. And I’ve never really cared about that top number. Because if you think of, you know, if we’re getting mathematical, say the top number is 100. Well, 100 over 1000 is less than one. You need more than you have. But if you reduce that bottom number so you’ve got 100 over 60, then 100 over ten, then 100 over one, maybe even like 100 over 0.001 where if you need very little, suddenly that top number of 100 is huge because you need so little. So I’ve always focused on the bottom number and never really cared about the top number. Even when I had like literally $2,000 in my bank account. It was like, well, all right, well, let’s find out how I can live on $200 a month. And I’ve been focused on that ever since I was a teenager. So I’ve always been thinking this way.
Mirriam
It’s funny how, you know, there’s this idea of the hedonic treadmill and once you earn a certain amount that “warrants” a certain lifestyle, and that people, when they increasingly earn more, they increasingly have the lifestyle to match that. And the obvious danger that comes with that. I had an experience recently. Very recently, my husband and I recently got back from Sunshine Coast, where we had the most blissful two months in the sun in this beautiful apartment. And coming back, if you think that we, you know, set aside a certain amount of money to afford that experience, coming back to our life now has been a bit of a down bus, if I’m allowed to say that. And I just wonder, you know, maybe that relates to what you’re saying about money, that once you start experiencing the niceties, you know, the nice things of life, it does something about your baseline level of happiness and satisfaction. What’s the book I’m reminded of? I think it’s “Stumbling on Happiness”. The authors I’ve forgotten. You’re familiar with the book?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, very. Yeah.
Mirriam
Yeah. Well, you correct me if I’m wrong. This idea that we we have a baseline happiness. And the more experiences you add to that makes it harder to almost go back to ground zero, because now your baseline happiness has gone up a few levels.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I really took that to heart. I loved that book, “Stumbling on Happiness” and I read it at a real key time in my life. And so I took it like a a mini Bible, you know, I was like, “All right, this is how I’m going to live my life.” You know, therefore, if these findings are true and I’m going to assume that this guy knows what he’s talking about, Daniel Gilbert, that’s his name. If these things are true, therefore, I’m going to focus on this bottom half of that fraction and my friends give me shit about it, you know. Sold my company for a lot of money, yes. Gave it all away, yes. But also, like I refuse to fly business class. I fly economy, even if it’s a 27 hour flight to London or whatever from New Zealand. I’ll still just sit in the economy seat and my friends go, “You’re crazy, you can afford it.” I’m like, “Yeah, but if I use that argument, then I’m going to acclimate to that level of comfort and I’m always expecting things to turn bad.” Go ahead. Yeah.
Anna
Is there not a little bit of martyrdom there? I could be comfortable and I could sleep for for 24 hours on this flight, but I’m choosing to be uncomfortable.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Deliberately. When I...
Mirriam
Maybe there’s joy. Maybe there is satisfaction and enjoyment in the the stoic approach, if you will.
Derek Sivers
People go camping, right?
Anna
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
And part of the joy in camping is to show yourself that you can do it. That I’m going to toss this backpack on my back and walk five days in nature and sleep in a little dark hut. And I can, like to show that I can be happy in a log cabin in a sleeping bag. And so it’s like that with life. It’s like you constantly have the chance to show yourself every day, I could choose the luxury, but I’m going to show myself that I don’t need that luxury to be happy. And so you choose the other path. Say anybody who’s ever wanted to not be fat has chosen to not get the second dessert, even though you could afford to eat two desserts. And it would be nice you don’t, because you know that ultimately you’d be happier in the long run if you don’t. It’s like shallow happy versus deep happy. Shallow happy might be buying a first class seat, “Fuck it. Take a $15,000. I’ll be comfortable for ten hours.” Long term happy is not spending the $15,000 and showing yourself that you don’t need it to be happy.
Mirriam
Yeah. And I can’t help but actually the term I’m reminded of here is stealth wealth. And I think that comes from the book “The Millionaire Next Door”. And if you think about the really genuinely wealthy people in the world, we don’t even notice them because they’re wearing the unbranded t-shirts and the flip flops and, you know, they drive the five years ago, solid German car, but with no bells and whistles. It’s the people that are wearing the brands and donning themselves with the latest and greatest things that are often not actually seriously wealthy. And personally, I can’t help but think, this is possibly a flaw in my own character, but oh, they’re the type of person to want to be seen to be wearing those or driving those things. Because if you strip it back and think, if no one else was here on earth except you, how would you live?
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Mirriam
And I think for a lot of people, it would be very different to the way that we live and operate. And actually, that’s a question that I sometimes ask myself when I’m worried too much about my hair or what I’m wearing or whatever. I say this with a smirk on my face because before Anna and I dialed in, I was faffing with trying to do my hair properly. But I think that’s a helpful question to ask is, you know, what would you do differently if you were the only person on earth?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I feel bad when I see somebody with an obvious mental disorder yelling at ghosts on the street. And I feel bad when you see those people that are like hoarders that have filled their old car with wrappers and cans and it’s filled to the brim, and you just think like, oh, it’s a mental disorder to be a hoarder. And I feel the same for the people that are, as you say, like out there with the look at me Lamborghini and whatnot. It looks to me like a mental disorder or something. I feel bad for them. It looks like a raging insecurity, just shouting their insecurities to the world. And I just feel bad for them.
Anna
And you might relate to this point that I feel bad when people will say, “I am too busy.” Because I heard you say, well, I’ve often said when someone says I am too busy, it means their life is out of control.
Derek Sivers
Yep. I haven’t heard that referenced in a long time. Thank you. I’d almost forgotten about that. Yeah, when somebody says my...
Anna
My past life as a lawyer means when I decide to deep dive, I fully and utterly deep dive and can now requote things.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. When somebody says, “Oh, my God, I’m so busy.” It’s just somebody admitting that they’re out of control of their own life. It’s just like, I can’t control this car I’m driving. It’s crazy, I think, “Oh, that’s a problem. You need to work on that.”
Mirriam
And also I think there’s probably a... What’s the word. We put a lot of emphasis into being busy as a sign of things are going well for me as well. So I wonder if we need to almost remove the idea of productivity with busyness, you could probably be still be quite productive without being busy.
Derek Sivers
Yeah,
Anna
Absolutely. When anyone says to me, “Oh, I’m too busy.” I’ll always say, oh, you mean it’s not a priority.
Derek Sivers
Right. Yeah, yeah. Because you always make time.
Anna
Exactly, exactly.
Mirriam
And unless Anna doesn’t like you, Derek. Then you will quickly be on the back foot. By the way, it’s an honor... I made out that I feel like it’s an honor that you’re here, but actually, it’s an honor for you that Anna is gracing you with her time. She is very ruthless with who she spends time with. And if she doesn’t like you, you get the cut. An what was it the other day, Anna? You were like, “I give someone if I meet with them 15 minutes and then I will make up some reason to leave if they haven’t got my attention by then.” So, Derek, I think we’ve been recording for more than 15 minutes.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I made the cut.
Mirriam
You’ve made the cut. You’ve made the cut. Hey, let’s go back to big mistake. So, Anna, what was your take? Would you rather deep dive into one of those bullet points? And I think we’ve already started to do that. Or should we jump to the book? What’s your take?
Anna
Well, with the big mistakes, is there a story to share?
Derek Sivers
Okay, for each of these, there’s a story. Okay so look, the distinguishing between an accident and a mistake. I guess I told a micro story that I never planned on having a kid. In fact, I had deliberately decided I don’t want kids. Let’s not have kids, “Okay? Let’s not have kids.” And then, “Oops, I’m pregnant.” “What do you mean, oops? We decided no kids.” And so we had a kid. And at first I was like, “Oh my God, this is the worst thing ever.” And then before he was born, I succumbed to my fate. And I’m so glad I did because it’s the best. It’s the greatest. It’s so wonderful. And so I’ve even told him he’s 12 now. So we were talking about this. I said, “You know, you were an accident, but you weren’t a mistake.” So like, never...
Anna
Is it an accident. I’m always challenged when someone says that to me. Because if you’re saying that this is the Immaculate Conception, then maybe. But otherwise people choose to do something and there are consequences when people choose an action and is something a true accident? Because you could say, “Oh, I was on the pill, I was using condoms. I barely even did anything.” And then this happens. Is that actually an accident? I do discuss this a lot.
Mirriam
You don’t have to answer that question, by the way.
Derek Sivers
Okay, good. So then yeah, thinking about a mistake being something that has consequences that cause harm. The reason I had such a problem. Answering your big question of, “Derek, what was your biggest mistake.” Is that I love my life. And I’m just sitting here happy, living my best life and just thoroughly happy with it. Trying really hard. I mean, I sat there for an hour and a half in my diary going, like, “Let me try to replay my whole life. Have there been any mistakes that have caused harm?” I mean, there were things that I didn’t intend and there were things that caused like, say, short term harm, but then long term gain, you know. And I can’t wholeheartedly call that a mistake. I’d be lying for the sake of entertaining your audience if I were to call that a mistake. So it’s tough that I don’t feel I’ve been harmed by things I did in the past. Although I did come up with one. Do you want to hear my answer so we can just get it out?
Anna
Yes, definitely. Okay. Yes.
Derek Sivers
So shifting gears for a minute now we’re just getting into, like, businessy nuts and bolts. The one thing, after an hour and a half of thinking that I can wholeheartedly say that was a mistake, both personally and professionally in businessy is that I had 85 employees, and out of those 85 people, 82 of them were quite happy with their job.
Derek Sivers
Three of them were not. But those three people were very loud, they were let’s say trolls inside the company. That slowly went and enacted the metaphor of the rotten apple spoils the barrel. So those three unhappy people went around all the employees very actively saying, “What don’t you like about your job?” And people would say, “I like my job.” And they’d say, “But if you didn’t like something, what would it be?” “Oh, no, I’m happy.” “But if you had to think of something you don’t like, what would it be?” “Well, I don’t know. I guess I wish I could bring my dog to work.” We need our dogs at work. Like, you know, there are some personality types that are just the the rabble rousers. I recently rewatched the Spike Lee movie called “Do the Right Thing” from, I think, 1990 or so, and there was this one character named Buggin Out that just goes around the neighborhood like trying to pick fights, like trying to find something to get mad about and then telling everybody else in the neighborhood, “You should be mad about this.” And everybody’s looking at him like, “Buggin Out. Just shut up, man.” And he’s like, “No, you should be mad about this.”
Derek Sivers
And I had three of those in my company. So my biggest mistake in hindsight was not firing those three people. I was trying to be nice. I was trying to be compassionate. I was trying to think of everything as my problem, like my fault, I should say. I was trying to think of everything is my fault. Like, if these three people are unhappy, maybe I’m doing something wrong. And in hindsight, looking back, those three people just weren’t happy in their life. They weren’t happy in their current situation, and they were trying to blame me for that, when in fact, I think they just needed to move on and do something else. They weren’t happy in this situation. It was my biggest mistake that I let them stay there and rot the culture of the company, which grew so bad that eventually I’d say 70 out of the 85 people decided that they were also really unhappy, thanks to the efforts of these three people. And that’s what destroyed the company’s culture, which is why I basically shut down the company in the end, just decided to sell it and walk away. Because those three people wrecked the culture so badly that my options were to either fire all 85 and move the company to a new city and start anew. Or just walk away from it myself. So that’s what I did.
Mirriam
Do you think you could have preempted the bad apples, or put differently were there any early signs that this was the way it was going?
Derek Sivers
No. One of them was great and wonderful and a happy person until a friend of his committed suicide. And then he kept coming to work and just making his misery everybody else’s problem. One of them had the best of intentions and actually seemed at first like he was going to be one of my best employees because he was so keen. But he was the one with his keenness that went around to all the employees, asking them what they don’t like about their job. It was with good intentions from his point of view. He was trying to make the workplace better, but what he did was to shift everybody’s focus from helping the customers into how they could personally have their company please them more. Which is not really the point of the workplace.
Mirriam
It’s funny you talked. Oh, sorry. Were you going to explain the last one?
Derek Sivers
No. That’s it. No.
Mirriam
Yeah, I was just interested. You used the word they had, “They had the personalities...” You talk a lot about character and mindset and approach to to living as if it is this thing that we can control and determine where we end up. Do you think these individuals, or people in general are the way they are personality wise or to what extent I guess it’s the nature versus nurture, isn’t it? To what extent can we influence or change our behavior to be better people and achieve better outcomes?
Derek Sivers
Oh, boy. Well sorry, that’s just different for everybody. I’m so glad you mentioned the nature versus nurture. You beat me to it that I do think it’s some of both. We have a nature. But then it’s up to us to kind of nurture ourselves in a way that we need. But that’s so unique for everybody, and I can’t think of any universal thing I could possibly say here.
Mirriam
Maybe the set point is, there’s wiggle room. Everyone has their starting set point, but there’s wiggle room either side of that. Who knows? I don’t know. Well, maybe there’s no right answer.
Derek Sivers
Okay. For example, let’s pick the word stupid. I don’t think that anyone is stupid. I think there is such a thing as being stupid. But I’m sure there were moments where Einstein was being stupid in the moment. If Einstein does something stupid, then Albert Einstein is being stupid in that moment. And I guess we tend to call somebody stupid if they repeatedly and usually do stupid things. But I think it’s important to make that distinction that is not a stupid person. It is a person doing something stupid. So any of us can do stupid things, or any of us can prevent ourselves from doing stupid things. Hence, may be part of the purpose of this show, is to try to catch yourself before you make a big mistake. Before you make a bad decision, there is a moment to react, to intercept your own instincts or habits or impulses and intercept. Think for a second and try to do the right thing.
Anna
We don’t want to make people averse to taking risks though, because sometimes you can have such a sense of, “I won’t do this because it will be such a mistake and such a failure that I shouldn’t even try.” And sometimes it’s better just to try and fail and then learn and then recover quickly. Isn’t the joy the recovery, the mistake, the failure and the how quick you can recover from it.
Derek Sivers
So the little chapter I was going to read you guys. It was called “Make More Mistakes” that the theory is that if mistakes are how we learn. Therefore, we should deliberately go make as many mistakes as possible. On the condition that we learn from them. If you don’t learn from your mistake, then it was wasted. But if you deliberately set out expecting that what you’re about to do may be a big mistake. So you’re going to expect it. Which means it won’t upset you. It won’t upend you or destroy you if it doesn’t work out as expected because you’re expecting it to be a mistake, or you’re expecting that it could be a mistake. So you do things like a scientist trying things in their little test tube, knowing that I’m going to try 200 things and they probably won’t work. But let’s see what happens. But then, like a scientist, you have to make sure to collect the lesson from that mistake so you don’t make the same mistake twice, because then you truly have wasted your time.
Anna
Let’s go back to the scenario of the bad apples. There’s two ways that could have happened is that they could have come to you directly and said, “I am having a hard time here, I’m feeling sad and I’m just sharing it with you. I’m not going to incite others. I’m not going to share this amongst. I’m not going to rally. It’s not a whipping situation. I’m explaining my sadness to you. I’m explaining how I’m having a hard time here, and maybe we could work together to come up with something.” And that would have been the more proactive way to do it, as opposed to their let’s set fire and let’s cause all these issues publicly. And I wonder if because there must be so many scenarios and so many companies where you could point to a few people that seemed to not be in the same path, motivation, performance, whatever as the others where you could intercept earlier to say, “I’m not going to let you affect others, but I do still want to hear your problems and your issues because that is part of me running and controlling this company. I want to know what is going on with you.”
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Mirriam
Hey, Derek, I’m wondering if that’s a great segue into let’s just jump into hearing this passage. What do you say?
Derek Sivers
Oh, sure. Okay. Hold on. Okay. It’s actually from my previous book called “How to Live”. “Here’s How to Live. Make a million mistakes. You learn best from your mistakes. This is true. So you should deliberately make as many mistakes as possible. Try absolutely everything all the time, expecting everything to fail. Just make sure that you capture the lessons from each experience and never make the same mistake twice. You’ll be extremely experienced. You’ll get incredibly smart. You’ll learn more lessons in a day than others learn in a year. Deliberate mistakes are inspiring. Trying to write a great song is hard. Trying to write a bad song is easy and fun. You could do it in one minute. Right now. Writers say you should quickly finish a bad first draft because it gets the idea out of your head and into reality, where it can then be improved. Live your whole life this way. Jump into action without hesitation or worry. You’ll be faster and do more than everyone else. What takes them a month will take you an hour so you can do it ten times a day. Do what everyone says not to ignore every warning so you can find out for yourself. Learn by hands on experience. The more mistakes you make, the faster you learn. Once you’ve made all the mistakes in a field, you’re considered an expert, so you only really learn when you’re surprised when your previous idea of something was wrong. If you’re not surprised, it means the new information fits in with what you already know. So try to be wrong. Try to disprove your beliefs. Never believe something on faith, prove it or disprove it. While other people have one idea that they think might work, you will have thousands you can prove didn’t work and one you couldn’t make fail. Just keep a log. A mistake only counts as experience if you learn from it. Record what you learned and review it. Otherwise it was a waste. Take on big challenges. Start a company in Silicon Valley. Ask investors for millions. Audition for Hollywood movies. Invite your dream date to dinner. While everyone else is nervously preparing, you jump right in, unafraid to fail. Create predicaments. Get into trouble. Being desperate leads to creative solutions This gives you emotional stability. No mistake will upset you. You’ll never think that a failed attempt means that you’re a failure. The people devastated by failure are the ones who didn’t expect it.
Derek Sivers
They mistakenly think failure is who they are instead of the result of one attempt. If you’re prepared for endless failures, you’ll never think of yourself as a failure. There’s only one difference between a successful person and a failure. A failure quits, which concludes the story and earns the title. Your growth zone is your failure zone. Both are at the edge of your limits. That’s where you find a suitable challenge. Aim for what will probably fail. If you aim for what you know you can do. You’re aiming too low. It’s easy to make a robot that walks. It’s hard to make a robot that can’t be knocked down. Same with people. People who avoid mistakes are fragile. Like the robot that only walks your million mistakes will make you someone that can’t be knocked down. Mistakes are the fountain of youth. The old and successful get fragile. They think they know everything. They overinvest in one solution. They have only answers, not questions. If you’re never wrong, you never change. Keep making mistakes so that you can keep changing, learning and growing. Share your stories from all your mistakes for the benefit of the world. Every plane crash makes the next one less likely.”
Mirriam
That is brilliant. Wow. Fantastic. I’m actually so glad you mentioned that. Derek, in my hand I’m holding a copy of “How to Live. 27 Conflicting Answers and One Weird Conclusion”. What you do see is one copy here. What you don’t see is the ten copies I’ve also got in my wardrobe, which I selectively give to people. And I’ve given one to a retired surgeon. I’ve given one to a high school graduate. My most recent one I posted in the mail yesterday with someone in Australia, a contact of mine who’s deciding what path to take next, and I just wanted to highlight, I know you’ve done a beautiful job of reading out that passage, but a particular passage that I just found quite life changing, and it was the passage that I read to this guy on the phone on Friday, which prompted me to then say, “Hey, I want to send you a copy of this book.” The context. He’s someone who’s currently with an employer. He’s considering all these different business avenues, and he got a bit of overwhelm with the decision he needs to make. And so I read him this highlighted passage, which is on “How to Live: Commit” and the passage is, “What makes something the best choice. You. You make it the best choice through your commitment to it. Your dedication and actions make any choice great.” So just one of many gems in this book, “How to Live”. So yeah, thank you for writing such a brilliant book, and it will remain my one of my favorites to date.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, Mirriam.
Mirriam
Hey, that is a novel idea on the “We only learn when we’re surprised by something.” Funny enough, I actually shared that insight with a client of mine recently. As a public speaking coach, I am often helping people prepare both in terms of content and delivery with their with their presentations. And this... Oh, yeah. Go for it.
Derek Sivers
Oh. Oh, okay. Sorry. I guess you saw my facial expression. Yeah, well, I just realized I was putting two and two together right with your public speaking angle. Part of this idea came from Tony Robbins when I read about him when I was a teenager. And he specifically says in his book, “Awaken the Giant Within”, that he enrolled in a public speaking course that said, “Try to go find a speaking opportunity at least once a month.” And he said, “Hell, I want to be good at this. I’m going to go find three a day.” And he said, “I literally would just stand out on street corners or stand up in shopping malls and start a public speaking three times a day. He said, “By the end of the month, I had done 100 public speaking events, while most of my classmates had done one.” And he used that as an example, he said, never accept this speed limit of somebody saying how long something is going to take. He said, “That’s just the norm. If you just want to be a normal ho hum person, that’s how long it would take. In a worst case scenario, you can always advance this.”
Mirriam
Brilliant and this idea that you mentioned in your reading out. You said something along the lines of something about hesitation and action. What was that? Anyway, it just reminded me of one of my favorite quotes, which is from “The Magic of Thinking Big” and I often quote this at the beginning of a workshop, which is, “No one is born with confidence. People who radiate confidence have conquered fear and worry, and they’ve done so through action. As action cures fear, hesitation only increases fear. So take action promptly and be decisive.” So that goes back to your commentary around making as many mistakes as you possibly can.
Derek Sivers
Hey, you know, I’d like to hear your thought on something. Have either of you felt imposter syndrome?
Anna
No, never. You’re talking to two people that are quite different to the rest of the human race.
Mirriam
Yeah. It’s funny. It’s a good question. I’m interested to know where you’re coming from Derek, with that question. Anna and I often talk about this. We don’t. And I think it was a previous podcast guest who beautifully articulated it for me in terms of why we don’t. And she was another one that doesn’t. And this is a bit cynical, but she says she looks around when she’s trying to figure out whether or not she can do something. She looks around and she looks at these people who were doing great things, and her internal dialogue is, “Well, if those Muppets can do it, then I can.” And I kind of relate to that. So anyway, where were you coming from with that question?
Derek Sivers
Oh, I thought maybe in your field, especially with public speaking, that a lot of people have imposter syndrome and you might have some insights into it because I don’t get it. I’ve never had it and a lot of people around me say like, “Well, of course everybody has imposter syndrome.” And I think, “God, am I a sociopath that I don’t?” I don’t know.
Mirriam
Yeah. It’s an interesting comment. I think it’s a fair comment that most, a lot of people, a lot of people do. You know, what’s interesting? I’ve noticed, there’s a there’s a certain pool of people who didn’t used to have it, but now have it, particularly in the area of presenting. And I think why it’s in the area of presenting is that it’s when you’re particularly more vulnerable. But it’s around this late 30s, early 40s age group, I will often have conversations with clients where they say, “I didn’t used to get it, but I now do, and it’s quite crippling as well.” And I’ve looked into it and I can’t quite put my finger on why it is. My hunch is that it’s because by that age for these individuals at a certain professional level. And with that comes certain expectations. And if their ability is not where they think people expect them to be, then that discrepancy is where the the imposter syndrome comes in. That’s my theory anyway. Do you have any wisdom for people who are dealing with imposter syndrome? Any pep talk or little mantras or frameworks that you give them?
Derek Sivers
I know, but all I can say is my hunch about why I don’t have it and never have is because I’ve always assumed that nobody cares about me. That to think in terms of imposter syndrome, I think it comes from thinking that other people care who you are and are judging. Somebody has to care about you in order to judge you? I don’t even think people judge me. I just think people don’t give a shit about me. They only give a shit about themselves. And I’m just an object passing through the subject of their life, and I just exist to fulfill a little purpose. Like, you know, if they’re attending a Ted conference, then I am three minutes of entertainment passing before their eyes. They don’t give a shit who I am. And if I’m writing an article on the internet, then I’m just one of a thousand things they’re reading that day and they don’t give a shit who’s writing it or whatever. So I never have assumed that anybody thinks about me at all. And so maybe you can’t even think in terms of imposter syndrome if you don’t think that anybody’s thinking of you. So that’s my hunch.
Anna
Also another one is that I’ve never been told what to do. So no one in my life has ever said, “Oh, you should do this.”
Mirriam
No, no, they have, but Anna just doesn’t listen.
Derek Sivers
Nice.
Anna
Fair point. Fair point. You’re probably right. Lots of people tell me what I should do, and I just don’t hear it. It’s just like white noise, little crickets around that I’m not paying attention to. I don’t know where I was going with that, but that’s what I hear. That’s funny.
Mirriam
But actually what you’ve just said, Derek, one thing I often tell clients is there are various techniques out there for helping reduce public speaking anxiety. And one technique that I’m particularly fond of is this idea of a truth statement. So a truth statement is basically a personalized phrase that cuts through, it’s almost like a mantra. It cuts through your core fear that is often irrational. And my truth statement that I was grappling with when I was becoming more accustomed to speaking was not unlike yours. And this is what I tell myself before getting up in front of an audience, I’d say, “Don’t flatter yourself, Miriam. Your audience doesn’t care about you as much as you would like to think.
Derek Sivers
Nice.
Mirriam
And that just worked and that worked. And to put on the inverse, think of how much mental energy you give other people passing by in your life. Nothing. None. You do you. I don’t, you know. So I think it’s helpful to try that on for size and reframe that same thinking for yourself. Hey, Anna, I know you’ve got so many questions.
Anna
I’ve got so many questions.
Mirriam
Okay, so let’s go to you.
Anna
I love that, love that. So one of your things you say is that you can say whatever you like because your actions will reveal your values. Your stance is that you take the action first and then you’re going to believe it. And I had a question to discuss amongst the group, which was someone I know finds it very hard to get excited about things, anything. Do you think it would help them to take the action of excitement, the action before feeling it. The whole fake it before you make it vibe.
Derek Sivers
Oh yeah, but I don’t think in terms of psyching yourself out. I think that’s just practical from experience that things get more interesting once you get into them. So often I’ve had a project that I don’t want to do. It feels overwhelming and I got to procrastinate and put it off because it feels so big. But if it’s something that absolutely needs to be done, then I go and make myself begin. And once I begin, often with the help of a little caffeine, you know, it’s a little artificial boost to make myself do it. Or sometimes I’ll, like, actually treat myself to get myself to begin, you know, instead of ice cream at the end, I’ll say, “You know what? I’ll begin this project now if I can combine the first two steps with having ice cream.” For example, you know. So then I’ll eat the ice cream while I’m beginning. I’m like, okay. So the point is, once you begin, now you’re into it. Now your mind kind of molds into the shape of what it needs to be. And you go, “Oh, okay. Actually this is quite interesting.” And now you’re sucked in. Oh, Anna. Okay. There’s one of my favorite quotes. I don’t even know the source, so maybe I shouldn’t say it’s a quote. One of my favorite ideas is, “Inspiration like any true beauty or like any great beauty will never make the first move. She’ll only meet you halfway.” So it’s the idea of like, you can never wait for inspiration to come to you. You always have to begin with no inspiration. You have to and only once you’ve made the first move, then she inspiration will come meet you halfway. I really like that idea, and it’s played out in practice over and over and over again. Not just for artistic works, but even doldrum necessary projects that need to be done. They’re horrible before beginning, but once you begin, they become more interesting.
Mirriam
Hey Derek, that’s reminded me of and I’d love to talk about. I know we’ve talked about “How to Live” but I’d love to talk about your new book as well, “Useful Not True”. And what you’ve just said about inspiration has reminded me of this analogy that I had to write down when I was listening to the audio book of your new book, around the bag of trash and the diamond. And I wondered if you can... Well, one hopefully that’s jogged a memory that what it’s about? No.
Derek Sivers
Can you remind me?
Mirriam
Okay. Well, this is profound for me. I just wrote down a prompt. But it’s talking about in the context of ideas, that our mind is a pile, a bag of trash. And there’s a lot of bad thoughts and thinking and unhelpful, you know... Is that enough for you to get you going?
Derek Sivers
Sure. But what did you like about it? I mean, how did that reach you?
Mirriam
Yeah, I just found that this idea of of you have to search for the diamond, and that’s like the coming halfway with the piece of inspiration. If we believe that a situation is solely bad or that we can’t come up with a solution to a problem, then all we’ve got is a pile of trash. But if we believe there is a diamond in that problem we will search through the trash to locate the diamond. You want to expand on that at all?
Derek Sivers
Well, I also like the metaphor of you lock somebody in a jail cell and tell them, “This is the most secure prison in the world in 200 years. Nobody’s ever broken out of this prison. Thousands have tried and thousands have died. You won’t do it.” Okay, well, then that’s going to bring on a self-fulfilling hopelessness. But if you tell that same person, like, “Hey, secret, there’s actually a trap door in your room, I won’t tell you where.” You know, now that person is going to do everything they can to find any way out of that jail cell, right? Just by whispering that one idea of like, hey, there’s a trap door in there somewhere, good luck. And it’s like that in our own lives, with any situation you find yourself in, you can default to the helplessness of going like, “FML, this just sucks. This situation sucks, this is awful. This is bad.” And by believing that, it becomes self-fulfilling, right? Yeah. Why even try to break out of this jail cell? It’s hopeless. But by telling yourself that there’s a diamond in this trash, or telling yourself there’s a trap door to get me out of this jail cell, you’ll never stop looking for it. You know it’s in there somewhere. So it’s just a mindset to me that any bad situation you find yourself in, if you can just whisper that in your own ear that there’s something great about this, there’s some benefit in here somewhere. You’ll keep looking until you find it.
Mirriam
It’s a beautiful tie in to the big mistake, of course.
Derek Sivers
Right, right. So, by the way, Miriam, you said like, “Oh, Anna’s got so many questions for you.” And then Anna asked one and then you changed the subject.
Mirriam
Sorry. Yeah, I know. This is the problem with...
Anna
I honestly feel like I want to just put my hand up and just be like, “My turn. My turn.”
Mirriam
Okay. Permission granted. You’ve got the talking stick, Anna. Sorry. Going back to you.
Anna
One of the stories that you shared was that you would reach out to mentors. So you would send them emails. You would imagine what they were going to say. You would write it all out. It’d be this beautifully thoughtful email where you’d shared your problems, concerns, what was going on in your world, what you imagined they were going to say, hurdles to help them along the way, and then by the end of it, you never needed to send the email to the mentors that you had, because by writing it all down, you’d figured it out. YWhen I heard that, I thought one of my favorite things from people in my life is when they reach out to me to share issues and problems because I love working with it alongside them. And I thought to myself, if I was one of your mentors, you would have robbed me of the joy of working along alongside you with a problem, because that is one of my favorite things to do, is that you would say, “I’ve got this issue, here’s this problem. Let’s kind of brainstorm or figure it out together.”
Derek Sivers
Nice. Yeah, I hadn’t thought about that ever. Thank you. Yeah and to be clear, I don’t actually send my mentors email hardly ever like, twice I have. And specifically, I’m thinking of Seth Godin. Seth Godin is generous enough that if you email him, he will reply probably. If I email him, he will reply. But Seth is a very busy guy and I don’t want to take up his time unless it’s important. So there were many times that I’ve thought about asking Seth something, and I’m like, “Okay, before I waste his time with this, let me really work through this, okay. This is the question I want to ask him. I know him well enough. What will he probably say to that? And then okay, then what be my response to that?” And I’ll go through all of this and I’ll spend an hour with it before trying to craft the perfect email to him. But after an hour of that, I’m like, “Oh, actually, never mind. I think I know what I need to do now.” Unfortunately, this happens sometimes with hiring. Apologies to all of those people out there that I asked about hiring and didn’t hire. Many times I should do this more with people I’m thinking of hiring. I’ll often put out a call first saying, “Hey, I’m thinking of hiring somebody for this.” And I’ll get a bunch of replies and a bunch of people get invested and I’ll think, “Okay, wow. All right. Some people seem interested in this.” Well, let me think what this job actually entails. And in the hours I spend preparing the job description, I go, “Oh, actually, I don’t need to hire anybody at all. Oops sorry everyone.”
Derek Sivers
You know, so it’s a good reminder to self to any of our selves that sometimes when you’re tempted to just go bother other people with your thing, that it it can be worth thinking it through a little further. Like just imagine that they did reply and then what you do next. Go to the next step first before you bother people. Unless it’s Anna who wants to be bothered.
Anna
But also, I don’t like people assuming that they are a waste of time because you said that a few times. I don’t want to bother others. I don’t want to be their waste of time. But if you were in my circle, I would never think that you were my waste of time.
Derek Sivers
Okay, I get what you’re saying. But it’s not a judgment call as much as it is saying you got to do a little legwork for it. So okay, in nerd circles. Do you know the acronym RTFM?
Anna
No.
Derek Sivers
Okay. Every programmer knows the acronym RTFM because it stands for Read the Fucking Manual. And so many times people like on some kind of like, newbies programmer, like somebody just beginning to learn JavaScript or something. They’ll go on to some forums like, “Hey everybody, I’ve got a string with the letter X the middle, but I want to split it into an array. How do I do that?” And somebody will very rightly say, “Look, before you bother hundreds of readers of this forum with your very basic question. You really should just read the manual. You know, people put a lot of effort into writing a really good manual that tells you exactly how to do what you’re saying, and it’s written right there on page 50. You just have to read it. Instead of not doing the legwork and bothering all of us with your basic question.” It’s meant in a helpful way to say a bit of like, you know, slap down, but for your own good because it reminds you people here are valuable. Like, our time is valuable. You really should do your legwork first and do everything you can to figure out the answer for yourself first before you bother me with it.
Anna
Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I like it, I like it, and it’s what we do in law firms as well that we could never go bother a partner without having done the research. Looked at cases, figured out our own argument, what we thought about the situation, and then we would have a proper debate. If we just walked in at cold and said, “Oh, like, what do you think about this?” I’d say, “I always want to talk to you. I always want to debate things out with you. But you are going to have to go do a lot of research before you come to this office right now.” And then we’ll go.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. And you know what? We really took a tangent here, but it’s fun. Doing the next step is often really fun. So even though I’m a programmer, I mean, it’s just something I learned how to do over the years. After selling my company, thought, you know what, for my next project, instead of trying to program everything myself, I can afford to now, I’m going to hire one of the best programming firms out there. I’m going to tell them what I want for my software and hire them to make it for me. That’ll be really interesting. It may be a great learning experience for me. So I did that. I specked out what I wanted from them, but hey, before bothering them with this, because, you know, I do kind of know what I’m looking for here. I made a really detailed spec. I mean, everything down to, you know, it says this. And when you click this, then it calls this function which you know does this and it returns this response which then the user can go to. I spelled it all out for them. And then I hired them, handed them the spec and the guy that was my contact person luckily before they took my money said, “Derek, you really already just done 90% of our job.”
Derek Sivers
Like they said, “What you just did is most of what people pay us the big bucks to do, and you just did it already. So you really don’t need us. Like all that’s missing is some of the code inside the functions. You spelled everything else out. You basically architected this whole thing yourself. You just need a cheap code monkey to fill in the missing code functions.” And I went, “Oh.” And that was really empowering to me. It’s like, oh yeah, you’re right. I guess I just did do most of the work. And in fact, this just came up this morning for some of the chapters in my new book called “Useful Not True”. Many of them are stories that are meant to be told visually. So I’ve decided to spend some money on hiring animators to make videos to go along with these chapters. And I thought, all right, well, before doing that, let me start to spec out what would happen in this video. And I started doing it, and it was really fun. And the idea of coming into actual storyboard, like, okay, well, at this second, then, you know, this person appears on the screen.
Derek Sivers
Okay, well, from what angle do I want them to be like off in the distance? Or, you know, is it going to be like a close up and you get a reaction shot and went, “Oh, this is actually really fun thinking of the storyboard of how this video would go.” And then not only am I having fun doing it, but realizing once I do this kind of like the programming company, I think I’ve just done 90% of the work. Like that’s probably the hardest part. Being an animator somewhere is getting a job from somebody saying, “Hey, here’s an article, animate it.” And now you’ve got to suddenly come up with a whole bunch of visual ideas. Whereas the truth is, I’ve already been sitting with these ideas for two years. I already have visual ideas in my mind of what would go along with these words really well, so it’s actually really fun to do it. So anyway, back to the whole mentors full circle to Anna’s point is that it can be both considerate and useful for you to do the next step and anticipate somebody’s response before you contact them.
Anna
Nice.
Mirriam
Hey, on the mentors front, Derek, you’re close friends with a lot of impressive people to put plainly, you’ve mentioned Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, Mark Manson, to name a few. But you’re also very game for giving a lot of your time and and input to us common folk as civilians. Whatever you going to call it. And for those of you listening, and you’re not familiar with Derek’s work, he actively encourages on a regular basis people that follow his work to reach out to him via email. And I think every response I’ve sent to you, Derek, I think almost everyone I got a reply to. To be fair, when I this is a slight tangent, when I sent my first email to you, Derek, I had just listened to your in a podcast interview with you telling the interviewer how you would reach out to mentors or anything. So I was like, I’m going to frame this email exactly what he suggests to increase my chances of getting a reply. Anyway, where I was going was that was has this approach of being very open ever backfired?
Derek Sivers
Oh, nobody’s ever asked that. Once and it was worth it. I mean, and backfired. I don’t know, that’s an interesting loaded word, but let’s say has there ever been a downside to it is. Well, I said just once, but let’s say maybe 3 or 4 times ever in 15 years. Somebody with like seemingly some kind of mental problems. Who knows? Maybe they were seriously just incredibly drunk every time they were emailing. Sometimes people dump their shit onto me or project some kind of savior situation onto me, where they think that I’m the solution to their problems and they pour out a bunch of stuff onto me. And it sucks seeing those because, you know, I’m not a complete asshole when I see people suffering, I care. But I don’t care enough about a stranger in Belgium sending me 20 page long emails every day. I don’t care enough to, like, engage that much. And so say, if they’ve done this for the 10th time, I’ve had to say like, “Look, the reason I have an open email inbox is so that people can contact me.” Kind of like the RTFM. Read The Fucking Manual first. It’s like I’ve put a lot of myself out there in books and interviews. Really, almost everything I have to say about anything is already out there. If everybody sent me these big, long emails like you’re sending me every day, I just have to shut down my email account. I’m sorry I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep reading these giant emails of yours. I’m really sorry. I hate to turn this into a rejection type situation. And so unfortunately, 3 or 4 times when that’s come up, 3 or 4 people have been really upset and really hurt and you can tell.
Derek Sivers
And so that kind of sucks. So that’s the only downside to the open email inbox. But it almost never happens relatively. You know I’m talking like say I think there are almost 500,000 emails in my database that I’ve answered over the course of 15 years, and we’re saying that this has happened a few times out of all of those. So it’s been worth it to me, because in general, there are times when say, like somebody is being problematic like this and I think of like, “Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have such an opening box.” But then the truth is like almost, you know, if that’s one out of 100,000, the rest have just been great. And most emails are wonderful. And I’m so happy for the people I’ve met. And that’s why you might have seen, recently I’ve started taking a new approach to travel that when I travel I go to a place I’ve never been. Say, like Nairobi, Kenya is a place I want to go next. And when I do, I’m going to go meet up with the 30 or so people from Nairobi that have emailed me over the years, and I love that. I’ve asked people where they live, and these are people that already know my books, and so I can go in kind of... It’s like the difference between cold calling and warm calling, right? I show up to Nairobi with people that already know me there. It’s amazing. So it’s so worth it. All in all it’s net positive, hugely net positive.
Anna
Derek, Miriam is not a fan of Mark Manson.
Mirriam
So context here like Anna is very good at putting very hard and fast labels.
Derek Sivers
That’d be great if that was the only question. Anna has a question. Derek., Miriam is not a fan of Mark Manson. Respond. Sorry.
Mirriam
So I mentioned his name in passing. No, so in preparation for this interview, I listened to the brilliant interview you had with him and prior to even this interview. I had started reading the “Subtle Art”, and that is for those of you that you’ll probably be familiar with that book. Mark Manson is the author of that book. Look, actually, this is a good segue because I would love to ask Derek a very boring question on writing. The reason, it’s not that I don’t like him, it’s just I personally, I found the style of that book affected. And I sensed he was trying to do something to create a certain effect, and that’s what I didn’t like. So I think it’s Paul Graham that said, oh yeah, I think it was Paul Graham that spoke about, and I’m paraphrasing here, that the best writing style is one where the writer is trying to write as simply and plainly as possible. I might be misattributing that, and through doing that a writing style will emerge. So personally, I just didn’t really gravitate towards that style because I found it too affected. Derek, on writing style. Any comments there? Do you go in with this view of how you’re going to approach something in terms of the tone and sentiment or style? Any comments there?
Derek Sivers
I always want everything to be as minimal as possible. My programming code has every unnecessary character stripped away from it. My writing has every sentence stripped away from it, and then even inside every sentence, I try to get rid of every word that doesn’t need to be there. I try to write as succinctly as possible because for my taste, I find that aesthetically pleasing, and I find it very considerate to people that are giving me an hour of their time to read something I’ve written. I want one hour of their time to return maximum punch per minute of their time, right? Whereas we’ve all felt the pain of reading one of these 300 page non-fiction books that really should have been a 20 page article. Really, all of that could have been said so small. And yeah, we laugh because it’s like, yeah, we’ve all been there. We’ve all felt that, well, then it should be the author’s job to not do that, to edit and advance, to just get rid of whatever ego or whatever that might be that feels the need to write 300 pages instead of 20. Just write the 20. And unfortunately, by the way, I did find out later it’s publishers that are also complicit in that that are pushing authors to write more, because if it’s a thicker book, they can sell it for more, whereas if it’s a little 80 page book, it doesn’t get seen when vertical on bookshelves.
Derek Sivers
So I write these little 90 page books. And when I was looking at doing the foreign translation rights, a few foreign publishers balked at how short they were, saying, “We can’t sell that. It’s too short. Like in theory, we should, but it won’t be seen on the shelves, and we’ll only be able to sell it for $6 because it’s so tiny.” I thought, “Oh, interesting. That was never an issue for me.” To me, I felt that people would be happy to pay full price knowing I’m giving them more information in a 90 page book than is often in a 300 page book. Okay so anyway, I just aesthetically I like to write as succinct as possible, but let’s never forget that it’s just a preference. So Paul Graham, in that case was saying he said writers should be as simple as possible. But really, what he’s saying is, I like it when writers are as simple as possible. Because there are some very beloved authors that do not write as simple as possible.
Derek Sivers
And a lot of people love a flowery writing style. And in fact, I’ll pick a contemporary example of somebody I know and love. Oh my God, I’m just spacing on her name right now. Brainpickings, Maria Popova. Her website is called something else Now, but it was formerly called “Brainpickings”. And Maria Popova is brilliant. She’s so smart, so wonderful, so interested and interesting. And she prefers a really flowery writing style that even though I adore her as a person and I adore the ideas behind her writing, I just can’t vibe with her writing style. And there are many books like that. If you look through the list of book notes on my website, it’s at sive.rs/book is the URL for my page of over 400 books that I’ve written notes on, and you’ll see in my short description many, many times, probably over 20 times, I’ve said, “This is probably a good book, but I just couldn’t handle the writing style. I really had to slog through all these blah blah anecdotes to get to the occasional good, juicy bit of information.” So yeah, I like Mark’s writing style. He’s definitely speaking to bros that don’t usually read books.
Derek Sivers
And for that, I think he’s done an amazing job. I think as a musician, there were only, say, like a few albums ever that even people who don’t like music had that album, right. So it used to be like somebody who didn’t like music. You could still see, like Dire Straits Brothers in Arms and Norah Jones Come My Way, and I don’t know, Nirvana, Never mind. These albums would be in collections of people who don’t usually like music, but they had just a few albums in there they were. And I think the “Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” is one of those books that’s written for people that don’t usually read books. I think it’s actually written for both. I think it’s actually brilliant and deep and has a lot to say, but also is appealing for people that don’t usually read books and they see it. That’s why that title was so effective. They see the “Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck”. Yeah, this is my kind of. Yeah, I’m going to get this book.
Derek Sivers
Because it doesn’t sound so pompous and full of itself. And most people find self-help books cringeworthy. So anyway, I think it’s brilliant.
Anna
I think your point about music and people that aren’t into music, I’ve been on that journey with my husband. He is not into music, he finds no music enjoyable. And I would always say, “You just haven’t found the music for you yet. Tomorrow is a new day. There is some music out there for you somewhere, somehow.” And I’m on a ten year journey of exposure to music. And so far we’ve yielded zero results.
Derek Sivers
Yes, some just aren’t. Yeah.
Mirriam
Hey, I’ve got a really good anecdote that I think. Derek, you’re going to love this. So Anna and I have a mutual friend, Ben, Anna, that hated, hated country music. And this actually goes back to what you were saying earlier, Derek, about we are generally interested in things that we know about or that we delve into. And so he wanted to test this theory that if he exposed himself to a particular type of music, would he come to like it. And for three months. And I love this about him. For three months he listened to only country music. And the result is that he now listens to nothing else. He loves country music. I just think that is such a cool taste. And maybe there’s a lesson there.
Mirriam
Can you take that and if you were to put it in a different situation, like, “Oh, I never spend any time in Asia or I never want to travel to Japan.” But then you go and seek and find out what you can about the culture, huh? Surprise, surprise. You’ll probably come to be really interested in it. So I wonder if when people have very strong opinions about things they don’t like. In my head I hear, “Well, you just don’t know enough about it or you haven’t sought to understand.” Yeah, anyway.
Derek Sivers
One of my greatest joys is exactly what you’re talking about. I think my deepest, deepest joys have come from learning to love something I was previously prejudiced against.
Anna
Oh.
Mirriam
Very cool, very cool. Anna are you going to say anything?
Anna
Well, no, because that’s interesting. Have you got any specific examples there?
Derek Sivers
Sure. Dubai, Python. What else came up? I think there was a third one last year as well.
Anna
But it’s Python, something techie as opposed to the animal.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Sorry. The Python programming language. Oh, rats. Oh my God, my rats. Okay, so there we go. There’s my three. Dubai was a place that was like top of my shit list. A place I never want to go.
Mirriam
Wow.
Derek Sivers
Sounds awful. Sounds like everything I hate in the world. But I was traveling from New Zealand to Europe, and my plane changed in Dubai. And I was like, you know what? Like your country music friend. I wass like because I feel so averse to Dubai, I’m going to change this from a two hour layover and do a three day layover. I’m going to go see it for myself because I think I hate it and I want to go find out. And so because I had booked that flight, I ended up reading three books about the United Arab Emirates history and Dubai in particular, and met some people that live there that were so hospitable and wonderful and taught me about the culture and brought me underneath the surface. And it was wonderful. It was great. And now I love Dubai so much that like, I think I want to live there. I think it’s a fascinating place below the surface, right. Same as one of my best friends lives in Las Vegas. He doesn’t gamble, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t go to the strip. But Las Vegas Under the surface, or let’s say, outside of the strip, he says, is the most wonderful place on Earth, and he moved there after having lived in many places around the world. And he said he got there and he said, “Oh my God, this place is amazing. It’s wonderful. Just if you just don’t go to the strip, the rest is great.” So I feel the same thing about Dubai. All the glitz and the millionaire pandering stuff. I’m not a fan of that, but oh my God, Arab hospitality and the Arab culture and all of that outside of the most multicultural place in the world, it’s fascinating. Python programming language is... I just for 20 years I’ve just said I hate it, even though I hadn’t actually tried it. And then I finally tried it and I went, “Oh my God, this is great.” And then rats. Just about four months ago...
Anna
When you said you hated something, “I’ve never tried Python because I always hated it.” But to me, it seems like you’re a really open person who would want to try something. Why would you not have tried Python all those years.
Derek Sivers
Okay, sorry, I don’t want to get too far down the rabbit hole.
Anna
No no no.
Derek Sivers
But it’s because I’m fluent in a programming language that’s very, very, very similar to Python. I’m fluent in Ruby, which everybody says is almost the same as Python and just whatever 20 years ago I took the Ruby path and then Python got more popular, and I’ve just said, “Why would I ever spend a single minute doing Python? I already do Ruby. It’s so close.” And finally, I was working on a new project. I thought, “Well, all right, fine. I’ll look at it for five minutes.” And I looked at it for what was supposed to be five minutes, and I loved it. And so I enjoy Python now. So last one.
Anna
Rats.
Derek Sivers
Rats. About five months ago, my boy asked if we could get pet rats, and I went, “What?” I thought he was kidding. I said no and he was really sad. And so like a week later. He said, “Dad, I really want pet rats.” I was like, “Wait, when you asked last week you were serious? I thought you were kidding. That’s like asking if we can have pet tarantulas. Like, no. Awful. Yuck.”
Derek Sivers
And he said, “Dad, just come look at these videos. They’re really sweet.” I went, “Oh, all right, I’ll look at the videos.” So he shows me these YouTube videos, and I had no idea that rats are really smart and they’re really clean. And they use a litter box and they’re affectionate, they’re trainable. You can train them to, you know, come and do tricks or whatever. And wow, okay. And I said, “Okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were serious. I thought you were being sarcastic.” And so I opened my mind to, you know... By the way, sorry I didn’t give you my background. I used to live in a basement apartment next to the rubbish room in an apartment building where my apartment was infiltrated with rats in the ceiling blocking my door. I’ve killed so many rats in my life with so much hatred towards rats. So for my boy to then say, “I want to get pet rats.” I was like, “Ah.” So they’re wonderful. And right now.
Mirriam
So you got them?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. We have Clover and Cricket, two.Beautiful, wonderful, cuddly cozy pet rats that sleep on my lap as I work.
Anna
Are these rats that are bred in captivity. Or you just open your door and you’re like, “All right, you’re coming in.”
Derek Sivers
So the the shorthand that I tell people is that, if you think rats are nasty, well, wild dogs are also nasty, but the difference between a wild dog and a poodle is the same as the difference between a wild rat and a pet rat, that technically they are the same species. But yeah, they’re bred in a very different way.
Mirriam
My knowledge on pet rats is that my husband also used to have pet rats, and he went to a specific breeder. And interestingly enough, when you breed rats for temperament their tails get shorter. And it’s funny, as I’m saying this, you’re probably imagining someone around your son’s age, Derek. Around 12. No, no, no, my husband was 25 when he decided to name these rats. Similarly, when you breed wild dogs for temperament, their ears get more floppy. Which is why, like domestic dogs anyway. Hey, I’m conscious of the time, and I would love to sit here and talk for hours on end. Yeah. Anna.
Anna
Yeah, well, I’ve got a good one to end on, actually.
Derek Sivers
Also, we haven’t done... You asked two big questions in advance. Biggest mistake, but also the worst advice I’ve ever received.
Mirriam
Which is our last.
Derek Sivers
Oh, okay. Sorry.
Anna
So we’ll call this the second to last penultimate.
Derek Sivers
Got it. Okay. Yeah.
Anna
“If it’s not a hell yeah, it’s a no.” And that is quoted so much nowadays, which is amazing. But you really did intend it for a specific situation. So can you expand on that?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, it’s a tool for a certain purpose. It’s a tool when you are overwhelmed with too many options. So it’s a colorful way of saying it’s time to raise the bar all the way up. If you have too many options. So if, like my friend in Perth who has been on over a hundred bad dates with a hundred different guys, she needs to raise the bar and maybe go on less dates and be a little pickier. So I think she should apply the hell yes or no in her situation. But unfortunately, I get emails from people who hear about “Hell Yeah or No” and use it in a situation that I think it doesn’t apply, say, like they just got out of college and don’t know what they want to do. And so nothing’s feeling like a hell yeah yet. So I’m just going to sit here and play video games until something feels like a hell yeah. But I think in that case, it’s the wrong strategy. There’s never one solution that fits all problems. It’s different solution for different problems. And so I think usually you want to say yes to lots of things, say yes to almost everything you can. If you’re at the beginning of your career and you’re looking for new opportunities, it can be amazing to just say yes to everything and just sleep less, do everything. Try every weird opportunity because you never know. Like lottery tickets, which one is going to pay back. And then when something pays back and then you’re too overwhelmed with other options and you really just need to say yes to one thing and no to the rest, then the hell yeah or no strategy can be more effective. So big point is it’s just one of many tools, ideally for a situation where you’re overwhelmed with too many options.
Anna
And apart from this interview, what are you saying hell yes to at the moment, as you today? What are you going big hell yeah?
Derek Sivers
It’s a trick question right now, because for the last two years, I’ve done only one thing, which is just write that new book called “Useful Not True”. I did nothing else. Every other thing that came up in the last two years, I pushed it aside, saying, “I’ll do that later. After I finish this book.” I can be really single, focused like that. I just finished the book like ten weeks ago, so now I’m doing this two years of backlog of other things that need to be done, even though I’m not hell yeah about them. They are things that actually need to be done. I mean, like, I don’t know, I just got a thing an hour ago before we hit record about how I need to make a financial statement for my business because the accountant needs it. It’s like, “All right, well, that’s not a hell yeah, but it needs to be done.” So I’m not in a hell yeah or no mode right now. That’s what I was in for the last two years. Now I’m taking care of things.
Mirriam
Or fix the squeaky door that you’ve been putting off. All those other things. Hey, before we move on to the last question, Derek, where can people buy this book of yours?
Derek Sivers
Oh, just my website. So I am not a fan of Amazon. I’m just not a fan of centralization. I’m not a fan of people depending too much on only one source. You know, if you depend on Google for everything. I do know some people that have because they tried to resell their pixel phone or something like that. Suddenly Google just shut their account and they were so screwed because they had put all of their life into Gmail and Google Calendar and Google Contacts and Google Photos and Google everything, and Google Docs and Google shut down their account. And it was a techie friend of mine in Singapore that had this happen, he bought a Google Pixel phone when they first came out, and he decided he wanted to stick with his iPhone, so he resold it and there was like a little clause in the Google contract that says you’re not allowed to resell your Google Pixel phone. And so they shut down his account without any way to fix the situation. And I just never forget that any of these companies can just close your account, you know? And so I never like to depend on any one company.
Derek Sivers
So it makes me really sad to see authors make Amazon their everything, like video creators that just make YouTube their everything, and they’re just 100% dependent on that one business to support them. I think that’s really dangerous. So point is, I don’t put my books on Amazon, even though I know kind of going back full circle to something I brought up at the very beginning, even though I know I would make more money if I did. I’m just happier selling it direct. So if you go to my sivers.com website, that’s where I sell my books and I make it a better deal than you could have got from Amazon anyway, where if you spend 15 bucks and buy the book from me, you get every format ever, including new formats that haven’t even been invented yet. You get the e-book, the audiobook, the videobook, if I make videos for it, or in the future if there’s some like AI LLM thing that’s beamed into your brain, that will be included too.
Mirriam
And I’ll also add that if you listen to the audiobook, you get some brilliant character voices that I really appreciated for listening to that. So thank you Derek. Hey. Our last... Aw, go for it. i was just going to go into our last question.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I’m ready.
Mirriam
What is the worst piece of advice you’ve received, Derek Sivers?
Derek Sivers
Okay, so I nerded out on this big question. Because we hear stupid crap all the time. But the worst bit of advice I took was because I had specifically hired an investment advisor right after selling my company for $22 million. Even though I put all of the money into a charitable trust, it was still up to me to be the trustee of the trust and invest that $22 million wisely. So even though I had read 5 or 6 books about how to be a smart investor and index funds and being, you know, wise and prudent and all of that, I thought it would be just kind of nice to have a sounding board person. So this was in August 2008, just as the financial collapse began. And so this advisor I hired, for months, he just kept saying, Derek, “We’re in the middle of the biggest recession of your lifetime. Just stay just stay in cash. Trust me. You know, there’s things that’s got so far to fall.”
Derek Sivers
So he was right for a few months. But I had also read Warren Buffett’s advice echoed in many places that when everybody says we’re all going to die, it’s a good time to buy. That the stock market is often a reflection of the optimism versus pessimism cycles. And the cover of time magazine that week was like saying “The Great Dust Bowl 2.0” and just kind of projecting that everything is going to be horrible now. It’s awful. And this is the next Great Depression. And that seemed to be the sentiment all around, as it were, in the next great depression. So I felt, you know what? I think this is that moment where pessimism has reached its peak. So I said, “all right, I’m ready. I’m ready to all in and invest this $22 million into these ETFs.”
Derek Sivers
And he said, “Derek, you know this is the reason you hired me. You know I’m here to help you stop you from making a big mistake. So just now just trust me. Just stay in cash. You haven’t seen nothing yet. We’ve got the fundamentals. We’ve got a long way to go.”
Derek Sivers
And unfortunately, I took his advice because I was paying him for his advice. And this was the reason I paid him. So what I did that day, on February 19th, 2009, I wrote down what ETFs I wanted to buy that day. I decided to do a real world counterfactual is what I wanted to do that day. And I was like, “Let’s go a year and let’s see who was right, who was wrong. So I’ll take his advice. I won’t do anything and we’ll just see.” So yeah, it turns out I was dead right. And he was dead wrong. That like, down to the day. The day that I called him on February 19th, 2009 and said, let’s do this. And he said no. Was when the stock market hit its bottom, and then it just shot up for the next ten years, and I missed out on millions of gains. And when I say I, I mean really the charity that, you know, owns the funds, but none of it would have touched my hands personally anyway. But I often think that me taking his advice cost the charity about $20 million.
Mirriam
Well, is that a halo effect, do you think, because you were financially invested in his services, and you had made the decision that his advice is worth your money. There is the temptation to believe that what he is advising is true. Do you think there was a bias there, or do you think?
Derek Sivers
No, I was actually very, very skeptical in fact. Even in the moment I argued against him and I said, “I really think you’re wrong here. I really think everything I’ve heard from all the wisdom that’s from many people.” I said, “I know you’ve got your one opinion, but I’ve read lots of the books that people say are the best books on investing ever. And this is that moment that they’re talking about with peak pessimism.”
Derek Sivers
“Derek, just listen to me.” You know.
Derek Sivers
It’s fun to do voices. So no, it wasn’t the halo effect. I think in any given moment, there’s even no reason to try to ascribe why to any of these. It’s like, well, you either do the action or you don’t. You take the advice or you don’t. It can be as simple as not having enough sugar that morning that makes you take one path or another. So we often don’t know the reasons why we do anything, so there’s no point in getting into that. But it was really fun. There were so few things in life where you really can do a counterfactual right. So as I was nerding out on this question... Actually no, back to the biggest mistake. Personally, I think like one of my biggest mistakes was my first marriage, but then there’s no way to do a proper counterfactual with that. What would have happened if I didn’t get married? You know, maybe life would have taken a worse turn. Maybe lucky me that I had a bad marriage. But this was the only concrete thing where I could say it was possible to do because it was just numerical right to say, like, here are the ETFs I would have bought in what quantities on this day. And it’s easy to just look back and say, “Oh, that would have been the right decision.” But as a final word for a fun conversation on this subject, let’s just say that whenever anybody is giving you advice, it helps to notice your reaction, because ultimately, it’s almost impossible to know if something is objectively good advice or bad advice.
Derek Sivers
What really matters the most is how you respond to it. So if somebody says, “Miriam, you should do this.” And if your response to that advice is like, “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I should do that. Oh, well.” Then no matter how objectively or technically correct that advice might be, it might be the wrong advice for you because it’s causing you to take less action or to lose interest or whatever. Where if somebody says, “Well, you know, Anna, I think what you should do is this.” And if that advice makes you go, “Oh my God, yeah, I could do that. If that makes you jump out of your seat and take action, then it doesn’t matter if that was bad advice for somebody else, it’s good advice for you.” Like flavors in a recipe. You know, there’s no saying whether salt is the right thing for this thing. But in that case, that bit of advice mixed with your unique situation in a way that it made you want to jump into action, it inspired you. It charged you. So I think that ultimately, we have a compass in our gut that points two directions. What excites you and what drains you. And if the advice you hear excites you and causes you to take action, then for you, that’s good advice. And if the advice causes you to lose energy and it drains you, then that’s bad advice, because I think that’s a pretty objective measure of good and bad in life, is whether you’re excited about things and feeling alive or drained and feeling dead.
Anna
And people as well. I’m going to add on to that. People will do exactly the same to you. They either excite or drain and just chase the excitement and what feels right.
Mirriam
Well, Derek Sivers, what a treat and bit of a roller coaster of ideas. If you’re listening to this and you’re looking for some some direction rather than send Derek a ten page email with all your life problems. Jump on to his website and Derek, can I get that website one more time?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Sive.rs and and you should email, introduce yourself and say hello. Maybe not a 30 page email making me the savior of your life’s problems, but introduce yourself and say hello. I love it.
Mirriam
I love it and purchase a copy of Derek’s books. Now I say books plural because I’ve read, I think, almost every one and my personal favorite is “How to Live”. I’ve really enjoyed the audio book of “Useful Not True”, and I’m looking to get my hands on a physical copy as well. If you are looking to be inspired to use Derek words or looking to make some kind of action, there are so many gems in here that you will just have to go through each book very slowly, because every line to his earlier point is a distillation of all the wisdom that Derek has accrued over many years of reading and doing incredible stuff. So I do encourage you to jump online and purchase yourself a copy of all of the books. Derek, what a treat. Thank you. Needless to say, it has been everything that Anna and I could have hoped. What a wonderful conversation. We could have gone down so many other routes. But we thank you for your time. We know you’re not a busy person, but you are a productive person, so we appreciate you giving us your time when there are many other things to do. So on that note, any final thoughts from you, Anna?
Anna
No, this has been really enjoyable. I am almost disappointed that we didn’t go down the path of when you were crying with Tim Ferris around parenting and how much it meant to you, because I got very emotional listening to that. But maybe we’ll get you back another day to talk.
Derek Sivers
Part two.
Anna
Part two. Awesome.
Mirriam
Thank you so much, Derek, and we wish you all the best.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, guys.