Alchemist’s Library
host: Ryan Ayala
eclectic life experiences, philosophy of mastery, parenting, education, reframing
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Transcript:
Ryan
Mr. Derek Sivers. What a pleasure to have you,
Derek Sivers
Mr. Ryan. We have been trying to hook this up for two years. For two years we’ve been emailing about me coming on your show and it finally happened.
Ryan
Absolutely. I’m shocked that you remember that with the amount of emails that you get.
Derek Sivers
I have a good system. I built my own email system long ago. I actually built it for customer service for my company because I had like 28 people handling a few hundred emails a day. And when I left the company, I just kept the software for myself. So yeah, I don’t use Gmail or Outlook or whatever it is normal people use. I just built my own email client that keeps track of things.
Ryan
I definitely want to get into the system stuff because I think it’s fascinating. But before that, I want to just give the audience a bit more context on you. You’ve lived quite the eclectic life. What do you think the audience needs to know about you to make sense of the person I’m speaking with today?
Derek Sivers
Haha. Oh, it depends where we want to go. What do you need to know about me? I lived in a few different parts of the world, and therefore never felt that I was necessarily native to any one part. Therefore, it always feels like the rules of this place don’t necessarily apply to me. And I guess I’m always looking for a different way of doing things, but I tend to think of things from scratch since I don’t tend to follow norms very much. And that has led me to some weird paths. I was a musician for ten years. I ran a music distribution company for ten years. I’ve now been writing books and giving talks and stuff like that for 14 years. I’m living in New Zealand now. I’m a “California native”. I don’t know. There you go. I don’t usually introduce myself.
Ryan
There it is. Yeah, that first person’s thinking that is something that I’ve really come to admire from you. You have, like, an approach that’s very... I think Chris Williamson described it as lean, and it’s a very cool.
Derek Sivers
Lean?
Ryan
Lean, but I think more than anything, more than being lean. It’s your own. You know, so often in life we build these personas based on what the people around us want us to be like. And you’re very much your own person, which is something I very much admire.
Derek Sivers
Thanks. You know, it’s funny. Even when you asked me to introduce myself, imagine a social situation where you and I were, like at a party or something. And you know me and I know you. But then another person walks in that I know nothing about. Like, imagine they’re behind a shroud or something. Yes. Imagine that we’re at a Halloween party. Look, it’s ten days before Halloween, right? So imagine you and I are at a Halloween party and somebody in a mask comes up, and I know nothing about them. And you say, “Oh, Derek, introduce yourself or tell them what they should know about you.” And I think, well, I don’t know, is this a nine year old girl or an 80 year old man or a an aggressive banker or a laid back surfer stoner dude, I don’t know who I’m talking with. And so who we are in the context of others or what others might find interesting about us depends on who you’re talking to. So I think that’s why I was maybe awkward in that introduction you just gave is like, I don’t know your audience, Ryan, you do.
Ryan
One of my favorite things I’ve stolen from you is when people ask you what you do and you’re like, “Huh? I don’t know, I’ve never really thought about it.”
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I went to the TED conference a few times. The big, expensive, intimidating main TED conference, the one that happens once a year, where the billionaires go. When I sold my company, it was like a treat to myself. I was like, “I’m spending the $7,000 on a ticket to TED.” And I went, and yeah, you’re meeting these people. I mean there’s Bill gates, there’s the guys that invented Google, there’s Vice President Al Gore, there’s the guy that invented Unix. All these impressive people are there. And when you’re asked to introduce yourself, I mean, what can you do but rebel instead of trying to top that? It’s like, oh, I don’t do anything. Who knows, I don’t know.
Ryan
Yeah, it’s so funny. And I wanted to start with talking about mastery today, because I was trying to think of some things I wanted to pick your brain on, and my mind went a million different places. But I think the most interesting place that I went was to a conversation I had with a friend, and we were talking about what we wanted to master. We’re both in our early 20s, and we know we want to, you know, we don’t want to live like a mindless life. And the conclusion we came to, because we are both very all over the place and want to be generalist, is to master the art of living. What do you think about that perspective, and what do you think we need to know to start to get closer to that direction?
Derek Sivers
I think that’s too vague. I think the art of living for one person is very different than the art of living for another person, therefore, it kind of means nothing. It depends what it means to you. You may find that when it feels like you’re all over the place, there may be a common thread between these things that seem all over the place. Which might not always be in what you’re doing, but why you’re doing it, or why you find it interesting. So, for example, from the outside, it might have seemed like I was an entrepreneur when I started CD Baby, my company in 1997, but I was really just trying to help musicians, and I was learning about systems because I had done everything, like with my own two hands for so many years. Suddenly I was in a position where I needed to help not just ten people, but like 10,000 people And I was coming from a place of helping ten people, right? Like ten people asked if I could help sell their music. So at first I was just doing things with my own two hands, and that was a little bit interesting. But when I started getting hundreds and then thousands of people asking me to help them, I went, “Oh my God, I need to make a system.” And that became so interesting to me that I wasn’t doing it for the money at all. I didn’t care about the money. I would have done it even if it would have lost money, I would have done it indefinitely because it was so fascinating learning to build systems that help people. And I liked the warm and fuzzies of giving back to this community that had already benefited me. So that’s why I was doing CD Baby.
Derek Sivers
But then when I left, I was fascinated in finding new ways of thinking about anything. I mean, kind of like about, you know, the art of living. But when I look back, actually, that’s what I was doing all along with CD Baby too. Is I was finding new ways of looking at business from scratch, kind of like you said a few minutes ago in the intro about me is I love, like tossing away all the priors from even if temporarily to say, “Okay, well, what am I trying to do? What do I really want? What’s the most direct way to get there?” Who cares what everybody else does, it doesn’t matter. Ignore all that. For what I want, what’s the best way to get what I want? And it’s fun thinking of things from scratch. And then I went all the way back to my years as a musician and realized that’s what I was often trying to do with music, too. That’s why I was fascinated with music producers like Brian Eno that started questioning the whole process of almost like, what is music in the first place. What’s the whole point of it? And breaking things down to nothing and then recreating it in a new way, the way you want. Suddenly I found a thread between making music, starting a business, writing books. There was a subtle thread underneath that connecting them all. And that thread is what really interested me, not the different pursuits necessarily, for their own sake. So when you say you and your friend are all over the place, it may be that there is a common thread that is your real pursuit underneath what you’ve been doing.
Ryan
What made you have that realization?
Derek Sivers
Probably just wondering why I’m so interested in say writing. That, “Oh, this is really a new pursuit for me. I’m so into writing.” And then I thought, wait a second. No, this doesn’t feel new. It doesn’t feel like something really changed. And then I had to go back and look at my past through that lens and going, “Oh my God, I’ve actually been communicating all along.” Even programming is communicating. Oh my God, you’re trying to think of how to accurately communicate to a computer what you really want. You can’t just wave your hand and say, “Come on, make it happen.” You have to be specific and it can be the same thing with people, and it can be the same thing with leadership. You can’t just say, “All right, come on people, we’ve got this common vision. Let’s make it happen. All right everybody go go go.” It’s like, no, no, no. You got to be specific to tell people exactly what to do, to make sure that we all understand exactly what outcome you’re trying to get without assumptions. It’s all communication. But it’s not all communication. It’s also a colored filter.
Derek Sivers
Have you ever played with Photoshop where you can...
Ryan
Yes.
Derek Sivers
There’s a thing you can do with command 1, 2 or 3 where you can say, show me only the Reds. Now show me only the greens. And it puts it into a grayscale, but grayscale according to just that color, and turning it grayscale with only the greens versus only the blues versus only the reds gives you a very different grayscale image. And so maybe it’s like that where you filter your actions in your past through different color lenses. So you can say, “Okay, well, now let me look at my past as if what I’ve been pursuing all this time has been status. Okay. I could see where that applies that emphasizes different parts of my actions. Now let me look at my past through the lens of what I’ve been doing all this time is trying to make connections with other people. Ooh, okay. I could see it all through that lens.” And in doing that, one of these things will resonate with you and maybe just be the thing that’s most useful for you to believe right now, even if it’s not necessarily true.
Ryan
Yeah. And that line.
Derek Sivers
Sorry Ryan, that was really abstract. I hope I didn’t go off. That made sense for me.
Ryan
Oh, absolutely. I love that. Like you always talk about nuance is the key. Nuance is the key. It really unlocks a lot of things. And when it comes to like the more practical answer, I guess, or question would be, how do you find that line that connects all these things? Do you think it’s just a combination of taking actions forward, trying to move forward in life and doing some reflection alongside that.
Derek Sivers
A lot of reflection. So first let’s be clear. There’s not the line or a line. It is, like I said, with the many different colored filters, whether you’re looking at it through status or communication or connection or just money or curiosity. You could filter your life through any of these lenses. And not a single one of them is necessarily the answer, but it’s just one possible way of looking at it. And then all you’ve got to do is just kind of notice inside yourself, which is the useful one for you to look at now. Look, say that you’re on the brink of something that you’re pursuing right now and you’re just not feeling quite enough motivation, or you’re feeling stuck and not sure what direction to go. And if you spend a lot of time reflecting and looking at your past and you find a certain thread there or you find maybe ten different threads, but one of them makes you jump out of your seat and take action. Well, then that’s the useful one to jump on. And if you want to declare it to be true, and you wanted to declare it to be the one. And if you want to say, “Ryan has finally found his mission, like this is what I’m really after, forget everything else. This is the one thing.” If that helps you, great, then adopt that belief. The whole point is not whether it’s the right answer or not, but whether it’s the one that makes you jump out of your chair and take action.
Ryan
You mentioned motivation there. And you know, right now the sentiment on the internet is like this grind mindset culture where you need to be disciplined and white knuckling things and really forcing your way through, voluntarily doing difficult things. What’s your perspective on discipline and motivation? Do you think it’s necessary?
Derek Sivers
Again, nothing is necessary. You need to only judge it by whether that belief works for you now. So if feeling that discipline is necessary is the missing piece for you right now, that makes you take the actions that you want to take. If that belief is working for you, then that’s what you needed. But never confuse that with it being the right answer. It can be timely too. There are times when what you need is to go to sleep, and there are times when what you need is to wake up. And neither one of those is the answer. But at different times of the day it is for you. So there are times in your life when discipline is the right thing that Ryan needs now. And there are times in your life when letting go of discipline might be the right thing you need. You might need more time in a hammock, reflecting, staring at the branches of a tree blowing in the wind while you’re thinking about your life. Or you might need hours in your journal no matter what your schedule said you were going to do today, you might need that more than what your schedule said so anybody listening to this, you need to be tuned in to what you need now to get you where you want to go.
Ryan
The answer almost always depends...
Derek Sivers
And sorry, that’s vague, but it’s.
Ryan
In order to give them that.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I caught a hint of this like what’s the right answer kind of question. And I’m just so wary of that that. You got to understand that it’s the right answer for you for now, for this situation. It’s never universal. That’s why it’s kind of funny when people write these books saying, “Here’s the way, this is it. Here’s what everybody needs. Stoicism, that’s everybody’s answer.” Or, you know, whatever it may be. “Here’s the 12 rules for life. This is what everyone needs.” It’s never true. It’s never what everyone needs. It’s what that author and maybe a few people close to that author may be needed at a certain point when writing that book, but it’s never the answer. You’ve just got to ask yourself, is this what I need now.
Ryan
There are tools in the toolkit. Like I love that perspective. Just thinking of it. Like, you have this kit of things and you know, sometimes the hammer is the right tool, but not always.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, but when you know that this is what you need, like say, for example, you’ve been eating too much junk. You’ve been sleeping in too much. You’ve been sitting on your video games. You’re like, “You know what, I need discipline.” In that moment, it helps you to convince yourself that discipline is the answer. As long as you understand, this is the answer for me, for now, for this situation. But embrace it 100% and dive completely into discipline. One of my favorite sayings or perspectives is, “You don’t get extreme results without extreme actions.” That if you want to be unordinary, well then don’t do ordinary things. And if you want to be unmoderated, well then don’t make moderation your goal. Go extreme and dive completely into something that matters to you. If you found that a certain belief system or a certain value is what you need right now, well then go all the fucking way into that, to where your friends get concerned, because you’re dialing it up to some extreme that most people don’t. That can be where the good, fun stuff comes.
Ryan
Yep, there’s a time and place for almost everything.
Derek Sivers
And then people will introduce you on a podcast someday by calling you a unique person or whatever you said about me. Sorry. I think a lot of the things that seem weird about me, yeah eclectic. Because I think a lot of the things that seem weird about me is that I often take a certain way of looking at something and explore what would happen if I take it to some extreme or to its logical conclusion right. So that’s what my previous book called “How to Live”, was that. It was a bunch of different ways of looking at the world. Each one taken to its extreme, logical conclusion, like if independence is the way to live and self-reliance well then how would that look if we took it all the way? Okay well, if, say, generosity and giving is the way to live, how would that look if taken all the way? These can be fun to explore in yourself. Like you asked about discipline. If you’re feeling I need discipline. This is something I’m not good at. This is something I need more of. Then it can be a fun experiment for your life to try taking that all the way. What is a life of complete discipline look like? And how can I live that if only for now?
Ryan
I think it’s an important reminder that, you know, life is filled with sprints and there’s a time for walking. There’s a time for running, and there’s a time for going all out sprinting and recognizing when you’re in which stage. It’s just an important reminder that, you know there’s different situations that require different things.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Ryan
And I think it’s a perfect segue into “Useful Not True”. Because, you know, this core idea of nuance. And I just wanted to run through some of my favorite ideas or takeaways from it and get your perspective on them. The first one being, “You are what you pretend to be.”
Derek Sivers
Is there a question?
Ryan
I just wanted to get what that kind of means to you?
Derek Sivers
Kind of like we were just talking about picking a thing and going for it all the way and sorry I’ll just keep using your example of discipline. You can pretend to be a disciplined person, even if it’s not how you feel on the inside, even if you feel like in your self-identity, “Oh man, I have no discipline, I suck, I just go to every temptation. I’m a total hedonist. I’m a sucker. I’m an addict.” You could call yourself any of these things in your self-identity, but you can pretend to be disciplined. And sorry, when I say pretend, I don’t mean by telling others. I mean by acting like it. Act like you are disciplined. Set your alarm at this hour and do exactly what you said you were going to do, whether you feel like it or not. Don’t give up until you reach the desired outcome. Even if you have to put on some theme song music or give yourself an alter ego name, you know I am the tiger or whatever. You can pretend to be this disciplined version of yourself. But by pretending to be that, you are that. And I find that so fascinating that you can feel like a shy introvert. But if you find yourself in a social situation, you can pretend for just 30 minutes to be a social extrovert. But by pretending to be one, you were. You were a social extrovert for those 30 minutes, and this way of thinking about it is so helpful to realize you don’t have to align your actions with your internal self-image. You can just do the thing that you want to do. And just by doing it, you are becoming that. So you can pretend to be disciplined, you can pretend to be ambitious, you can pretend to be an athlete and do the actions one hour a day. The pretending to be a fit athlete will turn you into a fit athlete.
Ryan
It reminds me of this journal entry from Michael Jackson, where he talks about how he no longer wants to be Michael Jackson.
Derek Sivers
This is the MJ one. I saw your Instagram. I saw that, that was a great quote, “I am MJ, I will be this.” What did you like about that? I was curious.
Ryan
I liked how you don’t have to be one thing in life, and people get this identity set in stone at a young age, and then they go with that identity for their entire life. They identify as a certain thing, and then all their actions are a reflection of that. And I just love an individual who realizes that’s not the person I want to be, and especially a little later in life, and has the fortitude to change that about themselves.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. It’s amazing to realize that you are definitely not some sub persona that you’ve made. That isn’t necessarily all of you. I used to have on the home page of my website and just kind of an about me. This is me thing. That said, “I’m an introvert.” And I think I even said like INTJ because I took that little stupid Myers-Briggs test like 15 years ago and said INTJ. So I’ve just copy pasted that since, and I got an email, a tiny email from a guy in Germany saying, “Derek, I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that’s all that you are. I think that might be who you were at the moment you took that test and who you are in some situations. But don’t you act differently in different situations?’ I think that’s all the email said. And I went, “Whoa, Holy shit. Thanks random German dude, for challenging me.” I was like, that’s so true. I’m not always this way. I do adapt for certain situations, and it really just kind of opened my whole self-identity. It’s like I kind of went to my home page of my website, and I deleted this whole I’m an introvert thing, or maybe part of it’s still there, but it made me question that because in some situations, I act like a total socialite, a real extrovert, and in some situations I feel like one. It’s rare. But that was a wonderful way to challenge this whole idea of like, well, this is who I am. I think we should all challenge that. If you catch yourself feeling, “Well, this is just who I am. That’s how I am.” Well, challenge it. See if you can prove it wrong.
Ryan
I catch myself in conversation often with friends. If they ever say they’re an introvert, I’ll say, are you an introvert? Or the people around you just aren’t like you? Because it’s so often now that if you’re a unique person, if you have very weird interests, you think you’re an introvert. But when in reality you aren’t by your people.
Derek Sivers
Right. Like you imagine, the cliche of somebody who’s into chess and nothing else, and they have nothing to say to the girls focused on their fingernail colors or something like that. But you put them around a bunch of other chess dudes. Suddenly he’s got a lot to say. It’s a nice idea. I like that.
Ryan
Yeah. And...
Derek Sivers
You know what’s funny? Wait. Sorry, sorry. When I’m traveling, and if you’re sitting next to somebody on an airplane or you’re just encountering a lot of strangers that ask you that shallow question, like, “What do you do?” I always just say I’m a computer programmer because for most people, that makes them go, “Oh.” And it ends the shallow conversation right. Or somebody can say like, “Oh, are you back end or front end? Oh, database. Oh, PostgreSQL.” I’m like, “Oh shit, dude, are we really going to talk tech now? Oh fuck yeah, I can talk tech. Let’s do it. Let’s dive into this. What are you using?” You know, and I love talking with other programmers. So it ends up being a fun filter by just saying I’m a programmer.
Ryan
Yeah. I love, like, if you ever want a great heuristic for people who want to have things to say in that situation is just giving people stuff to grab onto in those situations. When someone asks you what you do instead of giving that one word, answer. Unless obviously you don’t want to speak with the people, but it’s a great heuristic for people.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I think my usual desire is to shut things down if I’m really just exactly getting from point A to B, and I’m trying to just go through life, I don’t feel like getting into it. But yeah, of course, if you’re having a conversation. Well, I guess it depends. How much do you want to have a conversation with this person? If you’re really wanting to engage, well, then yeah, you look for those little hooks to hang on to and you give them any of yours that they might grab on to, and you look for theirs that you can grab on to. Conversation is fascinating, as you know, here we are.
Ryan
It’s an art within itself. “The brain invents explanation.” We quickly touched on this. And what really stuck out to me about this section was what you learned about individuals who have a disconnected left and right side of the brain.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. So what I’m about to say next, if you’re listening to this, don’t think that this does not apply to you. But there are some otherwise normal people that had some kind of problem in their brain where the correct fix was to sever the surprisingly small connection that connects the left and the right half of the brain. I forget what it’s called. Something with a C or something. Anyway sometimes brain surgeons need to sever that. And so now you live an otherwise normal life. But the right and left halves of your brain are separate. And they study those, psychologists study those people to try to understand the mind better. And what they found is that you can give a message to somebody’s right ear, like, “Please close the window.” And they’ll get up and close the window. And when they sit down, you can ask their left ear, like in the headphones, ‘Oh, why did you close the window?’ And they’ll say, ‘Oh, sorry, I was a little cold. Is that all right?’ And they really completely think that the reason they got up to close the window was because it was cold and they were feeling a little chilly. And that’s the reason, because the left half of their brain doesn’t know that the right half got this message. Please get up and close the window.
Derek Sivers
So there are a few more examples of this in the book. But the point is, we all do this, but we don’t realize it. We don’t realize that our brain is lying to us. Our brain doesn’t like to say, “I don’t know.” So if you ask yourself, why did I break up with her? Your brain will say, well, it’s because rah rah rah rah rah. But the truth is, you don’t know. Your brain might have just made up an answer because you asked. Like the person that said, “Oh, I got up to close the window because it was chilly.” But it’s probably not the real reason. And you can never know the real reason. Because who’s to say and if you think your brain is to say, well, your brain will lie to you. So the lesson learned is that when somebody asks you why something, you just shrug. And also you can stop asking other people why they did something because you’re just asking them to lie. You know, “Why did you do that? Why did you cancel the appointment? Why are you late?” You’re just asking someone to lie in those moments. It’s never going to be the real reason. And they don’t even know the real reason. So let it go and stop thinking you know.
Ryan
My takeaway from that was, since you can’t know the real reason, it’s better to take the useful reason that you give yourself instead of the unempowering reason. Yeah, it’s so good because there’s so many times in life that you get the get told you can’t, or that it’s not the right thing for you.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. The useful reason. Useful as measured by what is helping you actually take the actions you need to get you where you want to go to help you be who you want to be, to do what you need to do, or to just feel at peace inside. Because sometimes that’s all you need is to just say, make peace with the past, or let go of thinking that you can do everything under the sun. Say, here’s a useful belief, you can do anything, but you can’t do everything. You need to decide. Okay, true or not, that’s arguable, but it can be really useful in a moment where you catch yourself badly wanting to do 28 different things. And if you hear that aphorism, “You can do anything, but you can’t do everything you have to decide.” I find that really empowering to go, yeah, I can do anything. I really can do anything, but I can’t do everything. I need to decide. I need to pick which of these 28 things is the one thing that matters the most, and let go of the other 27 and throw everything I’ve got into this one thing. And if I do that, I can make that one thing happen. If I have the balls to let go of the other 27, that could be a really useful belief. I’ve found that really useful. We could argue about whether it’s true or not. That doesn’t matter, if that’s the belief that helps me take action on one of those 28 things, and gives me the inner peace on why I’m letting go of the other 27, then that was a very useful belief.
Ryan
It loosely reminds me of something I’ve heard you say in the past talking about Charlie Munger’s investment advice, where he said, if you think about investing, like if you had a punch card and you could only do, let’s say, 12 investments in a lifetime, think about how calculated and how much you would wait on making the right decision.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. For somebody that might be horrible advice. That might not be what they need. And for somebody that might be great advice. If somebody is doing too much or if somebody is not doing enough, you need to kind of ask yourself. Here’s a related example, let’s talk about beliefs that are useful to some people, but not to you. I like to believe that everything is my fault. That no matter what, even though I’m living in New Zealand and I’m not a U.S. citizen or resident, and so I will not be voting or cannot vote in the upcoming US election. I could take it on myself and say, whoever gets elected, that’s my fault. I let that happen. I didn’t work hard enough to make my desired outcome or whatever. You could take the burdens of the world. You could say that famine is my fault. Whatever world hunger, the unrest in the Middle East is my fault. I should be able to do my part. And maybe if I really committed my life to it, then I could change that. And therefore, everything’s my fault. The fact that my friend cancelled dinner last night, that was my fault. If I was a more appealing dinner guest then my friend never would have canceled, he would have made sure that no matter what, he would have been there.
Derek Sivers
So you could get mad at the world for everybody else that does things that aren’t to your pleasing. Or you can take it on as your fault and say, I can handle all this. Okay. For me, that’s an empowering belief. I love thinking that everything’s my fault. I talked about it publicly once, and a handful of people came in saying, “Derek, that’s the most awful thing I’ve ever heard. You don’t know the kind of guilt that I was raised with. I was raised with the parents that just put the guilt of the world on me. And I’ve spent my whole life trying to tell myself that not everything is my fault, because my parents told me that everything is my fault and they blamed me for everything. I hate this advice or I hate this way of thinking.” And I went, “Oh wow, yeah, then it’s not for you.” I didn’t say it was true. I just said it’s one way of looking at things. And if this way of looking at things is not helping you flourish and thrive. Then that way of looking at things is not for you.
Ryan
Yeah, it’s crazy how we live in a world of prescriptions, like meaning people giving you a way to live and a way to do things. And it was one of the coolest parts about “How to Live” your book, because it appeared on the surface like prescriptions. And if you read each page individually, you might think it would be that case. But just, you know, having the complete contrast next to each other, it’s such a cool way to get clarity of thought in what you actually believe and what’s actually useful for you in that situation.
Derek Sivers
Thank you. I liked that format too.
Ryan
I did as well. So the next one being, “The world is negotiable and only a fool doesn’t haggle.” First of all, I just thought that is a beautiful piece of writing. But second of all, I think there’s a deeper truth that kind of underlines that sentiment.
Derek Sivers
Everyone listening to this should find a book by Herb Cohen called “You Can Negotiate Anything”. Big bestseller if you just search for “Negotiate Anything Cohen”. Search for a book with those three words, you’ll find it. It is such a beautiful book. I read it when I was 19 years old, and it changed my life. And then I reread it a few years ago at the age of, I don’t know, 53. And I was shocked how much his mindset shaped my life, because it’s not just a book about shallow negotiation how to knock down the price of a car. He gets in... I mean, he does mention that, but he gets into like, the core assumption that everything in life is negotiable. He said, “When somebody comes to you and says the price of an iPhone is this, or you are not allowed to attend this university unless you are of this age, of these grades, or unless we approve you or whatever.” Sorry don’t get too stuck on my two dumb examples there. I mean, in any situation in life where you’re being told that what you want is forbidden or not allowed and can’t happen.
Derek Sivers
He says there’s no stone tablet in the sky that says so. He said this rule is arbitrary. He said, “It’s just some people in a room made up this rule and they’re hungry. They’re late for lunch. Somebody had to make a decision. The vote was 5 to 3, so they chose the thing and somebody wrote it down, and somebody else is enforcing it and telling you it’s written in stone, but it’s not.” He said, “Everything is negotiable. Life is negotiable. You don’t ever have to take no for an answer. Even in the biggest forms of life, somebody in a wheelchair can’t be president. Somebody that looks like you could never do that. This is all negotiable. Never just accept somebody else’s rules as just written in stone.” It’s a beautiful philosophy. He says it better than I can here, but I highly recommend reading that book. Not only for the shallow gains you will get of being better at negotiating prices and situations, but for the bigger view of life as all negotiable, which to me is kind of the core of the “Useful Not True” book is reframing.
Derek Sivers
Reframing is about renegotiating a point of view. It’s saying, “Oh man, that really sucks that that thing happened to you, Ryan. Man, she shouldn’t have dumped you. Dude, that was really bad news. You must be so upset.” You can renegotiate that situation and see it from a different perspective. Or see the fact that you didn’t get into the university you wanted to, or see the fact that you grew up in a place with not many opportunities. You could see that as a bad thing, and that could make you slump into a chair and feel sorry for yourself. Or you could see that as a benefit and say, “Wow, the fact that I’m living in a place without many opportunities is amazing for helping me stay focused. It is such a good thing that I’m living in Tulsa, not Silicon Valley, because I’m able to sit here and practice this craft 12 hours a day without being distracted by a bunch of exciting social events going on.” You can spin anything to your favor with reframing, and the core of that is understanding that it’s all negotiable. There is not one set way that things are. It’s your perception.
Ryan
What gave me that ability to reframe was stoicism. Do you think that by reading that book, and I know stoicism was something that you discovered later on and you were like, “Oh my goodness, this is kind of like my life philosophy in a way.” Do you think that it is that reframing that you learned, that led you to feeling like stoicism was such at the core of who you are?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I say that reframing is more at the core of who I am than stoicism itself. I think stoicism is one way of reframing things. Yeah, it is a good time proven practice of a way of reframing. But there may be other ways of reframing that are not stoicism. I avoid isms in general, kind of like we said half an hour ago about whenever you say like, “I’m an introvert, I’m just not that kind of person.” As soon as you say that, you want to challenge it, go, “Hold on. Let me test that hypothesis scientifically. Let me see if I can disprove that.” Well, same thing with isms. As soon as I hear an ism, I’m like that sounds like you’re just buying into somebody else’s package. It sounds like that’s not being fully thought through. You’re not thinking fully if you’re just adopting somebody else’s ism, you might not be thinking fully. So I’m wary of any isms.
Ryan
I know you’re definitely not a person to give advice willy nilly. And you don’t strike me as a person to to take advice or give advice. When do you think advice is useful? When it is useful, I guess.
Derek Sivers
Advice is useful, like flipping a coin is useful, like strong opinions are useful. And it goes like this. If you flip a coin, say you’re 50/50. You can’t decide on something. You say, “I’m going to let a coin toss decide.” You flip a coin. Heads or tails? You decide tails. It lands. There are two moments you notice when it’s in the air. Are you subtly wishing that it will land on heads or it will land on tails? Which way are you just noticing a tiny little whisper of a voice inside yourself, wanting it to be more one way than the other? And then at the moment when you see what it turned out to be, are you disappointed or glad? You don’t have to follow what the coin says. The coin is not the point. It’s about noticing that you aren’t exactly 50/50, that you are, in fact 49/51. And so which way are you secretly leaning. That helps you decide, not the coin. You don’t do whatever it says, “Ah tails. Damn it. That’s not what I was hoping. But I guess that’s what I have to do.” No! It’s going. “Oh, it’s tails. And you know what? And I’m disappointed. So fuck it. I’m going for the heads choice.” Okay, that’s one example. It relates to advice because if somebody says, “Ryan, you know what you need to do? You need to shut down this podcast right away. You need to follow this way of being. I know the strategy for you. Trust me. This is what you need to do. You need to move to Hollywood. You need to do something. Something you need to do this. This is the way for you, Ryan. Trust me. I can see this in you. I know this is the way.”
Derek Sivers
Kind of like the flipped coin. If something in you goes, “Oh, my God, he’s right. And this is so exciting to me. And this is what I’ve been needing. I’m going to move to Hollywood and do this thing.” Well then that was good advice for you. If it inspires you, it excites you. It revs up your actions. It makes you take action before where you were taking none. It makes you try things, but in short, if it excites you. But on the other hand, if somebody says, “Ryan, here’s what you need to do.” They give you some advice and you go, “Yeah, he’s right. I really should do that. Fuck.” Well then kind of like the coin toss. That’s not for you. No matter how informed the advice may be, if it’s draining your energy, it’s not the right choice for you. And lastly, I said strong opinions.
Derek Sivers
Brian Eno, the record producer that has produced some legendary pop rock records from U2 to Coldplay to David Bowie. He said that his main role in the recording studio is to have strong opinions, because when the band is in there and the guys from the U2 are fighting among themselves and they say, “Man, this needs to be harder. Man, this needs to be softer. No, this needs to be this.” And he’ll say, “No, boys, you know what we need to do? We need to get rid of the drums entirely. The drums are the problem here. Get rid of the drums. The problem is solved.” And he says it with such conviction that if everybody goes, “Yeah. All right, that’s a good point.” Well, then. Okay, it’s solved. Or if everybody goes, “What, are you fucking nuts? Get rid of the drums. Absolutely not.” He goes, “All right, glad I could help. I was just presenting a strong opinion so that you’d have something to disagree with or not. So my job in the recording studio is to have strong opinions.” It could be very useful for the world if you went out and gave extremely strong advice, strong opinions, maybe even extreme. And some people would say, “What are you fucking nuts? That’s awful.” He said, “Okay, great. Glad I could help solidify your argument.”
Ryan
What’s interesting about that is it takes a lot of courage and a lot of times like to take an example of, let’s say, your parents giving you advice to go to college and study this. And then deep in your heart when you hear them say that, your heart sinks and you’re like, “I really don’t want to do that.” But it takes a lot of courage to, in spite of the advice, do what you think that intuition is telling you to do.
Derek Sivers
Right. The tricky thing there is impulse versus wisdom. So there’s a thing in the “Useful Not True” book where I say your first thought is an obstacle. That too often we glorify the first thing that comes to our mind. Something happens, you have a reaction and you call that instant reaction authenticity. You say, “This is who I am.” It’s like, no, that was just your first stupid impulse reaction. If I hit your knee with a hammer, it’s going to kick. That’s not who you are. That was just your impulse. If you were to think through it, do you think that kicking right now is the right thing to do? Probably not. You just did it because something hit your knee. It was just an impulse. And so there are times when somebody can say, “Ryan, you need to quit smoking.” And your first reaction will be, “What? Fuck you. No, I like smoking. It’s who I am.” And you might come up with a bunch of reasons why you enjoy smoking and fuck you. I’m never going to quit. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing. The person who tells you to quit smoking is actually right, even though your impulse said no. Even though your identity says, “I am a smoker. Fuck you. You can’t make me stop.” It is actually the right thing to do to stop. So sometimes, maybe most of the time, it actually can be the right thing to do to follow the advice of people who know better.
Derek Sivers
And that say, for example, the religious kind of thinking. And by religious, I don’t even mean a spiritual belief. Again, sorry in the book “Useful Not True”, I learned the distinction between religion and belief, and it was actually written by the head of theology at New York University wrote a book called “The Religious Case Against Belief”, where he makes the distinction between religious beliefs and religious actions. And in distinguishing that you say that actually, in most of the world, religion is more about the action, what you believe inside your mind doesn’t matter, because it’s nonsense anyway. And who knows, if you’re just lying to yourself. What really matters are the actions. And you can say that the history of religion is people distilling very wise actions to say, “Just do this, no matter what you feel, just do this.” And if you just follow those rules, you will live a good life. No matter what you are feeling along the way. Your impulse was saying no. If your impulse was saying, “Fuck you, I won’t quit smoking.” But if the rules say “No, you must not smoke that destroys your body.” It can go with other ways. Like, “No, you must not kill people, even though we know you feel like it sometimes. No, you shouldn’t just go have sex with other married people, no matter how you feel like it. No, don’t do that.” Sometimes you just have to ignore your impulse and do the right thing. It’s a tough choice
Derek Sivers
Sorry. Yeah, it’s a tough choice when you said, like, your parents saying, go to college, you’re like, “But I don’t want to.” That might be the rebellion of something. I don’t want to quit smoking. I don’t want to eat healthy. It’s like, “Oh, now it’s got to be your choice. Is that the right thing to do, whether you feel like it or not?” Sorry to interrupt. What were you going to say?
Ryan
No, no, not at all. What’s funny about that is, like, I could relate to that very deeply of being in college and being like, “Oh, I really want to drop out. Like it in my heart of hearts, I think I should drop out.” And my parents are like, “You are an idiot.” And in hindsight, you know, it’s like, I’m so grateful for that experience I had in university. And it’s a funny thing there. But what’s so beautiful about what you were saying when you broke down beliefs versus actions and the religious context is that so often when people are arguing about religion, it’s the beliefs that they don’t subscribe to. The actions are almost for the core of them, are almost universally accepted that, “Yeah, that’s probably the right thing to do.”
Derek Sivers
Yeah. And then to me, when you combine that thing about the split brain patients and your brain lying to yourself and not even knowing why you believe what you believe or anything, it’s like, can we just never mind this whole topic of beliefs, just anything in the head let’s just disregard it. And let’s just look at your actions. I don’t care that you think you’re a good person. I’m just looking at your actions. I don’t care that you believe in your heart of hearts, that you will be forgiven in the afterlife. I’m just looking at your current actions because that’s the only reality we have here. Everything else is just in your head. I don’t know if you’re lying and you’re lying to yourself. Who knows? So it’s a fascinating idea to disregard all beliefs and look only at the actions.
Ryan
It really is a fascinating idea, and something I’m incredibly curious about is your experience as a parent. Now if I remember correctly, your son is almost like a teenager now at this point. Or is a teenager. What has your experience been like with parenting? I know you’ve done things in a very unorthodox way. How do you think in, you know, in the modern world, with social media and technologies and attention spans diminishing, what has being a parent taught you?
Derek Sivers
Before I answer that, notice that your question itself, where you said, like “In the world of social media and diminishing attention spans.” I disagree with that question. I don’t think that’s the real world. I think some people choose to give that more of their time and attention, and choose to believe that narrative, that our attention spans are getting shorter. But I disagree. I don’t think that’s a given truth. I haven’t raised my kid in a very unconventional way. The only thing I did is really I spent time with him the same way I would have if it were 1850 or 1950, which is we spent a lot of time together doing real things, mostly outside, mostly physical things. Waking up and making things out of Lego or out of wood or out of whatever 3D printing. Out of sticks outside building things and the end result is he’s fascinated with making things, fascinated with having great conversations because he and I just have been talking for 30 hours a week since he was born. I’d say 30 hours is just kind of like I noticed once I analyze, like, “How much time am I actually spending one on one with my kid no other distractions?” And it’s about 30 hours a week I’ve spent with him since he was born. And his friends stare at their phones like zombies, and he doesn’t. He just has no interest in it. So he’s had a phone for a couple of years.
Derek Sivers
I gave him an old great phone of mine. When somebody gave me a new one, I thought, “Yeah, okay, I’ll take this new one, because then I’ll give my kid a phone.” And it was a bit of a test to see if he would get addicted to it, but no, no interest. He usually keeps it off in his backpack. Only turns it on if he has to tell me or his mom where he is or call a friend. But other than that, no interest in whatever’s coming over that stupid little screen because oh my God, he’s got the whole world at his fingertips. And he loves being in the forest and making things. Just three days ago, he built an entire huge fort. We both went to the forest, and he sat there for six hours of, like, intense focus and hammers and nails and sticks and axe and his knife and, like, chopping down trees and this and hanging it there with the string and the hook and then the tarp over the top. He built an entire fort in six hours while I sat there and read a book. Beaming with happiness. And that’s my boy. He is amazing. But I haven’t been that extreme of a parent. It’s just like I said, it’s like I just spent a lot of time with him doing real things. I never just shoved a screen in his face and said, “Here, stare at this.”
Ryan
Did you homeschool him or does he go to traditional school?
Derek Sivers
Regular old public school. His mother works for the Ministry of Education for the New Zealand government. So anytime I mentioned homeschool or even some kind of alternative or private school, she said, “Oh hell no, he’s going to public school.” All right. Fine. You’re the expert.
Ryan
If you were to have a school, what do you think the curriculum would look like? How do you think that would differ from the traditional way of doing things?
Derek Sivers
I’ve actually thought about it before. I’m not that interested in it. So don’t think that what I’m going to say next is something I’m going to do. But I think it would be interesting to have a school of mastery where everybody could come with their own thing that they want to master, whether it’s a musical instrument or writing or computer programming or whatever it may be. The path of mastery itself has some common practices and traits that can be taught. No matter what it is you’re wanting to master. So I think it could be amazing to say, have a remote place with an infinite library. You know, let’s say good, fast internet and a local storage of a lot of resources and tools. But people come there from around the world to focus on their mastery of their thing for a year or four years or whatever it’s going to be. And I think the remote thing is symbolic and helpful. Say, whether you would have put it off in eastern India, or even here in New Zealand, someplace that most people don’t live. So you have to leave your home in Chicago or Berlin or whatever to go to this faraway place as a symbolic commitment. Like, “All right, goodbye, everybody. I’m going to be mostly off the grid, focused on mastering my thing for the next whatever months or years.” And you go to this faraway place that takes care of your room and board and feeds you for a year and gives you the place and just enough solitude and resources and guidance from people that have walked the path of mastery before, and can help keep you and guide you on the the path to mastery of whatever it is you want to do.
Ryan
I’m fascinated when you mentioned the faraway place aspect of things because it’s funny how in certain sports, especially like combat sports, where a fighter would go into fight camp and they would go out to the mountains or somewhere far away, and it’s just them and their team, and it’s just a single focus for a certain amount of time, a short sprint. And there’s something, I don’t know if it calls deeply to me or to a lot of people of the beauty in something like that and the beauty in, you know, saying f it to the rest of the world and going into the the wilderness and just having a single focus. I don’t know what it is, but it’s to me, it’s just a very romanticized idea in my head.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Which means it can be useful for people because there’s this precedent of legends doing the same thing to go into the wilderness to focus or go into solitude to focus without distraction. You know, it’s funny, Ryan, where I thought you were going with that question. I thought you were going to challenge me when you said battle, I instantly went to the idea of, like, oh, but you get good at your craft, and now you want to test it among the best. You want to go to Silicon Valley, and with all the other programmers, you want to go to New York City with all the other finance people, or you want to go to Hollywood where you test your skills in acting. You want to learn acting in Hollywood, not in a mountain in India. But it’s funny. Maybe I’m affected by the legends I grew up with learning music. Where, say, Charlie Parker, the great jazz saxophonist. There’s an idea that I think he grew up in Kansas City. If I got that right. And he was a young saxophonist that was ambitious and badly, wanted to be a great jazz musician and a traveling band came through, and he convinced them to let him get up on stage and play with them. And he played a little bit, and he was so bad that the drummer unscrewed one of his cymbals and threw it at the guy, like, “Just get off the stage, you’re awful.”
Derek Sivers
And he was so hurt by that that he went into the woodshed. And to this day, musicians still call it shedding. I’m shedding, which means I’m practicing in solitude. I’m alone in the woodshed practicing my instrument. That might have actually started with the legend of Charlie Parker going into the woodshed for a few years. A few years of intense, like, 12 hours a day, just practicing his scales, his arpeggios, his harmony, his this and that and finger exercises and a few years of intense, intense practice. And the next time a band came through, after he had put in the hard work of shedding, then he got up on stage again and everybody was like, “Damn, where did this kid come from? He’s amazing.” And then he moved to New York City to put himself into the heart of the scene where again, now thousands of people said, “Damn, who’s this guy? Get him a record contract. Get this guy out to the world.” And he became a legend. But it’s because he put in the solitude craft of the shedding. So I think both can be necessary. You can’t just stay in the shed forever, but you don’t want to go straight to the battle front too early. You’ll get yourself killed.
Ryan
No doubt. There’s a time and place for both things, for sure. And I’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about “Hell Yeah or No”, because it’s a frame that has been incredibly useful in my own life. And I always tell it to people and they’re always like, That is good. That is good.” But what is it? And when do you think it best applies? When do you think it worst applies?
Derek Sivers
Hell yeah or no is, in short a saying that when you’re overwhelmed with too many options, you raise the bar all the way to the top. So you say, if I’m saying anything less than hell, yeah. Meaning no more yes or no. If I’m saying anything less than, “Oh hell yeah, that would be amazing.” Anything less than that I’m going to say no to. By doing that, you’re saying no to almost everything and you’re leaving space in your life. You’re not trying to fill every space. You’re leaving time and emptiness in your schedule so that when that occasional thing comes along that makes you say, “Oh, hell yeah.” Now you have the time and energy to throw yourself into that one thing completely, because you didn’t say yes to all the lesser shit along the way. So it’s a strategy for a certain situation when you’re overwhelmed with options.
Ryan
And do you think that best applies with the biggest decisions in your life?
Derek Sivers
It can apply to...
Ryan
Where to live? Who to be with? That sort of thing.
Derek Sivers
If you’re overwhelmed with options, yes. I think the situation is more important to notice. Yeah, Ryan, if 100 girls are begging you to be with them and you’ve got so many choices, well, then yeah, you should be adopting a hell yeah or no philosophy to these 100 women that want to be with you. But if there’s really just, say, one person that really wants to be with you and doesn’t take no for an answer. Hell yeah or no is probably not the right philosophy. Actually. Hold on. Scratch that stupid example. The better example is, say, when you’re straight out of college or you’re just at the beginning of your entrance into life. It can be a smarter strategy to say yes to everything, because every tiny little opportunity is like a lottery ticket. Where? Why not? If they’re free, just take as many tickets as you can because you don’t know what thing’s going to hit. So you should meet everybody you can. You should say yes to every weird little invitation. And when you’re anywhere with other people, when wondering to yourself, should I go meet that person? Hell yeah. Or no? No, it’s, yes. You should go meet that person. You should keep in touch. You should meet as many people as you can. Put yourself into the place where opportunities are happening, where you know the action is going. Be in the place where things are happening. Try everything.
Derek Sivers
Put yourself in the middle of it because you never know what surprising thing is going to work out for you. The example Cal Newport made in a great little book called “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”, is that Steve Jobs was not passionate about computers. He was only passionate about yoga. He was really giving his full attention to yoga and meditation. But then his friend Steve Wozniak came along and said, “Hey, there’s an opportunity over here at Byte Center or whatever it was called, like a computer chain. They want somebody to build a computer, and I know how to build it, but I don’t know how to sell it. Could you help me with this thing?” And he saw it as like yeah, that’s probably a smart thing to do. Okay, I’ll help you with that. But it wasn’t a passion of his. It wasn’t a hell yeah. But after he got into selling computers, they called it Apple Computer. It grew and it grew. Then it became a passion later. But it wasn’t a passion at first. So you should not be using this measure at the beginning of your career of like, “I don’t know, am I really passionate about that? I’m not feeling the the lightning bolt of yes.” It’s like, well, early in your career, it’s a smarter strategy to say yes to everything because you never know which of those many, many, many things is going to have the big lottery effect and pay off for you.
Ryan
Do you think there’s anything that’s a good North Star or a good general North Star... Obviously, when we’re speaking in generalities, it’s hard. But when people are thinking about decisions like that and they’re trying to zoom out, is there any anything there in terms of a good North Star?
Derek Sivers
Whatever excites you and scares you. Being scared of something is a form of excitement. The enemy is that feeling of boredom and the feeling of draining your energy. If something makes you go, “Ah.” And just drains your energy, feels like it’s sucking your soul away or it’s boring, that’s the stuff to avoid anything that either excites you or scares you because sometimes it’s like, “Oh my God, I can’t do that. That’s way out of my league.” Okay, well, that’s excitement you’re feeling. I think that is the North Star. That is the compass to whatever scares you, go do it. Whatever excites you, go do it. Whatever drains you or bores you, stop doing it. I think that’s the simple compass.
Ryan
I love that it reminds me of starting this podcast and those feelings of, “Oh, my gosh, that’s a little bit out of my realm.” There’s a lot of nervous energy or nervous excitement. I think that’s such a great North Star.
Derek Sivers
Dude, it was two years and four months ago. I looked it up before our call. It was two years and four months ago that you sent me an email saying, “Hey, I just started this podcast.” And here we are. You stuck it out two years and four months later. Here you go.
Ryan
Yep. Still going. It’s such a beautiful thing to learning the art of conversation. Like, nowadays, it’s very rare that you’re able to sit down with an individual. And no phones, no distractions. It’s just you two for an hour. An hour and a half, and it’s a lost art and and one that I love to do. And Derek, is there anything that we haven’t talked about today that you think we’d be remiss if we didn’t cover?
Derek Sivers
Haha, you’ve used that word remiss twice now. That’s impressive. The first time you said it, I went, “Wow, that’s like a word that I’ve heard in writing. I’ve never heard somebody say.” You know, I’d be remiss. So the only thing we haven’t said is I do podcasts like this not to sell books or anything, but for the people I meet because of them. So my favorite thing is anybody listening to this, especially if you are here all the way at the end of the conversation, is you should absolutely, definitely email me and say hello. If you go to my website, go to sive.rs. There’s a link to email me. It says contact and yeah, email me and just say hello. Ask me anything, introduce yourself. That’s how Ryan and I met two years and four months ago. So please send me an email. I answer them all myself and I really enjoy it. I put aside like about an hour, hour and a half a day to go through my inbox and I really enjoy it.
Ryan
And I think the people really appreciate it. I know I do. Derek, what do you hope people get out of the book? Useful Not True.
Derek Sivers
Let’s say two things that we mentioned earlier. First, that it’s all negotiable, that your perspective on any given situation is negotiable. And that’s called reframing. I think that is the key to almost all strategy. If you think back to the most celebrated strategists or even if you’re watching a movie, a Hollywood movie and somebody has like a brilliant strategy that helps them escape a situation that seemed inescapable. It all starts with reframing. The people that have become extremely successful in life in any avenue started by reframing the situation to find their advantage in it. So first you got to realize that the situation is not just the way it seems as your first thought. But there’s another way to think about it. So that’s one thing. And then second is to judge all of these thoughts and beliefs only for the actions they create. That’s it.
Ryan
Beautiful. I highly advise people go pick up a copy. Derek does an incredible job of taking away all the fluff.
Derek Sivers
It’s a tiny little book.
Ryan
Wisdom bomb, wisdom bomb, wisdom bomb. And then next thing you know, the book’s done. It’s incredible.
Derek Sivers
The whole audiobook. How long have we been talking? Yeah, I think the entire audiobook is the same length of this conversation we just had. It’s a 90 minute audiobook.
Ryan
Were you successful in doing it in one take.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, yeah. In fact, three times I did it in one take. People who bought my early advance copies. Because I’m standing in my little recording studio right now. I just have this in my house, so I’d be sitting there. It’s like a Wednesday at 2:00. I’m like, “All right, I think I’m done. I think I finished the draft of my book. I’ve been reading it out loud as I went. It feels good.” By 2:15, I’m sitting here in my recording booth recording the audiobook, and I just do the whole thing in one take. By 4:00 I’m done, and by 5:00 it’s up on my website for people to buy. It’s a wonderful way of distributing your thoughts ,is to get that the shortest time between when you feel done and when people can check it out. Because then along the way, in that first draft, which felt pretty damn done to me, a lot of people said, “I don’t understand what you mean about the aliens here.” And then the, you know, the second and the third and the fourth and the fifth person all said, “Yeah, I liked everything. But what was that bit about the aliens? That made no sense.” I’m like, “All right, I got to either rewrite that or chop that chapter about the aliens.” It helps to get that kind of feedback, instead of just leaving that up to a single editor and then sending it off to Penguin Random House and waiting a year before it’s suddenly on bookshelves in airports. And then you got to wait to get that kind of feedback. I love the the quick loop of immediately releasing what you’ve done.
Ryan
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, Derek, thank you so much for doing this today. It’s such a pleasure and I appreciate your wisdom and thoughtfulness as always.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, Ryan.