Tim Ferriss
host: Tim Ferriss
changes in perspectives, traveling, living in multicultural environments, generosity in cultures, inhabiting different lifestyles
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Transcript:
Tim
For people who don’t know who Derek Sivers is, what is the brief overview of Derek?
Derek Sivers
Oh, I have to do it. All right. I was a musician for many years, and then I started selling my music online in 1997, when there was no PayPal. And Amazon was just a bookstore. So I started a little thing called CD Baby just to sell my music. But then it grew and became the largest seller of independent music online. And I did that for ten years until I got sick of it and sold it. And then I was a Ted speaker for a few years, and then kind of threw myself into that completely. And then Seth Godin asked me to write a book. So I wrote a book, and then people really liked it. So now I’ve written five, and now I’m a... I don’t know dad in New Zealand thinking philosophically and living my life. How about that?
Tim
I thought you did a great job. Thank you for that. You know, when I can’t find a virtual assistant to do work for me, I’ll ask my podcast guest to do my job. I’ll also add number one people if you enjoy this conversation, which I’m sure you will, not to apply any pressure to Derek, but I always have so much fun. Go back and listen to the other conversations also because you’ll notice a few things. Number one, Derek has one of the most eclectic CVs imaginable. He’s worked in traveling circuses. He has played music at pig fairs. He has been an entrepreneur. He has certainly been a philosopher, coder and many other things. But also, I would say overarchingly crafted a life that is uniquely Derek’s and frequently tests assumptions and I suppose, bucket one of what we’re going to discuss today, changes his mind and finds himself zigging when he might have otherwise zagged, or where other people are zagging. And that is part of why I enjoy spending time with Derek. Aside from the dashing good looks and wit and charm, of course. So let’s begin. As we were brainstorming what we might chat about because we were hoping to catch up, I suggested a few things. We batted a number of things around and we landed on things you’ve changed your mind about, things you’re fascinated by, people you’re studying, not necessarily in that order. So let’s start with things you’ve changed your mind about or on. Where shall we begin?
Derek Sivers
I’ve got five things for you. I’m starting small and getting big. Coffee. I’ve never liked coffee. Every time I tried coffee, I went, “Ugh. I don’t understand how you people like this.” And even when I’d be with somebody that knew I didn’t like coffee. And we were out somewhere and they would go, O”h, my God, this is the best coffee I’ve ever had in my life, here. I know you don’t like coffee, but if you’re ever going to try coffee, this is the one. Try a sip.” And I’d say, okay, I’d like to try to get myself into this mindset. I’m going to like this. I just never liked it. So then I was in United Arab Emirates, and I was the guest of this Emirati man that we will get to later. And he said, it is Emirati custom. You must have the coffee. And I went, “Oh, sorry, I don’t drink coffee.” He said, “You must have the coffee.” I said, “No, really, I’ve never liked coffee in my life.” He goes, “My friend, you must have the. It is Emirati custom. You must have the coffee.” I went, “All right.” I took a sip. I was like, “Oh my God.” I was like, “This is really good.” He goes, `’That is Emirati coffee.” I went, “No, really. There’s something different about this.” He goes, “Yes, it’s Emirati coffee.” And I said, “Is that the one where they make it in the sand?” He said, “No, no, no, that’s Turkish. This is Emirati coffee.” So knowing that we were talking today and I was going to mention coffee, I texted him and I said, “Hey, what was that coffee?” Because he said there were only three places in Dubai that know how to make real Emirati coffee. So he told me one, Bateel. If you’re in Dubai and you want to try real Emirati coffee. Apparently, according to this Emirati try Bateel in Dubai for real Emirati coffee. I’ve changed my mind on coffee. I now like at least Emirati coffee. There’s one.
Tim
Okay. Just for definition purposes. All right, you know, I’ll hold my follow ups. There are going to be a couple of follow ups, including how do you define Emirati? Is that basically a Brahmin in the UAE?
Derek Sivers
No no no. Sorry. That’s what we call people from United Arab Emirates. So UAE...
Tim
Everybody? All right.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. If you are of the lineage, if you were a citizen of United Arab Emirates, you referred to as Emirati.
Tim
What was the special technique, special ingredient that makes that coffee so miraculous for you?
Derek Sivers
I don’t know. Hey listeners, if you find out what’s different about Emirati coffee, please let me know. I don’t know. I went back six months later, same thing. I tried Emirati coffee and I like it. Yeah.
Tim
Severe social pressure.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that might be the magic ingredient. Severe social pressure, it makes anything taste better.
Tim
You must have it. And it will be disastrous if you don’t like it. All right. So coffee, number one.
Derek Sivers
So I don’t know what it is. Okay. Python. So I’m just going to include this because 23 years ago, I learned the Ruby programming language and I became fluent in Ruby. And Ruby and Python are as similar as Portuguese and Spanish. But let’s say Ruby is Portuguese, where Spanish became more and more and more popular. So when I first learned Ruby, it’s like Ruby and Python were kind of side by side. Ruby was a little more popular at the time, but then over the years, Python just took off and I refused to look at it. I was like, “No, I chose Ruby, I speak Ruby, I don’t want to learn Python. It’s too similar. If I’m going to learn another language, it’s going to be Lisp or Haskell or something really different. I’m not going to learn Python. No.” And so for years and years I’ve been refusing and then just irrationally prejudiced against Python. When I was choosing a new language for a new project, I considered everything but Python. And then I realized I had left Python out because of my severe prejudice against it for no good reason. So I finally looked at the Python programming language and I went, “Oh my God, it’s beautiful. It’s great. Oh my God, it’s wonderful.” So now I love Python. And that just felt amazing in my heart to be like, “Wow, this thing that I was prejudiced against for 20 years is actually wonderful.” How cool. So coffee, Python number two. Should I go on.
Tim
Number three? Let’s go on.
Derek Sivers
Rats. Okay. I brought a prop. I want to make this a good show. Here we go. For the first time ever appearing, are my little pet rats. Okay, if you see on YouTube.
Tim
Oh, look at that. All right, we have we have two rats on video. They’re sizable. They’re chunky monkeys.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They are so cute. And they are so wonderful and they’re so affectionate. You can’t maybe tell because I’m holding them up like they owe me money right now, you know? But I’ll put them back. So here’s the deal. I’ve already given away the punchline. But as soon as I said rats, you know. So here’s the deal. Years ago, I used to kill rats. I hated rats so badly. I lived in a basement apartment in Boston that had rats in and around the apartment that would sometimes be blocking my entrance to my apartment as I would come home. And I was tired. So I killed many rats with great vengeance. I hated rats, and then just a few months ago, my boy said, “Hey dad, can we get a pet rat?” I was like, ha ha ha! And I just thought it was, you know, he was kidding. And he said a week later he said, “You know, that really kind of made me sad that you just shot down my idea of the pet rat.” I said, “Wait, you were serious?” He said, “Yeah.” I went, “Oh, well, why would you want a nasty, awful rat as a pet?” He said, “No, they’re not nasty and awful. Look.” And he showed me some videos that rats are really sweet and they’re really wonderful. They’re smart, they’re trainable. You can train them to do little tricks and like pick things up and like go to a wallet and open it up and take money and bring it to you. And, you know, very useful in a.
Tim
Thieves guild. Interesting.
Derek Sivers
The little artful Dodgers. And so it’s like the difference between a wild rat and a pet rat is like the difference between a wild dog and a poodle. The pet rats are really sweet. So no matter what you think of wild rats, don’t discount or don’t hate on pet rats. They’re actually really wonderful and cuddly, and they’re even clean. They use a litter box like they can control their bladder, you know, so like a cat they prefer to go in a litter box. And so they’re really clean and wonderful. And so I love my oh, and wait, the lifespan, their lifespan is 2 to 3 years, which as a parent is really wonderful because when a kid says, I want a pet, you don’t always want like a 15 year commitment, you know, the kid’s going to be away at college and you’ve still got the pet that your kid wanted when they were eight. You know, so I like that the lifespan is 2 to 3 years. So rats are good pets. And so I love my little rats. We’ve just got these two boys. But as even more than loving the rats, I love that I am now cuddling what I used to kill .like that I now love what I used to hate. It’s so sweet. Like, I cuddle them, but it’s like, God, I used to hate you. This is such a good feeling in my heart that I now love what I used to hate. And you’ll see this is the theme of my five things today. All right. Ready for the next?
Tim
What are the names of the two rats?
Derek Sivers
Cricket and Clover. Yeah, cuddly Clover and crazy Cricket climber.
Tim
What do they eat?
Derek Sivers
Oh, actually. Well, they do love clover but no, they just kind of eat rat food from the store. They eat anything. It’s like when you’re making food and you’ve got little leftovers, you’ve got little bits and crusts or little things that you just give it to the rats and they usually love it. It’s great. I keep them in the kitchen.
Tim
That’s perfect. That’s what some folks in South America do with guinea pigs, although the difference is they fatten up the guinea pigs on the table scraps and then they eat the pigs. Probably not going to eat Cricket.
Derek Sivers
I won’t be eating Cricket and Clover, but but I do like that kind of hang out near the kitchen and give them the scraps. Okay. Number four ,China.
Tim
Number four, China.
Derek Sivers
So in 2010 I went to Guilin, China, and then I went to Taipei, Taiwan. And at the time, China was rough. I was walking over rubble. The air was just choking me with its smoke and the sense of oil, and everything felt very third world, very rough. And I just thought, okay, that’s what China is. China, you know, developing economy. It’s just rough. And then you go to Taipei, Taiwan, and it just feels like the most refined first world beautiful version. It’s like Japan, but with Chinese culture. And I thought, “Ah, someday I want to live in Taiwan because that’s the really nice part of China.” So here we are, 2024, 14 years later, I got to bring my kid on a school holiday to China for his first time. And I thought, well, we’ll start out rough by going to mainland China, and then we’ll move on to like the best of the best with the refined culture of Taiwan and Taipei. And it turned out to be the opposite, that China was wonderful. We went to Shanghai and it was like first world, amazing, refined, silent because all the vehicles are electric now. So it was the very first thing I noticed. As soon as I took the train from the airport, we got off in downtown Shanghai. I’m surrounded by 100 vehicles and I hear nothing.
Tim
That’s so nice.
Derek Sivers
And I was like, “Oh my God, what? This is surreal.” Like, 20 motorbikes went in front of my face, like right there, like, you know, three meters away. And I heard none of them. There was just the silent movement. I was like, “This is so nice.” And the people were just just so polite and cultured. And it was none of this, like hacking and spitting that I associated with it before. Like the shouting and the spitting, you know.
Tim
That’s good to hear. I remember the spitting from my visits. A lot of spitting.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. And even just transactionally, you have to get Alipay or WeChat on your phone first before you go, like, attach it to your credit card. But then once you’re there, all transactions are just beep. Everything is so easy and they’re beautiful Like rental bikes everywhere. Laid out in perfect color coded cues. You can just walk up to one and go beep and step on the bike. And then just go where you want to go and you drop it off you go beep. And everything is just so civilized and wonderful. So it completely changed my mind about China. And then I don’t want to sound like I’m trashing Taiwan, but it was just interesting that by comparison. Then I went to Taipei and I thought, “Whoa, if China is this nice, imagine how nice Taipei is going to be.” And I got there and it was kind of like stinky and trashy. And they don’t take credit cards or they don’t have the apps. And so you have to pay cash everywhere. And I’m like, “Oh, money and paper and coins.” And I was like, “Wow, interesting.” And so I met with a Taiwanese woman for lunch that I’d emailed with before. And she’s an investor that goes to mainland China often. And I mentioned something about this cautiously. I was like, yeah, I don’t want to trash your home.
Derek Sivers
I didn’t say it like that, but I just cautiously said hi. I noticed something and she said, “I’m glad you noticed. I noticed this too.” She said, “I go to mainland China cities every 6 to 12 months. And I feel like Taiwan may be plateaued like 12 years ago. Like we kind of hit first world status and then stayed there, almost like Japan.” You know, it’s like Japan used to feel futuristic. Now it feels kind of stuck in the 90s, you know, fax machines and stuff, which is kind of cute in a way. Like, again, not to knock it. It feels like, it got to a certain point and then it said, “Okay, we’re happy here.” And she said, “Every time I go to China, there is visible noticeable improvements like every six months.” She said it blows my mind that they just keep improving and keep pushing. So I read a book called “China’s Worldview” by David Daokui Li that changed my perception of China’s government, too. It’s really impressive. He’s a guy that’s in but not in China’s government. And so he kind of is trying to explain the mindset of China’s government to outsiders. And it’s a beautiful book. I highly recommend, if somebody wants to understand China better, China’s Worldview.
Tim
China’s Worldview. Just as a sidebar, note your mention of Japan. I love Japan, and I’ve spent time in also in mainland China and in Taipei. It’s time for me to get back to both of those. I’ve spent much more time in Japan, but when people are going to Japan for the first time, they’re like, I can’t wait to experience this futuristic view 30 years ahead. I typically say, especially if they’re going to stay there for a longer period of time. I say, “You’re going to love it, and it is 30 to 40% Blade Runner. And 60 to 70% DMV.” Just like filling out paperwork in triplicate and fax machines. It’s going to drive you nuts if you actually try to live there. On some levels, right? There’s so many beautiful things about it. But yes, it does have the feeling of having frozen in time in a sense. As opposed to continued to inflect the way that it was perhaps some time ago. I need to get back to the East, so to speak. It’s been a long time. All right. I think you have...
Derek Sivers
Actually, because of this newfound love, I’m actually going to Shenzhen and Chengdu in a few weeks.
Tim
Oh, wow.
Derek Sivers
I just want to keep experiencing different Chinese cities.
Tim
Are you going to do any factory tours? Or see manufacturing there?
Derek Sivers
No. I’m just meeting with people. That’s kind of how I travel these days. I tend to go to a place, and instead of seeing the sights, I want to meet the people. So I’m meeting with people that I’ve emailed with over the years, and I chose those two cities because I know a lot of people there.
Tim
Great. Can’t wait to hear the report. So I think I’m no mathematician, but maybe you have one more.
Derek Sivers
Smart ass. Okay. Number five, Dubai. So this is my big one because when I lived in Singapore, Dubai would often come up. People would compare the two and they would tell me things about Dubai, about the shopping malls and the millionaire pandering and the Instagram hashtagy look at me kind of crap. And Dubai was in my top ten places I never want to go in my life. Fuck that place. It sounds awful. It sounds like everything I hate in one place, you couldn’t pay me to go there. But then I have to notice that feeling in myself. And this is going to be... We’ll get to like, the theme when we’re done with this number five. But I had a flight from New Zealand to Europe that it changed planes in Dubai. And I looked at that and I went, ugh Dubai. And I was like, “Wait a second, what is this prejudice in me against Dubai?” It’s like saying, I hate artichokes, but I’ve never tried artichokes, right? Like, I hate Dubai, but I’ve never been to Dubai. Maybe I should go to Dubai. So instead of making it a three hour layover, I made it like a 3 or 4 day layover. I went, “Wow, okay, I’m going to Dubai for a few days.” So I read a book called “City of Gold”, which was about the founding of Dubai and the creation of Dubai. And dude, it was so good. It is such a great book. Anybody listening to this, if you want a great read, read the book “City of Gold” about the history of Dubai.
Derek Sivers
It is inspiring, the wisdom and the foresight and the boldness it took to make that place happen. It was really just like a vision that saw its way through to the end, against all odds. Right. So super inspiring. Then somebody said, “Oh, you need to read ‘Arabian Sands’ by this man named Thesiger.” And that gets into like the Arab Bedu cultures written in the 1940s or 50s kind of like a Lawrence of Arabia kind of guy, like from England, but went through the desert and kind of became one with the Bedu people and got to know the culture and wrote about it. So that was really inspiring. And then the United Arab Emirates itself, as I learned more about... So Dubai, you know, is a city and a region inside the United Arab Emirates. It’s one of the seven states, the emirates in that country. And then so Sheikh Zayed, the guy that was really like the father of the nation, was a really great dude. Kind of like when I moved to Singapore and I learned more about Lee Kuan Yew and started to really admire the decisions he made, it became a bit of a role model. Like learning about him, makes me want to be a better person. You know, I just noticed that it actually subtly influences my actions. And so when I’m in Singapore, I feel like a little bit infused with the role model. Like I feel the presence of the role model of Lee Kuan Yew. And when I’m in UAE, I feel a little bit of this.
Derek Sivers
Oh, sorry, I’m jumping ahead, but it’s like I feel a little bit inspired by Sheikh Zayed because he was just such a great, generous dude. Also, I think it’s interesting that Arab culture gets a really bad rap in the media. Like Hollywood portrayal is usually some like white actor with brown makeup being stupid, saying, you know, “Oh, I like this building. I’ll buy ten of them.” You know? “I think I want a penguin colony in the desert, you know, make it happen.” And they’re kind of portrayed as a fools that are too rich. Right? And so getting to know the culture felt like this is really interesting. I really had the wrong idea about this culture. Okay, so as I read these books, City of Gold and Arabian Sands, I have a thing on my website where I always show what I’m reading and I take notes from the books, and I put the notes on my website. And a friend of mine that lives in Muscat, Oman, saw my reading list and he said, “What is your interest in this region? I’ve noticed you’re reading books about the Middle East.” And I told him, I’m just really interested in Arab culture. And he said, “You must meet the man from Tamashe.” And I said, “What?” And he goes, “Go to tamache.com. You will see a shoe store. His name is Mohammad Kazim. He designs sandals, but underneath the surface he’s an educator of Arab culture. So the sandals are just like the storefront. But underneath it, he does these cultures...”
Tim
It’s like the pirate shop in San Francisco on the magazine.
Derek Sivers
Oh, I haven’t heard this.
Tim
YOh, it’s, why am I blanking? It’s not Mccallister’s. There is a place in San Francisco. It’s on Valencia Street and it is used for now educating kids, writing workshops, things like that. But because they couldn’t get it zoned in San Francisco, they couldn’t get permission for what they actually wanted to do. They had to create a storefront and then do the teaching in the back. And so they created a pirate. A pirate attire store. And all the classrooms are in the back, so.
Derek Sivers
Love it.
Tim
That was a bit of a digression, especially because I can’t even recall the proper name of the sort of writing outlet that is is associated with this. But Tamashe...
Derek Sivers
Free to interrupt. Okay, so.
Tim
Sandal store on the front end, but education in disguise.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, well, at first I thought there was no connection. And then I realized that his sandal designs are actually kind of reflecting Arab traditions and culture through the design of the sandals. But it’s like his true passion are these cultural trips he does. So if you go to tamashe.com and you go in the menu, you can click Cultural trips and then you’ll see. So my friend introduced me to this guy. So I met with him on my trip to Dubai. We meet by the creek and he tells me that his grandfather built the first building in Dubai. That was his grandfather. That’s how young that city is. And he’s just like, “Yeah, right. Basically right over there. There was the very first building in Dubai. My grandfather is the one that built it.” So I said, “Can you explain to me something about Arab culture?” And he said, “Well, wait, first you got to understand that the culture of the people of the desert is very different than the people of the sea, like the Arabian coast, which is very different than the people of the hills.” And I said, “Okay, well, where’s your family from?” And he said, “Well, from the desert. But you know, two uncles got in a fight. And so kind of half the family moved off to Iraq for a while, and there was kind of like a split in the family, but then they kind of reunited in Abu Dhabi.” And he said, “But then Islam came along.”
Derek Sivers
And I said, “Wait, hold on, Islam that was like the year 600.” I said, “Have you been telling me your family history from 2000 years ago?” And he goes,” Well, 1800 years ago. Yeah.” I said, “Wait, how the fuck do you know your family history back 1800 years?” He said, “Well, we keep good records.” Whoa. Imagine what that does to how you see your life. If you see yourself in this long lineage of 1800 years of recorded family history. Like how that affects your dating and whatever choices on where to live. Okay, so Muhammad Kazim, this guy is a badass. I love this guy. He’s such a wealth of information and he communicates it so well. It really helps, by the way that he’s got a complete American accent. He went to college in Boston for six years. Like got into finance, came back, worked in finance in Abu Dhabi and then just said no my real passion is teaching the the Arab cultural traditions that I think have gotten lost in our modern skyscrapers. So that’s why he made it his passion project. You know, he could have made way more money in finance, but he has his tamashe.com sandal store and he teaches Arab culture. And I admire the hell out of this guy.
Tim
He’s a really cool Easter egg. All right. So we’ll link to that in the show notes. And I also pulled up this word that was on the tip of my tongue. Mcsweeney’s. Oh yes. Mcsweeney’s.net
Derek Sivers
Oh, of course.
Tim
There’s some hilarious writing, the one that I most recently shared with someone after it was shared with me is, “Cormac McCarthy writes to the editor of The Santa Fe New Mexican” by John Keenan. It’s only going to be funny for people who have read some of Cormac McCarthy, like On the Road or Blood Meridian, but there’s a lot of really good stuff, so that is the outlet. Also wanted to mention because you mentioned Iraq, Iraqi music, traditional music is some of the most incredibly intricate music I’ve ever heard, using a dulcimer or a hammered dulcimer. There are different instruments involved. Absolutely spectacular. A lot of that has been destroyed, unfortunately, culturally and various teachers and so on due to all of the goings on in Iraq over the last while. But what is the overarching lesson that you take from the five things that you have changed your mind on? Are there kind of meta lessons that you take from this?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, you can see the theme, which is like, I love my rats, but even more it’s like, I love that I used to hate them and now I don’t. And I could have gone on twice as long about Dubai by the way. The place is amazing. It is this cultural melting pot that just warms my heart. Just sitting on the second floor of the Dubai Mall and watching the whole world go by. Just the Nigerians and I don’t know the Saudis and the Russians and the Chinese and the British just all walking through in the same place. And oh, it’s so amazing. I kind of want to live there. But as happy as it makes me, I get this extra happiness of going, “Wow, I used to hate this place without even knowing it.” And I take a sip of this coffee and it’s like, “Wow. For my whole life, I’m 55. I hated coffee.” And the Python programming held.
Tim
So now you have to go to Dubai to have the coffee you like.
Derek Sivers
Right. And so I think the theme is that if you feel completely averse to something, get to know it better. That whatever you feel yourself leaning away from, try leaning into. If you hate opera, then go learn more about opera. And if you hate sports, well then go learn more about sports. It’s usually just learning about something gives you an appreciation for this thing that you used to just dismiss. So now at the end of the year, last year, I just thought, “God, this has been, I think, maybe the greatest year of my life. I think this is the happiest I have ever been in my whole life.” And I think the reason why was because I had five major things in one year that I used to hate, that now I love. I thought, God, this is the greatest joy.
Tim
It’s a major thing. So the rats makes it into major things. I like this.
Derek Sivers
Sure. I mean, you know, they’re my...
Tim
I’m not minimizing rats. I’m not minimizing rats.
Derek Sivers
You know, even the coffee and even the Python, I’m doing something with Python going, “Wow, I can’t believe I hated this for 20 years.”
Tim
Well, I suppose they’re major in the sense that to the degree you had a fixed position beforehand. These were strong, fixed positions of dislike, right? So that turnaround is very interesting. Let me ask you this, since in the case of the rats that was catalyzed by your son bringing up pet rats. Dubai, you had a layover that then prompted you to extend how long you stayed there. Python I’m not sure exactly how that about-face came to be, but having experienced the past year, you say to yourself, this is one of the greatest or maybe the greatest year of my life. High levels of happiness. I think it’s because I had these changes of mind. Are you farming for opportunities to change your mind proactively?
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Tim
And if so, how are you doing that?
Derek Sivers
I don’t have a systematic thing I can share. Not that I’m not sharing it. I just don’t have it. But it just made me notice. Like, now I just need to notice in myself. When I’m irrationally averse to something, it can even be a thought process. Sometimes... Okay, this is actually in my “Useful Not True” book that just came out, this idea that was actually a little bit sparked by you, where somebody dismisses everything a person says. Dismisses everything a public figure says because they don’t like something about that public figure. Right. Like, “Oh, I don’t like the way he acts on social media. So fuck him. I’m not going to listen to a word he says.” And that was inspired... I think I told you last time that the first time I encountered that was years and years ago when I saw somebody holding “4-Hour Work Week” and I said, “Oh, wow. Great book.” And he goes, “Yeah, the guy’s full of himself here. You want it?”
Derek Sivers
And it’s like he didn’t want to read the book because he saw one thing in there that made him think you were full of yourself. So that’s it. Fuck this whole thing. Fuck this 400 page book. There’s nothing in it for me. Because there’s something I don’t like about this guy. When I think about that, to me, that’s trying to think of people as either true or not true instead of useful or not useful. That’s judging the box, not judging the contents inside. And so I think there are many things in my life where I have judged the box. I’m like, “Python. No, you know, China, rough. Dubai, fuck that place. Rats. Coffee. There sorry, I just had to spit all five times. And all of those. I was judging the box. But if you learn a little bit more about it, then you get into the contents and you go, “Oh, actually, the contents are wonderful.” I was dismissing the package.
Tim
I would go further, you know, and he probably read the first edition where I had that whole chapter on my cock size that ended up being a little over the top. So I took it out for reprints.
Derek Sivers
And then you put it into 4-Hour Body.
Tim
It was a bit much. Yeah. Then I ended up putting that as an appendix in the 4-Hour Body. So fair, fair play on his part. I would actually build on that to say that I look to my close relationships and I pause and question how I’m thinking about friendships. If in every case there isn’t something substantial I disagree with each of those friends on.
Tim
Does that make sense?
Derek Sivers
Yes. I love that.
Tim
I really want friends where the differences of opinion bring us closer and make our friendships more valuable, not the other way around.
Derek Sivers
Yes,
Tim
It’s like if you and your friends agree on pretty much everything, I view that as symptomatic of a problem.
Derek Sivers
Okay. I’m so glad you brought this up. Sometimes I wonder about your motivation for continuing these podcasts and how you keep up the enthusiasm for doing this for so long. And then I thought, God, wait, you must be immersing yourself in so many diverse worldviews that it made me think about the comparison to investing. I was in a situation recently. You’ve probably had this many times, and I think it’s maybe part of why you left California, where you catch yourself in a group of people and everybody agrees with them. It’s like this group think, even if they’re all really smart. But damn it, they all basically agree. That sucks. And I thought about the benefits of diversification when it comes to investing, right? So anybody who learns, like investing 101 learns about having a a low correlation between your asset allocations. So your US stocks international stocks, real estate, commodities, bonds, gold, cash some things risky, some things riskless. And the whole idea is they’re supposed to have a low correlation. So if one goes down they won’t all go down. And I thought about that in terms of the thought portfolio in our head. Any given person, so you say it with the friends you have around. But I assume, aren’t you then by knowing your friends so well, when you’re in a certain situation, you’re thinking about what to do. You don’t just have Tim’s thoughts, you also have this friend’s thoughts, and that friend’s thoughts. And it’s like, how would this friend of mine approach this? Do you do that actively?
Tim
Oh yeah, I definitely do. And I’ll give a real world example. And I don’t know if we want to get into the thick of it, but I was reading some of your writing before we hopped on the phone, and I was taking an ice bath also right before we got on the phone, which I know I am fonder of than you are. But I was sitting in the tub freezing my balls off, and there were certain statements and positions in the writing that got me all riled up. And I was sitting there getting riled up and thinking about my counter positions. And then I thought to myself, well, that’s interesting to observe these feelings coming up, these very strong feelings. And then I thought to myself, “This is really good.” This is good because the feelings are coming up in a strong way, and you’re not someone to shy away from a conversation about those things. And what a gift to be able to have civil disagreement with friends. Like what a fucking treasure that is. Because we don’t have a lot of models for civil disagreement, I would say. At least not in most media or online. It’s just not what sells. And I very much want friends who are going to call me on my bullshit, or at least take counter Positions and help me think through things. Right. And I think that in in your new book, for instance, there’s a very good job of discussing perspectives and perspective taking and how you can read many things differently from different viewpoints. And you want friends who can help you do that so that you don’t get trapped in your own thought loops. And furthermore, just on a very practical sense, you want to be able to speak truthfully to your friends, and you want them to be able to do the same. And if you do that and you talk about a really wide breadth of things, if you never have conflict, one or both of you is probably being dishonest.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Tim
And if you’re going to have some friction in the system, which you probably will if you’re really being honest, then you’re going to need to be good at conflict resolution or repair or talking about hard things. So that’s a very long stream of consciousness that I just let out. But if I look for friends who I can and will disagree with on things, then it becomes my dojo for life overall.
Derek Sivers
Yeah,
Tim
With people I really care for and love and good God, what an amazing gift and advantage that is. So, yes, I do that deliberately and I invite people on the podcast who I suspect or know I will disagree with on a few different levels, and that gives me a chance to interrogate their thinking, but also interrogate my own thinking.
Derek Sivers
I love it. I’ve noticed within myself that when I’m around people that I know agree with me, my inherent curiosity level drops a bit, and when I’m around people that I know don’t think like me, my curiosity peaks. So when I meet somebody that is like a scientist that is also Hindu, I’m like, “Oh my God, I have so many questions for you. Can you explain to me how this okay...” Like I’m filled with curiosity to meet somebody that grew up Hindu and still actively has the Hindu beliefs. I want to understand this better. I’ve read two books about Hinduism. I don’t get it still, I have so many questions for you. But if I’m around somebody that’s like me, I’m like, “Yeah, how are you doing? What’s up? Me too. Cool.” All right. So I think it’s a deliberate overweighting if we’re going to kind of use a quantitative and investment metaphor. I have a whole lifetime of thinking my way. Now, I want to overweight learning other ways of thinking. And to me it’s just pure curiosity. There’s no debate. There’s no like, let’s work this out and get to the right answer. It’s just, “No, please tell me this other way of looking at things. Tell me this other way of looking at your family history 1800 years. Tell me this other way of looking at, I don’t know, spirituality, life after death. Et cetera. Please.” Like I’m so curious because it reminds me that my way of looking at it is not the only way. I love dislodging my first impression. I think our first thought is an obstacle, and we have to get past it to realize there are other ways to look at the situation. Once you realize that you can get past your first way of looking at something, then you can do that like what do they call it? Systems two thinking right? Thinking fast and slow. You can go, “Oh, right. Okay. Hold on. That was my first reaction. What are some other ways I could look at this.” That’s what my whole “Useful Not True book” is about.
Tim
Yeah, I remember also this, I think this was on the podcast in one of our earlier conversations, but I asked you it was on the podcast, probably the first conversation. I asked you who the first person you thought of when I gave the word successful. And your answer was along the lines of, “Well, I think answer number one. Isn’t that interesting? Because I might say Richard Branson, but really or Elon Musk. But if Richard Branson wanted a life of peace and tranquility and a slower pace, if that were his goal, then he’s utterly failing. So maybe that isn’t success, but perhaps overarchingly...” I’ve used that twice now as an adverb. That’s pretty funny. I never use that word, “But the question should be who’s the third person you think of when you hear the word successful?”
Derek Sivers
I’m so impressed that you remember that.
Tim
It’s a long time ago. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Tim
And that is an example of what you’re talking about, is getting past the first thought. I think the operative word there is thought. Right. Just to draw a distinction for me, I think paying attention to feeling the first feeling can save you from a lot of pain in the short and the long term. In other words, along the lines of “The Gift of Fear” Gavin de Becker, etc. If your system says no, pay very close attention to that. But if you have a inbuilt story, “I hate Dubai because A, B and C.” Which is very different from, “I don’t feel safe in this airport and I don’t know why.” Those are two very different things.
Derek Sivers
Very. Yeah.
Tim
Questioning that first story can pay a lot of incredible dividends. All right.
Derek Sivers
Dude, I love this subject so much. To me, it’s kind of like the key of life. Like, so often the difference between success and failure is the mindset that leads you to take different actions. But if you just look at a situation and you say, that’s it, that’s what the situation is. I’m not talking about physical things. I mean declaring something to be a dead end, declaring something to suck. These are all things of the mind, and nothing of the mind is necessarily true. Everything that’s just in the mind is just one perspective. Like physical things are true, sure. You know, there are some physical realities. The number of votes cast in an election is a physical reality that an alien or a computer could observe and agree. But all of these things of the mind were social creatures, and we treat them like they are realities. Like, “Hey, that person wronged me.” And that’s just a fact. It’s like, that’s not just a fact. That’s one way of looking at it. And you might be a lot happier and a lot more successful if you realize that’s just one way of looking at it. It’s not true. It’s just a perspective. It’s just a thought. And there’s another way of seeing that, and that other way of seeing it might lead to actions that would be much more effective for you.
Tim
Yeah, for sure. And I think your new book pairs well with Byron Katie’s “The Work”.
Derek Sivers
Very much.
Tim
Focuses on a lot of what we’re discussing. And I was going to say, in addition to what we’ve already covered, that the content is different from the mindset. And what I mean by that is. You have crafted a very path of Derek life for yourself, and you’ve made some very unorthodox decisions, some of which I think are frankly, sometimes cuckoo bananas.
Derek Sivers
Thank you,
Tim
Even if I don’t... You’re welcome. If I don’t agree. Even if I wouldn’t replicate the decision, hearing you explain why you did it and how you navigated that the lenses through which you viewed this scenario has allowed me to learn things that I can apply to totally different circumstances.
Derek Sivers
Right.
Tim
And that’s really valuable, right? You might not make the same house as someone else, but learning how to use the carpentry tools that they use to build that house could actually, really, really, really aid you in a lot of disparate scenarios. So that’s how I’ve also thought about it.
Derek Sivers
I so often try to get people to devalue the example, but value the theme, the process. Like you just said, that too many people focus on the example that you give them, but it’s like try to forget the example and look for the process. So thanks for saying that. I do that with everything. I don’t know, there’s a a person that we could talk about here if you want later, but he’s a computer programmer. But he gets up and gives a talk about computer programming that I see the theme in what he’s talking about. I’m like, “Oh, okay, well, forget the code for a second. That’s a brilliant theme.” And it’s fun to be able to do that, go ahead. Sorry.
Tim
No, I was just going to say so let’s pause. This might be a good segue. Is that part of the next bucket of people you’re studying?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Although, you know, it’s funny...
Tim
Where would you where would you like to go next? Because this might be a good segue.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. It’s funny, you actually jumped to the last thing I was going to mention. You brought up this diversified portfolio of perspectives. So that was one of the things I wanted to talk about today. And you didn’t even know that.
Tim
Oh, amazing.
Derek Sivers
So that was great. Okay. You asked me in advance people I’m studying, so let’s do them in reverse order, since we already brought up Rich Hickey. Wait a second. Before we switch to that, have you ever met Brian Eno? The record producer?
Tim
I’ve not met Brian Eno, but I have his oblique strategies hard set. I was just reading about how he ended up coining the term “ambient music” in the hospital because he couldn’t get up and change the volume, and he ended up listening to very, very low volume music a friend had put on for him. So I’m fascinated by Brian Eno, but I’ve never met him.
Derek Sivers
Brian Eno is one of these guys that his thought process is fascinating. I don’t love his music. I like his music. I don’t love it, but I love his thought process. And one thing he said is... By the way, if you go to the website musicnotes.com, that’s my love letter to Brian Eno and John Cage and some of these music thinkers. I made that website in 1999, and it’s a collection of inspiring quotes from Brian Eno, John Cage, and a bunch of other.
Tim
Musicthoughts.com?
Derek Sivers
Yep music thoughts.com. It’s totally non-commercial. I’m not going to make a penny off of anybody looking at it, so I’m not trying to pitch it, but I’m just saying it’s a collection of Brian Eno’s philosophies on music and thoughts on music that I would read these quotes to inspire me as I was making music and kind of knock my thinking, kind of like the Oblique Strategies cards, to shift my thinking into something different. And so even just reading his interviews, one thing he said is his job as a record producer is to have strong opinions in the studio so that if he’s in there producing a record by U2 and the guys are fighting about whether to have a guitar solo or not, whether it should be a loud guitar solo or a quiet guitar solo, he said, well, my job then would be to say, “Well, how about we have no guitar at all in this song?” And the band members go, “What, are you crazy? No, this song needs guitar. No, we Brian, we absolutely need guitar.” And he goes, “All right, happy I could help.” Like just by you disagreeing with me. I just helped you solidify your position. So that’s my job here. So on the other hand, if you would have said, “Oh yeah. Okay. No guitar. That’s a good idea. Great. Glad I could help.” I’m not saying my opinions are right. I’m just trying to help you respond.
Tim
You’re providing a foil. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Yeah,
Tim
Yeah. You’re providing a foil. That’s musicthoughts.com. Quick question on, was it John Cage you mentioned?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Yeah.
Tim
So I was first exposed to John Cage in a documentary. A friend of mine named Steve Jang was involved with “Nam June Paik Moon is the oldest TV”, which is about Nam June Paik, this amazing pioneer in experimental art, performance art, many different media. And he was inspired by John Cage. Now I know very little about John Cage, but I did get to see a segment of a performance that he did which caused like 90% of the audience to leave. It was just like the most agonizingly uncomfortable, I would say, noise to listen to. That is my sole exposure to John Cage, but I’ve heard him invoked as this figurehead of great influence. And I’m basing my impression of him only on that. What I would just say is awful performance that I saw part of in this documentary. How would you sell John Cage or why is he interesting?
Derek Sivers
Oh. I’m no expert, but let’s just say he questioned things that hadn’t been questioned before. A lot of modern art. No, is that what we call it now? You know the kind of art I’m talking about. Like, maybe we call it performance art. The kind where people look at it and go, “What? That’s it? It’s a it’s a seesaw over the border between the US and Mexico. You call that art? I could do that.” And it’s like, yeah, but you didn’t. Somebody looked at that border between U.S. and Mexico and said, “I think we could put a seesaw over that.” And in a way, that’s a beautiful statement. It’s not about the brushstrokes on canvas. It’s about the statement. So I think John Cage was doing that with music he was questioning the core of what is this anyway? And so that’s why I think his most famous piece is called four minutes and 33 seconds, which is just four minutes of 33 seconds of silence. The point was, “Hey, listen to the room around you for four minutes and 33 seconds. There are sounds going on here already.” I mean, I think that was his point. Maybe he stayed mute on it, I don’t know, but yeah.
Tim
Okay. So is it fair to say that he’s interesting to you for the same reason that Brian Eno, in the producer capacity, is interesting as a provocateur of sorts, like an instigator of new thinking, is that a fair description?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I want to emulate his thought process, even if I don’t love his end results. Well you said it first. That’s why I love that you beat me to this. Your friends that you may not want to live my life here with my whatever three glasses and two rats. But you like some of my thought process?
Derek Sivers
People keep emailing me about that, “Hey, I heard your podcast with Tim Ferriss. three glasses. Huh?”
Tim
So let me explain that for people who don’t have the context, you should get a third rat. Just so you have the same number of rats that you have glasses. But when I visited you in New Zealand, I was like, “Hey, do you mind if I have a glass of water?” “No, no. Knock yourself out.” “Where are the glasses?” “Oh, they’re in the cabinet.” And I went and I saw three glasses. All of dramatically different sizes. And I was like, “What happens if you have more than three people over.” And you’re like, “Oh, just buy some more glasses.” I was like, “Well, actually it kind of makes a certain elegant sense.” So those are the three glasses.
Derek Sivers
All right. You know what? On that note, do you want to hear?
Derek Sivers
I am building my dream home right now. You can imagine where this is going. Just 20 minutes north of Wellington, I bought a piece of land where I’m building my dream home. It is a four by eight metre rectangle with nothing inside, no toilet, no kitchen, no nothing. Because I thought every house I’ve lived in came with its default shit, and I adapted myself to its default shit. Like, well, that’s just where the bathroom is. That’s just the size of the living room. That’s just what it is. And I’ve always had to adapt myself. So I’ve never experienced the process of making the place adapt to me through practice not in theory. So I thought if I just start with a four by eight metre well-insulated rectangle, then over time we’ll see what I need. So I’m going to start with just.
Tim
Did you say four by eight? Hold on.
Tim
Four by eight by eight meters.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Tim
Is the whole house?
Derek Sivers
Sorry, sorry. It’s actually two. So it’s a 4x12.
Derek Sivers
Hold on, hold on. No, 4 by 14 meter rectangle. That’s the two bedroom place where I’ll sleep with my kid. And then next to it is a four by eight where I spend all of my waking hours. Okay, so it’s the sleeping house and the waking house, and my kid actually gets his own four by eight meter cube to experiment with. And the whole idea is to see what you need. So I’m starting with no bathroom, no kitchen. I’m just going to put a little induction hob outside and an outhouse, and then I’ll see if that’s okay with me, or if I find through experience that I really want a bathroom inside. Okay. Well, now I know from experience not just because it’s the default setting. So I’m trying to start from scratch, and this is my dream house because of the process that it will allow me to have.
Tim
Okay. Got it
Tim
Okay, so this is a very mundane question, but I’m curious. Generally, if you’re going to have like a kitchen or a bathroom or something, you would have the piping or the, the power and so on put in a certain place. So as it stands, that is not the case. So you might have to do a fair amount of demo or deconstructing your house to add any of these things internally.
Derek Sivers
So I got this tip from, Stewart Brand wrote a brilliant book that everyone should read. Anyone who’s smart that is called “How Buildings Learn” by Stewart Brand. You should try to get the paper book, because it’s just laid out in such a way that you kind of need the paper book. He goes through this analytical thing with about buildings, and he said, “This is the reason why you should never hide your wires and pipes. Just keep the infrastructure on the outside so that it’s easier to change.” He has a beautiful line in there. It’s almost the opening point, he says, “All buildings are predictions and all predictions are wrong. So therefore the less predictive you can make your building, the better.” That’s why I’m just getting this rectangle. All pipes and wires will just be exposed. Nothing buried so that I can quickly change them. I can always see where they are. Yeah, I’m very much following Stewart Brand’s philosophy.
Tim
Stewart Brand is a smart, fascinating man. Just a quick pitch for Stewart Brand. So I met Stewart through Kevin Kelly. Now, Kevin Kelly, founding editor of wired magazine. Fascinating genius bizarre guy has an Amish beard, but he’s a technology futurist. Built his own house by hand. Spends more time in China than probably anyone I know. He’s just an eclectic combination of all sorts of things. And the title of my podcast with him way back in the day was “The Real World Most Interesting Man in The World” or something like that. And in the midst of the conversation with Kevin or maybe speaking offline, he said, “If you really want the person I consider to be the most interesting man in the world, it’s Stewart Brand.” So I had Stewart on the podcast a number of years ago and boy oh boy, you want to talk about a polymath. He’s something else. All right. So you’ve preserved the optionality with the possibility of putting things on the outside rather than on the inside in terms of support infrastructure. And how do you see yourself using a space with nothing inside?
Derek Sivers
I don’t know, see, that would be a prediction. I’m trying to not predict. I’m just going to show up. It’ll be ready in a few months, and then I’ll start living there and we’ll see what happens. That’s all I know.
Tim
Okay. It’s going to be totally empty. Are you going to have some desks, a chair? I mean, are you going to have anything at all, or are you just going to sit on the floor and be like, “What do I require?”
Derek Sivers
I’m bringing a mattress to start. And then over time I’ll notice if I wish I had a desk here, then I’ll get a desk there, you know. So I’ll add things as I feel that I really, really need them. Again. I highly recommend, in “How buildings learn”. He kind of goes into this about like the best spaces are just rectangles, and the best places are the ones that are easy to alter so that if you suddenly decide... He talks about this MIT building where people were just allowed to bash a hole in the wall because it wasn’t some beautifully architecturally designed masterpiece, it was something thrown together quickly in World War Two. And people love that building, because if they do need to bash a hole in the wall to run some wires through, they can just do it because it’s a trashy old building. And because of that, it’s such a creative space. So the places that are award winning are often the ones that are the most hated by their residents. They might win the award for the architect.
Tim
That’s true.
Derek Sivers
But because they’re award winning, they’re inflexible. They’re sacred. I mean, talk to people who live in a Frank Lloyd Wright home now. And it’s like, you know, living in a masterpiece museum can’t change a single screw or anything because it’s the way he wanted it.
Tim
So practical recommendation, I would say if you’re going to be sitting on the floor a lot, if you’re not accustomed to doing that just so you don’t end up with all sorts of orthopedic issues, I would start doing Turkish get ups and getting accustomed to sitting on the floor and getting up a lot.
Derek Sivers
I’ll probably get a good chair almost right away. But I just want to make sure that I really need it.
Tim
All right. Fascinating. Yet another example. I’ll let you be the first monkey shot into space on on this particular type of home design. I can’t wait to learn so many things.
Derek Sivers
You experiment with some things I don’t want to experiment with, and I’ll experiment with things that you don’t want to experiment with. I’ll renounce my U.S. citizenship and let you know how it goes. I’ll build my dream home of a four by eight rectangle. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Tim
Yeah, you got to divvy it up. I mean, the redundancy and experimentation is kind of, I won’t say pointless, but it’s more fun to have people doing different things. Other people you are studying?
Tim
Or things you’re fascinated by. We can hop around. Depends on where you want to go.
Derek Sivers
All right.
Derek Sivers
Okay, well, I already started. Rich Hickey.
Tim
Oh, that’s right, you mentioned him. I wrote him down because that was left dangling. And I was like, “Who is Rich Hickey?”.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, sorry. And then I wanted to wrap up what you were talking about before. Before I came back to this. Okay. So Rich Hicket, he’s a programmer. He’s the inventor of a programming language called Clojure. He’s actually one of my number one picks for somebody that I would like to get on your show. Like if we did a co-hosting kind of thing and I were to get somebody on, actually I already emailed him. He didn’t reply. But maybe hey, if anybody knows Rich Hickey and if he’s interested. Nudge nudge nudge. He did a brilliant talk. If you search YouTube for either “Simple versus easy” or I think the name of the video on YouTube is called “Simplicity Matters”. Here’s his point. And I actually jotted down these notes so I could try to bang out his point quickly. And then we’ll talk about it. And keep in mind everything I’m about to say. He’s just talking about programming. He’s speaking to a room of programmers. He said, “We mistake simple and easy. We think that simple means easy, and easy means simple.” But he said they’re two different things. The word complex, if you look at the definition, it comes from the word complect, which is to braid things together. So if something is complicated, it means it’s intertwined with other things. And so the adjective complex means that something is bound to other things, whereas simple comes from simplex, which means it is not bound to other things, it stands alone.
Derek Sivers
Easy means that the root of that means that something is near at hand. It’s something you already know how to do. It’s within your realm. So easy and hard are subjective, but simple and complex are very objective things that we can look at. Something is simple. It stands alone. It’s complex if it’s bound to other things. And he said, “Here’s where it gets tricky, is that it can be very easy to make something very complex.” So he says, “You could just type gem install hairball. And with typing three words on a computer, you can install a massive framework, whether it’s Ruby on Rails or WordPress. And if you start using that, well, wow, you are now complected with a huge, complicated system that you’re intertwined with.” And so now everything I say after this, this is my take on his analysis. But it’s really easy in life to say, “Okay, yeah, let’s get married.” Or to have unprotected sex and get pregnant and have a baby. That’s easy. Adopt a dog, hiring people. You can have a problem and think, “All right, well, I’ve got some money, and I’m overwhelmed. I’m going to get a consultant to, like, hire ten people. Okay, great. Now I’ve got ten employees. Phew. That was easy to take some work off my plate.” But your life is now objectively complex. You are complected with these other people and their needs and their time schedules and their desires. Handing off parts of your business to say, “This is hard. I’m just going to hand off my billing or my something or my scheduling to these apps or these subscription services.”
Derek Sivers
That was easy to just hand it off. But now your business is very complected with these other services. So hence my rant on our last conversation over scotch at my house about tech independence. His point is, it can be really hard to make something simple. It can be much harder to do something that is objectively simple, that stands alone, that isn’t dependent on other things. It can be harder to make that, but it’s ultimately usually a better choice because it’s more maintainable. It’s easier to change. It’s easier to stop and start. It’s simpler, even if it’s harder to make. So the point in his thinking is to be aware of the objective measure of complexity or be beware of complexity, which can be objectively measured and aim for doing the simpler thing, even if it’s harder. In my take, I think you can make simple things easier just by learning more say about the fundamentals of something. Instead of just adopting somebody else’s high level solution, you can spend a little time learning about the core underneath it, about the fundamentals, and then you can forget norms. You could forget what others do, what others think, and you can just get to the real essence of what you need. I’m not just talking programming now. I’m just being like in life. If you say, I just need a shelter...
Tim
Give me an example of that.
Derek Sivers
Okay, my four by eight house. It’s like, really, I just need a shelter where it’s temperature controlled, so it’s really well insulated. I do need a mattress to sleep on and I do need a place I can work, oh, and I do need a little food. To me, these are the core things of a shelter. But even say with friendships, do I need to live in the same place with my friends? Well, not necessarily my dear friends. My best friends are often far, far away. I don’t need to move to a place that has all my friends if I can reach them on the phone. I’m very often... Talk about just the thought process. I very often find myself asking like, “Well, what’s the real outcome I’m after? What’s the real point of this?” And once I figure that out, well, then what’s the most direct route to that outcome? Never mind what other people do, what the norms are. What do I think is the most direct route to that outcome? And then try to keep it simple along the way and be very wary of dependencies and entangling myself with other things. So that’s my take.
Tim
Can you give another example or two of how you implement that in your life?
Derek Sivers
Sure you.
Tim
Because I know there are more examples.
Derek Sivers
The next two might be less relatable because it’s writing and programming.
Tim
That’s relatable than the four by eight...
Derek Sivers
Because I know everybody wants to live in it.
Tim
With nothing inside.
Derek Sivers
Okay, here’s here’s a good question to strip away some things. Ask yourself, would I still do this if nobody knew? There might be a lot of things in our actions that we do, because we like the way it would look to others, because it would be impressive to others. That’s the first thing to just strip away when you’re beginning this thought process is like, if I were to never tell anybody and nobody were to ever know, would I still do this thing? Okay, well then that might just be the the decoration. Okay, so two examples. Programming wise, I’m constantly asking this when I’m building something, I need to get this calendar entry into this database with this time. Do I need a whole bunch of JavaScript? Do I need a bunch of CSS and things flying around? Do I need fading graphics? No, I just need this thing there. What’s the most direct way to get that calendar entry into that database? Okay, so that’s like a programming example. Writing wise, my last two books, How to Live and Useful Not True. I’m spending most of my time reducing. My rough draft I always spew out everything I have to say on the subject, and then I spend 1000 hours crunching, like every single word going, “Is that word necessary? Wait a second. Is that whole sentence necessary? Wait, can the point still be communicated without that sentence? If it can. Okay, let me try to get rid of that sentence and see if the point still comes across. Actually, does the point come across without this entire chapter? Oh my God, it still does.”
Derek Sivers
Then I therefore I don’t need this chapter. One of the most useful things that happened recently is a few months ago, an organization in Australia paid me to come give a talk and I said, “What do you want me to talk about?” And they said, “Anything.” I said, “How about my next book called ‘Useful Not True’.” They said, “Sure.” So it was a room of very successful, very effective people. And I had one hour on stage to communicate the whole idea of my next book. And at the time, the book was still in process. And that was so helpful because I noticed that there were a few things that on stage, even though I had it in my notes, I skipped over it and I thought, “Okay, well, actually, we don’t need to do that. Okay, let’s get to the next point.” And so later when I was back home, I thought, wow, I just skipped over that whole point on stage. So why do I think it’s worth killing trees to print that point? Apparently it’s not, cool. So anyway, this is now the shortest book I’ve ever written. I’m very proud of that fact. I compressed this 400 pages down to I think it’s 102 pages or something. And so those are two examples where I’m constantly asking, like, what’s the most direct way to just get rid to what I really want, get the outcome. Skipping the the usual fanfare.
Tim
Here’s a question for you, which is how do you think about first order simplicity versus complexity versus second order, third order and planning? And the reason I’m asking that is you strike me as someone who prizes freedom, independence, simplicity all very highly, but I imagine there could be cases where looking at the first decision and the first order effects, you might think, “Well, it’s much simpler for me to do X, to renounce my U.S. citizenship, to build a box, to do everything myself instead of taking on these cloud services for accounting and so on.” But there are levels of of second, third order complexities that ultimately make a kind of net net more complex than doing the slightly more complex thing up front. Does that make sense?
Derek Sivers
Almost.
Tim
I guess I’m wondering how practically people might think about simplifying, but not oversimplifying and then shooting yourself in the foot in the long term.
Tim
I don’t know. Maybe it’s a very coherent question, but I have seen people in the name of... I’ll give you an example. I know people who have moved to Puerto Rico to trim taxes substantially. Right? But in the process, they viewed that as the most direct route to reducing taxes therefore, they can do X, Y, and Z over time with more income or preserved capital gain, whatever it might be. However, in the process of doing that, they’ve created all of this lifestyle complexity and applied a lot of constraints to what they can or cannot do. And the tax tail is wagging the dog. And instead of money serving life, now life is serving money. And they’ve kind of put themselves in a topsy turvy upside down situation when, if you were to look at it from first principles. Two years later, you’re like, “Wow, that was really bungled.” And that’s not true for everybody in Puerto Rico. I’m not trying to make it sound like that, but I have seen those types of examples where like, the thing that seemed simple and straightforward at the outset ended up producing a lot of ripple effects that produced not just complexity, but complexity that was hard to undo.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Great example.
Tim
What do you think about that kind of risk mitigation?
Derek Sivers
Oof! By the way, my two little examples of that. A few years ago, Tony Robbins had a “Money Master The Game” book. And I was like, “Oh, wow. Tony hasn’t put out a book in like 20 years. I wonder how this is going to be.” And in it, he’s giving these prescriptions for extremely complex like insurance things that you could set up. I was like, “Oh, wow. That’s very that’s objectively complex.” And another example is in Neil Strauss’s book called “Emergency”. I’ll never forget this point. He said that he’s off at one of these nomad sovereign individual. I’m beholden to no country kind of events. And he meets this guy that is bragging to him about his setup. He’s like, “I got my income coming here, but then all expenses go here. But then I’ve got a trust and this. But I’m the non managing member of the trust which is held by this and that.” And in the end he’s going to save 30% taxes. And Neil said, “Wouldn’t it just be a lot easier or make a lot more sense to just work 30% harder or like just make 30% more money?” He said, “That’s a ton of work just to save 30%. It’s not that much harder to just go make 30% more.” And dude, when I read that, I love that thought process. So I think that, I know that your podcast and the Titans and all that is often about how do we use the wisdom of others to avoid making these mistakes ourselves. But some of these things may be you just have to I don’t know, I think for some of these things, I’m willing to throw myself in and feel the pain to see if I’ve done it wrong. I’m sorry, I don’t have any.
Tim
Okay, so I know we’re we’re improv jazzing here, so let’s let’s keep going. This thought just occurred to me because when I hear you talk about code and programming, I mean, there’s a poetry to it and there’s an economy to it that seems, I’m not a programmer, but I do write. There seems to be something intrinsically rewarding to you about that presentation of elegance. And I’m wondering, in the case of following Stewart Brand’s principles and building this box or doing certain things that seem to me optimized for freedom, independence. Is there even if it ends up face planting, is there something that you find beautiful and redeeming just about taking the simple approach, even if the outcome is suboptimal? Or is that a bad question.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. No, it’s a great question. It’s related. It’s finding out in fact instead of just in theory, we can sit at home and wonder what it might be like to do such and such, but at a certain point you just got to throw yourself in and go try it. And if you try moving to Puerto Rico and you hate it, well, now you know it was worth a try maybe. And now you know, in fact, that you that doesn’t work for you. That’s maybe the “How Buildings Learn” idea is don’t predict that you will want to sink in that spot. Put yourself into that spot first and live without a sink for a while. And eventually you’ll get a good feeling for where the sink needs to be. In fact, not in theory. And so I think I do this with my life, as I’m willing to mess up happily because I will know that then I found out, in fact, that that doesn’t work for me. And maybe this is coming from the core of the fact that, like, I’m a really happy person. And so I feel that my base level is up here, I can take some big knocks.
Derek Sivers
And I think a lot of the crazy shit I’ve done. You know, I did marry somebody that I hardly knew after few months because fuck it, let’s see what happens. In fact, you and I have never talked about that directly. But do you know the mindset I was in at the time? I had just sold my company, I had a ton of money, and I felt like I need to change my trajectory because my first impulse after selling my company was literally the next day, I set up my next company and I thought, I’m going to move to Silicon Valley. I’m going to do this thing. I’m going to stay on the same trajectory. And I did that for a few months. But then I caught myself going, “Wait, I want a full life. I don’t want to stay on the same trajectory. I want to shake shit up.” So I very deliberately did what we might call the George Costanza principle, which is...
Tim
You can take the hit
Tim
Do the opposite.
Derek Sivers
Do the opposite of all of my impulses. Every time I felt, yes, everything in me said yes, I would say no out loud. And everything in me says no. I say yes out loud as a way of deliberately shaking shit up. And so I was dating this woman for a few months, and we had no great connection. And she said, “Oh, well, I can’t travel to California with you unless we get married.” And everything in me says, “Oh, hell no, don’t do that. That’s stupid. I don’t want to marry this person.” So I said, “Yes, let’s do that.” And so we got married and I kept doing that in every way. I deliberately fucked up my life and made a bunch of crazy fucking decisions. And some of them worked out great and some of them didn’t. And I’m so happy that I did that. Like, in some ways I could say that that’s my biggest regret or biggest mistake, but in other ways it was wonderful. It deliberately sent me on a different trajectory and I’m glad I did it.
Tim
Well, that definitely will. So for people who don’t have any of the connective tissue here to figure out how to orient themselves to this. People are going to want to know, right? Cliffhanger. So how did that turn out? The everything in me says no. So I said, yes, let’s get married. Let’s do that.
Derek Sivers
Oh, the marriage is awful. No, that was that was terrible. I mean, and we knew it like literally like days later, like, oops, we made a big mistake. Yeah that was that was instantly a big mistake. And that’s fine because we knew, in fact then that it was a big mistake, not just in theory. I could have walked away from that going, “Oh God, remember that woman that wanted me to marry her? And I said, no, God, I wonder what would have happened.” Well, now I get to find out like I did it.
Tim
Now, hold on a second, though, I’m going to push on this a little bit. We could use this logic to be a reverse George Costanza for every decision we think is bad. We could turn around and say yes to. But as a life strategy, I don’t see you continuing that. Right?
Derek Sivers
No.
Tim
So you don’t know for a fact that the awful idea would have been awful. But, I mean, there has to be a point at which you think about self-preservation and time as a finite currency. So you’re like, well, when would you apply that versus when would you not apply it? Right, because you could apply it everywhere indefinitely. But certain things are one way doors and some are two way doors, right. I mean, like, for instance, getting a pet rat. Okay. Lower cost, more reversible, let’s just say, than maybe giving up your US citizenship. Right? That is a little harder to control.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I cannot undo that. Yeah.
Tim
So moving forward for you having learned everything that you’ve learned. When do you play the George Costanza strategy versus not? Because there are lots of things we can’t know for a fact unless we make the right or the wrong or the good or the bad decision. But you can’t make all decisions. So what do you do?
Derek Sivers
You know, long ago when I said the hell yeah or no thing and...
Tim
It’s going to be on your gravestone.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. That’s fine, “Hell yeah or here I am. Here he lays.” So some people emailed me after that was on your show, and they said, “Hey, man. You know, I like this. Hell, yeah or no thing. I’m using it for everything. You know, I just got out of college. I’m getting a bunch of offers, and I’m like, I’m not feeling hell yeah about any of them. You know, I’m dating and I’m not.Hell, yeah about any of you.” And I go, wait, wait wait wait. Hold on. Everything does not become a nail because you’re holding this hammer. This is a tool for a specific situation. When you’re overwhelmed with options. Like you have to have the wisdom to know when to use this tool. You don’t use it on everything, always. So the same thing with this going against your instincts. Of course, you don’t use it on everything always. But that was a specific time in my life when I wanted to deliberately change my trajectory. I wanted to go against my normal way of doing things and deliberately introduce some randomness and variety into my life. But let’s say in minor ways.
Tim
It’s not your default.
Derek Sivers
Right. But let’s look at, you know, I mentioned Dubai earlier, everything in me said fuck that place. And then I caught myself feeling that. And I thought, “Okay, wait, hold on. Thi is a good time to use this tool. My impulse is saying, no, I’m going to try saying yes. I’m going to go get to know this thing.” Because that sounds to me like that would be a learning, growing experience to try it. So that’s a good example of integrating this into your life, but then say like if maybe you do hit a situation where it’s like nothing is working out. You’ve been an idiot your whole life. You just got fired. You were just dumped by your romantic partner. It’s skid row. Maybe it’s a really good time to go against all your natural impulses, since it’s pretty clear that your defaults were set wrong.
Tim
Not working.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I like integrating it. Maybe the question is like, is this going to be a learning, growing experience for me? I like leaning into discomfort. Whatever scares you, go do it.
Tim
All right, so I have quite a few follow up questions. We can take them in many different directions. So we’ve covered Rich Hickey, Clojure. Knock, knock. We’ll see if anyone lets him know he appeared on the show. And I could ask you about Lee Kuan Yew and Sheikh Zayed and how they differ. If that is interesting to explore.
Derek Sivers
I don’t know. I’m no expert, I just. Yeah, only read tiny bits.
Tim
And I also want to ask you a question we can cut from the conversation if we need to, but since the...
Derek Sivers
That’s a great lead in. I love that repeatedly. This may be too risky for anybody’s ears, but here we go.
Tim
Do taxes fit into this at all? Is this like people who move to Nashville or Austin and they’re like, “Oh, the barbecue and the music.” And they will dance and dance and dance until you corner them with a broomstick. And then they’re like, “Yeah, okay, fine. Yeah. The tax is also it’s a thing.” Is is Dubai one of those or no?
Derek Sivers
No, not at all. I mean I had to ask myself that. Okay. When you ask yourself, would I still be doing this thing if nobody knew about it? I got an email from a guy once. It was just like, “Hey man, I want to travel the whole world. I’m going to visit every country in the world. Do you have any suggestions for me?” I said, “Yeah, don’t bring a camera and don’t tell anyone that you’re doing this. Is it still appealing to you now? Probably not.” Okay, let’s say Dubai, for example, I was like, “Whoa, this place is fascinating. Oh my God, I think I want to live here.” And I was like, “Would I still live here if the taxes were like 50%?” I was like, “Yeah, that’s moot to me. I mean, look, I’m living in New Zealand, where my income tax right now is 45%.” I pay a ton of taxes, but it’s worth it to me. I love it here, I don’t care. So that thing I mentioned in Neil Strauss’s book “Emergency”, that sentence hit me hard when I first sold CD Baby. That was 2008. There were some things I was thinking at the time was like, “Oh wow, I just got mega millions, how can I pay less taxes?” And it was literally like the month before or month after I sold CD baby, that I read that book “Emergency” and I saw that sentence and I went, “Whoa, that is a great point.” Don’t jump through hoops to save taxes. Jump through a hoop to go make more money. That’s the growth choice anyway. That’s the thought process that leads you to make growing decisions not shrinking decisions.
Tim
Yeah. That makes sense. Why would you... Actually let me back up. I want to understand the thought process behind it, right. So you’re about to sell or have just sold CD Baby. You form a new company the next day, you’re planning on moving to Silicon Valley, and you see yourself moving on that track, and you decide to throw a Costanza curveball in and mix things up. Why? Like, what was the fear or the hazard you’re trying to avoid by following that path?
Derek Sivers
I want to live.
Tim
Was it thoughtlessly and repeating what you’ve done before, that it wasn’t intentional. What was it?
Derek Sivers
I want to live a full life. Like at the end of my life, I want to look back and go, “Wow, I did a bunch of different things. I tried a bunch of different ways of living. I followed this philosophy for a while. I followed that one, I tried this, I tried that, I lived here, I lived there.” That to me is my definition of a full life. My previous book called “How to Live” was “27 Conflicting Philosophies and One weird Answer”. And the whole idea was that it’s 27 chapters. Each one disagrees with the rest, but each one has a strong opinion of saying, “Here’s how to live. You know, live for the future.” Then the next one is like, “Here’s how to live. Live only for the present.” And the next one is like, “Here’s how to live, leave a legacy.” And these are all valid ways of living. And my definition of a full life is I want to experience the different approaches to life. I want to have the diversified portfolio of thought and of experiences. So that was it. I just felt like if I was to create a new company the next day and move to Silicon Valley, I’d just be doing more of the same shit I’ve already done.
Tim
Yeah. Makes sense. Makes perfect sense. Who else do you have on your list of people you’re studying?
Derek Sivers
All right. Tyler Cowen. Just a few days ago, in an article on Bloomberg.com called “Who was Bitcoin’s Satoshi?” So we still don’t know who is Satoshi, the inventor of Bitcoin. And you know, there’s this law of headlines that if it ends in a question mark, the answer is usually no. You know, so when I first saw the headline, I thought that the answer was going to be it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who Satoshi is. Forget it. And oh my God. Tyler Cowen took it somewhere else. Like, even if you would have asked me, by the way, “Hey, Derek, I’m going to give you an hour alone in a room to think about one question, does it matter who is Satoshi, the inventor of Bitcoin?” Even after an hour, I think my answer would have been, of course not, and I would have just sat there for an hour just going “No, no, no.” Tyler Cowen took it the opposite way, and I jotted down his points. But it’s a masterpiece in this kind of if then knock on thinking. So he said, okay, if we find out that Satoshi is dead, that the inventor of Bitcoin is dead, then that’s a good thing, because it means Bitcoin will be more safe because it won’t be open to future alteration. The person can’t tarnish the reputation of it, you know, say like Elon Musk and Twitter, kind of like, you know, by continuing to be there can tarnish the reputation of something. Sorry, I shouldn’t have gone there. Satoshi can’t come back and change the rules for the worst.
Derek Sivers
And then he even said, “This is why all religions have dead founders.” Is because the founder can’t stay in and tarnish the reputation of the religion. So I went, okay, good point. If Satoshi is dead, that is good for Bitcoin, it can stay as is and won’t get tarnished, won’t get changed. And he said so there’s a chance that Satoshi is an older guy from this previous movement around E-gold that was generally seen as like a failed project, that a bunch of people were into this idea of e-gold and it didn’t work out. If Satoshi is somebody from that group, then that means that even projects that look like they’ve failed can create great things. So we should maybe think more highly, or it would be less dismissive of projects that seem to be failing because who knows what they will lead to. He said there’s a chance that Satoshi is this person and I forget their name, but he said that would have been 21 years old and in grad school at the time of inventing Bitcoin. He said if that’s true, that means we should raise our our perception of what young, busy people can do, that they can do more than we realize. This guy while in grad school also invented Bitcoin. And he said, “If Satoshi is still alive, that means...” Oh, by the way, we should say I assume people know, but maybe not that whoever is Satoshi has hundreds or okay, let’s say at least tens of billions of dollars in bitcoin that all he’d have to do, whoever Satoshi is, would have to just take it.
Derek Sivers
It’s already there in the account, in the public record that we can see. So Satoshi is one of the richest people on Earth who ever Satoshi is. So he said, “If Satoshi is still living, that means that some people don’t want to be billionaires or just have incredible self-restraint. Like maybe upon realizing what he created, he destroyed the key, destroyed the password so that he could not take those billions of dollars, you know, to protect himself from that.” He said, “Now there’s a chance that Satoshi is a pseudonym for a group of people, if that’s true, it means a group of people can keep secrets way better than we expected. Which means that conspiracy theories are more likely to be true about anything in general, about UFOs, about JFK or whatever. If this group of people is Satoshi and they could have tens of billions of dollars, but they are choosing not to, and they are all keeping the secret. That’s amazing. And we should regard secrecy more higher than we can.” So that’s the end of the bullet points. But I read this one little Bloomberg article and my jaw dropped. I went, oh my God, this is the kind of thinking I aspire to that is some amazing lateral creative. I don’t know what kind of thinking do you call that? But that’s what I want to do more of.
Tim
I love it yeah. Tyler is incredible. Highly recommend people check him out. That’s a really good Tyler example. Cowen, definitely recommend people check him out.
Derek Sivers
Until then my previous favorite point of his... Yeah that was a great one. And he interviewed you on his or did you... I think you went both ways or I don’t remember anyway.
Tim
I think I’ve been on his podcast, but he’s been on mine.
Derek Sivers
So previously to this. One of my favorite points of his is he said, “Restaurants are better in places of high income inequality. Why? Because these are places that have both rich customers and low paid staff. So somebody can afford to run a great restaurant because there are enough people that will pay because there are rich people around, but there are enough low income people that we can have a good amount of staff.” He said, “That’s why the best restaurants are in places of high income inequality.” Whoa. That’s again a brilliant connection.
Tim
That’s interesting. I mean, I would also add to that that a lot of folks who want to dedicate themselves to a craft or an art are depending on the industry, but frequently not going to be well paid for that. And so let’s just call it volitionally poorly paid in some cases. And I’m thinking of, in this particular case, San Francisco and East Bay, where a lot of restaurants in San Francisco, a lot of restaurants in different places. But as the price of living went up in San Francisco, a lot of the best restaurateurs, meaning, I should say chefs, a lot of the best chefs, a lot of the best line cooks, a lot of the best massage therapists. A lot of these people could no longer afford to be there. Had to move to the East Bay. And I would say that led to a decline in the quality of all of the goods I just mentioned and services, right. So that would also make sense. If you want access to the artists, they’re not going to be in the most expensive areas typically, unless it’s like a Jeff Koons or someone.
Derek Sivers
I haven’t been to Pittsburgh lately, but I heard that that happened with a lot of the best chefs from New York City went to Pittsburgh, and that now Pittsburgh is hotter than you’d expect.
Tim
I can see that. I can totally see it. All right, Tyler. Anybody else on the list of people you’re learning from or people you’re studying?
Derek Sivers
Those are my two. Because there’s specific things. Yeah, yeah. That’s it.
Tim
Love it. I love it. All right, So I think we have one more category. We’ll see how many we get to. But...
Derek Sivers
Here’s something I’m fascinated with.
Tim
Where should we go?
Derek Sivers
Okay. So inchword.com. This is actually a bit of a callout. I don’t usually do this, but I would like to hear from translators that if you’re a translator, contact me because I’ve got a lot of paying work. Because I’m really interested in the subject of translations that are always improving. Well not always at a certain point, you call it, maybe you call it a release. But, you know, as a writer, the first time you write a sentence is not always the best. You improve it the second or third time. And at any given sentence we see in your books, that might be the fourth time you’ve improved that sentence, maybe over the course of months. There’s always room for improvement. But now when somebody makes a translation of one of your books, the incentives are a little off now. Because the translator’s incentive, as long as they’re not translating the Bible or something, their incentive is mostly just get it done, good enough, get paid. The publisher’s incentive, the publisher who publishes the translation. Their incentive is hire a translator that will make a good enough translation for a low enough price that we can get this out of the market now and make a profit selling it. But my incentive, as the writer that sweated over these words for years and really crafted it almost like song lyrics like, I have a different incentive, is if I’m going to have a translation of this book out in the world, I want it to be great. Like really, really great. Which means my incentive is to work closely with the translator to make sure that what they’re doing is the best it can be, and that it’s communicating what I intended. So then I started thinking.
Tim
A language you don’t speak.
Derek Sivers
I don’t know, but that’s my question. So I don’t have the answer. But I’m fascinated with the problem. So far the best idea is what I’m putting it into inchword.com, which is this idea of incremental improvements. So first my whole books are separated...
Tim
So this is your website?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I made it.
Tim
Inchword is yours okay.
Derek Sivers
Passion thing. Yes. That’s me.
Derek Sivers
So it’s this idea where first, once I call something done, whether it’s an article or a book, I put every sentence into its own entry in the database, and then I pass it to a computer that does the first round of a bad translation. So now we have a starting point. So now if you’re the first translator to come through and translate the automatic translation into your language. Well, let’s say that’s a low bar. That’s low hanging fruit. So let’s say that will pay $0.50 per sentence. But now if you’ve done one round of improvements over the computer translation, and now somebody else comes through and says, “Hmm, I can improve that further, that sentence, not the whole thing, that sentence, I can improve that one.” Now that’ll pay like a dollar per sentence if it’s improved. And now, say two different people have improved it twice. And now a third person looks at that and says “Mhm, I know how to improve that better. “Okay well now you can make say $2 per sentence to improve it better. The stakes are getting higher for improving it. And so their incentives now to make it as good as can be. So yes. How do we know it’s a better translation.
Tim
How do you know if it’s been improved?
Derek Sivers
So then we have readers who reviewers, readers whatever you want to call them, that are paid a little something to just read through and judge. And at any given sentence where an improvement has been made, both sentences are shown in random order and they have to vote for which one they feel is the better sentence in that case.
Tim
Okay.
Derek Sivers
And only after two native readers have voted that that is definitely the better sentence. When the more majority votes that that sentence is better, then it’s chosen, and that’s when the translator gets paid. So a translator can’t get money just for coming in and spewing crap. They only get paid when the readers believe that that was a better translation. Anyway, I’m not saying this is the final answer, but I think it’s a fascinating problem that I’m willing to spend money on because I’m incentivized to have the best translation of my works out there. That’s it.
Tim
How do you think you incentivize people to... If they are a good translator, how do you incentivize them to go first. Knowing that someone might come along and make substantially more money by doing the fourth or fifth iteration. Or is that not a problem?
Derek Sivers
I don’t know. So you just asked a great question. Thank you.
Tim
You’re welcome.
Derek Sivers
That question is kind of the answer. That’s a really good thing to ask, I don’t know. I mean I know nothing about this. I’m not fluent in any other language. But you’ve probably seen this effect whenever you start to learn another language, doesn’t it make you look at your English more closely?
Tim
Oh, 100%. That’s part of the fun. It makes you look at the whole world differently depending on how divergent the language is from your native language, in this case, English for us. Oh yeah. So so so interesting. I was just trying to help somebody with their approach to Japanese yesterday, and my first thought was if you have like 3 or 4 weeks, maybe you go to South Korea first and try to pick up Korean because the reading is so much easier. So perhaps you could learn the basics of Korean, which isn’t identical to Japanese, but the grammar is very, very, very, very similar. And then you go back to Japan with your newfound knowledge of the grammar, without the handicap that slows you down of having to learn three writing systems, right?
Derek Sivers
Interesting.
Tim
And I don’t know if that’s a good approach, but it was the first time it had occurred to me and I was like, “Huh? I wonder if that actually would be helpful.” Or kind of like Python and Ruby would just be confusing as fuck because now you’re like, learn Portuguese and Spanish at the same time and you just get scrambled. It’s possible that it would be the latter.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Okay. Do you remember Benny? Lewis fluent in three months Benny Lewis?
Tim
Sure. Yeah. The Irish Polyglot, I think?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Benny recommends Esperanto for that same thing that you just said. He said, because objectively, Esperanto is the easiest language to learn. That’s why it was invented in 1888 by Zamenhof to be easy to learn. Therefore, if you’ve never spoken a second language before, go learn some Esperanto first. Get used to having a conversation that’s not in your native tongue, and then go learn your target language.
Tim
Interesting.
Tim
Too much of a lift. Have you done it?
Derek Sivers
Well, I have a report? I did it. I became fluent in Esperanto about six years ago on Benny’s advice, and I regret it. I did it.
Tim
That’s useful than Klingon net net?
Derek Sivers
Yes, it is. Actually, I think Esperanto is hippie Klingon. I went to the annual Esperanto conference in Seoul, Korea, and it was a bunch of like 60 year olds and tie dyes singing about world peace, kind of like, you know, Woodstock 1969 revisited. And and they’re all singing like, oh, the world would have perfect harmony if we all just followed the ways of Zamenhof and had the one world language and even though I had spent six months learning this language, I got to the event and I went, “I don’t like you people. I’m sorry.” And I stopped on that day. I was like, I don’t want to speak this language anymore. Okay. But then so talk about like, you know, the Ruby python. I never learned any Spanish my whole life, even though I grew up in America. I just thought, no, Spanish is too similar to English if I’m going to learn another language, I want it to be Chinese or Arabic or something very different. So I never learned any Spanish. But just two months ago I went to South America for my first time and so I spent like a month learning Pimsleur basic Spanish. And Tim I was like, “Oh my God, this is a great language. This is amazing. This is fascinating.”
Tim
It is.
Derek Sivers
And also it is so easy that I went, damn it, Benny shouldn’t have learned Esperanto for six months. I should have learned Spanish. It’s just as easy and it would have been more useful. So anyway, I like that you brought up the Korean thing. I think it is proven to be a good technique to do the easier language first to help you disconnect or like you say, to help you understand the grammar and then do the difficult one. But it does help, I guess, if it’s Korean or a language that people actually use, not Esperanto.
Tim
Yeah, Spanish is a great language for people who are curious about Korean and just how brilliantly the writing system is designed. It is a point of national pride and it is not something that was out of the box. It was something that was developed long after Korea had first adopted Chinese writing, much like the Japanese. There is a cartoon online and it is something like “How to read Korean in 15 minutes”. And it’s a comic book. You can find it and literally it might not be 15 minutes, but within 2 or 3 hours you can learn Korean well enough that you can read anything in Korean. You will not understand a damn thing that you are reading, but you will be able to sound out phonetically. Yeah, roughly what it what it is, which is great fun and well enough that, you know, if you’re... As I was a few weeks ago in an Uber and you see the Uber app is set to Korean, you could say, you know, thank you or have a nice day or how are you in Korean and below that. And they’d be like, “How did you know?” And you’d be like, “Well, it’s Korean on the app. Oh my God,” If you want some cheap applause that’ll make somebody’s day. That’s an easy way to go that.
Derek Sivers
You know, what’s funny, it fits right in. You remember your whole like, “Hey, here’s how to learn how to spin a pen with your fingers. Like, here’s some things you can learn in 15 minutes.” Like the old like Tim Ferriss 1.0 South by Southwest.
Tim
Yeah,yeah, exactly.
Derek Sivers
Speak Korean in 15 minutes.
Tim
Courtesy of Japan. For sure. This is what all the kids used to do in class. And now I have something that will endlessly distract and annoy everyone who sees it on an airplane or something. Thanks, Japan. Oh. All right. What else do you have, Derek?
Derek Sivers
Oh, God. Yeah. There’s one more. Do you do you need to go? What time is it?
Tim
No. We’re good.
Derek Sivers
Oh, okay. Oh, my God.
Tim
It’s it’s 5 ET on my on my clock. But I bought some time, so we’re good.
Derek Sivers
All right. Well thank you to the next person because I’ll just say this quickly. I love this little phrase. I realized when I was, like, digging into my incentives why I do things. I travel to inhabit philosophies.
Tim
Okay.
Derek Sivers
We don’t have enough time to dig into it.
Tim
Well, yeah, we do. We have some time.
Derek Sivers
Okay. But I realized that the reason I travel is I don’t want to just hear about... Okay, you can hear about life in Brazil or life in Japan, but it’s a different thing to be there in it that I think there’s some philosophies, whether it’s stoicism or hedonism, that we can just do from a chair by just sitting and changing our thought process. But, you know, Brazilian-ism, Japan-ism, Arabian-ism, I don’t know, Parisian-ism, like, these are kind of like philosophies. The way that people live in places are kind of living philosophies that I want to experience what it’s like because I want to think that way. So I would really like to go there, live as close as I can to being like a local, learn the language, live that life according to that way, to inhabit, embody this way of living. In order to feel the actual physical results, the actions of living that philosophy. And I thought this is actually the reason I travel. It’s not to look at things or take pictures or post them to impress people. I travel to inhabit philosophies.
Tim
I love that. What are you finding of the philosophy? What is the philosophy of the UAE or Dubai? Recognizing that the cultures are very different depending if their hills or the water or the desert? But how would you try to express that philosophy?
Derek Sivers
Easy, generosity. That’s the thing. When I said that Sheikh Zayed, who founded it, Bedouin culture underneath it and then say Emirati culture or Arabian culture. Generosity is by far the number one. If you read this book, Arabian Sands by Thesiger. He has all these stories of when he’d be out in the desert on the camels with his little crew of six guys, and they only have, like, this much food left, like nothing. And their tummies are grumbling and they’re starving. It’s funny that I just said tummies. That was cute.
Tim
And I noted that for myself. When’s my bedtime story, dad?
Derek Sivers
And also my little rats here. I love kissing their little tummies. Anyway, okay, so, but then if somebody would approach them, you know, like, “Oh, hello my friend.” Or whatever, he said as soon as somebody approaches, that’s it, we’re not going to eat today because this is the way. You give whatever you’ve got. So anybody a stranger approaches you, you say, “Hello, friend, come sit with us here. No, have some soup. Don’t worry, we’re not hungry. We’ve eaten enough. This is for you now. Come sit with us.” When I went to Dubai that first time, somebody I had met once from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We met briefly in Oxford. He was the only person I knew that lived in the region. So I emailed him saying, “Hey, man, I’m going to Dubai for my first time. Are you going to be around?” And he said, “My friend, cancel your hotel reservation. You’re going to stay at my home in the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. I have an apartment in the Burj Khalifa. Stay at my home. You’re my guest.” I said, “Wow, that would be great. It’ll be so good to see you again.”
Derek Sivers
And he said, “No, no, I won’t be there. I live in Riyadh, but my uncle will get you from the airport and just give you the keys. My home is your home. Stay as long as you want.” So I did, I stayed in the Burj Khalifa for a few days. This generosity runs so deep. It’s hospitality, it’s generosity. And you understand why, that you’re in the harsh environment of the desert. Everybody’s living a harsh life. When you meet somebody that’s traveling and passing, it’s like, “Oh, come in, come in here. Have some. Don’t even need to tell us your name or who you are or your tribe or nothing. Just come in. My guest. Please. Have whatever you want. My food. Take a bed. Stay as long as you want.” And that’s so deep in the culture that, yes, I would like to inhabit that philosophy. Now that I’ve been on the receiving end of that hospitality, part of me kind of wants to have a home near the Dubai airport and make that like my main home base. And for whenever I’m not there and I’m traveling to just open it up for any of my friends in the world, like, Please, you’re coming through, please stay at my home. “Like, I want to return that generosity.
Tim
Is it going to be a six by eight foot cube.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Touché, my home.
Tim
Everything I have is yours. Wait, Derek. Where’s the bathroom? Oh, no, there’s no bathroom.
Derek Sivers
No. My friend question whether you truly need it or not. You will find out.
Tim
Let me know where you think the sink should be.
Derek Sivers
I’ll be a bad Emirati. I’ll be fired. I failed the test of hospitality. Yes. I did not learn a lesson.
Tim
Yeah, that Dubai is an international city for a lot of different reasons. You could get by on English. Almost certainly. How is your Arabic coming? Have you started?
Derek Sivers
Oh, I haven’t started yet, but if I do decide to. Sorry, I haven’t spent more time in Dubai yet. I’m planning on going back very soon and getting to know more people and spending more time there and considering it as a place I really might want to live. Because I’ve just noticed throughout my life, like I grew up in Chicago. Then I moved to... Actually, I grew up in a suburb of Chicago. Then I moved to downtown Boston. Then I moved to New York City in the middle of it. And it was like, oh yes, this multiculturalism like this feels more like representative of the real world to me right then, like when I went back to my hometown in Hinsdale, Illinois, it’s like, “Ooh, everybody’s white. This is weird.” You know? It’s like, I like places that are multicultural because it feels like I’m more in the real world. Right? So I thought, like, I’ve also lived in London. I moved to Singapore. I lived in Singapore for four years. I thought I had been in the most multicultural places in the world. No. I looked up statistically New York, London, Singapore, they’re all about 35% or so, 30% to 35% foreign born population. Dubai is like 90%+ foreign born population. Everybody is from everywhere. And so when I got there, it was like, you know, anthropology.Jackpot.
Derek Sivers
I was like, “Ah. This is amazing. Everybody’s from everywhere.” I could get into any taxi drive, you know anybody, you can just ask anybody you see, “Where are you from?” And you’re going to get a different answer all the time, “I’m from Cameroon.” “What are you doing here?” “I love languages.” I say, “Okay, what does that mean?” He said, “Well, I love languages. And I thought, where can I get paid to learn languages? I said, I’ll move to Dubai, I’ll drive a taxi and I can get paid to learn languages.” I said, “Did it work?” He said, “My friend, I can speak eight languages now. I’ve been here 18 months. I can converse with people in eight languages. Everybody that gets into my taxi, I just talk with people all day long.” He said, “I speak Urdu, Hindi, Arabic, whatever. “I think he grew up with French. He said, I’m speaking to you in English. He said, “I couldn’t speak English 18 months ago. Now look at me. And I’m getting paid to learn languages. This is amazing.” And I turned to somebody else and I’m like, “Where are you from?” She’s like, “I’m from Nairobi.” She had the most beautiful accent. And we got into a long conversation about Nairobi. And I just thought, this is what I want. Like just by being in Dubai, the whole world comes through there and you meet so many people from all over the place. Oh, God, what a beautiful place anyway. Yeah. Sorry.
Tim
Living in the cantina in Star Wars. That’s fun.
Derek Sivers
Dude, you said it first. That’s what I usually say. It’s like Dubai is the bar in Star Wars. It’s the cantina. Everybody comes from all over the world to this spot to kind of do their shady dealings. But oh, my God, if you’re an And amateur anthropologist like me. It’s heaven.
Tim
Well, I’m excited that you’re excited, man. It’s fun to see and hope to break some bread in person in the not too distant future. What fun. Always fun to hang, man. Always great fun. Is there anything that you would like to say? Anything you’d like to point people to mention? Anything at all? Before we land the plane.
Derek Sivers
Let’s bring out the little buddies again. These guys have been sleeping by my feet the whole time we’ve been talking.
Tim
Adorable. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
They’re really good little pets. If you don’t wash your hands after you cook, then you just let them lick your fingers. Oh, he’s licking me right now. It’s really sweet the way they lick. They never, ever, ever bite. They’re very gentle.
Tim
Unlike my hamsters I had when I was a kid, they were biters.
Derek Sivers
Yes. Yeah. Same. I had gerbils. They were nasty. Anyway, I don’t know. Well, you know, my usual call out. I really enjoy the people that I’ve met through your podcast. So, hey, anybody listen to this all the way through I truly enjoy my email inbox. I spend about 90 minutes a day just answering emails and I really like it. So send me an email, say hello, introduce yourself. Especially if you’re a translator or if you live in Dubai or you found anything here fascinating.
Tim
All right. Do you want them to do the detective work of finding the email address? Is that the hurdle?
Derek Sivers
Oh, sorry. Go to my website. Just go to sive.rs. There’s a big contact me here link. It’s easy detective work.
Tim
Sive.rs
Derek Sivers
Yes. My name.
Tim
Pretty low hurdle. If they can’t clear that, then they have other problems. Yeah. All right man. Well thanks for taking the time as always. Yeah, really appreciate it.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Sorry I missed you in England.
Tim
Next time, I guess we’ll next time we’ll both get our knees repaired and then we’ll meet up for another walk and talk.
Derek Sivers
I might ask you some tips on meniscus stuff.
Tim
Yeah, exactly. Oh, boy. Yeah. We’ll talk about the knee repair. For everybody listening go to Tim.blog podcast. I’ll link to everything we talked about all the books, City of Gold, China’s worldview, all of these various things, the figures and places, musicians and so on. And until next time,
Derek Sivers
I should say that “Useful Not True” is only through my website. Fuck Amazon. It’s not on Amazon. I put it on my website only. So don’t go to Amazon and look for it and email me and ask why it’s not there. It’s because I don’t like them. So go to siVERS.com that’s where my books are.
Tim
All right, go to singers.com or Sive.rs. I guess. Let’s go to the same place and you can find all things about Derek. And until next time, be a bit kinder than is necessary. Not just to others, but also to yourself. And thanks for tuning in.