Escape 9 to 5
host: Lydia Chen
Having many lives, China, what's home, practicing what you can't yet do, taking the leap, doing what scares you, accumulating evidence.
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Transcript:
Lydia Chen
So I actually, I found your name in my Notion from over a year ago, right after I read Hell Yeah or No. I thought I need to reach out to you after I published a video about 15 years of building my networking skills. Earlier this year, when you said yes to my podcast, and I finally published that video. Only after you said yes to the podcast, I stumbled across the old one. So here we are.
Lydia Chen
I usually start my podcast with two truths and a lie. Share two truths and a lie about your unconventional life journey. Let me guess which is the lie.
Derek Sivers
1. From the age of 18 to 28, I was the ringleader MC of a circus. It was my full-time job.
Derek Sivers
2. I am such a minimalist that I legally removed my middle name since I wasn't using it.
Derek Sivers
3. I am only a citizen of New Zealand, India, and the Caribbean island of Nevis.
Lydia Chen
I know that you were a ringleader. I don't know whether that's exactly the age that you mentioned. I know that you have renounced your US citizenship. So I guess you still keep your middle name.
Derek Sivers
It was a trick. All three of them are true, except the circus was only a part-time job, not a full-time job. I did legally remove my middle name.
Lydia Chen
What was your middle name, if you want to share? It doesn't matter.
Derek Sivers
Doesn't matter. It was fine. I never used it. A lot of people I know in America, or England especially, have these middle names that we just never use. And I think, what is that there for? We don't ever use it. What's that about? I found out it was a $25 form to legally remove my middle name. So it's done.
Lydia Chen
I wanted to describe you, but I don't know how. How would your oldest friend describe you in three words?
Derek Sivers
My oldest friend, in three words, would say "My friend Derek." How's that for a cop-out answer?
Derek Sivers
If I'm looking to avoid conversation with somebody, I just say I'm a programmer. And most people will just say, "Oh." And that's the end of the conversation. It's beautiful. If it's, you know, I'm on a public place and I don't feel like engaging with the chatty stranger next to me, I just say, "I'm a programmer." But if somebody says, "Oh, what kind of programmer? Back-end or front-end?" And I say, "Oh, really? Do you know what you're talking about? Great! Let's talk programming." Because I actually spend so much of my time programming. I love programming. And I never have anyone to talk with about it. So if somebody really wants to talk programming, it's a good filter to just say I'm a programmer. Yeah, that's how I do it publicly.
Derek Sivers
If somebody really cares, I say I'm an author of pop philosophy books.
Lydia Chen
That's the identity you want to carry with you, I guess.
Derek Sivers
It's what I'm currently focused on.
Lydia Chen
I was trying to describe this guy who wrote this book called Hell Yeah or No. People mostly know about the book. I said he's a person who knows what's enough for himself, so then he sold his company, and never took the money. Then a lot of the people wrote about you, a lot of people mentioned you. That's how I come across your work when I was watching Ali Abdaal's YouTube video when he introduced your book, the book before How Yell No: Anything You Want.
Lydia Chen
To prepare for this podcast, I listened to so many conversations. Each conversation, if people don't know you, it could be a different person because you talk about different stuff.
Derek Sivers
I've also lived different lives, as I think everyone listening to this podcast will. You'll have different stages in your life. From the age of 14 to 29, I was only a musician. That's all I did. I didn't care about anything but music. I didn't read. I didn't write. I didn't travel. I just wanted to do music. And that's all I did. Head down from the age of 14 to 29 for 15 years, I was obsessed with only music. I had no interest in anything else.
Derek Sivers
But at 29, as I was selling my music, I accidentally started this company. So for 10 years, from 29 to 38, I did nothing but CD Baby, this music distribution company I was running. And I was just an entrepreneur. I stopped playing music. I was just completely focused on running a great business.
Derek Sivers
At 38, I sold the company, and it made me kind of philosophical because suddenly I could do anything. I had total freedom.
Derek Sivers
You talk about escaping the 9-to-5. There is such a thing as too much freedom when you literally could do anything and you could go anywhere because you don't have to be anywhere and you don't have to do anything. If you have total freedom, it can be a little overwhelming. And so it makes you philosophical because then you start asking, well, what should I do? I can do anything. I have every option in the whole world available to me right now, what's worth doing?
Derek Sivers
So then I spoke at the TED conference in 2009 and 2010. I spoke at the TED conference like five times in two years. And not TEDx, not little events. I mean the big main stage TED. Five times in two years. And so for actually for many years after that, everybody only knew me as a TED speaker. You'd say, "Well, what did you do before TED? You're just the TED guy."
Derek Sivers
So then I published my first book called "Anything You Want" because Seth Godin asked me to. And then people started to know me as an author. And they said, "Well, when's your next book?" And that's when I decided, actually, right now I'm really enjoying writing.
Derek Sivers
But this book that you mentioned, "Hell Yeah or No," I think it's my worst book. I have five books and I think Hell Yeah or No is the worst of the five. My last two books are great.
Lydia Chen
I also have your other one, How to Live.
Derek Sivers
Oh, good. I think Useful Not True and How to Live are the two books that I'm the most proud of. I think those are my best work, writing-wise. So much so that I don't know if I'm going to write any more books. But we'll see.
Lydia Chen
You mentioned that you're writing another book. Maybe that was a long time ago. Maybe that was the most recent book.
Derek Sivers
Probably, yeah. You know what's funny about doing podcasts is sometimes you capture a moment when you're interested in something that day, but now it's recorded forever. So in 2015, for one week, I was learning about the history of hip-hop music. That week, Tim Ferriss called me and said, "Hey, let's record a conversation." I said, "Okay." And he said, "So what's on your mind?" I said, "I'm learning about the history of hip-hop." And now years later, people ask me, "Hey, so what else have you learned about hip-hop?" I said, "Well, nothing. That was 10 years ago. That was one day. That was one week."
Lydia Chen
Ali Abdaal mentioned you in his recommend books. Then I read Andrew Wilkinson's book about Never Enough. That was one of my favorite books. And he was a great storyteller. And he mentioned, "I wanted to ask Derek Sivers how he handled things." And I was like, oh my God, this person is just appearing everywhere. Now you're on my podcast.
Derek Sivers
You know what's kind of funny about the Andrew Wilkinson book? I haven't ever told anybody this before. Imagine if you're Bob Dylan and they make a movie of you and you see somebody playing you and they get some of the facts about your life right but some aren't right because they've been kind of spun to be a little more dramatic. When I read the chapter about me in Andrew Wilkinson's "Never Enough, Barista to Billionaire" book, a lot of those facts are not true. He wasn't taking notes when we talked. So I think he flew back to Canada, then wrote down what he remembered, but he remembered it wrong. But it's fine with me because it's like seeing a slightly fictionalized version of myself. So just little facts, like he said I had a rough childhood. I never had a rough childhood. I never said that. There were some little details in there that I went, "Huh. Where did that come from?" Oh, well, it's kind of nice to be a little fictionalized.
Lydia Chen
It is. The thing I remember really well is that he mentioned that you always wear your signature outfit, like what you're wearing now.
Derek Sivers
That's true. Ever since 2020, when I was living in Oxford England, and I realized I was leaving England forever. And so I went down to Savile Row, the classic menswear street. I thought, while I'm here, this is my chance to get a custom made suit on Savile Row. So ever since then, it's all I wear when I leave the house.
Lydia Chen
How do you separate who you are from what you do?
Derek Sivers
You don't have to. Some people want to compartmentalize and say, "Well, I'm a sales manager, but that's not who I am. That's just what I do." Some of us don't compartmentalize. I wake up at 5am and start working within one minute. I tend to work until a minute before I go to sleep. That's very much who I am. My work is my life. I live to work. I do not just work to live.
Lydia Chen
Do you think that that's because you love what you do and you're very cohesive as a person? For many of the people who are maybe stuck or wanted to escape 9 to 5, they might not have the luxury, what should they do to eventually get to where you are?
Derek Sivers
I think the most important thing for your audience to know is that the life you want comes from making so many little daily decisions to steer that way. So if you know you want to be a digital nomad, you should not buy a house. And if you're renting a house, you should not buy a TV. And if you already have a TV, you should not buy a comfortable chair. (laughs)
Derek Sivers
At every stage, you'll have to make the decision, asking, "Does this fit into the ultimate life I want?" You nudge it a little bit and a little bit every time, and eventually you can look back over the past few years and say, "I'm now living the life I wanted because I made a thousand little tiny decisions." No one decision was the big lightning bolt groundbreaker, but it was just all those little decisions that led to this point.
Derek Sivers
So for example, I talked to an old friend of mine. I've known this guy since I was 17 and we talked for the first time in 10 years yesterday. He said, "Dude, have you heard surround sound? Surround sound is amazing. You've got to try surround sound." I said, "Wait, wait, wait. I'm not going to do that." He goes, "Why not? I know you. I know you're going to love it." I said, "Yeah, I would love it. That's why I'm not going to do it. Because I want to live nomadically. If I get really into surround sound, with five speakers around me, that's going to be one more thing that's keeping me anchored to one place. So I will forego the joy of surround sound for the deeper joy of living free with almost no possessions.
Derek Sivers
Same thing with like a really nice desktop computer. I actually do currently sit at a desk all day because I like having a physical keyboard and a screen or whatever. And it's tempting to get a real desktop computer because it could do stronger AI stuff. It's a better bang per buck. But that would be one more thing keeping me anchored to home instead of feeling just as comfortable at a cafe in Chengdu as I am at home in New Zealand. In fact, someday soon I don't want to ever say at home in New Zealand. I would just want to be at home wherever I am in that moment. So I have to keep making a bunch of little decisions to forego pleasures, forego things I would enjoy, but I'll forego them for the deeper joy of living the ultimate life I want.
Derek Sivers
So finally to answer your question, the steps to get where you want to be are many, many tiny little sacrifices along the way. You make the choice each time, the tiny little choice that steers you to the life you want. And eventually you look back and realize you've done it.
Lydia Chen
Yeah, this is so profound. I stopped leasing an apartment and I always travel by myself. Then whenever, wherever I go, sometimes people will be like, "Where are you from?" Then I was like, "I used to live in Hong Kong. I grew up in China, studied in the US, and now I live in London." And then these people will ask, "Where's home?" Then I said, "Home is wherever I am."
Derek Sivers
Nice. Yeah. Actually, Lydia, my recent definition, I've done a lot of soul searching about this: To me, home is the place with no obstacles.
Lydia Chen
Huh. So for you, where is home? It's just wherever you are?
Derek Sivers
Wherever is comfortable. I recently went to Shenzhen and Chengdu for my first time, and both felt so comfortable that I instantly felt, wow, this just feels like home. I could just cancel my return flight and just stay. This place has no obstacles for me. I feel there is nothing holding me back from complete flourishing. I could thrive here. It has no obstacles to my maximum abilities here. This is great. It's comfortable. There's nothing holding me back. It's a great quality of life. I like it. No obstacles. This is home.
Lydia Chen
How many times did you visit China recently in the past few years?
Derek Sivers
Oh, just twice. Both very short little visits. My main top priority is my son. He's 13. He's here in Wellington, New Zealand, because his mother works here for the government. So we're bound here. All three of us are bound here because of her. So when I go somewhere, it's usually for just a few days, because I don't want to be without him for long.
Lydia Chen
Can you take him with you to China?
Derek Sivers
I could, but his mother hates traveling, and she also doesn't want to be without him for more than maybe 10 days. So even if I do take him, like if he's got a school holiday, that was, yeah, the first time I went to China for the last 12 years was taking him there on a school holiday last April. And that's when we went to Shanghai and Taipei and Hong Kong, and I was just so surprised how nice everything was. And so then I went back in November, I went to Shenzhen and Chengdu, and again, was just blown away with how nice everything is.
Lydia Chen
In your book, How to Live, you mentioned that everyone should visit China every month.
Derek Sivers
Well, I didn't say everyone. I said that's one way of living. I said, here's how to live. Live for the future. If you want to maximize that way of living, then here is the logical conclusion. If you're going to live for the future, then yes, you should go to China every month. You should maybe live in Songdo, South Korea, which is like the place where everything is so future focused. But yeah, I might actually update that and say you should live in Shenzhen.
Lydia Chen
Yes! I grew up in Guangzhou, a one hour train away from Shenzhen. And the lifestyle is very similar to Chengdu, actually. So people just sit there, have a pot of tea. The weather is nicer than Chengdu, I will argue. And that's much more culture than Shenzhen, I will also argue, because Shenzhen is a brand new city. So next time, please go to Guangzhou.
Derek Sivers
You know what's funny? I actually found that because Shenzhen didn't have a super laid-back lifestyle, I found it actually inspired me more because I just wanted to work. I just wanted to throw myself into my work and keep writing and keep building and keep programming because I wasn't distracted by this fascinating museums and operas and culture and tea houses. It's such a really efficient but kind of boring place. So great! Let's work.
Lydia Chen
Oh, yeah, everything functions perfectly. My point I want to get to is I used to work and live in Hong Kong, and it's just in a few hours train back home, right? It's not just every month, every now, maybe every two weeks when I go back, things had changed. So everything is developing in a very, very fast speed.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. A friend of mine in Taipei said that when I lived in Singapore in 2010, mainland China had this reputation as being kind of rough and nasty and dirty and unpleasant. And Taipei had this reputation of being so refined and civilized and nice. And only 14 years later, which to me, 14 years doesn't feel like that long. I went back 14 years later and Shanghai was the place that felt so refined, so pristine and beautiful and perfect. And then I went to Taipei and it was a little nasty - a little rough. I talked to a friend that grew up in Taipei. She's an investor that goes over to mainland China like every year as part of her work. And she said, "The thing is, I think Taipei kind of hit its plateau around 2010. It got to a really nice quality of life and then stayed there." She said, "But every time I go to Shanghai, Beijing, it gets better and better and better and better. Every year it keeps improving. It's just blown us away, just left us in the dust. They keep getting better while we've just stayed the same."
Lydia Chen
Yeah, this year I went back for Chinese New Year.
Derek Sivers
I saw your article about that. I liked it.
Lydia Chen
It made me very proud as a Chinese. Because in my lifetime, the GDP has grown for 10% every year, almost every year. Now it has plateaued a little bit. But then, like you said, I grew up in the age when it was like 2000 to 2010. And that was a rapid growth. And this time when I went back, everything feels very civilized. Everything works. Everything works. Everything is electric!
Derek Sivers
I love that. The electric cars. It's so quiet! As soon as I got out of the subway in the center of Shanghai, I took the subway from the airport to the center city. I got out of the subway and I'm standing in the middle of central Shanghai and it's silent. And I see all these cars and all these motorbikes, but I don't hear them. I think, "What's going on?" And I got closer. And that's when I realized they're all electric, but it's almost unnerving that they can go right in front of you and they're silent. I love it so much. The air is cleaner. It's quieter. It's wonderful. It feels like China's becoming almost like a giant Switzerland, with how pleasant and pristine it is.
Lydia Chen
Of course. Oh, that's so nice.
Lydia Chen
Let's go back to the beginning 'cause I always wanted to understand the origin story. You said that it may take 15 years but you're determined: you were not very good at singing and then you've become very good at singing. Now I listen to all the other podcasts. I feel like your voice is just very nice to hear. And that must be your training. Can you take us back to the moment and how does the 15 years of practice shape your mindset for all the other stuff coming in your life?
Derek Sivers
When you learn music, you have to slow down and every week take on something that you don't know how to do.
Derek Sivers
There's this guitar piece or this violin piece or something that you want to play and you can't do it. Your fingers are unable to do it. And so you break it down into small little bits. You slow it down. You go ((imitates playing a riff slowly then faster)). Eventually you can do what you couldn't do last week. That becomes a way of life. It starts to shape how you see the world. That nothing's impossible if it's a human capability. If anyone on earth has done it, that means you can do it. So it's just a matter of practice, slowing it down and doing it. That empowers you and enables you to take on anything.
Derek Sivers
It also teaches you to not glorify anyone else. Even somebody that seems like a genius, a brilliant writer, for example. Especially if it's a thing of the mind. We could talk about physical capabilities in a second, but if it's a thing of the mind, you could say, "Oh my God, this poet or this songwriter is just beautiful, or this philosopher. I could never be that brilliant. I'm just not that smart. I don't see the world as specially as this amazing person does." But then you realize that amazing person also probably just practiced their ideas, whether it was deliberate or not, they started joining ideas that other people hadn't joined before. They started questioning what they were learning and asking what else could be. They made a point of steering towards what was new and unsaid instead of repeating what others have said. As soon as somebody else has said it, just don't even bother. If it's already been done, keep looking for what's new. If you do that for a few years of good practice, well then you will become an original thinker or a great songwriter or whatever it may be.
Derek Sivers
There's a catch, that people point at in a defeating way: When they look at somebody like a basketball player. They say, "Yeah, but I'm not two meters tall, so I could never be a basketball player." Like, all right, well, there's one thing. But don't use that metaphor to make you give up on everything else and just sit there and watch TV and give up, thinking any human capability is possible for you to adopt.
Lydia Chen
I used to be chubby until six years ago. Then I become very fit because I start going to the gym after a breakup. It always happens. Then I kept going to the gym. I was training for a spinning class instructor, those SoulCycle type of spinning class instructor. It was so tough for me. And my trainer, he said something, he's like, "Of course you can learn it. It's just a skill." This is something that I keep it with me. I think it's maybe similar to your music journey is that you realize no matter how hard it is and no matter how comfortable you are right now doing something you never thought that it's possible. It is possible right now. It means that even very clearly to me as for now, I can still figure it out, move it 1% closer to the goal every day.
Lydia Chen
In your book, How to Live, you said that someone can build a great business and then just become anonymous.
Derek Sivers
We should always remember that reinventing yourself is an option. It only takes $25 to legally your name. And you can fill out some paperwork and become a legal resident of another country. And it's some work, but if it matters to you, it's really quite easy to start anew. You could just move to the other side of the earth with a new name and erase your past reputation and start anew. And read ten books on a subject and become just enough of an expert to get in the game and improve your skills once you're in that game. You don't need a university degree. Think about people doing AI right now or many things. I mean, a lot of computer programming are things that you couldn't have got a degree in this. You could have got a degree in computer science, but it wouldn't really teach you to be a great programmer. A lot of these skills you don't need a degree for. You just have to jump in and do it. So It's free to reinvent yourself. It's good to remember when you feel that you've hit a dead end.
Lydia Chen
I think it's very important for people to understand there is an option to reinvent themselves.
Lydia Chen
In your story, you said that you just wanted to become an open source programmer at the time when you first started your company.
Lydia Chen
But what if someone is just starting from scratch? What are you going to tell someone who wants to start from scratch and find their voice? What should they do to build a name?
Derek Sivers
Depends what they want to do. General advice for building a reputation: you have to make a hundred little decisions a day to do everything publicly, to do things in broadcast. So this is an example of what we were talking about earlier, where I said if you want to be nomadic, you have to make a hundred little decisions all the time that push you that direction. So same thing with making a name for yourself. Get a name that has the dot com and the social media tags available, even if it's not your birth name. Don't just say, "Oh, well, my parents named me Mary Kim, and there's just no way that's available, so I guess I'll just be MaryKim43625." No. You can just pick a different name and go make a name for yourself under this professional pen name and get one that's easy to find and unique and you like the sound of it. And then just start sharing your thoughts in public all the time. Challenge yourself to come up with interesting thoughts that other people haven't already said. Broadcast them everywhere you can, on your own site, on every social media channel.
Derek Sivers
But also manage that process so you're not just being a full-time social media manager for yourself. You have to keep being great at whatever it is you're doing, because ultimately that's the real point. The broadcasting of what you're doing is supposed to be secondary to your unique contribution to the world. So you don't want to just be a socialite.
Derek Sivers
But then it just comes down to being great at what you're doing, which usually means, ironically, disconnecting, to shut off the internet, shut off your inputs, ignore the media and focus and learn and practice like a musician. Practice and practice and practice to get deliberately better at whatever it is you want to make a name for yourself doing.
Lydia Chen
Yeah. I think practice at the right direction is going to lead somewhere. But if someone is stuck in the path at the wrong direction, but they are not sure whether they should take the leap. How can they take the decision forward? And if you can share one moment in your life, because you've lived many different lives, if there's one moment that you feel unsure, but still took the leap?
Derek Sivers
Oh, many. I love leaping.
Derek Sivers
I decided to go to a music university while I was drunk at a party with a friend when I was 17. We had both read an article in the newspaper about Berklee College of Music. And it sounded great. And then we were there drunk at a party. We both like turned to each other like, "Dude, let's go to Berklee College of Music. Yeah, man, let's do it." And the next day we filled out our applications and got accepted and moved to Boston, Massachusetts to go to Berklee College of Music. And that was a huge commitment. By taking that action, you say, "Okay, my music is now my primary life's focus. This isn't just something I do on the side because I like music. I'm going to a music university now." It defines you.
Derek Sivers
When I graduated university, it was a really scary thing for me to move to New York City. It would have been so easy for me to move back home to my hometown that I knew, but I sensed that the most frightening thing I could do was to move to intimidating, scary New York City. So that's what I did.
Derek Sivers
I've had a rule of thumb ever since I was a teenager that says, "Whatever scares you, go do it, because then it won't scare you anymore." So I follow that rule of thumb over and over again, even if it means talking to this gorgeous, person. I'm like, "Oh, I'm scared to talk to her, therefore I will. I'm scared to move to New York City, therefore I will."
Derek Sivers
I keep doing the scary thing, including quitting my job after two and a half years at the same job in New York City. I was performing in the circus on the side on weekends. I had a regular nine to five job Monday through Friday in midtown Manhattan. And then every Friday at 5 p.m., I would race down to Penn Station and hop on the 6 p.m. train up to Massachusetts, where I'd perform with the circus all weekend. Every Monday morning, I'd catch the 6 a.m. train down from Massachusetts back to New York City, getting into the city right at 9 a.m., enough to show up at my job at Monday morning at 9, smelling awful from my early morning journey. I did that for two and a half years until I had $12,000 saved up, which maybe was the equivalent of $20,000 today. Not a ton of money, but it was enough that I knew that I could quit my job and be a full-time musician. So I just challenged myself to do the scary thing, and I quit with no safety net except this $12,000 in the bank account. I thought, "All right, I'm just going to have to work extra hard to be a full-time musician now." And I did it. And I rose to that challenge. If you have to, you will. And it becomes your self-identity. You throw yourself into it.
Derek Sivers
Then I forced myself to leave America. I realized after 10 years that leaving America forever was the most scary thing because America was all I knew At that point. I was 40 years old. 40 years old, and I had never really left America. So at the age of 40, I said, "All right, not only am I leaving, I'm leaving forever. I'm gonna ban myself from ever returning. I can come visit for a few days, but I will never live here ever again." So that's why I renounced my US citizenship, to prevent myself from going back.
Derek Sivers
And I don't know, met a girl I hardly knew. Her parents wanted us to get married and everything in me said no, so I said yes, 'cause I realized I was scared to get married, so okay, sure.
Derek Sivers
I keep taking those leaps.
Lydia Chen
Once you take the leap first, that doesn't sound that scary, and then you accumulate those evidence for yourself. Slowly but surely.
Derek Sivers
Yes! Perfect way of putting it: You accumulate the evidence. I love that, Lydia.
Lydia Chen
First of all, I didn't know you have a regular job. That's why I didn't have those questions. I was like, what's the job about?
Derek Sivers
I was the librarian at Warner Chapel Music Publishing, Warner Brothers' music division in Midtown Manhattan.
Lydia Chen
It was a relevant to music job.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, it was loosely connected. It was good to be in the music business to help me make more connections and see the inside of the music industry. I wrote a whole book about it, called "Your Music and People". It's about everything I learned from being on the inside of the music industry and then leaving, setting out to do music on my own, and then starting CD Baby to sell other people's music. So being on both sides of the counter, trying to get my music sold and then later being the one selling other people's music. It's everything I learned about holistic marketing along the way.
Lydia Chen
What was the moment that made you want to leave then?
Derek Sivers
It was the challenge. The safe choice versus the risky choice. It often comes down to what's the safe choice, what's the risky choice. And I think the risky choice is always the growth choice. So almost every time I will choose whatever's the bigger risk, whatever is the scariest thing is the one that will lead me to more growth. So even now at the age of 55, I keep making decisions this way. I never want to be comfortable. I never want to be stagnant. I want to keep choosing the scary, risky, unknown thing that will expand my self-identity.
Derek Sivers
Accumulating evidence. I love the way you put that.
Lydia Chen
I was a very not-confident and introverted person 7-8 years ago. And then I started to accumulate evidence. First, I go to the gym, I become very fit. It's something that I couldn't do. And then I lost my job twice. And then now I am doing my own business.
Lydia Chen
I remember the first time I lost my job. My friend, he's French and he's like, why are you worried? You have to take 10,000 steps, you will never go back to zero. Maybe you will take a little bit back, but then you will never go back to zero. And now when I look at whenever I have self-doubt, I will just, there's so many evidence to say that, yes, it might be tough, but you'd be fine. So I think that's the, that's life, I guess.
Lydia Chen
You're 55. I'm 35. If you could go back and give yourself, give your 35-year-old self career advice in 10 seconds, what would it be?
Derek Sivers
No. I wouldn't do that. That's trying to help me avoid some mistakes, but the mistakes are what help you learn. I want the mistakes. I want to make more mistakes. The more mistakes I make, the more I learn. You only really learn when you make a mistake and learn that something you were doing or thinking was wrong. So I want more of that. I don't like this go back and tell yourself something question because it's trying to help your past self not learn something directly.
Lydia Chen
What would you tell me then in 10 seconds?
Derek Sivers
I don't know. It's so unique.
Lydia Chen
What's the most significant event that affected the world the most in the last 25 years?
Derek Sivers
I disagree with the question. I'm glad you sent it in advance, because I had a minute to think about it. That as soon as you say "the world," what's been the most significant event for the world? It leads you to generalize. Because I haven't met everyone in the world yet. The world has 8 billion individuals, each with their own different priorities. They are not one big mass that is equally affected by an event.
Derek Sivers
So you could say the invention of the internet was a big event that affected a lot of people. But I'll bet you that was almost nobody's biggest event. There's someone who for the first time feels loved and safe. And there's someone else whose biggest event, life-changing event, was that they found Islam and they have surrendered to the Islamic way of life. That's the biggest thing that happened to them in 25 years. For somebody else, the biggest change in their life was reading a certain book that changed the whole way they approach the world. They're no longer scared. They see everything differently. It's empowered them. It changed everything was that book was the event for them.
Derek Sivers
For me, it was selling my company. It wasn't the money, because I gave that away. It was the philosophical shift to no longer being on any track and just having this wide open blank slate. It's so different for everybody.
Derek Sivers
If you start thinking in terms of the world, then you're just going to think in terms of media has shown you. It's a horrible filter because the media itself has its own business biases. They just want to show you what gets the most clicks for their businesses. They're not generating an accurate representation of the world. But if you start to say, "What's the biggest event for the world?" Yeah, you're going to get this awful, diluted, generic, media version of the world. So I highly recommend that we stop generalizing like that. We stop thinking in terms of the world or even my country or even my city. To even say the people of my city, or people my age is too broad of a generalization. Everybody's so different.
Derek Sivers
I don't know if you, Lydia, need more confidence or less confidence. I don't know if you need more of a sense of right and wrong or less of a sense of right and wrong. I don't know if you need more connection to family or less connection to family. I don't know you well enough to know all these things, so I can't prescribe anything for you. Everyone is so different.
Lydia Chen
Everyone experiences the world based on everything that comes before us and how we were built before this point. Thank you so much. It's a very philosophical take.
Derek Sivers
I often have different goals than the people around me. I hear well-meaning people prescribing certain courses of action, which are very wise if what you want is to go up and to the right, then that's a good course of action. And a lot of people want to go up and to the right. That's what they want. But what if I want to go down and to the left? Well, then that advice doesn't apply to me at all. But we're just assuming that everybody wants to go up and to the right. But not all of us Some of us want to go a different direction.
Lydia Chen
So let's go back to you. If you could relive just one day of your past for the joy of it, not to change anything, which day would that be?
Derek Sivers
Ha ha. Um... I don't know. Does it matter? I mean I could say that in 2008 I had fun riding scooters through central Vietnam. I could say that there was a particular day in this day in my past that was fun for me. I don't have a wonderful fountain of a tale to tell that would be entertaining. I don't know if it would be useful to anybody.
Lydia Chen
Okay, let's talk about goals then. You talk about a good goal is one that makes you take action now. So what's the current goal that's shaping your daily life?
Derek Sivers
Oh, Lydia, I have a problem. I keep good records. And this has begun to be a problem. I'm becoming too aware of all the different things I want to do and could do.
Derek Sivers
I could really relate to that movie "Everything Everywhere All At Once", when the daughter made "the everything bagel". That's to me kind of the story of my book called How to Live. How to Live was my everything bagel. Or at least 27 toppings for the 27 chapters. That was, look at all of these different ways you could approach life. And none of them are necessarily right or wrong. All of them are possible. And in fact, you can do all of them in little ways, even if it's just one year each for 27 years, or one month each for 27 months, or minutes of each per day, minutes of following the good book, and minutes of being a public figure, and minutes of this. You could break it up every single day and live 27 ways every day.
Derek Sivers
Now, the problem is it doesn't stop at 27. I've got a folder on my computer where I keep track of my future plans. And every time I have a really good idea that I want to make happen, I immediately go into that folder, open a new subfolder, and I start spec'ing it out. I write the detailed execution plan. I start building the code. If it's a programming thing, I build the database.
Derek Sivers
I start making the real nuts and bolts of how I'm going to make this thing happen, the steps to do it. I write about how much I want to do this and why and how I'm going to do it. So here's the problem. I've got over 500 of these now. All detailed specs. And I want them all.
Derek Sivers
I've also got over 504 books - I just counted this week - 504 books that I've purchased because I want to read them and I haven't had the time yet. I really want to read all 504 of these books. They're right there. They're purchased. They're on my computer or on my literal bookshelf, but I haven't read them yet.
Derek Sivers
I also want to live everywhere in the world. I want to live in Africa. I want to live in Eastern Europe. I want to live in South America. I want to live in China. I want to live in every part India.
Derek Sivers
So every day I don't sleep very much. I stay up so excited working until 11 p.m. or so and then I sleep for maybe five hours, five and a half hours usually. After about five and a half hours I wake up, no matter what time I go to bed, whether it's 10 or 11 or 12, I tend to wake up after five and a half hours because I'm just too excited. As soon as my brain turns on, it just, "Bang, bang, bang, bang. Oh my God, this and this and that. Oh my God, I just had another day and I want to do this. Oh my God, I've got to get back to finishing this." And I bounce out of bed at 4.30 in the morning usually, and just start typing right away and get back to work on what I'm doing. So I've got too many goals right now. It's a problem. But they are all leading to action.
Derek Sivers
I still hold to that, that a good goal is one that makes you jump into action. So maybe right now, for me, a good goal would be the one that makes me stop taking action on all of the others.
Lydia Chen
Or prioritize. You must have a prioritize list, right? 500 things: you cannot do all of them! If you open up a folder, what would you pick to do on that day, that moment? How do you decide?
Derek Sivers
Well, that's a problem. I only last week made a temporary solution where I took the 19 things that I had pulled out of my 500. I had taken 19 and said, these are the ones I'm doing now. But those 19 were overwhelming me because every day I was doing a little bit of that and a little bit of this and a little bit of that and I was feeling awful every day. So on the advice of a dear friend, I took 18 of them and put them back into the folder that says "someday maybe" and "maybe never." And I kept just one thing in there, which is right now, today, I might be done tomorrow, but today I'm programming translation software on inchword.com for translating all of my books. That's what I'm doing today. That's all I'm doing, except this conversation. As soon as it's done, I will open up the folder of 500, where I've already kind of nudged 18 of them near the top, and I'll pick a different one and do that to completion.
Lydia Chen
It must be very exciting to have so many different types of things that you want to do. You also once said that give them the safety experiment, make mistakes, and fail up. So if you wanted to do so many things, you must have moments that you fail, but fail up.
Derek Sivers
Oh, all the time. I don't even know if I fail up, I just fail all the time. Sometimes just certain things drop in my lap, even personally. I recently made a new friend that's a bit of a big deal. Someone that lives like five houses down from me. And I have become really, really close friends in a way that I'm not used to. I'm used to having my close friends across the world from me. So we just talk on the phone every few days. And to have a close friend live four doors down from me is a really new thing for me. It's actually a really new experience. It's really hard for me. So, like letting a new person into my life like that, physically, like into my house, it's weird for me.
Derek Sivers
Another example is this house I'm living in right now. I don't like this house. I've never liked this house, but I was seeing somebody four years ago that liked this house, and we were talking about moving in together, so I bought this house because she loved it so much. And then a year later we broke up, but now I'm still in this house that I hate. No, I don't hate it, I just don't love it. I don't like it. And so then my neighbor on that side, you can see the house right there out the window, the neighbor on that side, that old lady moved out and put her house up for sale. And so I put a lowball offer on it and I got it. And then the neighbor on the other side that way said, well, actually I'm leaving too. So if you buy my house too, then you can have this whole section, because it's like these three houses share a section and share one driveway. So actually, as of two days ago, I bought the other neighbor's house too. So now I own these three old, hundred-year-old houses that are decrepit and decaying. So I'm going to tear down all three of them and build new townhouses in their place. And I never wanted to do this, but it was just something that was dropped in my lap. So sometimes life is like that. You can make your goals. But then something drops in your lap or somebody steps into your life, and it's unexpected.
Lydia Chen
Would you say that you're so comfortable with this idea of failure or the experience of failure, you actually don't mind and everything that happens just would push you to the direction that you should be?
Derek Sivers
I think really long term. So if you're thinking in terms of 50 years, then what happens this year, no matter how bad it is, is just part of your story. It's part of what makes you a better person. So I'm always thinking 50 years. So what happens this year is never any big deal.
Lydia Chen
Time is really a magical thing. I think sometimes when people are trapped in their 9 to 5, it's very hard to disassociate themselves with the rat race or whatever that is called.
Lydia Chen
And you once wrote that nothing destroys money faster than seeking status. Do you think that trapping in the nine to five is partly rooted in the status game as well?
Derek Sivers
I think for most people, they see it as the only option. They see it as just a given. "Well, that's just what you do. You wake up, you eat a meal, you go to a job for someone else as an employee where you get paid a regular paycheck, and maybe you had to get a degree to get that job, so that shaped that path. And that's just what you do." They're kind of following everything around you that has shaped this path that you're following.
Derek Sivers
So I consider it really lucky that I wanted to be a musician when I was 14 - - a professional musician. That's what snapped me out of the matrix: knowing that I don't want what most people want. Almost everybody is going this way, I'm going that way. So it helped me disconnect from norms. It also helped me be the black sheep in my family.
Derek Sivers
In your lovely essay on your website about going back for Chinese New Year, you talked about expectations and answering questions to relatives. And when reading that, I was struck with my lucky fact of always being the black sheep since I was 14. I had long hair down to here, covered in heavy metal patches, and I dyed this half of my hair red and this half purple, and I was just a freak from early teen years, so that everybody just gave up on me long ago. They never expected anything of me because I was just the black sheep. I was just off being weird. They gave up. So nobody expected anything of me. I was disconnected from norms. That was so handy and continues to be so handy that I just see myself as a freak and I assume that other people just see I'm weird too. And so norms don't apply so much when you're already a freak.
Lydia Chen
Thank you for reading the essays so closely. It was a very defining moment for me this year, going back home. For the first time in my life, I actually feel that this is just me take it or leave it. And my family actually are supportive because if they don't say no, it's kind of supportive for, for whatever that is worth in a very traditional setting. I also feel very lucky to have this podcast. So I have these kind of conversations because I started last year. I don't have friends who have been on this path long enough to have these kinds of conversations with me. I always ask people, why did you want to move from a traditional job to a different one? And then you have your story. Other people have their story that all of those I'm accumulating evidence for myself as well. In a way, we learn from these people and sharing with other people who doesn't necessarily have these stories and examples in their life.
Derek Sivers
I'll give one more - I'll tell my thing and then flip it into something that could be constructive for your listeners. Yes, at the age of 14, I decided I wanted to be a professional musician, that already set me apart. Then I went to a music college instead of a regular college, that set me apart further. But more importantly, I was at music college, I got a call to join a circus at the age of 18. I became the ringleader/MC of this circus. And then being in the circus, all the people I was around were face painters, professional magicians, professional jugglers, people who were making their living and paying their rent by juggling. These are the people that I was around. I fell in love with the face painter at the circus, and her parents were these hippies that lived in an old cabin that they got for basically free. Both her parents never had a job. They just did odd jobs for money because their cost of living was so low because they lived in a cabin for free. They put their daughter, my girlfriend, through college just on scholarships.
Derek Sivers
So all this traditional stuff of saying, "Well, you've got to have a good job"? I was surrounded by evidence that you don't. You don't need a job. In fact, I don't know many people with jobs. Most people I know don't have a job. And then later, I didn't know anybody that was married. I had like a hundred friends and I think like one of them was married. Everybody was just single. Everybody was creative. I was surrounded by magicians and then eventually musicians and writers and self-employed people are my norm. I still don't know that many people that have a job.
Derek Sivers
You choose your social circles. You can deliberately just put yourself into different circles. You could go join a meditation group and a pottery class or go down to some artsy center or whatever and just meet more people that have dropped out of the usual 9-5 race and befriend them and get to know them and pretty soon you'll be in a group of friends where you're the only one that has a job. And it really helps shape your sense of possibility of the world. It helps you just see the world differently, with its different options.
Derek Sivers
I have a 13-year-old boy now that I'm encouraging him to ideally never have a job. I say if you're going to have a job, you should only get it for the specific purpose of learning how to be a good boss. By getting a job and working for some bad bosses, you'll see how badly it sucks to have a bad boss, and it will help you learn how to be a good boss. But I never want my son to have a job except for that. And because of that, I don't think he necessarily needs to go to a university. Because the only reason you really need to go to a university is to get the degree so that you can get a job. But if you don't want a job, then it's moot. You can just learn through other means. I've shaped him this whole path since he was born. I just say, "No, no, no, don't worry about that. Don't worry about your grades. Don't worry about this. Learn and be smart, but never think that you need to get a job. Learn how to make money. That's eventually way more stable. Learning, being good at making money gives you more stability than a job.
Lydia Chen
Yes, exactly. For people who might not be as lucky as your son to have you shape their path, what's the small action they could take tomorrow? Maybe just to try a little bit.
Derek Sivers
Oh, I think just the ones I just said. Go get yourself into a different group of friends. Go join some kind of creative craft group or a writing group or something that pulls you out of your existing social circles, puts you into a place where people are actively being more creative, and then get to know them and be friends with them and go have them over to your house and go visit their house and get to know their lives and see how they see the world.
Lydia Chen
Yeah, something that's really helpful for me in the past year is I have this podcast. I'm also in this part-time YouTuber Academy. So almost everyone in part-time YouTuber Academy have a very non-traditional path that they're taking on. Then when I talk to my friends who are in their traditional path, they're still talking about somebody getting a raise, or somebody doesn't have time for their kids. Even some of my friends, I think they are just financially safe already, but they hate their job. They just cannot quit. I went back to China, asked my friend, I was like, "What's the reason why you have to stay in this low-paying job and don't like it?" And he said, "I don't know. I just don't know what else I can do." So I think in a way, I'm lucky in that way.
Lydia Chen
Along the years, there must be a lot of people go to you, ask different type of questions, right? What's the most unexpected question?
Derek Sivers
There was one that stands out. A guy from Singapore had me on his podcast. And in the middle of a conversation about other things, he said, "So how can I get a girlfriend?" I went, "Uhhhh... I don't know."
Lydia Chen
Well, first of all, you don't know him that well.
Derek Sivers
At all!
Derek Sivers
That was the only really weird question I've heard. Sorry.
Lydia Chen
You mentioned that learning how to make money is a much more stable skill. Because now I'm on my own path, I'm learning how to make money on my own. And sometimes I'm very good at making connections. I feel like I'm not very good at asking for money. Even today, I was brainstorming with ChatGPT, and it was like, "Maybe you should reframe as offering value and exchange curiosity." You mentioned in Mark Manson's podcast about you stepping into a different personality when you're in the telemarketing job. What is the best way for me to practice this? Because I do know I have value. Whenever I talk to my mentors and friends, they know that they always say you shouldn't undersell yourself. I don't know how you're like in negotiations, but you shouldn't sell yourself. But when I get to the real conversation, I start to become maybe the 28 year old Lydia again.
Derek Sivers
Okay. So first, read a book by Amanda Palmer called The Art of Asking. And if you don't like books, then watch her TED Talk.
Derek Sivers
Anybody listening to this. If you're having a hard time getting into the mindset of asking for money, go read books on sales. There are some brilliant books. There's one called The Ultimate Sales Machine. I think there's another one called The Art of Selling that I really liked. There's a brilliant one by Harry Beckwith called "Selling the Invisible." If you surround yourself with these thoughts, it just gets you into this mindset where selling is not taking something away from someone. It's offering great value.
Derek Sivers
"And hey, if I'm going to do this in any sustainable way, I'm going to be giving you something it's worth this much to you, it's going to help your life in such a way, it's going to help you earn $1,000. So the cost of it is only $95 to help you make $1,000. I'm doing you a favor."
Derek Sivers
There are certain mindsets that you can get into by just inhabiting the thoughts of others that are great at this. Then you just act like them. You say, "I'm going to act like Amanda Palmer for 20 minutes. I'm just going to not be Lydia. I'm going to be Amanda. For 20 minutes, I'm going to act just like her. It's ridiculous, but I will." That's what it was like with my telemarketing job. At the age of 16, had to get on the phone and act like George Amos, because George Amos was the number one salesman on the floor. And luckily my manager let me listen in to what he was doing with his phone calls. So I just stopped being me and I started being George for those hours that I was on the phone. I imitated George the best I could. And within two weeks I was the best salesman on the floor.
Lydia Chen
Is it hard to imitate someone because you also want to use your own voice?
Derek Sivers
It's like acting. It's like getting on stage at a school play, pretending to be Juliet, pretending to be the villain. Still there have been times in my recent life where I've had to play the villain, where My true self is generous and carefree. And there have been a couple situations when I've got the feeling like somebody was trying to screw me on a contract. And I just flaunt my power in those moments and I become the villain. And I don't care if this person hates me for life. I put on this persona, I even fake a certain anger. and I fake a rigidity, and it lasts for a few minutes during the phone call. And then I hang up and I laugh. So you just put on a role, you do what you need to do.
Derek Sivers
But it's the same thing as going on stage. There are times as a musician that you get on stage to entertain a crowd, when you don't actually want to, you're sitting backstage with a weary look on your face going, "This is the last thing in the world I want right now." But the audience is out there and they're waiting. And so you just go, "All right, here we go." And you step out on stage and you turn on your face and you do a performance.
Derek Sivers
It can be the same thing with whatever you need to do, selling-wise, negotiating-wise. It's really just wonderful to read books about this stuff.
Derek Sivers
Look at my book list. Go to sive.rs/book and you will see my list of over 400 books that I've read since 2007 when I started taking notes. In 2007, I started, every time I read a nonfiction book, I would underline and highlight, grab all the key ideas, and then post it on my site for free for the world to share. I was really doing it for myself, but why not share it? And then I sort them in order of how highly I would recommend them to anyone.
Derek Sivers
You will see the number one at the top of the list right now is called "You Can Negotiate Anything" by Herb Cohen. It is such a good book to help you get into this negotiation mindset. He describes the inner mindset beautifully. He's a master negotiator. It's an old book from the 1980s, so you'll miss some of the references about Jimmy Carter and whatever. It doesn't matter. It gets you into a beautiful mindset for negotiating and selling. I highly recommend that to literally everyone because it makes you realize that you can negotiate life as well. It's not just money. It's not just business. It's everything. It's your whole identity and social norms and path you follow in life and what's right and wrong. It's all negotiable.
Lydia Chen
Yeah, I started to learn about negotiation after reading the other book called Never Split the Difference.
Derek Sivers
That one was good. But this one is great.
Lydia Chen
Speaking of different paths, because you've built so many things, have you ever had a moment that you built and you feel like you've arrived and you feel somewhat empty and want to ask yourself, now what?
Derek Sivers
All the time! Yeah!
Derek Sivers
Mark Manson, after he published the "Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck", and it went on to sell a bajillion copies, he got depressed because it was his first public book and it sold a bajillion copies. And he got really sad like, oh man, now what? He was lost and empty for a year. We talked a few times that year and he was feeling really lost and not sure what to do. He knew he had to do another book. The publisher wanted a follow-up, but he was feeling really depressed.
Derek Sivers
Almost every time I finish a thing and launch a thing, I'm initially elated because I'm so proud of the thing that I've released and I put it out. And then, now what? I've thrown everything I've got into this thing. That's what just happened with my last book called Useful Not True. It was two years of my life. I just was completely focused on that one idea. I put it out into the world It's going well people like it and I have no idea what's next.
Lydia Chen
How do you hold the space for this now? What are your useful tips for yourself that you practice?
Derek Sivers
I can just tell you from experience, that the worst I've had it was for a whole year and a half after selling my company. I spent a year and a half adrift and I considered many, many ideas.
Derek Sivers
So this is my advice. If you consider some ideas and try deciding, that's different than deciding. Deciding means to cut off all other options. True decision is where you cut off other options. So instead, try deciding. Do a trial decision to say, "Yeah, I am going to do it. I'm going to move to Mexico and learn Spanish, and I'm going to be a professional potter, and I'm going to take pottery classes, and I'm going to do this, and I'll start my pottery business." And you write out how this plan's going to work, what it implies. You look at where you're going to live. You talk to people that live. Maybe you even tell some trusted friends where you have a safe space to say, "This is what I'm doing." And your friend echoes it back at you. And either that will make you so happy and excited that it will feel so congruent and right that you will jump into action and do it. Or, after trying that decision for a few days, you might feel, "Eh, no. Not that." And then you just keep thinking of other possibilities. Or perhaps there's some detail in that plan that just needs to change, and it's just that one detail that was missing. So maybe it's the exact same plan, but not Mexico, it's Spain. Suddenly that plan sounds so much better that now you're super excited.
Derek Sivers
In fact, that literally happened with me last night in a tiny sense, that a friend wants me to come visit Chengdu again. And the flights from Wellington, New Zealand to Chengdu are like 28 hours with three layovers. And it just sounded dreadful. So even though I knew in theory I wanted to go spend more time in Chengdu, I just wasn't excited about it. It sounded awful because of those flights. And just last night, I thought, "Wait, what if I fly to Hong Kong?" Suddenly there's a perfect flight, just nonstop, 6 a.m., leaves here, arrives at 5 p.m. there, effortless, arrive at 5 p.m. in Hong Kong, "Hey, I'll spend a day in Hong Kong, and then the next day I'll take the train over to Shenzhen and just take a nice cheap Shenzhen Airlines up to Chengdu." Suddenly it all felt happy, and just that one tiny detail changed, and I went, "This is really appealing now. I think I'll do this."
Derek Sivers
So sometimes you should completely ditch an idea that hasn't excited you after you've tried deciding to do it. And other times you need to go back if it felt like almost the right choice. See if you can tweak some details that will make it appealing. And eventually something will hit you that will make you jump into action And then you have to capture that moment and actually take the action in that moment when you're inspired. Go click the sign up form and sign up. Go pay the registration fee for that class. Go book the flight. Go buy the camera. Whatever it is that's the next step that puts you on that path. Just take that action immediately in your moment of inspiration so that it starts the ball rolling.
Lydia Chen
Yeah, catch the moment that we want to do it and then just do it.
Lydia Chen
If I can make your trip a little bit more appealing is, I think you can take the train from Shenzhen directly, maybe directly to Chengdu. Maybe it's long, but that might be really nice. The high-speed train to Changsha, the high-speed train to Hunan is only three hours nowadays. So I think you might be able to take a high-speed train to Chengdu.
Derek Sivers
If the trains are as nice as they are in Japan, which I suspect they are, whenever I visit Japan I think I enjoy my time on the trains almost as much as my time off the train. Sipping your tea, looking out the window, going by at 300 kilometers an hour. It's so pleasant.
Derek Sivers
Well, I'm gonna see friends in Shenzhen anyway. I made two really good friends in Shenzhen last time that I'm eager to see them again.
Lydia Chen
So we've talked about now and now what? So what's next for you? What's bringing you most joy or curiosity right now?
Derek Sivers
I don't know. That's my only honest answer. The thing we talked earlier, it's a more nuanced answer that I gave you earlier about my folder of 500 things I desperately want to do and having to constantly pluck the next one that is the most urgent and important. Yeah, happy, smart and useful. The reason, for example, I'm doing the translation project next and putting everything else aside is that I have many publishers that are contacting me wanting to publish my books in other countries, and they are all just waiting on the translations being done. So I need something to manage my translations so that I can find them. Every week or two I'm getting an email from these publishers going, "How are you still doing it? Is it coming? We really want to do this. Please let us know." I'm saying, "Okay, okay, okay." And I do want my books distributed in other languages and other countries. So this fits the happy, smart, and useful intersection, the Venn diagram of those three, even though It's actually not quite the amount of shallow happiness. It's not fun, but it's ultimately more fulfilling.
Lydia Chen
You speak multiple languages, right?
Derek Sivers
No, I wish.
Lydia Chen
At some point I thought you speak a little bit of Chinese.
Derek Sivers
I know how to say one good sentence.
Derek Sivers
我现在不想看电视。
Lydia Chen
Oh, that's very good.
Derek Sivers
Thank you.
Derek Sivers
谢谢。
Derek Sivers
I learned it in a grammar book. I like the way it sounds. It's got a lot of those fourth tone, the falling tones.
Derek Sivers
我现在不想看电视。
Derek Sivers
In fact, that was one of the 18 things that I had recently pulled out. I was spending an hour a day practicing Chinese, memorizing the grammar, the components, and the radicals so I could learn to read better. I was spending an hour a day on that, but I just recently stopped. That was one of the 18 things I put back into the Someday folder.
Lydia Chen
Yeah, I think you're pronounced, because you're a musician, you have no problem learning Chinese because that's the most important thing is the tones.
Derek Sivers
The tones, yeah. That's why I wanted to learn it. It was 25, maybe almost 30 years ago now that I met... Yeah, oh my god, it was 30 years ago. 30 years ago was the first time I met a Chinese person that told me that the language had tones. And I went, "Wait, what? How does this work? How do you sing? If you have the tones, does that change how you write the songs based on the words you want to say?" And she said, "Well, I don't know. That's an interesting question." I'm like, "Oh my god, this is blowing my mind." And so for 30 years I've wanted to learn Chinese. And in fact, that's why I went to China in 2010. I moved to Guilin because I signed up for Guilin Normal University for the four-month immersion program. But unfortunately, I had just met my girlfriend and she came with me. And after one week, she hated it so much, she was miserable, she insisted we leave. So my dream of living in Guilin for four months and becoming fluent was trashed and we moved to Singapore and then she got pregnant and that was that. So I have not learned Chinese yet. I will.
Lydia Chen
I used to teach my friends a little bit Chinese. And I have seen those books when they teach foreigners.
Lydia Chen
I also feel like your writing is in a very poetic, calm, and warm way.
Derek Sivers
Thank you.
Lydia Chen
It's difficult to translate. That's the challenge.
Derek Sivers
That's why I didn't want to just hand it to a publisher who's just going to hand it to a cheap translator so they can make more money. I want to work very closely with the translator and at least three reviewers that know my English writing well that are bilingual, native speakers of another language like you that know my English writing well, I want to work with at least three reviewers in each language that work with the translator to make absolutely sure that this is really the best translation it can be, even if I lose money doing it. I just feel like if you're going to do something, do it right or don't do it at all. So if I'm going to do translations, I want them to be great.
Lydia Chen
Yeah, I would love to read it if it's helpful for the future.
Lydia Chen
And then we talked about traveling. I know that you keep mentioning nomadic and you have nomadic blood, but because of your son, you're now bound to New Zealand, which would be the first place that you want to move to after he grows?
Derek Sivers
Bangalore and Dubai are my top two. Maybe Dubai, maybe Abu Dhabi, which is an hour down the road from Dubai, which is a little more comfortable, less hectic, less traffic. Abu Dhabi's really nice. And honestly, so far, either the melting pot of Shenzhen or maybe the comfortable clean air lifestyle of Chengdu, those to me are the big three.
Derek Sivers
I could really see living the rest of my life with two homes, splitting my time equally between India and China, because I see them as such perfect opposites to each other. Chaos and order. Pristine and messy, and the advantages of both. So I have really dear friends in Bangalore, India, that are just wonderful conversationalists, and it's such a social place for me. Everybody I meet with, we dive into these deep philosophical conversations right away. But if I got fluent in Mandarin, then I could also make a home base somewhere in China and spend my time going around the different regions there. And I think it would be a beautiful way to split my time for the rest of my life with those two homes. I would continue traveling, but if I had to make a home base, then I like that split-time home base. You know, stay in China until the orderliness of everything wears on you and then go to India until the chaos of everything wears on you.
Lydia Chen
It's interesting because you said when you mentioned China and India, I thought they have more in common in the way that everything moves very fast.
Derek Sivers
Oh, right. But see, if I set that as a baseline, right.
Derek Sivers
I love the fact that two different people on my last visit to China, both said that they were shocked and horrified when they went back to, one said New York City, one said Melbourne, Australia, after ten years and were horrified and shocked to see that it hadn't changed. They said, "That's just... nothing's changed." And I thought that's very telling that that would be a surprise to you, that you would expect everything about a city to change in 10 years. Whereas, ask anybody in London or, God, even most cities in Europe, they say, "Yeah, it hasn't really changed in 200 years," let alone 10 years, 20 years. It's the exact same as it looked 50 years ago. Maybe then we got cars. Cars made a difference. But I love the fact that both India and China are changing so fast that it keeps you very future-focused, keeps you optimistic, keeps you wanting change and expecting change. Whereas I think the European mindset scares me, which is this idea of like preservation. No, don't change. We have to resist change. We have to keep things as they were. That attitude scares me. So I could see myself visiting Europe, but I have a hard time seeing myself living in Europe. Whereas if I want to live somewhere, I want to live somewhere with change.
Lydia Chen
Yeah, it's interesting, the preserving, because the other common theme between China and India is actually, we're both very long history country, have thousands of years history. And then now both of the countries are changing very fast.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I think it's important as you get older to not stagnate, to not get stuck in your ways. And so I see moving to India and/or China as a recipe to keep myself from stagnating.
Lydia Chen
Yeah, don't stagnate. I know you don't like time travel, but if, let's say, if we allow ourselves, your son is 13 this year. When he becomes 30 years old, what would you want your son to say about you when he's 30 years old?
Derek Sivers
Oh, we're good friends, that's it. We've been good friends since before he could speak. We're really, really good friends now. I spend at least 20 hours, usually 30 hours, every single week giving him my full attention, just talking. So he and I talk 20 to 30 hours every week. We know each other so well. No filters. We talk about anything. And we're just really, really good friends. So I hope that in 17 years that will still be true.
Lydia Chen
That's such a good goal, to be the best good friends with your son.
Derek Sivers
That's all. I don't care what he does. His life is his own. His life is not mine. I love when his tastes differ from mine. There's only one food on earth I hate and that's olives and it's one of his favorite foods. I love that. I love that his life will be so different from mine that I don't want to prescribe anything for his life other than being his friend.
Lydia Chen
That's such a good goal. I have one fun question. If you had a week alone, no tech, no people, where would you go and what would you do?
Derek Sivers
I actually do that a lot. I've done that a few times and it's wonderful. New Zealand is very good for that. Just the natural world. You know, I'm building a new house where I'm putting both the bathroom and the kitchen outside. So that many times a day you're forced to step out of the room into the real world with the wind blowing the trees and the birds and the rain or the clouds and it just reminds you of the real physical world that puts everything else into perspective.
Derek Sivers
Friends that are really full of fear and anxiety are full of fear and anxiety because of what's coming to them over that screen. If it weren't for that screen, they wouldn't have fear and anxiety. If they turned the screen off or threw it in the ocean and looked at the real world, there's nothing inducing fear and anxiety in the real world for most of us. For some of us living in Gaza or Syria or some places right now, yes, there are actually bombs falling and the real physical world has something to be scared of. For most of us, the fear and anxiety comes from our screens and screens are optional. You don't need them. Screens are optional.
Lydia Chen
Yes, exactly. Screens are optional.
Lydia Chen
Let's go to the lightning round. Are you ready?
Derek Sivers
Ready.
Lydia Chen
One app or gadget that's been life-changing recently for you?
Derek Sivers
I disagree with the question. (laughs) I think we should not be looking for apps and gadgets because they are usually locked down little things where you can only do what the creator wants you to do and it's usually self-serving for them. Our incentives are not aligned. I think we should look less for apps and gadgets and instead better get to know a general purpose computer. And by that, I just mean a Mac, Windows, or Linux computer that can do anything you want it to do, not just what a gadget maker wants you to do.
Lydia Chen
To have the ownership of that device.
Derek Sivers
Yes, to have the power, to know how to drive it, know how to run it, know how to make it do what you want to do, not using any commercial software, not subscribing to anything. Learn how to use a general purpose computer so that you have tech independence.
Lydia Chen
A tiny experiment you tried recently that surprised you?
Derek Sivers
I do so many. Almost every day I try something. Just two days ago, I tried putting carpet on all of my walls and see if it would reduce the echo. It did, but I didn't like it, so I will tear down the carpet and try something else.
Lydia Chen
Best and worst advice you've ever received?
Derek Sivers
The worst advice was to start a record label when I wanted to be a musician. It was smart advice. It could have made me more money, but it did not inspire me. I'd say most of the worst advice was advice on how to make more money. And they might be right, but there's so much more to life than money. Money is a side effect. Money is like the odometer on your car. If you're driving just to make the odometer go up, you've lost the point of driving. Money should never be the reason. Don't do anything for the money. All of the advice I've received has been around how to make more money.
Derek Sivers
Best advice was you can do anything, but you can't do everything. You have to choose. And if you don't decide, you do nothing.
Lydia Chen
Yes, like your 500 items on your folder. Right.
Lydia Chen
If you could gift one book to every 22 year old, what would it be?
Derek Sivers
I disagree with the question. Everybody should go to my book list, I said earlier, because we all need different things. I said this earlier, but I'm going to say it again in the context of a book. There are some of you listening right now that need more confidence. There are some of you listening right now that have too much confidence, and that's your problem. There are some of you listening that need to be more adventurous, and some that need to be less adventurous. There isn't any one book that everybody needs. So instead, I highly recommend if you go to sive.rs/book - it's just a free resource. So I'm not telling you this to make money. I make no money from my site, but they're sorted with my top recommendations. But then it's up to you to see which one hits you now and feels like the book you need now. And only you know that. Nobody else can tell you what it should be.
Lydia Chen
What's a non-negotiable habit that you do every day?
Derek Sivers
There's nothing I do every day, not even eat. My weekly non-negotiable habit is giving my boy my full attention.
Lydia Chen
Your good friend.
Derek Sivers
Yes.
Lydia Chen
Final question, a quote or mantra you find yourself repeating lately?
Derek Sivers
Whatever scares you, go do it. I keep using that one to guide my decisions. It's a good compass for all of us that doing what scares you is the thing that's going to lead you to grow and have a fuller life.