Think Like a Game Designer
host: Justin Gary
Choosing an unconventional path, embracing your weirdness, choosing the harder path to build strength and resilience, experimenting, being vulnerable to create deeper connections, the value of conciseness for clarity and memorability, living deliberately.
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Transcript:
Justin Gary
Hello and welcome. I am here with Derek Sivers. Derek, it is an honor to have you here, man.
Derek Sivers
You too, Justin. We've been emailing for five or six years now. So it's really nice to finally talk with you live.
Justin Gary
Yeah, yeah, it is, man. And one of the reasons why I kind of started and reached out to you is because one of the goals of my life is to help people to be able to live more creative, fulfilling lives and to think about the world in the same way I kind of think about games, right? Like, how do we structure it? The rules are sort of malleable. How do we build systems that help us to lead these lives? And you have been not only living that life, but sharing those truths for so long now. And so I'm really eager to dive into this with you.
Justin Gary
And I wanna kick it off with this: What got you thinking about things in this way? You know, like, is it from very young, you just had this process of like exploring and breaking these things apart? Or was there some kind of inciting incident that got you to be like, "Hey, I don't have to follow this other path."
Derek Sivers
When I was 14, I heard heavy metal for my first time and learned that it was an electric guitar that made that sound, I went and got an electric guitar and within a day or two, I was so hooked. I was like, "This is it. This is my life's mission." And I stayed with that from the age of 14 to 29. I was 100% obsessed with music and only music. I wanted to be a great musician, a great songwriter, a great performer, a great producer. I didn't necessarily care that much about getting rich, but I wanted to be a full-time musician. And I knew that this is something that a million people want and only one in a million will get. So it's like deciding at 14 that you want to be an Olympic athlete. I need to be so damn focused and so damn good and practice so damn much that I am unstoppable. So I set out with that mission at the age of 14.
Derek Sivers
And there's a cute little thing in my high school yearbook, where there's a picture of me with my guitar. As always, you couldn't pry that guitar out of my hands. I was just practicing my scales and arpeggios and pieces constantly. And it said something like, "Derek Sivers is hoping to go be a success as a musician." Well, good luck, Derek."
Derek Sivers
Ten years later, I went back to my high school reunion, just by circumstance I just happened to be in Chicago on tour. I thought, "Oh, all right, I'll go." So all my classmates were like mid-level managers looking 40 years old at the age of 28, wearing suits, pushing papers from left to right for Motorola. And they looked at me, this full-time musician, and said, "Man, I can't believe you did it!" And I thought, "Man, I can't believe you didn't! I can't believe you gave up! I just did what I said I was going to do!" But everybody around me was trying to live well-balanced, normal lives, and I was just so driven.
Derek Sivers
So to finally answer your question, I realized early on, by looking at the careers of other musicians, that the way to succeed is to stand out, to be different from everyone else. You've got to find your unique voice in the cacophony. You've got to find a unique angle, ideally a smarter angle, a more interesting angle that makes you more interesting to the audience. So as a songwriter, and as an artist, I guess I was always looking for a different angle.
Derek Sivers
And then the stuff you're asking about, honestly, didn't happen until many years later, when I sold my company and I suddenly had a blank slate in life. And that's when I started applying all of this creative approach to life itself.
Justin Gary
Yeah, it's fascinating. There are so many pieces and threads. I take notes and I will come back to every little piece of that that I want to dig into because I think it's great to share your story. And I've wrestled with this podcast because I think many people know your story very well. I've read all of your books. I've listened to many of your podcasts and I've gotten a lot of value out of them. And I don't want to just repeat those things here but your story is pretty remarkable, right?
Justin Gary
What I just heard is an interesting twist on that, which is one, this intense focus and you knew what you wanted to do for music and you knew that that was your passion and you found a way through it. And we're going to piece that apart soon.
Justin Gary
But then your story of how you started CD Baby, which was this massive success of a company and there's a lot of great stories I know that you've told from there, but that just kind of came as a step-by-step thing of you just saw a need, you met it, you saw a need, you met it, and you just kind of kept moving forward. So to know that you didn't really think strategically or question the assumptions ahead of that. You just did the next thing in front of you.
Justin Gary
I find that really fascinating because that's a lot of what my life story was too. I just loved games. I was passionate about games. And so I went to a tournament. I did well in tournament. I did the thing. I loved-- I wanted-- but I just kept going, and then I got another job and I did the next thing. And it took me a while to encounter that moment of, hey, wait a minute. I don't have to do the next thing. Even if it's something that I'm excited about, now kind of zoom back out and think more holistically about, okay, well, what do I do next? And so I think that takes so long. For me, it was 27, I think, when I finally made that, that happened to me, like at that age.
Justin Gary
What age were you when you sold CD Baby and when you kind of started to ask those questions?
Derek Sivers
36.
Justin Gary
We'll get into that, but I'm gonna try to pull the timeline pieces together here in ways I think are interesting. You mentioned, you know, intense focus is the key way to succeed and that you chose a path that's really hard. And so music is one of those paths.
Justin Gary
Becoming a game designer, professional game designer is one of those paths. You know, people who want to act, who want to, you know, there's a lot of these careers where you're only the 1% or whatever, you know, can in principle seem to survive.
Justin Gary
What do you think, in terms of the aspect of finding your unique voice, how did you think about doing that? How did you think about differentiating yourself from the crowd beyond that just sort of intense focus?
Derek Sivers
Well, just by my choice of path, I was headed a different direction than everybody else I knew. I grew up in suburban Chicago in a pretty upper-middle-class suburb where everybody was just on the path to get into a good college so they can get a good job. And I knew that I wanted the opposite. I didn't want to go to college. I never wanted a job. I do not want security. I do not want a salary. I do not want insurance. I want to go live by my music only. I felt that I was going a different direction than everyone else, so all of the conventional wisdom I was surrounded by didn't apply to me. Not to say I was better than the wisdom, but we were heading different directions. It's like everybody else was making their plans to go east and I wanted to go south.
Derek Sivers
The wisdom and norms around me are a cookbook for an outcome that I don't want. I want a different outcome than you guys. So I felt that the norms don't apply to me because I'm pursuing something that's unusual.
Justin Gary
OK, so you certainly you had more comfort with uncertainty, or risk tolerance, than a lot of people do at that stage.
Derek Sivers
It wasn't the uncertainty or the risk itself. It just felt like that was bundled together with the dream I wanted. I wanted to be a professional musician, and as a side effect of that, that means you're never going to have insurance, you're never going to have a job, you're never going to have security, a college degree is moot. It was just a side effect of the dream I wanted.
Justin Gary
Yeah, but I would claim that there are millions or more people that have that same dream, but it is that what you call side effect that stops them from pursuing it. Everybody would love to have that. I support myself through the creative work I'm passionate about, but most of them when they say, "Hey, I'll never have health insurance. I'll never have security of a job. I won't know necessarily where my next paycheck is coming from." That's a barrier to most people.
Derek Sivers
Ah, well, Stoicism! I didn't learn that word until I was 42. At the age of 42, after hearing our buddy Tim say it so many times, and I don't care about some ancient Greeks, but I finally reluctantly read a book on Stoicism. And I went, "Oh my God! This is the philosophy I've been living by since I was a teenager!" Because I like that aspect of deliberately choosing the harder path to toughen yourself. Don't give me luxury, give me hardship so I can strengthen. Give me challenges so I can get better at overcoming them so that in the future I can be strong enough to weather any situation. I knew that by wanting to be a successful musician, I needed to strengthen myself again and again and again every day.
Justin Gary
Yeah, I think that true comfort and security comes from the knowledge that you can survive and thrive under any circumstances, right? That's the real sort of security that we look for. When I was on Tim's podcast, my billboard statement was cultivate comfort with uncertainty and impermanence. It's a mantra that I repeat to myself all the time because I'm not saying I'm good at it, but it's something I continue to try to grow into. And the more that I have been okay with that, in the same way that you said, when you met up with your old friends and they couldn't believe that you had pursued the path of music and you couldn't believe that they hadn't. That when you realize that the real nightmare is not that I tried to do the thing I loved and it didn't work or I suffered for it, but that I never even tried and I would never know if I could live a life that I'm passionate about and pursue dreams that I have. Like, that's the real nightmare scenario that I think most people don't realize that the true cost that comes on that side of things.
Derek Sivers
Well put. I totally agree.
Justin Gary
I like this philosophy that inspires action here and that allows us to deal with adversity. But I also like to give very practical tips for people to make the path easier. Because even though we can agree that we want to strengthen ourselves and be willing to face adversity in pursuit of our dreams, okay, that could be really tough. But we get at a granular level. One of the things that I want to dig into, and you've mentioned this in your background, It also came up in your book, "Your Music and People," in terms of how you position yourself and how you market, which is a book I bought for my brother, who is a musician and audio engineer. And I read for myself and realized that this applies to everybody. So I was very grateful for that.
Derek Sivers
I was grateful that you applied it metaphorically. I remember when you sent me some feedback, you were an early reader and gave me some feedback on that. I was like, "Oh, Justin read it metaphorically!" Thank you, that was an honor.
Justin Gary
When I give advice to game designers: I'm trying to focus exclusively on this and be the best in the world. Also, I'm trying to find out where's the unique intersection of the skills and inclinations that I have that can make me a category of one, right? So if I, as a game designer, I also love speaking and talking about design. And so being able to have a podcast and reach an audience this way helps make me more unique than somebody else who might be a better peer designer than I am. Or people who are good at participating at events, or programming, or being able-- all these different aspects and subsets of skills that can come together to create a unique category of one.
Justin Gary
Has that resonated with you? Or maybe tell some stories about how you can use that both to create your art and to find the audience that your art will resonate with?
Derek Sivers
Imagine there's a play with 50 actors on stage. We're drawn towards the one that has something in them that we aspire to. We want to be more rebellious like that person, or we want to be more mysterious like that one, or more brooding like that one. We're drawn towards different people that may not necessarily be the ones that are all up in our face yelling, "Hey everybody, don't forget to smash that like button!" That kind of outreach thinks that you have to be the loudest and do the same thing that everybody else does. I mean, why is it that every podcaster has a bunch of books on a shelf behind them and that every YouTuber has their O-face to please the algorithm and everybody says "Smash that like button!" That sameness makes you unnoticeable! The best thing you can do is whatever nobody else is doing. The way to find that is to notice what about yourself is weird.
Justin Gary
I love that. I love that. Just to bring that home, it resonates when you think about the people you're closest to - your friends, the people who you want to surround yourself with. It is that weirdness, it is the things that are the quirks that are part of why you love whether you know your partners and your close friends, the things that attract you to them. And that is true writ large at scale when you are willing to own your own weirdness and put it out there.
Justin Gary
There's this interesting kind of quote from Peter Thiel: to be super successful, you need to be both non-consensus and correct. So this idea of succeeding at a massive scale: If everybody believes the same thing and does the same thing, you're just in the mess. If you do your own quirky, weird thing, sometimes you're going to be right. Sometimes you're going to be wrong. But when it comes to art creative work, there's this process of self-discovery. It's just about surfacing different parts of your weirdness and exploring those things and putting them out there. And then eventually, you're going to start to see where you get resonance from.
Justin Gary
And so one of the things I believe in when it comes to creative work is the iterative process. We don't know when discovering your own voice is not necessarily "I just have it here and it's ready to go. And I just need to put it out there." It's a lot of, it's like, "Okay, let me try this persona. Let me try this side of me. Let me see how that feels." And there is some back and forth in this feedback loop.
Justin Gary
How do you think about this sort of thing? Be true to yourself and be true to your weirdness versus the reflect what the world is telling you - and have that feedback loop exists. How do you think about that trade-off?
Derek Sivers
This is a fun subject because by being less mainstream, by being more weird, you can reduce the potential number of fans, but you can increase the intensity of that bond between you and fan.
Derek Sivers
Here's an oddly personal example. I have a page on my website that is my "About" page that a lot of personal sites and even business sites have - sive.rs/about - there's a page that says, "I was born here in California. I grew up there. I went to music school. I did this. I did that." It's It's the long version of everything that my dear friends know about me that I don't want to say twice. I thought I should just write this all out once and for all, so I can point future people to this page. But one thing that's weird about me is that I don't love my parents. I don't love my family that I grew up with. And I know that's really unusual, but I suspected that there are some other people out there in the same situation. So it was hard for me to decide to put this on my about page, but it is somewhat core to who I am. I don't hate them. I just don't believe that saying that blood is thicker than water. We all have blood. I feel equally connected to people that are not my parents as I do my parents. So I wrote about this. There was a major section on my about page that said, "I'm not into my family." I described this. I said, "I've never felt any connection to my family. I left as soon as I could. I hardly talk to them. I don't hate them. I just feel no particular connection." That part was buried two-thirds of the way down a very long page with everything about me. And that one paragraph got so much response from people, all positive. People saying, "Oh my God, thank you! Thank you for saying this! I have felt like the only weirdo on Earth that doesn't love my parents! Oh my God, I can't believe that you actually came out and said that! Thank you so much! You just validated something. I'm crying right now from reading this. Nobody else has ever said this. My friends tell me I'm a jerk for not loving my parents. I feel guilty all the time. Wow, thank you so much."
Derek Sivers
Now, most people can't relate to that. But the few that can now have a deeper bond. So I think this can apply to so many of your weird preferences, whether you just like to do everything in the Unix terminal or maybe your monitor is mounted on your ceiling or whatever it may be that's weird about your tastes. Sharing that will reduce your potential audience or maybe shaping yourself around that would reduce your potential audience but intensify the connections with the ones that can relate.
Justin Gary
There's another piece to that specific example too which is important, which is sharing vulnerability, right? The creative life is intrinsically one of emotional risk. You're putting things out there. And if you're putting things out there that are safe - I like pizza and walks on the beach and whatever - that's not going to resonate with anybody, because you're not really risking anything. But saying, "I don't love my parents", or "I'm really struggling. I have no idea what I'm doing right now. Like you I've suffered this loss and I suffered this mistake." And being able to share that stuff, I think people are just intrinsically drawn to that. And it's one of those things, it's very hard when you're the one doing it.
Justin Gary
I mean, honestly, it was this interesting process I went through. I've got my new book that I've been working on and I worked with Neil Strauss on it. And I had, he ended up pushing me to make that book far more personal and vulnerable than I ever imagined it could be, right? I wanted to share the principles that, you know, how gaming and design can apply to life and business. And that's in the book, but it ended up being like a lot more stories of like my divorce and my near bankruptcy and the things that I just totally messed up in ways that are embarrassing. And once I was willing and able to do that, the people who have been now my beta readers for the book, those are the parts they respond to the most. Those are the things that people resonate with. And so it's been a lesson I've had to learn that, you know, when you are willing to share, just your weirdness, but the things that you're a little bit maybe ashamed of or scared of. By putting that out into the light, not only does it make you, can make you feel better to integrate that into who you are, but it helps everybody else out there that's had that same struggle or that can relate to that struggle.
Derek Sivers
So well-put. Totally agree.
Justin Gary
I want to move forward a little bit because there's another piece to this that I think from your backstory that I think is worth exploring, which is I saw a thing from Tim Urban, who does the Wait But Why series that he posted that when he looked around at his community of friends who had succeeded in the creative world, that in essence, it was two things that they had, which was one, a willingness to stick with it for the, you know, 10 to 20 years or whatever it took to kind of get there and a sufficient level of business acumen, that there are some amount of the ability to sort of see opportunities in the market or learn how to position yourself and sell things, which is something you've clearly demonstrated in creating and launching a big company and launching multiple products.
Justin Gary
What are the minimum viable business strategies that somebody who wants to live a creative life should focus on? How do you think about that kind of trade-off?
Derek Sivers
It's as learnable as anything. Anyone can learn to cook. Anyone can learn to sew. Anyone can learn to invest. And anyone can learn this business acumen. It's not an inherent thing that some people just have and some people just don't. So all you need to do is to go read the top 20 books that people say are the greatest business books or the ones that appeal to your specific niche. And by read them, I don't mean skim them. I don't mean get the cliff notes or get a little summary that you can get in six minutes. I mean, immerse yourself in these books and really get into this thought process. And take notes while you're reading the book on the actionable takeaways. And then after you read the book, put something into action immediately. Go take the suggested action right away. Go do the thing, even if it's just a first attempt, to start to turn theory into practice. And look at it all as an experiment. "Let's see what happens if I do exactly what that book said I should do. It's so not me. But that doesn't matter." Just go pretend that you are like this businessy person for five minutes, go do the thing as if you were. And then eventually, you become what you pretend to be.
Justin Gary
Yeah, fake it till you make it. I brought this up earlier, this idea of trying on different personas, trying on different things in the work that you put out there. I think the same is true here, right? Like what it takes is being able, what I call the core design loop, but this idea that you're consistently, you know, ideating things, figuring out what you can, what's the minimum thing you can test to determine if that idea is right or not, what your hypothesis is, getting feedback, feeding that back into the process so that you can then sort of try again and hopefully learn in each cycle is the heart of doing anything that hasn't really been done before, right? Like the recipe to do a cookbook, okay, just follow the recipe, you're good. But the strategy to launch a cooking business, that's gonna be very hard, right? It's gonna be different, unique to you, the specifics of what you're doing, just it requires iteration.
Justin Gary
This gets back to the vulnerability point. I'd be curious how you feel about this piece because it's, iteration is a fun word, but what it really means is fail a lot. Like, right? Like, how do you, like the challenge I find for people to do this stuff. And the same thing that stops them from going from, oh yeah, I read the books, I got it, to no, no, I tried the thing and I failed and I tried the thing again and then I tried the thing again, right? That barrier is another one of those that it's really hard to get people to cross that gap. And so I'll let you, you can take this as either, how do you think about addressing that feeling or emotion from as either yourself or stories you've encountered this or how do you think about this as someone who writes books and tries to get people to take action how do you try to push other people over that gap?
Derek Sivers
It's funny that you said iteration is a fun word, because as you were saying it, I was thinking, "Hmm, Justin, that's an awfully serious word to something that I think of as just fucking around." I don't take any of this seriously.
Derek Sivers
When I read a book with some business advice, I just think of it like a grown-up playpen, a grown-up sandbox. It's like, "Hey, let's try that. Let's see what happens if. Let's see what happens if I take this kooky advice from Seth Godin mixed with this kooky advice from Chase Jarvis, and I'm going to mix it together and do this weird thing that nobody else has done. Let me just see what happens. I'm just going to email everybody I know and tell them my books are now free. Or my books are, I'm going to do reverse pricing." Or you know, anyway, come up with your own weird business thing. I'll just go try it. Everything's a fun "let's see what happens" kind of experiment. You're not searching for the right answer. You're just playing.
Justin Gary
Yes, I love this. This is actually one of the core tenets of the book that I'm working on, this idea that you can take, and I use the word iterative, but take this iterative mindset, which is in games, which is my field, it's by default. When you play a game and you lose, cool, let's play again. My ego is not on the line, but it's fun and you're intending to do that and you're going to repeat and play again. But in life, most people do not think the way that you think. They do not take that like, hey, let's have fun and play with it. They take that if I fail, then I am a failure, and I suffer this way. And so that transition in bringing people over there, I'm really glad that for you, it was just-- I loved your facial expressions as I watched you say this, because for you, it was so obvious. And it just felt, yeah, of course, I'm going to play with this. But you recognize most people don't default that way. They take it a lot more seriously.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. It's the zen of business that we're drawn towards those who are having fun with it themselves. I think that's what people like about Richard Branson, for example. He seemed to be taking a fun approach to business. If you fly on Virgin Airlines, the little safety video doesn't take itself seriously. And that's part of what we love about the brand of Virgin.
Derek Sivers
There's only one company that I have an irrational brand loyalty to, and that's Surly Bicycles. Because Surly Bicycles in Minnesota, their whole vibe is this kind of like, "Yeah, well, Jim got drunk one night and thought we should invent a new kind of bike. So here's some butt ugly thing that we're going to call the Fugly bike. We don't know what to do with maybe you do. It's our newest model. Check it out. Go get drunk and see if you like it then." I'm like, "I love you guys!" That's so much of a better way to market a bicycle to me than telling me about the specs.
Derek Sivers
And it can be the same with anything. We choose who we give our money to as like a vote because we like them. I want this company to have my money instead of that company because I just like them more. So that can come across in your choice of what you choose to do instead of stiffening up and trying to say, "Oh God, okay, I'm going to try to make the perfect marketing plan. Oh my God, my ass is on the line here." Instead, you loosen up, you have fun, you be somebody that your target audience wants you to be. Even if that's, like I said earlier, being the more sullen one, being the silent one, being the angry one, being the rebellious one, whatever it may be. You have to show some color to draw people towards you.
Justin Gary
Yeah, yeah, that's great advice. And it makes me think of two examples, one of which is yours and I'll let you tell the story of the best email ever. But I'll start with the story I have from the gaming world, which is the game Cards Against Humanity, which is sort of a very irreverent, inappropriate kind of brand. And every year during the Black Friday sales, they'll do something completely ridiculous, right? Or they'll like, everything costs $5 more on Black Friday, right? I love them. It's so good. You know, just like just taking the other tack and it got them a ton of attention and a ton of sales or they sold a box of bullshit, which was actual shit from an actual bull that would sell you. And so, you know, that kind of thing can suddenly be a thing we tell stories about years later and really resonates. And it just reflected their personality and their brand. And yeah, if you don't mind, I'd love you to share that email you wrote.
Derek Sivers
I'm gonna tell a better one.
Derek Sivers
First, thank you, my eyes are wet from laughing. I love "Cards Against Humanity" and that kind of stuff because you know that the people doing it are laughing their asses off while doing it too. And isn't that what it's all about? You can make 6% more money and be miserable, or you can make the same amount, maybe even 3% less money and be ecstatic and loving your job because you're having fun with it. Or you're just making it what you want it to be.
Derek Sivers
And we keep saying fun as if that's the only goal, but I mean, look at Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails. That pouty sullen motherfucker creates the pouty sullen world that he wants to live in. And the pouty sullen people that love it say, "Thank you. This guy gets my pain." And that's great. You embody your expression. It's art, not just cut and dry right answer, wrong answer. It's an expression that you want to put out into the world.
Derek Sivers
So on that note, I was 26, living in New York City, running a recording studio in New York in the years before I started CD Baby. I was a musician myself, and I set up a studio for myself, but I would rent it out to other people that needed it. And a friend of mine asked me to produce his album. So we'd known each other since high school, but his persona, public name was Captain T. And he created this persona that was during the time of the X-Files TV show, full of conspiracy theories, trying to reveal that the government was covering up Area 51 and the aliens are among us and all this stuff. So he put this persona together to make an album in character. So after we recorded it and had a blast recording it, it was time to market it. He wanted to get it onto all the college radio stations. It was his target market. We printed up a thousand CDs and there are about 500, no, 600 college radio stations. So usually, if an album comes out, a promoter will send it to all 600 college radio stations in America and hope for the best, and maybe 50 or 100 of them will play it. So my first thought was, "Okay, well, now that we've finished recording this, we should go promote it." And I thought about just doing the normal thing. But that idea lasted barely a minute before I realized we need to do something is as unique as this music itself and goes with the character.
Derek Sivers
Art doesn't end at the edge of the canvas. There's your pull quote for this interview. I remember this slogan often, actually comes from Brian Eno, the record producer. He says, art doesn't end at the edge of the canvas. How you present your art to the world is part of your art. And it goes with everything we're talking about here. So for Captain T, the art did not end at the edge of the canvas. We carried his persona into how we promoted it to the college radio stations. So I wrote up a letter that said, "Dear Station Name," you know, Mark at KEXP, whatever, "You don't know me, but I live in the bushes behind your station. I've lived here for the last six years in the gutter, in and out of consciousness. Your saved my life many times over. But let me tell you about the man that just pulled me out of the gutter yesterday that has an important message that your listeners need to hear. His name is Captain T, and he's revealing the truth of what's going on in this country, man. And you got to get the message out there now! Signed, the man looking in your window at you broadcasting right now."
Derek Sivers
And then for each of these letters, I got this kind of dirt-colored paper, this old brown paper, printed letter, mail merged 600 letters in the printer. Then we took each one of them and went outside and rubbed them in the dirt, crumpled them up, uncrumpled them, stuck the CD in the middle, folded it together, put it into a black envelope, and we found some sealed tape that said, "Confidential. Do head sticker that we sealed the envelope with. And that's what we mailed to 600 college radio stations. And we got the reports a month later that 540 of them played it. Because it was irresistible. If you think of yourself in the position of being this college student in the college radio station that gets hundreds of these same manila envelopes every week, And then this black one shows up, open up, dirt pours out. And it says, "Do not open for any reason." Of course, this is going to get your attention. And of course, it enhanced the message of the music itself.
Derek Sivers
And it's unforgettable. Years later, like 20 years later, my friend Mark, who actually runs a very popular podcast called Talking Metal now, so Captain T is Mark Striegel, who has the Talking Metal podcast. And he tells me that 20 years later people still come up to him going, "Oh my God, you're Captain T. I'll never forget that album that came to our college radio station that day." So anyway,
Derek Sivers
I haven't told that story in a while. Thank you for indulging me.
Justin Gary
Yeah, that's great. I think, yeah, I want to linger on this point more because I think it's one of the things that a lot of people struggle with and whatever, I'll say I struggle with it too, right? This marketing, the break between creating and marketing, right? This And then this, oh, I've got to market now. Right. You know, like breaking free from that mindset and saying, no, no, wait, hold on. Like marketing is built into this concept of the thing or I can have fun with marketing. I think it's something that a lot of people struggle with. And I don't know like how to help ensure that that's part of the gap, right? I mean, and it's a problem that's arguably it's worse than it's ever been in the sense that like creating things is easier than it's ever been. Distribution, everybody has stuff out there but how you break through the noise, how you get people to pay attention to you, how do you get the right people to pay attention to you, right? Like what other, are there other sort of advice or more recent stories or things that you would have for people that would help them to kind of change their mindset on this and find the fun in reaching their audience?
Derek Sivers
Ultimately, everything we're talking about is considerate for the person on the receiving end of your communication or your actions. It would be considerate of you if you're a YouTuber to record all of your videos upside down. Just flip it in the editor, including the stupid thumbnail of you going "Oooh!" at the side of the camera. Flip it all upside down just to make people go, "Hey dude, your video's broken. Hey, what's going on here? Wait, is this a trick? Hold on. Do I need to turn my head upside down? Can't flip my phone. It's auto rotating." You're ultimately being considerate. You're making people's lives a little more interesting by giving them something that's not what everybody else is doing. That Cards Against Humanity example is beautifully generous. Having fun. And this idea of $5 more on Black Friday, that's so beautifully funny and hilarious that it, even if you didn't spend the extra $5, it made your stupid Black Friday better by getting that. It's ultimately considerate to do these different unusual things to do what other people are not doing.
Justin Gary
Yeah, I like that. I think that this, this idea of like just constantly thinking about can sort of add and deliver more value to my audience, to the people I care about, is at the fundamentals of business creativity. What can I do that will help make your lives better? And everybody that's listening can relate to this. When there's an ad that gets pushed at you that's just trying to sell you something, it's annoying. It gets in the way, especially if it's not well-targeted. But when it's a piece of content that's valuable to you and then helps you see a thing that would make your life better or more fun just amusing to engage with, that's a net positive. And if the latter is the thing that ends up driving you into a purchase funnel, then great, everybody wins. And so it's finding that, that, from my perspective, like a playfulness or that, like, as you said, sort of considerate or generous approach. I think having that as a foundation as you kind of go through these cycles of trying different things and putting your stuff out there is very powerful.
Justin Gary
Are you familiar with the alternate reality games? Have you heard about this concept?
Derek Sivers
No.
Justin Gary
Yeah, so there's some of my previous guests have done some of these, Jordan Weissman and Elon Lee and others, but they basically, you create a interactive experience that is like breaks out of the game. So there might be like a website with a cryptic message that if you figure it out and then you go to this social media account that posts a clue that then if you go to this specific location, there's a treasure chest. And then, and so it becomes a sort of global game that sort of people are trying to figure out what's happening. And they've done this for major movies, like the Dark Knight Returns and the old AI movie. And they've done it as promotional things, where suddenly now everybody gets to kind of collectively play and try to figure out what's going on. And then it ends up being a marketing campaign. But it creates a fun thing where now the Joker could be calling you and giving you a secret mission. And you've got to try to do it, but you can't do it yourself. You've got to call in friends through Reddit on the other side of the planet. I've always found that to be this really fun tool to sort of engage, again, make the world itself play. And people have used this for marketing all different kinds of things, not just not games, but music releases and movie releases and things like that.
Justin Gary
So I find just that spirit of playfulness, that was kind of one of the first things that came to mind as a way to engage and create something. But it's a lot of work. I think that's one of the major things that I think people get lazy when it comes to marketing. They'll spend a lot of time thinking about how to create the thing. And then when it comes to marketing, there's just like, okay, well, you know, do some paid ads or I'll work with an influencer, I'll do a thing.
Justin Gary
And I think that, is there, I was gonna say a number, but I'm curious if you think, is there like a, is there a range that you think of the ratio of like how much you think about the thing you're creating versus how much you think about how you're gonna get it to somebody? Or is that, does that, is there even make sense to put a number behind that?
Derek Sivers
No, it is more of a mindset, like we're talking about. For musicians, I describe it like this. So anybody else listening that's not a musician, just think of this metaphorically: You write a song, you start out with a little idea, maybe a phrase or a feeling or a message you're trying to communicate, whether in words or a musical riff, you build on it. And as you're turning it into a song, you make some decisions about how that song is going to go, whether it's going to loop in this part or whether this part comes in. And then as you go to record it, you make acoustic decisions on whether it's just going to be a strumming acoustic guitar or some twisted electronic sounds. And then you take photos of yourself. And those are artistic decisions, whether you're going to be in a dark room, barely visible or bright and colorful and in your face.
Derek Sivers
But we shouldn't stop there. You just keep making those creative decisions all the way out to the end user, to the end. It keeps radiating out. You keep making these creative decisions at every step. They're all just part of the art. If you think of this as all just part of the art, then again, you're not trying to look at what other people are doing business-wise and imitate that, either you're staying true to the expression of the original idea you're trying to get across and think, "Well, what is the marketing expression of that? What is the YouTube expression of this idea I'm trying to get across?"
Derek Sivers
Think like an artist. Look at what everyone else is doing and say, "How can I do something that nobody else has done?" Just because it makes the world a better place to do something that nobody else has done, in the same way that a songwriter tries to think of a lyric that nobody else has said. We don't need another lyric that says, "Baby, I look into your eyes and I realize the way I feel is so real." There is no need to say that ever again. Better to say "You're a banana, and I'm a gorilla." Whatever. That at least is going to make people say, "What did he just say?" Now you've said something a little bit unique that hasn't been said a hundred times. Same thing in business. Same thing in marketing. What are people not doing? Don't look at everybody else and say, "How can I do the same?" Look at everybody else and say, "How can I do anything but that? What hasn't been done?"
Justin Gary
Yeah, I like that. And so the way I think about this stuff, in some ways, you know, for people, because there's people that listen to this podcast, it all ends up the spectrum. I know there are people who've been in business and making games professionally for a long time. There's people who are kind of just getting started. And I think that sometimes when you're on that spectrum of just kind of getting started, this idea of let me do something nobody's ever done before, let me like, which is pretty tough, right? You don't you haven't necessarily found your own voice yet. You're not really sure you the, the you haven't worked on the craft itself enough. And so what I will advise in those circumstances, I'm curious if this resonates with you, is it's OK to copy at first. Like in essence, like this, copy-- this is sort of like the fake it till you make it, right? Like copy the people that you admire. Genuinely try to build your own thing. You can't help but have your voice kind of shine through the things that you make. But that when you're early in your career, sort of taking things that you like and think work, and sort of smashing them together and making small little tweaks here and there, how you figure out the craft itself and how you figure out your voice. And then as you feel more comfortable in that space and you have more comfort being able to say the things you want to say, now is your time to sort of break away and say, okay, now what has nobody done before? How do I like further separate from myself? Like, do you see that arc? Uh, how does that, how does that resonate with you?
Derek Sivers
An old music teacher of mine said, go ahead and cover other people's songs because none of us are perfect mirrors.
Justin Gary
There's a very deep level of who you are will come through the work that you create. In fact, I think it's the main reason that we create is to be able to that find that expression of ourselves, we have this desire to express ourselves into the world. And the creative work is as much about that, being able to sort of reflect that and see yourself reflecting in the world as it is about the contribution or the effect on the audience.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I also liked that you said to take two ideas and smash them together. I think that's essential. If you're going to copy and do a perfect copy, not a twisted funhouse mirror, at least take two different ideas and smash them together.
Justin Gary
Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that I love is, and I often advise, is take an idea and then remove something. Like, take something out. Because the default, when I see any new creatives and new designers, they always want to do more. They always want to add the thing. It's going to be, you know, in the gaming world, it's like World of Warcraft and Halo meets Super Mario. And they are there's like all these games, they've never made a game before. It's like, that's just too much. But if you take a core experience that you love, and it's like, well, okay, what would Monopoly be like if you were trying to lose all your money instead of make money, right? Or just like invert the thing or pull out a piece of it. Now, all of a sudden, there's actually a whole new game there. And a a different experience that is just as creative and just as innovative. And actually a lot of the best creative work I've ever done has been more about what can I take out rather than what can I combine or put in.
Derek Sivers
I've got a good term for that. When somebody tells you all of the ideas they want, you say, okay, you know how software has version numbers, Windows 10, Windows 11, iOS 16, iOS 17. What you've just described is version infinity. That is everything it will ever be someday in the glorious future if everything works out perfectly. Now, in order to start making this thing, we need to start with version 0.1. What is the most essential feature that we can just make that one little feature to make that one thing happen and do a version 0.1? Let's test that first. Whether it's a game, a web app, a business, start with version 0.1 of its one essential feature. And you can personally keep version infinity in mind, but maybe keep it to yourself so that people can stay focused on what's good about version 0.1.
Justin Gary
That's great advice, the kind of minimum viable product idea from business or just, you know, yeah, being able to both as a learning tool to get yourself started out there and learn from putting things out there rather than try to build everything all at once. And often it's an interesting process that happens for us in game design where you'll have play testers that'll play early versions of the game. And they'll have certain feedback and thoughts about it. And then as I'm working on it, I'll decide, okay, you know what? I'm gonna take that mechanic out. I don't think it needs to be there. And the play testers, a lot of times they'll complain. They'll be like, oh, I really liked that mechanic and I miss it. But your audience, when you release the thing, they've got nothing to miss. They won't know that that wasn't there, right? And so you also need to sort of, when you're culling down, a lot of times putting yourself in the mindset, this could be one of the hardest things about creating, is put yourself in the mindset of the audience that hasn't experienced this before, that isn't so deep in the weeds as you are. I don't know if you had this experience with some of the work that you've done. And I think with writing a book, a lot of times I've found this, right? Where I'm like, I've re-read and rewritten this chapter like a dozen times. Like I can't even see it straight anymore. And so I have to bring in new outside beta people to help me like reset my mind. I don't know if you have any practices or stories around that.
Derek Sivers
Just remember the frustration you've felt when somebody comes to you all wild eyed and tries to tell you their idea and it just sounds like some insane ramblings 'cause they won't shut up. Try to remember how frustrating or annoying that is and just think of yourself through those eyes.
Justin Gary
Yeah, I like that. I think one of the other related things I advise people often is to use the elevator pitch concept, right? This idea that like, you need to be able to distill whatever it is, you need to be able to distill the essence down into two, three sentences at the most. Like, not that they're gonna know everything and all the deep insights, whatever, but if you can't distill the heart of what you're doing to that level, then you don't have a clear enough vision for it, and it's going to be not just hard to sell, because the idea of the elevator pitch is usually I'm trying to actually sell the thing, but even in the creative process itself, that you need to know what the heart and the core of the thing is, and use that as the guidance for all the difficult creative decisions you're going to make kind of along the way. And so I think finding and refining that core message can not only help you be better at the end of the process or while you're trying to market it, but just help you be better, you know, throughout the many cycles that good creative work takes.
Justin Gary
So I want to dig into a little bit of your books and your writing because when I think about writing books, not only do like the titles of your books themselves, I reference as just useful on their own and incredibly powerful. I've used your most recent book, Useful Not True, in so many cocktail conversations that It's a little embarrassing, but each of your chapters gets distilled down into a sort of almost poetic, and not almost, a poetic brevity that I am both very impressed by and aspire to. What does that process look like for you?
Derek Sivers
Sure, and thank you for that. That's really the ultimate compliment.
Derek Sivers
First, I have my private notebook where I just dump out all of my thoughts I have to say on this subject. Everything there is to say. And I'm trying to get at what I'm trying to say, but it's taking a long time. So eventually I get so sick of this giant jumble of thoughts that I reduce it to an outline. A good old-fashioned high school outline. Ultimately, I'm just trying to say these seven things. So then I take those seven things and just post the seven things. And I leave out all the other noise. I just post the outline with a few necessary filler words so that the outline makes sense. And that's about it. The average chapter length in my books is 22 sentences. I counted. So they really are barely more than an outline of my thoughts. The notes go on for pages and pages and pages. But ultimately, I'd say, what I'm really just trying to say is this.
Derek Sivers
I might be pessimistic in assuming that people don't have time to hear 30 pages of ideas around this. So I reduce it to one page. And it ultimately feels more considerate, and gives me more of a pride in having put out something that is rock solid.
Justin Gary
Yeah, yeah, no, it's amazing. And I think about this stuff now, I think there's this interesting shift that's happening, because a lot of times people writing a lot in detail was a sign of weight and significance. And I wrote all of this stuff, and anybody that's read an academic paper knows it's just like a lot of jargon and a lot of nonsense to sound important. And this was, it's a signaling tool, right? a signaling tool, like, "Hey, I've done my research. I put the thing in. This is a big deal." When you have a book that's got some weight to it, people think, "Oh, okay, well, that's a serious book." Or if it was just, you could say the same thing in a little book. I think there's a social norm around this that I think is many ways mistaken. But nowadays, with what AI has been able to do to sort of, it can generate mountains of text from an outline quite easily. It's not a signaling tool at all. And most people are never going to read those mountains of text, you're just going to put it back into AI to turn it back into the same outline. So I feel like you're skipping a lot of steps with your writing here that I think is going to become more the norm, or we're just going to have a bunch of AIs both expanding and distilling the same thing to get back to what you should have done in the first place. Right.
Derek Sivers
I had a publisher in Spain that was asking if they could do a Spanish translation of my books, I think because they had seen my public outreach and they said, "Wow, this guy's getting some good coverage. Let's look into publishing his books." So they got a copy of my books and they said, "These are too short. We can't put these onto shelves. They're only 80 pages." And I wondered how much of the norm of creating a 300-page nonfiction book might be coming pressure from the publisher saying we need it to be this width so it can fit onto the shelves.
Justin Gary
Yeah, I think that's right. I think there's the norms around what goes onto the shelf, what goes, you know, what people feel that it's worth spending $20 on or whatever the, you know, kind of minimum economic viable thing is, right? The paper, extra paper doesn't cost that much, but getting a book onto a shelf costs a certain amount. And so you have have to, people will build fluff into it to begin with. I mean, I was even, yeah, go ahead.
Derek Sivers
Well, let's not forget the aspect of your self-satisfaction at having simplified your thoughts to the point where they're small enough that you can remember them. It's a joy to be able to recite to somebody an entire chapter of your book from memory, because It's only 20 sentences. So there's some chapters that when I'm trying to explain a point, I'll say, "You know, let me tell you a story." And I can tell them the story because like an Aesop's fable, it's just this long. It's so short. I can memorize it. There's a peace and clarity of mind that comes from simplifying your own thoughts that much, even if it's just done privately. I'm talking about even if you're processing your last breakup and you've got a jumble of thoughts about it, and this is just in your private diary, you no intention of being an author, but you're listening to this podcast. It's a wonderful joy that comes from simplifying your thoughts down to something that you can fit into a little nutshell and keep in your pocket as a memory of why this thing happened or what lesson you learned from that. The smaller and simpler you can make them, the better they feel to yourself.
Justin Gary
Yeah, yeah. No, I think it's the main reason I started writing in the first place and why I enjoy the process of writing books for the most part. Sometimes it's really painful, but for the most part, is that that's how I am able to think clearly, right? I will often start exactly as you did with a giant jumble of things and ideas and blah, blah, blah. And then I realized, then I look at that, that's like, that's actually not clear. Like I actually thought I understood this thing. And I really don't because I don't have it in a way that's clear that I could communicate to others. the process of refining that writing to get to the point where I can communicate that clearly to an audience or to somebody else is the process of refining my own thinking. And while I'm not as, you know, I can't quite get it to the length that you have, I do think that it's valuable. And I mean, and there's a lot of research now that backs this for even again, for people that are not interested in writing books or anything like that, that that process of journaling and going over the same thing, even especially traumatic events and like journaling on that same event for multiple days in a row, as it gets more and more concise in your recollection of it, you are able to process the emotional charge of it and it has some pretty amazing benefits for your own mental wellbeing as well as kind of understanding and growth.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, they say this is the benefit of talking to someone else, whether it's a friend or a therapist or even group therapy. Let's actually look at group therapy as a more extreme version. If you're in a room with 10 people and you're all there for two hours on a Thursday night, each person only has a few minutes to speak. You can't take that whole two hours to yourself. You've got to think about this thing that's upsetting you and think about how to express it to the group in three minutes. And that very act of simplifying for the sake of communication helps you think of this jumbled thing, previously jumbled thing, in a simpler way feel better through trying to express it to others.
Justin Gary
Yeah, I love that. And I think I'm gonna go back to your analogy of the kind of fun house, we'll be able to do blue mirrors, right? Like I think that that's important. And actually I've used this analogy in the past. I think when it comes to our own psyche and our own consciousness and our own experience of things, like we're so immersed in it, we can't see it clearly, right? We just are experiencing it and it's happening all the time. And we need some mechanism to reflect it back upon ourselves in order to be able to process it. And I think there are multiple tools of ones that we've talked about here, right? So one can be, you know, writing and journaling and like kind of reflecting. And one of the things I've loved about my journaling process, I've used the Day One app now for quite a while, and it does this really cool thing where on each day that you do your journaling, it'll also say on this day button, which will go back to every previous year, what did I journal on that day? It makes it really easy to surface that. And so I've been able to find patterns in my thinking where I think that the thing I'm facing is because this situation is unique and a problem and I'm dealing with it. And I look back and I'm like, oh, this has happened so many times. This is clearly a thing I'm creating and a thing that I'm doing, right? And so it helped me, my own journaling and reflecting through my own fun house mirror over time helped, or as you said, therapy and being able to talk to other humans, whether it be close friends or therapists or whatever, like they have their own weird distortions, but it still gives you another view on yourself. And I think even, you know, fiction and stories and music and other like creative medias, even, you know, game worlds and whatever that I can see other personas and other stories that get reflected through me also, right? When I make a game and I create characters in that game, I try to create different personas and, you know, kind of iconic psychographic profiles, if you will, that will appear in different characters so people can see themselves in those aspects. Or if you're playing a role-playing game like Dungeons and Dragons, it's even more obvious that you're taking on these different roles that in essence are a part of yourself you don't really look at. And I think finding these different tools to create, even though none of them are perfect, they're all funhouse mirrors, to reflect back on who you are and what you're experiencing, I think it's a really powerful tool that all these different creative arts can potentially provide.
Derek Sivers
I love that.
Justin Gary
I want to dig in because we've referenced Useful Not True, and I think your other book, How to Live, both speak to this idea. And I'll just give my funhouse mirror reflection of it and we can bounce off of that, which is this, that there are many contradictory truths about the world. There are many different perspectives that one can take. And the phrase I like to use is lenses that you can choose to look at on the world. And that we as a society typically are obsessed with being right, that this is the right way and this is not the right way. And that what I got from your books is that that's not, that in fact, what we're trying to do is adopt these different frames, these different views that make our lives better, that are useful. It doesn't matter whether they're true in some absolute sense, but that I can adopt this. And the way I think that like skillful living comes from being able to fluidly move from one to another, that like I can jump from one to the next when I need to and not worry so much about this is the answer, but this is the thing that can help drive me forward. And so I'll let you reflect back on my weird reflection on your things, but I found it to be a really powerful point to linger on a little bit.
Derek Sivers
Thanks. Yeah, it's been the focus of most of the last six years for me. I spent four years writing that book called How to Live, and then two years writing Useful Not True. And the two go together really well. In hindsight, I found out that Useful Not True, the book, was like a prequel to my book called How to Live. Because How to Live, I just put out into the world with no explanation. It's 27 chapters that are very opinionated, saying here's how to live, but every chapter disagrees with every other chapter. I put it out into the world, and it was an unusual book. Some people got it, some people didn't.
Derek Sivers
And then I put out Useful Not True, which is a book of short fables that explain a certain mindset of seeing anything as just different lenses, unless it's an actual, concrete, observable fact that a non-human entity, whether animal or machine, could observe it and agree. If it's not that empirical and observable, then it's just a lens, as you say. It's one way of looking at it. It's not the only way of looking at it. Therefore, we can't say it's absolutely true. So I'd say at the very first page of the book when I say "useful not true," the word "true" for the rest of this book, when I say "true," I mean necessarily, absolutely, empirically, observably true for everyone, everywhere, always. If it doesn't pass that qualification, I'm going to say it's not true, which means not necessarily, absolutely, observably, empirically true for everyone, everywhere, always. It doesn't necessarily mean it's false, but it just opens up your mind. As soon as you hear the phrase "not necessarily true," you think, "Well, what else could be true?" or "How else could I see this?"
Derek Sivers
It's a beautiful tool to use in everyday life when you catch yourself saying, "This situation sucks," or "I'm stuck," or "That was a disaster," or even, "I am a winner. I'm great at everything I do." Every day, there are these little micro-situations or major situations that you declare with judgment to be absolutely the way it is. And you have to realize that that's just one lens and there are other ways to see it that could be more useful, more helpful, and ultimately better at helping you take the actions you need to take.
Justin Gary
Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of that is, that's what it comes down to, right? What's going to help you to live that, you know, more fulfilled life to do the things that you want to do more so than the like, yes, this is right or this is wrong. I found there was a book I read a while ago called mastering your hidden self, that that that presented this really well to me, like I used to be, you know, I come from a very analytical mindset background, a lot of our audience is going to be like this here too, right? If you're a gamer, and you're competitive, and you're in the space, you just, it's a very analytical step by step thing. And it made me a very, let's say, anti-religious, anti-Venny, anything that was more in the woo-woo side of things, right? I was very rigorous. If I can't validate it in a very rigorous experiment, it's not true and it's not, and it's silly. And that book kind of presented this idea. I was like, look, I'm gonna say things that, just for now, just try them on. See if they help you. Don't care if they're true or false. Don't care if it's like, what's going on? Just, if you do this thing, your life will be better. and just run it as an experiment in your life. And that just really shifted my mindset. And your book kind of brought that back and I think articulated it in a better way. It's just like, try on some different, like behaving as ifs, right? That can make your life a better thing. And that, you know, the entrepreneur, right? And somebody that's out there, like, it's most businesses fail. Most people who try to become a musician or a game designer or whatever, don't make it. But if you believe that you are one of the people that can make it and you believe you can learn and grow, you are far more likely to actually be one of those people. And so it's worth it to take on that belief, right? When I started a new business and I started a new project, I have, it's almost a bizarre amnesia, willful ignorance that I take on of how hard it's gonna be and how many challenges I'm gonna face. I just focus on the, okay, yeah, of course I can do this. I know how to do this. And that adoption of that belief gives me the power to move forward. And so it's a worthwhile, whether you want to call it a useful fiction or just a frame that anything could be true. Might as well take the one that empowers me. I found it to be just such a useful way to kind of go through life. And so I just wanted to kind of just hammer home that point. And again, obviously, I recommend people read your books for this. But I really appreciated the way that you were able to distill that down. And hopefully, people listening will find that helpful.
Derek Sivers
Thanks.
Derek Sivers
It makes your brain a more fun place to be in as well when you daydream about other ways things could be. Even as simple as taking something and reversing it.
Derek Sivers
I have an open inbox. I might as well tell your audience now. I love getting emails from strangers. I answer every single email I get. It's my favorite of the day. I put aside an hour every day to answer every single email that comes in.
Derek Sivers
So when somebody emails me, for example, a share their life's problems with me. They'll say, "Hi, Derek. You don't know me, but I've read your book and liked it. I don't know what to do with my life. There's nothing I love doing. How should I know what to do if there's nothing I love doing?" And I'll say, "Hmm, well, what do you hate not doing?"
Derek Sivers
We could do this in any aspect of life. It's just fun in your own brain to take something you're stuck on and flip it, inverse it, reverse it, take it from a side angle. I heard somebody describe somebody in the past saying he died penniless and it was said as a sad thing. And I thought, well, Wait, isn't that a good thing? He died penniless. That's it. Every last penny was spent and used. Who wants to die rich? No, die penniless. Wouldn't that be the goal? Why is that set as a bad thing?
Derek Sivers
You could do that in your business. "The goal here is to make the most money." Is it? Maybe the goal is to share the most money. Maybe the goal is to give the most so that our business is just barely profitable and gets me just what I need to be happy and therefore is the most generous it can be. Maybe that's a measure of success. Maybe business profitability is like the length of sleeves on a shirt. It's not that the longer the sleeves, the better. Maybe there's just a right size. You want the profitability to be right here. No more. Any more than that would be too much profitability. There are different ways to think about anything. It just makes your brain a more fun place to be in if you enjoy exploring different ways to think of these things.
Justin Gary
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I've talked about this before on the podcast and had a previous guest that gave me the idea, but going through an assumptions challenging exercise is something I do with my team once a quarter. Literally, just take anything that's going on in your life and list out all of the fundamental assumptions around it. Even things as simple as we need to make profit or I'm writing a book that's going to be printed in paper or whatever the things are, the very basic fundamentals, and then go through the process of challenging and reversing each one of those. Sometimes it doesn't go anywhere. Sometimes the idea doesn't, okay, that doesn't make sense, but 100% of the time when I've dedicated an hour to this exercise, I have come up with something that has been super powerful and useful that has shifted the way we're going to move forward as a company So I think this idea of just flip it and reverse it is a simple little hack that can make your life both more fun and give you some useful insights. So I love that as a specific example of how to play with ideas.
Derek Sivers
Justin, have you written about that? This hour challenge?
Justin Gary
I've talked about it on the podcast. I don't know if I've actually written about it. So it's a worthwhile thing to add into to something in the future.
Derek Sivers
You should really share that more widely. That sounds really, really, really helpful. I hadn't heard of that before. I really like that a lot.
Justin Gary
All right. Great. Well, see, look at that. Getting some extra value. Another chapter in my book. I'm going to try to keep it not as short as yours, but try to keep it pretty short.
Derek Sivers
Wait, by the way, as long as we're talking about it, hold on, as long as we're changing the subject anyway, Neil Strauss, I think, is the best writer alive. And that's a high compliment because it's reflected in the actions that I've noticed over the last 20 years, there have been only three books of the 450 books I've read in the last 20 years. There are only three books that when reading it, I just could not stop and I stayed up till sunrise to finish it in a single reading. And looking back, I named all three of those books and realized, oh my god, all three of them are written by Neil Strauss. Yeah, I think Neil Strauss is the best writer alive.
Justin Gary
Yep, no, and that's why, yeah, it was a real privilege to get to work with him on this book and he forced me to make very hard decisions that made my book a lot better. And I think he's just, yeah, I mean, it's an incredible part of the craft. And I had different people write differently, right? He's not writing short books like you are, but he is writing and weaving together a narrative and taking you into a story that has these core truths in it that I found, yeah, like you found very powerful and drew me to his work. So yeah, highly recommend it.
Justin Gary
What were the three books that, if you don't mind my asking?
Derek Sivers
Truth, Emergency, and I don't remember what the third one is right now. I haven't thought about it in a while, but yeah, Emergency was the first one that I ever read by him. And then he did this one called The Truth, and I think I read one in between that, yeah, all three of them, I just couldn't stop.
Justin Gary
Yeah, yeah. And then it's one of these things where it speaks to your weirdness, right? Tying it back to the earlier things, right? The way that Neil dove into these books and the ones we're referencing here, like, you know, "Emergency" is like this, almost a little crazy, like doom prepping, like being ready for anything thing, which speaks to his own inner anxiety. And the truth is about the relationship challenges he's faced from, you know, going through all of these journeys himself. And then to reveal that in the way that he does is part of what makes it resonant. And, you know, in gaming, and some of the other people who've written about games that have had on the podcast, Raf Koster wrote "A Theory of Fun," which may be one of the most popular game design books out there. And it's literally got pictures on every other page that he drew. And it's a short book that you could easily go through and anyone can access. It talks about where the idea of fun comes from from games. Whereas another thing that was another book that was more-- there's a book called "The Art of-- what's that? "The Book of Lenses," which is "The Art of Game Design and the Book of Lenses" by Jesse Schell, who was also a guest on this podcast, is much more a lot like what we're talking about, where it's a bunch of different chapters that are all totally different ways to look at the game, whether that be through the graphics and through the interaction systems or through the team and through the community and all the different aspects. And you could pick which one you want to use and each one has its own valid perspective. Each speaks to that person and their particular way and weird way of looking at the world. And so I think good writing and good creating, I think the same would be true from great musicians. The same is true, I think, in game design where that's a part of your weirdness and your unique thing has to come through for it to resonate in a deep way.
Derek Sivers
Love it.
Justin Gary
Awesome. Okay. Well, we hit most of the things I wanted to make sure I 100% hit when I talked to you. And so I'm happy to bounce around to a couple other topics here. I'm curious if there's anything that has come up for you in this process, in this discussion that you would love to dig into or that we haven't covered. Because otherwise I'll jump to a couple more and then we can wrap it up.
Derek Sivers
You mentioned something in passing that I think is really profound, which is to judge ideas not by whether the idea is right or wrong, but if this idea is enabled, embodied. If I follow this idea, what action does it create? I think that's a better way of judging ideas then whether the idea itself is right or wrong. So what action does this idea create? If this idea is true, then what are the actions that follow? And are those the actions you want? Does the idea create the actions? Judging ideas only by their actions, I think, is profound and important.
Justin Gary
Yeah, I appreciate that reflection. And there's another version of this, which is I like, which is, you know, tell charitable stories, which is right, we in any given situation, we can choose to tell any story we want that would it within that space, right? We'll use a simple example, right? Somebody cuts you off in traffic, right? One story is that guy's an asshole. What the hell was he doing? He did that on purpose, like, and that's one story. And the result of that story is you're going to get angry, you might honk your horn, you might drive more recklessly, right? That's going to fall from that story. Or you could tell a story that, oh, man, they they probably didn't even see me, and they just totally missed it. Or, or a story that, oh, man, they must be in some kind of emergency, like, they really have something seriously important or dangerous or something going on. Right? You don't know any one of those stories you could choose to adopt. But how you feel and what you do coming out of that story is radically different. Right? And so if you have that power, and you have that choice to author the story you want, then you know, pick the one that's going to make your life, you know, your emotional state better, your actions better. And Somebody cutting you off in traffic is a trivial example, but the same is like when your partner or your spouse does something that annoys you or forgets to do something that they said they were going to do or does whatever, right? How you choose to adopt that story and just recognizing that you have the power to do so has been one of the most profound changes in my personal life, my business life, like everything. That the ideas and stories and the impact that they have downstream on your emotions, your actions, how you show up in the world may be the most powerful thing we have available in terms of the control we have in our environment and how we become a part of the world.
Derek Sivers
I love that. It's just such a creative approach to life to be able to switch out your lenses.
Justin Gary
Yeah, yeah, I love it. And I think that if I'm going to kind of bring this home a bit, One of the things that's always attracted to me to you is your willingness to live deliberately, to be able to make—be willing to choose your path and be conscious about—even if your path is going great, that you will make deliberate choices to shake up the bog board and shift things because you want to make sure that you're not falling into a rut and falling into this pattern. I guess I'd love to just like, kind of close on that. Like how can people that maybe heard all this stuff and are now like, yeah, there's something here. I really want to be able to shift this. But most likely when they end this podcast and they stop they're going to fall back into their regular patterns. Right? And it's not disparaging any particular listener right now. It's all of us, right? The falling back into the patterns, falling back to the routines is just the norm and the default.
Justin Gary
What would you say to those people to say like not just listen to this, but to be able to take action and sort of integrate this into a more deliberate life?
Derek Sivers
First, you have the reflection where you think, "What do I really want? What's the real point? What am I really going for?" And then there's usually a direct line there. We often take these arc lines around getting what we really want. "Ultimately, I just want a peaceful life. So therefore I'm going to have to work really hard and make a lot of money to do it so that I can end up having just a peaceful life." Well, maybe there are decisions that will bring you in a straight line to what you want instead.
Derek Sivers
And this could go for mindsets. I want to be a more creative thinker. I want to have a more unusual perspective on the world. I don't want to just be like all of my peers that see everything the same way and do everything the same way. And if that's true, then through reflection, you can think of some action that could get you what you want. And the action might shock you at first, when you come up with it. You'll probably brainstorm 20 different things. And one of them may make you go, "I can't do that. I just, I can't just quit or I can't just declare this to be so. I can't just make this happen." But usually it's just a five minute action that you can do right now that will put you on that path.
Derek Sivers
So I try to always do that little five minute action in the moment when I'm daydreaming and journaling and realizing that that action would be the right thing do to get me the outcome that I've realized I want, no matter how unusual that action is, if I feel congruent that that would get me where I'm going, I'll take at least the first step in that action right away.
Derek Sivers
I smiled when you brought up this subject because we're recording this nine days or ten days before Easter. And so it's Easter holidays here where the school is going to be off for two weeks. I live in New Zealand, so here it's autumn. So this is the autumn school holidays where they've got two weeks off. And I was just yesterday morning thinking, well, I will just have two peaceful weeks of holiday here with my boy. And it's nice weather here in April. We'll have a good time. And as I was thinking about the world, and especially as we're, the trade war is ramping up right now, I was thinking about Americans not understanding China's point of view or seeing the world from a Chinese point of view. And I thought, I really wish more people could see the world from the opposite point of view, or at least the US and China as two superpowers. I wish they could go swap places and live in each other's shoes for a while. I think that would be really important. And I thought, hmm, just curious. What is a flight from Wellington to Shenzhen, Kuala Lumpur right now. That kind of sounds fun. So last night, I booked the flight and I leave at 6am tomorrow. I'm going to China for two and a half weeks. Even though the easy choice would have been to just stay here, the weather's nice, it's holidays, whatever. But by the way, to be clear, my boy was all in favor of it. This was not a selfish decision. So tomorrow morning, 6am, flying to China for two and a half weeks during this trade war, as just yet another way of trying to see another point of view. And it just felt congruently like the right thing to do. But the point is, the rest of the trip will happen later. It was just that little first step.
Derek Sivers
To answer your question, it was that little tiny action in the moment as I realized, "Hmm, that would be the right action to do." It's just a couple clicks. It just took a couple minutes to set it in action. And now everything else would follow through. Yes, I have to get to the airport and do the flight and get a hotel. That comes later. But I initiated it in that moment. And any of us have our own version of that. Whether it's quitting your job, signing up for the gym, proposing to your girlfriend, having your last cigarette. Everybody's got their versions of this, where there's an action that you can take that just starts you on that path, moving to a new place, filling out an application, a resident visa for New Zealand. You just go to the Immigration New Zealand website and you just initiate, you start the form, you fill it out. It'll take nine months of paperwork. They'll get back to you, but you started the process. I try to always leap in that moment of inspiration.
Justin Gary
I love that so much. All right. So for those listening, what five-minute action could shortcut you to the thing that you really want?
Justin Gary
That is a beautiful place to leave it. Derek, I have looked forward to this for so long, and it has more than delivered. I'm so grateful we got to have this conversation.