Patterns of Success, Freedom, and Happiness
host: Oskar Woehr
About my books, who they're for, how I write, my non-distracting technology setup.
listen: (download)
watch: (download)
Transcript:
Oskar Woehr
Just starting with your books, I read "Hell Yeah or No", "Useful Not True", and "How to Live", super cool.
Oskar Woehr
Do you write your books for yourself or for others or just as a reflection?
Derek Sivers
That's a good question.
Derek Sivers
I wonder what a musician would say if you asked if you write your songs for yourself for others. It's kind of a mix because if it was truly just for you, you could just keep it in a diary. You wouldn't need to release it. There's some effort involved in releasing something to the world. So it's a combination of challenging yourself to create the thing you want to create artistically, but then testing it on the world to see if it is received as well as you think it could be. So I'm thinking of songwriting now. If I have an idea for a song, like I think this melody and this beat would go well together and these lyrics would communicate an idea but also be entertaining and catchy and raise an eyebrow. Then I get inspired to make this piece of art I have in my head turn into reality and I could leave it at that, just keep it privately on my computer. You release it to the world to see if other people will respond to this as well as you suspect they will. And sometimes they don't. You release a song that you think is amazing and the world goes, "Eh."
Derek Sivers
Same thing with a book. I have an idea that I think Useful Not True, for example, is a complete life-changer. I think that if more people adopted a useful not true approach to life, it would make their lives so much better, more effective, more creative, more empathetic. And so I try to share this idea as succinctly and as catchy as possible so that it can spread from mind to mind as easy as possible. So that you could read it and get it in a minute and you could tell a friend about it in a minute and you'd remember a beautiful succinct way of telling this idea because Derek told it in a catchy way so now Oskar can tell it in a catchy way and Oskar's friend in Bali can remember what Oskar said because it was pre-lubricated to make it easy to travel. That's my goal as a writer with this project at least.
Oskar Woehr
That's one of your powerful skills, making things super succinct and memorable. Either just through creating sound bites or like quotes, you're super quotable. Do you always have that intention in mind when you're writing?
Derek Sivers
Yes. I want the idea to travel. That's why I'm bothering to release it. It travels better if it's catchy.
Derek Sivers
So this book in particular, with Useful Not True, I really made it my number one or two mission to be catchy. Because, for example, my last book, How to Live, was I think maybe my artistic masterpiece, but definitely not catchy. There were no stories. It was just directives after directives after directives because that's what that art form was, right? That was the whole point. It was a book full of opinionated chapters that all disagree with each other and that was the point of that piece.
Derek Sivers
But for Useful Not True, I challenged myself to come up with visual, memorable little stories that would communicate the idea better than me just saying it. Because I wanted those stories to stick in your head and make it easy to tell a friend.
Oskar Woehr
Even since your college days, you've been trying to think like this. Do you feel like this is a skill that you've always had, or how did this actually develop?
Derek Sivers
I was a songwriter for 20 years, so songwriting usually is a challenge to both express what you want to say and be catchy. So I guess I have been doing this for a long time.
Oskar Woehr
Yeah, very powerful. There was also, listening to, when you're using a marker, dissecting a Tony Robbins speech, and you're saying like how you're thinking of some of those quotable moments that are sticking to people's minds.
Oskar Woehr
I want to talk about the other book, the one I started with, which is How to Live. You feel like that one was quite different from the other, because it had less stories?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, but that's okay. That was a flash of inspiration. I had read and loved a book called Sum, by David Eagleman, which has a beautiful format where each chapter says, "Here's what happens when you die," and it tells a fictional story of what happens in the afterlife, right after you die. And then the next chapter says, "Here's what happens when you die," and it tells a different story of what happens right after you die in the afterlife. And then the next chapter says, "Here's what happens when you die," and tells a different story. And so I love this format of every chapter disagreeing with every other chapter as if there were 27 different authors invited to join in a compilation of conflicting viewpoints but all written by one author. What a fun format! What a beautiful format! I read that book twice, loved it.
Derek Sivers
Shortly after, I was driving down the road and was hit with a lightning bolt of inspiration, "Oh my god, I want to write a book called "How to Live" in this format, where every chapter thinks it has the answer to how you should live. Very opinionated." "Oskar, live for the future. This is the way. Forget the current moment, forget the past. Everything must be optimized for the future." And the next chapter says, "No, no, no, no, no. Live for the present. That's all there is." the next chapter says, "No no no no no live for others, live for other people this is what matters!" I love this format so that was just a flash of inspiration and then yeah it took four years of full-time work sometimes 16 hour days of writing for four years to make that book the way I wanted it to be but I'm so damn proud of it.
Oskar Woehr
It's very powerful, it's so entertaining as well.
Derek Sivers
Thank you.
Oskar Woehr
It keeps contradicting each other. Is there a favorite way for you to live?
Derek Sivers
Did you see the picture of the orchestra at the end of the book?
Oskar Woehr
No, because I was doing audiobooks. I didn't look it up after. Oh, but you described it though.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, in the audio book I describe it, but at the, the book ends with a weird conclusion. The subtitle of the book is "How to Live, 27 Conflicting Answers and One Weird Conclusion" and the weird conclusion is a picture of an orchestra seating chart. The violins, violas, clarinets, oboes, trumpets, drums, harp, piano, etc. And there are 27 instruments, which is not a coincidence because there are 27 chapters.
Derek Sivers
The idea is that philosophies are like instruments in an orchestra. No one instrument is the right answer. The oboe is not the right instrument and all of the others are wrong. The cello is not the right instrument and all the others are wrong. They are different sounds that you as the composer and conductor of your life can pull in when you want them. And you can combine them with others. You don't have to pick just one. You can combine a trumpet and a viola. At the same time, it can be really beautiful to have the bass and the oboe be playing the same thing, because they have such different frequencies. So, in your life, you don't have to say, "Is making money the right thing to do, or is being generous the right thing to do?" You can combine those two beautifully. You can say, "I'm going to focus on making money and being generous. But maybe you do that just between the hours of 9 to 5 on weekends and maybe you have a baby at home. So after 5 p.m. you come home and you think nothing of money until the next day at 9 a.m. and you are fully present with your baby living entirely for your spouse and kid. So you could say that you're switching philosophies at 5 p.m. and at 8.50 in the morning you switch from a philosophy of being present with your kid to going to an office and being entirely future-focused and objective. It's a switching of philosophies and we can do this in life for different philosophies, whether it's hedonism or stoicism or pragmatism, you can switch and mix and that's life.
Oskar Woehr
Beautiful. Do you think that there are any of those rules that people would live better if they adopted? Maybe there are some that are less used?
Derek Sivers
Well, all of them. It's a unique combination for every person and different times in their So anybody listening to this, you might right now in your life be tuning into Oskar's podcast for tips on how to make more money. But one year from now you might be drowning in money and have no interest in making more money. So timing matters and different people have different combinations so there's absolutely no recipe that you can say, "Hey, everyone listening to this, this is what you need to do." Because everybody's different.
Oskar Woehr
Of course. Yeah. Yeah. That's very true.
Oskar Woehr
When you were writing that book, were they mostly ideas that you came up with yourself, or did you do a lot of research as well?
Derek Sivers
A lot of research. The reason that "How to Live" took four years to write is, first, it took two years to compile everything I've ever learned in life. I was about 50 years old when I wrote it, and I really went through all of my notes from every book I've ever read, everything I'd ever learned, everything I've ever heard, went back through all of my diaries of everything I've ever thought, everything I've ever written, and for two years I included all into this book and then I categorized it into these different chapters that emerged naturally as I looked at all of these thoughts, you know. These 400 thoughts are around living for the future. These 400 thoughts are around living for others. These 328 thoughts are around getting famous. These 290 thoughts are about doing nothing and just being with nothingness. So I first I categorized all of them, but then of course I don't want to release a 3,000 page book because the rough draft of the book was over 1,300 pages and I would not want to subject that, subject anybody to that. So then it took two more years to compress this 1,300 page rough draft into the 110 pages it turned out to be.
Oskar Woehr
I haven't written music myself. Which part took the longest, the research or the composing?
Derek Sivers
Probably the research. Because you could say that it took my whole life. It was the culmination of everything I had ever learned. So, in contrast, spending a mere two years of editing was not that long.
Oskar Woehr
So having written the book you probably learned a lot about yourself, at least the reflection of it, do you feel like you know how to live?
Derek Sivers
Yes I do! Well, I wrote the book on the subject! (laughs)
Derek Sivers
I know how I want to live and it's ever-changing and that's the answer. I'm very reflective and introspective. I spend a lot of time journaling In fact, I'd say that's the one thing that I can wholeheartedly say that everyone listening should do.
Derek Sivers
I think everyone should be journaling more. I think everyone should spend some more time with their own thoughts. Because even, for example, as you're listening to a podcast like this and you take in information from speakers, or taking information that you read anywhere, it's worthless until you both reflect on what this means for you, and then you actually act on it, and do something about it. Until you act, it was just worthless information. If it doesn't turn into actions, it was wasted. The actions are the real point, not just the information. But the information itself isn't the point. It's how you personally can apply it and that takes some time put aside to reflect and think first and that's what journaling is for.
Oskar Woehr
I think you just highlighted a really powerful point of being able to be more intentional with our thoughts, how to create our actions. But there's also this thing of like action creates clarity, so you can go about it the other way. Or you get a little bit clearer on what you need to do next, but you also reflect and know what could be the clearest path to it.
Derek Sivers
Usually, actions for me come after I've put aside time to think of some different options.
Derek Sivers
Just because some famous thought leader says, "Everyone should be doing this," doesn't mean that you should immediately brainlessly jump into doing what someone else says. You should first spend a minute, think about how that would be applied to your life.
Derek Sivers
Think about where that could be applied to your life, because it might not be in the obvious way. You might take a strategy for making money and apply it to learning Chinese instead of just making money. Or you might take a strategy for learning Chinese and apply it to making money. Just because you heard of something in one place doesn't mean that's the only way it can be applied. It's up to you to think about your unique life, how this could apply, and when that feeling hits you of knowing that this would be smart for you to do and is the right thing to do.
Derek Sivers
Then it really helps to just take action immediately. Don't procrastinate, jump into action. Don't just click to watch the next video. Take action immediately.
Oskar Woehr
That's even more powerful. I think that's helpful in what I see a lot of people have to know whether, not that it's a procrastination, but people delay their choices. So many dreams go unfulfilled if you un-dream them. I love that you're dreaming. I have not been dreaming in a while.
Derek Sivers
To me it's everything. I spend sometimes hours a day, if I'm at a point in my life when something's changing and needs reconsidering, I can spend hours a day writing to myself. And there I'm just going through different thoughts, different options, considering it, daydreaming, challenging myself, doubting decisions, healthy doubt. Skepticism is an entire philosophy around healthy doubt. I'd say that actually, that newest book called Useful Not True was mostly about skepticism, which I think is an underrated philosophy.
Oskar Woehr
Do you have any prompt or way you start your journey?
Derek Sivers
No, I don't need to. I have a thousand things to say at any given time. I just open up an empty text document and just the fingers start flying. I don't need to try to make myself say things. I have things on my mind. I have things that I'm wondering. I have possibilities I'm considering.
Derek Sivers
Let's talk about procrastination for a second. In Useful Not True, there is the metaphor of a computer that takes a while to process something. So think of if you use one of the fancy AI models now with the reasoning capabilities, so where you ask it a question and it takes two minutes to calculate its answer, right? Even before AI there were programs like that too, that you would put some numbers into a database calculation and you'd say "give me a projection" and it would take 10 minutes to calculate to make a projection. But now if, imagine that one minute into its 10-minute calculation you interrupt it to give it some more numbers. You say "wait, add this into the calculation." Well now the computer is going to say "oh okay I have to start over." Okay now it's going to take 10 is to calculate. And after one more minute you say, "Oh wait, here's some more information. Include this in your decision." Well now the computer has to start all over again. So the point is, this is a metaphor for your own life. You take in information, you take in information, you take in information, and at a certain point you have to say, "Stop. enough information, I need to act now. And you need to put those current ideas into action. But if you keep just taking in more information, it's like asking the calculator to restart all over again. So instead you need to deliberately block out information. Say, "That's enough. I'm going to act on the information I have already, without taking in any more."
Oskar Woehr
That's extremely important, especially in today's world where everything is overloaded with information. I appreciate that message a lot. I remember it's very addicting to just have that dopamine, like "Oh, something new is coming up."
Derek Sivers
Well, look, it actually goes beyond notifications, because I assume that you pick up your phone at least once a day. So even if it's not notifying you, just the act of looking at your phone and knowing that there's more information out there that you're going to look at, you've now just added more information to your day, which I assume is now interrupting a process that could have already begun.
Derek Sivers
So I think it's really important to structure everything about our lives so that you deliberately turn on the flow of information when you want it, but it's default off. Like the internet used to be in the 90s for us, when you had to use your home telephone number and tell your family, "Wait, no phone calls for 10 minutes, I'm going online." And you would like go online for 10 minutes, send the emails you needed to, download the ones you need to get, and then you'd go offline so your family could use the telephone again. There was something beautiful about that. Deliberately going online instead of being online always by default. I'm not saying that we should go back to that, because nobody will. But it's interesting to set up your life that way, so that by default you are not even receiving new information.
Derek Sivers
The fact that somebody posted a new thing somewhere in the world does not mean that that thing by default reaches you. That would be awful. That's a terrible way live. So, people forcing messages into your face? No way. So, by default, it helps to have all of those off, but then when you have decided, you've consciously, deliberately decided I need some more information, and you know why you need that information and what you need to get out of it, then you turn it on and get the information you need, then go back to the default of having it off and take action on it to make sure that action is always your top priority.
Oskar Woehr
Do you do this very intentionally, like making sure you keep lines on so you don't receive too much information?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I receive no information. I do everything in a command line. Well first, just like the way I use a computer. I only use my phone to call friends. So there's nothing there. I've never had a social media app on my phone, ever. So my phone itself is just a device to talk to some loved ones in my life. My computer is set up so I do everything in the command line. So I'm just in the terminal all day long, so there's no way - I'm not logged into any apps or websites. So my emails and everything is done through the command line. All my writing, all my books, just everything is the command line. So then if I want to actually go get some information, I have to open a web browser, which is not open by default. I open the web browser, I go get the information I need, download it into the terminal, and then I shut it off. I shut off, I close the browser entirely, I go back to the terminal and I get back to my work. So that's my workflow.
Oskar Woehr
I must say it's quite unique.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, people who look over my shoulder when I'm on my computer, they go, "What is that? It's just a black screen with nothing on it!" There's no menu bar, there's no top menu, no bottom menu, no taskbar, no nothing. Just my terminal takes up every pixel of the screen and it's just the words I'm writing by default.
Oskar Woehr
I think it's very peaceful. It is. Can you explain what a command line in the black terminal is?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, anybody using a Mac, you have it built in. You go into utilities and there's a black box there that says terminal. Double click it and it will just bring up this black screen just waiting for you to type a command. So, you can do anything you can do in a web browser by clicking other people's programs. You can do it in a terminal, you just have to know what to type. And then, anybody on Windows has this too, I think it's called PowerShell, I just haven't used Windows in 20 years, but I think it's in there called PowerShell or something like that. I use an operating system called OpenBSD, which is kind of like Linux, so it's just kind of the default, you turn it on and it just gives you the command line, the default. I would actually specifically have to type the word Firefox or Chrome in order to open Firefox or Chrome to open a web browser. But by default, you're just in the terminal. Nothing to click on, no mouse, just typing words.
Oskar Woehr
Do you instill this philosophy in your son as well?
Derek Sivers
No. He knows that this is how I work, and I've taught him a few of the basic terminal commands, but his life is his own.
Oskar Woehr
Sure he'll figure it out.
Derek Sivers
He'll do it if he wants to.
Oskar Woehr
Yeah, so, like, um, what you're talking about also reminds me of, like, um, Blackout that the whole country shut down. My brother sent me a video of myself, there's people hanging on the streets playing music together, and whether we had the tune or not, probably. But I was really, people felt very connected to it.
Derek Sivers
Well you live in Bali, I live in New Zealand. These are two physically beautiful places where when I step out my door and I see people around, most of them are not on their phones, most of them are out in the forest and on the beach because that's where I usually am. As soon as I walk out my door here, I don't really live in a very urban environment. When I step outside, I'm in the forest or I'm on the beach. So most of the life I see is not people on their phones. So that's my normal life. It'll be different. Someday I'll be living in China, someday I'll be living in India and be in different environments, but for now, this is where I am, and it's been very useful, very healthy for the last 13, 14 years I've been here. As the rest of the world often reacts or overreacts to today's current news, I'm very thankful that I'm not tapped into that channel. I'm not trying to drink from that fire hose.
Oskar Woehr
I was doing research for this episode, I heard that you had said that, that was one of the main reasons to move to New Zealand, because it's so disconnected. Even though it's so modern, how could New Zealand manage to make itself quite distant but also modernized at the same time? I think... It's like a time zone.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I was going to say, I think millions of years of geographic continental plates made it isolated. No, I think it's a choice by the people here. I think that this is just a place where it is culturally normal to be outside barbecuing your food and playing frisbee in the park.
Oskar Woehr
So then, these days, living your life and doing it, what's a powerful question I could ask you that would allow you to share what occupy your mind these days? What are you focused on now?
Derek Sivers
Uh, what am I focused on now? Hmm. The real answer? I just, 18 hours ago, got back from two and a half weeks in China and it's my third trip there in one year and I'm currently enamored with life there. I think it is one of the most pleasant, beautiful, and interesting places on earth to live. I think it's a really healthy culture currently and fascinating and pleasant. I think it's extremely well run, at least the major cities, the tier-1 cities there are very well run and I want to be there. I feel the same thing about Dubai, I feel the same thing about Bangalore. I find these places fascinating and am planning on living there as soon as I can.
Oskar Woehr
Where in China would you do that?
Derek Sivers
I've spent a lot of time in Shenzhen and Chengdu, spent a few days in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and I will probably move to Shanghai. We'll use this podcast as a timestamp of May 2025 to see if a few years from now I'm doing it. Sometimes my plans take a few years to happen.
Derek Sivers
There was a time in my life when I was 27, I moved to Woodstock, New York and bought a house there. And I was a professional musician at the time, so I was touring and I went to a gig in Rhode Island and I saw a girl who recognized me. And she's like, "Hi Derek, what are you doing?" And I said, "Oh, I just moved to Woodstock, New York this week." And she screamed with excitement. I went, "What? What?" And she said, "Oh my God, you finally did it." I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "Five years ago when we first met, you told me your dream was to move to Woodstock." I said, "I did? I thought it was a new idea. I don't remember saying that." But she remembered that I had told her five years earlier my dream was to move to Woodstock, and five years later I finally did it. So there are many things in my life that take a long time to happen.
Derek Sivers
Hopefully in a few years I'll be living in Bangalore, Shanghai, or Abu Dhabi.
Oskar Woehr
Well, what's just one thing I've noticed, some people move fast in certain areas of life and slower in other areas of life. Like traveling, moving, that's not the slow area of my life. I've moved every year and that's just not my time as well.
Oskar Woehr
But maybe taking action on my business decisions can be a bit slower than I would like, for Have you ever thought of what creates speed in decision making?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, for my personal sake, more importantly, my kid has a mom. So the mom is the one that doesn't like to move. If it were just me and my kid, I think we'd be moving in an instant to Japan, China, India. He loves these places as much as I do. His mother does not. So here we are.
Derek Sivers
But I'd say for everything else, for anybody listening to this, it's really up to you. It's so easy to just start the action that you know you want to take. If you know for sure, let's actually let me renote for sure, if you know that this is a good thing for you to do, you should really take that first step right away. I mean instantly, as soon as you know this is a good thing to do, then go sign up for that course or contact that personal trainer or buy that book and immediately read the first 50 pages without delay. Start these things that you know are the right things to do immediately. Just take that first step. It usually just takes 10 minutes. Book that flight. Sign up on that sign-up form. Just begin. And that momentum then helps you turn it into reality.
Oskar Woehr
Yeah. But it's mostly about overthinking. That's where the reflection and getting concrete on what your thoughts are helps to make those kinds of decisions faster.
Derek Sivers
Okay, well, you've got strength training on your mind. There are so many different approaches to strength training. If somebody were to just keep taking in more information, they'd never get stronger. They'd never see any noticeable gains and improvements. You just have to pick one and say, "Alright, I don't know or care if this one is the very best in the universe. It's good." It's more important to take action on a good plan than to not take action because you're trying to make the perfect plan.
Oskar Woehr
Hmm. 100%.
Derek Sivers
90%! (laughs)
Oskar Woehr
I really like the value of living by, at least ChatGPT told me, like freedom and intentionality. Do you think it's possible that everybody can live aligned with their own values?
Derek Sivers
Oh yeah. Please don't live aligned with mine. Live aligned with your own. You just have to notice where you thrive. There's all these inputs. Right. Well, notice where you're out of alignment with your own values.
Derek Sivers
Or, notice that your values have changed. It might be that when you were a teenager, you said, "By this age, I'm going to be a millionaire." But maybe you're quite happy with your life of carefree sufficiency. Maybe you've got enough to pay for a carefree life, so you don't have to sell your soul or kiss someone's ass to make a million dollars. Maybe you really enjoying making $50,000 which is enough to pay for a wonderful life that lets you do whatever the hell you want to do and not have to do anything you don't want to do. So maybe instead of saying, "Well damn it, my values are I'm gonna be a millionaire," you say, "I thought my values were that I wanted to be a millionaire, but actually it's time for me to update my values because I'm really happy like this right now."
Derek Sivers
Or, "My values are that I'm going to be strong and fit, and I'm a fat, flabby piece of shit, and that's not okay with me, and I'm going to henceforth from this point on no longer eat any sugar or anything but protein shakes until I lose 20 kgs". Whatever it is, just either your values or your actions need to change so that you get those two things in alignment.
Oskar Woehr
The power of thought and shaping your thoughts allow you to create those actions and it's very powerful. It's a big segue to journaling. I did not expect that at all, actually.
Derek Sivers
That's where you can explore your own mind. You can ask yourself "What else?"
Derek Sivers
Okay, here's an example. Somebody said recently something about living a normal life according to the norms of the world. They said, "Most people just live according to the norms of the world." And I interrupted and I said, "What world?" If you live in Singapore, and you grew up in Singapore, and you're surrounded by Singaporeans, well then there is a set of norms in that little world that you might be following, but those are very much not the norms of Berlin, and very much not the norms of Rio de Janeiro. And so you need to realize that it's not like you're living a normal life because you're living a normal Singapore life. It's only one way of being.
Derek Sivers
So first it helps to zoom out and see different perspectives, see that there are different totally valid ways of living, that the Brazilian way of life and the Japanese way of life have nothing in common, but neither one is wrong and neither one is right. It's just different approaches to it. And that also conflicts with the Saudi Arabian way of life, which also conflicts with the Swedish way of life. And I'm just picking countries, but of course even within a country there are many different ways to approach life. Living to uphold traditions versus living to destroy traditions and build a new future versus whatever you can think of.
Derek Sivers
So in your own private journal, if you're thinking of how you want to approach your romantic relationship or finding one or building one or how you want to approach your career, you can't get stuck into following norms as if they are the only way, because it's what you see around you, whether physically around you or you're just tapped into these certain channels on YouTube that only show you certain ways.
Derek Sivers
Go into your browser, delete all cookies, start over, or go get Firefox and open a new browser with no cookies, go to YouTube and see different algorithms being pushed at you. Go search for videos of people you hate or things that you ordinarily would never watch and let the algorithm show you stuff you ordinarily wouldn't see. Or just pick a culture on earth that repulses you and go learn more about it. Because if more than a few people are following this culture, there might be something to it. And your repulsion should be an indicator of your ignorance about it.
Oskar Woehr
Very refreshing. I'm going to go delete all my blogs and history.
Derek Sivers
Well, you're kidding, but guess what? It should be no surprise. I actually, I browse, my browser, I use Firefox as my default browser choice, and I have it set with cookies off. So every time I close the browser, which is a dozen times a day, it deletes all cookies. So every time I open the browser a couple hours later, if there's something I need to get, it's fresh and cookie-less. And so if I go to a website where I have to log in, I have to log in again. But to me that change is worth it to browse the web cookie lists. I don't get any algorithmic feeds.
Oskar Woehr
I didn't know that was possible.
Derek Sivers
Dude, how can you not know it's possible? You just go into preferences and it says allow cookies, you choose no. Or the specific setting in Firefox is delete all cookies when I close the browser. Actually not just cookies, delete everything. delete your browser history, your cookies, all stored, local storage, to close that every time you close the browser, and then I just closed the browser many times a day.
Oskar Woehr
Fantastic. This has been a very refreshing conversation. You think it's important for people to know that this way of living is possible, right?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I think it's important to know that other ways of living are possible. I'm not saying that mine is better than any other. It's just the way that I like.
Derek Sivers
But, you find somebody else like... say, Tyler Cowen is somebody I admire a lot. And he calls himself an infovore. His personal preference is to receive a ton of information all the time every day. That's how he thrives. And I admire the hell out of this guy. So I think my life has been improved by considering his perspective on that. Doesn't mean I need to live it for myself.
Derek Sivers
The same way that my perspective has been improved by spending more time in India and spending more time in China and getting to know people there, making dear friends with people that grew up there, and tell me a different way of looking at any given issue.
Oskar Woehr
Yeah. Wow. What's really funny is that me and my girlfriend I say we are like the opposite. I'm more of an info boy and my girlfriend's just like, "Oh, I'm gonna make a decision. Don't give me any info. I don't want any info." Like, "Oh, nice." And I'm Yeah, and I was like, well I want to hear as many perspectives as possible to, you know, you want to know what you can find out about me. Yeah, I also like what you're saying, to really take the time to solidify what sounds best for you.
Derek Sivers
I do take in a ton of information when I know I need more information. So if I'm trying more about something in order to make a decision. I'm trying to choose which server software to use, I'm trying to choose which bank to use, what to invest in, or whatever. I will go be an infovore temporarily in order to learn more about that. But then shut it off and by default, like your girlfriend, when making a decision, I say, "Okay, that's enough. No more information. I need to make a decision now." And then it's time to reflect. And I need quiet reflection without any distractions influencing me.
Oskar Woehr
You talked about quite a few things. What would be one thing that you want people to remember after listening to this episode?
Derek Sivers
To journal. Doesn't matter how, where, with what. Just start if you haven't. Maybe you like to have a paper notebook and sit offline on the couch. Maybe it's a browser tab. If you're one of those browser tab people that always has your browser tabs open, maybe journal should be in a browser tab so that it's always right there. And you can just press Command-1 to jump to that tab and go back to typing so that 50 times a day, as you have a little thought that you want to save for your future self, you go to that browser tab and you add it to today's diary. And then at the end of the day, wrap it up and share more to it.
Derek Sivers
It's one of the things that I wish I would have started 20 years earlier than I did. I started journaling when I was 42. Let me back up. When I was a teenager, or since I was a teenager, I would turn to my diary only if I was really upset about something and really needed to sort out my tangled thoughts on a subject. Then I would go to my journal and write. But the problem is, years later looking back at my journal, all that's in it are the tormented days. There's no indicator of how I was feeling in general at that point in my life or what I was doing. So at the age of 42, realizing I regretted not having that from the past, I made a point of doing it every single day since then. So I was 42 years old, so the last 13 years, because I'm 55 now, I have a journal of my day and it's been the best thing I've done. It's so useful to find thoughts I had 10 years ago, to look back at a time in my past to see how I was really feeling then, because memories are not accurate. And that helps me make smarter decisions for the future. I can better guide my future self by more accurately knowing my past self.
Oskar Woehr
Powerful. Very important. I actually have one more question then. I was thinking AI could be a very powerful assistant in the journey. What do you think about, like, if used a ChatGPT chat and just keep on going there, that could help you do research as well.
Derek Sivers
That could help you, yes, although I would highly recommend making sure that you export that chat, copy paste into something, because you are going to outlive ChatGPT. Many of the companies that were around when I started journaling have long since gone out of business. You will outlive most companies out there today. Your younger audience today will probably outlive Google, definitely outlive Facebook. So you should not keep anything of any importance in a company's log. You have to keep it in your own private log somewhere that you will take care of because you are incentivized to take care of it. The company is not.
Oskar Woehr
Hmm. Great point. Awesome, Derek. Since you are not so much active on social media, where do you usually want people to get in contact with you?
Derek Sivers
Oh, same as you did. Just email me. That's why we're here today. That's why we met, because you emailed me. So I answer every email and I thoroughly enjoy it. Maybe because I'm not on any other social media, that's how I hear from people, is just emails. So anybody, please go to my website, sive.rs and click where it says "Contact Me." All my writing is there, most of it's already out there for free. Every interview I've ever done, every article I've ever written, every presentation I've given, every-- you mentioned my TED Talks earlier. It's all there on my website and right on the homepage is the link that says "contact me" so please do.
Oskar Woehr
There you go. Thank you so much, man.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, Oskar.