Spaghetti to Bento
host: Alexandre Petit
Effectiveness of programming solo, my tech preferences, software philosophy, my people database and productivity tools, writing, social travel, dating, questioning beliefs.
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Transcript:
Alex Petit
I spent the last five years writing code for a living. On the side, I collect stories from the people I meet along the way, and today’s guest is Derek Sievers. Derek was a professional musician for 10 years, that includes touring in Japan with Ryuichi Sakamoto, and performing as a ringleader MC musician in a circus. While trying to distribute his own music, he accidentally funded CD Baby. One of the first internet company. He grew it from 1 to 85 people, sold it for 22 million in 2008, and gave everything to charity. Since then, he’s become a TED speaker, author of five books and one of the most original thinkers I’ve come across. His latest book, "Useful Not True" explores how our beliefs shape our lives and how we can reframe them. What fascinates me about Derek is how he consistently walks the road less taken. While we chase more, he subtracts and aims for less. While we hope from tool to tool he builds his own. While we optimize for speed, he goes deep and slow. Over the past year, his work has shaped a lot of mine. I read his five books, listened to 30 podcasts with the guest, and he joined me in most of my runs. I studied his blog posts and book recommendations. It makes a lot of input and this inspired me to memorize Python with flashcards, set up my own server, launch a blog, start journaling every day, travel in Vietnam. Somewhere along the way, I started writing down questions I would love to ask him. That list grew to 150. I trimmed it down to 90. So yes, it might be a long conversation, but I promise it will be a rich one. Derek, welcome.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, Alex. Audience, you’re up for a different kind of podcast today because Alex sent me his 90 questions in advance. So we’re going to bang through a lightning round of fascinating questions with short questions, short answers.
Alex Petit
So to start with, so the questions are organized in two parts, technical and broad life questions. So let’s start with the technical part.
Alex Petit
What do you think made CD Baby work so well, technically speaking?
Derek Sivers
Your original question said, "Was it because you were not part of a team and didn’t have to deal with politics and didn’t have to deal with code reviews?" And yes, I think you guessed it in advance that CD Baby, because it was just me doing all of the programming, I wasn’t trying to please some jury, there was nobody telling me "These are bad practices, you should do it a different way." I got to just make the code just good enough so that it works. And I would often push things up to the server live as a way of seeing if it works. There was no test container. I didn’t have unit tests even. I would just make something on my laptop, try it a couple times myself, and then push it live to the server to see if it works. And I would stay logged into the inbox so that if people said, "Hey, your site’s broken!" I’d say, "Oh, okay, hold on, let me fix that." And I would just fix it live. It helped me move very fast.
Alex Petit
So you had no unit test at the time? Still no unit test today?
Derek Sivers
I’ve just started using a PostgreSQL unit test framework called pgTAP that is very interesting as a way of testing my PostgreSQL functions. But other than that, no.
Alex Petit
And how often do you get regressions? How do you prevent regressions?
Derek Sivers
I don’t know what that word means.
Alex Petit
Okay, so you don’t have a lot of regressions?
Derek Sivers
No, I literally don’t know what that means.
Alex Petit
Okay, it’s when something works, you add some functionality and break something else. It’s called a regression.
Derek Sivers
Oh, I don’t know. I still do this same approach. I tend to push things live to my website and wait for real users to tell me if something is broken. Just very reactive.
Alex Petit
Do you have, okay, some alert mechanism, or is it users?
Derek Sivers
No. Just users. I don’t even keep logs on my website. Nothing is logged. Nothing is monitored.
Alex Petit
Okay. No logs. But yes, working solo provides a lot of freedom. You can test everything you want. You don’t have to negotiate. No ego clash. No soft compromise. No hand-offs. No big bang merges. Just simple solo development. So easy.
Alex Petit
Have you ever wanted to work with or learn with other developers?
Derek Sivers
No. I did once. Near the end of CD Baby, I worked with a Ruby on Rails expert. And it was fascinating. And I learned a lot. In that case, it was he and I sitting side by side where he did most of the work and I was watching in awe and helping to guide requirements while he fulfilled the requirements. I learned a lot, but ultimately I would rather just hire a teacher if I want to learn and then just continue to work solo.
Alex Petit
When it comes to learning, how do you decide between learning by yourself or learning with a trainer or with a coach?
Derek Sivers
I always learn by myself. The one or two times i’ve hired a coach, I tend to get rebellious. Like if a coach says "All right I need you to do this for me and report back to me on Wednesday to show me that you’ve done it", I notice that inside I get like a rebellious teenager. I’m like, "Well screw you I’m paying you! I don’t have to report to you! Who the hell do you think you are?" I find that I end up not doing what a coach is telling me to do, but then as soon as I fire him, I start doing it. This has happened to me twice now, so apparently accountability doesn’t work well for me.
Alex Petit
Which field?
Derek Sivers
This was once in like health and fitness, and once in like a general life coach that I hired long ago.
Alex Petit
That’s interesting, even if it’s not your core because fitness is not your core business, but even with this field it’s like no it gets rebellious.
Derek Sivers
Yeah even with business. You actually reminded me if there was one more business type coach I hired in my last year of CD Baby, and I didn’t like that either.
Alex Petit
On the technical side: What terminal do you use? Do you stick with the built-in one? You use the default terminal?
Derek Sivers
When I read about people using other Alacritty or Kitty terminals, I just don’t see the benefit. I’m happy using the default terminal.
Alex Petit
Okay. So color schemes, is it clarity or distraction for you?
Derek Sivers
I like color schemes. I like the color coded code to help me see immediately if I’ve made a typo. If suddenly everything below my cursor is red, it lets me know that I must not have closed a quotation mark somewhere. So I think it’s very handy for that. I’m very happy with color coded code.
Alex Petit
You still code with Vim?
Derek Sivers
Yes, everything in Vim and Terminal.
Alex Petit
And what are your favorite plugins in Vim?
Derek Sivers
I have none. My Vim config line is five lines, just making sure that it’s UTF-8 encoding and file type. And that’s it. No plugins.
Alex Petit
No plugins. Okay. Where do the linting come from?
Derek Sivers
I don’t do any linting.
Alex Petit
But you told me you like when the color, you know, when it gets red, when something...
Derek Sivers
Right. So I think that’s one of the few lines I have in Vim just says to look for the file type. So there are the file type settings. So if you open a file in Ruby, it colors it one way. If you open it, if you open an SQL file, it colors it that way. But that’s just, I think, the defaults built into Vim.
Alex Petit
Ah, yeah, there is some built-in color scheme.
Alex Petit
So, okay, no refactoring tool?
Derek Sivers
Nothing. It’s funny, in Ruby, I talked with a Ruby programmer once years ago, and he asked, how big is your Bundler file? And I said I don’t use Bundler. He said, well, how do you manage all of your gems? I said I don’t use gems. I just use one. One gem to connect to the PostgreSQL database, and everything else I just write myself.
Derek Sivers
But I think it’s a different mission. My mission is to deeply understand the problem by making myself create the solution from scratch. Whereas if I was programming for money, if I was doing this for a business or for a client, I would have a different mission. I would want to get the job done as quickly as possible. But I’m doing it for my own self-discovery. So that’s why I don’t use any of these tools. I like to learn it myself.
Alex Petit
Yeah, you don’t have the same incentives.
Derek Sivers
Incentives, good word, yes.
Alex Petit
It’s really inspiring because if you do this in the long-term, It’s more long-term thinking.
Derek Sivers
Yes. I think of it like physical fitness, that you can hire a taxi to take you 26 miles, or you can train for a marathon. Training for a marathon takes a lot longer, but in the end you’re healthier. You would not sign up to run a marathon and then call a taxi to take you to the end. I want the hard work. I want the self-improvement that comes from doing the hard work myself.
Alex Petit
Do you use Git?
Derek Sivers
I stopped using Git because I realized I was never branching. It was not actually doing source control I was just using git mindlessly so about three or four years ago I stopped. I just rsync my code away to a few other backup boxes so that if I accidentally screw up something or I deleted something that I need then I’m able to just go onto one of my backup boxes and restore that file but other than that I don’t do source control right now.
Alex Petit
Okay. So how do you deploy?
Derek Sivers
rsync
Alex Petit
Disabling copy-paste. Great idea or hell?
Derek Sivers
I love copy-paste. I understand that there would be people copy-pasting major code from Stack Overflow or now from an AI tool, But it’s always been your responsibility to understand it. Back to this metaphor of running the marathon instead of calling a taxi. Even if I ask an AI tool to help me write this PostgreSQL query, and it gives me 20 lines, I’ll copy-paste it, see if it works. If it does work then I’ll stop and figure out what it’s doing and make sure I really understand it.
Alex Petit
I’ve tried to stop copy pasting to try my muscles, and yeah my memory, and I noticed that when I write it, I tend to remove some elements. But it’s quite heavy, actually.
Derek Sivers
I will go through and refactor in my own way any code that I copy-paste from the Internet or from an AI tool. I’ll first test it to make sure if it works. And if it does, then I’ll go through, make sure I understand it. And while going through and making sure I understand it, I’ll change variable names to what I want them to be. I’ll fix the code to make it the way I like it. And that’s a good way of making sure that I really understand it.
Alex Petit
What’s the software design principle you often use?
Derek Sivers
You aren’t gonna need it. Y-A-G-N-I. I try to only satisfy what’s actually needed now because I have a tendency to live in the future in my head, thinking of what it might be. But I know if I follow that type of thinking, I will build too much stuff with too many abstracts. So instead, I try to constantly remind myself that I might never need that and I will just solve the current problem.
Alex Petit
You apply this to functionalities. Do you apply this also to performance?
Derek Sivers
Yes, I never worry about performance, because I know who I’m building for and it’s usually just a few hundred users at any time. So I’m very happy that I do not need to optimize for millions.
Alex Petit
Yeah, it’s another problem. And do you plan for the work case? Like if you create a field, do you think like, okay, people will try to make a very long text in it?
Derek Sivers
Yes. I whitelist everything instead of blacklist at every step, whether it’s the HTTP routing or the form inputs or the URL parameters. I always just whitelist what’s allowed and everything is denied by default.
Alex Petit
You like to have no more than necessary.
Alex Petit
So to keep a track of a post, do you use date or time?
Derek Sivers
Date. I figure nobody cares what time of day I wrote this article, so only date.
Alex Petit
because I have came across this question during it when I yeah implemented the comment section in my blog and I was like oh using date this is bored like we always use date time like by default it’s data we put data everywhere like we don’t know in case of that.
Derek Sivers
With the comments on my site, I just do date, but then of course it’s in a database table that has a sequential id auto-generated, so I sort by date and then id then by default that puts comments in the correct order because that’s all that really matters. It doesn’t matter if this person commented at 4 16 p.m and this person commented at 5 19 p.m you don’t ever really care about that all you need to know is which one of these was first, since they might be responding in order so I just use the sequential id and the date.
Alex Petit
What does "How Buildings Learn" teach us about software design in refactoring?
Derek Sivers
That the book "How Buildings Learn" by Stewart Brand emphasized that a building is never done. It’s a constant changing process. That the best buildings are the ones that are the easiest to adapt by the people that live in them. So same thing with software. There’s that brilliant talk by Rich Hickey called Simple Made Easy where he emphasizes the same thing saying that our programs are easier to change if they are less complected together if they are individual units, then we can change them more easily. I think that’s a similar lesson from the book How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand.
Alex Petit
Do you document the architecture of your code, like do you create some diagrams?
Derek Sivers
No diagrams but I do put a README file at the top, explaining to my future self, since I assume I’m the only one working on this, I try to explain to my future self what this is. Because I felt the pain of going back to a project I did five years ago and having no idea what’s going on here so now I always try to tell my future self what this is.
Alex Petit
You developed a lot of custom tools for managing many aspects of your life. You have a people database. What is the structure of this database or I should say the people table?
Derek Sivers
The people table in the database was the original inspiration for keeping everything in one place. Because at CD Baby, I saw how I had a database table called Customers and a different one called Musicians. So my clients that gave me music and the people that bought the music, those were two separate tables. But sometimes those two tables were referring to the same person. Somebody would send me their music, but they would also buy music. And the person who sent me music changed their email address. And I didn’t update the contacts of people who bought the music because I didn’t know it was the same person. So I learned from that experience that we should have one table just called people that is unique per person. And if that person leaves a comment on your website or buys something from you or signs up to be a translator, these are different roles that should refer back to that one person ID. So if that person moves from France to Vietnam or changes their email address, that it’s updated in every aspect.
Derek Sivers
So my people table is just like name, city, country, phone number. And now I even have a one-to-many relationship with the email addresses. Finally, that took me 20 years to do. I used to think that everybody should have just one main email address, but there were some people that have five different email addresses and they keep emailing me from the different ones. So finally, I now have a one-to-many relationship between the person and the email addresses. So, yeah, the people table itself is quite simple, but everything builds off of it.
Alex Petit
Is there a page where we can update, like, I was thinking about my case. For example, I emailed you with two mail addresses. How do I update this? Or do I tell you like these two emails, it’s me?
Derek Sivers
You should just tell me, right now. I figured it sounds like it would be too much trouble and create room for disaster if I let people just log in and update their email addresses. I don’t want them to change it to, you know, president@whitehouse.gov. And, you know, I’d just rather say, I just tell people to just email me from your new one and I’ll fix it.
Alex Petit
Your messaging client, do you use Mutt or still use a custom client you built yourself?
Derek Sivers
Everything is custom. I built it originally for CD Baby’s customer service. And so when I left the company, I took the code with me and still use a very changed, updated version of that. So that everybody that emails me, my database imports the actual email file off of the server, attaches it to a person in my database, inserts it into an emails table, and then I answer it from the emails database table. It’s already in there. And so when I reply, it inserts a new outgoing email in the emails database table so that I can always have this complete history of everybody’s emails since 2008 when I started this.
Alex Petit
Okay. So how does it work? It’s a client app?
Derek Sivers
It’s all just a server-side Ruby PostgreSQL web app.
Alex Petit
Okay. So it’s a web app. You have a user interface, a graphic interface.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, it’s got one user. Literally, I’m the only person allowed to log into this. So it’s an entire web app for me.
Alex Petit
So do you answer your emails directly on your server or from your local post?
Derek Sivers
Directly on the server. Because really, the act of answering an email is just inserting a reply email into the database, And then a cron job sends out the queued outgoing emails that haven’t been sent yet every 10 minutes.
Alex Petit
Oh, that’s why you answered me at 4 a.m. exactly. It was a cron job that took the email, okay, I get it now.
Derek Sivers
I didn’t know anybody ever noticed that. So, yes, you will see that all of my emails are probably sent exactly on the 10-minute mark.
Alex Petit
Do you read your email FIFO or LIFO?
Derek Sivers
Yes, first in, first out. It’s by default, I always answer the next email chronologically. So my system doesn’t even have the ability for me to jump ahead and answer a newer email. it’s always set to just give me the next oldest email that has not been answered yet.
Alex Petit
Okay. So you don’t have a letterbox. It’s like if you want to go to the next, you have to reply to.
Derek Sivers
That’s my way of keeping an empty inbox. I have to answer everything in order.
Alex Petit
Okay. So when you read something, do you say, okay, will you answer a letter? Or no, it’s just, okay, I answer now, right now.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I answer right away.
Alex Petit
The same for SMS and messages?
Derek Sivers
Yes, mostly. Yeah, I try to keep things off of my phone. I don’t use my phone very much.
Alex Petit
So the macro, you use some macro to...
Derek Sivers
Yes, I have 26 or 36 macros assigned for every alphabet letter and the zero through nine numbers. They’re my most commonly used sentences. It’s not usually a big form letter. But if I’m constantly saying, "Cool, thank you, I really appreciate it." Or if I’m constantly saying, "I’m really glad you liked my new book." Or if I’m constantly saying, "Hey, I haven’t heard from you in a few years. It’s good to hear from you again. How are you doing?" Or when people ask how I’m doing, I have a link that sends them to my now page or a link that sends them to log in at the store. All of these things are sentences that I was typing over and over and over again. So I just gave it a hotkey macro.
Alex Petit
How often do you update them?
Derek Sivers
When I need to add a new one and I’ve run out of letters I will look through my old ones to see which ones I never use anymore.
Alex Petit
So it’s not a extensible list. It’s like there is 26 and no more.
Derek Sivers
I won’t add more, yeah, that’s why I said 26 or 36. I know that I use the A to Z, and I think there are a few that I have assigned to numbers. Sometimes I change them per project. A few years ago, I was hiring a translator. So I suddenly needed four different form letters for four different levels of translators. And so then I remember I used keys number one through four for those. So I could constantly just send those shortcuts.
Alex Petit
For your podcast, how do you handle the publishing of the episode? Do you, because I think it’s available on Apple Podcasts, it’s available on several platforms.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, once again, I looked at what most people were doing and it seems that they were handing over their podcast to some service provider that would say, "No, no, no, this is all very difficult. We’ll do it for you. You just pay us money and we’ll set up your podcast." But when I looked into it, I realized a podcast is nothing more than an XML file and MP3s on a server. That’s it. So I just put my MP3s on my server and I learned how to make the XML file by hand. I output it as a static file onto my website. And then I posted it at Apple and Spotify and some of those places. I gave them the location of the XML file on my website. And voila, that’s it.
Alex Petit
That’s very simple.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Alex Petit
That’s what I did. I rushed. I said, okay, everybody use OSHA. I will use OSHA. I paid money and then I said, hmm, why did I need this?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I’ve done that too. My first version of my blog used WordPress, and after a year I thought I’m not using 95% of the features of WordPress why am I using WordPress? I can just do this myself.
Alex Petit
The most annoying part for me is that I cannot come with my own transcription. I can use the AI tool to generate the transcription So it’s like, wow, I’m paying and I can do something. It makes no sense.
Alex Petit
Is the project of making a tech independence training still active?
Derek Sivers
Yes, it’s fifth or sixth priority under some other things I’m doing now, which why it hasn’t happened much. I think it was a year and a half ago that I started the tech independence page and I did a big overhaul after six months. I made like a version 2.0 and now I need to do a version 3, which is setting up my own dedicated server and letting a few hundred people have an account on my server. So that will greatly simplify things. So I don’t have to tell people to go use an external SMTP emailing service. I can just set up my server so it can be their email sending service. And I can have shortcuts to say, for example, if you want to add another user to your account, just hit the letter A and tell me their name and I’ll create another user there. And I can show them while it’s going on here’s how it’s done here’s the script or no here’s the commands that my script is entering into the server you could do this yourself you don’t need to just type a you could manually enter these commands yourself but to save you time to show you how it works voila we’ve now entered a new user uh but in the future you can do this without my help or if this project is shut down next year and I die here’s how it’s done yourself you don’t need me for this my goal was empowering people to be self-reliant I don’t want them to be dependent on me as if i’m some replacement for dropbox or wordpress.
Alex Petit
That looks really like a great project. I’m really happy with my server now that I have it. It gives me, yeah, it makes me, I want to develop on it. I want to deploy applications on it. I learn each time I need to add something. So, okay, I will check in the documentation and I learn step by step, like at my rhythm. I really like it. I like that too. It’s probably beneficial if in the future,
Derek Sivers
When people ask me a question, like, "How do I get my SMTP server to respond to outgoing emails? It’s not working." I should probably answer it by asking an AI tool a question, then send them the link to that AI chat so they can continue asking the AI this question instead of asking me. Because right now there are some people who email me and then they wait three or four days for me to personally reply, telling them how to send an email. You know, it’s all very general stuff. It shouldn’t need to wait on me to reply.
Alex Petit
Yeah, the idea is to figure out by yourself, try to learn.
Alex Petit
You have your own replacement for Calendly.
Derek Sivers
Yes. That’s how we’re talking today at this time and this date is I sent you a link to schedule this. So, yeah, same thing with Calendly. When I started booking podcasts, I looked at Calendly for a second since everybody uses that. And again, like WordPress, I said, I don’t want all these features. And I don’t want to pay these people to do something I can do myself. And ultimately, I need to get this into my own server so that Alex, user number 43625, I know that this is my podcast interview with Alex, not some separate information entered into somebody else’s system. So it was a fun challenge to ask myself what was needed. First, I had to whitelist to say who could book time with me. So that I have to enter by hand. I enter in the ID number of the person that is allowed to book my time now. And then I entered in the dates that I’m available and the times that I’m available. And then, yeah, when you asked if we could do this podcast, I said I decided yes. Then I entered your ID number into my system to say, OK, Alex is allowed to book my time. And then I sent you the link so that you could choose what time worked for you.
Alex Petit
Do you use it only for incoming inquiries or do you use it also?
Derek Sivers
Actually, specifically only use it for this, for podcasts.
Alex Petit
Okay.
Derek Sivers
Maybe partially because of where I live in New Zealand now. I’m not meeting up with people in person. I don’t schedule phone calls. I don’t schedule meetings. I really only do these podcasts once every week and everything else is just my own free time. But if I was living in Shanghai or Bangalore and meeting with lots of people constantly, I probably would set up a system like that for meeting people in general.
Alex Petit
So, okay, it’s made for very specific use case. Arranging meeting for podcast.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, actually, when you scheduled it, it entered this time and date directly into my podcast interviews table in my database.
Alex Petit
Okay.
Derek Sivers
So it’s not general. It’s very specific.
Alex Petit
And there was a confirmation message. I received the hour in your time zone, the hour in my time zone, which is very helpful because sometimes it’s not clear what time is it. And there is a custom message. Is it automated or is it personalized?
Derek Sivers
It was all automated, yeah. I try to make it clear when you are emailing with me personally, you get my kind of like, "Cool, dude, all right, awesome. I like your questions. Love what you’re doing." That stuff is custom. But the other stuff is form letter.
Alex Petit
So about the interviews and podcasts, you did a lot. I don’t have the exact number I don’t remember but it’s maybe 200 or 300 podcasts
Derek Sivers
I think about 250 now
Alex Petit
How do you prepare when you are the guest on a podcast?
Derek Sivers
I used to need to prepare but as of the last few years I’ve gotten better at being able to do it with no preparation because many podcast hosts say have no questions prepared in advance. They like to just wing it and have a natural conversation. Whereas you, for example, had 90 questions in advance that you wanted to talk about. So I much prefer it if somebody’s able to send me the questions in advance, because then I can put aside time to think about them so that when we record, I’ve thought of a more interesting answer. Because often the more interesting answer is not the first one that comes to mind. It’s the one you think of a few minutes later. And I’d rather record the more interesting answer a few minutes later. So it’s really helpful when somebody sends the questions in advance. But because almost nobody does, I’ve gotten better at doing this with no preparation.
Alex Petit
And do you warm up before an interview? Like your voice, your energy?
Derek Sivers
No.
Alex Petit
I love the energy you bring in your interview. Something that I noticed, often the same question comes back. How do you keep it fresh?
Derek Sivers
I try to find a new angle I haven’t said before. I imagine how hard it must be to be a movie star or a rock star that gets asked the same question so often that you could either just perform your prepared answer, like Paul McCartney on stage singing "Yesterday" for the 5,000th time. I’ll bet that he doesn’t perform the song "Yesterday" different every time he performs. He just has to enjoy doing the same song over and over again for a different audience every time and enjoy the connection between him and the crowd. So that’s one approach. But another approach is to challenge yourself to never answer it the same way twice. So luckily I’m not Paul McCartney, so I can try to answer a question a different way every time.
Alex Petit
It’s something that comes back also with smalltalk. We often ask the same question, like, how is your week? Often the same questions. So, yeah, I was wondering. Yeah, two interesting approaches.
Derek Sivers
Here in New Zealand, a common question that strangers will ask you at the supermarket is, "Are you having a busy week?" And that question always confuses me. Am I having a busy week? I don’t know. Busy by what measure? What does busy mean? That I have scheduled too much that I don’t have time for? That my schedule is overflowing? I don’t understand the question. So instead, I’ve had to just create a nothing answer that says, like, "Oh, yep, how are you? How are you doing? Oh, yep. How about you?" I think it’s just to fill the silence because it’s just coming from a stranger that asks the same question of everybody that passes their till every minute of every day so I don’t think they really want to hear my personal answer.
Alex Petit
What do the interviews you enjoyed the most have in common?
Derek Sivers
Questions that challenge me to think of something I’ve never thought of before. Like your first question won me over about developing solo versus developing on a team. I never had honestly thought about that before. And that was really fun to think about how it is different for me to not be on a team. And then your other tech questions won me over. So those are my favorite when people ask me questions that make me go somewhere new.
Alex Petit
What’s a question you wish someone would ask you but never does?
Derek Sivers
Oh, it would have to be something I never would have thought of, so I can’t give the answer to that.
Alex Petit
I love how you play with your voice - you speak fast, slow, loud. It’s very playful. Is that from your singing background or reading books to your son? Do you have any tips on how to improve?
Derek Sivers
First, thank you. I think it’s from being a social person in big cities, high social situations where you have to learn to be interesting or else lose attention. So maybe it’s 30 years of me socializing in big cities. Teaches me to try to be interesting. Although notice, I’m actually speaking more slowly now than I ordinarily would because I’m aware that we’re recording this and I’m going to edit the transcript of this. So I started watching my words more carefully after I spent many hours trying to edit transcripts of me stumbling through an answer. I’ve learned to slow down, pick my words more carefully in order to make a better transcription.
Alex Petit
How do you transcribe your podcasts?
Derek Sivers
I use a computer to do the first round of the transcription, and then I painstakingly go through it by hand. It takes almost as long as the length of the interview for me to go through and edit the transcription carefully. Two-hour interview means about two hours to edit it. That’s after a computer has done the first draft, because I want it to very accurately represent what we meant to say. Even if I stumbled and said a wrong word, I want the transcription to be the definitive record of what we talked about today. So that future AIs can be trained on the transcription.
Alex Petit
And how much do you get? Do you keep everything or do you use to cut a lot of things? Do you cut 10%, 20%, 50%?
Derek Sivers
Oh, 99%. I keep almost everything. Unless there was a half-started, abandoned sentence or too many fillers like, "um, uh, you know." I just cut those.
Alex Petit
I’ve tried to do it. Everybody says, don’t do that. You lose your time. It’s very interesting because when I use a lot of field words, then I have the pain of removing them. So I’m incentive to not say them.
Derek Sivers
Yes, exactly. And I’m also editing these myself instead of hiring someone else to do it so that I can feel the pain from saying too many filler words. I want to feel the pain myself to motivate myself to stop using filler words in the moment. And going through the transcription also helps me reflect back on that conversation and how I can do it better next time. It’s all very important. I considered hiring someone else to do it, but I think it’s really good self-improvement to do it myself.
Alex Petit
Yeah, we could compare the transcription of this.
Derek Sivers
I’m happy to give you mine. I’ll do the painful work and send it to you as soon as I’m done. Because I’m going to do it myself anyway, so I’ll send it to you when we’re done. Okay.
Alex Petit
We’ll see. I think I will do it and I will compare.
Alex Petit
Where do your writing ideas come from?
Derek Sivers
Usually from ideas I’ve had that I’m trying to communicate, at first to friends. And then if friends give me good feedback and say that that’s really interesting, then I’ll go write it up on my website to email to everyone. Sometimes they’re inspired by questions that a single person asks by email. And if my answer would take a long time to write, well then instead of writing it only to that person, I write it on my website and publish so everybody can read it.
Alex Petit
And how do you approach writing? Do you draft? Do you outline? Do you write line by line?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, all of that. Line by line doesn’t come until later. But I dump all of my messy thoughts into a text document, including arguing against myself, changing my mind, taking a different angle, disagreeing with what I just wrote, Asking myself, what’s a different point of view I haven’t considered yet? I put all of that mess into one big text file until I feel exhausted, which then maybe I’ll save it and open it again next week and continue with fresh ideas. But when I feel that I’ve had enough insight that is worth sharing, Then I try to make an outline of the most important things I’m wanting to say here. I’ll make the outline and then just find a way to make the outline the final article. I’ll add just the necessary sentences that the outline needs to be complete. And then ideally just post that outline and save my readers the trouble of reading all the mess. The outline becomes the final product.
Alex Petit
But because, yeah, you don’t want to publish an outline. You add just the necessary connectors to make it like a text. Readable for you.
Derek Sivers
Necessary connectors. That was beautifully put.
Alex Petit
Do you use a grammar corrector?
Derek Sivers
Never.
Alex Petit
No spell check, no grammar check.
Derek Sivers
Just raw in my Vim terminal.
Alex Petit
And you have someone who proofreads your articles, like, to be sure the meaning is, you know?
Derek Sivers
No proofreading of articles. And for my last two books, I didn’t even have an editor for the books. I spent so much time self-editing that I knew that every word was exactly how I wanted it to be. So the idea of sending it to another editor felt silly.
Alex Petit
What advice would you give to someone who wants to develop a minimalist writing style?
Derek Sivers
Read the book, "Several Short Sentences about Writing." Read the book called "On Writing Well". Sorry, I forget the author’s name, but these are both linked from near the top of my book page, which is sive.rs/book. And on that page, I have all of my book notes sorted with my top recommendations up top. And those two books I named are two of my most favorite books ever about writing. And they both emphasize the importance of being succinct and clear. So it’s the best place to start. They can say it better than I can.
Alex Petit
"Several Short Sentences About Writing" is really unique on its kind like there is no structure on the book but it flows very I don’t know, smoothly and really really special reading really special experience
Alex Petit
Has some writing influenced how you write today?
Derek Sivers
Those books.
Alex Petit
Songwriting?
Derek Sivers
Songwriting, absolutely. I’d say the reason I write so succinctly is because I spent 15 years first writing song lyrics where usually the melody would come first and so I have only seven syllables in order to say what I want to say. It really makes you compact your message and pay attention to every single word. So I think I still write that way, as if it’s song lyrics. I don’t speak that way unless you made me self-conscious because we’re talking about the editing process, and now you can hear it. I’m slowing down even more, thinking of myself transcribing this next week. But usually, if you and I were sitting over a beer in Vietnam, I would be talking much less minimalistically, much more verbose in person.
Alex Petit
Okay, you always have this in mind, running in background like not too much work.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Alex Petit
We have to time then after.
Derek Sivers
Also because you have so many questions. If you said, "Okay, Derek, we’re going to record a podcast today. It’s one hour and I have only one question." Well, then maybe I would go on and on and on. But I know you have so many interesting questions. So I’m giving you succinct answers.
Alex Petit
What kind of day is a day without journaling?
Derek Sivers
A day where I’ve been with other people the whole time, whether that’s a day where I was with my kid from the minute he wakes me up in the morning by jumping into my bed till the minute we fall asleep together. Those days I don’t journal. Days where I’m with other people all day, I don’t journal. But even in those cases, then the next morning I will go back and write yesterday’s journal entry.
Alex Petit
Do you have a recipe for discovering a new culture?
Derek Sivers
No I’d like to do more of that. There was a beautiful book called The Geography Of Bliss - I think that’s the title - And I think the author Was Eric Weiner, and he went to Iceland for only 10 days after I had been there for a month and I felt that he discovered more insights about Icelandic culture in 10 days than I had in a month. So I emailed him and asked, "How did you do that?" And he gave me some advice but I would really like to spend many years doing that, going to places I’ve never been like Vietnam and really digging into the local culture and really asking a bunch of dumb questions until I understand it and making friends with a lot of people that grew up there and getting into good conversations, not just shallow chit-chat at the store to really help me understand places better. So I would like to develop a set of skills for helping me do that better, like he did with Iceland. But as of now, I think I’m not very good at it. But I want to get better at it.
Alex Petit
That’s really interesting. I think I’ve started with some of your advice. Somewhere, I think your advice to read a few books. Have conversations with local people. watch a documentary, watch some movies. You get a first idea of the culture.
Alex Petit
When you travel, how much do you plan or improvise?
Derek Sivers
That’s a good question. These days, I only have two kinds of travel. Either I’m traveling with my son, then almost nothing is planned. We will just go where he wants to go, and we will leave the days wide open to just wander and follow whatever he finds interesting. Maybe we’ll schedule one specific target. We’ll say, on Tuesday, we’re going to go to this Buddhist monastery. But that’s all we know. We leave everything else out in the open. So if he says, ooh, let’s go to that forest, or hey, let’s see what’s down this alleyway, we can just do that. Things are very loose. That’s one kind of travel.
Derek Sivers
The only other kind of travel I do now is social travel, where I go to a place where I know a lot of people, like Bangalore or Dubai or Shanghai. And I try to meet with as many people as I can in a short period of time because my boy doesn’t like me to be away for too long. And I don’t like to be away from him for too long. So I often go to a city like this for only six days. And in six days, I try to meet with 50 people. So I’ll meet with eight or nine people a day for six days for one or two hours each. And then fly home. So I will see nothing of the city, but I will have had in-depth conversations with 50 people. And to me, that’s worth it.
Alex Petit
The two are very different, radically different.
Alex Petit
I find it fascinating, the conversation. Who leads the conversation? Is it you? Is it the person? Does the person come with questions?
Derek Sivers
When I meet with somebody like this, it’s usually people that already know my writing or they already know me from podcasts. And we meet up and usually I’m the one filled with questions for them. I say, "OK, we’re imbalanced right now. You know more about me. I know very little about you except from your emails that you’ve sent me." Because I’m not meeting with just anybody. I handpick people that have emailed me that seem really interesting because they’ve told me something about themselves by email. But then I’m usually filled with questions for them, either about them personally or questions about this place. "What can you tell me about Bangalore culture and how does it compare with Mumbai and how does that compare with Delhi?" "Tell me about living here in Dubai" or "Tell me about growing up in China in the 1980s and 90s." I’ll have personal questions about just them and general questions about the culture.
Alex Petit
You recommend, "Au Contraire, figuring out the French." I’m French, so I’m a bit curious, like what made you really, Was there a moment where you thought, I really need help decoding these people?
Derek Sivers
I started with a book called "Watching the English" by Kate Fox. And that book was so good that it got me searching for other books like this from anywhere, about any country. And someone recommended, "Au Contraire, figuring out the French." So it wasn’t like I went looking for a book to explain the French. I just went looking for any book that explains a culture I don’t understand fully. I would love to find a book like that about New Zealand, even though I’ve lived here for 13 years. It would be fascinating to read a book like that about New Zealand culture. Maybe I’ll have to write it because there isn’t one yet. The "Au Contraire" book, I think, was the best I’ve ever read about explaining a culture because it had two co-authors, one American and one French, that have already been running a consulting business for 20 years, helping American businesses do business in France and helping French businesses do business in America. So for 20 years, they’ve already been explaining each other’s cultures to each other. And then they wrote the book. It was really ideal. It had so many surprising insights about the metaphorical importance of the rooster And the hexagon and things that I never would have noticed just from walking around. Some really wonderful deep insights. I really hope to find more books like that about so many cultures in the world. I’m only slowly now realizing that big countries like China and India might be impossible to do a book like that. Because the different regions of those huge countries are so different. Or to write a book about the Yunnan region of China is very different than the Hainan region of China. Or the Rajasthan book would be very different than the Kerala book. That really it’s an accident of history that that region we call India is just one country, whereas it could have been 27 countries. And that region we call China could have been many countries. So I think I’m learning that I need to break it down smaller if I want to understand the big places. But I found some fascinating books about Switzerland, Germany. Yeah, the France one was the best. And I’ve got a few more queued up to help me try to understand other countries. I really love this subject.
Alex Petit
Dubai was on the top 10 place where you don’t want to go. You learned about it. Now you love it. What are the nine other places on the list?
Derek Sivers
I’m glad you sent me that question in advance because I thought about it last night. Nine more places right now I do not want to go. I don’t know if this will be exactly nine, but last night I was thinking Russia, Peru, Burning Man, the Burning Man festival in Nevada, Laos, Democratic Republic of the Congo, I forget I had a few more in here but surprisingly the other one I really do not want to go to now I’d be really upset if I had to go there is the United States I really don’t want to go I have zero interest in going I’ve had a few invitations to be on some famous podcasts but I would have had to go to America to do it. So I said, no, I don’t want to go.
Alex Petit
Yeah, it’s a difficult question. I tried to answer it and I was like, I don’t know. I don’t have the places.
Derek Sivers
But see, there are some in that list - like Russia as an example: Right now, I’m inherently not interested in Russia. It sounds like a place I don’t want to go. I don’t want to get to know. But just realizing that in myself now makes me a little interested in it, because I assume that it must be a blind spot in my understanding of the world. But some of the ones I named like Peru, Costa Rica, I don’t want to go there because it seems to me like there’s just not much going on there. It’s not that interesting. It’s not a vibrant culture. It’s not an influential culture. There’s just not that much to captivate me. But again, once I put that into a list, I have to doubt it. Maybe Costa Rica and Peru are fascinating. Maybe Central Democratic Republic of Congo is a fascinating place that I would love getting to know. I try to let my prejudices guide me by steering into them instead of away from them. Once I notice I’m prejudiced against a place or a subject, that makes me more likely to want to look into it instead of avoid it.
Alex Petit
You were a professional musician for 10 years. Then you fully shifted into building CD Baby. You gave all your material, your recorders, your guitars. What place does music have in your life now?
Derek Sivers
It’s a language I speak. That’s about it. I can still occasionally get excited if I hear a piece of music on the radio that I think is brilliant. Like just last week I heard a song called Vampires by Olivia Rodrigo that I’ve listened to 20 times since then because it’s a fascinating melody that builds and builds and builds and builds and builds and then falls in three lines and then builds again I’ve never heard a melody quite like it before. So I still speak that language of the craft of music. So I can appreciate it the way that somebody who trained as a carpenter for 20 years can appreciate a well-built chair, but I’m not playing music anymore.
Alex Petit
Okay. Do you sing sometimes or not? Neither?
Derek Sivers
No. Neither.
Alex Petit
And do you listen to music when you work?
Derek Sivers
Never. Nothing. Not even instrumental music, because even the simplest instrumental music distracts me because it’s a language I speak. I think about this when you’re in a place like Vietnam, where I assume you do not speak Vietnamese. And so if some people are talking at the cafe next to you, you’re able to fully focus in your French because the Vietnamese noise going on in the background is just noise. And if you were fluent in Vietnamese, it would be very distracting. Or if you were sitting in a cafe in France, it would be very distracting to listen to people talking right next to you about some crap in their lives that’s distracting you because you know the language. So that’s what music is to me. I know the language so well that I can’t have it on in the background because there’s no such thing as background. To have music playing anywhere makes me tune into it because I understand it.
Alex Petit
Yeah, that’s why people recommend that you can listen to music but only instrumental. That’s because most of the people, they don’t speak this language, so that’s okay.
Derek Sivers
I speak the instrumental language too.
Alex Petit
But even when you don’t speak it i’ve noticed that the level of energy is not always aligned with my level of energy sometimes it’s higher sometimes it’s slower sometimes I want to skip it anyway so yeah I like it but um when I do this I know that I i know that i’m not really working anymore.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I’d rather just give a piece of music my full attention later. Like literally lay down and close my eyes and just listen to it instead of having it on while I’m supposed to be doing other things.
Alex Petit
That’s what I’ve tried doing after reading the book The Power of Less. to really do one thing at a time no but when I listen to music and I try to only listen at the music and I notice that instead of listening for music to music for one hour I just listen like three songs i’m really focused on it and yeah I enjoy them and then I do something else then
Derek Sivers
Yeah it’s more intense. But there are some things - like say if i’m riding on my exercise bicycle - like It’s raining outside - I have an exercise bike so I can go get one hour of cardio exercise - or even if I’m walking on my usual walking path through the forest next to me: it’s a good time to put on something I can listen to, whether it’s a Chinese lesson or a podcast or music, because the physical thing I’m doing takes no attention at all. I’m just pushing my legs on a bicycle or I’m just walking on the same path I’ve walked 20 times before. It takes none of my attention, so I’m able to give my full attention to what I’m listening to. But, for example, I could never listen to music while walking through a place I’ve never been before.
Alex Petit
You damaged your hearing at 13. How did it show up in your life? What’s the impact of it?
Derek Sivers
It’s there all the time. Like right now, as soon as you asked about it, yep, I listened and there it is. A high tone in my hearing at all times. And, same as you, it makes it harder for me to distinguish an individual voice in a crowd, which means I spend less time in crowded places. I much prefer one-on-one conversations like this. I’d be happy to have hundreds of one-on-one conversations and never be in a group crowded setting in a bar with a hundred people. It’s exhausting to be in a noisy crowd for even five minutes. But having one-on-one conversations like this? If they’re interesting, I could do this almost indefinitely.
Alex Petit
The same happened to me but later like I was 26 uh but and I used to go a lot in clubs noisy environment a lot of parties it changed my lifestyle a lot but maybe I think maybe at first it was like terrified I was a bit worried but maybe it was a gift in fact because no I’m more yeah I have more healthy lifestyle I work more so I don’t know maybe it was a gift
Derek Sivers
That’s a great way to think about it.
Alex Petit
"How to Live" is one of my favorite books. I read it three times last year. It’s really deep. I don’t try to make bookmarks because you end up bookmarking the whole book. Actually, I do bookmark it, but then I trash it because there is almost all the books. I say, okay, I will come back to it later. How often do you revisit it?
Derek Sivers
I’d say once a year. I should revisit it more. Because every time I do, it’s so helpful. At the time I wrote that in 2021, I put everything I had ever learned, every important lesson I’d ever learned in my life, I found a way to fit it into that book. So now, since finishing it, I’m on to new things and I wrote Useful Not True and I was thinking of other things. But then I go back and I read a chapter of How to Live. It blows me away with how important those lessons are to me. So it’s a beautiful reminder to make that wisdom surface again in my life, to stay at the forefront of my mind.
Alex Petit
You listen to music with an analytical ear. Do you experience the same thing with reading?
Derek Sivers
Yes, to a fault. There are some books that might have a good message, but if I hate the way the author writes, I find it hard to get through the book. It’s like listening to a song with a terrible singer. Maybe that’s a good song, but if you can’t stand the singer, it’s so hard to get through it. You can see on my book page that I mentioned earlier on my website. There are some down at the bottom of the list because they’re sorted in my order of recommendation. The ones at the bottom of the list, there have been some where I’ve had to abandon the book early just because I hated the author’s writing style. I just couldn’t get past it.
Alex Petit
Moby Dick, the book: Everybody says it’s great, but the sentences, they are very long. And I went up to 30%. I just gave up. I was like, I cannot do more. Someone told me, but it’s just when it starts, I was like, oh, I can’t, I cannot. But to be fair with the book, I read the French version, so maybe it’s better in English.
Derek Sivers
Probably not.
Alex Petit
Do you skim when you already know about the topic or do you always read cover to cover?
Derek Sivers
Cover to cover, but I’ve just recently started taking a new approach to books, where the first time I hear of a book, I will find a way to download the EPUB of the book, which lets me unzip it into plain text. And then I feed the plain text chapter by chapter into an LLM and tell it to give me a summary of each chapter. I find that’s better than asking an LLM to summarize the whole book for you, is to feed it a chapter at a time and say, summarize this chapter for me. Then I read the summary and decide if that’s enough for me. It turns a book into an article, which often is enough. But if the subject is really interesting, then I will sit down and read the whole book cover to cover. It becomes a beautiful way to preview a book like standing in a bookstore and skimming the entire book. If you can imagine spending 10 or 15 minutes really flipping through a whole book to decide if you really want to spend 10 or 15 hours with this, LLMs are helping the summary become like skimming.
Alex Petit
Okay. And you don’t need to take a subscription to a third service that provides you a summary.
Derek Sivers
No, yeah, I wouldn’t. I guess I could do that. You’re right. That would be another way of doing that. But I like managing it myself because then I can ask the LLM for examples. There was a book about China that many people recommended, and I asked for a summary, and then I was able to ask a few more questions. Like, is the tone of this book generally negative and critical? And it was able to tell me, oh, yes, the main point of the book is that it’s highly critical of the Chinese Communist Party. And it is very opposed to this. And it talks about the Chinese government as a threat to American flourishing. I went, OK, never mind. Thank you. That helps me know I don’t feel like reading this book. I don’t need yet another source telling me that China is the enemy of the American way. I don’t want to read that book. So that helped me not read it because I was able to ask some follow-up questions.
Alex Petit
What’s the current composition of your wardrobe?
Derek Sivers
I have maybe five t-shirts, one pair of jeans, one pair of shorts, three pairs of socks, eight pairs of underwear, three shoes, and two jackets, and a few of these turtlenecks. Oh, and a hat. That’s what I’ve got.
Alex Petit
It’s quite a small quantity. Do you wash them by hand or with the machine?
Derek Sivers
Machine.
Alex Petit
Because I’m asking, it’s a bit weird question. I’m asking because now that I travel, I took the last thing possible with me. So I have just, yeah, one tent, one trough, three t-shirts, three underwears, and I try to wash them by hand.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, it makes sense.
Alex Petit
Yeah, but you know, it’s a tropical country. do a lot of sports so I i wash them like every day.
Derek Sivers
My friend tynan you can see his website at tynan.com - Tynan travels with one shirt one pair of underwear one pair of socks, and travels the whole world that way so it is his daily routine at night he washes his only shirt in the sink, washes his underwear in the sink, hangs them out to dry and goes to sleep, and puts them on the next day. This is his daily routine when traveling. It’s impressive. We do not all need to imitate Tynan, but it’s interesting to know that that’s a possibility.
Alex Petit
I was thinking about this, about the minimalism and dating. I was like... Last time I went on a date, I was like, okay, I only love a jean. You saw my pants, a t-shirt. It’s very casual. We’ll see. Do you think minimalism is compatible with dating?
Derek Sivers
If you meet somebody that appreciates that about you. A lot of people admire minimalists and they’re envious of somebody who has been able to draw the line and say no to some things that they find themselves unable to say no to. I think it feels like a weakness to a lot of people that they aren’t able to say no to having more stuff in their life. But many people also feel the opposite, where they think minimalists are crazy and they would never want to live with one because that would be too annoying to have somebody criticizing the amount of their stuff. A lot of people like their physical comforts and they like collecting knickknacks and having lots of different clothing. So somebody like that might find it annoying to live with a minimalist. So if this is truly your tendency then dating while being a minimalist would help filter out somebody that wouldn’t like that anyway.
Alex Petit
It’s polarizing.
Derek Sivers
Polarizing. Good word.
Alex Petit
In your in your exchange with Mark Manson in Auckland you said that dating was a main focus for a long time. What changed? Is it having experienced many relations? Is it becoming a dad?
Derek Sivers
I think it’s being old. I think I am in the last third or the last quarter of my life now, so everything has a sense of urgency. I bounce out of bed at five o’clock in the morning sometimes four o’clock because there’s so much I want to do in every day, and so little time. I have such a sense of urgency that I can’t waste a single hour on something unessential. Somebody tried to show me a video game that they love and I tried playing it for five minutes and I ended up getting really upset because this was five minutes of my life that could be spent doing the other things I want to do, instead of this stupid game. Even if it’s fun, it’s pulling me away from my ultimate deeper goals. And so that’s how I see dating now, which is maybe if I were to suddenly find a soulmate, somebody that gets me like I’ve never been got before and vice versa, that could be nice. I’m not wanting that. And so spending time looking for that feels like wasted time.
Alex Petit
Yeah, it’s a lot of time and energy. Have you ever used a dating app?
Derek Sivers
Long ago, yes. Long ago, I tried them all. When I became single for the first time in 2014, I tried them all for a while. It’s very disappointing, isn’t it?
Alex Petit
About your friendship, why have most of your best friends been women?
Derek Sivers
I think there’s an emotional intimacy that’s on the verge of romantic. It’s not quite romantic, but it’s not entirely not.
Alex Petit
Who usually calls? Is it you or your friend?
Derek Sivers
Either one. 50-50.
Alex Petit
What’s a key ingredient in your long-term remote friendships? Is it a shared interest? Is it a behavior?
Derek Sivers
Curiosity. I’ve noticed that the people that I become best friends with are the ones that are filled with questions. "Why do we do this? Why do we that? What is this? Have you ever wondered about this?" I can relate best to people that are filled with questions.
Alex Petit
About you but also about life in general?
Derek Sivers
Life in general. Not so much about me, unless it’s what are your thoughts on this subject - on life in general. People that are filled with questions about life in general are my kind of people.
Alex Petit
I find it easy to meet new people, but how to make time for old friends? Do you have any advice?
Derek Sivers
Schedule. One of my old friends would make me laugh when she’d say, "Are you available next Thursday at 7pm?" I said "You’re crazy. You’re the only person I know that schedules weeks in advance." She said, "Well if I don’t do this, you and I will lose touch. So are you available next Thursday at 7pm?" I’d say yes I am. And in hindsight I’m really glad she did that because she was right - that otherwise we would have lost touch. And now we have. She stopped scheduling, and now I haven’t talked to her in 12 years.
Alex Petit
You met so many people - you did a lot of one on one in Singapore. You met hundreds of people. When you do social traveling you recorded a lot of podcasts.
Derek Sivers
Only four of them became ongoing friends. So it’s a very high bar to actually trade phone numbers and become dear friends. It’s really only one out of every 100 or 200 people do I really get that close with where we become good phone friends.
Alex Petit
You cannot be close friends with 100 people.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Or you’d have to change your definition of what is a close friend.
Alex Petit
Do you try to keep up with the people you met? Do you have any process to reach out?
Derek Sivers
I don’t, but I would like to. I wrote about it in my first book - when it was a career technique for keeping in touch in the music industry, which is built on hundreds of connections in your local city to get gigs as a musician. You have to keep in touch with hundreds of people. So I wrote about this in the past, but on a friendship level, I don’t do that, but I should. Especially the people that I have sat down for one or two hours with one-on-one and talked to, I would like to keep up with them better because I got to know them a bit. I care about them. It’s not just another email in my inbox. It’s a person I sat with for two hours. So I don’t have a system now, but I would like to.
Alex Petit
I came across a system once that was really smart, I thought. It was in Notion. I didn’t implement it on my own yet. But the guy, he used to, for each people, to say, how often do I want to keep in touch with them? Is it like every week, every six months, every one year? And so he has a reminder. He has a task list and tasks pop when, ah, next one year you have to just send in a message.
Derek Sivers
That’s ideal. I think that’s what the ideal system looks like.
Alex Petit
Yeah. Not implemented yet.
Derek Sivers
Not yet.
Alex Petit
Do you offer to help every person you meet?
Derek Sivers
Not really. No. No, when I’m meeting with somebody, I try to just give them my whole present self. I think an offer to help would be committing my future self, which I might not be able to follow up on unless I had a team of assistants that I could tell my assistant to go help this person. But I don’t think I’d want to commit my future self to doing a big task. I’d rather just engage with that person fully in the moment. And hopefully create the environment where if they really needed help that they would ask.
Derek Sivers
I actually don’t like it when I meet somebody that says, "Let me know if I can help in any way." It seems to be more of a business-y thing to say. You don’t say that with your dearest friends. You don’t say, "Let me know if I can help in any way." That’s a given when you have a real friendship. "Let me know if I can help in any way" is something you say to business contacts as a way of inviting future business-y communication. So I’ve always felt a little off-put when somebody says that. It seems to take it out of personal and into business.
Alex Petit
You are already retired. I’m broke. Is it a good idea to follow your advice?
Derek Sivers
No. Do not follow any of my advice for money. I don’t know anything about making money. I haven’t made any money since 2007. You could maybe argue I haven’t initiated the making of any money since I started CD Baby in 1998. Yes, CD Baby made a lot of money, but that was something I made in 1998. And all the money I made in the next 10 years was just following on from that initial building of the company. I feel that almost everybody on the internet has good advice about making money, except me.
Alex Petit
What’s the secret of your enthusiasm? My theory is that you always move towards what excites you, but I’m not sure. Do you agree?
Derek Sivers
I think that’s right. There are thousands of things that don’t interest me enough. Like AI right now. AI itself, I find mildly interesting, but not super interesting. So you won’t hear me talking about it, because if you asked me an AI question, I would push it away with a short answer and we would not spend too much time on it. But you ask me about "Figuring out the French" or about understanding cultures around the world, I have a lot to say about that and a lot to ask about that because it interests me so much. So I get to just follow my intrinsic interests. And intrinsic being the main point that these are things that I’m internally driven to learn more about, not extrinsic, which would be doing it for some other purpose. Like "If I learn about AI, then I can make big money." Or "If I learn Chinese, I can make a lot of money in China." Those are extrinsic motivations, which I have had plenty of in the past. There’s nothing wrong with them. I spent years extrinsically motivated by wanting to be famous or rich as a musician. But now everything I do is just intrinsically motivated.
Alex Petit
Okay, so both work. But maybe, yeah, what’s intrinsic motivates you more. Yeah, it motivates you more.
Alex Petit
Have you ever done therapy?
Derek Sivers
No not at all.
Alex Petit
Maybe it’s just talking with friends and having deep conversations?
Derek Sivers
And lots of journaling in a way I later learned is called cognitive behavioral therapy. That’s how I’ve been journaling for 30 years - very similar to CBT - which is cognitive behavioral therapy, which is writing down my beliefs, questioning the beliefs, learning where those beliefs might have come from. That’s what my journal often looks like when I’m going through any difficult times. So maybe I have been doing therapy, but just not with a therapist.
Alex Petit
So how do you identify your belief? It’s just something that is not a fact, statement?
Derek Sivers
Well, that’s the subject of my new book called Useful Not True. It was all about that. Where we say things like "this situation sucks" or "I need to move to Vietnam" or "there are no good women here in Australia" - people say these things as if they are facts, and they often shape their life around them. They say, "I’ve got to get out of here because nobody here is ambitious. This is a terrible place to start a company. I need to leave." But all of those statements I just made are not true. They’re just one way of looking at it. So I think it helps you to see that your own statements aren’t true, that they are just one perspective and other people’s statements are not true. That if somebody else says, "Alex, you can’t do that, Alex, you’re not qualified. Alex, we’re not hiring." You need to also understand that those statements are not true. They’re just one perspective. They’re one way of looking at it. So that was the subject of my "Useful Not True" book. And it’s also the subject of 30 years of journaling: my own thoughts and feelings and pointing out to myself that those are not true.
Alex Petit
So journaling helps you catch yourself, catch them, catch your beliefs.
Alex Petit
What’s a belief that was hard to reframe?
Derek Sivers
I don’t need to make money anymore. I still found myself trying to monetize my interests. And it took me a long time to realize that that’s irrational because when I sold my company, it gave me more money than I will ever be able to spend. So doing anything for the money ever again is irrational. That was a hard one to realize.
Alex Petit
Do you still have beliefs that hold you back?
Derek Sivers
Probably, but I don’t know what they are. Otherwise, I would have addressed it.
Alex Petit
Do you believe writing is hard?
Derek Sivers
No. It’s work to edit something beautifully so that you can succinctly and beautifully get an idea from your head into someone else’s head. That can be work and it can be hard. But writing itself should be no harder than speaking. The concept of writer’s block is silly. Nobody ever has speakers block. You just start talking to your friend. And so I think it should be the same thing on a page. You can just start talking into words on a page. Now we can use a computer to transcribe our voice into text. So we really can just talk. There should be no more writer’s block ever again. It’s just an outdated idea that writing is hard. If you get too caught in the world of academia and trying to please a harsh jury of teachers. That might be terrible training for reading because it will kill your enthusiasm for writing, I mean, not reading. But just writing in a journal every day, writing emails even, it’s good practice to remind you as simple as speaking.
Alex Petit
And what’s easier, reading or practicing for you?
Derek Sivers
Practicing what?
Alex Petit
Practicing. Like reading is a bit in the theoretical field. Practicing is putting in action. Like coding, for example, is practicing.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, practicing is harder. Practicing, your ass is on the line. It’s active, whereas reading is just passive
Alex Petit
Is there a belief you sometimes question - whether it helps or hurts?
Derek Sivers
All the time, almost every day. That’s a constant subject in my journal, whether it’s about parenting or a social issue of the day or a work thing even a programming thing still. I love questioning the fundamentals of things I’m programming.
Derek Sivers
I’ll tell you a recent one that I’m working on literally right now. As we get off the phone today I’m going to go right back to programming this thing which was that I was keeping data in my database and I was using a separate language to get the data out of the database and then use HTML templates to convert the data from the database into strings that I could put into an HTML template. It’s a very common way of doing things, right? But I was having so much trouble trying to use the Go programming language because it’s a static and pulling the information out of the database in static types and converting everything to strings and parsing JSON to do that was so hard in Go that it made me question the entire way of doing things. That if the hard part was converting things from JSON to strings, And just to put it into an HTML template, I thought, maybe I don’t need to do it at all. So what I’m working on right now is making the PostgreSQL database itself parse the mustache templating language so that it will return HTML documents ready to show to the browser already. Do that all inside PostgreSQL so that the programming language doesn’t need to translate everything twice. It can just get it directly from PostgreSQL.
Alex Petit
Yes, questioning the usual way we do things.
Derek Sivers
Yes, it’s really fun. Even if doing things a new way is not the best, it’s fun to explore. It’s like being an artist in the 1920s saying, well, "Do we need to have our paintings be an accurate representation of what our eyes see? Do we need, as a writer, to have our words fully describe everything that’s being seen?" It’s wonderful to question these things artistically, not judging whether this is the right or the wrong answer, but just trying it to see how it goes.
Alex Petit
Yeah. And it’s harder when you’re in a team because if anybody plays like an artist, the team goes nowhere.
Alex Petit
Your personal knowledge: where did you learn to organize your notes? Is there any thinker that shaped your system?
Derek Sivers
David Allen, Getting Things Done. My system is still based on the recommendations that I got 20 years ago from the book called Getting Things Done by David Allen. Everything is still in that format. I have my inbox of things that can be done in two minutes, my projects folder of the projects that I’m doing right now that take many sub-steps, and then my someday folder and my waiting on folder. And everything else just gets put into an archive of reference material that I might want to do someday, maybe never.
Alex Petit
When it comes to learning with Anki, How do you balance definition versus example when you create cards, when you create flashcards?
Derek Sivers
I think, I don’t know. I think I try both. Sometimes a definition is the new information for me. So I’ll make a separate card just for the definition of a term I’ve never heard before. And then later I’ll have an example that I write that might use that. But I’ll do both. Yeah, when in doubt, I figure if you make multiple cards in Anki, if we trust the algorithm that if something’s easy, well, then you mark it as easy, it gets pushed into the distant future. Maybe you’ll only ever see that card once every two years from now on if it’s too easy. I’d rather make too many cards instead of too few.
Alex Petit
The mistake I did when I learned Python with flashcards is that I created too many cards.
Derek Sivers
Too much work to do it each day?
Alex Petit
Yeah. And I couldn’t keep up. I created like 1,600 cards.
Derek Sivers
Shit.
Alex Petit
I was like, okay, we never go through all of them.
Derek Sivers
I try to never create more than 20 cards per day.
Alex Petit
Yeah. But it was the first time I worked with Anki. So you do a lot of mistakes.
Derek Sivers
You have to learn the hard way.
Alex Petit
But today I think what I would, yeah, my process is that I try to get through the material. I take some notes. If there is things that come back often, I will create cheat sheet. So once they are in my knowledge bed, I can reach them, like I just press search the name of the concept. And I have the cheat sheet, like for Git, for example. I open the note git.md, and I have all the commands I use the most often. And if it’s really something I need to learn, I will create a card.
Derek Sivers
Well, it’s good. We’ve had a fascinating two-hour conversation. So thank you so much for all of these questions. I really, really appreciate how much time and effort you spent thinking of all these questions, gathering all these questions, preparing for the conversation. It’s really an honor.
Alex Petit
So thank you. Yeah, it was my pleasure. Maybe do we want to close with one last question?
Derek Sivers
If you have one last question you want?
Alex Petit
Yeah, one of my favorite takeaway from you is whatever scares you, go do it. What scares you today?
Derek Sivers
Moving to India and moving to China. It is my plan for myself when my boy doesn’t need me here in New Zealand anymore. I’m laying the groundwork and getting the visas so I can move to China and try to live only in Chinese, speaking only Chinese. It’s terrifying, but that’s what I like about it.
Alex Petit
Yeah, sounds like a nice project.