Victory Degree
host: Nik Atanackovic
Social media, pleasing the algorithm is not worth the price, virtual progress, run the program, no need to struggle, entrepreneur is moot, expire your labels quickly, death as a tool for focus.
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Transcript:
Nik Atanackovic
Derek, welcome to the podcast.
Derek Sivers
Nik, thanks for having me.
Nik Atanackovic
I am so excited. Listen, if you go back and look at my old podcast episodes, I typically say that I'm excited for every guest, but this one has a little bit of a different flavor to it.
Derek Sivers
But this time you mean it.
Nik Atanackovic
Exactly. This time I'm actually genuine. No, all kidding aside, very excited for this conversation. Very excited for the topics that we're going to get into today. I think it's going to be very helpful to my audience. and hopefully you have a good time as well. Part of my job is to make sure that you have fun answering some of my questions.
Nik Atanackovic
If someone has just clicked on this, Derek, and they're looking at you and they're saying, I have no idea who this is or anything about his background, why should they stick around and listen to what you have to say?
Derek Sivers
It doesn't matter who I am. Ideally, it really doesn't matter at all. The ideas themselves are what really matter. My favorite nonfiction authors, I don't even know who they are. And in fact, I don't care. I don't even usually bother to go read the bio and find out more about this person. The ideas themselves are all that really matter. So conversely, if some billionaire says some vapid shit, I'm not going to glorify it because they're a billionaire. All that really matters are the ideas themselves and if they are useful to you.
Nik Atanackovic
It's interesting you bring that up because we live in this age of social media where people's follower counts are posted for the public to see. And oftentimes, the people with the most followers, whatever they say, seems to stick with people more and holds a little more weight than those with, let's say, less followers, I'd say by and large. What's interesting is if you were to just pick up a book, you don't know, to your point, oftentimes who the author is, if they have a large following, if they don't, if this is their first book, if this is their last book, how many books they've written. You are just enamored with their ideas and with the actual contents of the book. Have you given that much thought or just in this age of social media, just some of the information that gets thrown around on the interwebs?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, a lot. I think about filters. See, I'm not in the age of social media because I just don't put myself there. I'm not on it. I don't use it. I've never had a social media app on my phone. I just don't do it. I looked into it like 18 years ago, 15 years ago. I just didn't like it. So I never did it. So I hear that other people are very engaged in that world and constantly connected and getting little tweets and drips all day long of stuff. I am so glad I don't live that way. But I am thankful for the people that do and then filter the noise into letting someone like me know what is the best book or the best movie that is really worth my time. And then I only read those things.
Nik Atanackovic
Why stay away from social media?
Derek Sivers
I just don't like the sound of it. I don't like the drama. Same reason I've watched a reality TV show once for about five minutes and hated it and just never watched one again. I just don't like drama for the sake of drama.
Nik Atanackovic
Do you ever feel like you're missing out?
Derek Sivers
Oh, I love missing out. It's a great feeling, missing out because... We're all defined in relation to other things. So what you choose to not do defines you as much as what you choose to do. So I love knowing every day the noise I am not subjecting myself to, the noise I am successfully avoiding.
Nik Atanackovic
One of the most interesting things, obviously, in research for this podcast. I mean, I had known this before, but I was reminded because I went to try and find you on Instagram. and you do have a profile, but I believe in the description, it just says, Hey, not using this right now, reach out to me at, you know, uh, your website. So it's, um, yeah, you're, I mean, I'm sure there are probably hundreds of other people who may be abstained from social media, but you are one of the more interesting examples because you are externally - people would define you as successful. Um, you've built a company, you've sold a company, you've written multiple great books so you are you do have the success behind you but yet it seems like you don't care that much for fame. Is that is that an accurate statement?
Derek Sivers
I used to. We all have a set point that we're happy with, hopefully. If you had no money you'd want more money. And maybe if you had just a little money, you'd want more money. But at a certain point, hopefully, you'd get to a point where you'd say, "that's enough money for me. I don't need to keep beating myself to death to make more money. I'm happy with the amount of money I have." So it can be the same thing with fame. If I was completely obscure, I think I would want to go make a name for myself. In fact, I highly recommend it to almost everybody. I think it's great. By putting yourself out there like you're doing right now, like I'm doing right now, you become a magnet for other really interesting people that find you. And you get emails from Belgium or Uganda from somebody that finds your ideas and is also really interesting. And you get into interesting conversations or make sincere friendships with people that find you because putting yourself out into the world like this. So some amount of fame is great. But some people want more. I'm sure there are many Hollywood actors that would not have been happy until they reached A-level status. But, yeah, I'm the kind of guy that wanted enough fame to get here, but don't want more. I have enough. I like the amount I have. It's just right.
Derek Sivers
But wait, hold on. Before we switch subjects, there is another interesting point, because you started out talking about social media. So none of us wants money or fame at any cost, right? Like you don't want to have to go around giving blowjobs for money to get rich. You think "That's not worth it. That's not what I want. No amount of money is worth that." So that's how I feel about social media. Like, yes, I want some amount of public profile, but I am not willing to suck the algorithm's dick to get it.
Nik Atanackovic
I think we just end the podcast there. On that note. That's it. That's the pod. Derek, thanks for coming on. We end it there. And I will clip that and post on social media. Perfect. How ironic.
Nik Atanackovic
There is something to be said, obviously, about what you're saying. And it reminds me of, I believe, Tim Ferriss, who I'm a huge fan of, wrote a blog post way back when about the dangers of fame and some of the downsides of fame. Can you just, through your own lens, and then also from Tim's blog post, kind of give us an overview of some of the downsides of fame? And I ask because I think it is a North Star for a lot of people. And I'm also reminded, I believe Chris Williamson had this quote, get rich and then see if you still want to be famous. And I think a lot of people correlate fame and money and they say, well, if I can only get fame, then I will be able to get the money. But as you and I both know, you can achieve the money without the fame. But nowadays, it just seems like it's both. You can't do one without the other. So I say all of that to bring us to the question of some of the downsides of fame, some of the things that people don't really consider when they think about what it means to be famous.
Derek Sivers
Okay, I have lots of thoughts on this.
Derek Sivers
Tim's blog about the dangers of fame should be taken as the report from like an adventurer that was climbing mountains and pushed himself a little too far, and now he's lost a toe to frostbite or lost a foot in a puddle of lava. So he, in the name of self-improvement and self-challenge and adventure, pushed his fame plan a little too far, where he got too much recognition. And that's why that article that he wrote is so brilliant, because it's the report from someone who went too far. It's a cautionary tale. And now he's deliberately dialed it back a bit. He's trying to find the place that he's comfortable with.
Derek Sivers
I love cautionary tales. A good money cautionary tale is a book called How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis that I really took to heart just as I was selling my company for $22 million in 2008. I stumbled across this book called How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis. And I'm so glad I did. This guy made $700 million in publishing and was an old man in his 60s or 70s when writing this book near the end of his life, holding nothing back, saying, yes, I made a ton of money, but if I could do it all again, I would have stopped after the first 20 or 30 million because everything after that has just been a waste of time. It didn't make me any happier. I do wish I could go back and just stop after my first 20 million and spend the rest of my life writing poetry and planting trees. That's what he said. So reading that just as I was selling my company for 20 million, I heeded his cautionary tale and I stopped. I took his advice and I did not go any further. I have not made any money since 2008. I'm officially, as far as a government tax form is concerned, I'm retired, meaning I don't do anything for money anymore. And it's because of that book. So I think same with fame. You could read Tim's article and ask yourself, is this worth it? Do I want to pursue fame to that level? And if not, then what level?
Nik Atanackovic
Funny you bring up that book because I'm currently about halfway through it. Sitting right here on my desk. Fantastic read. I'm trying to see where I want to go with this because there's a bunch of different ways by the way I know that that these are none of the questions I had sent you ahead of time so
Derek Sivers
Yeah, audience, Nik emailed me his questions and I saw them an hour before we hit record today and I'm so glad I did because it was really interesting. When given the questions in advance, I try to go past my first answer and think of a better answer that would make a more interesting listen for you, the listener.
Nik Atanackovic
And I promise we'll get to them because there are a lot of interesting facts in there.
Nik Atanackovic
What should people be asking themselves if they're deciding whether or not fame is for them?
Derek Sivers
Well, first, it's not easy. So, like people that say that they want passive income, like, well, just focus on the income first. You can work on the passive thing later. But income is not just a given. It's not that easy. You can just say, oh, yeah, I just want to get a lot of income with no effort. I don't want to do anything for my income. Can you just make that happen? Just bring me that passive stuff I don't have to work for? If it was that easy, everybody would do it. It's the same thing with fame. You're not rewarded with people's attention unless you're doing something interesting enough that they find it beneficial to give you their attention.
Derek Sivers
First, be honest with yourself. If it's something you actually want, then you've got to think of what you can do that's interesting enough to earn their attention. So start with that, because maybe you don't have anything. I know plenty of wonderful people, some of my best friends, don't have anything that the general public or even a niche public would find that interesting. And so they don't put themselves out there. They just save all their wonderfulness for a few dear friends like me. So you just got to ask yourself if it's worth it and then probably just go try it. Try it and see if you like it in reality, not just in theory.
Nik Atanackovic
Yeah, the trying part is I think where a lot of people get tripped up on. And I've seen it with my own experience, certainly. There's been multiple, multiple moments in my life where fear has held me back. And it could be fear that started from a very young age. And sometimes all it takes is a parent to say one thing in passing or a friend to say one small comment. And it sticks with you for the rest of your life. So for instance, being vulnerable here on the podcast, but public speaking like has always been one of my greatest fears, which is a little ironic because now I have a podcast. But I just remember when I was when I was a kid, like anytime, you know, you had to there's those poems that you had to read in front of your third grade class or, you know, even when you did the popcorn reading and, you know, teacher would randomly call in students to read a portion of a book. I just remember my heart racing every single time in those exact moments. And, and, and for a long, long time, like it, it really affected me. Like I, anytime I had a public speed, whether it was in college with the, with the project or even at work, like if I had to present, you know, a slide deck or something similar. And for the longest time I thought back and I was like, why is like, why, like, where did this start? Where did this fear start? Cause I had to have started from, from something, from somewhere, either comment or some scenario. And I think I'm, I think I'm still, I'm over the fear of public speaking, but I'm still trying to dig at the root cause and how I actually solved that fear. Cause it's interesting. Cause one day I remember I was at work and I was getting up to give a presentation and I was like, I don't feel nervous. And this is weird. Like, this is unusual. Like, and, and what's interesting is like my mind almost tried reverting back to old me and say, no, no, no, this is weird. like you need to be nervous. Like I, like I could feel myself thinking you need to be nervous. And at that point I was like, okay, something like what's happening. I'm not nervous. And yet my mind's telling me that you have to be nervous. Um, and, and that's what kind of kickstarted also my journey, understanding the mind a bit more. And, um, you know, I, I know you talk a lot about, you know, psychology and, and you bring up fear and some of your books and just, this idea of how to overcome fear. That was kind of a mess and a ramble. But I do think that there's a lot of fear that people have. And you have this, this part in your book, useful, not true, which is your most recent book that you just put out. And I want to read this quote. So you said, and this is in relation to fear, your mother always said, be careful, teaching you to live in fear. Your father had a terrible temper teaching you not to share your thoughts. And I think this ties back into what I was saying with, you know, it could be a small comment from a parent.
Nik Atanackovic
In your own experience, how have you seen fear manifest in your own life and also in maybe people that you know? And what's your advice to people who are maybe going through something where they're just, they're so fearful and they don't know how to overcome that fear?
Derek Sivers
There's a lovely simple acronym for fear which is False Evidence Appearing Real. I like that because it's memorable - it's a little helpful to come back to in the moments when you're scared to remember this kind of silly cheesy acronym - False Evidence Appearing Real - to ask yourself in that moment is this a reality or is this just in my head? And of course it's entirely in your head.
Derek Sivers
But my main advice for anybody is my main rule of thumb that I have followed more than anything else in my whole life. This little nutshell of an idea that I keep in my pocket at all times says: "Whatever scares you, go do it. Because then it won't scare you anymore." I've been following that in tiny ways and big ways since I was a teenager. In the small moment-to-moment level, I notice, for example, there's an intimidating person 10 seconds away from me. "Ah, I'm scared to go talk to them." I notice that feeling then I say, "Ah, whatever scares you, go do it. Here I go." And I take the 10 steps to go talk to the intimidating person. On a big level, I think renouncing my U.S. citizenship to block myself from ever entering America again. That's terrifying. "Well, whatever scares you, go do it. So here we go." So even on the big life level, I've done things like renounce my citizenship to keep me out of my comfort zone. And everything in between. I use this rule of thumb all the time because of the second half. Because once you do it, it doesn't scare you anymore. Or the more you do it, it ends up becoming your comfort zone.
Derek Sivers
So now talking to strangers is my comfort zone. It used to terrify me. Now it actually calms me. New Zealand is a place where everybody chit-chats with each other on the street. Sorry, I live in New Zealand. I've been here for 13 years now. And the local culture is such that the locals just chit-chat with each other all the time. And I find it very comfortable. An American friend of mine came to visit me. And just in two hours of walking around, he said, I've never talked with so many strangers in my life in two hours. I said, well, that's kind of the New Zealand culture. It's shallow chit-chat, but it's talking with strangers, and I find it very comfortable now. But public speaking, same thing as you. I used to be terrified of it. Getting up on stage was a heart pounding out of my chest like I was about to have a heart attack. And because of that, I kept doing it because it kept scaring me. And eventually, it became so much my comfort zone that actually I feel a little weird when I'm in the audience now because it always feels like I'm supposed to be on stage. That's my place. That's my turf. It's on stage. This feels weird. I'm in the audience. How strange. I need to be up there where I'm comfortable. So whatever scares you, go do it because then it won't scare you anymore.
Nik Atanackovic
Alex Hermozzi had this thing where he was getting ready for this presentation. And he went up on stage and he was like, oh, I don't feel nervous. Like he kind of had the same reaction that I did where, you know, at one point you just get up there and you're like, oh, this is weird. I feel oddly comfortable. And he'd ask himself, like, how did I get to that place? Like, why now? Why do I have this feeling of calm now? And then he'd think back to all the public presentations that he had to do in the gyms that he owned in front of hundreds of people and all the practice that he had. And he's like, oh, okay, that makes sense. You know, it makes sense that I'm calm now because I had all this evidence back here that supports me feeling this certain way during this presentation. So I love that advice that you say, do things that scare you. It's just, it's scary.
Derek Sivers
That's what makes it hard to do.
Nik Atanackovic
Going up and talking to the pretty girl at the bar, you know, it's a scary endeavor.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I try to stay in that zone. I try to make sure I'm still ongoing-constantly pursuing the thing that seems scary to me.
Nik Atanackovic
And what type of long-term impact do you think that that's had on your life? Do you think it's, is it confidence? But what's the overarching kind of long-term impact?
Derek Sivers
You know, I honestly hadn't put those two together. But now that you mention it, I think a lot of my confidence comes from the fact that I've done this my whole life. I'm 55 now. I've been doing this approach of whatever scares you go do it since I was 16. And it's almost 40 years of doing this. So I think a lot of my confidence has come from the fact that I keep throwing myself into scary situations. And over and over again, getting over that fear so they don't scare me anymore. So now it's just a deep set assumption that anything that scares me is something I can handle.
Nik Atanackovic
I think that last part that you said as well, knowing that you can handle it, putting yourself in these situations, coming out the other end. and telling yourself any other hard situation that gets thrown my way, I know I can handle it because I've been in similar ones in the past and I've come out on the other end and I'm not dead yet. It didn't kill me.
Nik Atanackovic
I wonder though, for someone listening to this, they hear this advice, but then they might stop watching this podcast or any other podcast. and they don't make the change and they listen to the advice but they don't implement the advice where's the disconnect what what is the disconnect in there i'm sure i'm opening up a can of worms here but and i'll say this and i and and really this is i know a lot of people in my life who you know um What's the word I'm looking for? It's not porn. Wow, I can't think of the word. But basically, especially for people looking to build a business, right? Like they'll read up on all the information. They'll have all the books. They'll have all of the, you know, anything that they could ever ask in terms of information. But then yet they are still here and they're in the same spot and they have not taken any action.
Derek Sivers
Stardew Valley is a video game where you build your farm and you turn your little farm into a huge success in the video game. And I played it during COVID, actually because I was looking for a game for my kid and it was on a short list of games called the No Bullshit Games that have no in-game advertising or no upselling. So that's the only reason I heard of it, was from this list finding something for my kid. But then I started playing on my kid's iPad going, "Oh my God, this is fascinating." It's addicting. "How do I build my little farm? Oh, look, now my crops are growing and now I can buy a cow and now I can sell the milk, but now I can turn the milk into cheese. Oh my God, I'm making so much more money." I noticed it felt like achievement. Like I would actually put down the iPad, feeling good, like "I've achieved something today. I've improved my lot in life. I've made more money." But the truth is I was just tapping a screen. And so same as listening to business podcasts, it's like Stardew Valley. You could walk away feeling like, yeah, I'm getting better in life. I'm moving up in the world, listening to some good information. But at a certain point, the pain has to outweigh the pleasure when you realize that you're not actually doing shit - that you have to go actually do something real to make any real difference, that everything else is virtual. I think that's where you're going with the porn thing. It's like this idea of virtual learning, virtual success. Maybe that's not the right word either, but it's not real until you apply it.
Nik Atanackovic
Hermozzi has this great thing where he's like, you know, talking about pain and talking about success and all those things. He says, how boring of a story would it be if the hero wakes up one day and he's like, you know what, I'm going to go slay a dragon. And then he slays the dragon first attempt. That'd be the worst story of all time. It would be a two pager. Nobody would care about it. Instead, what we love to read is the hero waking up, encountering a dragon, not being strong enough going on some journey to gather the skills and whatever else he or she needs to then go and and kill the dragon at the end and now they are victorious and now but what makes the story interesting is all the pain and all the suffering and all the lack of skills that they had at the beginning and seeing them you know develop into this mighty hero at the end and so oftentimes i think about that with my own life and it's like how boring would it be if i just woke up one day and I was great at interviewing guests on my show and my podcast was number one and I had everything that I ever wanted just from day one of starting this what actually makes this a fascinating journey and this also ties back to the whole thing like journey is the only thing you have is the fact that when I started this podcast I wasn't great and I was really nervous and I sucked and if you go back and watch my my old interviews you'll see hopefully hopefully I've gotten better but you'll see the transition and and my confidence level and all those things and i hope to continue down that path but i i sometimes think about like even when i'm going through through periods of my life where it like it just seems so difficult and and there's so much pain and and you know the motivation is low i just remind myself of that like like these are the moments that build you into the character that then goes and slays the dragon at the end
Derek Sivers
I love that. I want to take that idea somewhere a little different for the audience. And that's the related idea that things should take a certain amount of time. You might have heard that I graduated college in two years instead of four, because right before I went to college, I met a teacher that used to teach there. And hearing that I was about to attend, he took me under his wing for only a few weeks saying, "I think I can help you graduate in two years instead of four." And he did. He taught me enough and got me into the right attitude and gave me the right strategy and mindset and viewpoint that I went into this four-year college determined to graduate in two years and I did it. Same thing with grieving. Imagine someone you love dies, and you have a cultural norm that it is supposed to take a certain amount of time to get over a death. It's such a norm that we just take it for granted like it's an absolute fact. Someone you love dies, it's going to take you years, maybe a lifetime to get over that. Maybe you'll never get over it. That's not an absolute concrete, indisputable fact. That's a perspective that we don't realize is just a perspective, not a fact. It could be that you get over your loved one's death after a day. And that idea sounds shocking and almost blasphemous. That's so belittling to their legacy that you would get over their death in a day. But that's just some cultural shit you've attached to a meaning that's not real. It's just one meaning.
Derek Sivers
So, coming back to you, or let's just say not you, Nik, in particular, but anyone listening, you shouldn't or don't have to necessarily assume that if you're going to undertake something, it's going to take you years to become great at it. It may be that, like Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, that your first book ends up being your biggest success ever. Mark actually got depressed, thinking it was going to take him five or ten books over ten or twenty years to become a best-selling author. And when his first book became a smash success, he was ironically devastated because he was looking forward to the journey. But he smashed the MVP home run, whatever you want to call it, on his first hit, which ended up being depressing. So you need to be open to the idea that things don't need to take as long as you assume they'll take.
Nik Atanackovic
But Derek, isn't that what makes life so exciting? The uncertainty of it all? Talking to a girl and not knowing if she likes you or not. That's why so many people love the quote-unquote chase. When they're in the stage of, does she like me back, does she not? That's where certain people thrive because it's so uncertain, but it's so enthralling. And the possibilities are so exciting. Like what if she does like me when you're starting a business, as I'm sure you can attest, not knowing if it's going to succeed or fail. But you have this idea that you want to try out and put out into the world and you want to execute on. And it could be this big thing that you sell for 22 million or it could also be nothing and you waste five years of your life. You could write a book and it could be a number one New York Times bestseller or it could flop or it could take you 10 books. I could put out this is episode 73 of this podcast. Maybe episode 74 is the one that changes everything. And, you know, I blow up and now I'm this big thing. Or maybe it takes me 500 episodes. Like, isn't that what makes life so exciting is the uncertainty of it all?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. One of my favorite bits of life wisdom came from a little TED Talk by Tony Robbins, about the six basic human needs. Number one: certainty. Everyone has a need for certainty. We need to know that our house is going to be there tomorrow. We need to know that things are where we want them to be, that life is not going to devastate us with every step. We need certainty. If you have no certainty in your life, you'll do anything to get certainty. Human need number two: uncertainty! I don't even remember what the other four were because this was so fascinating to me, these first two. The human condition is that we all need certainty and we all need uncertainty. He even used the example of marriages, that people get married to get a sense of certainty that this person is going to be with me. And after a few years, it's too much certainty and they need uncertainty. So then they cheat to introduce some unexpected craziness into their life. and we all follow this pattern. We pursue too much certainty, so we introduce uncertainty. We have too much uncertainty, we reach for more certainty. We all need both.
Nik Atanackovic
So is there ever a perfect amount of certainty and uncertainty or do you think that we are in just this never-ending chase for this perfect amount that may actually just not even exist.
Derek Sivers
Is there any piece of music that has the perfect amount of minor chords and major chords for the rest of your life that this one piece of music will have just the right amount of major chords and minor chords so that you'll never need to listen to any other music?
Nik Atanackovic
You were talking about cultural norms that we place on on how long certain things should take. I'll never forget when my ex-girlfriend broke up with me, I remember I was talking to a friend and I was devastated. And the friend said, you know, oh, don't worry. We had dated for nine months or something. Not even that long of a relationship. My friend said, don't worry. Usually it takes twice the amount of time that you dated someone for you to get over them. So he said, have no fear. In 18 months, you will be good as new. And I remember, you know, me being, what was it, 23 at the time? Me thinking, perfect. I have the answer. All I have to do is get through these next 18 months. And I will be great. Lo and behold, it did not take 18 months. It was actually much quicker. But in the very same sense, it could have taken longer. I mean, there's no way to predict. So I always think back to that. And it just reminded me because you know, you're talking about how long things take. And I was just the first example that popped into my head.
Derek Sivers
Sometimes things take longer, sometimes they they are in fact shorter. You know people ask about my old company I started called CD baby they ask what are the struggles you faced what were the hardest times you had to go through and I say none everything was easy it was a surprise to me granted I started eight businesses before CD Baby that all failed. But as soon as I started CD Baby, instantly, it was a huge hit. There were absolutely no hard times in the entire running of that business. Everything went amazing. It was all like just running downhill. Everything was easy. So if you go in thinking that every business needs to have its challenges. The problem is you might ask yourself a question that your brain will find an answer to. So if you ask yourself, "Why do I always sabotage everything I do?" Well, your brain will find an answer to that question. And if you ask yourself, "Why am I such a loser? Why do I always suck at everything?" Your brain will find an answer. You've just asked an assumption question. Your brain will find an answer for why you're such a loser and why you suck at everything. And you need to be careful of timelines, somebody telling you, this is how long it takes to get over somebody. This is how hard it should be to start a business. And let's go back to what you said before, the assumption that you need social media in order to be public doing anything. These are all dumb assumptions that are not true.
Nik Atanackovic
I want to bookmark what you just said, because I have a follow-up question. But I did first want to ask, you mentioned CD Baby being easy, and everything just felt like it was going smoothly. Do you think that you would have been, that you would have felt more fulfilled had it not been as easy as it was?
Derek Sivers
No, I don't think that. I think it was fulfilling because I was helping lots of people that over 200,000 musicians used my service to sell their music and were thanking me all the time for making this thing that helped them. That was the fulfilling thing. I made something that didn't exist before, and now it did, and it was super useful to hundreds of thousands of people. That was what was fulfilling. How much struggle it took to get there was moot. That had nothing to do with it.
Nik Atanackovic
I ask because... When I think back to my own life...
Derek Sivers
Wait. Remember what you're about to say. The story you told earlier about slaying the dragon, that's true for storytelling. But you are not a story. Ideally, you would slay the dragon instantly. And we should always aim to slay the dragon instantly. We should never try to make a difficult life of struggle if what you want is to kill the dragon. Just kill the damn dragon as quickly as you can. Don't make your life harder than it needs to be. Unless you see what you're doing is a separate thing, like going to the gym. If you were deliberately plunging yourself into ice baths and doing the hard thing to strengthen yourself, that's different. But if what you want is to kill the dragon, just kill the damn dragon as quickly as you can.
Nik Atanackovic
But what does that also say about, because if you log on to Twitter X, whatever it's called now, or any other social media platform, you'll see a lot of entrepreneurs talking about put in the long hours, you know, do the hard work, you know, building a business should be hard and, you know, choose your hard. Either you're going to have a life of poverty or you're going to build this incredible business, choose your hard, do hard things. Like what do you just think about all of that advice that's coming out and that's been popularized recently?
Derek Sivers
It's entertainment. Same things I think about TED Talks were entertainment. People called them education, but I thought they were really just entertainment. All social media is just trying to be an entertainer. It's trying to get likes and retweets. It's trying to get applause. People say what they think will get them the applause.
Derek Sivers
I don't like how a lot of this business advice is very self-centered. "It's about you, man. You need to toughen up. You need to do this for yourself. You need to shape your life in this way." Like your very first question, "Why should somebody listen to you?" And I said, "I don't matter." I feel the same thing even stronger about business. I don't matter. It's entirely about what value I'm creating for my customer. Fuck me. I'm moot. I'm just here to be of service. I'm just doing this thing to help you, making this thing that can help you. I don't matter at all. I think anything that puts the attention on the entrepreneur is a distraction.
Nik Atanackovic
I love that you brought that up. And I can't remember and it's going to kill me, but someone I listen to often brought up specifically with podcasting. And they said, you know, people always ask me, like, you know, what's in it for you or, you know, what do you want to talk about? What topics are you interested in? And oftentimes I say, listen, I'm not here for me. I'm here to serve my audience. Yeah, I'm here for them. Yeah, I I want to know, like, what do you guys want from me? Like, what topics would you like for me to discuss? What guests do you want me to bring on? Is there a better way that I can do this? Is there a different format? Maybe this one-on-one interview stuff is getting boring and maybe you don't want to see that anymore. Maybe I can bring on a panel. I could have Derek and, you know, another entrepreneur who maybe has a completely different viewpoint of Derek's and we could do like a little debate and maybe bring on someone who says, you know, it is about the hard work and, you know, you do have to struggle through all this. And maybe Derek's going to say, well, if you can do it an easier way, maybe we take that path. And maybe that's what you want to hear. So I don't know. I, I'm just so glad you brought that up because I see it all the time on Twitter and other platforms. So I'm not trying to single out Twitter here, but it does seem to be the general advice. And I think to your point, it is, I think it is a little virtue signaling. It's like, Oh, look at me. I'm doing something really hard. You know, it's, I'd argue the same reason people, nothing against it, but like people will post their marathon training you know it's like oh look at me I'm you know training for a marathon um and and there's some human nature to that but um it's I don't know again I just think that if you were an entrepreneur who was trying to build an audience and you said hey I had a really easy time I just don't know what I guess what I'm trying to say is:
Nik Atanackovic
Is the forcing function social media? Is it, is it the fact that we've discovered that what gets clicks and what gets attention is a difficult story? And so therefore that is the path that we take is the forcing function. The fact that that type of story gets the most attention?
Derek Sivers
Probably. It's funny to go back a few sentences where you said, if you're an entrepreneur and you want an audience. My mind stopped there thinking, why the hell would an entrepreneur want an audience?
Nik Atanackovic
Please say more.
Derek Sivers
Well, if you're doing something of value for people, you should reach the people who stand to benefit from what you're making, which is not everybody. It's a very, very, very, very small percentage of the world. You do not need to reach everybody. You just need to find those 10 or 100 or maybe 1,000 people that would most benefit from what you have to offer and just reach them directly. Speaking to them about them and their needs. Again, fuck me, I'm moot. They are the whole point. This isn't about me. This is about them. That should be the only communication you care about right now if you're actually focused on making your entrepreneurial idea a success. Let's go directly to those people. Stop diluting your efforts trying to get an audience in a general sense. That's a horrible dilution of your life's energy and time. You should be focusing extremely sharply only on your target people.
Nik Atanackovic
This ties back into the discussion that we had on social media. And is fame overrated? Or should people pursue fame? I always love to to read about entrepreneurs who, who built amazing businesses pre-social media. Um, and it's funny enough, I had, uh, Preston Rutherford on the podcast. Uh, he's the co-founder of Chubbies and, um, the, I don't know if you're familiar with Chubbies, but they're the short, like short shorts, like bathing shorts, swim trunks for, for men um super popular um and i asked him i was like hey if you were to rebuild chubbies like would you build an audience or try to build an audience online and then funnel that audience to your product which was these you know and it's funny like the swim trunks like very you know over the top cool designs um and he was like well i think i would kind of do what i did in the beginning, which is go customer by customer and go in person and ask people for feedback in person and try to develop connections with those people. And I think that ties back to, you know, the hundred thousand true fans and build it out that way. Because if you make something really great, guess what? That person that you just told about or that tried your product, if it's really that great, they're going to go tell their friend. And then guess what's going to happen? That friend's going to tell their friend. And then, you know, it goes on and on. So he said, you know, actually, I'm sure we would dabble in a little, you know, paid ads and maybe a little social media, but I think our main core approach would stay the same in person. Take a foldable table. I think they had started in San Francisco. So they went to a park in San Francisco, take a foldable table, put our swim trunks out there, ask people, Hey, do you like this? If they don't like it, ask them why, and then try to iterate. If they do like it, you know, write it down. Okay. This is a design that people like, see if they like the material and gather feedback that way and try and just continue building.
Derek Sivers
There was a popular investment book with a great title. I haven't read the book, but I know the title, which is, Where Are the Customer's Boats? And the story behind the title is that some investment banker was bragging to a potential new client about his boat. "Look at me. I'm such a good investment banker that look at this expensive yacht that I bought." And this potential customer said, "Well, never mind that. Where are your customers' boats? That's what I want to see. This isn't about you. Show me that your customers are benefiting from working with you. Don't show me that you're benefiting." So, great example with Chubbies. The founder of Chubbies should not be trying to say, "look at me." He should be ideally helping all of the Chubby's customers say "look at me". Let's let all the Chubby's customers get famous. Let's let all of the Chubby's customers build a big audience. That's what you really want.
Nik Atanackovic
Derek, I love that perspective. And this is why I wanted to have you on the podcast so bad and actually get to meet you and talk to you. Um, and it's why it's such a huge honor for me is because in a sea of entrepreneurs and, you know, other people, I feel like you stand out and I've, I've listened to your, and I know, you know, entrepreneurship is something in the past, but I've listened to your other interviews and just the way that you come across genuine would be an understatement, but just just thank you it's just crazy especially someone like me who is on admittedly on social media more than i should be um it's uh it's really refreshing to talk to someone who uh who puts the importance back on the customer and puts it back on creating value and servicing them and not just servicing yourself. Building up your customer's dream life, not just your dream life.
Derek Sivers
Well, let's get meta for a minute, if you don't mind. I try to find the thing that's being less said in a crowded conversation. And it's a little bit like singing the counter melody, that if you hear that everybody is singing the main melody, you think of what's a counter melody you could sing that would go against it in a useful way. Because if we all just joined in the chorus and all sang the same melody in unison, then we're not being very useful. Plenty of people are going to sing that same melody anyway. So if you hear what other people are saying, and you open your mind to consider the opposite approach, and if it's valid, then usually that opposite approach needs more voice, since the main approach is getting plenty of attention. So I try to be the opposite voice, too. I try to be the counter melody to the main melody.
Nik Atanackovic
Tell you what, I'm liking the counter melody a lot more than I am the melody.
Derek Sivers
Well, they're meant to be together. It's not necessarily declaring the melody to be wrong. It's understanding that we all know the main melody. We all hear it. We're all surrounded by it. It's very loud. I'm trying to present a counterpoint that might be more useful to people. But just like I said, you shouldn't try to build an audience for yourself. That's just a counter melody. It's not saying everyone listening to this, you should never build an audience for yourself. No, it's not saying that that's the right answer either. It's just a counter melody you should consider.
Nik Atanackovic
I want to bring us to the topic of happiness. And I want to start with a story. I was reminded of the story because you mentioned boat. I don't know if you heard about the story of the fisherman. I think the one that I read was told as a Mexican fisherman, but really the race, the ethnicity does not matter in this case at all. For those who have maybe not heard it, the story very quickly, a fisherman goes out on his boat, fishes daily, brings back enough fish to feed his family, to make a living. Lives in this very normal house, but his entire family is there. Gets to spend time with his family, with his friends in this village. And a businessman comes down, and he notices that the fisherman is really good at fishing. And he says, Mr. Fisherman, why do you only have one boat? You could expand your operation. You could get three boats, ten boats. And the fisherman says, okay, cool. So then what? And the business guy says, well, then you could have 20 boats and then 50 boats. Okay, okay, yeah, then what? Well, then if you get big enough, you can sell your business for millions of dollars. And the fisherman says, well, then what? And the businessman says, well, then you can do whatever you want. You could fish a little during the day, spend time with your family, spend time with your friends, and live in a village surrounded by people that you love. And he was like, well, I do that right now, so why would I go do this? That's my life right now. And I want to relate that to happiness because I think a lot of people chase what they think will make them happy, but not what is maybe currently making them happy or not realizing that maybe the happiness that they desire is actually here already and they have it and they have everything that they want. Thoughts on happiness and just the chase after happiness that we all go through.
Derek Sivers
You could either heed the cautionary tale of the Mexican fisherman parable or Felix Dennis with his How to Get Rich book or Tim Ferriss writing about the dangers of fame. And that might be enough for you. You might not go down a certain path because somebody has just come back from that path warned you that you'll get burned on that path. Or you just have to try it for yourself to know for sure.
Derek Sivers
This is how I feel about minimalism. The only reason I'm living a minimalist life now is because I used to have too much shit. I already felt the pain from having too much. And I know from experience that I'm happier having less. I don't think I could just have some rich guy tell me I should be minimalist and that would be enough for me. Same with a lot of these things. You could have some rich person tell you it's not all it's cracked up to be. And you could use that as an excuse to just play on your PlayStation and work a minimum wage job.
Derek Sivers
But ultimately, you have to ask yourself, which way of looking at it is most useful to you? And my definition of useful is whatever helps you do what you want to do, be who you want to be, or feel at peace. And none of these perspectives is necessarily true. Nothing I said here today is true. Nothing any of your other guests have said is necessarily true. They're just sharing one way of looking at it. So you listen to all these different perspectives through the media, and you consider which one works best for you. the pursuit of becoming the richest person in the world is useful for you because that's the mindset that's going to help you be the best version of yourself and create the most value for the rest of the world. Be the most useful to your fellow man. Maybe not. Maybe that would make you a shithead asshole terrorist that's negative for the world. You need to just know in yourself which perspective is most useful for your actions. Ultimately, all that matters are your actions, not arguing on whether a certain perspective is right or wrong.
Nik Atanackovic
What does the phrase "useful, not true" mean to you?
Derek Sivers
I choose perspectives like this because they're useful to me, not because they're necessarily true. I deliberately choose beliefs that help me act the way I want to act, not because that belief is necessarily true, but because believing it is useful to me.
Nik Atanackovic
What's an example?
Derek Sivers
Religion. People fight and kill over religious beliefs, saying, "I'm right and you're wrong." "No, I'm right and you're wrong. Draw your swords, men." And instead, we could just focus on whether having these beliefs is useful to you or not, and just let go of this arguing over what's necessarily true or not. I raise the bar for the word true. So whenever I say the word true, I mean absolutely, objectively, observably, necessarily true for everyone, everywhere, always. Only if it meets all those criteria do I call it true. Everything short of that is just another way of looking at it.
Nik Atanackovic
So what's an example of something that is unequivocally true?
Derek Sivers
A square has four sides. Actually there's one - i took this out of the book - but there is a square somewhere in Iran that is like the town square that is circular so i was like what's an example of a square that does not have four sides, oh well there's a town square in Iran that's circular uh but i thought that would be too distracting. But a square has four sides. I just clapped my hands three times. These things are facts. Everything else is perspective. Your mother told you that you have an annoying voice. Is that a true fact? No, it's some words that she spoke. Maybe she was trying to upset you because you didn't help her do the dishes earlier that evening. And you've held this as some kind of fact. "Well, it's just true. My mother said I have an annoying voice. And if my mother says so, well, then it's just true." You hold on to these things as if they're facts when in fact, they're just words. They're not necessarily true. There's so many limiting beliefs like that that I think most of your audience right now is held back from being who they want to be or doing what they need to do. Not because of facts, not because of objective, concrete realities that are true for everyone everywhere always, but they're held back by their mindset. And that's the difference between success and failure for most people. It's just a matter of perspective.
Nik Atanackovic
So why is it important that we understand this? Like, why is it important that we understand that there are certain mindsets that may be holding us back? Why is it important that we understand that most of the things that get said or that we read or hear about are actually not true? What is the importance of choosing those beliefs that serve us?
Derek Sivers
It's like saying why is it important to be successful? There's a shallow happiness that comes from eating an ice cream cone, and there's a deeper happiness that comes from being who you want to be, from achieving what you set out to achieve, from being the best version of yourself. That's a really deep fulfillment that is worth pursuing. And that what's holding most people back from being who they want to be is just a mindset. That having a different mindset helps you see different perspectives - helps you see different potential actions that you could take. And having a different mindset helps you take those actions that you could be taking. That might be more strategic actions than somebody with a different mindset would take. There are plenty of people that want to be this kind of person, but are acting in a way that sends them off this other direction. They want to be fit, but they just keep eating crap. They want to be wealthy, but they're spending all of their time doing things that are not valuable to other people. These are just perspectives that shape your actions, and it makes all the difference in the world between your ultimate fulfillment and your ultimate life of resentment and regret and disappointment. So it makes all the difference in the world.
Nik Atanackovic
Let's say someone's listening to this, because I know I'd have this thought if I was an outsider listening to this podcast. And they say, Derek, great, I get it. There are certain things that are useful, but they're not true. And there are things that are useful and that they are true. That's all fine and dandy. And I'm going to choose beliefs that support the actions that I want to have. So if I want to go lose weight, I want to, in that case, you know, a belief that may serve me as thinking of myself as being athletic. Perhaps that would make it easier for me to go and exercise because I view myself as someone who does exercise, someone who is athletic. So I get all of that. But in the moment, how do we consciously change our actions and our habits? Does it come down to, let's say you are trying to lose weight and you feel yourself reaching for that chocolate or those chips. Is it a matter of in the moment saying, no, Nick, you told yourself that you're athletic and that you're going to exercise and that you're someone who does not eat junk food. So we are not going to do that. Is that the internal conversation that you should be having with yourself?
Derek Sivers
You need to test out the different internal conversations with yourself to see what works. When I see David Goggins, I think that the internal conversation he has does not work for me. That's not the right one. There is no right one. You just have to see what works for you. The one that had a profound impact on me came from a disabled woman that said, "We are all temporarily abled. Never forget that. That at some point, your health will go away. So you are temporarily abled right now." When I heard that, that worked for me. That gets me lifting the weights. That gets me putting on the running shoes, thinking that I am temporarily abled right now, that works for me. That doesn't work for most other people. So same with business, health, anything. You listen to these podcasts, you read these books, you hear different people's different perspectives. And when you find one that works for you, even just a little bit that charges you inside, It gives you some kind of boost, some go power, some energy. The best thing you can do is to shut off the inputs and switch to output mode. Go immediately into full output. Go take action on what you've heard. Stop all of your inputs. That's enough. You've found something that works for you now. Go turn it into action.
Nik Atanackovic
Run the program. That's the exact sentence that you used for the audience, because I think this will help tie in everything. How is that related? Run the program. How is that related to what you just said?
Derek Sivers
So we've all got a beautiful metaphor we can use for this now. The metaphor didn't even exist at the time I wrote the book just a year ago. But we've all probably at this point tried ChatGPT's deep thinking, where you ask it a prompt that it's going to take two full minutes to answer. Now, what if 30 seconds into that, you add some more information? "Oh, wait, there's more. Now give me a deep answer." Ten seconds later, you say, "Wait, OK, no, hold on. There's more. Now here's some more information. Now give me an answer." And it says, "OK, thinking." And you say, "Wait, here's some more information." The program will never stop running if you keep giving it more information. At some point, you need to stop the inputs so the program can run with the inputs it's been given already and create the output you want. Same thing with yourself. We take in so much information through the media that our program never gets the chance to execute on the information we've been given because we just keep putting more input into our machine. It really helps to stop the inputs once you've got enough information, which has probably already happened. You probably already have enough information to stop all inputs for the rest of the year and just go turn it into action using the inputs you've been given already.
Nik Atanackovic
I wish I had read your book and that specific part of your book, like two years ago, maybe. I'm so mad at myself because I don't know, I didn't realize that you had released a book up until recently, "Useful Not True". Because when I first started this podcast, and this is a personal example, when I first started the podcast, there are so many different opinions on, well, you need to have a very specific niche. So if you're going to start a podcast, be very specific or talk about only planting trees or talk about only gardening, be specific in your niche and do that. And then you have a completely different approach, which is like, talk about whatever you want. Like it's your podcast, have fun with it. Like people are going to come to you because they're interested in you. And eventually they're interested in your interests. Like you build that trust with your audience. And I could feel myself going crazy because I watched so many YouTube videos, so many Instagram reels, so many TikTok videos of people telling me, no, you need to do it this way. No, you need to do it that way. No, you need to do this. And it got to the point where I was like, I don't know what to do. Like I'm, I'm lost. Like, and at that moment in time, if I had read in your book, like, Hey, just stop the inputs, stop, stop taking it. You have all the information that you need. There is not going to be this other new piece of information that radically changes your approach. Whatever you feel is the right thing to do, which in this case, you know, I, I, I love business and entrepreneurship and I love sports. Like those are the things that I find myself talking about over and over again. Um, great. Go, go talk to people in those fields. Go talk to people you find interesting and fuck it, man. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. But guess what? At least you had fun along the way. And it was, and it was great.
Nik Atanackovic
I read this other story about this donkey who had food and water....
Derek Sivers
Buridan's donkey. Buridan is the philosopher that proposed this idea. So if you search up Buridan's donkey, you'll find the tale.
Nik Atanackovic
The story is that there is a donkey who is thirsty and hungry, and there's water to its left and hay to its right. And essentially, the entire lesson is that the donkey couldn't choose which one to go after first. And it ended up dying because it never made a decision. So that's my spiel on stop the inputs. You probably have all the information that you need. Start running the output. Start running the program.
Derek Sivers
And that's why I felt it was so important to write Useful Not True, the book, and to put this message out there, which I'm about to start sharing on my website daily. I finished the book a year ago, so now what I like to do, a year after I finish a book, I start putting it out for free on my site.
Nik Atanackovic
Really quickly, plug your website. Where can people find?
Derek Sivers
sive.rs Go there, email me, say hello, and you'll start getting my emails. Back to useful not true. The first step of any of this is to stop thinking of anything as necessarily true. So if a YouTuber is saying, "No, here's what you need to do. You need to find a niche." That's not true. Somebody says, "No, you need to go broad. People are going to be interested in you as a person." That's not true. It's not necessarily true. Remember my definition: not necessarily absolutely objectively empirically true for everyone, everywhere, always, so therefore it's not true. It's just one way of looking at it. If we get more skeptical about everything we hear and, most importantly, everything we think, if you start doubting your thoughts and doubting what other people tell you, it's really healthy because then the only measure that's left is whether this works for me. Is this going to help me take the right actions? Is this going to help me jump into action and do the things that get me where I want to go? That's all that really matters, not whether it's true or not.
Nik Atanackovic
Do you think that skepticism drives innovation?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Doubting the status quo. Doubting those that say you must do ABC. What about ZYX? "No, no, no, no, no. We can't do that. That's preposterous!" It's doubting norms, doubting limitations, doubting your instincts. Your first thought is an obstacle. Your first thought should not be honored as if it's somehow your true self. Your first thought is the bullshit that's buried in you from misunderstandings in your past. The better shit comes when you spend a little longer to doubt the first thing and ask yourself, "How else could I think about this? How else could I get to the destination I want to go to? How else could I achieve what I want?" Let me not stop at the second way or the third way I think of either, but keep thinking of other ways until you finally find one that helps you jump into action and do what you need to do.
Nik Atanackovic
Do you think that volume negates luck? Like if you throw enough darts at the dartboard, one of them, maybe it's 1,000, maybe it's 100,000 dart throws, one of them is bound to hit the bullseye. And you will increasingly get better and more skilled, and you will eventually hit the bullseye that you're looking for.
Derek Sivers
In short, yes. Opportunities are like lottery tickets the more the better until something starts paying off then you need to change your strategy don't take any of this don't take any strategy as the right answer for life it might just be the right answer for now which might even be just for the next hour. For the next hour, you need to get into a certain mindset to do the thing. And an hour from now, you switch to a different mindset, which helps you stop doing the thing and pay attention to your kid that just got home from school, or whatever it may be. We need to switch mindsets often and get out of this judgment that declares one of them to be right and everything else to be wrong. Instead, these are all just tools to be used when you need that tool, not forever. Don't bring your screwdriver into bed.
Nik Atanackovic
That reminds me of a quote that you had in "useful not true" that um i really resonated with the quote says "you have to keep up your label until it expires". It reminded me of Naval. By the way for those listening if you have not listened to Naval and Chris Williamson, highly suggest you go check out that podcast. Naval is one of my favorite thinkers. He's fantastic. But he talks about this, this idea of identity and how a lot of people get trapped in these identities that they that they create for themselves, or that maybe others create for them. Again, going back to maybe you're five years old, and your parents told you, hey, you're not good at public speaking. And now you have this identity that you've carried around for 50 years thinking you're not good at public speaking. So he says, Naval just alludes to the fact like, hey, don't think yourself into these corners. Like don't apply all these different categories. Be fluid. Be able to change kind of to what you were just alluding to, right? Like keep something, keep a label until it's useful. And then when it's not useful anymore, get rid of it, move on to a new one and just keep kind of moving through. So your quote reminded me of that, but I'm interested to hear your take on what that truly means to keeping your label until it expires. And I'll say real quick before you answer. I'm going to contradict myself because before I had said, hey, if you're trying to lose weight, think of yourself as someone who is athletic, like apply this label that you can use. And now I'm saying, hey, maybe it's not the best idea to apply all these different labels. Or maybe it is a good idea because that label in that case would be useful to help you achieving your goal. So I don't know, take that where you will.
Derek Sivers
I recommend expiring your labels quite quickly. Imagine you call yourself an entrepreneur and you've been telling everybody you're an entrepreneur, but you haven't started a business this year. Could somebody call themselves an athlete if they hadn't left the couch in a year? So could you call yourself an entrepreneur if you haven't started a business this year? I mean, that's what entrepreneur means. It's the person who's starting a business. Once it has started, and if you're just running the business you've started, well, now you're a manager. So either you update your labels and tell everybody, "I'm a manager!" Or if you don't like the way that sounds, then maybe it's time to go start a new business. Same thing with being a good parent. Can you just call yourself a good parent? if you haven't given your kid your full attention in a while? Can you call yourself a writer if you haven't written publicly this month? I think we should expire our labels as quickly as possible to better reflect the reality of who we are being now, not just how we think of ourselves. And if you don't like that updated reality, then either it's time to change your labels for the sake of self-identity or go change your damn actions to reflect the labels that you want to make sure you have.
Nik Atanackovic
I feel like I ask this question a lot, but why is that important? Like, why should people care about changing their labels? What is the downside to keeping labels past their expiration date?
Derek Sivers
Oh, because then you're still feeling the social satisfaction without taking the actions. If you're a high school quarterback, you can't keep calling yourself an athlete forever. At a certain point, you have to realize "I haven't played since high school. I can't keep saying I'm an athlete." Or go change your actions to go live up to your label. The reason it matters is because, like it or not, except for the most hermit psychopaths of us, we are all social creatures that are affected by our social self-identity and how others reflect who we are back to us like echolocation. Put our signal out into the world and it reflects back to us, letting us know where we are and who we are. So you telling the world, "I'm an entrepreneur, I'm an athlete, I'm a great dad." If you're saying these things without taking the actions, well, then you're feeling the social satisfaction from people that believe you, going, "Hey, that guy's an athlete, that guy's an entrepreneur." But if you're not taking the actions, then it's ultimately self-harming, self-sabotaging, because you're feeling the benefits without taking the necessary actions. You're going to ultimately let yourself down in a horrible way. Like the fitness example, you can't just go call yourself fit while eating shit. You have to take the appropriate actions to earn that label, to ultimately be who you want to be.
Nik Atanackovic
I don't know if this is going to make sense at all, but I kind of also view it as if you have a business idea, let's say, instead of going and working on the idea, you tell all your friends about the idea, and then just the action of telling your friends and labeling yourself as an entrepreneur with this fantastic idea kind of satisfies that dopamine response. And you get that dopamine from telling all your friends that you're gonna go do something, but then you don't actually do it. But then to your point, you still have the label like, "Oh no, no, I am an entrepreneur. Like I told all my friends." And so that kind of starts this cycle that ultimately results in you not going and doing the thing.
Derek Sivers
I did a main stage TED talk about this in 2009 called "Announcing Your Plans Makes Them Less Likely to Happen". And I was just echoing the research done by Peter Gollwitzer at New York University, a social psychologist who studied this effect by doing these tests and found in these A-B tests that people who announced their plans to others and got the social feedback, got the social reward from announcing their plans, therefore were less motivated to do the actions to make them happen. Whereas those who kept their mouth shut and got no self-satisfaction, no social satisfaction, were more likely to do the actions necessary to make the plan come true. So for your own sake, you should consider not announcing your labels, but just announce your actions that you're actually that you have taken, not planning on, but have taken.
Nik Atanackovic
Important distinction. Announce the actions that you have taken, not the ones that you're planning on taking. I love that.
Derek Sivers
Same thing with your fucking funding. Don't tell people that you're going to be getting funding, that you're going to be getting investment. Just tell us when it's happened. In fact, sorry, I lived in Los Angeles for years and everybody speaks in future tense there about this deal that they're going to be doing with Netflix and this record label that they're going to be getting a deal with. I just, after hearing so much of it, I felt like wearing a T-shirt that just said, "tell me when it happens".
Nik Atanackovic
Right, right. It's like the guy that also keeps going around saying, "No, I'll get a girlfriend. You know, like this is the one." It's like, all right, man, once it happens, you come to me and you show me the girlfriend and we'll go from there.
Derek Sivers
This is all related to the labels. Don't tell me the label that you want to be. Don't say you're an entrepreneur without having done anything. Don't say you're an entrepreneur because you plan on doing something in the future. You're discouraging yourself from taking the necessary actions by announcing that label. Instead, just speak your actual actions that you have done. Receive no social reward until the actions are done.
Nik Atanackovic
Derek, a couple more questions here to round us out. I want to be respectful of your time, and you've already graced us with an hour and a half here. A couple words on death. It is the last thing that you write about in your book, and you pair it with this beautiful story about this pet mouse that you had. I was just so moved by the story. And, um, death is one of those things that I've been thinking a lot about recently, which probably not great for the mental health if you're thinking about it too often, but I think it is important to understand something that is, you know, could be right around the corner for some of us. Um, you know, it's a, it's a clock and you have no idea, you know, how many hours or how many minutes are left. And you're kind of just going assuming that you have all this time, but sometimes you don't. And the way that I've kind of to harp on some of the advice that you give is I try to reframe it as something that's useful to me. And I think to myself, well, if I have this limited time on this planet, and I don't know when that time is up, why don't I try to just maximize my time here? Just live the life that I want to live, live the life that I think is worth living, do the things that I want to do. And it's also difficult because if you think too much along those lines, and you also become a little self-centered and you can fall down this trap of, it's like, well, you know, I'm not going to do that because I want to have the best life possible. So, you know, I'm not going to perhaps go and help that person because maybe that doesn't fulfill me or make me as happy as doing something else would in that moment. So I always try to play that balance too. It's like, okay, yes, live the life that you want to live, but maybe part of that life that you want to live is helping others and doing good for the world and putting good out into the world. All of that to say, it's something I've tried to wrap my mind around and I'm planning on getting a couple of books. So if you have any, any recommendations, I'd love to hear them. I just wanted to get your thoughts on, on death and kind of how you've come around to reframing it and how you think about it.
Derek Sivers
First, my recommendation is the movie Groundhog Day. If you've already seen it, see it again through this lens. It's what you just described, saying if you've only got one day to live, well, then fuck it, be as selfish as you can. Okay, well, now if you have to live that day again, there's so many different ways to play it. Be as generous as you can. Maybe if you're at the end of your life, your impulse will be to turn your full attention to everyone else. You've only got a few months left to give. So go benefit the world as much as you can in a few months. It doesn't have to be selfish. We shouldn't assume that.
Derek Sivers
Which, by the way, I think is a reason that public role models can be so useful. Like Felix Dennis in that How to Get Rich book. It was really, really helpful for me that he wrote that book and shared his perspective near the end of his life about having spent decades getting more and more money that he never used and regretting it. It was so helpful to me. And I can imagine somebody like the Patagonia guy that goes out publicly letting people know how he's giving away all his wealth to benefit nature or what have you. So I think it's really helpful that these people put their stories out so that those of us still in the early stages that are not there yet, when we get there, have an earlier role model that we can say, well, I'm near the end of my life. It's time to spend all my time giving instead of going to what you said. Well, you know, most people, if they think they're at the end of their life, they're going to be selfish. Not necessarily. Not if we've taken in more stories from people that have done the opposite. So I think it's really helpful when people share their good deeds.
Derek Sivers
Okay, that said, answering your question, my thoughts about death, I don't find it depressing at all. I find it super encouraging to assume that I am in the last quarter of my life now. I'm 55, and I inherited a nasty DNA that means that I get a chunk cut out of me every year. They keep finding little chunks of cancer and keep taking out a chunk. And in fact, I'm having another chunk taken out tomorrow because the chunk I had taken out two months ago, they sent it to the lab and found out they didn't get it all. So tomorrow, I'm going right back in for more surgery to take out another chunk. So I think it's safe for me to assume that I'm not going to live beyond the average. And if I look at the averages for somebody born in 1969, like I was, I'm in the last quarter of my life. And to me, that is so encouraging. Because do I want to spend time on social media? Fuck no. Do I want to engage in some bullshit drama about what Elon Musk is doing? Fuck no. Do I want to waste my time with, I don't know, chasing some hot girl just for the sake of getting the hot girl? Fuck no. I have limited time left. There's so much I want to do that thinking I'm in the last quarter of my life helps me take action in such a great way. It is such a useful thought for me. It's helping me tie up loose ends that I've left open that are bothering my psyche. It helps me say no to almost everything but what I want the most or what would be the most useful to others. It's a wonderful assumption. It's a deliberately pessimistic assumption because it creates the actions that help me the most.
Nik Atanackovic
I'm very sorry to hear about...
Derek Sivers
No, you're not. I'm not. No, I mean, there's nothing to be sorry about. Even when the doctor called me last week and he's like, "Yeah, Derek, you've got to come back. There's more." I was like, "Cool, man. All right, that's fine." He goes, "No, I'm serious. It might be something more." I was like, "That's fine. I'm totally cool with that." It doesn't bother me at all.
Derek Sivers
But I'm not feigning happiness in this case. I actually find it extremely useful. I might live another 50 years, and I would still find this mindset useful. To assume that I'm not, to assume I'm in the final quarter of my life, helps me take action.
Nik Atanackovic
How, okay, how do you keep that from impacting you in a negative way. Like you've obviously framed it well enough in your own mind where you have this positive outlook, but I could see some people like if you were to say, hey, think like you have 10 years left, right? Like, sure, maybe that will let you take, that would enable you to take action. But on the flip side, then you're kind of stuck in this negative mindset of like, oh shit, I only have 10 years left. So how do you balance those two?
Derek Sivers
Again, you can't assume that any of these are necessarily true or the right way of thinking about it. It's only judged by whether this works for you. So if some way of looking at the situation was giving you a negative limiting mindset that was impeding your flourishing, then that mindset doesn't work for you, and you'd have to find another one that works for you. So me assuming I'm in the last quarter of my life, that's not the only way to look at it. And in fact, I think that wasn't even among the first 20 ways I've looked at it. It's the one that, as soon as I thought about it, it made me jump up in my seat full of energy, full of action. And so, therefore, it's the one I adopted for now. And if I find that in three months or three years it's depressing me, then I will choose a different mindset that works for me.
Nik Atanackovic
I heard this guy talk about how we should view ourselves as experiments really. Yes. And what he meant about that, what he meant by that, sorry, is, uh, run experiments on yourself, you know, and, and this, I think this ties into kind of the overarching theme of this episode, which has been, you know, all this, the advice that you hear, the advice that Derek tells you works for him, absolutely go and try it. And if it works for you, great, keep, keep it, keep doing it. If it doesn't find some other advice that that might work better. And so going back to the whole like experiment on yourself, um, maybe one night, get four hours of sleep. See how you wake up the next morning. Maybe one night, get 12 hours of sleep. See how you wake up one day. Do a, do a protein heavy diet. The next day do a carb heavy diet. Um, go work out every single day. Don't work out for three months, right?
Derek Sivers
Like work out at night in silence. That was one of the best hacks I ever did. I used to live above a gym, and they gave me the card where I could go at any time. I started going at night. I would go at 9 o'clock at night after they closed, and I would leave the lights out. I would work out in the dark in silence. And suddenly, that made me want to lift weights in a way that being there during the loud music busy times did not. So you'll never know what weird, surprising, unexpected approach might work for you.
Nik Atanackovic
You know what's funny about that is at the end of last year, I was swimming a lot. I played water polo in high school. Do not consider myself an athlete anymore. That label has been left behind. But I love swimming. And so at the end of last year, I was swimming a ton. And what's interesting is with swimming, right? Like it's, they have the underwater, you know, earbuds, whatever. They're usually, I haven't found any that are actually pretty decent. And so oftentimes I would just go with nothing, right? Just myself, you know, in my swim trunks and go swim. And I'd swim for like 45 minutes, maybe an hour. And I noticed, I was like, wow, like I really do like a bunch of thinking, just like really deep thinking while I'm swimming. Like, this is kind of cool. But then, you know, that the, you know, we're, you know, creatures of habit. I was like, well, actually, like, maybe I should listen to some music or I, you know, this swim might be easier if I could listen to a podcast or listen to my favorite music. But then I would like think about it again. I'm like, wait a second. Like I'm doing all of my best thinking, like deep thinking about life, about relationships, about all these different things that's really useful to me with no outside distractions, like no earbuds, no nothing. And yet I want to interrupt that and go back to what I would always do when I'd work out is listen to the music. And so it's funny you mentioned, you know, working out at night, you know, in silence is like I found actually, I think I prefer whether it's walking, running, swimming in silence, meaning no AirPods, no music, no podcast.
Derek Sivers
I like how you have to say what silence means. Silence, meaning no podcasts. No music. There's people around.
Nik Atanackovic
Right. There are people around, but nothing directly in my ears. So it's, again, and if I hadn't done swimming, if I hadn't done it in silence, I probably would never have figured that out.
Derek Sivers
I go for a hour-long vigorous walk in a very hilly forest where I live here in Wellington, New Zealand. It's a very, very hilly place. And so it's a very sweaty workout for an hour to go walk in the forest. And I always just do it in silence. A few times I've tried to bring podcasts or even like language lesson learning. And in the end, I just same as you find that I'm ultimately happier when I just do it in silence because we all get plenty of inputs. We need time to process all of these damn inputs. Run the program. Let the program run. Run the program. We should all find a copy of the "Four Hour Work Week" from 2007 and go reread. If you haven't in a while, the chapter on the low information diet, that chapter was ahead of its time and has some great wisdom for 2025.
Nik Atanackovic
That's a great reminder. I'm actually going to do that right after this because I have it sitting on my shelf. I haven't reread it in a while. that and also the the other chapter that changed my life was the what does tim call it the man in the red bmw or um um when he's talking about uh if if if you're struggling to understand if you're in a career that you actually want to be in look at someone who's 15 years ahead of you i think he said like the fat man in the red car or something like in the red bmw i forget how he phrased it but he was like look ahead to someone 15 years ahead of you in your current career path and see if the life that they have is a life that you would want.
Derek Sivers
Nice.
Nik Atanackovic
And that profoundly changed my perspective on what career I'd want to partake in.
Derek Sivers
Dude, now we're injecting back into things we'd mentioned an hour ago, but it was so helpful to me when I started my company, CD Baby. It was 1997. That was just as the first dot-com boom was starting, the beginning of the internet, the beginning of the commercialization of the internet. It was a fascinating time. I am so thankful I was living in New York City. And so I was able to see all these people being handed tens of millions of dollars just to start a stupid idea that they had the week before. And I saw how badly it messed with their sense of action and reward and generating value versus just generating investors. And I'm so glad I was able to see that as a cautionary tale. So that's why I never took any investment. I started my company with $500 and I was profitable by the second month. And I stayed profitable the whole time and always refused all investment. And which alienated me from a lot of what people consider being an entrepreneur is all about thinking it's all about raising money. But I saw the perils of raising money. And I'm so thankful I did.
Nik Atanackovic
Two last questions for you. I promise I will let you go.
Derek Sivers
It's fun. We keep taking these little tangents and extending it a little longer. So yeah, okay, we'll set a cutoff for two more questions. Here we go.
Nik Atanackovic
I was going to ask you if you're still learning Mandarin, but I feel like that might be a whole different tangent that we could go.
Derek Sivers
No, how about this? Anybody wondering if you're interested what I'm doing? I made a /now page for this reason. I've had a personal website for decades. And about 10 years ago, I started adding a page just to let people know what I'm up to now. And I did it because some of my friends, or I should say more like acquaintances, people I know and care about, that I'm occasionally curious, what's that person up to? What's Tynan doing? What's Richard doing? And I wish that they had something on their personal website that wasn't just what I'm angry about in the news today or look at my fancy vacation on Instagram, but instead give me an overview. What's going on in your life? How are you doing? So I made a page on my website that's just /now. So sive.rs/now will always tell you what I'm doing now. And so a big part of what I'm doing now is, yes, spending one to three hours a day learning Chinese, both spoken and written. I'm actually more excited about the writing. I just find Chinese writing fascinating. So I'm learning to write and read Chinese.
Nik Atanackovic
I grew up in the Bay Area out near San Francisco, and a bunch of my friends were of Asian descent, Chinese, Vietnamese. But it always fascinated me, just Chinese writing. I've never, I mean, taken it upon myself to learn it. I've just heard it's a very difficult, like, it's both, I've heard it's both a difficult and very beautiful language at the same time, especially with the writing because there's so many intricacies.
Derek Sivers
My top recommendation is an app called Skritter. Go do Skritter for 10 minutes a day. That's all you need to do. And it will just enrich your life, even if it's just a little hobby that you'll eventually learn 200 characters a year. You could just keep adding to that. It is fascinating, especially if you start with the radicals, which are the components inside the character. So now when you look at a character, instead of seeing a bunch of squiggles, you see that it's water over sun with a knife or the moon under a grass roof with the power symbol. And you have to kind of figure out why moon, a grass roof and power means clothes. And you can actually look into the historical etymological dictionary to find out why moon, grassroof, and power means clothes or whatever it may be. It's fascinating when you learn what the ingredients mean and then can make up all these stories in your head about how we get to the end result.
Nik Atanackovic
Fascinating. I have one last question for you because you kind of already answered the other question that I had, which is what's next for Derek? Or maybe you haven't, if there's anything that you want to add on kind of what's coming up in the life of Derek.
Derek Sivers
I do not know, but let's do one last meta thing, which is this right now is my last podcast for a long time and maybe forever. I started noticing a month or two ago that I was feeling like I had exhausted the format and I was starting to repeat myself a bit. So for one, I immediately challenged myself to not repeat myself. So any question you asked me today, hopefully I was giving an answer that I haven't given before. But I started saying no to all invitations. So like a dozen people have asked in the past month and I told them all no. And then I got your email where you said, hey, you know, two months ago, you said we could do this in two months. So I'm ready. And I was about to say, no, I'm done with that. And then I thought about it. I was like, actually, doing a podcast with Nik would be a really great ending. So this is it. This is my last one for a long, long time, maybe forever.
Nik Atanackovic
What an honor.
Derek Sivers
And thanks for a fun one. It's been a really fun one. I've been smiling the whole time, as you can see. So I've really enjoyed your questions. And it's been a really fun challenge to think of interesting answers for your audience.
Nik Atanackovic
No, the pleasure is all mine, Derek. I mean, what an honor if it is your last podcast. I feel like this may be a fitting last question to as you as you retire and you and you ride off into the sunset and you say goodbye to the world of podcasting. You have a son. And I remember you talking with Tim Ferriss in an interview that you did two years ago, just how much being a father means to you and just the gratitude that you feel. But what was also interesting is like the responsibility that you feel. And you spoke about how you're like, if you do this right, I'm going to butcher your exact quote. But essentially, you said, if you do this right, you're setting up generations for success. You're bringing this person into the world who is going to inspire and who's going to pass down, you know, this way about life for generations to come. And that was very touching, very moving. I'm not a father yet, but I would like to be someday. I just know that that framework that you have is going to stick with me for a while. So first of all, thank you for that. And I'll post the link to that interview with Tim in the show notes. But I did want to ask if everything your son knew about you was wiped away. And you came to him and you could only impart a single piece of advice. What would it be and why?
Derek Sivers
Whatever scares you, go do it because then it won't scare you anymore. That's my single one. That's my single one that I think has been the most useful rule of thumb nutshell that I keep in my pocket at all times. I think that's the, if you're making me do that one fucking thing to say, that's my one fucking thing to say.
Nik Atanackovic
What a great podcasting question to end on too, right?
Derek Sivers
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything else you've learned? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me one sentence!"
Nik Atanackovic
"Derek, give us the one book that is going to change our lives."
Derek Sivers
Right, right.
Nik Atanackovic
Derek, in all honesty, man, this has been fantastic. Full circle moment for me. I'm a huge fan of yours and your work and your writing. I already gift... I mean, I've gifted a lot of your books in the past, but Useful, Not True is the most recent one that I read. I already gifted it to someone last night, bought them a hard copy and sent it to them. I was like, you have to read this because it's... I'm not just saying that because I'm a fan. I'm saying that because it's, uh, I mean, I have notes upon notes from, from reading it and just being able to talk to you and pick your brain, you know, in the last hour and 15 minutes has been honestly such a pleasure. So I hope you had fun. I certainly did. Um, and thanks again for coming on.
Derek Sivers
Cool. Thanks, Nick.