DEREK SIVERS | Making Decisions, Achieving Excellence & Finding Meaning | Modern Wisdom Podcast 150

Chris Williamson 0:00 (wind blowing) Hello, people of podcast land. Welcome back. My guest today is none other than Derek Sivers, writer, entrepreneur, programmer, fascinating human. He is one of the best guests I've ever heard on Tim Ferriss's show, so I'm very fortunate to have got a hold of him and sit him down on the big stage, obviously, Modern Wisdom. So yeah, had a long list of questions to go through today, including what have you been working on recently, get to find out where Derek's been spending his time. When are you going to finally release the now three books that he's been sat on? Excellence in life and how he perceives it. Why nuance is where truth lies rather than in a simple and succinct answer. Values and how they can both guide and restrict the way that we operate. Why it doesn't matter that we only live for a short period of time and in 50 years no one may even remember our names. Oh, it was so good. Derek, man, thank you so much for coming on. It was phenomenal. I already want to do another one. In other news, if you are new here, don't forget to hit the subscribe button. You will receive one episode every Monday and every Thursday with the world's most fascinating humans delivered directly to your listening device of choice. But for now, please welcome the wise and wonderful Derek Sivers. Derek Sivers in the building. How are you, man?

Derek Sivers 1:54 (laughs) Any particular building will do. Yes, I am in a building.

Chris Williamson 1:59 You are in the building.

Derek Sivers 2:00 Is that crazy?

Chris Williamson 2:00 You're in our building today.

Derek Sivers 2:02 That's true. I'm in your audio building.

Chris Williamson 2:04 That is it.

Derek Sivers 2:04 Thank you for having me to your audio home.

Chris Williamson 2:07 Thank you very much for joining us. So, as a man who says no to a lot, very glad that you said yes to coming on this podcast. It's been a while since I've heard you put out an audio podcast. I'm very honored to be the guy that we've reentered 2012 with. So-

Derek Sivers 2:21 Well, it's, uh, 2012. Um-

Chris Williamson 2:23 2012, 2020, you can tell it's been a long day.

Derek Sivers 2:26 (laughs) Uh, I, uh, yeah, I really, really like what you're doing with Modern Wisdom, and I really like your topics of conversation. So, these days when somebody asks me to do an interview, you know I've got nothing I'm promoting or pitching, so it's all about the quality of conversation, and you sent me some really interesting topics of conversation.

Chris Williamson 2:48 Thank you. Yeah, it's, um...

Chris Williamson 2:50 There's two, two types of guests I've found doing the podcast. One are guests who do their due diligence and then jump in, and then there's another type who like to really go deep before we begin about what we're gonna be talking about, and both of them I find to have their, have their merits. Um, but yeah, it's, I'm really looking forward to today. To the, the listeners, I've been going back with Derek since November time, before I went to Bali, before I went to Greece, and I've been thinking about all of these different questions. So we've, we've got a big breadcrumb trail of stuff that we've been thinking about.

Derek Sivers 3:27 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 3:27 Um, but first question that I've got for you is, what have you been working on recently? If you were to update your Now page today, what would it say?

Derek Sivers 3:38 Huh, I have been programming. Um, up until Christmas, I was working maniacally on my next book, which is called How to Live, which I'm so fucking excited about. And I was seriously doing, like, 15-hour days of writing, which I think you're not supposed to do for health reasons. But I would just get out of bed at 6:00 AM and I would just write and write and write and write and write. You know, I'd stop for lunch and I'd just write until I would drop at midnight. And I was doing that for months on end, and I was so into it, but then around Christmastime, um, my assistant reminded me that some other things having to do with my first and second book are on hold because they're waiting for me to program some things for the translators and the, the store. So, ever since Christmas, I, uh, paused. So what, what are we now, March something? So two and a half months. For two and a half months, I've been doing nothing but programming every day. Programing, um, programming the, the store where I'm gonna sell the books directly from my site, programming a translation system to manage all the translations of my books and stuff like that. I've just been in programmer head, which is fun.

Chris Williamson 4:51 That's cool. I, um, I had Stephen Wolfram on the podcast a while ago. You know Stephen?

Derek Sivers 4:57 I met him when he was a teenager and I was-

Chris Williamson 5:00 No way.

Derek Sivers 5:00 ... a little kid. I, my dad's a f- particle physicist. We were living here in Abingdon, England.

Chris Williamson 5:06 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 5:06 And Stephen Wolfram, my dad tells me, I don't remember this, but when I was five, uh, I had dinner with Stephen. Um, haven't seen him since then (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 5:16 You should,

Chris Williamson 5:17 uh, you should reach out to him. Stephen's, for the people, for the people who don't know who he is, uh, go back and listen to the episode. Just search Stephen Wolfram in the Modern Wisdom page. But, um, that is a man who has really, really optimized the ability to code as much as possible. You know, he's got a special-

Derek Sivers 5:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:32 ... laptop harness where he can go for a walk-

Derek Sivers 5:35 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 5:35 ... while he's still, while he's still coding, which just looks like the maddest thing. You got this guy with essentially a baby stroller attached to him, but instead of it being a child-

Derek Sivers 5:46 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 5:46 ... it's just, like, some Python or some Wolfram Mathematica or Wolfram Language, whatever it is.

Derek Sivers 5:51 Right. But, you know, I did a five-day-long walk in the forests of New Zealand, and I had so many thoughts during that time. I, for one, I just enjoyed it so much, just walking, walking, walking through a gorgeous forest. Felt like...... yeah, this is how life should be.

Chris Williamson 6:10 Mm.

Derek Sivers 6:10 Like, if you can get away with it, this is a great way to live, to spend most of your time walking through a gorgeous forest. And I, I, but then I have other aspirations in life. You know, I, I, there are a lot of things I want to write.

Chris Williamson 6:23 Mm.

Derek Sivers 6:24 And there are things I want to read. So reading while walking, I think we've solved that pretty well with audiobooks. But writing while walking, I can't do that yet. I'd like to. That would be maybe, like, a skill that one could practice, you know, the way that you decide, "Look, okay, I'm gonna start speaking Portuguese or-"

Chris Williamson 6:45 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 6:45 ... you know, learning to play the sitar, you would start at the very beginning and you would understand that you're not expected t- to know how to do this thing today. But yeah, something like this, idea of writing through voice and, like, recording your voice-

Chris Williamson 7:01 Mm. Yeah.

Derek Sivers 7:02 ... instead of having to write down visually, you know, on a typewriter and see it in front of you, that would be just a very different skill to, to learn. But it seems like it'd be really useful. Like, I think we have, between the voice recording and, uh, voice recognition, dictation software, I think we have the tools where it would be really, really viable to do this as your main method of writing, is to just do it orally. Um, it's very appealing.

Derek Sivers 7:33 Um, yeah.

Chris Williamson 7:34 How much of it is the being outside and how much of it is it, is the movement? Because you could get, you could quite easily get a treadmill desk, you could get a True Runner desk, which is one of those self-powered, um-

Derek Sivers 7:45 Oh. That's just sad.

Chris Williamson 7:46 Oh, no. You, you, you got to, you got to have the landscape going by, right?

Derek Sivers 7:49 Yeah, I think it's, uh, it's the combination. It's the walk, 'cause I mean, you could also say if it was just the outside, you could say, "Okay, we'll set up your laptop on a picnic bench outside."

Chris Williamson 7:58 Al fresco, yeah.

Derek Sivers 7:59 Uh, so no, I think it's, it's the both. It's the walking outside through a forest. God, I've never... I think I've tried a treadmill once in my life-

Chris Williamson 8:07 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 8:07 ... and it just felt like the saddest thing.

Chris Williamson 8:10 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 8:11 I mean, we use them as a, uh, as a negative metaphor, don't we? Like, you know, "How's work?" "Uh, it's just, you know, the treadmill."

Chris Williamson 8:18 Yeah. You are right. It's badly branded. They should rebrand.

Derek Sivers 8:20 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 8:21 They should call themselves something else, shouldn't they?

Derek Sivers 8:24 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 8:24 Um, so that's what you've been working on recently. You've been programming and writing. Am I right in thinking that your How to Live book, is that a descendant of the directives that you wrote?

Derek Sivers 8:34 Yes.

Chris Williamson 8:35 Cool.

Derek Sivers 8:35 Very good, yeah. It's, uh-

Chris Williamson 8:36 So that's the child, the love child of the directives?

Derek Sivers 8:40 Yes. Uh, and if you have read the book by David Eagleman called Sum, S-U-M, it's, it's an homage to that book. Um, Sum is probably my single favorite book. If... There's a page on my website where I collect my notes from every book I've read since 2007. Uh, it's sivers.org/book, and, uh, I think there's 300 something books there now that I've read. And so I take detailed notes whenever I'm reading something, and so Sum is the number one book at the top of that list because I have it sorted with my top recommendations up top, and I wish everybody would read that book. I just think it's one of the most brilliant, creative think piece books. It's, it's like 40 little short stories, just two to three pages long each-

Chris Williamson 9:29 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 9:30 ... each one answering the question, what happens when you die?

Chris Williamson 9:33 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 9:33 And so it's, it's a, it's a re- it's a constant reimagining. So it's 40 different answers to that one question.

Chris Williamson 9:40 Okay.

Derek Sivers 9:41 And I just love that format so much where, you know, chapter three will say, "When you die, you're, you know, you awaken in a great hall and it's just empty and you find out that, uh, God is a creator, he's not a manager. You know, he tipped over the first domino billions of years ago and he's on to other things. He doesn't even know we exist." Um, you know, chapter six, "When you die, you find out that, uh, what you knew as your life was actually just an artificial intelligence program. You are an artificial intelligence program," da da da da da. And so I just like this, this idea of 40 answers to one question, each one deliberately disagreeing with the previous chapter, 'cause it's just a re- uh, a reimagining of the, um-

Chris Williamson 10:23 Yeah.

Derek Sivers 10:23 ... a different answer. And so my book, How to Live, is an homage to Sum. It's using that exact same format to answer the question, uh, how to live.

Chris Williamson 10:36 It seems like your approach to writing, your approach to content production in general at the moment, based on, if anyone goes to sivers.org, you can see it's lean, is how I would describe it.

Derek Sivers 10:49 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 10:50 That's a diplomatic way of putting it. It's lean, right? There's, there's very-

Derek Sivers 10:54 Yes.

Chris Williamson 10:54 ... very little fluff. And the directives that you came up with, I think a list of 120, um, essentially instructions. We have a series on this podcast called Life Hacks, and that is essentially, um, directives for Gen X who have an iPhone-

Derek Sivers 11:10 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:10 ... in their pocket, um, and probably £30 to spend. Um, (laughs) and, uh, yeah, it, it's, it's, it seems to be a very, very lean, very no fluff. Um, I wonder if that's something that you've developed recently or whether that's something that you've always liked to do, whether you've always liked to s- kind of remove the fluff?

Derek Sivers 11:31 Um, hmm. If you, when people come visit my house, I'm living here in Oxford now, when they come to my house, the first question most people who come in ask is, "Do you live here?"

Chris Williamson 11:48 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 11:48 (laughs) 'Cause it's just empty. I'm like, "Yeah, well, I don't know. To me, I feel quite settled. I mean, look, I have a couch. That's, that's kind of big for me, you know, a couch." Um, so yeah, I think the minimalism goes through all aspects of my life. But when it comes to writing, I think it's just considerate.... um, I think the more you say, the less people hear, or the more they kind of tune out. If somebody- if, if you tell somebody, "Check out this article," and they click the link and they see the article and they say, "Oof, okay, this is like 50 paragraphs, or 100, like this is going to take me half an hour to read," they may skim it quickly. On the other hand, if they click and it's only 18 sentences, well then, hopefully they're going to read all 18 sentences. So, I found out that the average length of one of the articles on my site, and therefore the chapters in my book, the average length is just 22 sentences. So I really, you know-

Chris Williamson 12:47 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 12:47 ... I, I chiseled them down. I, I get rid of every single word and sentence that isn't absolutely necessary.

Chris Williamson 12:53 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 12:54 But I think that also comes from the fact that I spent th- 15 formative years of my life as a songwriter. From the age of 14 to 29, my primary goal in life was to be a great songwriter, and I wrote over 100 songs and, you know, that's 15 years of my life trying to say what I want to say in six syllables-

Chris Williamson 13:18 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 13:19 ... to match the melody, you know? So, maybe it's just like I spent so many years, you know, choosing the exact words in the minimum syllables to match the melody, so I think I still kind of take that approach to my writing.

Chris Williamson 13:32 I understand. Yeah, it's, um ... There's a, a wonderful article by Scott Adams. It's The Day You Became a Better Writer, um, and it- I think it's probably two paragraphs long and it's one of the most ...

Derek Sivers 13:47 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 13:47 ... it's one of the most cited, uh, bits of advice for fledgling writers and Tim Ferriss quoted it on a podcast a, a while ago and essentially broke the internet with it. You just completely-

Derek Sivers 13:58 Hm.

Chris Williamson 13:58 It just annihilated poor Scott's site, and Scott's got to buy extra server space and stuff for all this traffic.

Derek Sivers 14:02 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 14:03 So, moving on to some of the things that, um, I wanted to talk about today. So, something I've been thinking about a lot recently is to do with crossroad opportunities in life. So we have these, kind of like epochs, in our life, right? We have these grooves that we've greased, and then often there comes a time where we need to choose whether or not we continue to grease that groove, or we decide to take ourselves outside of that. And often, like a river, we take the path of least resistance.

Derek Sivers 14:34 Hm.

Chris Williamson 14:35 But to change the flow of that river, there's a lot of inertia to get over, a lot of stagnation to get over. I wanted to know your thoughts about that, about crossroad opportunities in life.

Derek Sivers 14:45 Um ... Well, I think when we're at those times in life where we're making decisions, we forget to explicitly name the benefit of doing nothing, of just continuing as we are now, right? Like, too many people, they say, "Okay, well, I have to- I have to make a choice between A and B." But then they forget, well, there's option C, which is to just do nothing, um, and just carry on as you are now. So I don't mean consider it, I mean actually state it and say it out loud. Like, name it as an option. So, the usual thing, you know, people say, "Should I do this new thing? What are the benefits? What are the drawbacks?" So I think that you should also ask, "What are the benefits of not doing this new thing?" Like, what are the benefits of doing nothing? Um, I really like th- this ... I, I heard this idea in a book called, um, The Courage to be Disliked, uh, which was also really brilliant, one of the best things I've ever read. Um, and it tells you to consider why you're not changing. Like, why are you just continuing on the way you are? It is clearly offering you a benefit if you keep doing it. So if you ask yourself, "Why am I just carrying on as usual?" you might come up with an answer like, "Well, my life is pretty good now, I'm happy," or, "There's a chance that doing this new thing would make my life harder, and I don't want to risk that."

Chris Williamson 16:16 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 16:17 Um, so you can name the mental mindset ones, right? Like, "My, my life feels under control right now, and I like feeling in control. I like feeling like an expert. I like feeling smart. If I do this new thing, I'm going to feel dumb and out of control," like trying to write a book while walking through the forest.

Chris Williamson 16:38 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 16:38 (laughs) Um, but then I think that once you bring these to the surface, then instead of sitting in your subconscious, you've, you've now brought them to the table, right? Like, you can now weigh them in your decision. You've laid them out as an alternate option. And then you have to admit that it's okay to do nothing. Like, I think often we, we feel that we're always supposed to be doing something, but ... You know, Warren Buffett is quite public, but he has a quiet partner, um, Charlie Munger, who's a really interesting thinker. Um, Charlie Munger gave this interesting advice to young investors. So people of course, you know, say- everybody just, you know, gets him up on a stage and says, "How can we be successful investors?"

Chris Williamson 17:27 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 17:28 So, one of his top bits of advice he gave, specifically to young people, I think it was a speech he gave at a college graduation, was he said, "Imagine you've got one of those little loyalty punch cards." You know, one of those little loyalty cards with 10 holes in it that they can punch out?

Chris Williamson 17:43 A Starbucks card or whatever, yeah.

Derek Sivers 17:44 Yes. He said, "Imagine it's got 10 holes in it that can be punched, and that is the total number of investments you're allowed to make in your life. That's it. You can only make 10 investments in your life." And he said, "If that was the case, you'd be better off just waiting and waiting for years for the right thing to come by, and then when the right thing comes along, you, you knock it out of the park." (laughs) To use the baseball metaphor. Y- you just dive in all the way when you see the right opportunity.... um, which is kind of what my, you know, next book, called Hell Yeah or No, is about.

Chris Williamson 18:25 I want you to talk about your approach to decision-making in general. And you have a page on your site which is /slow, right? I think that's, uh-

Derek Sivers 18:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:35 ... considered. Again, the same way that the articles are lean, the decision-making is considered. Is that because of Charlie's approach, that if you make the right decision, you only need to get a couple of them very, very right?

Derek Sivers 18:49 Hmm. There's a theme I think is going to come up a few times in this conversation, which is, there's no right or wrong approach. All of these things, this, you know, this modern wisdom, (laughs) these philosophies-

Chris Williamson 19:09 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 19:09 ... are just tools that we use for specific situations. Um, so I have this article called Hell Yeah or No that a lot of people quote, and they tell me that they, they like that idea of hell yeah or no. And so, they email me saying, "Oh, this is great. I'm going to use it. I'm using it for everything in my life now."

Chris Williamson 19:34 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 19:34 They say, "No, no, no, no, no, no. Hell Yeah or No is, like, one specific tool for one specific situation when you're overwhelmed with options and you're in danger of drowning." Well, then you raise the bar all the way and say no to almost everything, and say yes to almost nothing. But it's for a situation where, you know, you're in danger of drowning.

Chris Williamson 19:56 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 19:57 Um, if, for example, you're straight out of college and you're welcome to the world and you're about to jump out there and try to make something of yourself, then it's probably a better strategy to say yes to everything. Just do it all. Sleep less, say yes to everything, try everything, go everywhere, meet everyone, do, you know, 20 different jobs per year (laughs) for a few weeks each.

Chris Williamson 20:19 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 20:20 And just do it all. And then when something hits, when the world starts rewarding you in a certain aspect, well, then you can double down on that. And then when you start to get successful in that one thing and then everybody wants a piece of you, well then now maybe it's a time to start saying no to almost everything and just stay focused on this one thing that is, like, giving you major payoffs. So, when you ask about my slow thinking, um, that was more of just, like, that felt like a, a cathartic admission, um ...

Chris Williamson 20:59 Also probably a little bit of a disclaimer.

Derek Sivers 21:02 Yes, thank you. Good word.

Chris Williamson 21:03 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 21:04 It was a bit of a disclaimer. Um, because, hmm. Partially because I meet strangers that ask me deep questions, and they go, "Oh, Derek Sivers. Oh my God, I want to ask you something." They ask me a question, and I say, "Huh, I don't know." (laughs) And they just look at me a little disappointed, like-

Chris Williamson 21:29 I thought you were Derek Sivers.

Derek Sivers 21:30 "You're supposed to have the answer." I'm like, "Well, in a few days I will."

Chris Williamson 21:33 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 21:34 Um, so I just noticed that, uh, I'm just not the quickest draw, but that's okay. It was just, I just spent a little time thinking that through and realizing I don't, I don't need to be quick. And in fact, I think it's really kind of cool not to try to be quick, because when, when you try to be quick, you know, you think, "Oh my God, I have to answer in two seconds." You know, like, what's that game? Jeopardy, where you have to press the buzzer quickly.

Chris Williamson 22:03 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 22:04 Um, you, you just give this kind of knee-jerk reaction off the top of your head. You give the first thing that comes to mind. And I've just found that the first thing that comes to mind isn't as interesting as the, the things that come to mind much later, whether it's five minutes or five days later. But it's those things that once you work through the usual reaction and get to the other side of that, that's the shit I want to, you know, dive into. So yeah, it was kind of embracing my slow approach.

Chris Williamson 22:35 I agree. I think certainly there's, there's something to do with closing the loop as well. We all want to appear competent-

Derek Sivers 22:43 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 22:44 ... capable. You ask me a question, "Oh yeah, of course, I've got, you know, I- I've already written an article on that. Don't you worry, man. Like, let me just pull out the bibliography and I'll start citing from all the different books, 'cause it makes me look really cool."

Derek Sivers 22:56 (laughs) Right.

Chris Williamson 22:56 I, I fall into that trap. I'm watching myself now. I'm trying to constantly, um, strip away the very sticky elements of the persona of now becoming a competent regular podcaster.

Derek Sivers 23:08 Right.

Chris Williamson 23:08 So when people ask me things, "Oh, well, you know, I had this conversation with Aubrey Marcus. It's very interesting. On episode 117, when he said that..." And I'm like, "No, no, no, Chris. For fuck's sake, mate. Like, just, you know, just allow yourself to sit with the question. Don't try and, and broadcast this, this version of you which is competent and capable and this, that and the other," because I don't think that's me. And for some people that might be. You know, you're maybe the Gary Vaynerchuk of this world, perhaps.

Derek Sivers 23:35 Right.

Chris Williamson 23:35 Someone who's one of these hyper quick thinkers who does the Q&A on stage and, you know, the, the big conference thing and, you know, the life advice. I- I'm not, I'm not convinced that that's where my value lies. And it would appear that you have identified in yourself that you add more value by waiting and considering and then coming back than giving something to close the loop and, and look cool and look capable and, and competent.

Derek Sivers 24:04 Right, but it isn't just about looks. Um, in my case, I am pursuing the path of being a great writer, thinker kind of guy. I'm not pursuing the path of being a great interviewer or-... you know, debater.

Chris Williamson 24:23 Yup.

Derek Sivers 24:24 If, if I wanted to be a great interviewer or debater, then I would have to change my value system accordingly. I would say, "Okay, well, I used to be a slow thinker and that's my default, but I need to practice being a quick thinker now because I really want to be a great debater or interviewer." And that just, you need to be quick, that's just th- how that game goes. Um-

Chris Williamson 24:45 The Ben Shapiro approach, yeah.

Derek Sivers 24:47 Right. Um, so yeah. Uh, the slow thinking is for me for my current situation.

Chris Williamson 24:55 I get it, and it facilitates that. So you've touched on one of the words I wanted to move on to there, which is values. What would you identify as your life values?

Derek Sivers 25:06 (laughs) Okay, that's a big one.

Chris Williamson 25:09 That is a big one, but it's a question that I like, it's a question that I like to ask and it's one that I've been pondering a lot recently. And I managed to... Well, why don't I tell you mine? Should I tell you mine?

Derek Sivers 25:17 Okay, please. Thank you.

Chris Williamson 25:18 Cool. So I did an exercise at the start of the year, um, and I refined mine down to five. You're supposed to have no more than five. I mean, who's, who's the, the, the master of values told us that you're not supposed... The Values Agency told me I wasn't allowed-

Derek Sivers 25:30 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:30 ... to have more than five values or else I'd have to pay tax on the remainder-

Derek Sivers 25:33 Right, right.

Chris Williamson 25:33 ... on the ones over the top. Um, so mine actually spelled out words. So they spelled out an acronym, CASES. So number one, curiosity, uh, to be curious, to learn new things about myself and the world around me. A, adventure, to experience new things and meet and see new people. Uh, a word that I made up, which was selfless development, which is to learn about myself, improve, and then teach others what I've learned.

Derek Sivers 25:58 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 25:58 E was excellence, to be precise with my thoughts, words, and actions. I want to fulfill my potential, I want to make the most of minutes. And then the final one was self-care. If I don't look after myself, I can't do the things that I want to do for myself and others. And I realized that at the moment, if I ensure that broadly most of the stuff that I do on a daily basis meets some of those, most of those, at least one of those, I'm, I'm probably in the right ballpark.

Derek Sivers 26:26 Wow, very cool.

Chris Williamson 26:28 Thank you.

Derek Sivers 26:28 I like that. Um, hmm. Okay, well, um, I think my big ones are, they're not single words like that, but they're more like a, uh-

Chris Williamson 26:39 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 26:39 ... concept. So to me, one of the biggest ones is to ignore what you say, but notice what you do. So I think about this one a lot, that, um, that the words... Your, your actions reveal your values. So t- kind of doesn't matter what you say, your, your actions show what you really value. You can say that you, you think it's important to be kind to everybody, but then if you're going around being an asshole, well, then that's clearly not one of your values, no matter what you say. Um, so I think that we do too much thinking about what we want in theory and too little noticing what we want in practice.

Chris Williamson 27:24 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, I agree.

Derek Sivers 27:25 So that's kind of the same thing, right? Like, we, we can say, we can think that we want something, but you really have to go out into the world and try things. So if you have a theory about what you want, you have to go try it as soon as possible to find out if you really want that, and then be very open to the fact that your theory might have been wrong.

Chris Williamson 27:44 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 27:45 And, and don't be upset about that. You just say, "Oh, okay." You just, especially once you acknowledge the difference, you can say, "Okay, well, sitting at home in my bedroom with my notebook, I thought I wanted this thing, but now that I'm actually doing it, I found out I don't," and that's okay. Um, so another value, uh, or yeah, I think we often oversimplify. Like, you think, "I'm sick of the city, I want to live in the country," so you move to the country. But then after a few months you miss the city. So the tr- a- and I have a lot of friends in New York City that did this.

Chris Williamson 28:19 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 28:19 New York City is one of those places where it has this really nice Upstate New York area that's, like, just an hour north of New York City, and so a lot of people feel, like, burnt out in the city, so they say, "You know what? I need to move upstate," and then they do, but then after a few months, almost every time, they miss the city. So I think the truth was more nuanced, which is that sometimes you prefer the city and sometimes you prefer the country, but that nuanced truth is less dramatic, it's less simple, so it's harder to, you know, tweet your stance on that. Like, we kind of, I think we, we want to have a very simple version of our self-identity so that we can fit it into our little social profile and say who we are quickly in a sentence, but then I think we often oversimplify. Um, or (clears throat) sorry, the thing that we said a couple minutes ago where often, um, things are situational. Like, you want one thing when you're in a certain situation, but not when you're not.

Chris Williamson 29:22 Hmm.

Derek Sivers 29:23 Right? Like I said, the hell yeah or no is an idea for a certain situation. But then the problem is we feel some need to decide, like, "Well, which is it? Do I value this thing or not?" So I think often about, um, this kind of rule of thumb of don't oversimplify, that you need to acknowledge nuance and acknowledge conditional situations. Um, yeah. Friends of mine that... When my friends and I... Like, my, my friends are kind of spread out around the world, so most of our conversations are by phone, and when friends have these kind of life situations, I, I hear they're often trying to decide, "Am I going to do this thing or that thing, or do I prefer this or that?" And I'm always the one that I feel it's like my job to remind them to acknowledge nuance, nuance, that the answer might be both. Um, I like this idea that in between black and white is not only gray, but actually every color in the world.

Chris Williamson 30:27 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 30:27 So I think you can choose to be colorful in your values.... and like colors in nature, you can also acknowledge that you're ever-changing. You know, like I've, I've gone through some very distinct phases in my life where I've made a life decision to be in the middle of everything, you know, "I'm gonna move to Singapore, I'm gonna be in the middle of Asia, I'm gonna meet everybody and do everything." And I did that for a few years, and then I had a kid. Then I was like, "Mm, mm, I've got a baby now. I want to move to the middle of nowhere in New Zealand and just raise my kid in nature and, you know, give the finger to the world." (laughs) So I was like-

Chris Williamson 31:04 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 31:04 ... "Goodbye world, I'm gonna raise a kid for eight years."

Chris Williamson 31:07 See you later on.

Derek Sivers 31:07 And so I just, like, I just disappeared off to New Zealand for seven years and, um, had that phase. And now, just this past year, I moved here to... Well, I was gonna say I moved to Europe, you know. I moved to England-

Chris Williamson 31:21 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 31:21 ... a little island off the coast of Europe.

Chris Williamson 31:23 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 31:23 But, um, I'm kind of, you know, I'm next to Europe. I'm kind of in Europe.

Chris Williamson 31:28 Yeah.

Derek Sivers 31:28 But yeah, this was this decision to... It was a new phase for me to, to explore more. And, um, you know, so yeah, you can acknowledge that you're... that what you wanted five years ago is not what you want now. And just because you said it in the past doesn't mean that you need to still honor it. I think a lot of people do that thing where, you know, there's this question, um, I've heard asked around, like, "What would your teenage self think of you now?"

Chris Williamson 31:56 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 31:57 And the funny thing is that, that I think that that question implies some kind of authenticity. Like, as if the- your teenage self was your real, authentic self, and you now-

Chris Williamson 32:09 Some e- unencumbered, pure version of your spirit that actually-

Derek Sivers 32:13 Right.

Chris Williamson 32:13 ... wasn't be-fettled by all of the, the crap that you've done over the last 20 years or whatever. Yeah, I get it.

Derek Sivers 32:18 W- right. But, you know, I think that no, no, no, no, no. Like I... In fact, I think it would be pretty sad if I was still living some kind of life to please my teenage self. You know, that would just be like, that would kind of acknowledge that I haven't changed. But man, I've changed a lot. Um, I've changed so much. Yeah, the me now is very different from the me from 10 years ago and very, very, very different from the me from 30 years ago.

Chris Williamson 32:41 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 32:42 And I love that.

Chris Williamson 32:42 There's

Chris Williamson 32:43 some bits, some parts of me as well. At 17, there was some bits of me that I was just a dick.

Derek Sivers 32:47 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 32:47 You know, I was good, I was good in some bits, but I was a total dick in others. This really loops back to the crossroad opportunities in life, right? Where we're talking about we have this momentum which we've built up, we're moving in a direction like a river cutting through rock, and there's this continuity bias. I, I am a musician, writer-

Derek Sivers 33:07 Right.

Chris Williamson 33:07 ... podcaster, club promoter, uh, DJ, whatever. I am that thing. And there's this, there's this requirement, this feeling like, "Well, I can't... What, what are the... the new thing? I didn't do the do about the new thing. Like, if I try, if I change, then I'm not, I'm not that thing anymore. That is me."

Derek Sivers 33:24 Right.

Chris Williamson 33:24 "That was me, that's where I get my quantifiable metrics of status and success from the people around me, this is what society has put me on a pedestal for. I've had some form of success with this. If I do this new thing, what if it all goes to pot?" You know, I, it doesn't surprise me that all of us sometimes find it challenging to let go of the tether to that balloon.

Derek Sivers 33:48 Well, let's think about that question, um, you've asked about, "What are you optimizing your life for?"

Chris Williamson 33:54 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 33:55 About the difference between existing with an understanding of your values, your goals, your plan, versus just allowing life to, uh, you know, blow your, blow your leaf around. Like, was that, you know... Was that Forrest Gump where that leaf was like-

Chris Williamson 34:11 Mm-hmm. (laughs)

Derek Sivers 34:11 That was like the intro to Forrest Gump, right? The little leaf blowing in the wind.

Chris Williamson 34:14 Yeah.

Derek Sivers 34:15 But I thought about this with, there can be reasons at stages in your life to make yourself stick with one thing, even if you kind of want to chase every distraction. And then on the other times, there can be times where it's just, it, it's the right time for you to go chase distractions. So, I think about this wonderful rule of thumb of asking yourself what you want now versus what you want most. And I love the, that, the simplicity of that sentence. That what you want now-

Chris Williamson 34:53 That's a diff- that's a difficult question to a- to answer, sorry. (laughs)

Derek Sivers 34:54 Well, it's... I think of shallow happy versus deep happy.

Chris Williamson 34:58 Okay.

Derek Sivers 34:59 Right? Like, shallow happy is just having the ice cream, deep happy is being proud of yourself for not having the ice cream, right? But most importantly, it's, it comes back to whatever works for you, right? Like, there is no philosophy or approach to life that is inherently right or wrong. You just have to try it and see if it works for you or not. Like, I don't mind holding some beliefs that are completely false if holding that belief works for me right now, if it gets the desired action for me. So, you have to ask yourself, "Well, what does works for you mean," right? Like, what makes you take action? What makes you take the right actions? But maybe for you, for now, at this stage in your life, maybe the right action for you is to stay focused. Or maybe the right action for you at this stage in your life is to open your mind to new inputs and to try new things and to indulge every curiosity. Like, only you know what stage in your life you're in. Like, do you need to keep focusing right now for your current desires in life? Or is it time for you to stop doing the thing you've been doing? You know, no podcast is going to tell you the right answer.

Chris Williamson 36:16 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 36:17 But I think that what these conversations, what these podcasts, or even articles and books and whatever inputs we get in the world, are useful for hearing other people's thoughts. It's useful to help you consider another way of being.... but ultimately you need to try it on and see if it works for you in fact, not just in theory.

Chris Williamson 36:41 Mm. It's interesting as I, as I produce more content on this podcast, I feel myself playing between the prescriptive model of life, you know? We, like I say, we have this li-

Derek Sivers 36:52 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 36:52 ... we have this life hacks, um, series, and by no means is that something to live your life by. It's like how to make the best toasted sandwich in a Breville sandwich maker and stuff like that.

Derek Sivers 37:00 Right.

Chris Williamson 37:00 You know? It's not, it's not game changing stuff, although they, they're pretty good sandwiches.

Derek Sivers 37:04 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 37:04 Um, you know, I, I, I see that side, I see the prescriptive side, you know, the more, um... the, the best sleeping posture-

Derek Sivers 37:12 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 37:12 ... how you can scale your business using Google AdWords in blah blah. You know, I see that side but then this nuance is, for me, where all of the interest is. That's where, that's where I really enjoy sinking my teeth into and I think you arrive at a solution which is perfectly curated for you because we are all world experts in us, right?

Derek Sivers 37:33 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 37:33 You're a world expert in Derek Sivers (laughs) and I'm a world expert in Chris Williamson. Um, so really, there isn't anyone who's as qualified to make a decision about what you should do than you.

Derek Sivers 37:46 Right. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:49 I get it. So-

Derek Sivers 37:50 It's... yeah, taking in the inputs of others but... yeah, you hear it all, take it all in, but yeah, ultimately only you know what's best.

Chris Williamson 37:59 Yes. So this leads us onto, uh, another point I wanted to bring up nicely which is our mortality and playing the game of life. So, we have very fleeting time and our existence doesn't last, it doesn't mean much after 50 years' time. Very few people will remember that we were there or that care that we're gone. How does this impact the way that we should view our lives and our occurrences within them?

Derek Sivers 38:27 (coughs) I have a very tiny answer but then I'm curious to ask why you're asking.

Chris Williamson 38:34 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 38:35 Um, 'cause I just never understood people's need for meaning. Right? Like, I just tend to go from desire to desire, from interest to interest, from project to project.

Chris Williamson 38:46 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 38:46 Like, I'm, I'm always, always, always, always working towards something. So, that is my meaning in life at any given moment. Like, even if I zoom out, if you were to say, "No Derek, but what's the big picture?"

Chris Williamson 39:01 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 39:01 I... then there's a project or a path there too. I can say, "Oh, okay, well in the bigger picture I want to, you know, find interesting thoughts that others haven't considered and share those with the world." And you could say, "Okay, well what's the bigger picture to that?"

Chris Williamson 39:16 (laughs) I wanna zoom out more.

Derek Sivers 39:16 I'd say, "Okay, well, I... it honestly just tickles my brain and is viscerally pleasurable to find a new way of looking at things and it's creative and inventive and fun." Um, then you could say, "Yes, but what's the real point of that?"

Chris Williamson 39:35 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 39:35 So (laughs) you know, it just... it keeps going. You'd say-

Chris Williamson 39:37 Yeah.

Derek Sivers 39:37 ... well, then I'm, I'm growing. I feel that it's like I'm constantly growing and changing and this and that and it's, it's, um, learning more about the world, I'm understanding the world better which makes me happy on a day-to-day basis, the world becomes my playground. Like, at any point you could zoom in and say, "Why are you doing this thing this minute, this hour?" Or zoom out and say, "Why are you doing this thing this decade?" And it always has a purpose, so I don't really understand this mind... or this kind of, this question of saying, "Yes, but what's the meaning of life and it won't even matter in 100 years."

Chris Williamson 40:11 Mm.

Derek Sivers 40:11 I think, well... I don't, I don't care. Like... I, I... you know the, that thing of the, um... what are those Tibetan monks that make those elaborate sand drawings and then just, you know?

Chris Williamson 40:22 Yeah, just get rid.

Derek Sivers 40:23 Which is fine. Like, I've done so many th-... like, there have been projects that I've worked on for years and then just a month or two before launching I went, "Eh," and chucked it, and it's fine 'cause I was just doing it, I was enjoying it the whole way. Like I wa-... it wasn't a goal. It's a... didn't launch, so what? You know, so that's like, you know, it won't mean anything in 50 years. Well so what if you enjoyed doing it? So I don't know. So let me turn it back on you. Why... what is your thought behind answering or asking that question?

Chris Williamson 40:52 So I think it's twofold. The first one is I think many people don't get to do what they want to do in life and by asking what is the meaning of life, how can I find meaning and purpose in my daily, yearly, decadely existence, they're hoping that someone will prescribe them the steps to get away from doing the things they don't want to do and move toward doing the things they do.

Derek Sivers 41:21 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:22 And the second thing which I've been thinking about a lot recently to do with this question is, I think a big part of it is a repackaging of a fear of death. I think humans don't like the idea of dying. Unless you've absolutely taken the red pill on stoic philosophy or free will (laughs) whatever it might be-

Derek Sivers 41:45 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 41:45 ... there is an innate fear in dying, and previously we might have had that serviced by religion, previously we might have had that serviced by belief in an afterlife or a higher power or whatever it might be-

Derek Sivers 41:58 (takes a sip of water)

Chris Williamson 41:58 ... and now as we have an increasingly s- secular society, I think people are trying to find a meaning in their existence right now which is so great that it justifies the fact that one day it's all going to end.

Derek Sivers 42:13 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 42:14 How's that as an answer?

Derek Sivers 42:15 Thank you. That

Derek Sivers 42:17 helps.

Chris Williamson 42:17 I think that might be it. I genuinely do. I, I, I did a podcast a couple of years ago with, um, a, a guy who was talking about how he thought happiness, people's search for happiness, this proliferation of how to be happy, ten, five steps for your fulfilled life, he, he was adamant that it was just people fearing death and then-

Derek Sivers 42:35 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 42:35 ... and trying to run away from it, and I, um... upon reflection I, I can see more and more of that now. Um-Yeah.

Derek Sivers 42:44 Y- you know what's funny? I consider my written output ... Well, let's just say any of this output. I mean, you know, this conversation's gonna be recorded-

Chris Williamson 42:53 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 42:54 ... and kept around. Um, I definitely think in- of all of this stuff in terms of, like, after death. You know, like, I think this is my legacy I'm leaving, all this stuff that I've written. Um (laughs) , Darren Brown in the book called Happy. Did

Derek Sivers 43:17 you read that?

Chris Williamson 43:17 I did. I actually got to see him speak about it a couple of weeks ago in London as well. It was great.

Derek Sivers 43:22 Oh, wow. I wish I would've known about that. Um, I'm a massive fan of his. Uh, just huge. I would ... Whenever people do that fictional kind of, you know, if you could have any person-

Chris Williamson 43:34 Braun

Narrator 43:34 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 43:34 ... ever in history-

Chris Williamson 43:35 ... or whatever.

Derek Sivers 43:35 ... living or dead at a dinner party, who would it be? To me, it's just Darren Brown (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 43:38 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 43:38 That's it.

Chris Williamson 43:38 He's a beast.

Derek Sivers 43:40 Um, eh, no need for Jesus or Mo- Buddha or whatever. No.

Chris Williamson 43:44 Just give me Darren.

Derek Sivers 43:45 No Gandhi. Just, just Darren Brown.

Chris Williamson 43:46 Yep.

Derek Sivers 43:47 Um, so near the end of his book called Happy, he had a s- such a wonderful, tiny point in passing where he said that your thought patterns are your personality. Like, this is ... The way you think is your personality, and you sharing your thoughts and your personality with your loved ones, or even sharing them publicly like this, um, carries on after you die. So therefore, like, that is the, the life after death, is your personality carries on after you're dead. That's ... You know, it's always funny to me when, uh, say like, George Harrison from The Beatles dies, or somebody like that, or Ray Charles, and people go, "Oh. Oh God, that's so sad." You know, David Bowie or something like that. And I think really, oh, were you waiting for David Bowie's next album? (laughs)

Chris Williamson 44:45 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 44:45 Have you bought all of his albums in the last 20 years? They go, "Oh, no." It's like, well then, he's not dead to you. Like, you're enjoying what he did in 1972, so you can carry on enjoying that. He ... Like, David Bowie is not dead for you. Dar- David Bowie is very much alive. Um, it ... you know, same thing with a lotta these, like, famous musicians that were legends, is you weren't buying their current output anyway. You weren't a dear friend of theirs. They weren't stopping over at your house next week for dinner. So what they put out there in the world is completely alive, uh, for you. Like that is the only version of them that you get. And so yeah, I think of this creative output, um, as quite, uh, eternal, at least lasting-

Chris Williamson 45:25 Transcendent, yeah.

Derek Sivers 45:26 ... for another couple generations.

Chris Williamson 45:26 Yeah, yeah, it definite- it definitely is. The, the people that we leave behind, the effect that we have on them, the content we put out, you know, to y- your hell yeah or no concept. You know? Like, how many people has that touched? How many people ...

Derek Sivers 45:41 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 45:41 As much as, as much as you don't want them to use it as a heuristic- (laughs)

Derek Sivers 45:44 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 45:44 ... um, for life, that they are, so we, we need to accept that. Um, and-

Derek Sivers 45:49 You know, at the very beginning of the call, you asked, or you mentioned my HyperSimple website.

Chris Williamson 45:57 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 45:57 Uh, part of that is because I'm expecting this website to go on 100 years. So who knows what holographic devices beamed into peoples' retinas or implanted in their brains, like, websites will be, uh, used on in the year 2300, but I expect that my site will be around then. So I think people using WordPress and current plugins filled with Google Analytics and JavaScript bullshit is very, very short-sighted. Like, my site's completely ready that if I were to die tomorrow, this site is gonna keep working for couple hundred years 'cause it is just plain HTML and text with absolutely no contemporary tooling that will expire.

Chris Williamson 46:42 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 46:43 Um, and that's very much on purpose. Like, everything ... I, I make my site by hand. I don't use any frameworks. I don't use any software. I just type every HTML line b- line by hand. So when you ask, like ... I th- it was funny 'cause you even put the question like, you know, you said something like removing everything or stripping it down, but actually it's the opposite. Since I'm ... I open up a blank text document-

Chris Williamson 47:03 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 47:03 ... to create a web page, it's a matter of, like-

Chris Williamson 47:05 Hmm.

Derek Sivers 47:05 ... why would I take hours of time to type, you know, loads of unnecessary div tags and JavaScript includes-

Chris Williamson 47:13 Yeah, yeah.

Derek Sivers 47:14 ... unless it was absolutely necessary? That's too much typing. It's unnecessary. So no, I just don't put in anything that isn't needed, but a lot of that's because I'm, I'm making a site that's intended to be around for at least 100 years.

Chris Williamson 47:25 That's hardcore. I like ... I really, really like that. I was gonna ask actually what, uh, code your site was written in. I thought I'd seen something to do with Raspberry or I don't ... I have no idea what-

Derek Sivers 47:35 No, it's ... You're thinking of Ruby, um-

Chris Williamson 47:37 That's it.

Derek Sivers 47:37 I do use the Ruby programming language for a little bit of automation, but, uh, it, it just helps me output static, plain HTML-

Chris Williamson 47:46 Good.

Derek Sivers 47:46 ... pages with nothing in it.

Chris Williamson 47:47 Did, did you originally do your, uh, book summary in, was it plain text, like a notepad file or something? Like the most hard-

Derek Sivers 47:53 Uh-huh. Still do.

Chris Williamson 47:53 ... hardcore text version that you're gonna get? Like, it doesn't-

Derek Sivers 47:57 But-

Chris Williamson 47:57 ... matter what happens in future, it's always gonna be future-proofed?

Derek Sivers 48:00 Oh dude, I do ... Basically, I only use two programs on the computer. I use Vim, uh, which is a plain, uh, like a raw programmer's plain text editor, um, which is like Notepad. Like it just does nothing. It doesn't do bold print or anything like that. It does no fonts. It just, it's just plain text, which is, yeah, it's eternal. Like, you know, uh, civilizations, uh, on Saturn's moons-

Chris Williamson 48:26 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 48:26 ... will be able to read plain text files.

Chris Williamson 48:28 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 48:28 I don't think they'll be able to run, you know, WordPress 7.2-

Chris Williamson 48:32 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Derek Sivers 48:32 ... necessarily, but-

Chris Williamson 48:33 Yeah.

Derek Sivers 48:33 ... plain text files, yes. Um, and, uh, and then I use Firefox, and that's it. That's like I basically just do everything all day long-... in Vim, just a plain text editor. I don't, I refuse to use any... I don't do any... ev- yeah, I don't do any... c- I don't use the cloud for anything, I do nothing online, I don't use Google Docs. I in- in fact, I actually prefer working offline. I, I kinda do this, uh, uh, uh funny little nerdy work habit of mine is, about two hours before I go to sleep, I completely power down my broadband modem. I just go over to the wall and I click off that, you know, our, our British power switch on the wall.

Chris Williamson 49:09 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 49:10 I just go booh, and it, like, shuts off the internet, so I am now not connected to the world. I hold down both buttons on the phone so it powers off completely, and so now I'm kind of, like, in a dark house with no connection to the world, and that's how I spend the first... I mean, the last two hours of every day. Um, I may continue writing, but it's completely offline. And then same thing when I wake up in the morning, I spend, like, the first four or five hours of the day completely offline. Um, I don't turn on the internet usually until noon or so when I've gotten in a few good hours of writing and-

Chris Williamson 49:44 Is that just-

Derek Sivers 49:44 ... working and programming.

Chris Williamson 49:45 Is that just to give you time to focus, or is there something more symbolic about that? Do you like being off grid in that sort of a way?

Derek Sivers 49:52 Both. Um, I find there's a wonderful w- relief, a peace and relief when I know that there's no way to contact me. You know, like, my phone is off, the internet is off.

Chris Williamson 50:06 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 50:06 I mean, you know, I like the fact that it's like, if there was a real emergency, like, somebody would come bang on my door, you know? But I like being unreachable. It- it's, it's a different thing when you're sitting there focusing on work knowing that a, a little part of your brain knows that there are alerts happening, or at any point, you could just grab your phone and hit Reddit or whatever your fix is. Um, and I like that thing of just not being able to. I'm the kinda guy that I- I don't keep cookies in the house. You know, like, I can't, like, have a box of cookies and then just not eat them. So it's better for me to just not have the cookies in the house, it's better for me to just completely shut off the internet and my brain kind of just goes... (sighs) Like, that's not an option. I really like that. So yeah, I work usually offline, plain text files, et cetera. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:57 Yeah. I couldn't agree more. One of the best lifestyle changes I've made over the last few years has been charging my phone outside of my bedroom. So it means-

Derek Sivers 51:06 Oh, hell yeah.

Chris Williamson 51:06 It means my-

Derek Sivers 51:07 No electronics allowed in the bedroom.

Chris Williamson 51:08 Yeah.

Derek Sivers 51:09 Fuck that. It's so unsexy.

Chris Williamson 51:11 It is un- that's... Yeah, it is unsexy, and I found-

Derek Sivers 51:14 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 51:14 ... um, as soon as I did it, I, I'd start going to sleep in... previously, I remember the old me who, when he couldn't sleep for 15 minutes, would just roll over and go on YouTube, which obviously-

Derek Sivers 51:24 Right.

Chris Williamson 51:25 ... extends the time-

Derek Sivers 51:26 Right.

Chris Williamson 51:26 ... that you're going to sleep by hours because you're just scrolling down-

Derek Sivers 51:30 Yep.

Chris Williamson 51:30 ... this endless cat video portal.

Derek Sivers 51:32 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 51:32 Um, and by putting it outside of the room, it's the same as that, right? It's just, it's not there, it's no longer an option, it's like it doesn't exist.

Derek Sivers 51:39 Yeah. I, yeah, to me, I, I... yeah. It... I- I literally ban electronics from the bedroom. There's nothing there. I- there is a little, uh, a clock by the bed, just a clock. It's one of those, you know, little five-pound clocks that just-

Chris Williamson 51:52 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 51:52 ... does nothing but show you the time and that's it. Um, no phones allowed in the bedroom.

Chris Williamson 51:58 Is it firelight? Is it just candles? Like a- like an old-

Derek Sivers 52:01 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 52:01 ... like an old man with a lamp wandering around, gets up-

Derek Sivers 52:03 I wish. That would be great.

Chris Williamson 52:05 That would be great.

Derek Sivers 52:06 Uh, yeah. I- I do have a candle in the bedroom, but you know, it's, um... actually, you know what's kinda cool is that my kid is now eight, and he's been kinda raised this way. So he's not an iPad addict like a lot of kids his age are. He, he actually scoffs at video games. Um, he had a friend two years ago that, um... his next door neighbor, he was like, his, one of his best friends ever, and this kid's dad was always in the basement playing Fortnite or something for just hours, and was, like, a completely absent dad, was just completely not there for the kid, was just, like, grumpy because all he wanted to be doing was playing video games, and he would just never play with his kids. And so it was so interesting that my son saw that, and not just noted it, but mentioned it to me, like, a few different times, like, how sad it was. And so one time we were playing just a little word game of opposites, you know. Wh- what's the opposite of, of music? What's the opposite of a cloud? What's the op-... it's just a little fun-

Chris Williamson 53:10 What is the opposite of music? (laughs)

Derek Sivers 53:12 Oh, uh, you, you wanna know my favorite answer?

Chris Williamson 53:14 Yeah, sure.

Derek Sivers 53:15 Oh wait, first take a guess. What do you think is the opposite of music?

Chris Williamson 53:18 Silence?

Derek Sivers 53:19 No, 'cause silence is part of music. It's an important part. What else could it be?

Chris Williamson 53:23 (sighs) God. Singing?

Derek Sivers 53:25 Oh, okay. Um, my f- my favorite answer, the opposite of music is business.

Chris Williamson 53:32 (laughs) Yeah, okay. Okay.

Derek Sivers 53:36 See, these are the kind of funner answers, right? That- that-

Chris Williamson 53:39 Yeah, yeah.

Derek Sivers 53:39 See, this is... that was a, a fun example of, like, you have your first and second, you know-

Chris Williamson 53:44 Understand it.

Derek Sivers 53:44 ... that- that's like-

Chris Williamson 53:45 This or that.

Derek Sivers 53:45 ... the slow thinking.

Chris Williamson 53:46 Yep.

Derek Sivers 53:46 It's like, this idea of, like, th- there's a word game we kept playing, so the opposite of music is business. That's an idea that didn't come until, like, a week after trying to answer the question. Um, that was my favorite answer. I was like, "Oh, that's good." Anyway, I asked my son, "What is the opposite of parenting?" Or, uh, what is... I'm thinking of being a dad, that's... he-

Chris Williamson 54:08 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 54:08 ... yeah. He's, I think he brought it. He said, "What's the opposite of being a dad?" I'm like, "Oh."

Chris Williamson 54:13 You didn't say being a mum, did you? (laughs)

Derek Sivers 54:15 No, I was like, uh. And his answer was the winner, it was playing video games.

Chris Williamson 54:22 Nice.

Derek Sivers 54:23 Uh, because yeah, he just has such a negative association with watching his friend's dad just play video games instead of being there for his kid. Like, anyway, so point is, yeah, we have a, a household that is very offline. No, no, let me take that back. Not very offline. It's part time offline, and I really like that. It's not the primary thing. Like, there's no TV in the house. It's not... like, the house isn't arranged around a television-

Chris Williamson 54:45 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 54:45 ... like most are. Yeah. Anyway.

Chris Williamson 54:47 That's a self-aware kid that you've got there, Derek. Sounds really, really cool.

Derek Sivers 54:51 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 54:52 I like

Chris Williamson 54:53 it. Um, I wanted to touch on excellence for a minute, because I mentioned it as one of my core values and it's something that we've been talking about a little bit recently. Um, and I wondered how you, how you balance between wanting the best work out of yourself, wanting to produce something which you are proud of and connects with other people and is a, a high representation of your cumulative skills and talents and stuff, with also giving yourself sufficient of a break. And I wondered what, what your thoughts were on excellence. It's something that I see as a core value to my life, but I wondered what your thoughts were on it.

Derek Sivers 55:35 Hmm. Well, let's look at the micro-example of procrastination. Right? Like, if you look at why people procrastinate, um, it's usually if you're facing something difficult, it's easier to retreat into the safe thing, like surfing the wetter- web or playing video games, instead of uncomfortably facing what needs to be done.

Chris Williamson 56:00 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 56:02 So the way to stop procrastination is to catch yourself doing it, to deliberately interrupt it, um, and then go back to doing what you need, wh- d- doing what you know you need to do, no matter how unpleasant it is. And then I think it always gets easier after you begin. So when I think of excellence, I think of, like, a life-sized version of that. Like, if there's something you've always wanted to do, you need to stop wasting time and do it. Um, kind of like I said earlier, like, what, what you want now versus what you want most. Um, if you write out your bucket list, you know, like the things you want to do before you die, I'll bet you could do almost all of them in a few months, you know, m- most of them in just a few weeks. It's usually, like, people's bucket lists are, like, places they want to go and some things they want to do, and then they think, "Well, you know, you, if you just took a couple of months off work, you could do (laughs) two-thirds of that list right now-"

Chris Williamson 57:00 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 57:01 "... and be done by next month." And it's just a matter of doing them instead of doing other things, like watching shows, surfing the web, playing video games, or just sitting around on couches hanging out, tasting the local beers. Like it's, um, there are these things that we do, um... I'm sorry, I'm kind of answering your, your excellence questions in a way of, like, "Well, what's the opposite of excellence?"

Chris Williamson 57:26 We're all enjoying it.

Derek Sivers 57:27 Uh, it's-

Chris Williamson 57:27 Keep, let's keep going, Derek. Let's keep deep-

Derek Sivers 57:28 Procrastination.

Chris Williamson 57:30 Let's keep diving in.

Derek Sivers 57:30 Like, the opposite of excellence is giving into, I don't want to call it procrastination, but that, that same thing that triggers procrastination, which is usually, like, you're facing the uncomfortable thing that you know you need to do and so you do the easier relief thing instead. People who choose the easy path in life don't ever get excellence at anything. Like, excellence is usually choosing the more difficult path which gives the greater rewards. It's doing what you know you need to do even if you don't feel like it.

Chris Williamson 58:11 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 58:13 I mean, uh, my definition of excellence is tainted by the fact that I, you know, that was in music for 20 formative years of my life, you know. So I think in terms of, like, being an excellent performer, being an excellent writer, being an excellent producer, whatever. So you, you might have a different definition of being a, an excellent gentleman or something like that, that-

Chris Williamson 58:34 (laughs) No, definitely.

Derek Sivers 58:36 ... um, could be-

Chris Williamson 58:36 I'm definitely not that. Not yet.

Derek Sivers 58:38 I know, I mean, I, I mean that somebody listening to this could have a, a, a different definition where maybe excellence to them is just excellence in their, um, composure every day. Maybe it isn't something you need to practice for 20 years. Maybe it can actually just be in, in the moment. Like, you could just decide right now today to, like, from this moment on, to be excellent and you can achieve that, you know, by just, um, not giving into your temper or, um, stopping drinking or whatever it may be.

Chris Williamson 59:09 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 59:09 So, um-

Chris Williamson 59:09 Yeah, I think it's, um, precision is the word that I like to associate with excellence.

Derek Sivers 59:13 Huh. Why precision?

Chris Williamson 59:15 Because precision, for me, is doing the thing that you said that you were going to do, but doing the thing that you mean to do, not doing another thing.

Derek Sivers 59:24 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:25 It's one of the reasons why I like yourself as a speaker, why I like Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris as a speaker, because the speech is very precise. The number of words that are used are the number of words that are needed. Um, a link back to what you said earlier on about the, the way that people make choices and the kind of life they have, there's that, a meme that everyone will be familiar with, with, which is, "Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices-"

Derek Sivers 59:52 Right.

Chris Williamson 59:52 "... easy life."

Derek Sivers 59:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:54 Um, and I think about that. Another thing, I read a really interesting article from Taylor Pearson on procrastination and one of the things that he came up with was he says, "Procrastination exists because people have a fear of failure." They're concerned that they may be not good enough or that they don't have the skills that are required. I certainly think there's an element that he didn't touch on in this bit, which is to do with it's- it's just difficult, there's some inertia to get over, "I have to do a hard thing," and there's something easier floating around, the cookie jar, the, the social media fix.

Derek Sivers 1:00:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:23 Um, and he has this beautiful quote where he says, um, "Interestingly, sometimes we procrastinate to ensure that we inoculate ourselves from public failure. But the interesting-"

Derek Sivers 1:00:35 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:36 "... thing is, by procrastinating, we do inoculate ourselves from public failure by assuring ourselves of private failure."

Derek Sivers 1:00:43 Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:44 And I love that. I love the, the reframing of that. It's like, look, like if you do not do this thing, it doesn't matter whether you think you would or would not fail because you're guaranteeing the fact that you will by not starting it.

Derek Sivers 1:00:56 Right. Hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:00:59 I thought that was a really powerful model, used an interesting way to, um, to loop it back around. But look, Derek-

Derek Sivers 1:01:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:01:05 ... I'm, I'm conscious of the fact that I'm taking up your time and it's an evening. I've got, I've got two questions that I want to ask you-

Derek Sivers 1:01:10 Okay.

Chris Williamson 1:01:10 ... before we finish, if that's okay. First one, what have you changed your mind about recently?

Derek Sivers 1:01:21 The, um ... a lot of the things that I said were core values are actually pretty new to me. Maybe that's why they came to mind first when you asked, 'cause I think they're the most interesting because they're the newest to my brain. The stuff that's been in my, you know, value system for 30 years (laughs) I just take for granted and I probably don't even know it's there anymore.

Chris Williamson 1:01:40 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 1:01:41 Um, but ... acknowledging nuance, looking for not o- deliberately making sure you're not oversimplifying. Um, even though I write succinctly, because I think it's considerate, I don't think truth is succinct. I think truth is very nuanced. Um, memorable sound bites are succinct. (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 1:02:17 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 1:02:18 Quips and aphorisms are succinct. Uh, e- helping an idea carry further, um, i- you know, succinctness is good to carry ideas. It makes a good ... you know, what, what do you call that in nature when the, those seeds that have like o- um, little barbs on them-

Chris Williamson 1:02:36 Oh, like dan- like dandelions? Like little-

Derek Sivers 1:02:38 Thank you, yeah. Dandelions or, or bursum. So succinctness is a good tool to help ideas spread and carry, but succinctness is, um, almost the opposite of truth because yeah, you can make catchy slogans that make people go, "Ooh, wow, that's good." But it's just, it's one little ingredient in the truth, um, the truth of things I think is often very nuanced. It's like well, in, in these situations if you're in that stage in your life and for the kind of person you are and the kind of things you want, well then this is true. But if-

Chris Williamson 1:03:15 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 1:03:16 ... in another day, you know, in the morning or, you know, last year or if you were a little bit-

Chris Williamson 1:03:20 Waiting for your coffee.

Derek Sivers 1:03:20 ... a different person, you know. Yeah, for your sister that is not true but for your brother it is, and you know, at this age you're at and for what you want in life. But if in fact if you were to quit your job tomorrow, then suddenly that would no longer be true and then in fact (laughs) you know, it's like all of these ... but th- that doesn't tweet well, so ...

Chris Williamson 1:03:38 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 1:03:38 (laughs) Uh, that's, that's pretty new for me, like this constant acknowledgement of the nuance of things to get at the truth. Um, I can actually talk about this thing because I'm not going to name names. I have a dear friend who's been with the same guy for years, but complaining about him for years, often calling me to kind of like, "What should I do? Should I leave him? Should I stay? What should I" this? And finally I, I thought with his kind of new, um, focus on nuance, we realized like I think she's actually happy being one foot out the door. Like that's-

Chris Williamson 1:04:25 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 1:04:26 ... we don't need to oversimplify it into an either/or, should I stay or should I go now.

Chris Williamson 1:04:31 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 1:04:31 Um, it's the, the truth is, she's happiest with this one foot out the door feeling and she doesn't need to oversimplify that into in or out. Um, this is when ... yeah. I'm sorry, that example just actually (laughs) came up yesterday. (laughs) So that's-

Chris Williamson 1:04:50 I, I really-

Derek Sivers 1:04:50 ... that's on my mind.

Chris Williamson 1:04:51 ... I really like it. I, I meant to bring this up earlier on. While I was podcasting with George McGill last year, the highest played ever Modern Wisdom episode that we've done about mental models, he talked about the barbell strategy which is where you don't just have black or white thinking, you have black and white thinking-

Derek Sivers 1:05:06 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:07 ... and you push yourself to the end. You're able to do incredible deep work, but then also be very social when you need to turn that on. You are able to use the succinct side of things, but you're also inc- able to understand the nuances while at the, the complete opposite end of the scale. There's a, another point on that that I just have to bring up which is, I love aphorisms and I think that guys like Naval-

Derek Sivers 1:05:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:29 ... who are able to distill down incredible wisdom into, what, 160 characters or whatever, is, is just, it's a skill that I absolutely do not have and, and wildly envy 'cause I think it's really cool. But, you ... the reason that you created your directives was because you realized that most of what a book is, is getting people to believe and trust the author and-

Derek Sivers 1:05:55 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:05:55 ... provide sufficient context that they believe the instruction that they're then given. But if people were to sufficiently trust whoever it is that was giving it to them, the directive can be the leanest, uh, takeaway-

Derek Sivers 1:06:06 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:06:06 ... from that particular book.

Derek Sivers 1:06:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:08 And the equivalent is-

Derek Sivers 1:06:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:09 ... when you see on Instagram, you scroll through Instagram and there's someone's put up a, a quote, you know, Seneca's life's work distilled down into a single sentence.

Derek Sivers 1:06:19 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:06:19 But the context isn't there. You're just scrolling past-

Derek Sivers 1:06:22 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:06:23 ... boot, booty picture, booty picture, funny dog video-

Derek Sivers 1:06:26 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:06:26 ... aph- aphorism of Seneca's life, booty picture, booty pic ... you know what I mean? Like, there's no context-

Derek Sivers 1:06:30 Correct.

Chris Williamson 1:06:30 ... there's no buy-in, you're not in the right frame of mind, you haven't had the, "I trust Seneca, I know who he is," da, da, da. Like and I, I think you're right, I think you are correct there. There's, there's, um, the nuance and the understanding of that, I think it all ties together.

Derek Sivers 1:06:46 Cool.

Chris Williamson 1:06:47 Final question, final question. You have brought up today a couple of different projects that you're working on, some books that will be released in the future. Have you got ... is it within a year, is it within six months, is it within a decade? Can we give the people that are listening that are fans of yours any idea on when they can expect this new piece of work from you?

Derek Sivers 1:07:08 Oh, there's three. Um...

Chris Williamson 1:07:10 Ooh, here we go.

Derek Sivers 1:07:11 I finished my next book two years ago, I finished my second book one year ago, and I'm finishing my third book now. But the thing is, I nerded out on self-publishing. Um, my first big book called Anything You Want was published by, well, first by Seth Godin, but then he sold his little publishing imprint to Penguin, so then Penguin re-released it. So it's, you know, it's not a major publishing company, but I didn't actually like that experience. Um...

Chris Williamson 1:07:43 Why?

Derek Sivers 1:07:44 I didn't like that I didn't fully own the rights to my own book, and so I get, you know, I got contacted. Like here's just one core example. Sorry, (laughs) that was, you asked me a kind of like a, um...

Chris Williamson 1:07:54 Hey, no, no, I want the, I want this answer. We want the nuance. We are here for the nuance.

Derek Sivers 1:07:58 So, there were two or three different times when I got contacted by people that were, uh, putting on a conference that wanted to buy like 750 copies for all of their attendees. And I said, "Great, that's amazing. I would love to do that." And they say, "Okay, can, how do we do that? Can we get like a quantity discount for 750 copies?" And I'd have to go ask Penguin, "Hey, Penguin, (laughs) hello, my rep at-"

Chris Williamson 1:08:25 Gotta be 1,000 sales here for you, yeah.

Derek Sivers 1:08:27 Yeah, "How can we do that?" And they went, "Oh, well, you just have to tell them to buy it at Amazon. Like, there's no way to buy seven, you can't order it from us, we're not a retailer," and you know. And I said, "Oh man, like that's, that sucks to like, I want this person to have 750." I mean for, a dollar each would be fine, you know, like just how cool that they're gonna give... And so to have to tell this guy like, "Uh, just go to Amazon and type 750 in the quantity."

Chris Williamson 1:08:52 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 1:08:52 I was like, "Man, this sucks." Like-

Chris Williamson 1:08:54 Yeah.

Derek Sivers 1:08:54 ... I, I want to be able to do the right thing, but I, I don't even own the rights to, you know, and Penguin has the rights. I mean, I wrote that book for Seth Godin and then, you know, that's what happens. Um, so even though my rep at Penguin loves me and she's wonderful and she's great and I, I like her as a person, I just didn't like the experience. Uh, I have, I don't need the, the ego gratification of being on a major publisher. So I just really decided to self-publish to keep control. Which kind of reminds me of way back when I started CD Baby in like the mid-'90s, like the internet was just kinda getting started. There was a cool kind of do it yourself pseudo punky kind of ethic about, like, sticking it to the man, like, uh, you know, fuck the major record labels, man, I'm gonna do this myself.

Chris Williamson 1:09:44 Mm-hmm.

Derek Sivers 1:09:44 Like I'm not signing away my rights to some label. But here we are 20 something years later, and, um, everybody's like selling their soul to Amazon just every, like, you know, you said earlier here, here's how to do the Google AdWords to increase your business. It's just like everything's trying to please the man, (laughs) you know? The man is now like Facebook, Google, Amazon, to whatever, Instagram, and everybody's just trying to please the man. It reminds me of that kind of pre-internet thing where everybody was selling their soul to the major record labels in hopes of getting rich. And I appreciated that kind of giving it all the finger kind of spirit knowing that you're probably gonna sell less by choosing to be independent, but fuck yeah, it felt so much better.

Chris Williamson 1:10:26 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 1:10:27 Point is, I nerded out on, um, not just self-publishing, but like self-printing, self-layout. Like I, uh, you know how I told you I do everything in my plain text editor called Vim?

Chris Williamson 1:10:41 Yeah.

Derek Sivers 1:10:42 Well, do you think I did the book design layout in Adobe InDesign? No, fuck Adobe.

Chris Williamson 1:10:48 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 1:10:48 I did it in fucking plain text and I found a program of, like software called LaTex which you can, like, do book design in like as, as a programmer in plain text, and like fucking went hardcore on that. And I, and I'm just building my own store on my own site 'cause fuck Amazon. I don't want to sell my book on Amazon. I, I will eventually.

Chris Williamson 1:11:07 That is so hard to do.

Derek Sivers 1:11:07 And it's just like, you know what? I, I understand that I'm choosing to sell less by doing this, but goddamn, it feels better. It's like so much more fun.

Chris Williamson 1:11:17 Well, each book's worth 100 of what the one would've been before, right? Because you-

Derek Sivers 1:11:20 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:11:21 ... you've crafted the thing out of ancient technology in a programming language-

Derek Sivers 1:11:25 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:11:25 ... that no one's seen since the 1800s. Yeah, exactly.

Derek Sivers 1:11:28 It's, it's funny, you know, we talk about rationality. Well, okay, you and I don't, but people-

Chris Williamson 1:11:33 Some of us.

Derek Sivers 1:11:33 ... talk about rationality. And, um, yeah, there are things where, uh, you could say that this is a rationally unwise choice.

Chris Williamson 1:11:44 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 1:11:44 But emotions matter. And the way that something feels is a big reason why we do anything. In fact, you know, I think if you wanna get meta, meta, meta, the reason that people like to be rational is because it feels better, right? And, um, yeah, they're, so anyway, uh, sorry, I was answering your question about when are these books coming out. Um-

Chris Williamson 1:12:05 Well, we understand why the-

Derek Sivers 1:12:06 Any day now.

Chris Williamson 1:12:07 ... we understand why they're not here yet.

Derek Sivers 1:12:09 Yes, because I nerded out on the self-publishing and the self-printing, and ooh, and lastly, I decided to print hard cover books for the emotional reason that I found that knowing that I was going to be printing hard cover books, even though like I'm a total tree hugger, I don't want to waste a single sheet of paper ever, I thought, "Well damn, if these thing, if I'm gonna be cutting down trees, like really every sentence has to be worth cutting down a tree now." And it made me a better writer knowing that I was going to print hard cover, uh, books. Um-

Chris Williamson 1:12:51 You upped, upped the stakes of the writing-

Derek Sivers 1:12:53 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:12:54 ... because the externalized costs were, were increased. That's interesting.

Derek Sivers 1:12:57 Yeah, and s- so, um, anyway, it's all just about done and I'm putting the, uh, I'm, I was actually this morning I was programming the store on my site with, you know, the whole put your thing into a cart. And then by doing it all myself, I get to do some fun nerdy things like-... I can do custom dedications and things that, you know, people who sell their book on Amazon can't do. So everybody that orders their book from me can ask it to be custom dedicated to them and, prt, the server will create a custom dedicated book for you.

Chris Williamson 1:13:25 That is cool.

Derek Sivers 1:13:27 Um, and I'm gonna see if I can do that with the audiobook too, so everybody who buys the audiobook gets a custom little, like, you know, "Hey, Chris, it's Derek. This book's for you."

Chris Williamson 1:13:35 No way.

Derek Sivers 1:13:36 I mean, you know-

Chris Williamson 1:13:37 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 1:13:37 ... again, fuck Amazon. They can't do that.

Chris Williamson 1:13:41 (laughs) You're right. You're right. Sivers.org/podcasts and then /audiobooks/books/everything and then it can-

Derek Sivers 1:13:52 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:13:52 ... and then it can be siversbaby.org.

Derek Sivers 1:13:56 (laughs) Oh, god.

Chris Williamson 1:13:58 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 1:13:58 Ew. (laughs) Uh, anyway, so, uh, anybody who, um, yeah, anybody who wants my stuff, uh, you can probably tell 'cause, you know, you and I have emailed a bunch. I, I actually enjoy taking a few minutes a day to answer all my emails. I really like hearing from strangers. I actually really like it when people introduce themselves. I like it when somebody's like, you know, "I'm a guitar technician in Arizona," or, "I'm a," whatever, "a dentist in Estonia."

Chris Williamson 1:14:27 (laughs)

Derek Sivers 1:14:27 I just really like hearing what people around the world are doing and, and all that kinda stuff. So I really like it when people introduce themselves, and feel free to email me and ask me a question. And if you go to sivers.org, my email address is out there in the public, and you can email me and ask me anything and I always reply.

Chris Williamson 1:14:42 Cool. That's certainly cooler than just saying, "Oh, head to my Twitter." It's like, "Email me and-

Derek Sivers 1:14:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:14:46 ... um, I might, I might get back to you if I turn my internet on."

Derek Sivers 1:14:50 (laughs) Right. Well, even, you know, Twitter, that's, like, that's a, that's still, like, a corporate middleman. Like, you know what, actually, I'm really thankful that I got online in 1994 because I went through that first dot-com boom and crash where a lot of companies that people were totally dependent on, like MySpace, like every musician was 100% dependent on their MySpace page to manage all of their fan list, all of their music and their releases and their announcements and their gigs were all done through their MySpace page. And then MySpace disappears. And I was like, so I think I just have this healthy distrust of any corporate middleman. I think they're always about to go belly up any day, so, um, no, I would never tell people to, like, you know, Twitter was the way to reach me 'cause I don't trust that they'll be around tomorrow.

Chris Williamson 1:15:37 Uh, I think that if you've got plain text files as the future-proofed version of writing things down, I think you've got email lists as the most likely to survive a nuclear apocalypse-

Derek Sivers 1:15:50 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:15:51 ... contact list.

Derek Sivers 1:15:51 Yeah, 'cause it's, it's an open standard and it's like, it's uncommercial. I really like those uncommercial media forms, like, right? So, so paper books have no, you know, advertisements in them. No... Amazon's not tracking what you highlight in a paper book. Um, email, yeah, open technology. I love that kind of stuff. Anyway, nerd, nerd, nerd. We were saying goodbye, so maybe (laughs) -

Chris Williamson 1:16:16 Derek, man, it's been-

Derek Sivers 1:16:16 ... I shouldn't keep taking tangents.

Chris Williamson 1:16:17 It's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much. To the people that are listening, anything that we have spoken about will be linked in the show notes below, along with Derek's website where you can go on and hassle him via email, uh-

Derek Sivers 1:16:29 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:16:29 ... and not his Twitter because fuck Twitter. Um-

Derek Sivers 1:16:33 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:16:33 ... there won't be a link to Adobe After Effects in there either because fuck Adobe too.

Derek Sivers 1:16:37 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:16:37 Um, Derek, man, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Derek Sivers 1:16:41 Thanks, Chris. It was a fun conversation. Ah, ah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. (upbeat music)