Derek Sivers: Creativity, Self-Reliance, and Dropping Assumptions

“Everything you’re doing, you’re choosing to do. You need to understand that. Like never forget that you’re choosing to do this, and at any point. You can choose not to. You don’t have to. Just walk away from anything. There might be some consequences; more often, there’s not.”

— Derek Sivers

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Derek Sivers (@sivers) is a creative thinker who is quite hard to pin down when trying to explain who he is. Here’s a shortlist of what he’s a done musician, producer, circus performer, entrepreneur, TED speaker, and book publisher. If I could sum up who Derek is, I would say he’s a philosopher and introspective person looking to push his thinking in ways he hasn’t explored yet. He won’t hold any belief or assumption too tightly.

Originally a professional musician and circus clown, Derek created CD Baby in 1998. It became the largest seller of independent music online, with $100 million in sales for 150,000 musicians.

In 2008, Derek sold CD Baby for $22 million, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. He is a frequent speaker at the TED Conference, with more than 5 million views of his talks.

Connect with Derek:

Website

Twitter: @sivers

TED Talks

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Show Notes

[00:03:52] Derek's Background

[00:05:57] Life - Intentional and Unintentional Events

[00:07:24] Getting to Speak at TED

[00:08:46] What Did You Do Before TED

[00:10:08] Derek's Writing Process

“But with writing, I think it's the same as anything else. Like when you get stuck on something, you try to break down this big problem down into smaller, more specific problems. Right? Like I think that's the same with anything in life. Like if you're stuck in a creative problem, whether it's making music or whatever you do. There's always a way to like to flip it over and consider the opposite of whatever you're doing. It's just like a typical tool in the toolbox of people doing anything creative, it's like, let me try and reverse it. Let me try doing the opposite of whatever I'm doing. Well, let me take a 90-degree turn. 

Now I want to take a 180. You get up, on the other hand, if you're having a stylistic problem like you're. Sick of the sound of your voice. And I don't mean you know you, your voice box, but I mean, whatever you're doing artistically, and you can always just pretend that you're somebody else, whether it's your role model or just something else, and you can do whatever they would do.

 So for years, I was a singer, and my voice teacher would teach me like I would go in and work on a new song. He'd say like, okay, now sing it to me. Like you're sneaking up on me with a knife behind your back and about to kill me. Sorry, what? He said, okay, now sing it to me like your Grover from Sesame street, whatever.

You know, it's like you don't have to be yourself. You can be someone else when you're just doing some creative and trying to, if you're feeling stuck, you can always do it a different way.”

[00:12:11] Making Life Decisions

“I've recently found a new way of making, or getting through major life decisions when I'm feeling stuck is to describe my problem to a mentor, especially if it's someone who doesn't know me at all.

So then I have to summarize my entire context to a disinterested, right. Like, imagine You were going through a major business problem, right? And somebody says, okay, I'll give you five minutes on the phone with Richard Branson. He goes, Oh my God, Richard Branson! Oh my God, I know you're only going to have five minutes.

So now Richard Branson knows nothing about you. You have to summarize your entire situation and the problem you're going through down to like a one-minute explanation of the context and a one minute question. How would you do that? So to respect their time, you have to be as succinct as possible. 

And what I found. Is that by doing this exercise, by reducing the problem down to its essence, the answer becomes clear without you having actually to contact some successful mentor, no need for Richard Branson, like just going through that exercise usually it makes the answer pretty obvious when you.”

[00:14:45] Choosing the Right Tool For The Job

[00:18:37] How Derek Views Creativity

“The people that were most surprised that I found programming creative were either people that knew nothing about it and just thought it seemed like a dumb day job.

Or people for whom it was a dumb day job that they were doing out of like just doing it for the money. Yeah. So I thought about this and realized that it's not like we, it's not like making music is creative, and programming is not creative. I think it's a matter of who you're doing it for. So if I was the assistant to a Hollywood composer, and paramount pictures was telling the composer exactly what to do, and then he was dumping it on me saying, I don't have time. You arranged the horn section, make it exactly like this. Well then that's not really creative anymore, is it? Now it's like just some stupid task I've been assigned.

 I have to arrange the horn section, so that's not really creative. But then say that was my day job to be an assistant to a Hollywood composer. And then at night I would go home and play with computer programming to like invent my own mobile app idea. Right. And then, in that case, computer programming would be my creative outlet, but then vice versa, of course, if I worked for a big company that was telling me exactly what to program on computers, and I was just typing out Java code to meet their specs, then programming wouldn't be very creative. And I would go home at night and play guitar as my creative outlet.”

[00:21:29] Erich's Brother's View On Creativity

Listen to Nick Wenzel here:

#49 - Nick Wenzel: Graphic Communication and Encouraging Others

#50 - Nick Wenzel: Post Graduation

[00:22:46] Is Creativity An Innate Trait?

“It's not until something is thrown at you, do you get interested in it? So I wouldn't say that's like, some people are just curious, and some people aren't. I think the people who think they're not curious, probably just haven't been in situations where they're exposed to something that they find interesting.”

[00:25:58] Curiosity is Very Specific and Personal

[00:29:27] You Don't Have To Do Anything

“Everything you’re doing, you’re choosing to do. You need to understand that. Like never forget that you’re choosing to do this, and at any point. You can choose not to. You don’t have to. Just walk away from anything. There might be some consequences; more often, there’s not.”

[00:32:23] Skill Acquisition and Skills Across Domains

[00:38:15] Self-Reliance and Accumulating Knowledge

Calibre - E-book Management

[00:41:58] World Citizen and Being Comfortable With Travel

“So I just, I had this idea around the age of 36, and it just wouldn't leave. It's like in that one moment that one. 

Probably happened in an instant. I felt like I couldn't unthink this idea, and it shaped how I wanted to live the rest of my life. That's because, to me, it's so important to keep growing and keep learning and never get stuck into habits that hold me back. So ideally, I'd like to keep moving to more and more challenging places living in each one until it feels like it makes sense.

Right? Like, I'd love to move to a place that seems completely bizarre right now, right? Like Beijing, China. Yeah. I would love to move to Beijing, and I'm sure it would be incredibly frustrating and annoying and difficult, but then give it a few years, and it would probably just start to feel like home, like, yeah, this is, it's where all my friends are. I'm sure it would make complete sense. And then. Yeah. By the time after a few years, if Beijing makes complete sense, well, then it's time to move to Rio de Janeiro to another place that doesn't make sense and then do it again. And I think that that's a great recipe to always keep your brain, like to keep pulling out the rug from under your feet, you know?

And of course, there are other ways to do it. Of course, plenty of brilliant geniuses have never left Chicago. People way smarter than me are still in their hometown.”

[00:48:38] Taking the First Step to Travel

[00:54:55] Work Visa Under 30

[00:59:19] Counteract Tribalism

[01:00:23] Don't Confuse Medium With The Message

”I think we need to drop our assumptions. don't just assume that the common pairing. Is always true, right? So they don't confuse the media and with the message. Don't confuse the tool with the goal. Don't confuse the field. Calls the vehicle with the path. In those cases, what I'm referring to is, is my company, my company was the medium, the tool, the vehicle, but don't assume that I'm interested in business or profits or investors or any often goes with it.

But you see this in other professions too, right? Like someone could be a politician. Because they're greedy and they want glory, or someone can be a politician for very selfless social justice reasons. Right. You can't assume that musicians are necessarily creative, heart driven, people that live their life in chaos and sleep until noon every day.”

[01:03:20] Acknowledge Stereotypes

[01:05:27] Separating What You Do From Who You Are

[01:06:53] Gender Stereotypes

[01:10:24] De-exaggerate the Differences

[01:14:57] Within In One Place The Differences Feel Huge, But When You Compare Big Picture It Is Small

[01:17:26] Thinking Like A Scientist Or A Sports Fan

Learn more: The Thinking Ladder

[01:20:09] Thoughts On Parenting

[01:24:37] Learning to Trust as a Parent

[01:27:03] Giving Advice To Strangers

[01:29:03] Personality Tests

[01:32:05] Time Focuses

Recommended Book: Time Paradox by Phil Zimbardo

[01:34:32] Stoicism and Minimalism

Learn More: Stoicism | Minimalism

“I mean, I mentioned this where I said that ever since then, I was a professional musician from the age of 14 until 29, so starting at the age of 14. I really knew this is what I want. I want to be a successful musician. Yeah. And because of that, I was expecting my life to be hard. Like I knew I was never going to have a job.

I was never going to have a pension or, or health insurance or any of that stuff. So I knew that this was going to be a hustle. I knew that I wanted to be a successful musician. It's almost like wanting to be an Olympic athlete. Millions wanted only a few get it. So my whole approach to life ever since I was 14 was to like constantly, preparing myself for a more difficult future.

This means never choosing the luxurious choice, always like choosing to be deliberately hard on yourself too. To keep yourself tough. So even if times are not tough right now, just assume that they're going to be tougher in the future, and you want to be prepared. So that's just kind of like my approach to life all the way from the age of 14 until whatever, like this is how I approached life.”

[01:38:42] Don't Buy Into Isms Completely

[01:39:57] Don't Hold Your Beliefs or Assumptions To Tightly 

Derek provided typed answers to all the questions asked as well!

>What does your writing process look like? When you get stuck, what helps you break out of it?

Writing isn't much different than many other pursuits.

When you get stuck on something, you try to break a big problem down into a smaller more specific problem.

If it's a creative problem, flip it over, consider the opposite.

If it's a stylistic problem, you don't have to be yourself.  Pretend you're someone else, like a role model, and do what they would do.

If it's a life decision problem, try to describe the problem to a mentor, especially if it's someone who doesn't know you at all, so you have to summarize the entire context to a disinterested person.  To respect their time, you have to be as succinct as possible.  Then usually, by doing this exercise, by reducing the problem down to its essence, the answer becomes clear without you having to actually go contact some successful mentor.

> How did you become a citizen of the world? What would help get someone comfortable with travel if they have limited exposure or experience?

Even at the age of 36, I had no desire to travel.  I was living on the beach in Santa Monica California, happy as can be.  You couldn't pay me to travel.  No interest at all.

But then ONE TINY IDEA got into my head:

That you really only learn when you're surprised.  If you're not surprised, you may be taking in more information, but your mind isn't really changing.  You change your mind when you find out your previous assumptions were wrong.

So one of the best ways to keep yourself surprised daily is to live somewhere very unlike what you know.  Immerse yourself in different cultural perspectives.  Very different ways of looking at life, communication, expectations, and values.

That idea wouldn't leave my head.  I couldn't un-think it.  It shaped how I wanted to live the rest of my life.  It's so important to me to keep growing, keep learning, and never get stuck into habits that hold me back.  So ideally I'd like to keep moving to more and more challenging places, living in each one until it makes sense and feels like home, then moving on to the next.

OK, now, my advice?

Start with somewhere obviously different, but that speaks your language.  So if you're American, don't choose Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, or New Zealand.  Those don't count.  The cultural differences are so minor.  Instead consider Singapore, in Asia.  English is the first language, but the cultural values are very different.  If Europe then consider Budapest or Lisbon.

Whichever place you choose, you have to integrate.  Your default is to feel that they're doing everything wrong.  You'll focus on the frustrations.

You'll accidently generalize.  If one person is rude to you, you'll think people in this country are rude.  But you don't do that at home.  If one person is rude, you don't think everyone in your country is rude.  You know it's just that one person.

Try to assume that the way you grew up is wrong, and this way is right.  Try to assimilate as much as possible.

Stay at least three months.  Get a visa and a job, if you can.  Make some ties.  Make local friends.  Fall in love.

> You have many skills across domains many people wouldn't recognize as being useful together, but they have paid off. How do you look at skill acquisition?

When something's important to you, you should get to know the foundations of it.

You don't want to be at the mercy of a particular person, or a particular company, if something really matters to you.

I've been around long enough to watch companies disappear.  Companies that people were depending on, that people had uploaded all of their stuff to.  Next market crash, they're gone.

I've also felt the pain of being helpless when I was depending on an expert that was the only person who knew how to do something I needed, and that person disappeared.

So, I tend to learn things that give me self-sufficiency and independence where it matters most.

These things are different for everyone.

I don't depend on my car or my bike, so I'm happy to just pay someone to fix those when they break.  They don't matter to me enough.

But I'm self-publishing my books, and don't want to be dependent on a graphic designer to do the layout, so I'm learning the core language behind that now.

For someone else, it might be vice-versa.

Learn the foundations of the things that are important to you.

> Writing a song isn't that different from writing computer code. It's all just having a little vision or spark of an idea, then seeing how you can make it happen — for its own sake».

> As an engineer and analytically minded, I hadn't viewed myself as a creative until recently.

> How do you re-frame creativity to able to categorize music and coding into similar spaces? I've also seen musicians in my field who are adept at understanding electrical circuits; it is fascinating.

Maybe it's a matter of who you're working for.

If I was the assistant to a Hollywood composer, then my boring uncreative day job might be writing music to match his specific requirements.

Then at night I might go home and play with computer programming to invent my own mobile app idea.

Or vice-versa.  If I worked for a big company telling me exactly what to program, and I was just typing code, meeting specs, then maybe that wouldn't be very creative.

But going home at night and playing guitar would be.

For me, I do both for myself, so it all feels kind of the same.  I have an idea for something I want to exist, then I go figure out how to make it happen.

I guess you could say the same about:

Architecture, building a house or furniture.

Accounting, figuring out how to structure accounts for a business.

Gardening, Landscaping, etc.

If you're doing it for yourself, making a vision come true, it feels as creative as anything.

If you're doing it for others, following strict instructions, not so much.

> What are your definitions of creativity and problem-solving problems for fun?

Sorry, no definition.  Whatever seems fun.  My kid wanted a Rubik's Cube a few days ago, so I bought it, then had to watch a video explaining how to solve it.  I found it fun and fascinating, and a fun memorization exercise, so now I can solve a Rubik's Cube in 3 minutes.

A couple years ago I learned to speak Esperanto.  Last week I learned a book typesetting programming language.

Even situations like this interview.  You throw strange questions at me.  I think about them, and try to come up with an answer that's interesting to both me and your audience.

> Now that I think creativity and curiosity seem like puzzle pieces that fit together

>How do you think of curiosity, is it something we can train?

No.  Curiosity is very specific and situational.

My advice is if you feel even a hint of interest about something, go learn more about it.  Because the more you learn, the more interesting it gets.

When you know nothing about a subject, it's hard to be curious because you have no questions yet.

But once you start learning, and have more context, you start having questions.

It helps to have a real need.  Even a tiny one.  Like I had no interest in Rubik's Cube, but then my kid bought one, so now I have it here, and have to solve it, so now I find it interesting.

This is a great argument for why people should get out of their comfort zones, and go do random different things, exposing yourself to completely different inputs.

> The quote at the end caught my attention:

“Don't confuse the medium with the message.

Don't confuse the tool with the goal

Don't confuse the vehicle with the path.”

> This is something I've been thinking about a lot over the last few months.  I'm currently reading Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman and seems to fit right in with his thinking. How would unpack this passage?

I haven't read that book, but in my case I wrote that because:

Yes I ran a business, got surprisingly lucky, and made millions.  But don't assume I was doing it for the money, or even wanted to have a business.  Neither is true.

Drop your assumptions.

Don't assume the common pairing is always true.

"Don't confuse the medium with the message."

"Don't confuse the tool with the goal."

"Don't confuse the vehicle with the path."

In my case, my company was the medium, the tool, the vehicle.  But don't assume I'm interested in business, profits, investors, or any of the stuff that often goes with it.

You see this in other professions, too.

Someone can be a politician for the greed and glory, or for selfless social justice.

Don't assume musicians are creative, heart-driven people that sleep in.

Acknowledge stereotypes, then unbraid them.

They're often not true.

Disconnect the outer action, appearance, or profession with your assumption about that person's inner motives.

>  I would love to elaborate further on what being a parent has taught you and how you are raising him.

I don't have much to say about this.  Again, it's all so situational.

I've seen friends who have three kids, and two are angels and one is Satan.  A surprising amount of who people are is just DNA.

For me, being with my kid is like meditation.  When I'm with him, I shut down my needs, and enter his world.  He leads.  I follow.

> Going back to parenting: How would you let a child explore the world?

> This we can make more general apply it more broadly. *How you encourage a student to explore the world?

There are some tiny techniques.  Like anything they're physically capable of doing, let them do themselves.

When he was 5, I gave him some money to go across the street to our usual corner store by himself, to get something.

When he was 6, and we were living in a little enclosed neighborhood, I'd let him run off with the neighbors, and I didn't know where he was for an hour at a time.

Last week, at the age of 7, he started a fire in the fireplace without me knowing it, while I was making dinner.  But he knew how to do it carefully because I'd taught him how.

All of these involve trust.  First, preparation.  Then optimistic trust that it's going to be OK.

It's a little scary but that's my problem, not his.  I teach him that the world isn't scary.  That he's capable.

> Personality Tests : One of the few categories you have on your website is Introvert, which is linked to - INTJ (I also fall into this category myself). *What are your thoughts on Meyers-Briggs and other personality assessments? (Big 5 Personality, Character Strengths, etc.)

Not much.  It helps me understand others, though, by comparison.

I couldn't understand why anyone would want to run a marathon on the big day, with all the fuss, all the noise, the crowds, the clipboards, the walkie-talkies, when they could have just done that same run by themselves in wonderful peaceful solitude the day before.  Then an extrovert explained to me how they get charged up by having all those people around.

Same with the time-focus.  Some people are present-focused, and think mostly of today and this week.  Others are future-focused, and live mostly in service of their future self.

It's really interesting to realize which sounds like you, then use it to compare to someone else's point of view.

> You self discovered minimalism and Stoicism as guiding philosophies and are one for healthy skepticism as well. *How did it feel that realizing you hadn't created something new?

(( First, re-tell context.  Lived this way for 25 years before finding out it was a philosophy with a name. ))

But I wasn't trying to create something new.  I just felt I was the only weirdo who approaches life this way.  So to find out that there were ancient weirdos who pioneered it, and it's supposedly a desirable way to be, was kinda nice.  But honestly no big deal.

I've never wanted to be part of a group.  I would never subscribe to an ism.  I can't relate to how some people go all-in on something, like they start doing yoga, and then start saying "namaste" and putting on a stereotypical tone of voice.

Even Stoicism.  I read a couple books about it, got some good insights, but that's that.  I'm not going to say it's my life philosophy.

> how you keep yourself from holding on to your views too tightly?

I'm disloyal to my past views, almost to a fault.

Whenever I learn more, I update my worldview.  If it invalidates everything I've ever said or done in the past, that's fine.  I don't mind.  I don't care if people think I'm flaky.

In fact, I think it's pretty cool.  It means I'm learning and changing, and that's ideal.

It's a top importance to me to challenge my old beliefs, and make sure I'm not stuck with old beliefs out of habit.

> I find your take on gender stereotypes illuminating because it cuts through much of BS when people bicker about silly things. *Elaborate on treating genders the same way. Has having more female friends ever thrown people off, or why do you think you have more female best friends?

(( First, re-tell context.  Friend that says, "Oh you know how MEN are, always blah blah."  ))

Social psychologists found that the differences AMONG men, and AMONG women are much greater than the differences BETWEEN men and women in general.

They also found that we have a natural human nature to tend to EXAGGERATE the differences BETWEEN groups, like that.

So, to think clearer, DE-EXAGGERATE the differences.  Or take it all the way and assume ther're the same, knowing your human nature won't let you assume that all the way.

It's like throwing a frisbee, when you notice it always goes to the right, you deliberately aim to the left of where you want.

Over-compensate, to compensate.

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Full Transcript Episode 86 - Derek Sivers: Creativity, Self-Reliance, and Dropping Assumptions

[00:03:23] Erich Wenzel: Welcome back to another episode of Feeding Curiosity on today's episode we are joined by Derek Sivers. 

[00:03:29] Hey, Derek. Hey, this is awesome. Thanks for making the time and, pushing my question asking abilities to the limit that I'd hadn't known was possible. 

[00:03:40] Derek Sivers: Glad I could help.

[00:03:42]Erich Wenzel: [00:03:42] So for that give us a quick little bio of like, what have you been doing and, just what maybe what you're focusing on right now. So paint the picture. 

[00:03:52] Derek's Background

[00:03:52] Derek Sivers: So who am I and what do I do?

[00:03:55] All right, let's see. I've had a few faces. So first, I was a professional musician for 15 years from the age of 14 until 30. I was pretty much nothing but a musician. I was completely obsessed with just being a professional musician. And so in my 15 years of being a professional musician, I spent 10 of that working in a circus, being the ringleader, MC of a circus, and touring around the country doing that.

[00:04:27] I moved to New York city. I played guitar for a Japanese pop star. I was a professional session musician around New York city, playing on people's records and stage and producing people's records and started a record label. And I did lots of stuff there. 

[00:04:41] And one of the things I did was start a little online record store, which was meant just to sell my CD. But then my friends in New York asked if I could sell their CD through my little store, and I said yes, and I accidentally created the largest seller of independent music on the web called CD baby. And that ran for 10 years with like 150,000 musicians and 85 employees and millions in sales and all that stuff.

[00:05:14] It was way bigger than I ever wanted it to be. So after 10 years of doing that, I was personally done. So 10 years ago, 11 years ago, I sold the company. and became a writer, speaker, thinker kind of guy. I spoke at the TED conference a few times. I released a book. I've got three more books coming, and that brings us up to today.

[00:05:38] Erich Wenzel: That's awesome. And I think, you know, part of that story is this, the arc of accidentally becoming it is why I think it's so interesting. And then just the ability you have to unpack all of those things to be really clear about what, what it is you are and what it is that you aren't, if that makes

[00:05:57] Life - Intentional and Unintentional Events

[00:05:57] Derek Sivers: Well, some things in life are intentional and some things are right.

[00:06:00] I think that happens to everybody, right? It's like, you know, we, we choose some of our destinies. Some of it was through our own efforts and steering in some things. Plop into our lap or were happening in a bad way. You know, somebody pursuing a career as an athlete and they get into a car crash and you know, that spins them off in a different direction and that's how they became a lawyer.

[00:06:21] Or. Oh yeah. You never know, like which aspects of what you're pursuing are going to happen or not. So yeah, some of it like the, the, like speaking at TED, there was a time where I felt it. Okay. So I sold the com, I sold CD baby in 2008, and I felt like I had peaked. Like, this is it. I sold the company for millions of dollars.

[00:06:43] This is what's going to go onto my gravestone. It's like he did a CD baby and not much since, you know, and I was like in my thirties. I was like, thinking this is it. And, I spent a couple of years feeling pretty lost until I got to a new exciting idea. Like, I want to speak at the TEDconference, not TEDx.

[00:07:03] I want to speak at the big main stage. Ted. Yeah. Let them do insight. I mean, like got the inspiration that got me to like jump out of my chair and get into action and was like the most exciting idea I'd had for a while. So that whole thing happened very deliberately to create a great intention, but yet like starting a business and all that was a total accident.

[00:07:24] Getting to Speak at TED

[00:07:24] Erich Wenzel: Wow. So I guess for TED does getting into TED requires some sort of writing or. Does someone have to find you? I don't even know. I'm just curious how that process goes, like, or is there like a committee or certain people like say, yeah, this guy should be able to talk there?

[00:07:42] Derek Sivers: I'm not sure. I think it's pretty ad hoc and they, I think they keep it ad hoc so that people don't try to game the system system or whatever.

[00:07:50] But in my case, I was an attendee of the conference, like I'd already kind of bought my ticket to attend and then they asked. Attendees if they wanted, if anybody wanted to give a talk. So I proposed an idea and they said, yes, you give this talk, and that was it. And then I did it three times in one year.

[00:08:13] So I spoke at the TED conference in Oxford, England, and then in India, and then in California. That, that was back in 2009 I haven't done it since. 

[00:08:26] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, that's an interesting thing too, especially for someone. You know, it could be quotes relatively young to have sold a company and be like, yep, that's the, there's my high watermark.

[00:08:37] And then how do you have the rest of your life to go through to, I guess I may live in the shadow of that. It's a right. 

[00:08:46] What Did You Do Before TED?

[00:08:46] Derek Sivers: Yeah. yeah, that's what I saw it was going to happen, but it's so, it's kinda cool when actually, it's funny now, most people know me through my writing and books and podcast. But there was a time in 2010, 11, 12 where it felt like everybody that knew me knew me through Ted.

[00:09:03] Like everybody knew me is that Ted speaker guy. Cause my, my three talks all were quite successful and got millions of views on the site and whatever. And, and People just knew me as the tech guy, and so they would ask, so what did you do before TED? Yes, that was, it was such a cool question to hear because it's like, you know, like I just told you, I thought that CD baby was going to be like the last good thing I ever did.

[00:09:28] So it was such a cool thing to be known for the, the next thing. And, yeah, I hope I. I'm 50 now, so I hope I make another couple transitions like that. That'd be fun. 

[00:09:38] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, that's really cool. I think that's like one of the more interesting things in today's world where people can have like second lives almost, or third lives or four slides of different career paths where it's all of a sudden it's like, yeah, I did this thing and then I left it all behind and now I do this thing. 

[00:09:54] But someone can find you at many points in that trajectory and then be like, wait, what else did he do? Why is he here? Wait, hold on. And then being able to unpack that story because I think that's really, it's like the idea of a generalist specialist, which we'll get into later.

[00:10:08] Derek's Writing Process

[00:10:08]But we'll kind of get back into the writing aspect of what you do now, because that's what you, your focus is. So what is your process look like? And then like when you get stuck or unfocused, how do you like reset yourself? 

[00:10:24] Derek Sivers: Okay, so I don't think writing is much different than any other pursuits.

[00:10:29] Meaning I don't think I have like a writing process that's different than any other process of getting stuck. Like actually when you asked that question, I can imagine myself getting stuck. More on some programming things I've done. I get really stuck on some technical programming things. I just can't figure out how to make it work.

[00:10:49] But with writing, I think it's the same as anything else. Like when you get stuck on something, you just try to break down this big problem down into smaller, more specific problems. Right? Like I think that's the same with anything in life. Like if you're stuck in a creative problem, whether it's making music or whatever you do. There's always a way to like flip it over and consider the opposite of whatever you're doing. It's just like a typical tool in the toolbox of people doing anything creative, it's like, let me try and reverse it. Let me try doing the opposite of whatever I'm doing. Well, let me take a 90 degree turn.

[00:11:27] Now I want to take a 180. You get up on the other hand, if you're having a stylistic problem, like you're just. Sick of the sound of your own voice. and I don't mean you know your, your voice box, but I mean, whatever you're doing artistically, and you can always just pretend that you're somebody else, whether it's your role model or just something else, and you can do whatever they would do.

[00:11:50] So for years, I was a singer and my voice teacher would teach me, like I would go in and work on a new song. He'd say like, okay, now sing it to me. Like you're sneaking up on me with a knife behind your back and about to kill me. Sorry, what? He said, okay, now sing it to me. Like your Grover from Sesame street, whatever.

[00:12:11] Making Life Decisions

[00:12:11] You know, it's like you don't have to be yourself. You can, you can be someone else when you're just doing some creative and trying to, if you're feeling stuck, you can always do it a different way. And then with life decisions, I've recently found a new way of making, or getting through major life decisions when I'm feeling stuck is to describe my problem to a mentor, especially if it's someone who doesn't know me at all.

[00:12:42] So then I have to summarize my entire context to a disinterested, right.  like, just imagine. You were going through a major business problem, right? And somebody says, okay, I'll give you five minutes on the phone with Richard Branson. He goes, Oh my God, Richard Branson! Oh my God, I know you're only going to have five minutes.

[00:12:58] So now Richard Branson knows nothing about you. You have to summarize your entire situation and the problem you're going through down to like a one minute explanation of context and a one minute question. How would you do that? So to respect their time, you have to be as succinct as possible. 

[00:13:16] And what I found. Is that by doing this exercise, by reducing the problem down to its essence, the answer becomes clear without you having to actually go contact some successful mentor, no need for Richard Branson, like just going through that exercise. Usually it makes the answer pretty obvious when you.

[00:13:37] Erich Wenzel: Yeah. That's really interesting cause it allows you to distance yourself from the problem.

[00:13:41] Then instead of having the context of like, Oh yeah, this is why this is like, I'm hung up on this. You have to just take it for its root elements basically and say, Oh then it's like the, you know, slap yourself on the forehead kind of thing. 

[00:13:54] Derek Sivers: Right. It's just interesting to see it stripped of all emotion.

[00:14:01] That's a symptom. So it's better talking to a stranger than talking to a good friend. If your good friends care about you. They know you, you, they can kind of rely on your background and context. But when you're having to tell something to a stranger, then you really have to summarize more than ever. And, when you really summarize your problem, but anyway, it's best for a certain kind of problem.

[00:14:24] That's like, you know, if you're a painter and you're stuck on something painting wise, maybe this approach won't help. But I think for major life decisions or maybe even business decisions, you could look at that, but then I really do enjoy the opposite of the first thing I said where it's like taking something and flipping the upside out and asking yourself the opposite.

[00:14:45] Choosing the Right Tool For The Job

[00:14:45] Erich Wenzel: Yeah. I mean, I think it's worth noting like that, not every, you know, mental framework or mental model is gonna work to solve every problem, and it's no God, right? It's, it's knowing that, okay, this, this is the type of problem I am dealing with. And then like opening up the mental toolbox basically and saying, which one of these is going to work best.

[00:15:04] Derek Sivers: Let's try this. Let's try this. That's what's funny. You know, years ago I wrote a tiny little article called, hell yeah. Or know about. A tool that I use for certain situations when I'm feeling overwhelmed, I've got too many opportunities and I'm feeling like I'm drowning. And in that specific case, I've got a, you know, a rule called hell yeah or no, which is like, if I'm feeling anything less than ho hell yeah, that would be awesome.

[00:15:40] That would be amazing. If I'm feeling anything less than that, I just say no. So it's basically no to almost everything. But the problem is that, some people liked that article and quoted it a lot. Yep. And then some people have, you know, telling me like, Oh my God, this is great. I'm using this for everything.

[00:16:00] Now I'm applying this tip, my relationship, and my this. I go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. It's not like, no, don't, this is not something you use when you're fresh out of college and you're not sure what to do with your life. Well then no, you're not drowning in opportunity. In fact, in that case, the best strategy is to say yes to everything.

[00:16:19] You know, it's like different tools for different times and even certain philosophies are applicable to 'em just for certain situations. There was a, I found it interesting that when somebody actually critiqued Buddhism once saying, you know, Buddhism was invented in a time where people were mostly helpless.

[00:16:39] That it, it was invented at a time where the King could just decide to go, just take your land cause he felt like it. So Buddhism was a way of detaching from the outcome of everything as a way of protecting the downside, but by detaching from everything and kind of, It means you don't really get the the up swing either.

[00:16:58]so he was kind of, it was a really interesting critique saying, you know, now we're in an age where most things are up to you and, buddhism might not be the best approach anymore. It's like, Oh, that was a really interesting critique to say like even an entire philosophy or religion or whatever you want to call Buddhism might have just been a certain tool for a certain time.

[00:17:17] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, I mean, I generally try to think of like any domain we choose to pursue. If you become an expert in something, like for instance, I'm an engineer or someone can be an artist or a musician or a writer, those I tend to view those as just like problem solving lenses. So like back in the 90s we had those toys with like the thing you put in front of your face with the levers on the side and it overlays different images.

[00:17:41] It's kind of how I tend to view different mindsets or different ways of solving problems. In general because of my engineering background and it, so it's like, okay, maybe I can start overlaying lenses. But then the really fun part is when you overlay lenses from multiple domains, because then it gives you like super powers to be able to look at things in different ways that other people might not see.

[00:18:03] Yeah. Cool. I think that just, yeah, but there's some of my thoughts to kind of make things easier for people because we like to think in boxes, which is where we're headed for. The next question is about you. You tend to look at writing or writing a song and coding as very similar tasks. And, as an engineer for myself and getting done, doing this podcast has helped me reformulate what creativity is for myself.

[00:18:28] But what would you do? How do you reframe creativity, like to put music writing and coding in similar categories? I think that's fascinating. 

[00:18:37] How Derek Views Creativity

[00:18:37] Derek Sivers: Oh, okay. I just, well, first I should say that everybody knew me as a musician for like 15 years. Like it was just my monomaniacal obsession. Yeah. It was just music. I had no interest in anything but music. And so when after 15 years I stopped making music and started programming. My friends were shocked and almost offended, how dare you, dude.

[00:19:08] What are you doing? You're a musician now. You're programming. What the hell are you doing? Dude? And to me, I just felt like, well, it's not that different. And they said hell it's not. I was like, well, I don't know. It's like when I'm writing a song, I was trying to solve a specific problem. It's like I had a certain idea in my head like, Ooh, what if I took this rhythm from this Fela Kuti song and mixed it with these like Beatles, kind of melody, but then did the funky Prince kind of guitar thing, but I wonder what that would sound.

[00:19:39] I would go try it and well, now I'm programming and I'm like, okay, well. Oh, what if I took this database back in, but then I found a way to like, make this do that. I wonder what that would be likely. To me, it just felt like the same kind of process. Right? So I thought about it some more. And it I'm trying to, the people that were most surprised that I found programming creative were either people that knew nothing about it and just thought it seemed like a dumb day job.

[00:20:11] Or people for whom it was a dumb day job that they were doing out of like just doing it for the money. Yeah. So I thought about this and realized that it's not like we, it's not like making music is creative and programming is not creative. I think it's a matter of who you're doing it for. So if I was the assistant to a Hollywood composer, and paramount pictures was telling the composer exactly what to do and then he was dumping it on me saying, I don't have time. You arranged the horn section, make it exactly like this. Well then that's not really creative anymore, is it? Now it's like just some stupid task I've been assigned.

[00:20:54] I have to arrange the horn section, so that's not really creative. But then say that was my day job. To be an assistant to a Hollywood composer. And then at night I would go home and play with computer programming to like invent my own mobile app idea. Right. And then in that case, computer programming would be my creative outlet, but then vice versa, of course, if I worked for a big company that was telling me exactly what to program on computers, and I was just typing out Java code to meet their specs, then programming wouldn't be very creative. And I would go home at night and play guitar as my creative outlet. 

[00:21:29] Erich's Brother's View On Creativity

[00:21:29] Erich Wenzel: It's, that's a really interesting perspective because I think a lot of people go into something because it strikes their creative itch in some way or another. And it's like they get to play, you know, with mixing a different palette from using a painting metaphor.

[00:21:44]and what we don't realize is that when you start getting into the working world, there is a certain amount of routinization that is going to occur. For instance, my brother works in a corporate environment as a graphic designer. So he has to work within a great example. Yeah. So he used to work in a very specific, you know, pallet set, like how the typeface and all that kind of stuff is very structured.

[00:22:06] And so he can't play outside of a lot of boundaries as a graphic designer. And he's obviously really good at what he does, otherwise, he wouldn't be able to work in a, in a, corporate environment for graphic design. But he still comes to me sometimes and says, man, I just feel like I'm too boxed in, and it really frustrates me because all the bureaucratic overhead and things like that, and I'm like, I'm like, you're just a creative at heart and you need to have more leash basically.

[00:22:31] And I think, would you say, this is totally off, off random thought now, but would you say creativity is a, like an innate thing? Like there's a thing that's going to grab you by the lapels and compel you to create basically?

[00:22:46] Is Creativity An Innate Trait?

[00:22:46] Derek Sivers: No. I think it's a matter of whatever seems fun.  So like, okay. A few days ago I was with my kid and we were out and he saw a Rubik's cube and he said, Oh, can I get a Rubik's cube?

[00:23:04] It was like eight bucks. I was like, yeah, sure. All right, I'll get a Rubik's cube, and so then we took it home and he was playing this game where like he would make a couple twists and hand it back to me to solve it. And then we played that with each other. And then he said, close your eyes. And he made so many twists that it's like, Ugh, like completely messed up to not allow how to fix it.

[00:23:22] So, okay. So I have to go, you know, I went to YouTube and I found a video explaining how to solve a Rubik's cube. And I spent an hour like learning the, what they call them, the algorithms to learn the tricks on how to solve a rescue for sea salt. The bottom layer, the layer to this. And it was fun. It took me about an hour and it was fascinating and turned into a fun memorization exercise.

[00:23:44] And so now I can solve a Rubik's cube in about three minutes. That's really, so a couple of years ago I got just weird. She was actually on Christmas day. You and I are talking, the audience doesn't know this, but we are talking two days before Christmas. Yes. And it's always like a wonderful quiet time of year where nobody's outside of your families expect anything from you.

[00:24:06] It's a great time to like disappear, dive into something new. It's so on Christmas day a few years ago I was reading something about the language called Esperanto, the spoken language. And I remember I sat down in my chair at 4:00 PM like, Oh, this is kind of interesting. And dude, I didn't get out of my chair until 11 o'clock at night.

[00:24:28] It was like pitch black the whole house, like, you know, all the lights were off the whole house. I was like, I was riveted I was glued to my chair. It's like, Oh my God, this is the most fascinating thing. I sat there for seven hours learning about Esperanto.  For no practical reasons, same as the Rubik's cube.

[00:24:41] It was, yeah. This is interesting to me right now. Like I was not interested in Rubik's cube a week ago. I was not interested in esperanto

[00:24:50] drawn to the day six months passed after that. cause it was just interesting. This week I'm learning a book type setting, programming language. Cause. I have my own intrinsic reason to do that because I have books coming up that I want don't want to be dependent typesetter, but we can talk about that later.

[00:25:10] But even situations like this interview, you know, like you throw strange questions at me, I think about them and I try to come up with an answer that's interesting to both me and your audience, but I wouldn't see it say that these are like inherent creativity things. I think these are like in all three of those scenarios.

[00:25:37] It's like, not until something is thrown at you, do you get interested in it? So I wouldn't say that's like, some people are just curious and some people just aren't. I think the people who think they're not curious, probably just haven't been in situations where they're exposed to something that they find interesting.

[00:25:58] Curiosity is Very Specific and Personal

[00:25:58] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that. I mean, those are, that's the whole reason this thing is even called Feeding Curiosity for that reason, because it's just kind of, what is that thing that just kind of, it just made you stop and go, huh? And then you just start, for lack of a better term, going down the rabbit hole for whatever that is.

[00:26:17] And then when you kind of stop and reflect on what that rabbit hole opened up for you, then you realize, Oh, I'm a lot farther than where I started.

[00:26:27] Derek Sivers:  Well, okay. Have you found that there's a wonderful saying that, the ocean gets deeper the further you go into it? Yeah, the farther, like. Yeah. Like curiosity is very specific and situational.

[00:26:44] Maybe that's what I meant last time, where it's like you can't say that this person is curious and that person is not curious. Yes. I think that those two people might be reversed in different scenarios. Right. So my advice is that if you feel even a hint of interest about something, then just go learn a little more about it.

[00:27:05] Because the more you learn, the more interesting it gets, right? Like when you know nothing about a subject, it's hard to be curious about it because you don't even have any questions yet. but once you start learning anything and you have more content. Well then you start having more questions and you get more interested.

[00:27:27]so that's, I find it helps to have a real need, right? Like even a, a tiny one, like my Rubik's cube example. Yeah. but that's a great argument for why people should get out of their comfort zones and go do random, different things. Exposing themselves to like, completely. Different inputs because if you're just going through the same routine, like every day you drive to the same job and come home and do the same thing, eat one of six dinners in front of the TV, then no wonder you're not feeling your, your curiosity sparked because you're just, you're not getting exposed to new inputs.

[00:28:04] But if you go. Scramble it, mess with it, and suddenly, you know, you're sitting there, whatever, talking with a stranger who trains horses and is telling you how exciting it is or whatever it is. Like suddenly you've got these new inputs, you go, wow. Yeah, actually, yeah. A year ago I got super into dog training.

[00:28:20] I was like, no, interested in dogs a year ago. But then like. Keyboards like get a dog, and suddenly I was like looking into dogs and learning all about training, and suddenly I was like, Oh my God. I like to read five different books about dog training and got fascinated with it. It's just like all of this stuff just comes from being exposed to random inputs.

[00:28:36] Yeah. Anybody listening to this show wants to spark their curiosity more. Just go scrambled. Your inputs, goats, expose yourself to something completely outside your usual circles.

[00:28:49]Erich Wenzel: I think that's really cool. I just kind of thought, or like triggered a thought from a Michael Pollan's new book, the how to change your mind.

[00:28:57] He kind of talked about psychedelics in this way when you take psychedelics. It's like you are, you take your snowblower, snow globe and which is your brain, and then you shake it all up and then let everything kind of resettle in new ways. And that's kind of what I just thought of when you were saying like, take new inputs in and stuff like that.

[00:29:13] It's like you've got to shake your snow globe every so often. Otherwise you're not going to see, of course, you're not going to see new things or be as interested because everything is just settled and you know, stagnant. Basically. Yeah. It's really cool.

[00:29:27] You Don't Have To Do Anything

[00:29:27] To kind of keep building off of this curiosity and exploring how you would have so many different skills that we've already covered your music and coding and stuff like that.

[00:29:36] So what do you think about, crossing skills across domains or, how would you look at skill acquisition more broadly for, say someone in like college or something where, you know, you have to pick a degree and then stick with that thing for four years or longer? 

[00:29:54] Derek Sivers: You have to understand like, you don't have to..

[00:29:57]There was a really interesting turning point for me about 12 years ago when I was working with a guy, like kind of a, I'm kind of like a coach, a mentor type guy. And it's before I sold my company and when I, he asked, why do you want to, well, really, I just wanted to quit. I want to leave. I wanted to stop.

[00:30:22] He said, why? And I said, I'm sick of doing all these things I have to do. And he said, well, you don't have to do any of them. I said, well, yeah. I have to pay my employees. I have to pay my taxes, I have to ship out customers orders when they pay, and he said, no you don't. I said, of course I do. I said, what do you mean no I don't?

[00:30:41] Come on, yes, I have to pay my taxes. I have to pay my employees. And he said, Derek, I'm not just being as smart ass you really need to understand this point before we continue. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to pay your taxes. Nobody does. You don't have to pay your employees. Nobody does.

[00:31:00] But if you don't, he said, look at what will happen if you don't pay your employees? He said, they'll eventually stop coming to work. A few of them might file lawsuits. Most of them would probably just walk away and give up and grumble and hate you, but you don't have to pay your payroll. And he's like, you don't have to pay your taxes either.

[00:31:22] He said, after a few years, the IRS would probably come back to you and they would charge you interest on back taxes, but let's be killed. Clear. You don't have to do anything. He said you could right now just walk down to the local park, lay down on a bench and just stay there for a few years. Have to do anything.

[00:31:40] Everything you're doing, you're choosing to do. You need to understand that. Like never forget that you're choosing to do this, and at any point. You can just choose not to. You don't have to just walk away from anything. There might be some consequences more often there's just not not. So anyway, so sorry, I just had to like it.

[00:32:03] Call that one out. When you say like you have to choose a major, you have to pick a focus.

[00:32:06] Erich Wenzel: I appreciate that a lot because I was doing all of this stuff in parallel with, you know, finishing a degree and things like that. 

[00:32:15] Derek Sivers:  Right. Good example, like, yeah, maybe inside college you have to. Do is there, I mean, even then you don't have to, but okay.

[00:32:23] Skill Acquisition and Skills Across Domains

[00:32:23] Even inside college, you're going to get the most out of it. But if you pick a thing without, that's your entire life. Anyway, So to answer your real question about the skill acquisition and you know, being skills across domains, I just think that whenever something's important to you. You should get to know the foundations of it.

[00:32:48] And the main reason is because you don't want to be at the mercy of any particular person or particular company if something really matters to you. So a lot of what I've learned has been out of self-reliance and that's because I've been around long enough to watch a lot of companies disappear. Companies that people were depending on that people had uploaded all their stuff to next time there's a market crash, they're gone.

[00:33:16] And I was like, we've, are we at the, are we at the. like in the longest bull market in history or something right now, like crazy. It's nuts. There hasn't been a crash in 17 years, but before that, like there was a big crash in 2002, I think, and there was kind of one in 2001, and there was kind of one in that for that.

[00:33:38] So I could see why somebody who's just been online for 17 years thinks that it always goes like this. But yeah. Yeah. Just go back 17 years. There were a lot of likes, just imagine if tomorrow Google, Facebook and Instagram went out of business and all of the stuff you'd ever uploaded. Cause I'm like, all your photos or whatever were just like gone.

[00:34:05] They're just like, Oh sorry. Well we went out of business, so what can you do? You're like, wait, but no, all of my photos, like my pictures of my kid and everything like that. I was depending on you. You think the appropriate response would be, well, you idiot. Yeah. Cause that emails and actually would you depend on the company?

[00:34:27] Yeah. Like, Oh my God, my Gmail address is gone. I was depending on my Gmail address, a little, you idiot. They're a company. Don't depend on a company. Gmail might be gone tomorrow, you know? I mean, actually most of the people listening to this interview. Will outlive most of the companies they use. You know, you're probably going to live another 80 years or 70 or something like that.

[00:34:51] That's probably more, that's probably longer than your email provider will last, or the place you uploaded your photos to will last. So anyway, point is if something matters to you, whether it's your photos, your writing. Your, you know, your books, whatever. Don't depend on any particular person or any particular company to manage that stuff.

[00:35:24]I've felt the pain of being helpless when long ago when I was like, there was an expert that I was depending on, that was the only person that knew how to do something I needed with my database. I was like, I, I didn't know programming yet. And so I, I had just begun CD baby and I hired this guy to help me with my programming and he disappeared and it's like suddenly, like my store was broken and he wasn't replying and he was just like, gone, like, just no answer to his phone, no nothing.

[00:35:49] I was like, ah. I just said, okay, that's my fault. I was an idiot. I was dependent on this guy and that's stupid. You know, this, this business matters to me. I'm not going to have my business collapsed because one guy disappeared. So the point is I tend to learn things. It gives me self-sufficiency and independence where it matters most to me.

[00:36:16] But these things are different for everyone, right? Like I don't depend on my car or my bike right now in my regular life. I live in a neighborhood where I can walk everywhere. So. I have a car to bike, but if they break out, okay, I'll just pay somebody to fix those when they break, they don't matter to me enough.

[00:36:32]but I'm self-publishing my books now, so I don't want to be dependent on a graphic designer to do the layout. So right now, like this week, I'm learning the core language behind desktop publishing. so that I, I'm never dependent on any designer. It's there for someone else. It might be vice versa, right?

[00:36:54] Like if you lived out in the country, you might be completely depending on your car and it would be worth your time to learn how to fix your own flat tire because you live in the country. But then you know, the graphic design, you don't care. Just pay somebody to do it. So point is I think, to learn the foundations of the things that are important to you so that you're self sufficient.

[00:37:15] And then just in doing that, you know, you talk about skills across different domains and skill acquisition, but you just, you learn things out of necessity. That's how we all learn. I mean, that's how we all do, you know, like a Rubik's cube or dog training, you found something fascinating, just out of some weird random chance.

[00:37:32] But for most of us. We learned things like by necessity, that's the best way to learn. Even with computer programming. If that would've been like a class in college that I had to take, I would've had no interest at all. I would have been a terrible student, but a few years later, the fact that it's like me, I started this website.

[00:37:51] And then it suddenly started growing faster than I could handle by myself and I desperately needed automation. Damn sure. It was like learning programming, like my life depended on it, you know, cause it kinda did have that choice. So yeah, learning by necessities, the best way and things that later look like you've got many skills across domains and all that kind of stuff.

[00:38:11] It's usually just because you've had to learn some things out of necessity.

[00:38:15] Self-Reliance and Accumulating Knowledge

[00:38:15] Erich Wenzel: Yeah. I mean, I completely agree because that's kinda been my parallel path with learning how to manage. Again, mirroring a lot of stuff is the reason I have my own website is because I didn't want Facebook or any of the social media platforms to be the, you know, the one stop shop controlling traffic.

[00:38:31] I wanted to be able to say, you know, point here, like, you know, they go poof one day. Or they're just gatekeepers, for lack of a better term. I wanted to be able to control and say, no, this is really what I'm driving traffic wise. Not even for money purposes, but just because this is what I wanted to put out in the world.

[00:38:49] Like I'm going to, you know, take responsibility for the things that I put out publicly, basically. And then also too is like I. I do love reading so much, and there was a point where I was like, I should probably start switching to all like eBooks because I didn't want to, you know, for environmental purposes and things like that.

[00:39:06] But then I started thinking about it and I'm like, ah, I don't know, because I love having real books. And then I'm like, well. You know what? If the internet goes poof one day, then all of this knowledge, effectively evaporates, so then, then for me, I just love collecting knowledge. So I'm like, well, maybe I should just keep buying real books because they're cheaper than, they're not really much more expensive, and so therefore I can keep a library so that if it doesn't, you know, if it all goes sideways, then I still have access to information and help other people. You know? I don't know. It's just like this weird little responsibility thing to like keep acquiring knowledge and then have given access to it. 

[00:39:43] Derek Sivers: So dude, on that note, by the way, just this is just a tiny little side, but I'm the same way, but I don't use the cloud for anything.

[00:39:51] So. Even all of the eBooks I've bought through Amazon, through the Kindle or whatever. There's a program called Calibre, C. L. C. a. L. I. B. R. E. okay, cool. With a plugin called D, D. R, M. a. D. D. R. M. so as in to take off the digital rights management, the DRM. So if you put the D DRM plugin into calibre, then you can open up your.

[00:40:21] Kindle books in Collibra, and then save them as an open, unlocked epub format so that they are viewers forever. So I had, I went through the same thought process as you a few years ago where it's like, yeah, but these are, you know, I've paid a lot of money for books and these are my books. So much is going to leave them in Amazon's cloud, let them disappear.

[00:40:43]Even though yes, I pay for them, I don't, ship them for anything I've bought and paid for. I strip the DRM off of it and keep my own archives. So I have a hard drive with like, you know, every, every piece of music I've ever bought, every video I've ever bought, every book I've ever bought, I always, if it's something that I've paid for it, then I stripe the DRM and I archive it. That's a really digital library forever. Offline. 

[00:41:07] Erich Wenzel: Yeah. I'll definitely be going down that rabbit hole at some point too, to have that because I think it's really important to kind of figure out ways that we can have the things that we care about, at the very least, so that it doesn't become beholden to some other thing.

[00:41:23] You know, just have it longer than us, hopefully right to, to kind of keep going on. 

[00:41:29] Derek Sivers: Well, I kind of had to, you know, I was doing the world citizen thing. I was traveling so much. So it's like, I remember when I, the first time I went to India I, my suitcase, I was going to be there for a whole like month, month and a half I think.

[00:41:43] And so my suitcase was like half books, half clothes, half books, and I was like. Okay. This is, I think it was shortly after that, but I said, I think it's time to consider that Kindle thing. It's like half my luggage is books. 

[00:41:58] World Citizen and Being Comfortable With Travel

[00:41:58] Erich Wenzel: So yeah, that was definitely not easy to travel with either because it's just like they take up a lot more volume and they're pretty heavy depending on if you get hard numbers or not.

[00:42:07] So that's actually kind of where I was going next is like this world citizen or just being comfortable at travel. It seems to be more. Something miss by generation possibly, that like millennials and stuff that we want to start being troubled, like world citizens. You know, Vagabonding is a popular book or it seems to be a popular book.

[00:42:25]What are your thoughts on it? Cause it's, it's ironic that we grew up in the Midwest and very similar locations. And here we have really deep roots, at least in family ties where my parents have not moved farther than like Wisconsin or, even indiana probably like, it's not very far at all. And like I'll travel, I've just been with my friends.

[00:42:47] And then you take a plane and then spend five days and come back. Like it's nothing crazy. And then a couple of other friends have gotten much farther. But it's just more of like pulling the trigger is really hard. 

[00:42:58] Derek Sivers: Well, and it might, we all have different definitions of what we want. So, and it's, it's not even like a.

[00:43:06] Can't even necessarily blame your family. None of the black sheet, like my whole family, all of my, like my sister and my parents and my cousins and everybody, they all live like a mile from each other. They all live right there and I'm the one black sheep. I'll be on the other side of the earth. So it depends even, you know what's funny, a few years ago I went to a conference that was the digital nomads conference.

[00:43:31] Even though they are talking with everybody. I found out that most of these people, even though they were so self-described as digital nomads, that they would attend this conference. Most of them still had the definition that for them meant. I'm going to go hang out in a hammock in Bali or Thailand for a few years and drink cheap beers and work on my laptop on the beach.

[00:43:55] But at some point, I'm going to return back here where I grew up and have a kid near my parents so that my, you know, my kid can grow up near his grandparents. whereas I had a completely different definition. I wanted to just leave and never ever come back. Yeah. So my definition of nomading is to actually deeply integrate into each place and become a legal resident.

[00:44:17] Maybe even a citizen. Truly make this place my home for a few years, and then move on to the next mood again. But let me back up. Even at the age of 36, I had no desire to travel. Like this was not something that was always in me. So I was living on the beach in Santa Monica, California. I was just as happy as I could be.

[00:44:40] I had this amazing home. It was a tree house, it was his house. It was like wrapped around a tree right near the Santa Monica beach. I was in the music business. Los Angeles is the place to be like, it was just paradise. The weather's perfect and my bike riding on the back, like you couldn't pay me to travel.

[00:44:58]I had no interest at all. I was even with a girlfriend at the time that wanted to travel the world. I was just like, hell no. I don't want to Travel. I live at the end of the rainbow. Like, this is the best place ever. Why would I travel? But then one tiny idea got into my head that I couldn't unthink and that was the, you've really only learned when you're surprised.

[00:45:26] Like if you're not surprised, you may be taking in more information, but your mind isn't really changing. You only really change your mind when you find out that your previous assumptions on something were wrong. Like that's, that's the only time you really change your mind. So one of the best ways to keep yourself surprised daily is to live somewhere very unlike what you know.

[00:45:53] So, immerse yourself in the different cultural perspectives, right? Like very different ways of looking at life. looking at communication, very different approaches to expectations or values, especially. so I just, I had this idea around the age of 36 and it just wouldn't leave. It's like in that one moment that one.

[00:46:18] Probably happened in an instant. I felt like I couldn't unthink this idea and it shaped how I wanted to live the rest of my life. That's because, to me, it's so important to keep growing and keep learning and never get stuck into habits that hold me back. So ideally, I'd like to keep moving to more and more challenging places living in each one until it, until it feels like it makes sense.

[00:46:42] Right? Like, I'd love to move to a place that seems. Completely bizarre right now, right? Like Beijing, China. Yeah. I would love to move to Beijing and I'm sure it would be incredibly frustrating and annoying and difficult, but then give it a few years and it would probably just start to feel like home, like, yeah, this is, it's where all my friends are. I'm sure it would make complete sense. And then. Yeah. By the time after a few years, if Beijing makes complete sense, well then it's time to move to Rio de Janeiro to another place that doesn't make sense and then do it again. And I just think that that's a great recipe to always keep your brain, like to keep pulling out the rug from under your feet, you know?

[00:47:31]And of course there are other ways to do it. Of course, plenty of brilliant geniuses have never left Chicago. People way smarter than me are still in their hometown. So I'm not saying this is the only way, but I think that this environment helps. I know too many people that say are constantly learning and changing when they're in their teens and their 20s and by the time they start to get into their thirties it's like, well, this is who I am.

[00:48:04] This is where I live. This is my favorite team. This is where I work. This is what I do.

[00:48:09] It's like Fuck, you're, you're 35 like, come on. You got like another 60 years to live. You're done at 35. It's ridiculous. So, anyways, so my advice, not that you asked, but if somebody wants you, you said something about like getting your foot out the door or, yeah, just getting and stuff. 

[00:48:29] Erich Wenzel: Just get moving. You know, just like if you want to do it, like how do you just get past that first initial resistance, basically.

[00:48:38] Taking the First Step to Travel

[00:48:38] Derek Sivers: Okay, so, well first I'll tell him to tell you a tiny, cute little moment that your listeners might appreciate, which is like, I already said that I had this idea, I had this itch, this idea that wouldn't go away. But it was really like, there was this moment in December at the age of 36 when I said like, yeah, you know what if I just started traveling, traveling the world, and, and I dunno, went somewhere like London, like, let me just see, like I'll just, so I went to some travel website and I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time.

[00:49:17] And. I said, let me just look at prices. Okay.  wants me to pick a date. I don't know. May 1st okay, I'll pick May 1st. Oh no, it needs me to do a round trip. Okay, well, what is six months after may? Okay, November 1st all right, fine there. There's your fake dates. Let me see what it would cost to go round trip from Portland, Oregon to London May 1st to November 1st and I'm like click.

[00:49:38] I was like, Holy shit. $380 it's amazing. It's $380 to go around the world. Wow. That's cheap. I bet her book that. So I was like, huh. yeah, I was going to book it. So it's just like, I just like the idea kind of came into my head and a minute later I had typed my credit card and like to book it. Yeah. Cause it was only 380 bucks and I was like, huh.

[00:50:05] I just booked a six month trip to London. Well, I guess I just did it. So, yeah, I guess I'm going to go to London for six months. Like I didn't know anything else. I didn't know where I was going to stay, but I just booked it so well, that's one way to take the first step. but. but in hindsight, London is too similar to the argument it and felt, it might as well have just been like Boston or something, you know, like it's not that different.

[00:50:34] Yeah. So I think, for example, if you're an American, it'd be different if somebody's listening to this from, you know, Estonia, yes. But if you're an American. For example, then don't choose you, Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, or New Zealand. Like those don't count. The cultural differences are so minor that it almost doesn't count as, you know, like really expanding your mind like this, but on the other hand, don't just because some dude in a podcast interview said, don't let that stop you if that's what you really want to go to Ireland then go.

[00:51:06] But, I think if you're feeling blank slate, you want to do this. Consider some place like Singapore, because Singapore is pretty unique in that English is the first language. They're like the government and everything and all the newspapers and all the media is in English. English is their first language, but their cultural views are very different.

[00:51:31] So I think it helps to go somewhere where you don't have to learn a new language yet, like it's going to be if you're taking your first step. Out of your home country, then it helps to go someplace where you can speak English because then you can assimilate and integrate them, and that's the important thing.

[00:51:48]if you'd rather not go to Asia, you'd rather start with Europe than consider Budapest in Hungary or Lisbon, Portugal. Those are two places that are quite different culturally. But most people speak English, get by. So whatever place you choose, my advice is you have to integrate. You really have to, assimilate, integrate into the local culture.

[00:52:14] You can't just go there and stay in the little expat bubble and joke with other Americans. Go drink beers and facility foreigners, in which you are, know living in their country. and also. You got to get past that initial feeling that they're doing everything wrong. Like at first, when you get to a country, you're going to focus on the frustrations.

[00:52:35]day to day life will be frustrating and you'll accidentally generalize. So for example, this happened to me when I first got to Singapore. one day, like when I had first arrived, I went to go do something like customer service wise too. Get my phone bill or something like that, and somebody was rude to me and I came home thinking people in Singapore are rude, but no, of course it was one person that was rude to me.

[00:53:02] Whereas on the other hand, if you go down to your local grocery store and the checkout clerk is rude to you, do you think people in America are rude? So you think, well, that person's a jerk. Yeah. But the problem is when you first get to a new country. It almost feels like every person you encounter is representing the country.

[00:53:20] Yeah. Because you've had so few interactions in this country. So first we'll first try to integrate the second, like, try to not accidentally generalize, know that if one person is rude to you, it's just that person. and then I think, try to assume. That the way that you grew up is wrong and their way is right because otherwise you're going to do the reverse.

[00:53:46] You're just going to assume like, no, no, no. They're doing what they do with the grocery store. Everything's wrong. Or the way that they're paying their bills is the way that people, are, are chaotic at the bus to get on the bus. That's wrong. People should line up in an orderly fashion or whatever you think, okay, no, no, hold on.

[00:54:03] Maybe the way I grew up is wrong, and they are right, and you have to. Kind of psych yourself into that mindset so that you can try to understand and try to assimilate and not keep them at a distance, but integrate until you find yourself saying, we instead of they, you know, that's awesome. 

[00:54:24] And then ideally stay at least three months.  Make some ties, make local friends and fall in love.

[00:54:29]Erich Wenzel:  I liked that a lot. It really, I mean I'll probably be using some of this advice to myself because I think I've never heard someone talk about it in that way to be able to break it down. you know, other than otherwise and then it just easy stuff.

[00:54:41] You just, just do it or talk about the planning part of it, which seems like there's less planning in general across the board. Cause I've been asking this question for a little while or a similar question like this. So it's kind of funny. 

[00:54:55] Work Visa Under 30

[00:54:55] Derek Sivers: Well, by the way, if you're under 30 and you're listening to this, go before you're 30, because I don't know what's up with the number 30, but all around the world, so many countries make it dead easy to get a work visa if you're under 30 really, but much harder to get one if you're over 30.

[00:55:13] Huh? So it is so much easier if you're thinking about doing this. Yeah, go, go look at, I mean, first you can just go on a tourist visa or like three or even six months. You can almost always go to a country for three months. and then you can just leave and come back again for another three months.

[00:55:30] Almost any country will let you get away with that, but if you want to try to integrate and stay more than six months, yeah. If you're under 30, you can usually get a work visa or like, you know, for just young labor. And then you get these jobs like working at cool things. Like why don't you know? But there's a ski instructor working at a hotel or doing things like that where you meet tons of other people in their 20s and and you can tell, like really integrate cause you're going to be working alongside people that grew up there and they're going to be, you're all going to go out together after work like this.

[00:56:01] So much better instead of just. Going to some place like Cambodia and sitting in a little bubble of other expats and not talking to the locals at all. Yeah. I just think the most important thing. Well, I mean, the most important thing is to go, but the second most important thing is to, you really got to try to integrate and assimilate and not stay in your little bubble where you party with other expats, you know?

[00:56:28] Erich Wenzel: Yeah. I think that's awesome. It's really actionable advice, and I, and I didn't know about that at work visa part of it, but it does make sense to be able to kind of. Yeah. I, I'd give you a license to go for longer periods of time. because I think that's part of the big, big question mark for most people is the cost.

[00:56:44] Derek Sivers: And, yeah, right. Well, imagine this, imagine you're like 27 listening to this, and so you get a work, you hear here and suddenly you get a work visa to go to, I don't know, pick, pick a country in Europe, Germany. Sure me, you had a work visa to go to Germany because you're 27 it is easier if you're under 30 so now you're in Germany, and imagine this, you stay for say, five years, you start to learn some German, and now you've been a resident for five years.

[00:57:14] Most countries will make you a citizen. If you've been there for five years, and so now you get a passport. So now you've got a German passport along with whatever one you grew up with. Yeah. And once you've got a German passport, well now you have the right to live anywhere from Iceland to Italy, from Finland to Spain.

[00:57:36] You know, you have the legal right and that stuff passes down to your kids automatically. So now, as soon as your kids are born, they'll immediately have a German passport. and then that, you know, I think it, depending on their gender, whatever, then it passes down to their kids all because you spent five years there back in the year 2020.

[00:57:57] So if you're thinking long term and multigenerational, it makes so much sense to go, especially when you're young, like co integrate. Those tastes somewhere else. Go get out of your home country, expand your mind, learn a different way of approaching the world. Learn that things are not so black and white, that there are multiple ways of approaching anything.

[00:58:17] And it's not that one way is right. The other way is wrong. that there are multiple correct ways of approaching anything. And then you get these other benefits, like, like to be, to me, to be a real world citizen is to have the legal right to live places and that comes through legal residency, legal, citizenship, passports, et cetera.

[00:58:40] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, that's really cool. And just being a citizen of the world, I think is, is going to be more and more important as, as this connectedness with the internet happens, we're, we're, you know, being able to blend cultures through. I mean, this conversation is an example of that. Just being able to call someone across the ocean and I'm here in the Midwest.

[00:58:58] Like that's just goes to show how important is to be able to understand cultures across distances is, you know, it just going to get, become more and more important to be able to look at other people instead of, instead of saying of they, like you were saying, it'll solve a lot, I think, or at least just help you navigate the world as it gets more complex.

[00:59:19] Counteract Tribalism

[00:59:19] Derek Sivers: Yeah, and it's honestly, I think the trend right now, if we're talking 20 years ago, it would've been different 20 years ago. It felt like the trend was towards globalization. Now it feels like the trend is towards tribalism. Yes. Putting up stronger borders and I, and I think it's more of this like us versus them mentality. So yeah, I think it's even more important to deliberately counteract that. 

[00:59:47] Erich Wenzel: Yeah. Cause I, I truly think that there's more in common, like value wise across people. Then we lead the belief on, or at least at knee jerk reaction. So it's worth deconstructing those, those boundaries and say, you know, how did you grow up?

[01:00:01] Because if you just take the thematic values of like how someone grew up, you know, someone even in as different as China versus the U S. It would be more or less the same. You know, the same value structure is like I had, you know, parents like that kind of stuff. And I just think it's worth highlighting that stuff and then getting exposure to it as it is even better.

[01:00:23] Don't Confuse Medium With The Message

[01:00:23] It kind of leads to this next question. I agree with 'em cause you had talked about this at the end of one of your blog posts, but it says don't confuse the medium with the message. Don't confuse the tool with the goal and don't confuse the vehicle with the path. And then I wrote what I was writing there for thoughts wise.

[01:00:44] But yeah, I think that's really similar to how people tend to think about stuff is, is they overly box themselves in or they confuse the tool with what it does. 

[01:00:58] Derek Sivers: Okay. Yeah. That's saying, okay, so that's what I wrote, was because. I told you my little history at the beginning of the call that I was a professional musician that accidentally started a company, but then after 10 years of running the company, I got surprisingly lucky and sold it for millions.

[01:01:23] And so people who meet me after that assume that I'm some kind of like a stereotypical entrepreneur and they start talking to me about their angel round financing, their series a and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And all this stuff that I had no knowledge or interest in. So, but I could see how somebody would just assume like, Oh, okay, you sold your business for millions.

[01:01:44] So, you must be this kind of person. But it's not at all true. I mean, the truth is I didn't even want to start a business and when it was too late and my business was growing, I mean, I absolutely was not doing it for the money. People ask my advice on how to grow your business and they look at me.

[01:02:03] Strangely when I say I, I never tried to grow my business. In fact, I was trying to keep it smaller than it was. I was actively trying to prevent its growth. It was growing bigger than I wanted it. I've never tried to grow a business and they just, they don't even know what to do with that. 

[01:02:19] so the reason I said that stuff is because I think we need to drop our assumptions. don't just assume that the common pairing. Is always true, right? So they don't confuse the media and with the message. Don't confuse the tool with the goal. Don't confuse the field. Calls the vehicle with the path. In those cases, what I'm referring to is, is my company, my company was the medium, the tool, the vehicle, but don't assume that I'm interested in business or profits or investors or any often goes with it.

[01:02:51] But you see this in other professions too, right? Like someone could be a politician. Because they're greedy and they want glory, or someone can be a politician for very selfless social justice reasons. Right. You can't assume that musicians are necessarily creative, heart driven, people that live their life in chaos and sleep until noon every day.

[01:03:20] Acknowledge Stereotypes

[01:03:20] You know, you need to, I think, acknowledge the stereotypes. First, realize them, like acknowledge them, but then unbraided them because they're often not true. So you need to disconnect the outer action, the appearance, or the profession with your assumption about that person's inner motives. You know, the outer appearance doesn't tell you anything about the inner motives.

[01:03:48] Erich Wenzel: Yeah. I agree. It's one of those things we stereotypes are useful because they give us context to how to act easily in complex situations. But to do that for everybody is, is it a little disingenuous? Because not everybody does the things they do for the same reasons. So that's why I wanted to unpack this cause I think like the medium and the message is such a cool distinction. It's like, just because you're using a certain medium to convey a message doesn't mean you buy into all of that baggage. 

[01:04:22] Derek Sivers: And I just said, here's the slice example. I, I told you I lived, I lived in Santa Monica on the beach. Yeah. And I don't know if it's still true now, but when I was there, it just felt like every single person in Santa Monica was really into yoga.

[01:04:35] And it's a funny thing because. They wouldn't just do yoga. They would like to start doing yoga and then just decide to like to buy in whole heartedly to this whole thing. They'd start saying, Namaste, putting up like little like yin yang things in their house, going for drinking only deionized water or whatever.

[01:04:58] And it's just so funny when they would even sometimes be like a certain tone of voice. Like the day with a melodic kind of sounding. Yeah. Like you didn't used to speak like that a few months ago, but now because you're doing yoga, you're like, you're, you're like putting on this affected for like, some people feel a needs to buy in to this whole thing. 

[01:05:19] Erich Wenzel: That's over assimilating Right? 

[01:05:23] Derek Sivers:  Right. Okay. Touche that was good. 

[01:05:27] Separating What You Do From Who You Are

[01:05:27] Erich Wenzel: I think that's one of the things that's funny is like people's identity becomes a little too malleable, right? They, they buy into a cer, like their, whatever image they are supposed to portray as that type of person or a person that does X.

[01:05:40] Right? and so then they let that take over their entire identity. And I, I try really hard to not say. Like mentally look at what I do and say, okay, this is not. Like, because I'm an engineer, I yes it's a part of me, but it doesn't inform me that I am right. Everything I am is internal and what I choose to do is just that, if the outwardly manifestation of those things, but I'm, we're all like forever more complex and dynamic than anything we choose to fill like role wise at least. 

[01:06:10] Yeah. That's how I like to think about it and it really helps. You know, have that identity foreclosure or like keep it at Bay. Because we tend to, we tend to like to attach to things, especially the things that we get accolades for to our identity, you know? So as I try to, to do a lot of proactive work to say, yes, I'm this, because I used to do this a lot, like.

[01:06:30] Especially growing up, it's like you see the certain ways that you are and you see other people who aren't like you and they get praised for things and you're like, well, I guess I'm just this nerdy guy in the corner and I don't know how to be that person. And you just, you know, box yourself in slowly but surely, and then all of a sudden you realize, Oh, I'm the one who put these borders around myself, not the other way around.

[01:06:53] Gender Stereotypes

[01:06:53]All right, so to keep building on like the stereotyping, but getting a little bit more broader, not just in the working world, but also within the gender stereotypes.

[01:07:03] You had a really cool blog post about how you tend to look at stereotypes between genders and treating them more or less the same. Even though they're not. And I thought it was a really good way of just kind of cutting through the BS that a lot of people get hung up on this stuff. And you'd also mentioned that you have more female best friends than male as well.

[01:07:24] So I just would love to unpack this too, to just give your thoughts on it, because I think it's one of those things we kind of talk about in society and it's a little egg Shelly feeling and I just think it's, it's worth, I like your take really sure.

[01:07:40] Derek Sivers: So why I have more female friends than male might just be an accident of history.

[01:07:50] When I was 12, there was this girl, Sharon, that I sat next to in junior high school in Hinsdale, Illinois. And, yeah, we were just best friends and we just did everything together and, and, but for like, absolutely not at all, attracted to each other. And she was just my best friend for years. And then she moved.

[01:08:10] To Italy. And I think that just kinda like, and somebody else became my best friend. And I think it just kinda became my norm. Who knows? formative years. But,  but I've heard there's, so, because of it. Maybe there's something that's always just been a pet peeve of mine. It always annoyed me when my friends say things like, well, you know how men are.

[01:08:34] Men are always just like, you know, well, you know how women are. Women are always, and every time. Somebody says that, of course they, they say about the opposite gender. And what someone, whenever they say that I, it always just feels wrong to me. I mean, just factually wrong when they say, well, you know how all men are like, no, that's not at all true.

[01:08:58] And do you guys? Nope, that's, that's not all true for my experience. And so, I was always the one among friends to kind of say like, like, say like if a female friend says, well, you know, men are never good at, explaining how they feel. And I say, well, actually, nobody's good at explaining how they feel.

[01:09:18] That's a human thing, not a male thing. And usually when I say that, whoever I'm talking to has to acknowledge like. yeah. Okay. You're right. But then I thought it was really interesting what, after a few years of. This annoys me that I read a book about social psychology where social psychologists have found that the differences among men and the differences among women are much greater than the average differences between men and women in general.

[01:09:53] So at the same time, they found that we all have a natural human nature to tend to exaggerate the differences between groups. Right? So I mean, you could say the same thing with race groups or nationality groups. And in this case, gender groups tend to exaggerate the differences between groups, like in our own thinking.

[01:10:17]unless you're a stand up comedian, then you do it on purpose for a laugh. But, so I think if you want to think clearer.

[01:10:24] De-exaggerate the Differences

[01:10:24]Then you need to deliberately de-exaggerate the differences. and so I like to just take that all the way and just say, okay, if my human nature is to exaggerate the differences between groups, then I'm going to take it all the way the other way and overcompensate and just assume there is no difference between the groups, because I know that my human nature will compensate.

[01:10:48] So I think of the metaphor of throwing a Frisbee, right? Like if you've ever liked to play catch with frisbee  for a while. I'm sitting here like making the movement from my hand. if you've ever played with a Frisbee for a while and you find out like, man, every time I throw that Frisbee, it bends all the way to the left.

[01:11:06] Like every time I throw it, I try to aim exactly to my friend and it goes way off to the left. Well, from now on, I'm going to aim over there to the right because I know the Frisbee will. Bend to the left and then it'll actually go where I want to go. So now I don't aim where I really want to go. I am way off over here knowing the Frisbee will correct.

[01:11:26] Right. Yeah. So yeah, so that's why I think like if you're thinking about the difference between your group and another group, whether it's gender or race or whatever, just assume there are no differences. And that's the way of a mean B, you know, over-correcting just assume that men and women are the same and then your natural human tendency will, and that's how to find the sweet spot. Like find that more correct. 

[01:11:52] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, I like that. And it kind of shows through with like a lot of this stuff we've been talking about when it comes to travel and it comes to working in different domains professionally, it's like, don't try not to carry your assumptions too closely, right. Because it usually is not the right way to go.

[01:12:10] It's not the right lens at the time, or it's, you're going to assume too much. You know, you're bringing, you know, 10 pounds of crap along with the, you know, the 1% that's actually good. Right? I like that a lot. And it just to, to kind of put some context on it and put it away, that I think cuts through a lot of the, the, the apprehension that people feel when, when dealing with other things, like talking about, like professors having to deal with some of this stuff now or different, you know.

[01:12:41] Questionable situations. I guess. I just like to talk about this stuff that helps people have a way that makes it more even handed in general because it's, it doesn't need to be so polarized. 

[01:12:53] Derek Sivers: I left America 10 years ago and, and I hear that some stuff has happened since then, American. And so I thought it was really interesting in that same book. The social psychology book where they talked about the differences between groups. Yeah, I'm going to quote this wrong, but they, they pointed out a study where they asked Democrats what, what they felt Republicans wanted the tax rate to be, or this something said, like they basically were asking, and then they did the same thing and they asked your republicans.

[01:13:30] What do you think the Democrats want the tax rate to be? And so  trying to say, what do you think the other side thinks? Yeah. And, and then they asked afterwards, you know, and now what do you think? What do you want the tax year to be? Or where do you stand on this issue? And what they found is that, yeah, each group thought.

[01:13:51] That the other group was way different from literal and like standards. And I think specifically, I remember the tax rate one, the differences that what they thought in which each group thought the differences would be would be like a 40% like what do you want the tax rate to be.

[01:14:08]The actual difference between Republicans and Democrats was 4% wow. There's the actual difference, but the what they thought the difference, each group thought the difference was  40% when the actual difference was only 4% and I think this went for some other issues too. Not just tax rates, but that to me is the, the classic, I mean, we use the gender example, but to me that's kind of the classic case of like, yeah, where people assume. The other side is so much different than them.

[01:14:41] You know those people, those idiots. Yeah. Those idiots want it to be so wrong and it's like, no, you actually talk to people. You're not your differences. 

[01:14:52] Erich Wenzel: You have a 10X margin of error in your assumption. 

[01:14:57] Within In One Place The Differences Feel Huge, But When You Compare Big Picture It Is Small

[01:14:57] Derek Sivers: Right. Maybe that's the thing to me about why I think it can be so healthy to leave your country.

[01:15:06] For a long time to get to know their points of view. You said that you find like, yeah, in the big picture of things, I think you're in America actually, wait, this is, this is going to go, okay, I'm going to use America as the first example, but this goes for anywhere. When you're in America, the differences between groups inside America feel huge.

[01:15:24] But then like if you compare the American mindset, say you moved to India, and now it's like, well, basically all Americans are about the same compared to Indians. Yeah. You know, the relative comparison,  yeah, there's not that, I mean, what Republicans, Democrats, whatever, it's basically the same. What do you compare it to?

[01:15:43] The outside. But the same thing goes, in, in all places. Right? So it's funny that like, if you ask people from say, Korea for their opinions on people from Norway. Well, the people from Norway seem fine, and you ask them about the Japanese, they're like, Oh, the Jabba. Now let me tell you, you know, Koreans are like focused on the subtle differences between Koreans and Japanese are amplified.

[01:16:10] Huge. And same thing with, but then you ask a Swede that somebody from Sweden about the differences between Swedes and Norwegians, they're like, Oh, those Norwegians doesn't get a stick up there butt they're just, yeah. You know, when the truth is, they're about the same. And so I think every week we focus on these small differences with our neighbors.

[01:16:31] Yep. and we over amplify those because they're so easy to, you know, put on your finger on or whatever you call it. So when you step away from that, you move all the way across the earth. It just feels like it gives you a better perspective on being where you came from. I like seeing that you did not come from the center like you.

[01:16:50] Like we all grow up. I'm sorry. I'm picturing the metaphor of like a flower with the, what do you call that day? Whatever the thing in the middle of a flower is, right. And then you have all the pedals on the edge. Yeah. That, that we, we tend to all think that the, our position that we grew up in is like the center of things.

[01:17:08] And those people are over there in these people over here. But I'm in the center. I know. It's nothing. You're right, and when you leave American, you get into other mindsets. Then you realize like, Oh no, I actually, none of us are in this. Like we're all. Often. What are these pedals?

[01:17:26] Thinking Like A Scientist Or A Sports Fan

[01:17:26] Erich Wenzel: It reminds me of, Tim Urban has his writing this really long multi-part thing right now, but he talked about this idea of how people think basically, and he's got like, the scientist is like the top rung of higher level thinking where they're always testing their hypothesis or ideas basically.

[01:17:42] And then you have one rung down, which is this idea of the sports fan. And I think. Or at least using that as a metaphor for this kind of thinker, basically. But basically everyone has theirs. You know, their team or their idea that they're rooting for. And most people tend to think this way where they haven't a hypothesis and they will, you know, want a certain thing to win.

[01:18:02] But they'll let you know the referee called a good play and say, okay, they made a good play, but I'm not, I'm not happy about it. But you also think about it the same way when you have, like even in neighboring cities, right? Like here in the Midwest, you have the Packers averse, the bears. It's like this rivalry thing.

[01:18:16] And you know, right now is like high time for football season. So everyone's. You know, in oh rah sports mode right now, which I could care less about, but I see all the time you see all these people who are like really into it and it's like, Oh, there it is. There's that thinking again, and people tend to do this across borders, across neighborhoods, across whatever it is.

[01:18:35] Right. And it's really cool. Now that I'm thinking about it, like just the way you're explaining it is adding more to that metaphor for me. So, yeah, go ahead.

[01:18:46] Derek Sivers: For years, I was actually with this girl from Sweden and she was from the West coast of Sweden, from a city called Guttenberg. And we, I was, we were together for like six and a half years, and so we went back to Sweden together many times, and I always wanted to go to Stockholm.

[01:19:04] She's like, I'm not going to stock homeless. Talk up Stockholm. Really hate them. I think they're better. I don't think it was only like two hours away and she just refused to go there with me because she just hated them to put Stockholm people. And so, you know, years later after we broke up, I went back to Stockholm and it was wonderful.

[01:19:20] And it's just so funny. There's like, yeah, these like these little tiny territorial, you know, amplifying those differences. There it is like that again, that's that, that same thing that over, we tend to amplify the differences between groups.

[01:19:33]Erich Wenzel: Yeah, I like that. It's. It's worth highlighting these things so people can at least question them.

[01:19:39] I like people and pushing people to question the things that they don't. They haven't stopped to think about things like sports sports teams or cities you live in. You get, you know, if for lack of a better term, indoctrinated at birth. To assume certain things and it's not until you have a chance to distance yourself from the people around you that you can actually say like, Hmm, why did, why do I really believe that?

[01:20:01] Or is that even my belief? Is that just something that my parents or where I lived has put into me. Yeah. 

[01:20:09] Thoughts On Parenting

[01:20:09] To kind of go back, and I know you don't want to do too deep into this stuff, but you mentioned you have a son and he's, you know, taught you how to be more curious about stuff. But I think parenting is, is a really interesting domain for philosophically or higher level.

[01:20:25] Because of that, it's the one job we can choose to have that you don't, you know, you don't get interviewed for or no one checks a credential or something like that. You just are figuring out as you go along. And so it was more of like any just higher level thoughts about raising a child or, you know, how would you like, how have your child.

[01:20:46] Be exposed to the ideas that you think about, like you've, we've been talking this whole conversation. Or if we want to just go broadly like a student or some, you know, you're mentoring maybe a high school student or something. 

[01:20:58] Derek Sivers: Okay. So it's kind of a two part question. I combined the two. I don't really have that much to say about parenting because I've found that it's so situational right.

[01:21:13] I have friends who have three kids were like two of them are total angels and one is just Satan. So I think that a surprising amount of, of who people are is just DNA. Like it's just nature. That really surprised me. I think that, you know, the nature versus nurture, I used to just think it was an, I rarely.

[01:21:41] Nurture, like we are who we are based on things that happen to us and all that. But it's really interesting to see how much of it is probably just DNA. so for me, like my kid is just awesome. He's just great. And so being with him, for me is like meditation. when I'm with him, I just shut down myself.

[01:22:01] I shut down my needs, I shut down my. ambitions, and I just kind of like to turn it off. I'm in first. I tell it's also just literally, I turn off the computer, I turn off my phone, I just give him my full attention without distractions, and then I just enter his world. so when we're together, he just leads and I just follow.

[01:22:22]And that is my complete and total parenting technique. You know? That's it. But, okay, so your second part of your question was about like, Being kind of stuff we're talking about and encouraging a child to explore.

[01:22:35] Erich Wenzel: Basically not like before forcing him into something, because that's what I see a lot of parents who overlay their own like, Oh, this is what I wanted to do in my childhood, so I'm going to make it so that my child has those things too.

[01:22:48] Even if their child is showing all the outward signs that they don't really care about those things. 

[01:22:54] Derek Sivers: Right. Okay. So the truth is, I mean, I do, despite what I just said. Definitely do some of that. I do nudge, like some tiny techniques, right? Like, I, I believe that anything that he's physically capable of doing, I let him do himself.

[01:23:12] Yeah. And I, like, I do have a parenting opinion, in favor of, self-sufficiency and independence. And again, that's a cultural thing. Like I've seen, in India especially, I've seen some kids like as teenagers that are still completely helpless and dependent on their parents, like, they don't know how to make a meal, you know.

[01:23:31]But for example, like when he was five, We lived in a neighborhood in New Zealand where I trusted it. So we had, we often went to the corner store together, which is just across the street. And so when he was five, I just decided like, okay, I think he's ready. And I gave him some money to go across the street by himself to our usual corner store to get himself something and come back home by himself.

[01:23:57] And they washed out the window and he did it. And you know, the guy at the store knows him and that was his cool. He liked to go and did this thing by himself at the time. And when we were six, we were living in a different neighborhood that was more of like an enclosed, like cul-de-sac kind of neighborhood.

[01:24:12] It was totally safe. No through traffic. And there were some other neighbor kids. So I just let him run off with the neighbors and you know, for like an hour at a time, I didn't know where he was, but I knew that he was in the vicinity. I didn't worry. And, and then just last week, at the age of seven, I was in the kitchen making breakfast and he started a fire in the fireplace without me knowing it.

[01:24:37] Learning to Trust as a Parent

[01:24:37]And Yeah. I was surprised. Yeah. But then there was like, what the hell? I was like, Oh, all right. But, he knew how to do it carefully because I taught him how too. So yeah with each of those examples, like there was some preparation. Yes. But the biggest hurdle was the trust. Right. Like. I had to just trust.

[01:24:57] There was an optimistic trust that everything's going to be okay and it was a little scary, but I figured that that's my problem, not his right. Like I don't want to project any fears about the world and to him, I want him to believe that the world is not scary. I want him to believe that he's capable.

[01:25:17] Yeah, Abel, that he's capable, that he can do this. I'm not gonna do that over protective, like, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't do that. No one's day was mainstay. You know, you are not safe without me. That's, that's a total, let's see. Sorry, I'm thinking out loud, but that's like a completely valid cultural difference where I'm choosing the opinion that I just said, but I know plenty of people, especially like I said in India.

[01:25:44] That does the opposite and they're not wrong. Like I'm not saying I'm right. That's wrong. I knew some of them, but yeah, I know plenty of other people that completely shelter their kids as long as possible, and that is the other, it's also a perfectly valid technique that probably grew out of certain scenarios.

[01:26:02]But for my scenario, for him, for us, for me and him, like, yeah. This is me, I teach him the opposite. I want to teach as much independence as possible. Teach him how to make a fire. Teach him how to be careful. Teach them how to do everything he can by himself. 

[01:26:18] Erich Wenzel: Thanks. I, and you know, there's no right or wrong answer here, and I think you're making that very clear because it is not one size fits all.

[01:26:26] And it also depends on situationally, but I think it's just worth it. It's worth highlighting because I think it's just such an important job that doesn't get highlighted enough. Because a lot of people again, hold assumptions where it's like, Oh, I can't believe, you know, the parents talk kind of stuff. And I just, I just think, again, it's, it's worth highlighting how other people go about it without judging, basically.

[01:26:48] Derek Sivers: Yeah. There were other parts of our conversation today where, I kind of stopped and said, well, here's my advice, right? It's like, yeah, move to Singapore. but you know, when it comes to parenting, I've got no advice. I think that's what I meant about the DNA thing. It's like, I don't know who your kid is.

[01:27:03] Giving Advice To Strangers

[01:27:03] If you are like nobody, nobody knows your situation, but you, it's different for every, it's. Yeah. Same. It's like a love relationship. You know, some stranger said, can you give me some relationship advice? I said, well, no, because I don't know you. I don't know who you are that feels the same thing with career advice actually, when people like, I mean, look, I, I usually would probably say this at the end of the interview, but I still read and reply to every single email I get.

[01:27:33] And so I always encourage people, especially if they've already. Lasted 90 minutes into a podcast interview to send me the go to my site, go to  dot org and like emails and big letters there, and just click it and send me an email and say hello. Whether you want to ask me a question or just introduce yourself.

[01:27:51] But the thing is sometimes people that I've never heard from before will send me a two sentence question like, Hey, I don't know if I should quit my job or not. I'm thinking about maybe starting my own business. What should I do? No idea. Depends. So are you, I mean, we'd have to like sit down for two hours for you to tell me everything about your background, your scenario.

[01:28:15] Like I'm going to just give blind advice and I'll just depend on who you are. 

[01:28:18] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, that's, you're right. It's so important that you know, people look for it. External influences is to give them a reason why to jump when you know, there's so much to unpack, like does it make sense for you to do such a thing or whatever and it's just, yeah, I feel the kind of the same way when people like you see on Instagram or whatever, like workout advice or stuff like that, like follow my program and was like, I'm like, how can you even begin to like, unless it's just super general, but like, it just seems so crazy to me.

[01:28:51] I'm just like, you know. All you can put out there is like, Hey, this seems to work for me. And maybe if you do it too, and you might work for you, but you know, maybe there's a good chance to, 90% of it might not work. 

[01:29:03] Personality Tests

[01:29:03] So yeah. So for kind of going back a little bit further to a different topic, kind of a little sidestep, I, you had a thing on your profile about like I N T J you, you highlighted introvert, and I just thought it was an interesting that you'd decided to put it in there since you do kind of don't categorize super heavily. So I thought it was a little fun thing to unpack. and then I'm, I'm technically an ion TJ too, and I don't know, maybe it's my, engineering stuff, just collecting data that I just love to take these personality things and kind of overlay them on top of each other and see like, Ooh, here's the patterns.

[01:29:36] Derek Sivers: But I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on these personality type tests. I think I. Put  INTJ on my site because, Mmm.

[01:29:50]So it's one of those things where it's like, I don't know, like 20 years ago or something, like I took it a little Myers Briggs test and I answered the 50 questions or whatever it was, and afterwards it said, you are an I, N, T, J. And I said, all right. So I read the description and went, Oh, wow. Wow. yeah, this is weirdly accurate.

[01:30:08] Okay. Huh? That actually is okay. You're kind of freaking me out. How accurate that was. So I think I, it's like a shorthand. I was like, okay, I could sit here for five paragraphs and tell you some stuff about me. Or just click this link. I mean, that's, yeah, yeah. Category. This, this describes me. So I think that was kind of just a little shorthand for like, here's something about me.

[01:30:30] Yeah. If you don't know me and you're thinking about contacting me and you're going to ask me if I want to come hang with you at burning man, we'll probably not. Here's why. so, I think that, for me, what's more interesting. About these kinds of categorizations like introvert, extrovert , or that it helps me understand other people, right?

[01:30:54] Like I couldn't understand why anyone would want to run a marathon on the big day with all the fuss and the noise and the crowds and the clipboards and the walkie talkies and all of that stuff, when they could have just done the exact same run by themselves the day before. Yeah. They could have had wonderful, peaceful songs too.

[01:31:16] They could have had the road to themselves. Why would anybody choose to do it at the same time as anybody, everybody else and like an extrovert explained to me that they get really charged up by having all those people around. I was like, Oh really? You actually like having other people around? And I said, yeah, it'd be too depressing and sad, but like I wouldn't do it by myself.

[01:31:40] You get a whole bunch of other people around. Now I want to do it, and you're like, I would, I would be 10 times more likely to run a marathon. If I got to do it all by myself, if I had to like do it in a crowd with other people, no, just no way. Just count me out. No interest. But I think the same with, you know, we talk about introverts and extroverts  a lot, but time focuses.

[01:32:05] Time Focuses

[01:32:05] There's a fascinating book by Phil Zimbardo called the time paradox. He's a Stanford university psychologist, kind of a legend.

[01:32:13] Erich Wenzel: Lucifer effect was another one of his more famous, the Stanford prison experiment. There we go. That's the one. 

[01:32:20] Derek Sivers: Yeah. Yeah, he's, yeah, he's most famous for that. But my favorite thing of his was the time paradox because, same thing, he pointed out how some people are mostly present, focused  where they think mostly just of like today and this week tops, anything past this week.

[01:32:36] It's just, you know, it's off their radar. They can do that. Whereas it, people are very future focused. And think hardly anything of today like today is just lived in service of their future self. And then even talked about the past focus. Tell some people really mostly live in the past, whether positive or negative, you know, whether nostalgia past positive or, people who are like constantly in a state of kind of haunted PTSD, which is like past negative, where you can't let go of the past.

[01:33:13] And, and. Yeah. That really helped me understand some people in my life that made no sense to me before. And once I understood that different people have different time focuses. Yeah. It wasn't so much about my self definition. More maybe like once I was able to categorize myself and I said, Oh yeah, okay.

[01:33:33] Future focus. This is describing the way I see the world now. I understand. Okay. Some people. Really just open their eyes and look at the world in a completely different way because they're looking through a different time lens. 

[01:33:49] Erich Wenzel: That's cool. I'm gonna have to look into that book cause I, so it's fascinating.

[01:33:53] It sounds super fascinating for me cause I tend to do similar things focusing on the future. A field, but then not worrying about the middle part of it. Like when I was doing my degree, I was like, okay, I got, you know, roughly four years to figure out the degree thing. Like by the time I'm done with it, I'll have this thing that's the credential, but like how that's gonna like shake itself out.

[01:34:17] Like I didn't really care. You know? It's just like I'm going to just take things and figure it out as I go along instead of like. Worrying about it, I'm supposed to hit these benchmarks at these times, and if I'm not doing that, then I'm gonna like be stressed out or something like that. 

[01:34:32] Stoicism and Minimalism

[01:34:32] All right. So we're going to go onto kind of like your personal philosophy stuff here, and you have the, you had self discovered minimalism and stoicism, and then had a realization that you, Hadn't really created it on your own. There was this whole area of philosophy that had already kind of been around for like 2000 years. So I just love stoicism. It's like one of my favorite ideas that I've kind of run into and it helped me get into like mindfulness and meditation. So I just love to unpack how you think about that stuff.

[01:35:02] And it does show through, especially the minimalism stuff. I don't like your website and how you write because it's. There's not a lot of extra fluff between your words and things like that. 

[01:35:11] Derek Sivers: Yeah. yeah. Well, still some in particular. I don't know why. I think the way I do, or I think, okay, well, it might be kind of situational.

[01:35:26] I mean, I mentioned this where I said that ever since then, I was a professional musician from the age of 14 until 29, so starting at the age of 14. I really knew, like, this is what I want. I want to be a successful musician. Yeah. And because of that, I was expecting my life to be hard. Like I knew I was never going to have a job.

[01:35:45] I was never going to have a pension or, or health insurance or any of that stuff. so I knew that this was going to be a hustle. I knew that I wanted to be a successful musician. It's almost like wanting to be an Olympic athlete, right? Like, yeah. Millions wanted only a few get it. So my whole approach to life ever since I was 14 was to like constantly, preparing myself for a more difficult future.

[01:36:15]Which means never choosing the luxurious choice. Always like choosing to be deliberately hard on yourself too. To keep yourself tough. So even if times are not tough right now, just assume that they're going to be tougher in the future and you want to be prepared. So let's just kind of like my approach to life all the way from the age of 14 until whatever, like this is how I approached life.

[01:36:42] Maybe because I wanted to be a successful musician, or maybe you go back to the nature versus nature DNA thing. Maybe this was just in my DNA to approach life like this, right? Yeah. Maybe I shouldn't even be blaming. The fact that I wanted to be a musician, but this is how I approached life. But I never knew anybody else that approached life like this. I was just the weird one. In fact, that's why actually, it's a big reason why when Tim Ferriss and I met. Back in 2008 in San Francisco. We just had some random acquaintances. We just like met up for coffee and just like totally hit it off.

[01:37:16] I think because of this thing, like we both, we just looked at each other weird, like, Oh, you're like that too, huh? I've never met anybody else who thinks of that too, like I do. So we just had this weird approach to life in common. So. Later. I mean, I was like 40 when I read a book about stoicism, I kind of avoided it because it just sounded like boring ancient Greek stuff.

[01:37:39] Yeah. But a few people recommended this book and it had a whole bunch of five star reviews, and I was like, okay, I'll check it out. It wasn't called the guide to the good life by William Irvine, I think, and it was like. Reading that book. I was like, Whoa. It's a whole kind of ad hoc approach to life.

[01:38:03] It's like a philosophy that these ancients came up with 2000 years ago and it has a name with an ism on the end. So weird, like I thought this was just me, like Derek's weird approach to life. It turns out it's, it's an ism, but. You know, you asked like how did it feel realizing I had created something new, but I was, I wasn't trying to create something new, you know, I just thought that I was the only weirdo who approaches life this way.

[01:38:33] So to find out that there are other ancient weirdos who pioneered it and that it's supposedly like a desirable way to be. Well, that was just kind of nice. Yeah.

[01:38:42] Don't Buy Into Isms Completely

[01:38:42]But of that yoga example we gave earlier, like, I don't. Just like buying in. To a group or like an ism. I don't subscribe to the isms. Just because I believe something doesn't mean I need to buy into the whole thing. Right. So even with stoicism, I ended up breathing maybe two or three books about it and like got some good insights, but that's that.

[01:39:04] I'm not going to go say I am a stoic, I believe in stoicism. I'm not saying this is my life philosophy. I think that. I agree with a lot of it, but I don't think I buy it all the way, you know.

[01:39:19] Erich Wenzel: I agree. It's funny that you just taught like you're just the only weirdo and it wasn't, it wasn't until I listen to podcasts like it's like you mentioned to verus that he kept talking about it and I'm like, Oh I guess I do kind of believe in like, like this thing.

[01:39:32] And I'm like, huh, okay. I didn't know it had a name. Cause it does seem like you have some sort of. Itch or your natural orientation to believe a certain way that just kind of lends itself to being a thing, right. Or be named by somebody else. So yeah, I totally understand that. It's, it's quite interesting when you kind of discover it and like, Oh, I guess this is how I am, but it's also got a name or like a thought process.

[01:39:57] Don't Hold Your Beliefs or Assumptions To Tightly 

[01:39:57] It is a little strange. And we're getting close to the end here, and the. It's honestly been a huge through line for this entire conversation. And you mentioned it just there is this, being able to keep yourself from holding your beliefs too tightly. I think that's such a huge, huge thing to be able to check yourself on.

[01:40:16] And, and it sounds like this entire conversation is one to do that for all things you do, but also for jump-starting creativity and curiosity. So use that as a closing thought. Basically. 

[01:40:30] Derek Sivers: Oh yeah. well, no, I mean, I not only do I not hold on too tightly to my views, I think I, what would you say I like I hold on to loosely, I've, I think I'm extremely disloyal to my past self, like almost to a fault.

[01:40:52]When I had employees at my company, they found it annoying. Sometimes they'd yell at me for changing my mind. Like that's what learning is like, what are we going to do? Like I just feel that whenever I learn more, I update my worldview. Like sometimes I'm, whether it's just through reflecting or reading a book or something like that, at some point.

[01:41:20] I learned something that gives me a new perspective on something I've been doing before. So even if it invalidates everything I've ever said or done in the past, that's fine. Like, I don't mind. I don't care if people think I'm flaky. I could loudly announce that I, well, you know, like at the beginning of our call, we talked about the, how I lived on the beach in Santa Monica and I had no interest in travel.

[01:41:44] And I was like, travel, what are you nuts? Why would I travel? I live in Santa Monica, California best please. The whole world. Why would I ever want to be anywhere else? You know, six months later I was just like. Yeah, I'm going to leave America and never come back. This is just so, it's like I learn something.

[01:42:03]If it is the opposite of everything I've ever said, that's fine. In fact, I think it's pretty cool. You know, that that means that I'm learning and changing and that's ideal. So, I think we all have our value system, right? Like, so some people strongly value loyalty, like loyalty to their country, loyalty to their neighborhood, even, loyalty to their beliefs. I've stayed in my position . Loyalty to the system is such that loyalty is near the bottom. Oh, for everybody, you know, you decide where to put it. I'm very loyal to my kid. For example, I am loyal to the core, to my kid. I'm not going to change my mind about him. but you know, very, very judicious with where you decide to apply your loyalty.

[01:42:54] But anyway, but that's just me. Whereas on the other hand, it's like my top value or near the top for me to challenge my old beliefs and make sure that I'm not stuck with some old beliefs out of habit, you know? So I'm constantly taking things that I believe Trying to replace it with a question Mark just to see like, you know, take anything that I, I would put as a belief statement, right? Like, write your, write down your top 10 list of beliefs, what you think is important to the world, and now put a question Mark at the end of the, yeah. Yeah. Can you see the other point of view?

[01:43:33] Can you see a world where that's not true, where in fact the opposite is true. And to me, maybe I just, I enjoy thought experiments. I find it very exciting to consider that the opposite of what I believed yesterday might in fact be true. That's like, it's like going on a journey just in your head, you know?

[01:43:56] So, Yeah, I guess that's a fine place to end a conversation. 

[01:44:00] Erich Wenzel: That's awesome. You know, I like to, I like to describe you as, it's hard to describe you, but I've been talking to some people and I'm like, he's like a philosopher, a poet, musician. I don't know. It's weird. 

[01:44:10] Derek Sivers: I'm like, just a random thinker at large dude. 

[01:44:15] Erich Wenzel: Yeah, it's awesome.

[01:44:16] And thanks for doing this and giving your undivided attention and all of that. And you've already mentioned where people can connect with you, but if you want to reiterate real quick,

[01:44:26]Derek Sivers: yeah, just go to, you know, as you could tell by my whole rant about tech independence and not depending on other companies and all that, like just go to Sivers dot org S I V E R S . O R G.

[01:44:36] That's my website. And Everything I ever republishes. They're all, even my tweets. I put them on my website first and then echo them to Twitter if I feel like it. But the point is, there's a big link there that says, contact me. So anybody listening here, drop the line and say hello?

[01:44:52]Erich Wenzel: Awesome. Thanks Derek.

[01:44:54]Derek Sivers: Thanks Erich.