Focused - 232: Useful Not True, with Derek Sivers

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

Welcome to Focus Podcast. I'm David Sparks, as always joined by your pal and mine, Mr. Mike Schmitz. How are you today, Mike? Doing great. How about you, David? I'm doing especially well today. We've got a guest on the show,

someone who I've often admired. Welcome to the Focus Podcast, Derek Sivers. Thank you. Derek, for folks who don't know you, you first got started in the music industry, but then you went to software. You're the CD Baby founder. Yeah, out of necessity.

I was just trying to help my friends sell their music. You know, it's funny, because I feel like in an alternate universe, you and I are buddies. I got accepted to Berkeley in 1987. I think that's about when, because you went to Berkeley School of Music. That's exactly when I started, yeah. Oh really?

Yeah. I almost did that. I almost joined the Navy and their jazz band, but then eventually I became a lawyer, so go figure. But the- Wow. Yeah, but yeah, you went to Berkeley and then you took your music knowledge

to turn into software and gave you some independence. But what a lot of people know you for is as an author. Yeah, which is amazing to me because when I was leaving CD Baby, I thought, that's it. Like, my gravestone will say, here lies Derek Sivers that made CD Baby, and I don't know what else, that's it. Like, I thought that my, uh that my, I had peaked, so it was really nice that people know me more

for my writing now than CD Baby. Well, that's actually an interesting problem when you think about it. Like you, early in life, you hit it, you know, you cashed out and you could have just disappeared into the wilderness at that point. But who wants to do that, right? You still wanna make your dent.

I wonder so much about one hit wonders. The people that had a big pop song in the 80s or 90s and nothing since, I always wonder what does that feel like? And I wish I could get to know more of them to ask them because I'm sure there's the stock answer. Like if you just run into somebody at a restaurant and they say, hey, aren't you that guy that did that song in the 80s?

I'm sure they have a pat answer that they use. But I'd love to get under the surface of what that really feels like to know that you did something great once that millions or hundreds of millions know about and now you're laying low just being a good parent or being a good real estate salesperson or whatever it may be.

I wonder how that feels. What was the guy who made the Rick Roll guy, the never gonna give you up guy? What was his name? Rick Astley. Rick Astley, right? I mean, he kind of went into obscurity and then suddenly everybody knows who he is again

because of an internet meme. And like he was like living his life, raising his kids and all of a sudden, he almost, I saw him interviewed, it's almost like he didn't want the attention at that point, you know? Yeah, yeah. That is an interesting question.

So you went on and started writing some excellent books. The first time I heard of you was the book you wrote called Hell Yeah or No. And the first thing that occurred to me is like, that guy just gave away the entire book in the title. I've never heard of a book that encapsulates the entire idea of it in the title. But then you get the book

and of course there's a lot more to it. But yeah, you've had some really influential writing. So another thing you did is you've done some TED Talks. I put a link in the show notes to my favorite one. Sorry to interrupt, the thing you mentioned about the title, you're the first person to ever call me out on that, but that's very deliberate because I'm trying

to have something of value for people that actually read a whole book, but also have something of value for people that actually read a whole book, but also have something of value for people that don't read the book. To say, you know what, even if you just see the title on the bookshelf, and you're not the kind of person that's actually going to spend an hour to read a book, I still want you to get some benefits. So even every time I post an article, I try to have the main point of the article captured in the title. Every chapter in my new book, Useful Not True, I really tried to make it so that every chapter title contains the key lesson. So even if

you only look at the table of contents, you could get the benefit of the book. Because I want you to, I want this to change your life, even if you're not going to read the whole thing. Well, I will tell you that the phrase, hell yeah or no has entered the Sparks lexicon. It's in my family, we use it at the dinner table all the time. My wife and kids use it now too.

And when they're thinking about an opportunity, it's like, is it a hell yeah? If it's not, then it's a no. And it's funny, they're never gonna read your books. They don't know who you are. But sadly, I'm sorry to say, but they do know every participant on The Bachelor for the last five seasons, but they don't know you. But they do know hell yeah or no. So it does work that way and I like that. AC Cool. Can we talk just a little bit about the format of these books? Because it's very different than a lot of the other books that people who listen to Focus maybe are familiar with. And I love the format that you use where it seems like all of the content in the book is also available on your website. Or do you keep some post back just for the book?

JG Okay, fun question. I had to think a lot about this. So first, my first three books, Anything You Want, Your Music and People, Hell Yeah or No, were compilations of things that were already on my website. And yet the reason it was still worth doing a book is because I noticed in myself that there were some authors that did have a whole collection of blog posts on their site, and I just don't feel like clicking through 85 times to read 85 separate little things on their site. It's a distracting medium to be on the web.

But yet I would love to have those 85 essays in a book so I could just lay on the couch with no internet nearby, cup of tea, looking out the window, reading a book and focusing. I just really like that process of reading a book. So the idea was, I wanna make it available for whichever medium you prefer. If you prefer to click, click, click, click, click 85 times on a website, here it is.

If you prefer to lay on the couch and read a book, here it is. Or same thing with audio book, Who knows? Maybe video book. I guess I should probably put every little chapter on YouTube as well for people that refuse to read and refuse to just listen, but will watch videos. I guess I should put it there for them too. OK, so all of that was for the first three books, but the idea I had for the book called How to Live, there was no way I could put out each chapter on its own because it was the combination that made it special. The whole point of my book, How to Live, is that every chapter disagrees with every other chapter.

So if I were to put out just one chapter by itself, you'd lose the whole point of the book. So that one, it was the first time ever I had to keep it secret while I was writing. And it was so hard not to release these little chapters. And then I put out the whole book. And a year after I put out the whole book, I very quietly put the

chapters on my website for free, just so the internet has them. And then same thing with my newest one called Useful Not True. This one I just decided to try a new experiment which was keeping it secret for one year. So right now still the only way you can read Useful Not True is to go get the book and only on my website, it's not on Amazon or anywhere else yet. And then after one year, I will simultaneously

put it on Amazon, put it on Audible, and put it on my website for free. So it's kind of like, I gave myself a one year exclusive on that book. So I just try different things. Yeah. Well, you know, I also think that as a reader, reading something in a book or even an e-book

seems like it carries a little more weight than a blog post. And I can't really explain it, but I know I feel it. In your case, I've bought your hard copies and it definitely feels more substantial reading that there than on your blog. So yeah, it's fun though that you can do those experiments. And one of the things about you that I like

is your generous spirit and the way you do things. Like when I bought your books, I got links to get the e-books to and audio books of you reading them. So it's like you just gave me all the formats. I also sell products. I try to follow the similar model of just being generous and giving to them in whatever format works for them. Thanks.

Well, it's important for any creator or anybody that's like an entrepreneur or whatever you're doing to ask yourself, how would it be in a perfect world? Never mind what anybody else does, doesn't matter. Screw norms. Let's just ask yourself, how would you like it to be in a perfect world? Like as somebody that bought a book, if I were to buy the subtle art of not giving a ****

or whatever, atomic habits, I would want buy the subtle art of not giving a f*** or whatever, Atomic Habits, I would want all the versions. If I'm gonna spend my $16 or $19, I want the paper book and the audiobook and the e-book in any format. I've just bought the book. Just give me the book. It doesn't feel fair to have to buy it again to get the audiobook and buy it again to get the e-book.

Yeah. Uh, it just feels like I should just buy it again to get the audio book, and buy it again to get the e-book. It just feels like I should just buy it once and have whatever damn format I feel like today. So I just made a way to make that happen. But same thing with anything you're doing. If you're making a podcast, ask yourself what would be my dream podcast? What would I want to hear? Maybe I want them to break it up into five-minute segments.

Maybe I want an indulgent five hours where I can spend the whole day listening to these two people talk. Whatever it may be, you have to ask yourself, what would be the perfect world? And ignore the norms and just think of your ideal. Well, the thing I love about the format is that you have these little

chunks which are easily shareable. There's one in particular from Helly Arnaud on Balance titled How to Do What You Love and Make Good Money that I've shared probably dozens of times. Wow. And it's a self-contained little essay and you've got an audio clip at the top Which I love those audio clips and the the podcast that you have been releasing those It looks like it's maybe on hiatus currently, but they're all like one two three minute little Essays that they're very short. They're very concise So the book while I prefer to sit on the couch and read the the physical book as well I love that there are a whole bunch of self-contained, very short chapters.

And I think it's awesome that you can share a specific link to one of those essays with someone. They can listen to it if they prefer. And then you've got, you know, from the book and they can click and buy the book if they want to. It's a very interesting approach to writing, but I love it. Thank you. It's liberating too that I actually did for my first book had a book deal with Penguin. So here I was on the largest publisher in the world. It was a dream for a lot of people

and I didn't like it. I said, but because I didn't have the freedom to do the stuff that you're talking about. So I actually spent thousands of dollars to buy back my rights from Penguin for my first book, just so that all my books could be self-published and I can do whatever the hell I want with them. Yeah, I wrote two books for a publisher as well. And the thing that was remarkable to me is how much they wanted me to remove my own voice

from the book. And it was just so strange. And I did it and then I started self-publishing after that. My big fear after that, of course, was what I call the Star Wars prequel problem. George Lucas didn't have anybody looking over his shoulder when he made the prequels and got indulgent. You have to be careful when you get it yourself.

But yeah, I get it. I feel like you're in this world with your voice, you wanna use it. You know, as long as we're on this subject, my top recommendation for anybody that emails me and asks about publishing a book is I advise them to not do it in secret. I suggest that they take every single idea, every

chapter, and post it very publicly and email everybody they know and share it on every platform as individual small chapters to get the feedback from the world so that you're doing it in the public eye and you can get real-world feedback instead of keeping your book secret for years as you're stressing yourself out developing it and then putting it out and like you say I love the George Lucas problem putting out something that the audience would have told you nice and early like oh no no no don't do that no we don't like that please don't do that If you share your work openly and early, you get such great real world feedback and it starts reinforcing on itself

and you are building an audience. People are getting more invested in what you're saying and you're feeling the reward of their social feedback instead of doing it in secret and expecting that reward to come in the far distant future. Yeah, so true. Which I think leads to another point that you made in an essay, and I don't know which book it specifically it comes from, but I think it was titled The Best Book Ever Written,

where you talked about how a lot of musicians will say the last song that they made is the best song that they've ever written, but that's not true of authors. And the point you were making in that essay was that you could honestly say that How to Live was the best book that you had ever written. And I'm connecting dots here, but it seems like the approach of creating a bunch of stuff in public and getting that feedback and getting those feed the loops, basically, um, the iterations that makes, makes the quality of what you make better. And then if you don't have to try to fit it into somebody else's format, then you end up being a lot happier with the quality of the thing that you make.

I hope so. Yeah. Good point. This episode of the focus podcast is brought to you by incognito. Take your personal data back with Incogni. Use code FOCUSED at incogni.com slash focus to get 60% off an annual plan. Almost everyone experiences robo calls from time to time. If you've ever wondered how they keep getting your number, the answer is data brokers. That's where Incogni comes in. They reach out to data brokers on your behalf,

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And our thanks to Incogni for their support of the Focus podcast and all of Relay. Derrick, before the break you were talking about, their support of the Focus Podcast and Olive Relay. Derek, before the break you were talking about, sometimes you just have to go out on a limb, I forget the exact phrase you used, but one of the things that I find interesting about you as a fan is your, I guess, oh, I told you earlier, cavalier use of personal agency.

When you write the stories about your life, quite often you'll make a big decision quite quickly and act on it. And one of the stories in one of your books is you thought, well, I'm getting too comfortable in the United States. For $400, I could get a plane ticket to London. I'll go live there for six months.

And I think that is something that is really admirable about you, but I think it's something very difficult for people to emulate. I think for a lot of folks, getting out of your comfort zone is really difficult and kind of taking personal agency of your life is something that is quite difficult. Now, we're not looking to give everybody the answer to these questions, but I thought it was at least worth exploring. How did that come to you, that personality trait? Hmm.

I think it's a sense of urgency and importance that I'm only here on earth for a few years. You've got one chance at life. You have to be proud of yourself. You have to do what your internal values guide you to do. You have to do that thing, otherwise you're just going to stew in resentment and be one of those bitter people that, with a bad hip and a fading brain and angry that you didn't do the thing that you knew you could have done. I don't want that feeling of unused potential.

I feel such a sense of urgency to try to do everything I can. And I don't mean everything, you know, all of the things. I'm not trying to order everything on the menu. But to be the best version of me that I can feels super crucial. So crucial that I'll even do things like, I don't know, I really sadly a couple years ago ended a romantic relationship. That was wonderful in some ways, but I could tell that the, what she really wanted out of life was so opposite from what I wanted out of life.

And I knew that I have this people pleasing nature that I had to break up with the relationship because I had to fulfill my own potential as my top priority and taking care of her potential as my second priority. And I knew that those were a clash. So yeah, it's not choosing a pleasant, easy life, but I think for me, it's just this sense of importance. Like I have to have to have to do this thing to try to be what I can be. I mean, I think that really goes to the premise of the show because in the modern world, we are just so full of shiny distractions.

That sense of urgency is the thing that most people don't have because it's like, yeah, I know that I'm in an unhappy job or relationship or my life is going the right direction, but just one more click and Instagram, right? Or just like that whole system that just kind of pulls you down and gives you something bright and shiny to look at and avoid the hard questions. Yeah. To me, that stuff is the enemy.

Like a model looks at ice cream. Yeah. Like, of course that's tempting. Actually, I was friends with a woman once whose job was to stay extremely super fit. We went out to dinner and she didn't eat any bread. I said, you don't like bread? She goes, of course I love bread. She goes, but if I were to eat the bread, then I would fail at work tomorrow. I can't eat the bread. I wish I could eat the bread, but I can't. That's the trade-off. One of the things that you wrote about,

which I think speaks to this, is a more recent essay called One Big Choice Shapes 100 More. And I think at the heart of this is being clear about what you are really optimizing for. I'm Well, the personal agency, you know, you were talking about in response to David's question about that, I don't wanna, I feel this urgency to make the most of the time that I've got available, paraphrasing your response.

But essentially you have to be clear, I think, on what exactly that means to you. In the essay you talk about, there's this amazing house, but I don't wanna say, you know, I bought this house 50 years ago. I want to be the person who has lived in all these different different places So how did you get to the point where you figured out? This is the thing that I want to To prioritize my my life around what do I but this is the thing I want to focus on got it

Okay, um, I Journal a lot I Spend a lot of time thinking and recording my thoughts. Actually, believe it or not, just an hour ago, I was realizing where this came from. It's morning here. I live in New Zealand. We started recording at 8 AM my time. I woke up about a little before seven,

and I was laying in bed thinking, and also because it's winter now, it's cold. So I'm motivated to spend a little extra time in bed thinking, because once I get up, it's cold. So I was thinking that a lot of my journaling came from a friendship that ended. I had a super best friend at one point that we were so close, we would talk on the phone like four times a day. She was just like a fountain of ideas and questions and I guess so am I.

And so we would trade all of these ideas and questions all day long, all the phone or whatever. And then she met a guy that said, I don't want you talking to him anymore. And so she goes, okay. And she just like that pulled the plug on the friendship. And it was so traumatic for me. Like four times a day I was used to reaching out to her to talk. I kind of was left stumbling. I didn't know what to talk, I kinda was left stumbling.

I didn't know what to do, so I turned to a diary. I'm like, well, I guess four times a day I turn to my diary and I share all my thoughts and questions and what do you think about this? And I guess in a way, then my diary became like the friend in my head that also answers some of the questions I'm asking or questions the things I'm saying. And so now I write hours a day in my diary and realize some things about myself like I really want this thing.

I've been writing about this for years. For years I've been saying I want to learn Chinese. For years I've been saying I want to learn Chinese. For years I've been saying I want to switch programming languages and try programming in a different language for me. For years I've been wanting this. I can look at my history in my diary and realize how long I've wanted something, which then to me lifts its importance that I need to try doing this. I've wanted this for years.

I've got to try doing this, otherwise I'm going to resent not doing it. So, but to answer your question, I think it's just lots of navel gazing, lots of reflection time, lots of time to think about these things, which probably is related to the thing you asked right before, about time wasters and social media, how I see them as the enemy.

I look at something like Instagram or Pinterest or any social media. I've never had social media on my phone ever. I've never had a single social media app on my phone because I see that stuff as the enemy. That's the stuff that will pull me away from my own thoughts and into the crap of the world, which is not where I wanna be. So I keep that stuff completely shut out so that I can spend more time thinking and reflecting.

In order to hear that still small voice inside me that wants something and to honor it and amplify it and then pursue it. Derrick, you don't know what a trip mine you just stepped on because we talk about journaling all the time of the show. So much so that Mike and I have conversations like, are we talking about journaling too much to the audience? But I find the same experience.

It's the self introspection that I get from journaling that has invoked so much change in my life or just even self knowledge more than anything else. And so now that you have stepped on it, I think we have to talk about it. So- Yay, it's one of my favorite subjects that I don't talk about this much.

So I'm in the right room. Let's do this. So how do you journal? I mean, do you keyboard? Do you use a paper and pencil? And what's your journaling practice? Okay, well, the real answer for the audience is whatever works for you.

Whatever makes you want to do it is the right format. For me, I love a plain Unix terminal screen. Yeah. So I use a old ancient editor, a text editor called Vim. Yep. That's just plain text in a terminal because that's what I'm doing all day anyway. I do all my emails, my journals, my plans, my calendars, my everything is just in a plain terminal. So I ended up making some shortcuts.

So for example, if I just type the word diary, it's a shortcut that opens a new text file with today's date in year, year, year, year, dash month, month, dash day, day dot txt. So what would today be? 2025 dash 06.04 for June 4th. ISO format. I'm with you.04 for June 4th. ISO format. I'm with you. Yes, yes, exactly, the ISO date format.

The internationally agreed correct answer to how to format a date. So I have one text file per day. That works for me because sometimes I don't want to see yesterday. I just want to type the word diary and have a clean text file from scratch for today. But they're all put into one folder called diary that has everything ever going back to the 90s.

So at any point I can search for like, you know, what was I doing 10 years ago today? Or when did I meet Erica? Or how long have I been thinking about getting a dog? I can just find all the answers to these with a grep question. Yeah, so I like plain text files for this purpose. It's such a useful practice in terms of things like the thing you were saying earlier about how you have recurring thoughts that if you don't have a journal practice, they spin through your brain, but you don't really appreciate how often it's happening.

Whereas if you have a journal, you can go back and read and you can say, oh, you know, I really am worried about that thing. I've been writing about that for three months. I need to do something about it. How do you reflect on the entries? Do you go back and read them or? I usually don't, but sometimes there's a specific reason to go back. So I'll tell you guys a story

that I hinted at earlier. I was with this woman here for two years, and it was a good but difficult relationship. No, it was a good relationship that had recently become really difficult. That she was getting upset with me every day. I felt like we were clashing every day. And so I went back to my diary. We were living together and I said, I need a few days apart.

I need to go away for a few days. This clashing is too difficult. So I went away for a few days and I pulled up my diary from the day we met and I reread every journal entry since the day we met. It took me maybe eight hours. And I realized that even though I felt that this was a good relationship

that was just currently difficult, my journal told the truth, which is it had always been difficult since the day we met. It was always hard, but I'm such a sunny personality that I had remembered it in a positive light, and it just felt like today's hard, but everything until today was good. But no, the journal revealed the truth that it had always been hard and that's what helped me end things, which is a really hard decision, but the journal proved it was clearly the right decision. Yeah, I find it incredibly useful. I've never had a therapist and I know a lot of people get a lot from therapy, but for me, the journal has always kind of served in that role. And I've learned so much about myself just sitting there writing.

And like you said, it doesn't matter on the format. I love that you're doing it in Vim. That's like, I did not expect that answer, but from what I know about you, it makes perfect sense. Thanks. Mike, how about you? What's yours? So I am a fellow plain text fan. I use an app called Obsidian. So there's a GUI on top

of it, which does have support for the Vim key bindings. People want to bring those over. And I've crafted my own journaling workflow around that. I've got different things that I do for capturing entries, daily gratitude. The big thing I do every single day is answering what are called daily questions. So did I do my best to, I wanna follow through on my intentions, not my outcomes, not what did I achieve,

but did I do my best to love my wife, love my kids, create something, exercise, stuff like that. And then I've got all those values and all those tags, and then you can visualize that that sort of stuff and I can see the see the trends. So I have a way of looking at the aggregate data, but I think there's a lot to be said about just recognizing, you know, there's this significant pain point, where's the source of this going back to the beginning and just reading verbatim the text entries that you capture.

I don't do a ton of that sort of journaling and I feel like I'm getting inspired to do that more just listening to you talk about it. Oh, right, I should tell you guys, the key moment that changed everything for me was in the 90s, 2000s, I would only turn to my journal when I was feeling muddled. If my head was a tangled mess and I wanted to straighten out my thoughts, figure out what's going on in there,

I would turn to the journal for that. Then I told you this other thing that when an old friendship suddenly ended, I turned to my journal way more for just all my daily thoughts. But even then, it was when I had something specific on my mind, then I would turn to my journal. And so here's the key point that changed everything. In 2012, I was wondering what my life used to look like ten years ago when I was running my company.

Was it really as fun as I remember? Was it hard? My memory is fading now. What was I actually thinking when that was going on? And I tried to look back at my journals then, but it would be days of nothing and then one entry about some current problem I was having. And then days of nothing and another entry about a current problem I was having, and then days of nothing and another entry about a current problem I was having.

But man, that's not a fair reflection of my life then. I wish I would have taken just a few minutes a day to say what I did today, how I felt today in that order. Maybe sometimes if you run out of time, you just say what I did today, because that would give me a snapshot of my past. And you know, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. So in 2012, I started writing in my diary every single day.

I haven't ever missed a day since 2012. Or if I miss a day, I do it the next morning. Like if I fall asleep with my kid before I can write my entry for the night, then I'll do it the next day. But there's not a missed day since 2012. Even if it's just a few paragraphs about just what I did today. Woke up, had breakfast, did this, went on a podcast with David and Mike. It was pretty cool.

We talked about journaling. Got on my exercise bike, did this, answered emails, did a bit of programming, had a good dinner, went to sleep. It takes three minutes to write that. But future me will, I think, find that really valuable to be able to look back at today and what I was doing way back in 2025 and what life was like before the robots attacked or whatever it may be. The AGI took over. I feel like those entries,

those what you would think of as boring entries though, when you go back, because I actually systematically read mine. I go back every quarter in the last 90 days. And like, even though they felt very matter of the fact when I wrote them, there are trend lines and through lines that come through that you don't realize at the time you're writing it.

So you get a lot of it. One observation I would make is the three of us here, all three of us are not big social media people and all three of us are avid journalers. And I feel like there's a correlation. I feel like for me, the journal has been my Twitter for a long time, you know? So I don't feel a desire to go and tell the world what I had for breakfast, but I am very likely

to write it down somewhere in my own journal. I think it's scratching a different edge. The social media has figured that out, but I'm not sure the consumers have. I could see an intersection where if I decided to be radically transparent with my life, I could see making that switch in my value system and just making it public. If you look at, what's his name? I don't remember his name right now, but his website is scripting.com. David something, oh God, I won't even guess at his name.

I'm just forgetting right now. Anyway, scripting.com, he's Dave Weiner, that's it. W-I-N-E-R, the co-inventor of RSS, I believe. And his public blog seems quite private. I'm sure he has some things that he doesn't post, his public blog seems quite private. I'm sure he has some things that he doesn't post, but it seems like most of his life is there on daily posts on scripting.com. And in a way I admire that, that transparency.

And sometimes I think about doing that, but I'm not there yet. Well, the problem with that for me is, and this is what I always tell people when they want to journal, is you should only journal for yourself. One of the problems with journaling is, you start journaling, you're like,

well, someday my grandchildren will read this and figure out how wise I was. This is, you gotta be, you gotta bring the worst of yourself out in your journal. Just lay it out, because that's the only way you have a way to examine it. It's like the analogy I like to use is the Harry Potter, what's the thing where they pull the memories out the.

Oh yeah, whatever that's called, the wand with the goo. Yeah, yeah, oh geez, I don't know how I'm forgetting names. Anyway, everybody listening is hitting their dashboard and yelling the name out right now. There's a thing in Harry Potter, you can pull your memories out and look at them. And I feel like that's what the journal is, right? But you have to pull the memories out.

You have to like be honest with yourself. And I think if you start doing it publicly, you're gonna start filtering yourself unless you really don't care. Right, I mean, ideally there should be a way that you could write entirely privately and be completely honest and then for every day, maybe just highlight a mouse over the section. Just the good stuff.

And then share the video. Yeah. Where are you and what are you using when you journal? You mentioned you don't have social media on your phone. Are you journaling on your phone? Never, no. I use my phone to call friends and that's about it. And pin codes or whatever you call that, the two FA codes, I think that's the main uses of my phone. So everything, no, everything's on the computer. I have a laptop for when I'm on the road and a desktop for when I'm at home.

And that's it, I'm just always on that computer all day long. I figured that's what your answer was gonna be. And I think that there's an important point there where we tend to have all these devices and we reach for the one that is the most convenient when we want to do the thing. And I think there is something to be said about, okay, it's time to journal now. I'm gonna have to go to the place with my computer, stop what I'm doing and actually journal.

And if it's important enough to you, you'll do it. Right, okay, but I do have a solution for this that if say I'm out with my kid and he says, hey, let's go to the swimming pool. And suddenly he and a friend are swimming and I'm sitting in the bleachers for two hours just with my thoughts. I'll just stare off into space and think, but when I get an idea that I think,

oh, that's good, I want to save that. I will email it to myself. I'll just pull up the email app on the phone, send an email to myself, do the voice recognition thing, or I'll just talk into my phone for a while and have it turn the voice to text, email to myself. And then when I get back to the computer and I'm checking my email,

there it is, my thoughts from the swimming pool back on my computer where it belongs. So I don't try to make the phone duplicate everything the computer does. I just use an email to myself to get the ideas from the phone back to the computer. Yeah, so it's basically just a capture device. Yeah. is brought to you by Indeed. Join more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide using Indeed

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on the Focus podcast. Indeed.com slash focused terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Our thanks to Indeed for their support of the Focus podcast and all of Relay. All right, can I talk about your new book, Useful Not True? Oh, I guess if you must.

When you announced that book, I thought, what a strange concept. Could you explain the idea behind this book? Ooh, I think so many people hold themselves back by thinking that their thoughts are true. They get into some situation and they tell themselves, this sucks, I'm stuck, there's no way out.

That person screwed me over, I'm screwed, I'm no good at this. Whatever it may be, we think our thoughts are true. And we think other people's thoughts are true, that when somebody says something like, I've never liked you, we think that that's an accurate representation of their reality. But in fact, they might just be saying that because they're mad at you today. They've in fact often liked you, but they're mad at you right now, so they're saying that to deliberately hurt you.

You just realize that this whole connection between words and thoughts and actual hardcore reality are so different. That actual hardcore reality is such a high bar. We live in a social world where saying something like, this situation sucks feels like just a fact. But in fact, it's only one perspective, one way of seeing it. And the reason I think this is so important is that all of the happiest, most successful, high achieving, self actualized people are ones that have found out, figured out how to find a more useful perspective on

something, that when something goes wrong, they don't say this sucks and collapse into a bowl of ice cream and Game of Thrones. They just take a second and find a way to make it not suck or find a way to use this situation to their advantage and to not let it destroy them. This is so, so, so important that I wanted to talk more about this idea, but I didn't wanna do it in a big verbose 600 page book kind of way. So instead I spent a few years thinking about how to share this idea through little tiny fables.

So the book Useful Not True is very, very short. It's the shortest book I've ever written, so I think it's only 90 pages or something. Can read it in an hour, and it's little fables that should change the way you see the world to help you think of your own thoughts as being useful but not necessarily true, and hear what other people say

as something that's useful to them but not necessarily true. So the real key word, if I wanted to make the title longer, it would have been useful but not necessarily true. Yeah, I think the self-talk problem is so inherent, especially in Western civilization, that I think most people are not even aware of the fact that they've got a little liar running around in their head all day. Nice phrase, yes. I teach this productivity stuff in different venues and so often the problem is not that someone doesn't have

the ability to make the change, it's just that the little liar in their head has convinced them that they can't. It's just perspective and it just takes a minute of thinking, maybe five minutes at tops, to find a better perspective that can change your emotional state and help you take better actions. It's just the difference of a minute or two to just realize that your perception of this, your thoughts are not necessarily true. It's just one way of looking at it.

And you can ask yourself, what's another way of looking at this? What's a better way of looking at this? What can be good about this? What's great about this? How can I use this? It just puts you into a different mindset and helps you take better actions ultimately. I mean the funny thing to me is like if you objectively look at the voice, at least

my voice is a little liar, if I objectively look at the things he says and I compare it to actual fact, it doesn't take long to see that he's a little liar and yet I still want to believe him. And this book though of course course, in your fashion, takes it a step further. It gets you past that, but it also gets you a tool set to deal with that. And I really think this is one, I know you said that How to Live is your best book,

but I really think that this Useful Not True book is a very good book and probably my favorite of yours. And because it also addresses, and you've mentioned it here, not only does this voice come from you internally, it also often comes from other people. And just because somebody had a bad day, I used to work with judges and you could tell when they had a bad day and they would come after you

and you'd be like, okay, I'm sorry, maybe your wife didn't make your favorite breakfast this morning or whatever, but this isn't about me, you know? And that's another mantra I like to drill to my kids is almost nothing that anybody ever says to you that has anything to do with you. And that's like one of the themes of this book that I really love.

But it's not, and now if you wanna read it, you gotta go buy it, and I would recommend people buy it. I thought it'd be fun if I just shared a couple of my favorites. As a nerd, you've got one in here called No New Instructions for the Computer. This is one that resonated with me. So, as a programmer, you talk about how you can give

a computer program infinite number of instructions and the more you give it, the longer it takes to come up with an answer and often, it may never come up with an answer and you make the analogy to humans. If you keep giving it new information, it will never finish the job, dot, dot, dot. Consider the computer metaphor for yourself.

You've taken so much information and heard so many instructions. That's enough input, it's time for output. You've taken so much information and heard so many instructions. That's enough input. It's time for output. Amen, brother. That's what I needed to hear. Thank you. It's, I think about that a lot. I hadn't ever put it into a little metaphor like that, but so many times, I'd

say at least every, let's say at least every month, probably every week, I have to catch myself in this mode where I'm still taking in more input. I have to say, wait, stop, that's enough input. Yeah. Every time I take in more input, it changes the algorithm which can't then do its work. I just need to stop all new inputs and say that's enough. I'm gonna use what I've got and focus entirely on the output now without any interruptions

of more input. So I've been using this in my own head in my own life for years and it was fun realizing that it was connected to the whole idea of useful not true, which is there are always more perspectives. If you're trying to, let's say, lose weight, get fit, there are infinite opinions on what you should do to lose weight and get fit. And if you just keep taking in more opinions, you'll never just do the damn thing and put on your running shoes and lift the weights or whatever. You'll just keep taking in more inputs, thinking that there's somehow more information. You won't do the damn thing and put on your running shoes and lift the weights or whatever, you'll just keep taking in more inputs thinking that there's somehow more information. You won't do

the work. So yeah, that was an important one. Well, I also think that it kind of gets to something deeper. We were talking earlier about personal agency. And I think one of the real inhibitions or the one of the hurdles people put up towards taking action on their life is they're like, well, I don't know enough yet. I need to study this further. I need to make more. And you do that and you can do that for literally your whole life and never make a decision.

You know, in my head, you don't make a decision until you act on it. And this gets to the heart of that, you know. At some point you say, okay, enough inputs, let's make a decision, let's move, let's change, let's move a piece in the world. And I just really enjoyed that, it really was affirming for me.

Another one I'm not gonna summarize entirely because it takes too long, but this concept of your first thought is an obstacle on the idea that quite often your first thoughts on something are wrong. And that if you wanna get true insight as to a problem, the worst thing you can do, I guess maybe this is the inverse of the rule

you just talked about, but you can't just go off on your first thought. You need to think something through. And I know how that, I sound like I'm contradicting myself with what we just talked about, but there's a subtlety there that I think people need to understand.

Yeah. Your first thought is often some old crap that you took into your head years ago and you're still using it as your autoresponder. Yeah. And it's not thoughtful and it's probably not even true. It's like people that leave their vacation response on their email even after they've come back from vacation.

It's still sending out expired responses. We shouldn't honor our impulses. Our impulses are just **** that's already in there from before. It's not current. It's not thought through. It's just an impulsive reaction. And so if we realize that about ourselves, to realize that when something happens to you in life, you will have your impulsive response. But to know that that's not your best response and to go ahead and feel that one. Let the feeling pass like a good meditator. And then think of what other responses you could have or what's another useful way to

look at this that could lead you to a better action. And again, maybe it's just the difference of one minute, maybe five minutes tops, and you could have a much better perspective, a much better response and take much better actions. Yeah, they call it brainstorming for a reason. Yeah. Now you said though, that How to Live is your best book. Why do you think that? Well, I said that before Useful Not True was out.

Oh, okay. It was just that feeling of when, I was just noticing that difference between musicians and authors that I thought it was funny that last December, I went on a walk with a bunch of famous authors. And it was surprising to me that none of them were very proud of their books. Every time I said, oh man, you wrote that book and I love that book so much.

Everybody went, I just wish I would have had a little longer. I did what I could. Yeah. Man, how can you not love that book? That was a masterpiece. I feel that the musicians I know, when you tell them, I love that song of yours, they go, oh, thank you. I love it, too

Do you think maybe part of the explanation of that is the the birthing process of music versus words? It's so it's it's hard to write words and music and my experience is so There's so much joy in the creation of it. Whereas writing a book can feel really tedious. Maybe that's just me, I don't know. Maybe there's an author that's- I think you're onto something, yeah. Sorry, I cut you off. You were saying something about, okay, so yeah,

useful, not true. One of my favorite moments about that struggle of writing One of my favorite moments about that struggle of writing is when you somehow by yourself come upon a new insight that feels like somebody just zapped you with a lightning bolt of knowledge, even though it's just you sitting alone in a room thinking. My favorite moment in this book, writing this book, was realizing that actions are about the only true thing. Okay, there's some physical, you know, objects that are true and actually physically here. But if we draw the line somewhere to say,

well, your thoughts aren't necessarily true, the things you say aren't necessarily true, that's just the expression of your thoughts, your perspective of the whole situation is not necessarily true, well, then what is true? I think, well, your actions, the things that you're actually doing are true, and therefore, Or it should be the only way that we judge the thoughts is by what actions they create. We call them your beliefs, your thoughts, especially the word beliefs. We often think that our beliefs are true. I strongly believe that this and this and that,

and they express it like, well, this is a strong belief and that's how solid and foundational this belief is to my entire essence. Think, well, it's just a belief because you grew up in Chicago. If you would have grown up in Croatia, you would have had a different belief. That's just these aren't so solid. It's just a thought. It's just, these aren't so solid. It's just a thought. It's just one way of looking at it.

I know plenty of friends in India and China would disagree with that. So how does it affect your actions? Your actions are the real thing. And you should be judging your own goals, intentions, beliefs, aims, habits, all of these things, you should be judging them not by whether they're right or wrong or whether other people would say that they are noble and righteous, but what actions are they actually making you do?

Only judge your actions and forget all the other stuff and only look at your actions. It's a profoundly different way of judging yourself and thinking of what's the use of your beliefs. It's just to change your actions. When I was a kid, I mean, we're of a certain age, you and I grew up with record players in the house and our parents would have a collection of records. That's, we didn't have, well, we had the radio, but we didn't have the music libraries kids do now.

And one of the few records my parents owned was the My Fair Lady soundtrack. And there was a song in there, Don't Give Me Word, Show Me. And I remember listening to, because there was only like 10 records, so I'd listen to it all the time. And I feel like that song got in my head, and I always felt the same way.

It's like, at some point, you have to do something. It's not enough. Years ago, a good friend of mine heard me say, I want to really start my new company, this idea. And he said, no, you don't. I said, what do you mean no, I don't? I'm telling you, I want to start my new company. And he said, no, you don't.

He said, if you really wanted to do it, you would have done it. He said, I've heard you talk about this idea for five years, you still haven't done it. He said, you don't actually want to do it. And I said, no, dude, shut up, I'm telling you. And he said, no, dude, shut up. I'm telling you and he said no dude Shut up. I'm watching you. Yeah You're not actually doing it. I don't care what words you say your actions reveal your real values and I went ooh, that's good

Yeah, exactly. And and you know if you've got the journal entries to prove it, right? You've been going back talking about it writing to yourself about it. It didn't happen. At one point you ask yourself, okay, is this for real or am I just like in love with the idea of it more than the actual desire to do it? How does this tie into the idea of curving into the target? Because you don't really know exactly where you,

where you are. I was going to say land or end up, but that's not that's not really the right definition there. But what you're doing next, the actions that you're talking about, which are the the truth, right? Those aren't necessarily perfectly aligned with the destination all the time. Yeah. Great question. Okay, so imagine that you tell yourself,

I really need to get up and go running every morning, and I'm gonna do it at 5 a.m. Cause that's what this podcaster said is the way to do it. 5 a.m. every morning, no matter whether it's raining or shining, I'm gonna get up and go running. You tell yourself that's the right thing to do, but you notice that that's not working for you.

It's... Sometimes you do it, sometimes you don't. You just objectively look at your actions and go, mm, I'm not doing it very much. And so you say, okay, no, I'm going to look at this a different way. I'm going to die if I don't do this. If I don't do this, I'm gonna die an early death and my kids will be parentless. And this is so crucial to my health. I have to do this. And you notice that that makes you run a little more, but not all the time. And then you hold a different belief, which is,

or you try on a different thought that you hear somebody say, I am temporarily abled. And it's a disabled woman that's in a wheelchair because she got struck with some disease at the age of 30, so now she'll never walk again. And she's in a wheelchair because she got struck with some disease at the age of 30, so now she'll never walk again, and she's in a wheelchair saying, don't forget that all of you are temporarily abled. Today you're able to run, tomorrow you might not be able to. And somehow that thought, that works for you. That gets you to jump out of your chair and do it no matter what.

You actually run smiling in the rain because of this thought that you think, oh, God, thank you. I'm so thankful that I'm able to run today. Tomorrow I might not be able to run. That thought works for you. Okay, so all of those thoughts are just different ways of looking at it. It's not that one of them is right and the other is wrong, but one of them worked for you where the others didn't.

Whereas those other ones work for different people. Somebody thinks that that first thought is the one that really made them take the right actions, but for you it was the third thought. So it's just looking at where that thought is taking you. So the metaphor, the bowling metaphor was you have the bowling ball and you try to aim straight down the middle at that center pin. But hey, we're not perfect. Every time I do that, it goes off to the left.

I try it a couple more times. And so finally I say, well, let me try aiming off to the right. Even though I know it's not the accurate way, let me see if that does it. And sure enough, it curves itself back into the target. So I think it's the same with your thoughts, that if you, you don't have to judge whether a thought is right or wrong,

but if you just try it on and see what works, look at the result, not the thought itself. I love that. Derek, one question I want to ask you. You went to Berkeley. Do you still make music? No, that's one of those. Oh, wow. I'm surprised. Tie that in with all those things I just said. Yeah. In theory, I like the idea. In reality, I just don't.

First I gave away my guitars years ago to a good friend that was a professional musician, then I missed it and I thought, no, I do want to play guitar. So I got a guitar and for maybe 30 minutes I laid my fingers on the strings and I played. The muscle memory is still there. And after 30 minutes, I went, okay, well, back to my real work. Because I'm just so passionate about my desire to write and program and make things. I just don't have a big desire for music. If there were 130 hours a day,

I'd probably put aside one of them to make music, but instead it's always like sixth priority and so it just doesn't happen. Well, I mean, we all evolve, right? I mean, that's funny. I was just curious. And frankly, I think that there's a lot of ways to make art and it doesn't have to be with a guitar.

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So we'd like to finish up the show just kind of talking about a book we're reading. We're gonna let you go last so you got a little time to figure that out. Mike, what are you reading these days? I just finished the Confident Mind yesterday, so I haven't started it yet, but the next book on the list is

The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins, which I feel like has a lot of the same sort of themes that you talk about, Derek. And I remember listening to one episode of your podcast where you told this story about these people were thinking these things about you and you were just kind of like, yeah, it doesn't really matter.

I don't really care. And that was like, the word you used was emanciating. Emancipating, liberating, yes. Emancipating, yeah, liberating. And that's something that I struggle with, is caring too much about what other people think. So I'm really looking forward to this one, but I haven't started it yet.

Cool. I'm still grinding my way through the Mark Twain biography. It's, I have like a hundred pages left. It's a 1200 page book. And it's been fascinating. I mean, I grew up a Mark Twain fan. My dad actually grew up in Hannibal, so he's from, and I always saw the similarities between my father and Mark Twain,

the way they spoke and the stories they would tell. My dad died when I was pretty young, so I've got this connection in my brain. But then I learned about the actual Mark Twain've got this connection in my brain. But then I learn about the actual Mark Twain and he was flawed in many ways. And it's kind of good to get to know that about a hero, right? And it's just that I'm taken by this book way more than I thought I would be and I can't wait to finish it and kind of process what all it means. But that's what I'm reading right now. Ron Chernow just released it, and it's called Mark Twain.

Wow. It's cool that you have an extra meaning behind it. It's not just some random biography of Ulysses Escarante or something. Yeah, well Chernow did him too. But the, I read that one too. But yeah, Mark Twain in particular, he really, he grew up poor, so did my dad,

but somehow my dad escaped some of the baggage that comes with that, and Mark Twain never did. He always was looking for a way to make money, and it's like he was such a talent, and he had enough money, but in the attempt to get more, he often choked his own talent and his relationships and just like made a lot of mistakes. And I had no idea of that about him

until I started reading this book. The political thought of Xi Jinping. Okay. May surprise you, but Tyler Cowen, an economist and thinker at large that I admire, said, if you want to understand the world better, you need to understand the people of India and the government of China. And I heeded his advice, especially after going to China three times in the past year and just really loving it there. I just physically love it there. It's just such a pleasant, easy place to be and the people are so interesting

and kind and thoughtful. And so I've been going repeatedly this past year to meet with people in Shenzhen and Chengdu and Shanghai and making friends. And I just really love it there. I love the language. I love the people. I think the culture is fascinating and I've barely scraped the surface. So taking Tyler Cowen's advice, I want to better understand the government of China. So I've read two books so far about the government directly. One is called The World View According to China that I highly recommend. It's so interesting. It helps dispel a lot of the myths and

accusations you hear about China. If you go to my book list, sive.rs slash book, where I put all of my book notes from every book I've read. I think there's 430 there so far. If you click newest, you'll see in the past few months, 30 there so far. If you click newest, you'll see in the past few months, the worldview according to China by David Deaconley or something like that. I highly recommend that one.

But the most recent one I read is the political thought according to Xi Jinping, because he's very much the top down guidance of the Chinese government, which is the biggest government in the world. It's mostly coming from his vision. So I wanted to understand his vision better. So the authors using his public speeches and actions, compiled his thought process into a book. It was a fascinating read because there's so many things that

completely conflict with Western democratic liberal thought that I grew up steeped in. To me, it was like my How to Live book, where every chapter disagrees with every other chapter. I'm reading a book that completely disagrees with everything I was taught growing up, and I'm trying to suspend judgment or I had to suspend judgment while reading to be able to hear it without pushing back. Yeah well I like you feel like I am

ignorant as to China and they are growing power in the world. Which one of those two if I read one which one should I read? The worldview according to China, by, I'm getting it a little wrong I think, but David Deaconley, highly recommend that. I think probably everybody, especially people who listen to the news and find themselves prejudiced against a place they've never been to, should read that.

And then I think most people should, for their next holiday, if you're going to spend money and go somewhere anyway, consider going to Shanghai, for example. Shenzhen, Chengdu is even nicer. They're really wonderful and clean and you just see that they're very, very functioning and people are happy and thriving, and the places are extremely well-run. And I think it's just amazing what they've done

over the last, say, 40 years. It's, I won't say miracle, but it's really astounding what good governance and focused people and willpower has created there in just 40 years. I do have to ask a question because you brought up the book list. You have in this book list links to all of your notes from all of these hundreds of books that you've read. How do you take your book notes? Oh, say actually, I've tried different ways. So with paper books, I would circle and underline my favorite bits. And then when I was done with the book, I'd open up a text file and type out from looking at the paper book, I'd type out all of my notes. Then I started reading Kindle for

years, where then I would use the highlight function in the Kindle and then export as a text file. And for each of these, I don't copy them exactly verbatim. I edit it myself and I reword things and I make it for my future self. I was doing this just for myself privately, not meant to be public. But after a few years of doing this, I thought, there's no reason not to just put these on my site. Now with the last two books I've read, I'm trying a new method, super nerdy. I got a vertical monitor on my screen,

which is I'm really enjoying having a text vertical instead of horizontal. So I'm using Pandoc, an open source program in Haskell, to convert EPUB to plain text. And I'm actually reading books in plain text in the terminal at the computer. And as I read each paragraph, I delete it, because I've got the EPUB backed up. And then for sentences I really like, then I save those, I edit them on the fly,

save them. So I'm reading text files in the then I save those, I edit them on the fly, save them. So I'm reading text files in the terminal to read books. It's a new way of trying things. That's amazing. Oh wait, sorry. It is all fueled by the fact that I lost my Kindle. I was playing with my kid and left it at the beach. Oops, I went back to try to find it, couldn't find it.

And I thought, well, I guess I'm gonna have to buy a new Kindle. I thought, well, I guess I'm gonna have to buy a new Kindle. I thought, well, that's not necessarily true. Yeah, it's funny, it reminds me, I read once that Teddy Roosevelt used to read magazines and books that way, where he would get the book and he would tear the page out when he finished reading it and throw it away. And Mike is just cringing because Mike loves his books,

but he would just literally destroy it in the process of reading it. And I thought, man, that is like, that's a guy with some, you know, some cojones right there. Just rip it apart. I like that a lot. Because it sounds sacrilegious, but it makes sense. There's another, it's not the only copy. There's hundreds. It's like the idea of, got somebody told me that if you don't like a book, literally just throw it in the trash, throw it in the recycle bin,

because you shouldn't save it, because you don't want somebody else to read it. It's a bad book, you're never gonna gift it to somebody. It's just trash. Don't even give it to the goodwill, because that's gonna imply that somebody else should read it. No, it's a bad book, it shouldn't have been printed.

Throw it away. I love it. Derek, listen, we've been making this show for years. When you agreed to come on, it made me very happy because I'm a big fan. And you've been very generous with your time here today. And we just want to thank you for coming in and tell folks to go check out your website. It is I always get the URL wrong. Let me see here it is. S I V E dot R S It is, I always get the URL wrong. Let me see here, it is. S-I-V-E dot R-S.

Yes, I love that. It's just my name with a dot in it. Yeah, you got the dot in the middle. Okay, S-I-V dot R-S. You're also, I will say, I wanna, you came up with the idea of the Now page. I just gotta say this real quick. I have always felt like I was missing out on social media

because I don't do any of it. Then I saw that you had done this thing where you say, what am I doing right now? And the way you describe it at the end of the page is like, if I saw an old friend, this is how I would bring them up to date on my life. I started doing that at Max Sparky like a year ago and I just love it.

And I even put in my email signature and it sparks lots of conversations with friends and readers and what a great idea. So that's a whole nother thing that you have helped me with. I have a modification though on my friend Steven Hackett's idea, I also have a then page, cause people said, well what if I want to read what you were doing last year? So I just move them over, so I have now and then. All right, I like that.

So other than S-I-V-E dot R-S, is there anywhere else people should go to see what you're up to, Derek? No, nowhere else. Okay, I like that. Everything else is a lie. That's the only truth in this world is my website. Okay.

Yeah, you know, I don't do social media, obviously. So everyone listening to this, especially the kind of people that listen to the Focus Podcast,, especially the kind of people that listen to the Focus Podcast, you are my kind of people. You should email me and say hello. I really love it. I put aside an hour a day to answer every single email. And I love it.

It's one of my favorite hours of the day. So anybody that listened all the way through, please go to my website and there's a link there that says email me. So please do. Great set of books. You can get them directly from Derek at his website. We are the Focus Podcast. You can find us at relay.fm.focus. If you are a deep focus member, stick around. We're going to talk to Derek briefly about being a global citizen. Thank you to our sponsors today. That's our friends over at Incogni, Indeed, and ZockDock.

And we'll see you next time.