Think Like A Game Designer - Derek Sivers — Embracing Simplicity, Owning Your Weirdness, and Designing a Life with Intent (#86)

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

About Derek SiversDerek Sivers has worn many hats, musician, entrepreneur, author, and philosopher, but his work maintains a single throughline: a relentless pursuit of living deliberately. He first found success by founding CD Baby, an indie music platform that revolutionized digital distribution before he sold it for over $20 million and donated most of the proceeds. Since then, he’s become a bestselling author of books like Anything You Want, Hell Yeah or No, and Useful Not True, each filled with punchy, poetic wisdom earned from experience. In this episode, we explore how to treat your life like a design problem, why marketing is part of the art, and how vulnerability and weirdness aren’t liabilities—they’re the keys to resonance. Whether you’re building a company, making games, or just trying to figure out how to live a more meaningful life, this conversation will challenge your assumptions and invite you to take that first small but deliberate step. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I'll be having conversations with brilliant game designers from across the industry with a goal of finding universal principles that anyone can apply in their creative life. You could find episodes and more at think like a game designer.com. In today's episode, I speak with Derek Sivers. Derek is a musician turned entrepreneur, author, and philosopher, who in addition to making a living for many years as a musician founded CD Baby, the groundbreaking independent music platform that he later sold for over $20 million. Most of the proceeds he also donated to support music education. He has since become the author of several influential books, including anything you want,

hell yeah or no, and most recently, useful, not true. I have read all these books and gotten an enormous amount of value out of them. Over the years, I have emailed Derek back and forth with some little tips and insights, and we finally got a chance to chat and share that on the podcast. And Derek delivered on this episode, as he has in every other appearance of his that I have followed. His insights on simplicity, on decision making, on deliberate living have always resonated with me. And I think they will resonate with you. So even though he doesn't come from the game industry, for those of you that have listened to other episodes of mine, like the one with Stephen Pressfield, you can see where the creative work and the aspects of people from musicians to writers to designers to entrepreneurs, the work is the same.

The lessons are valuable across the board. We talk about how your art doesn't end at the edge of the canvas and how you can present your art to the world, how you can present your creative works to the world, how marketing can become part of the creative process and how you can succeed by emphasizing your weirdness. We talk about the process of making your brain a more fun place to be and how you can reverse common assumptions and take approaches that other people don't in order to be more successful, be more happy, and to do better creative work. And we end with some very concrete tips on how you can take.

take very quick actions to take these lessons and turn them into real iterative things that you do in the world. That's what I, my goal with this podcast, my goal with my writings and the substack has always been to not just talk about things that are interesting and explore the philosophy behind doing creative work, but to make it actionable to get you as a listener to make your life better. Derek has built his life around that same principle and it shows in this wonderful conversation that we are able to have. So without any further ado, here is Derek Sivers. Hello and welcome. I am here with Derek Sivers. Derek, it is an honor to have you here, man.

You too, Justin. I mean, we've been emailing for five or six years now. Yeah, yeah. So it's really nice to finally talk with you live. Yeah, yeah, it is, man. And one of the reasons why I kind of started and reached out to you is because one of the goals of my life is to help people to be able to live more creative, fulfilling lives and to think about the world in the same way. I kind of and think about games, right? Like, how do we structure it? The rules are sort of malleable. How do we build systems that help us to lead these lives?

And you have been not only living that life, but sharing those truths for so long now. And so I'm really eager to dive into this with you. And I want to kick it off with just kind of what got you thinking about things in this way. You know, like, is it from very young, you just had this process of like exploring and breaking these things apart? Or was there some kind of inciting incident that got you to be like, hey, I don't have to follow this other path. Ooh, great question.

No, when I was 14 and heard heavy metal for my first time and learned that it was an electric guitar that made that sound, I went and got an electric guitar and within a day or two, I was so hooked that was like, this is it, this is my life's mission. And I stayed with that from the age of 14 to 29. I was 100% obsessed with music and only music. I wanted to be a great musician, a great songwriter, a great performer, a great producer. I didn't necessarily care that much about getting rich, but I wanted to be a full-time musician. And I knew that this is something that a million people want and only one in a million will get.

So it's like deciding at 14 that you want to be an Olympic athlete. It's like, I need to be so damn focused and so damn good and practice so damn much that I am unstoppable. So I set out with that mission at the age of 14. And there's a cute little thing in my high school yearbook. There's a picture of me with my guitar, as always. You couldn't pry that guitar out of my hands. I was just practicing my scales and arpeggios and pieces.

constantly. And it said something like, Derek Sivers is hoping to go be a success as a musician. Well, good luck, Derek. And it's probably been 10 years later, I went back to my high school reunion. Just by circumstance, I just happened to be in Chicago on tour. I thought, all right, I'll go. So all my classmates are like mid-level managers looking 40 years. old at the age of 28, wearing suits, pushing papers from left to right, from Motorola. And they looked at me, this full-time musician, they said, man, I can't believe you did it. And I thought, man, I can't believe you didn't. I can't believe you gave up. I just did what I said I was going to do. But everybody around me was trying to live well-balanced normal lives.

I was just so driven. So, to finally answer your question, I realized early on by looking at the careers of other musicians that the way to succeed is to stand out, to be different from everyone else. You've got to find your unique voice in the cacophony. You've got to find a unique angle, ideally a smarter angle, a more interesting angle,

that makes you more interesting to the audience. So as a songwriter and as an artist, I guess I was always looking for a different angle. And then the stuff you're asking about, honestly didn't happen until many years later when I sold my company and I suddenly had a blank slate in life. And that's when I started applying all of this creative approach to life itself.

Yeah, it's fascinating. There's so many pieces and threads I want to. Sorry, I don't usually give long monologues like that. No, it's great. It's great. And don't worry. I take notes and I will come back to every little piece of that I want to dig into because I think it's great to share your story. And I've wrestled with this podcast because I think many people, I know your story very well.

I've read all of your books. I've listened to many of your podcasts and I've gotten a lot of value on them. And I don't want to just repeat those things here. But your story is pretty remarkable. Right. this intense focus and you knew what you wanted to do for for music and you knew that that was your passion and you found away through it and we're going to piece that apart soon but then this you know your your story of how you started cd baby which was this massive success of a company and there's a lot of

great stories i know that you've told from there that but that just kind of came as a step by step thing of you just saw a need you met it you saw a need you met it and it you know you just kind of kept moving forward so to know that you didn't really you know i don't know if it's the right way to phrase it, but think strategically or kind of, you know, question the assumptions ahead of that. You just kind of did the next thing in front of you. I find that really fascinating because that's a lot of what my life story was too, right? I just, I loved games. I was passionate about games. And so I went to a tournament. I did well in tournament. I did the thing. I love, you know, I was, I wanted, but I just kept, and then I got another job and I did the next thing. And it took me a while to encounter that moment of like,

hey, wait a minute. I don't have to do the next thing. Even if it's something that I'm excited about, I can now kind of zoom back out and think more holistically about, okay, well, what do I do next? And so I think that that takes so long. For me, it was 27, I think, when I finally made that, that happened to me, like at that age? What age were you in that, when you sold CD baby and when you kind of started to ask those questions? Ooh, 36. Okay. All right. So we'll get, we'll get into that, but I'm going to try to tell, I'm going to try to pull the timeline pieces together here in ways I think are interesting. You mentioned, you know, intense focus is the, key way to succeed and that you chose a path that's really hard. And so music is one of those paths,

becoming a game designer, professional game designer is one of those paths, you know, people who want to act, you want to, you know, there's a lot of these careers where you're only the one percent or whatever, you know, can in principle seem to survive. What do you think, in terms of the aspect of finding your unique voice, how did you think about doing that? How did you think about differentiating yourself from the crowd beyond that just sort of intense focus? Well, just by my choice of path, I was headed a different direction than everybody else I knew. So I grew up in suburban Chicago in a pretty upper middle class suburb where everybody was just on the path to get into a good college so they can get a good job. And I knew that I wanted the opposite. I didn't want to go

to college. I never wanted a job. I do not want security. I do not want a salary. I do not want a salary. I do not want insurance. I want to go live by my music only. So I just felt that I was going a different direction than everyone else. So all of the conventional wisdom I was surrounded by didn't apply to me. Not to say I was better than the wisdom. It was just we were heading different directions. It's like everybody else was making their plans.

to go east and I wanted to go south. I just felt like, okay, all of this wisdom and norms around me are a cookbook for an outcome that I don't want. I want a different outcome than you guys. So I just felt that all the norms don't apply to me because I'm pursuing something that's unusual.

Yeah, yeah, okay. So certainly you had a more, I'd say comfort with uncertainty or risk tolerance, I think, than a lot of people do at that stage. I think that's one of this. Sorry, it wasn't the uncertainty or the risk itself. It just felt like that was bundled together with the dream I wanted. I wanted to be a professional musician. And as a side effect of that, that means you're never going to have insurance, you're never going to have a job, you're never going to have security.

A college degree is moot. It was just a side effect of the dream I wanted. Yeah, but I would claim that there are millions or more people that have that same dream, but it is that what you call a side effect that stops them from pursuing it. It's that, yeah, everybody would love to have that my creative. I support myself through the creative work I'm passionate about, but most of them when they say, hey, I'll never have health insurance, I'll never have security of a job.

I won't know necessarily where my next paycheck's coming from. That's a barrier to most people. Ah, well, stoicism. I didn't learn that word until I was 42. At the age of 42, after hearing our buddy Tim say it so many times and me just thinking like, I don't care about some ancient Greeks. I finally reluctantly read a book on stoicism and I went, oh my God, this is. the philosophy I've been living by since I was a teenager, because I like that aspect of deliberately choosing the harder path to toughen yourself. Don't give me luxury, give me hardship so I can strengthen, give me challenges so I can get better at overcoming them, so that in the future I can have a more comfortable, no,

so that I can be strong in a lot of life. to whether any situation. I knew that by wanting to be a successful musician, I needed to strengthen myself again and again and again every day. Yeah, I think that true comfort and security comes from the knowledge that you can survive and thrive under any circumstances. That's the real sort of security that we look for in this model. That's what I was pursuing.

Yeah, and I actually ended my, when I was on Tim's podcast, my billboard statement was cultivate comfort with uncertainty and impermanence, right? It's a mantra that I repeat to myself all the time because I'm not saying I'm good at it, right? But it's something I continue to try to grow into. And the more that I have been okay with that, right, in the same way that you said, you know, when you met up with your old friends and they couldn't believe that you had pursued the path of music, and you couldn't believe that they hadn't, that when you realize that the real nightmare is not,

I tried to do the thing I loved and it didn't work or I suffered for it, but that I never even tried and I would never know if I could live a life that I'm passionate about and pursue dreams that I have. That's the real nightmare scenario that I think most people don't realize that the true cost that comes on that side of things. Well put, I totally agree. So I want to, you know, one of the things, you know, I like this, you know, the philosophy that inspires action here and that allows us to deal with adversity.

But I also like to give very practical tips for people to, make the path easier, right? Because even though we can agree that we want to strengthen ourselves and be willing to face adversity in pursuit of our dreams, okay, that could be really tough. But we get at a granular level. One of the things that I want to dig into, and you've mentioned this in your background, it also came up in your book, your music and people in terms of how you position yourself and how you market, which is a book I bought for my brother, who is a musician and audio engineer. And I read for myself and realized that this applies to everybody. So I was very grateful for that. I was grateful that you applied it metaphorically. I remember when you sent me some feedback.

You were an early reader and gave me some feedback on that. I was like, oh, just and applied it metaphorically. Thank you. That was an honor. Yeah. Yeah. So it's when I give advice to game designers, and we'll see how this works. It's not just the, I'm trying to do, focus exclusively on this and be the best in the world. Also, I'm trying to find out where is the unique intersection of the skills and inclinations that I have that can make me a category of one. So if I, I as a game designer, I also, you know, love speaking and talking about design. And so being able to have a podcast and reach an audience this way helps make me more unique than somebody else who might be a better peer designer than I am.

Or, you know, people who are good at, you know, participating at events or programming, right, or being able, like all these different aspects and subsets of skills that can come together to create a unique category of one. And I'm wondering if that has resonated with you, or you can maybe tell some of the stories about how you can use that both to create your art and to find the audience that your art will resonate with. Hmm.

I think of the metaphor of a bunch of people on stage that imagine there's a play with 50 actors on stage and we're drawn towards the one that has something in them that we aspire to, that we want to be more rebellious like that person, or we want to be more mysterious like that one, or more brooding like that one. We're drawn towards different people that may not necessarily be the ones that are all up in our face, and hey, everybody, you know, don't forget to smash that like button, that one. That kind of outreach, that thinks that you have to be the loudest

and do the same thing that everybody else does. I mean, why is it that every podcaster has a bunch of books on a shelf behind them and that every YouTuber has their face to please the algorithm and everybody says, smash that like button? That sameness makes you unnoticeable. And the best thing you can do is whatever nobody else is doing. and the way to find that is to notice what about yourself is weird. I love that. I love that. Yeah.

And just to bring that home, right, it resonates. When you think about the people you're closest to, right, your friends, the people who you want to surround yourself with, it is that weirdness. It is the things that are the quirks that are part of why you love, you know, your partners and your close friends. It's the things that attract you to them. And that is true writ large at scale when you are willing to owe. in your own weirdness and put it out there. There's this, there's this interesting, you know, kind of quote from, I think it's Peter Thiel. That's the, you know, you need to be to be super successful.

You need to be, you know, both like non-consensus and correct. Right. So this idea of succeeding in a massive scale, you need to, if everybody believes the same thing and does the same thing, you know, you're just in the mess. And you do your own quirky, weird thing. And sometimes you're going to be right. Sometimes you're going to be wrong. but I think when it comes to art creative work,

there's this process of self-discovery is just about like surfacing different parts of your weirdness and exploring those things and putting them out there and then eventually you're going to start to see where you get resonance from. And so one of the things I believe in when it comes to creative work is the iterative process, right? We don't know when like discovering your own voice is not necessarily like, oh, I just have it here and it's ready to go and I just need to put it out there. It's a lot of it's like, okay, let me try this.

persona. Let me try this side of me. Let me see how that feels. And there is some back and forth in this feedback loop. So I don't know how you think about this sort of thing, but the kind of be true to yourself and be true to your weirdness versus the reflect what the world is telling you and have that feedback loop exists. Like, how do you think about that tradeoff? Okay. This is a fun subject because by being less mainstream, by being more weird, you can reduce the potential number of fans, but you can increase the intensity of that bond between you and fan. So here's an oddly personal example.

I have a page on my website that is my About page, that a lot of personal sites, and even business sites have this, the About Me page. So it's Sivers slash About. There's a page that says, all right, well, I was born here in California. I grew up there. I went to music school.

I did this. I did that. It's the long version of everything that my dear friends know about me that I don't want to say twice. I thought I should just write this all out once and for all. So I can point future people to this page. But one thing that's weird about me, is that I don't love my parents.

I don't love my family that I grew up with. And I know that's really unusual, but I suspected that there are some other people out there in the same situation. So it was hard for me to decide to put this on my about page, but it is somewhat core to who I am. I don't hate them. I just don't believe that saying that blood is thicker than water.

We all have blood. I feel equally connected to people that are not my parents as I do my parents. So I wrote about this. There was a major section on my about page that said, I'm not into my family. And I described this. I said, I've never felt any connection to my family. I left as soon as I could.

I hardly talked to them. I don't hate them. I just feel no particular connection. And that was buried two-thirds of the way down a very long page with everything about me. And that one paragraph got so much response from people, all positive. People saying, oh my God, thank you. Thank you for saying this. I have felt like the only weirdo on earth that doesn't love my parents. Oh, my God, I can't believe that you actually came out and said that. Thank you so much.

You just validated something. I mean, people roasting like I'm crying right now from reading this. Nobody else has ever said this. My friends tell me I'm a jerk for not loving my parents. I feel guilty all the time. Wow, thank you so much. Now, most people can't relate to that, but the few that can now have a deeper bond.

So I think this can apply to so many of your weird preferences, whether you just like to do everything in the Unix terminal, or you like to only, like maybe your monitor is mounted on your ceiling or whatever it may be that's weird about your tastes. Sharing that will reduce your potential audience or maybe shaping yourself around that would reduce your potential audience, but intensify the connections with the ones that can move. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I feel like there's another piece to that specific example too, which is important, which is sharing vulnerability, right?

that the creative life is intrinsically one of emotional risk, right? That you're putting things out there. And if you're putting things out there that are safe, they're like, hey, I like pizza and walks on the beach and whatever, right? Like that's not going to resonate with anybody because you're not really risking anything. But saying, hey, like, I don't love my parents or, you know, hey, I'm really struggling. I have no idea what I'm doing right now. Like, I've, you know, I've suffered this loss and I suffered this mistake.

And like being able to share that stuff, I think people are just intrinsically. drawn to that. And it's one of those things. It's very hard when you're the one doing it. I honestly, it was this interesting process I went through. I've got my new book that I've been working on, and I worked with Neil Strauss on it. And he ended up pushing me to make that book far more personal and vulnerable than I ever imagined it could be. I wanted to share the principles that, you know, how gaming and design can apply to life and business. And that's in the book. But it ended up being like a lot more stories of like my divorce and my near bankruptcy and the things that I just totally messed up in ways that are embarrassing.

And once I was willing and able to do that, the people who have been now my beta readers for the book, those are the parts they respond to the most. Those are the things that people resonate with. And so it's been a lesson I've had to learn that, that, you know, when you are willing to share, not just your weirdness, but the things that you're, you know, a little bit maybe ashamed of or scared of. And by putting that out into the light, not only does it make you can make you feel better to integrate that into who you are, but it helps everybody else out there that's had that same struggle or that can relate to that struggle. So well put.

Totally agree. So I want to move forward a little bit because there's another piece to this that I think from your backstory that I think is worth exploring, which is, you know, I saw, I think it was, I saw a thing from Tim Urban who does the wait but why. series that he posted that when he looked around at his community of friends who had succeeded in the creative world, that in essence, it was two things that they had, which was one, a willingness to stick with it for the, you know, 10 to 20 years or whatever it took to kind of get there and a sufficient level of business acumen, that there was some amount of the ability to sort of see opportunities in the market or, you know, learn how to position yourself and sell things, which is something you've clearly demonstrated in.

creating and launching a big company and launching multiple products. How do you think about what is that, if you could distill down, what are the minimum viable business strategies that somebody who wants to live a creative life should focus on? Or how do you think about that kind of tradeoff? It's as learnable as anything. Anyone can learn to cook. anyone can learn to sew,

anyone can learn to invest, and anyone can learn this business acumen. It's not an inherent thing that some people just have and some people just don't. So all you need to do is to go read the top 20 books that people say are the greatest business books or the ones that appeal to your specific niche

and by read them I don't mean skim them, I don't mean get the cliff notes or get a little summary that you can get in six minutes. I mean immerse yourself in these books and really get into this thought process and take notes while you're reading the book on the actionable takeaways and then after you read the book,

put something into action immediately, go take the suggested action right away, go do the thing, even if it's just a first attempt to start to turn theory into practice, and look at it all as an experiment. Let's see what happens if I do exactly what that book said I should do. It's so not me. But that doesn't matter.

Just go pretend that you are like this businessy person for five minutes. Go do the thing as if you were. and then eventually you become what you pretend to be. Yeah, yeah, the kind of cliched fake it till you make it approach is not, you know, I think I brought this up earlier is this idea of, you know, trying on different personas, trying on different things in the work that you put out there. I think the same is true here, right? Like what it takes is being able, what I call the core design loop, but this idea that. that you're consistently, you know, ideating things, figuring out what you can, what's the minimum thing you can test to determine if that idea is right or not, what your hypothesis is, getting

feedback, feeding that back into the process so that you can then sort of try again and hopefully learn in each cycle is the heart of doing anything that hasn't really been done before, right? Like the recipe to do a cookbook, okay, just follow the recipe, you're good. But the, you know, the strategy to launch a cooking business, that's going to be very hard, right? It's going to be different unique to you, the specifics of what you're doing. It requires iteration. And again, this gets back to the vulnerability point, but I'd be curious how you feel about this piece because it's iteration is a fun word, but what it really means is fail a lot.

Like what, how do you, how do you like the challenge I find for people to do this stuff and the same thing that stops them from going from, oh yeah, I read the books, I got it to no, no, I tried the thing and I failed and I tried the thing again and then I tried the thing again, right? That barrier is another one of those that it's really hard to get people to cross that gap. And so I'll let you, you can take this as either, how do you think about addressing that feeling or emotion from as either yourself or stories you've encountered this or how do you think about this as someone who writes books and tries to get people to take action to how do you try to push other people over that gap? it's funny that you said iteration is a fun word because as you were saying it i was thinking hmm justin that's an awfully serious word to something that i think of is just fucking around i don't take any of this seriously when i read a book with some business advice

i just think of it like a grown-up place Playpen, grown-up sandbox. It's like, hey, let's try that. Let's see what happens if. Let's see what happens if I take this cookie advice from Seth Godin, mixed with this cookie advice from whatever, Chase Jarvis, and I'm going to mix it together and do this weird thing that nobody else has done. Let me just see what happens.

I'm just going to email everybody I know and tell them, my books are now free or my books are I'm going to do reverse pricing or let's say I'm going to you know anyway come up with your own weird business thing I'll just go try it everything's a fun let's see what happens kind of experiment you're not searching for the right answer you're just playing yes I love this and this is actually one of the core uh tenets of the of the book that I'm working on, right? This idea that you can take, and I use the word iterative, but take this iterative mindset, which is in games, right, which is my field, it's by default, right? Like, we, when you play a game and you lose, like, cool, let's play again, right? My ego's not

on the line, you know, maybe, you could, but it's just, it's fun and you're intending to do that and you're going to repeat and play again. But in life, most people do not think the way that you think, right? They do not take that like, hey, let's have fun and play with it. They take that if I fail, then I am a failure and I suffer this way. And so that transition in bringing people over there, I'm really glad that for you, it was just, I loved your facial expressions. That's not I watched you say this because for you,

it was so obvious. And it just felt, yeah, of course I'm going to play with this. But you recognize most people don't, don't default that way. They take it a lot more seriously. Yeah. It's the zen of business that we're drawn towards those who are having fun with it themselves. I think that's what people like about

Richard Branson, for example. He seemed to be taking a fun approach to business. If you fly on Virgin Airlines, the little safety video doesn't take itself seriously. And that's part of what we love about the brand of Virgin. And it can be the same with anything. There's only one company that I have an irrational brand loyalty to, and that's Surly Bicycles.

because surly bicycles in Minnesota, their whole vibe is this kind of like, yeah, well, Jim got drunk one night and thought we should invent a new kind of bike. So here's some butt-ugly thing that we're going to call the fugly bike. We don't know what to do with it. Maybe you do.

It's our newest model. Check it out. Go get drunk and see if you like it then. I'm like, I love you guys. That's so much of a better way to market a bicycle to me. than telling me about the specs. And it can be the same with anything.

We choose who we give our money to as like a vote because we like them. I want this company to have my money instead of that company because I just like them more. So that can come across in your choice of what you choose to do instead of stiffening up and trying to say, oh God, okay, I'm going to try to make the perfect marketing plan. Oh, my God, my ass is on the line here. Instead, you loosen up, you have fun. you be somebody that your target audience wants you to be, even if that's, like I said earlier, being the more sullen one, being the silent one, being the angry one, being the rebellious one,

whatever it may be, you have to show some color to draw people towards you. Yeah, yeah, that's great advice. And it makes me think of two examples, one of which is yours, and I'll let you tell the story of the best email ever. I'll start with the story I have from the gaming world, which is the game Cards Against Humanity, which is sort of a very irreverent, inappropriate kind of brand.

And every year during the Black Friday sales, they'll do something completely ridiculous, right? Or they'll like, like everything costs $5 more on Black Friday, right? You know, like, and I love them. It's so good. You know,

it's just like just taking the other tack and it got them a ton of attention and a ton of sales or they sold a box of, a box of bullshit, which was actual shit from an actual bull that would sell you. And so, you know, that kind of thing could suddenly be a thing. We tell stories about years later and really resonates. And it just reflected their personality and their brand. Yeah, if you don't mind, I'd love you to share the email from your, yeah. I'm going to tell a better one.

Okay, great. For one, thank you. I mean, like, my eyes are wet from laughing. I love cards against humanity and that kind of stuff because you know that the people doing it are laughing their asses off while doing it too. And isn't that what it's all about? You can make 6% more money and be miserable, or you can make the same amount, maybe even 3% less money and be ecstatic and loving your job because you're having fun with it. Or you're just making it what you want it to be. And we keep saying fun as if that's the only

goal, but I mean, look at Trent Resner from Nine Inch Nails. That pouty, sullen motherfucker creates the pouty sullen world that he wants to live in. And the pouty sullen people that love it say, thank you. This guy gets my pain. And that's great. You just, you embody your expression. It's art, not just cut and dry right answer, wrong answer. It's an expression. It's an expression. that you want to put out into the world. So on that note, in, how old was I, 26,

I was living in New York City, running a recording studio in New York in the years before I started CD Baby. I was a musician myself, and I set up a studio for myself, but I would rent it out to other people that needed it. And a friend of mine asked me to produce his album. So we'd known each other since high school,

but his persona public name was Captain T and he created this persona that was during the time of the X-Files TV show of somebody that's trying to reveal the conspiracy theory or it was full of conspiracy theories trying to reveal that the government was covering up Area 51 and the aliens are among us and all this stuff

so he put this persona together to make an album in character So after we recorded it and had a blast recording it, it was time to market it. He wanted to get it onto all the college radio stations. There was his target market it. We printed up a thousand CDs, and there are about 500, no, about 600 college radio stations. So usually, if an album comes out,

a promoter will send it to all 600 college radio stations in America and hope for the best and maybe 50 or 100 of them will play it. So my first thought was, okay, well, now that we've finished recording this, we should go promote it. And I thought about just doing the normal thing. But that idea lasted barely a minute before I realized, we need to do something that is as unique as this music itself and goes with the character.

It's like art doesn't end at the edge of the canvas. There's your pull quote for this interview. Because I remember this slogan often. Actually comes from Brian Eno, the record producer. He says, art doesn't end at the end of the canvas. How you present your art to the world is part of your art. And it goes with everything we're talking about here. So for Captain T, the art did not end at the edge of the canvas.

We carried his persona into how we promoted it to the college radio stations. So I wrote up a letter. that said, Dear station name, you know, Mark at K-E-X-B, whatever, you don't know me, but I live in the bushes behind your station. I've lived here for the last six years

in the gutter, in and out of consciousness, your radio station has saved my life many times over. But let me tell you about the man that just pulled me out of the gutter yesterday that has an important message that your listeners need to hear. His name is Captain T,

and he's revealing the truth of what's going on, in this country man and you got to get the message out there. Now signed the man looking in your window at you broadcasting right now. And then for each of these letters, I got this kind of dirt-colored paper, this old brown paper, printed the letter, mail-merged,

600 letters in the printer. Then we took each one of them and went outside and rubbed them in the dirt, crumpled them up, uncrumpled them, stuck the CD in the middle, folded it together, put it into a black envelope, and we found some sealed tape that said confidential do not open for any reason. And as a final touch, we had an alien head sticker that we sealed the envelope with. And that's what we mailed to 600 college radio stations.

And we got the reports a month later that 540 of them played it because it was irresistible. think of yourself in the position of being this college student in the college radio station that gets hundreds of these same manila envelopes every week and then this black one shows up. You open up dirt pours out and it says do not open for any reason. Of course this is going to get your attention. And of course it enhanced the message of the music itself and it's unforgettable. Years later, like 20 years later, my friend Mark, who actually runs a very popular podcast called Talking Metal now.

So Captain T is Mark Striegel who has the Talking Metal podcast. And he tells me that 20 years later, people still come up to him going, oh my God, you're Captain T. I'll never forget that album. It came to our college radio station that day. So anyway, I haven't told that story in a while. Thank you for indulging me. Yeah, that's great. That's great. I think, yeah, I want to linger on this point more because I think it's one of the things

that a lot of people struggle with and whatever. I'll say I struggle with it too, right? This marketing, the break between creating and marketing, right? This feeling that like the creating part, I'm building something I'm proud of, I'm excited about, and then this, oh, I've got to market now. Right. You know, like breaking free from that mindset and saying, no, no, wait, hold on. Like, marketing is built into this concept of the thing or I can have fun with marketing.

I think it's something that a lot of people struggle with. And I don't know how to help ensure that that's part of the gap. Right. I mean, and it's a problem that's arguably, it's worse than it's ever been in the sense that like creating things is easier than it's ever been. Distribution, everybody has stuff out there, but how you break through the noise, how you get people to pay attention to you? How do you get the right people to pay attention to you, right?

Like, what other is there other other sort of advice or more recent stories or things that you would have for people that would help them to kind of change their mindset on this and find the fun in reaching their audience. Ultimately, everything we're talking about is considerate for the person on the receiving end of your communication or your actions. It would be considerate of you if you're a YouTuber to record all of your videos upside down. Just flip it in the editor, including the stupid thumbnail of you going at the of the camera.

Flip it all upside down. Just to make people go, hey, dude, your video's broken. Hey, what's going on here? Wait, is this a trick? Hold on. Do I need to turn my head upside down? Can't flip my phone.

It's auto-rotating. You're ultimately being considerate. You're making people's lives a little more interesting by giving them something that's not what everybody else is doing. that Cards Against Humanity example is beautifully generous. They're having fun and this idea of like $5 more on Black Friday, that's so beautifully funny and hilarious that even if you didn't spend the extra $5, it made your stupid Black Friday better by getting that.

It's ultimately considerate to do these different, unusual things to do what other people are not doing. Yeah, I like that. I think that this idea of like just constantly thinking about how I can sort of add and deliver more value to my audience, right, to the people I care about is like at the fundamentals of, you know, a, you know, kind of business creativity. Like, what can I do that will help make your lives better? And everybody that's listening can relate to this, right? When there's an ad that gets pushed at you that's just trying to sell you something, it's annoying. It gets in the way, especially if it's not well targeted. But when it's a piece of content

that's valuable to you and then helps you see a thing that would make your life better or more fun or that is just amusing to engage with, that's a net positive. And if the latter is the thing that ends up driving you into a purchase funnel, then great, everybody wins. And so it's finding that, that, from my perspective, like a playfulness or that like, as you said, a sort of considerate or generous approach. I think having that as a foundation as you kind of go through these cycles of trying different things and putting your stuff out there is very powerful. Are you familiar with the alternate reality games? Have you heard about this concept? No. Yeah. So there's a some of my previous guests have done some of these Jordan Weissman and Elon Lee and others. But they basically

you create a interactive experience that is like breaks out of the game. So there might be like a website with a cryptic message that if you figure it out and then you go to this social media account that posts a clue that then if you go to this specific location, there's a treasure chest. And so it becomes a sort of global game that sort of, you know, people are trying to figure out what's happening. And they've done this for major movies like the Dark Night Returns and the old AI movie and they've done it as promotional things where suddenly now everybody gets to kind of collectively play and try to figure out what's going on. And then it ends up, you know, being a marketing campaign, but it creates a fun thing where now the Joker

could be calling you and giving you a secret mission and you've got to try to do it, but you can't do it yourself. You've got to call in friends through Reddit on the other side of the planet. I've always found that to be this really fun tool to sort of engage, you know, again, make the world itself play. And people have used this for marketing all different kinds of things, not just not games, but, you know, music releases and movie releases and things like that. So I find just that spirit of playfulness that was kind of one of the first things

that came to mind as a way to engage and create something. But it's a lot of work. I think that's one of the major things that I think people get lazy when it comes to marketing. They'll spend a lot of time thinking about how to create the thing. And then when it comes to marketing, there's just like, okay, well, you know, do some paid ads or I'll work with an influencer. I'll do a thing. And I think that is there, is there a, is there a range that you think of the ratio of like how much you think about the thing you're creating versus how much you're going to get it to somebody? Or is that, does that, is there even make sense to put a number behind that?

No, I think it's, it is more of a mindset like we're talking about. For musicians, I describe it like this. So anybody else listening, it's not a musician, just think of this metaphorically. You write a song, you start out with a little idea, maybe a phrase or a feeling or a message you're trying to communicate, whether in words or a musical riff, you build on it. And as you're turning it into a song, you make some decisions about, how that song's going to go, whether it's going to loop in this part

or whether this part comes in. And then as you go to record it, you make acoustic decisions on whether it's just going to be a strumming acoustic guitar or some twisted electronic sounds. And then you take photos of yourself, and those are artistic decisions,

whether you're going to be in a dark room, barely visible or bright and colorful and in your face. And I think that we shouldn't, stop there, that you just keep making those creative decisions all the way out to the end user, to the end. It keeps radiating out. You keep making these creative decisions at every step. They're all just part of the art. If you think of this as all just part of the art, then again, you're not trying to look at what other people are doing business-wise and imitate that. either you're staying true to the expression

of the original idea you're trying to get across and think, well, what is the marketing expression of that? What is the YouTube expression of this idea I'm trying to get across? And think like an artist, or just look at what everyone else is doing and say, how can I do something that nobody else has done? Just because it makes the world a better, place to do something that nobody else has done in the same way that a songwriter tries to think

of a lyric that nobody else has said. We don't need another lyric that says, baby, I look into your eyes and I realize the way I feel is so real. There is no need to say that ever again. You want to make a song that says, our love is like a banana. And I'm a gorilla. Whatever. That, least is going to make people say, what? Did he just say? Now you've said something a little bit unique that hasn't been said a hundred times. And it's the same thing in business. It's the same thing in marketing. What are people not doing? Don't look at everybody else and say, how can I do the same? Look at everybody else and say, how can I do anything but that? What hasn't been done? Yeah, I like that. And so the way I think about this stuff in some ways, you know, for people,

because there's people that listen to this podcast at all ends of the spectrum. I know there are people who've been in business and making games professionally for a long time. There's people who are kind of just getting started. And I think that sometimes when you're on that spectrum of just kind of getting started, this idea of let me do something nobody's ever done before. Let me, like, which is pretty tough, right? You haven't necessarily found your own voice yet. You're not really sure.

You haven't worked on the craft itself enough. And so what I will advise in those circumstances. I'm curious if this resonates with you is, you know, It's okay to copy at first. Like in essence like this, you know, like copy. It's sort of like the fake it till you make it, right? Like copy the people that you admire, genuinely try to build your own thing. You can't help but have your voice kind of shine through the things that you make.

But that when you're early in your career, you know, sort of taking things that you'd like and think work and, you know, sort of smash them together and making small little tweaks here and there is how you figure out the craft itself and how you figure out your voice. And then as you feel more comfortable in that space and you have more comfort being in. able to say the things you want to say, now is your time to sort of break away and say, okay, now what has nobody done before? How do I, like, further separate for myself from the gap? Do you see that arc? How does that resonate with you? An old music teacher of mine said, go ahead and cover other people's songs, because none of us are perfect mirrors. We are all warped like Funhouse mirrors. You know, those ro-ro-r-r-r-warped mirrors

that stretch out your torso head. We are all warped mirrors. So by you trying to imitate a Beatles song, you will just be revealing how warped you are. Yep. Yeah, a Yo-Yo Ma quote, I love it. No one else can make the sound that you make. There's a very deep level of who you are

will come through the work that you create. In fact, I think it's the main reason that we create is to be able to find that expression of ourselves. We have this desire to express ourselves into the world, and the creative work is as much about that, being able to sort of reflect that and see yourself reflecting in the world as it is about the contribution or the effect on the audience.

Yeah. I also liked that you said to take two ideas and smash them together. I think that's essential. If you're going to copy and do a perfect copy, not a twisted fun house mirror, at least take two different ideas and smash them together. Yeah.

Yeah, the other thing that I love is, and I often advise, is take an idea and then remove something. Like, take something out. Because the default, when I see any new creatives and new designers, they always want to do more. They always want to add the thing. It's going to be, you know, in the gaming world,

it's like, World of Warcraft and Halo meets Super Mario, And there's like all these games. They've never made a game before. It's like, that's just too much. But if you take a core experience that you love and it's like, well, okay, what would monopoly be like if you were trying to lose all your money instead of make money, right? Or just like invert the thing or pull out a piece of it.

Now all of a sudden there's actually a whole new game there and a different experience that is just as creative and just as innovatives. And actually a lot of the best creative work I've ever done has been more about what can I take out rather than what can I combine or put in. I love that. I've got a good term for that. When somebody tells you all of the ideas they want, you say, okay, you know how software has version numbers, Windows 10, Windows 11, iOS 16, iOS 17. What you've just described is version infinity. That is everything it will ever be someday in the glorious future if everything works out perfectly. Now, in order to start making this thing, we need to start making this thing. We need to start. start with version 0.1. What is the most essential feature? We can just make that one little feature to make that one thing happen and do a version 0.1. Let's test that first. Whether it's a game, a web app, a business, start with version 0.1 of its one essential feature. And you can personally

keep version infinity in mind, but maybe keep it to yourself so that people can stay focused on what's good about version 0.1? Yeah, no, I think that's great advice, the kind of minimum viable product idea from business or just being able to both as a learning tool to get yourself started and get things out there and learn from putting things out there rather than try to build everything all at once.

And often it's an interesting process that happens for us in game design where you'll have playtesters that'll play early versions of the game. And they'll have certain feedback and thoughts about it. And then as I'm working on it, I'll decide, okay, you know what, I'm going to take that mechanic out. I don't think it needs to be there.

And the playtesters, a lot of times they'll complain. They'll be like, oh, I really like that mechanic and I miss it. But your audience, when you release the thing, they've got nothing to miss. They won't know that that wasn't there. Right. And so you also need to sort of, when you're culling down a lot of times putting yourself in the mindset. This could be one of the hardest things about creating,

is put yourself in the mindset of the audience that hasn't experienced before. That isn't so deep in the weeds as you are. I don't know if you had this experience with some of the work. that you've done. And I think with writing a book, a lot of times I found this, right, where I'm like, I've re-read and rewritten this chapter like a dozen times. Like, I can't even see it straight anymore. And so I just, I have to bring in new outside beta people to help me like reset my mind. I don't know if you have any practices or or stories around that. Just remember the frustration you've felt when somebody comes to you all wild-eyed

and tries to tell you their idea and it just sounds like some insane rabbling's they won't shut up. Try to remember how frustrating or annoying that is and just think of yourself through those eyes. Yeah, I like that. I think one of the other related things I advise people often is to, you know, to use the elevator pitch concept, right? This idea that like you need to be able to distill whatever it is, you need to distill the essence down into, you know, two, three sentences at the most.

Like not that they're going to know everything and all the deep things. insights, whatever. But if you can't distill the heart of what you're doing to that level, then you don't have a clear enough vision for it. And it's going to be not just hard to sell, because the idea of the elevator pitch is usually I'm trying to actually sell the thing, but even in the creative process itself, that you need to know what the heart and the core of the thing is and use that as the guidance for all the difficult creative decisions you're going to make kind of along the way. And so I think finding and refining that core message can not only help you be better at the end of the process or while you're trying to market it,

just help you be better, you know, throughout the many cycles that a good creative work takes. Totally agree. So I want to dig into a little bit of your books and your writing because when I think about, you know, writing books not only do like the titles of your books themselves, I reference as just useful on their own and incredibly powerful. I've used your most recent book, Useful, Not True, in so many cocktail conversations that it's a little embarrassing, but each of your chapters gets distilled down into a sort of almost poetic,

not almost, a poetic brevity that I am both very impressed by and aspire to. What does that process look like for you? And how do you, you know, I can't even imagine how many iterations that would take for me to do it. I don't know what that looks like for you as your writing process. I'd love to just sort of dig into that a little bit. Sure, and thank you for that. That's really the ultimate compliment. First, I have my private notebook

where I just dump out all of my thoughts I have to say on this subject, everything there is to say. And I'm trying to get at what I'm trying to say, but it's taking a long time. So eventually I get so sick of this giant jumble of thoughts that I reduce it to an outline. good old-fashioned high school outline. Ultimately,

I'm just trying to say these seven things. So then what I end up doing is I take those seven things and just post the seven things and I leave out all the other noise. I just post the outline with a few necessary filler words so that the outline makes sense.

And that's about it. The average chapter length in my books is 20 sentences. I counted. So they really are barely more than an outline of my thoughts. The notes go on for pages and pages and pages. But ultimately, I'd say, what I'm really just trying to say is this. And I might be pessimistic in assuming that people don't have time to hear 30 pages of ideas around this. So I reduce it to one page. It ultimately feels more considerate and gives me more of a pride in having put out something that is rock solid. Yeah.

Yeah. No, it's amazing. And I think about this stuff now, I think there's this interesting shift that's happening, right? Because a lot of times people writing a lot in detail was a sign of, you know, weight and significance and I wrote all of this stuff. And, you know, anybody that's read an academic paper knows it's just like a lot of jargon and a lot of nonsense to sound important. And this was a, it's a signaling tool, right? It's a signaling tool that, hey, I've done my research. I've put the thing in. This is a big deal. Like when you have a book that's got some weight to it, you know,

people think, oh, okay, well, that's a serious book. Or if it was just, you could say the same thing in a little book, I think there was a, there's a social norm around this that I think is a, is many ways mistaken, but nowadays with what AI has been able to do to sort of, you know, it can generate mountains of text from an outline quite easily. It's not a signaling tool at all. And most people are never going to read those mountains of text. Just going to put it back into AI to turn it back into the same outline. So I feel like you're skipping a lot of steps with your writing here that I think is going to become more the norm. Or we're just going to have a bunch of AI's, you know, both expanding and distilling the same thing to get back to what you should have done in the first

place. Right. I had a publisher in Spain that was asking if they could do a Spanish translation of my books. I think because they had seen my public outreach and they said, wow, this guy's getting some good coverage. Let's look into publishing his books. So they got a copy of my books and they said, these are too short. We can't put these onto shelves. They're only 80 pages. And I wondered how much of the norm of creating a 300-page nonfiction book might be coming pressure from the publisher saying we need it to be this width so it can fit onto the shelves. Yeah, I think that's right. I think there's the norms around what goes onto the shelf, what people feel that it's worth spending $20 on or whatever the kind of minimum economic viable thing is, right? The paper into extra paper

doesn't cost that much, but getting a book onto a shelf costs a certain amount. And so, So people will build fluff into it to begin with. I mean, I was even, yeah, go ahead. Well, let's not forget the aspect of your self-satisfaction at having simplified your thoughts to the point where they're small enough that you can remember them. It's a joy to be able to recite to somebody an entire chapter of your book from memory because it's only 20 sentences. So there's some chapters that when I'm trying to explain a point, I'll say, you know, let me tell you a story.

And I can tell them the story because like Aesop's fable, it's just this long, it's so short. I can memorize it. There's a peace and clarity of mind that comes from simplifying your own thoughts that much, even if it's just done privately. I'm talking about even if you're processing your last breakup and you've got a jumble of thoughts about it. And this is just in your private diary. You have no intention of being an author, but you're listening to this podcast. It's a wonderful joy that comes from simplifying your thoughts down to something that you can fit into a little nutshell and keep in your pocket as a memory of why this thing happened or what lesson you learned from that. The smaller and simpler you can make them, the better they feel to yourself.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's the main reason I started writing in the first place and why I enjoy the process of writing books for the most part. Sometimes it's really painful, but for the most part, is that that's how I am able to think clearly, right? I will often start exactly as you did with a giant jumble of things and ideas and blah, blah, blah. And then I realize then I look at that. That's like, that's actually not clear. Like, I actually thought I understood this thing and I really don't because I don't have it in a way that's clear that I could communicate to others. And so the process of refining that writing, to get to the point where I can communicate that clearly to an audience, which is somebody else, is the process of refining my own thinking. And while I'm not as a, you know, I can't quite get it to the length that you have, I do think that that, it's valuable. And I mean, there's a lot of research now that backs this for,

even again, for people that are not interested in writing books or anything like that, that process of journaling and going over the same thing, even especially traumatic events and like journaling on that same event for multiple days in a row as it gets more and more concise in your recollection of it, you are able to process the emotional charge of it and has some pretty amazing benefits for your own mental well-being as well as kind of understanding and growth. Yeah, they say this is the benefit of talking to someone else, whether it's a friend or a therapist or even group therapy.

Let's actually look at group therapy as a more extreme version. If you're in a room with 10 people and you're all there for two hours on a Thursday night, each person only has a few minutes to speak. You can't take that whole two hours to yourself. You've got to think about this thing that's upsetting you and think about how to express it to the group in three minutes. And that very act of simplifying for the sake of communication helps you think of this jumbled thing,

previously jumbled thing in a simpler way that makes you feel better through trying to express it to others. Yeah, I love that. And I think I'm going to go back to your analogy of the kind of fun house, blubble-blub mirrors, right? Like, I think that that's important. And actually, I've used, I've used this analogy in the past, I think when it comes to our own psyche and our own consciousness and our own experience of things, like we, we're so immersed in it. We can't see it clearly, right? We just, we just are experiencing it and it's happening all the time. And we need some mechanism to reflect it back upon ourselves in order to be able to process it. And I think there are

multiple tools of ones that we've talked about here, right? So one can be, you know, writing and journaling and like kind of reflecting. And one of the things I've loved about my journaling process, I use a, I've used the day one app now for quite a while. And it does this really cool thing where on each day that you do your journaling, it'll also say, on this day button, which will go back to every previous year, what did I journal on that day? It makes it really easy to surface that. And so I've been able to find patterns in my thinking where I think that the thing I'm facing is because this situation is unique and a problem and I'm dealing with it. And I look back and I'm like, oh, this has happened so many times. This is clearly a thing I'm creating and a thing that I'm

doing. Right. And so it helped me my own journaling and reflecting through my own Fun House mirror over time helped. Or as you said, therapy and being able to talk to other humans, whether it be close friends or therapists or whatever. Like they have their own weird distortions, but it still gives you another view on yourself. And I think even, you know, fiction and stories and music and other like creative medias, even, you know, game worlds and whatever that I can see other personas and other stories that get reflected through, through me also, right? When I make a game and I create characters in that game, I try to create different

personas and, you know, kind of iconic, psychographic profiles, if you will, that will that will appear in different characters so people can see themselves in those aspects. Or if you're playing a role playing game like Dungeons and Dragons is even more, more obvious that you're taking on these different roles that in essence or a part of yourself you don't really look at. I think finding these different tools to create, even though none of them are perfect, they're all funhouse mirrors to reflect back on who you are and what you're experiencing. I think it's a really powerful tool that all these different creative arts can potentially provide. I love that. I want to dig in because we've referenced useful, not true,

and I think your other book, How to Live, both speak to this idea. And I'll just give my fun house mirror reflection of it. And we can bounce off of that. which is this, that there are many contradictory truths about the world. There are many different perspectives that one can take. And the phrase I like to use is lenses that you can choose to look at on the world. And that we as a society typically are obsessed with being right, that this is the right way and this is not the right way. And that what I got from your books is that that's not,

that in fact, what we're trying to do is adopt these different frames, these different views that make our lives better that are useful. It doesn't matter whether they're true in some absolute sense, but that I can adopt this. And the way I think that skillful living comes from being able to fluidly move from one to another, that I can jump from one to the next when I need to and not worry so much about this is the answer, but this is the thing that can help drive me forward. And so I'll let you reflect back on my weird reflection on your things.

But I found it to be a really powerful point that I'd love to linger on a little bit. Thanks. Yeah. It's been the focus of most of the last six years, for me. I spent four years writing that book called How to Live, and then two years writing Useful Not True. And the two go together really well. In hindsight, I found out that Useful Not True, the book was like a prequel to my book called How to Live. Because How to Live, I just put out into the world with no explanation. It's 27 chapters that are very opinionated saying,

here's how to live, but every chapter disagrees with every other chapter. I put it out into the world that it was an unusual book that some people got it, some people didn't. And then I put out Useful Not True, which was a book of short fables that explain a certain mindset of, seeing everything is just different lenses,

unless it's an actual concrete, observable fact that a non-human entity, whether animal or machine, could observe it and agree, if it's not that empirical and observable, then it's just a lens, as you say. It's one way of looking at it. It's not the only way of looking at it.

Therefore, we can't say it's absolutely true. So I'd say at the very first page of the book, when I'd say useful, not true, the word true for the rest of this book, when I say true, I mean necessarily, absolutely empirically, observably true, for everyone everywhere always. If it doesn't pass that qualification,

I'm going to say it's not true, which means not necessarily, absolutely, observably, empirically true for everyone everywhere always. It doesn't necessarily mean it's false, but it just opens up your mind. As soon as you hear the phrase, not necessarily true,

you think, well, what else could be true? Or how else could I see this? And I think it's a beautiful tool to use an everyday life when you catch yourself saying, this situation sucks, or I'm stuck, or that was a disaster, or even I am a winner, I'm great at everything I do. Every day, there are these little microsituations or major situations that you, that you're you declare with judgment to be absolutely the way it is. And you have to realize that that's just one lens.

And there are other ways to see it that could be more useful, more helpful, and ultimately better at helping you take the actions you need to take. Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of that is, that's what it comes down to, right? What's going to help you to live that, you know, more fulfilled life, to do the things that you want to do more so than the like, yes, this is right or this is wrong. I found there was a book I read a while ago called Mastering Your Hidden Self that presented this really well to me. Like I used to be, you know, I come from a very analytical mindset background. A lot of our audience

is going to be like this here too, right? If you're a gamer and you're competitive and you're in the space, you know, just it's a very analytical step-by-step thing. And it made me a very, let's say, anti-religious, anti-veny, anything that was like, more in the woo-woo side of things, right? I was very rigorous. If I can't validate it in a very rigorous experiment, it's not true. And it's not, and it's silly. And that book kind of presented this idea.

I was like, look, I'm going to say things that just for now, just try them on, see if they help you. Don't care if they're true or false. Don't care if it's like what's going on. Just if you do this thing, your life will be better and just run it as an experiment in your life. And that just really shifted my mindset. And your book kind of brought that back and I think articulated it in a better way.

it's just like try on some different like behaving as ifs right that can make your life a better thing and that you know the entrepreneur right and somebody that's out there like it's most businesses fail most people who try to become a musician or a game designer or whatever don't make it but if you believe that you are one of the people that can make it and you believe you can learn and grow you are far more likely to actually be one of those people and so it's worth it to take on that belief right when I started a new business and I started a new project I have, it's almost a bizarre amnesia, willful ignorance that I take on of how hard it's going to be and how many challenges I'm going to face. I just focus on the, okay, yeah, of course I can do this. I know how to do this.

And that adoption of that belief gives me the power to move forward. And so it's a worthwhile, whether you want to call it a useful fiction or just a, you know, a frame that anything could be true, might as well take the one that empowers me. I found it to be just such a useful way to kind of go through life. And so I just wanted to kind of just hammer home that point. And again, obviously, I recommend people read your books for this. But I really appreciated the way that you were able to distill that down. And hopefully people listening will find that helpful. Thanks.

It makes your brain a more fun place to be in as well when you daydream about other ways things could be. even as simple as taking something and reversing it. Like when somebody emails me, for example, I have this open inbox. I might as well tell your audience now. I love getting emails from strangers. I answer every single email I get. It's my favorite hour of the day.

I put aside an hour every day to answer every single email that comes in. And some people share their life's problems with me. I'll say, hi, Derek. You don't know me, but I've read your book and liked it. I don't know what to do with my life. There's nothing I love doing. How should I know what to do if there's nothing I love doing?

And I'll say, well, what do you hate not doing? We could do this in any aspect of life. It's just fun in your own brain to take something you're stuck on and flip it. Reverse it. Reverse it. Take it from a side angle. I heard somebody describe somebody in the past saying he died penniless, and it was said as a sad thing. And I thought, well, wait, isn't that a good thing?

He died penniless, that's it. Every last penny was spent and used. Who wants to die rich? No, die penniless. Wouldn't that be the goal? Why is that said as a bad thing? You could do that in your business. The goal here is to make the most money, is it?

Maybe the goal is to share the most money. Maybe the goal is to give the most so that our business is just barely profitable and gets me just what I need to be happy. And therefore is the most generous it can be. Maybe that's a measure of success. Maybe business profitability is like the length of sleeves on a shirt. It's not that the longer the sleeves the better. Maybe there's just a right size. You want the profitability to be right here.

No more. Any more than that would be too much profitability. There are different ways to think about anything. And it just makes your brain a more fun place to be in if you enjoy exploring different ways to think of these things. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And I've talked about this before on the podcast and had a previous guest that gave me the idea. But going through an assumptions challenging exercise is something I do with my team,

once a quarter, right? And just like literally just take anything that's going on in your life and list out all of the fundamental assumptions around it. Even things as simple as, you know, we need to make profit or I'm writing a book that's going to be printed in paper or whatever the things are, like the very basic fundamentals and then go through the process of challenging and reversing each one of those. And sometimes it doesn't go anywhere, right? Sometimes the idea doesn't, you know, okay, that doesn't make sense. But 100% of the time when I've dedicated an hour to this exercise, I have come up with something that has been super powerful and useful that has shifted the way we're going to move forward as a company.

And so I think this idea of just like, you know, just flip it and reverse it is a simple little hack that can make your life both more fun and give you some useful insights. So I love that as a specific example of how to play with ideas. Justin, have you written about that this? I have I have talked about on the podcast. I don't know if I've actually written about it. So that's a worthwhile thing to add in to something in the future. You should really share that more widely. That sounds really, really, really helpful.

I hadn't heard of that before. I really like that a lot. All right. Great. Well, see. Look at that. Getting some extra value. Another chapter in my book.

I'm going to try to keep it not as short as yours, but I'm trying to keep it pretty short. Wait, by the way, as long as we're talking about it, hold on. As long as we're changing the subject anyway, Neil Strauss, I think is the best writer alive. And that's a high compliment because it's reflected in the actions that I've noticed over the last 20 years. There have been only three books of the 450 books I've read in the last 20 years. There are only three books that when reading it, I just could not stop. And I stayed up till sunrise to finish it in a single reading. And looking back, I named all three of those books and realized, oh, my God, all three of them are written by Neil fucking Strauss.

Yeah. I think Neil Strauss is the best writer alive. Yep. No, and that's why, yeah, it was a real, like, privilege to get to work with him on this book. And he forced me to make very hard decisions that made my book a lot better. And I think he's just, yeah, I mean, it's an incredible part of the craft. And I had different people write differently. He's not writing short books like you are, but he is writing and weaving together a narrative and taking you into a story that has these core truths in it that I found, yeah, like you, found very powerful. and drew me to his work.

So, yeah, highly recommend it. What were the three books, if you don't mind my asking? Truth, Emergency, and I don't remember what the third one is right now. I haven't thought about it in a while. But yeah, Emergency was the first one that I ever read by him. And then he did his one called The Truth, and I think I read one in between that, yeah, all three of them, I just couldn't stop. Yeah, yeah. And then it's one of these things where it speaks to your weirdness.

Right. Tying it back to the earlier things, right? The way that Neil dove into these books and the ones we're referencing here, like, you know, emergency is like this almost a little crazy like doom prepping, like being ready for anything thing, which speaks to his own inner anxiety. And the truth is about the relationship challenges he's faced from, you know, going through all of these journeys himself. And then to reveal that in the way that he does is part of what makes it resonant. And, you know, the, in gaming and some of the other people who've written about games that have had on the podcast, Raft Costa wrote a theory of fun, which may be one of the most popular game design books out there. And it's literally got pictures on every other page that he drew. And it's a short book that you could easily go through. Anyone can access. It talks about where the idea of fun comes from from games. Whereas another thing that was another book that was more,

there's a book called The Art of Lenses, which is The Art of Game Design, a book of lenses by Jesse Schell, who was also a guest on this podcast, is much more a lot like what we're talking about, where it's a bunch of different chapters that are all totally different ways to look at the game, whether that be through the graphics and through the interaction systems or through the team and through the community and all the different aspects. And you could pick which one you want to use and each one that has its own valid perspective.

Each speaks to that person and they are a particular way and weird way of looking at the world. And so I think good writing and good creating. I think the same would be true from great musicians. The same is true. I think in game design where there's a part of your weirdness and your unique thing has to come through for it to resonate in a deep way. Love it. Awesome. Okay.

Well, we hit most of the things I wanted to make sure I 100% hit when I talk to you. And so I'm happy to bounce around to a couple other topics here. I'm curious if there's anything that has come up for you in this process, in this discussion that you would love to dig into or that we haven't covered, because otherwise I'll jump to a couple more and then we can wrap it up. You mentioned something in passing that I think is really profound. which is to judge ideas not by whether the idea is right or wrong, but if this idea is enabled, embodied,

if I follow this idea, what action does it create? I think that's a better way of judging ideas than whether the idea itself is right or wrong. So what action does this idea create? If this idea is true, then what are the, actions that follow and are those the actions you want? Does the idea create the actions? Judging ideas only by their actions, I think is profound and important. Yeah, I appreciate that reflection. And as another version of this, which is I like,

which is, you know, tell charitable stories, which is, right, we, in any given situation, we can choose to tell any story we want that would, within that space, right? We'll use a simple example, right? Somebody cuts you off in traffic, right? One story is, that guy's an asshole. What the hell was he doing? He did that on purpose. And that's one story. And the result of that story is you're going to get angry. You might honk your horn. You might drive more recklessly. Right, that's going to fall from that story. Or you could tell a story that, oh, man, they probably didn't even see me and they just totally missed it. Or a story that, oh, man, they must be in some kind of emergency. Like, they really have something seriously important or dangerous or something going on, right? You don't know. Any one of those

stories you could choose to adopt. But how you feel and what you do coming out of that story is radically different, right? And so if you have that power and you have that choice to author the story you want, then, you know, pick the one that's going to make your life, you know, your emotional state better, your actions better. And, you know, obviously somebody cutting off in traffic is a trivial example, but the same is like when your partner or your spouse does something that annoys you or miss it forgets to do something that they said they were going to do or does whatever, right?

How you choose to adopt that story and just recognize that you have the power to do so has been one of the most profound changes in my personal life, my business life, like everything, that ideas and stories and the impact that they have downstream on your emotions, your actions, how you show up in the world may be the most powerful thing that we have available in terms of the control we have in our environment and how we become a part of the world. I love that. It's just such a creative approach to life to be able to, to be able to

switch out your lenses. Yeah, yeah, I love it. And I think that if I'm going to kind of bring this home a bit, one of the things that's always attracted to me, to you is your willingness to kind of live deliberately, right, to be able to make, be willing to sort of choose your path and, and be conscious about it, even if your path is going great, that you will make deliberate choices to shake up the bog board and shift things because you want to make sure that you're not falling into a rut and falling into this pattern. And I guess I'd love to just

like kind of close on that. Like how can people that maybe heard all this stuff and are now like, yeah, there's something here. I really want to be able to shift this. But most likely when they end this podcast and they stop, they're going to fall back into the regular patterns, right? And it's not disparaging any particular listener right now. It's all of us, right? The falling back into the patterns, falling back to the routines is just the norm and the default. What would you say to those people to say, not just listen to this, but to be able to take action and sort of integrate this into a more deliberate life?

First, you have the reflection where you think, what do I really want? What's the real point? What am I really going for? And then there's usually a direct line there. We often take these arched lines around getting what we really want. ultimately I just want a peaceful life. So therefore I'm going to have to work really hard and make a lot of money

so that I can end up having just a peaceful life. Well, maybe there are decisions that will bring you in a straight line to what you want instead. And this could go for mindsets. I want to be a more creative thinker. I want to have a more unusual perspective on the world. I don't want to just be like all of my peers that see everything the same way and do everything the same way. And if that's true, then through reflection you can think of some action that could get you what you want. And the action might shock you at first when you come up with it.

You'll probably brainstorm 20 different things. And one of them may make you go, I can't do that. I can't just quit or I can't just declare this to be so. I can't just make this happen. But usually it's just a five-minute action that you can do right now that will put you on that path. And so I try to always do that little five-minute action in the moment when I'm daydreaming and journaling and realizing that that action would be the right thing to do. do to get me the outcome that I've realized I want. No matter how unusual that action is, if I feel congruent that that would get me where I'm going, I'll take at least the first step

in that action right away. So I smiled when you brought up this subject because we're recording this nine days or ten days before Easter. And so it's Easter holidays here where the school is going to be off for two weeks. I live in New Zealand. So here it's autumn, is it? Yeah. So this is the autumn school holidays where they've got two weeks off. And I was just yesterday morning thinking, well, I will just have two peaceful weeks of holiday here with my boy. And it's nice weather here in April. We'll have a good time. We'll have a good time. And as I was thinking about the world, and especially as we're the trade war is ramping up right now, I was thinking about Americans not understanding China's point of view or seeing the world from a Chinese point of view. And I thought, I really wish more people could see the world from the opposite point of view,

or at least the U.S. and China as two superpowers. I wish they could go swap places and live in each other. shoes for a while. I think that would be really important. And I thought, hmm, just curious. What is a flight from Wellington to Chen Zhen cost right now?

Hmm. That kind of sounds fun. So last night, I booked the flight and I leave at 6 a.m. tomorrow. Amazing. I'm going to China for two and a half weeks. even though the easy choice would have been to just stay here,

the weather's nice, it's holidays, whatever, but by the way, to be clear, my boy was all in favor of it. This was not a selfish decision. So tomorrow morning, 6 a.m. flying to China for two and a half weeks during this trade war as just yet another way of trying to see another point of view. And it just felt congruently like the right thing to do. But the point is, the rest of the trip will, happen later. It was just that little, to answer your question, it was that little tiny action

in the moment, as I realized, hmm, that would be the right action to do. It's just a couple clicks, just took a couple minutes, to set it in action. And now everything else will follow through. Yes, I have to get to the airport and do the flight and get a hotel. That comes later, but I initiated it in that moment. And any of us have our own version of that, whether it's quitting your job, signing up for the gym, proposing to your girlfriend, having your last cigarette. You know, there's always, everybody's got their versions of this,

where there's an action that you can take that just starts you on that path, moving to a new place, filling out an application, a resident visa for New Zealand. You just go to the Immigration New Zealand website, and you just initiate. You start the form, you fill it out.

It'll take nine months of paperwork. They'll get back to you, but you started the process. I try to always leap in that moment of inspiration. I love that so much. All right. So those listening, what five-minute action could shortcut you to the thing that you really want? That is a beautiful place to leave it. Derek, I have looked forward to this for so long, and it has more than delivered. I'm so grateful we got to have this conversation. I believe that you tease that you love answering emails, but I don't remember if you actually gave the email that people could send. Oh, it's right. If you go to my website. So my website is sivee.r.r. It's my name with a dot in it. S-I-V-E-R-S. I'm not on any social media. I don't like the noise. just go to my website. Right there, there's a big link that says, contact me. It goes right to me. My eyes only. I answer every single one and I love it. Anybody listening, please say hello, even if you're just saying, hey, dude, liked the podcast. Hi. You don't have to ask me a question. Just say hi. I enjoy it. I like the connections.

Awesome. I encourage everyone to do it because it was my outreach that led to this very podcast, so I can validate that this does in fact work. Our first email from 2019, you sent me the email the first time. I saw it again right before we recorded today. So that's how we met. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being you, for doing everything that you've done. It's had a massive and profound impact on my life. I know that this conversation is going to have an impact on a lot of my audience. And I can't wait to hear how the China trip goes. So thanks so much. And I'm sure we'll be chatting again soon. Thanks, Justin. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you want to support the podcast, please rate, comment, and share on your favorite podcast platforms, such as iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever device you're listening on. Listen to reviews and shares make a huge difference and help us grow this community and will allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews, along with my 20 years of experience

in the game industry, and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this podcast. Think like a game designer. In it, I give step-by-step instructions on how to apply the lessons from these great designers and bring your own games to life. If you think you might be interested, you can check out the book at think like a game designer.com or wherever find books are sold.