Derek Sivers podcast

I used to scoff at those people who had panic attacks. “The cake is late! Oh no! I’m freaking out! I can’t breathe!” Ridiculous. Hysterical. Over-reacting. I was learning scuba diving , and went on my first practice dive. While I was 15 meters underwater, I felt a sudden need to get out of there. My heart raced. Alarms in my brain. My body filled with terror. I raced up to the surface and pulled o...

My advice to anyone who writes: Try writing one sentence per line. I’ve been doing it for twenty years, and it improved my writing more than anything else. New sentence? Hit [Enter]. New line. Not publishing one sentence per line, no. Write like this for your eyes only. HTML or Markdown combine separate lines into one paragraph. Why is it so useful? It helps you judge each sentence on its own. We...

Growing up in America, I didn’t know much about other cultures. When I was 25, my band got some gigs in Europe — my first time there. It was 1995. The European Union was new. I heard a street performer in Copenhagen tell this joke: “The EU will be a success if … the British are the police the French are the chefs the Italians are the lovers and the whole thing is organized by the Germans.” “The EU...

My Sivers ancestors came from Grantham, Lincolnshire, England on a boat to America in 1849. The boat crashed on rocks in the Irish sea, caught fire in the Atlantic Ocean, got pushed off course repeatedly by storms, and finally landed in New Orleans after two months. New Orleans was overcome with cholera, so they hopped a steam boat up the Mississippi River to St. Louis. Cholera killed nine passeng...

I was living on the beach in Santa Monica, California, and life was perfect. I was in paradise, and deeply happy. Friends wanted to travel, but I had no interest. I had already lived a few years each in New York City, Boston, Chicago, Portland, and San Francisco. Santa Monica was perfect. I loved the weather, the people, the lifestyle, the business opportunities, and everything. It was the best pl...

Here’s how to live: Balance everything. All bad things in life come from extremes. Too much of this. Too little of that. When we lack balance, we’re upset. Over-worked, under-loved, over-eating, under-sleeping. Focused on wealth, but ignoring health. Focused on the present, but ignoring the future. Even positive traits, when taken too far, become negative. Like when someone is generous to a fault,...

Here’s how to live: Make change. Change the world as much as you can. All your learning and thinking is wasted if you don’t take action. People try to explain the world, but the real point is to change the world. If you go through life without changing anything, what have you done? Just observed?! The world doesn’t need more audience. The world needs changing. What’s broken needs fixing. What’s OK...

Here’s how to live: Make a million mistakes. You learn best from your mistakes. This is true. So you should deliberately make as many mistakes as possible. Try absolutely everything, all the time, expecting everything to fail. Just make sure that you capture the lessons from each experience. And never make the same mistake twice. You’ll be extremely experienced. You’ll get incredibly smart. You’ll...

Here’s how to live: Don’t die. There’s only one law of nature: if you survive, you win. Be paranoid. Avoid failure to survive. For something to succeed, everything needs to go right. For something to fail, only one thing needs to go wrong. Don’t try to be more right. Just be less wrong. Avoiding failure leads to success. The winner is usually the one who makes the least mistakes. This is true in i...

Here’s how to live: Create. The most valuable real estate in the world is the graveyard. There lie millions of half-written books, ideas never launched, and talents never developed. Most people die with everything still inside of them. The way to live is to create. Die empty. Get every idea out of your head and into reality. Calling yourself creative doesn’t make it true. All that matters is what...

Here’s how to live: Love. Not love, the feeling, but love the active verb. It’s not something that happens to you. It’s something you do. You choose to love something or someone. You can love anything or anyone you decide to love. Love is a combination of attention, appreciation, and empathy. To love something, first you have to connect with it. Give it your full attention. Deliberately appreciate...

Here’s how to live: Reinvent yourself regularly. People say everything is connected. They’re wrong. Everything is disconnected. There is no line between moments in time. Something happened. Something else happened. People love stories, so they connect two events, calling them cause and effect. But the connection is fiction. It’s a hard fiction to escape. “My parents did that, so that’s why I did t...

Here’s how to live: Get rich. Suspend judgment. Making money isn’t evil, greedy, shallow, or vain. Money isn’t your worth as a human being, or a substitute for love. But don’t pretend it doesn’t matter. Money can represent freedom, safety, experience, generosity, attractiveness, power, or whatever you want. But really, money is as neutral as math. Because it’s neutral, people have projected all ki...

Here’s how to live: for others. Focusing on yourself seems smarter and easier, but it’s short-sighted. It’s ignoring the huge benefit of cooperation. Compare survival strategies. You could prepare for disaster by stocking food and ammunition in a bunker by yourself. But what if, instead: You made yourself an integral member of your community. You built a reputation of being helpful and generous. A...

Here’s how to live: Prepare for the worst. Things are going to get harder. The future will test your strength. So far, you’ve lived in a time of prosperity. You haven’t experienced massive devastation, but you probably will. It’ll be harder to make money. It’ll be harder to be happy. Much of what you love now will be gone. You’ll look back at this year as one of the easiest you ever had. You’ll ge...

Here’s how to live: Laugh at life. A gorilla, speaking with sign language, makes a joke. We’re amazed. She’s showing the fullest expression of a soul. But when a person is humorless, it’s the opposite. They’ve lost the point of life. A recovering hospital patient makes a joke. We’re relieved. Not just their body, but their soul is alive. But when a previously jovial patient loses their humor, we’r...

Here’s how to live: Follow the great book. You know what your great book is. Whether the Bible, Tanakh, Upanishads, Quran, Think and Grow Rich, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, or another, follow it diligently. Your book is wiser than you. It’s describing natural law — the way our world works. It’s not just someone’s opinion. It has the definitive answers to the choices you’re confronted w...

Here’s how to live: Learn. Learning is underrated. People wonder why they’re not living their ideal life. Maybe they never learned how. You get healthy by learning healthy habits. You get wealthy by learning valuable skills. You build a great interpersonal life by learning people skills. Most misery comes from not learning these things. The biggest obstacle to learning is assuming you already know...

Here’s how to live: Value only what has endured. The longer something lasts, the longer it will probably last. Something that’s been around for a year will probably be around for another year. Something that’s been around for fifty years will probably be around for another fifty years. Only the strong survive, so what’s still here after decades is proven to be well-made and well-loved. The longer...

Here’s how to live: Chase the future. Live in the world of tomorrow. Surround yourself only with what’s brand new and upcoming. That’s where life is made. It’s the most optimistic environment, full of hope and promises. It’s the smartest way to live. You’re moving forward in time, so you should watch where you’re headed. Go where things are going. It’s the most exciting way to live. Every day will...

Here’s how to live: Be a famous pioneer. Nobody had ever run a mile in under four minutes. It seemed impossible. But one day, Roger Bannister did it, and the news spread worldwide. Over the next two years, thirty-seven people also did it. This is the power of the pioneer: To enable the impossible. To open a new world of possibility. To show others that they can do it too, and take it even further....

Here’s how to live: Do whatever you want now. The past? That’s what we call our memories. The future? That’s what we call our imagination. Neither exists outside of your mind. The only real time is this moment. So live accordingly. Whatever benefits you right now is the right choice. You know immediately whether you like something or not. But if someone asks why, you start making up reasons. The t...

Here’s how to live: Pursue pain. Everything good comes from some kind of pain. Muscle fatigue makes you healthy and strong. The pain of practice leads to mastery. Difficult conversations save your relationships. But if you avoid pain, you avoid improvement. Avoid embarrassment, and you avoid success. Avoid risk, and you avoid reward. Anyone can be their best when things are going well. But when th...

Here’s how to live: Let randomness rule. We think we see patterns and causes. Really there are none. We think events are meaningful. Really they’re just coincidence. We’re not used to the logic of probability. Life is more random than it seems. Identical twins were separated at birth and raised on opposite sides of the world. They met later in life, and found that they had freakishly identical pre...

Here’s how to live: Master something. Be a monomaniac on a mission to be truly great at something difficult. Pick one thing and spend the rest of your life getting deeper into it. Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status. Striv...