Derek Sivers podcast

Being a songwriter is weird. You dig deep inside yourself. You extract and explain your emotions. Then you broadcast your innermost feelings to the biggest possible audience. It’s a life that demands a deep focus on yourself. It’s all you, you, you. It’s a one-way road that goes from inside of you out to the audience. Because of this, it’s hard for you to turn that off, switch directions, and just...

Don’t confuse the word “marketing” with advertising, announcing, spamming, or giving away branded crap. Really, “marketing” just means being considerate. Marketing means making it easy for people to notice you, relate to you, remember you, and tell their friends about you. Marketing means listening for what people need, and creating something surprisingly tailored for them. Marketing means getting...

I knew a music publicist in New York City when she was at the peak of her success. A few of her clients had hits, so everyone wanted to work with her. She was flooded with new music. Here’s how she dealt with the flood: Whenever someone sent their music, it would go into an inbox. That inbox was completely ignored. Whenever someone contacted her to follow-up the first time, to ask if she’d receive...

I once went without food for ten days, and that was fine. But the two things I can’t do without for long are solitude and silence. (Freedom from people and their noises.) I was on a holiday in Ireland with seven members of my family, all packed into a van, exploring the country. A week after they left, I had to be at a conference in Dublin. So in-between those two events, I wanted nothing but soli...

Three true stories: In 1992, in Tokyo, I dated a girl named Masako. After our month together, she moved to London. We lost touch. In 2008, I was in London for a few days. I wondered if Masako still lived there, sixteen years later. A minute later, she walked by. “Masako!” “Derek?!” In 1993, I had a pen-pal from Argentina named Lucia. She was studying Norwegian and planned to move to Oslo, Norway,...

Since my son was born five years ago, I’ve spent at least thirty hours a week with him, just one-on-one, giving him my full attention. But I’ve never written about parenting before because it’s a touchy subject — too easily misunderstood. So why am I writing about it today? Because I realized that the parenting things I do for him are also for myself. And that’s an idea worth sharing. Here are the...

I told my old coach that I really wanted to start my new company. He said, “No, you don’t.” I said, “Yes, I do! This is really important to me!” He said, “No, it’s not. Saying it doesn’t make it true.” I said, “You can’t ignore what I’m saying. I know myself well. I’m telling you what’s important to me.” He said, “Yes, I can ignore what you’re saying and just look at your actions. Our actions alwa...

Imagine the Olympics, where you have the three winners of a race standing on the podium: the gold, the silver, and the bronze. Imagine what it’s like to be the silver medalist. If you’d been just one second faster, you could have won the gold! Damn! So close! Damn damn damn! Full of envy, you’d keep comparing yourself to the gold winner. Now imagine what it’s like to be the bronze medalist. If you...

Art is useless by definition. If it was useful, it would be a tool. For the past twenty years, I was obsessed with being useful. That one measure drove all of my daily decisions: “How can I be the most useful to the most people today?” That question served me well but had its downsides. It kept me from playing and doing things just for me. It’s no coincidence that I stopped making music twenty yea...

Personal change needs some space to happen. To bring something new into your life, you need somewhere to put it. If your current habits are filling your day, where are these new habits supposed to go? The English word “quit” comes from old French, meaning “to free” or “to release”. We know about quitting something that’s bad for you, or something you hate. But what about quitting something you lov...

For the past ten years, I’ve answered up to two hundred emails per day. I sit alone in my little office for hours, engaging with everyone’s stories and questions for a few minutes each. Then when friends want to hang out with me, I say I need some me-time first. They wonder why, since I’ve been alone all day, so I explain how I’ve actually been very social and connected with so many people. I like...

People with a well-paying job ask my advice because they want to quit to become full-time artists. But full-time artists ask my advice because they’re finding it impossible to make money. (Let’s define “art” as anything you do for expression, even just blogging or whatever.) For both of them, I prescribe the lifestyle of the happiest people I know: Have a well-paying job. Seriously pursue your art...

Motivation is delicate. When you notice your motivation fading, you have to seek out the subtle cause. A simple tweak can make all the difference between achieving something or not. An hour outside my city, there’s a little mountain range. The other side is gorgeous. But the road that crosses the mountains is very twisted, with sharp turns every few seconds. The first two times I drove across, my...

It’s crucial to know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Most people don’t know. They just go with the flow. Social norms are powerful. The inputs that influence you are powerful. A great talk, book, or video can instantly change how you think. But on your death bed, you don’t want that horrible regret, feeling like you spent your life pursuing what someone said you should want, instead of what yo...

When a friend says something interesting to me, I usually don’t have a reaction until much later. When someone asks me a deep question, I say, “Hmm. I don’t know.” The next day, I have an answer. I’m a disappointing person to try to debate or attack. I just have nothing to say in the moment, except maybe, “Good point.” Then a few days later, after thinking about it a lot, I have a response. This p...

Until yesterday, I called myself an entrepreneur. Now, I don’t. It’s been years since I started a company, so I can’t keep using that title. Someone who played football in high school can’t call himself an athlete forever. Someone who did something successful long ago can’t keep calling himself a success. You have to keep earning it. Holding on to an old title gives you satisfaction without action...

Like everyone, I get those times when I’m unmotivated to do anything. Brain dead. No energy. Everything feels like, “Why bother? What’s the point?” But I’ve finally figured out what to do with those times. Like everyone, I have a list of boring chores that need to be done but that I’ve been putting off for years. I never do them because I’m always more excited about something else. During my last...

All the best, happiest, and most creatively productive times in my life have something in common: being disconnected. No internet. No TV. No phone. No people. Long uninterrupted solitude. When I was twenty-two, I quit my job and spent five months alone in a house on a remote part of the Oregon coast. Practicing, writing, recording, exercising, and learning. No internet. No TV. No phone. No people....

“My two cents” is American slang for adding a small opinion or suggestion. An employee says to the boss, “I’ve been working for the past two weeks on this new design. What do you think?” The boss says, “Good job. Maybe just change the blue to gold, change the word ‘giant’ to ‘huge’, and get rid of the border. Other than that, it’s great!” Now, because the boss said so, the employee will have to ma...

I occasionally get a big vision for my future — a huge project that will take many months or years. Something exciting and very worth doing. I’ll do a bunch of research, make a bunch of plans, and feel like I’ve made a big decision on a new direction in life. Then a month later, I have a completely different vision. Something unrelated to the previous one. Something I’m more excited about. And the...

My advice and opinions may sound strange on their own. Do you know what musical counterpoint is? Underneath the main melody, you have a counter-melody that goes against it, and together they make harmony. This is different from harmonizing, where someone sings along with the melody at an interval. The counter-melody is a separate melody that could stand on its own, but is mainly there to complemen...

When you bake a cake, you need to do first things first. You need to get the ingredients before you turn on the oven. You need to bake it before you frost it and slice it. I meet a lot of people who want to start a business. Some don’t have an idea yet. I don’t understand this. It’s like wanting to wear a bandage when you don’t have a wound. Most have an idea but no customers. For them I always sa...

There are three things to consider when making life-size decisions: What makes you happy What’s smart — meaning long-term good for you What’s useful to others We have a tendency to forget one of these. For example: Smart and useful (but not happy) This is the stereotype of the strict parent who says, “You will go to the best school, get perfect grades, get a degree in law or medicine, and make lot...

Men say, “Women can never make up their minds.” But actually both men and women are equally indecisive. Women say, “Men think one thing but say another.” But actually both men and women are equally indirect. We think the differences between our group and another group are greater than they are. But the differences among men, and the differences among women, are much bigger than the differences bet...

Imagine that you hand someone your camera, and ask him to take a photo of you. He does, but when you look at the photo later, you notice that he took a photo of himself by mistake. Imagine you’ve got a big question like, “Should I quit my job and start my own company?” You go ask the advice of some successful people you respect. Because they can’t know everything about you and your unique situatio...