[Music] spending all your time filling it with regrets right that's not a useful use of your time should I do this or should I do that should I live here or should I live there should I take this job or that job the act of choosing one and wholeheartedly committing to it makes
your choice the best choice decide cut off make the best of it commit and that is your best choice and suddenly their face is huge on the screen they're not a special read They're not a different type they did the thing instead of watching TV and that's all the
difference it took just do the thing what's the worst thing that can happen [Music] right well hello everyone and welcome to another infinite Loops I am so excited for today because I have part two of my wonderful conversation with the inhibitable there Derek civer author I
mean I'd still need if if I had to go through everything that you are and do Derek it would probably eat up the first 15 minutes of the podcast but welcome back thank you and I love that for the listener these conversations can be uh two days apart or even minutes apart
depending on when you're listening but uh here we've had a month aart and and been around the world since then so good to be back that's right yes it's good to be back as well uh and so I was I was going over our last conversation and we left off when we were talking about uh you had made an
excellent point about people needing to Value uh the very idea of learning and of growing and and you referenced again as you had earlier in that conversation Michelangelo kind of vers picazo and we're not we're not saying that Michael Angelo had this idea but he's a good
example of his work you know it kind of stayed the same uh over his career and then of course Picasso who was continually iterating and moving on and I always think of his uh painting of bulls right Steve Jobs Steve Jobs used that at Apple as as the way here's how
you make the progress and and I find it really interesting and and so my my first question is is it is there a way Derek for us to instill in people who might just be like yeah no I'm good is there a way to instill no no no you're not good you you you really want to learn more you really
want to really want to change H I guess it has to start with a disatisfaction doesn't it um if you're not dissatisfied with the way things are then you see no reason to change I was thinking about that with my next book called useful not true which I've been stewing on for a year I've been
dabbling with the idea for a year and intentionally letting it sit and constantly learning more about it and going down the rabbit hole as we say but along the way I realized I had forgotten Point number zero of you know when I think of like okay here's the six main
points of the book I realized I had forgotten about Point number zero which is if you're not is satisfied with the way things are well then everything else is mood like you don't need any of this um it starts with this idea that you you want to be somewhere
else from where you are right now um you are here you want to be there whatever that might be uh mentally physically financially whatever it may be uh if you're completely satisfied with where you are then you just don't have any incentive to change do you no but you
know I I don't know many people like that um and I I I'm aware that there are a lot of people like that they're content right I often say that many people are sometimes just quite happy to come out and use the shrink WRA human OS that they get instilled at Birth and
they're just like yeah no I'm good I'm happy yep I buy into this Creed and I support this party and like to me and I this sounds unable maybe it is a little unable I kind of think of that type of person as an NPC right like well what what do you mean you're you're happy
with that don't you like don't you want to know at least how that came about but no huh you think that that there are a lot of folks who are just like yeah no I'm good I do it can maybe it's not a characteristic of the person but a a stage that people can be
in and maybe it can even be applied to different things that there might be times where um relationship wise let's that's a good example there are times in your life when you're very not satisfied with your relationship status uh and then there are other times when you are just satisfied so if
somebody were to present a book to you on uh whether it's how to improve your marriage or how to get laid that they're times when you would be very interested in that book and then there are other times in your life when you wouldn't okay so let's say it might also be like
that with um let's just say other aspects of your life there are times when you're looking to make a change and times when you're not and it doesn't mean that you don't want to make a change in any aspect of your life just but maybe not this aspect that
somebody's trying to sell you that's a really good point it kind of depends on where you find yourself in in SpaceTime right and I love the relationship uh example because you know that that your reticular activating system gets fired up and like all you
see is dating books or improve your marriage books right but but I wonder is there a difference between that kind of episodic curiosity or uh events specific or or domain specific type of curiosity as as you give the example of relationships um and uh just a person more like you
who is just so voraciously curious about everything what what about that that's the part that I'm more interested in is there a way that you see like I I personally would recommend what I would do is send people your books and say read these and and let me know what you
think um I like that plan let's just we'll just keep doing that we'll just send everybody my books yes that's what that's what the entire world should do that is the answer my books okay um the uh let me think about this for a second um brainstorming uh I I don't hear that term used much
anymore but uh this idea of coming up with another idea saying okay you've had that one idea now let's come up with another and so you come up with another idea and they say okay now you have two let's keep going even if you really like idea number three let's keep going past idea
number four and five like that's what we're doing here keep coming up with more um again I was thinking of this for my next book called useful not true is the key idea in the book it's like first disproving that very few things in life are absolutely necessarily
true but then the reason to do that is to force yourself to look at other perspectives to say this P this idea that I think of as just true this is right this is true is actually just one of many perspectives so let me force myself to consider some other
perspectives and that's where all the good stuff happens so yeah clearly this is my belief uh or my approach to life is to force myself to consider other perspectives but maybe like you said the um the Picasso bull example that that Steve Jobs celebrated Picasso's drawing of a bull
um maybe people just need to be shown examples like that to be shown that picoso didn't just have the perfect bull drawing in mind and then draw that bull to be shown that he screwed around and tried different approaches until he found one that he liked there is actually a movie
um I think it's called Uh LST the French word for the mystery de Picasso L de Picasso is yeah yeah I've seen that yeah I know that movie it was a documentary so a French filmmaker friend of his uh was allowed to set up a time-lapse camera in Picasso's Studio
and let it run all day or for two or three days as he drew uh or painted um and so you got to see the progression of initial lines then crossed out then drawn here then scribbled out replaced with this replaced with that and then you see the final drawing but you get to see the the
whole process along the way maybe people just need to see more often that that's the case with not just paintings but uh businesses and music and uh careers maybe people just need to see that uh the process more often they need to see the kitchen yeah I had a a guest George Mack
on and he had a he had a theory that was you can increase what he calls your surface area for luck by taking when you have like option A and option b he always picks the option where he feels he's going to have the highest surface area for luck happening um and and one of the things
uh before we started recording you were telling me about speaking at a conference and and then ultimately having this fantastic conversation with uh uh the same group of people over the time in in the in the conference and that's a great example of you you kind
of do it naturally right so you you went and and then that presented itself and uh I like that idea but I wonder also because I I was I wanted to talk a lot about uh useful but not true um I just finished a book on William Blake it was called William Blake uh verse the world
and um he he is such an interesting cat because he was a Mystic and like many people if you read contemporary people who were writing about him when he was still alive like when they would meet him they would one guy wrote in his journal like I don't know whether I just
met a genius or a Madman or maybe both because Blake Blake had this idea that you had to understand things kind of through their opposition and he had what he called you know First Vision second Vision third vision and and to him that was just normal right and and as I was paging
through it um it it I I thought like in this the in his the marriage of heaven and hell he includes the Proverbs of hell and one is the road of excess leads to the Palace of wisdom okay that's interesting and then the next one is prisons are built with
bricks of law brothel with bricks of religion wait with the first one palaces are built with bricks of law no uh no no no the first one is the road of access leads right to the Palace of wisdom the the second one which I think is kind of funny is prisons are built with bricks
of law broel are built with bricks of religion but this but this this idea that that you know what Blake seemed to understand the reason I was so well I've always been fascinated by Blake but this book William Blake Bur the world really calls out like Blake dosm Quantum
philosophy like he understood he understood that what everyone thought of as reality out there was in fact not reality out there it was created in here in in our minds and and so Timothy lirry called them reality tunnels and uh other guys have called them you know reality
goggles and it's your idea RIT large right as you when you say you've got to look at the world from as many perspectives as you can to get kind of a a real sense of what the real world so to speak is all about and that most people are just kind of happy hanging in consensus reality wow
um thanks for that I really like that uh I was did Derek honestly as I as I Was preparing for this I just thought he's gonna love this yeah thank you're right um just this morning before I got out of bed uh it's 9:00 a.m. here we so I'm talking about like an hour or two ago um
it's that um I was thinking about how things are defined by their opposition that we wouldn't have said you don't say Catholic it you wouldn't ever say Catholic until there was a Protestant that those two things are defined by being not the other and uh Sunni and
Shiite Muslim you wouldn't say Sunni Muslim until Shiite Muslim came belong and then Shiite is defined or Sunni is defined by being not the Shiite one and vice versa and so yeah oh I really like this uh the prisons built of law and brothel built of religion is
that what it said brothel yeah PR prisons are built with bricks of law brothel with bricks of religion yeah and and and I love that too by the way um so yeah things defined by their opposite and even when you say I believe dot dot dot dot dot something you're generally
saying that it's in opposition to you're choosing to not believe something else um that's why you say I believe this it's in uh defined by what it's not um I had a fun conversation in Dubai with a hardcore Christian uh that has lived in the Middle East for 10 years speaks fluent
Arabic and is very well-versed in Islam uh and he introduced me to one of his best friends uh that is a Muslim guy and so the is emirati gu so the three of us are sitting there and they were telling me about the difference between their two religions and so the Christian guy said
basically our our two religions are almost the same he said but uh Muhammad here sorry meaning his friend not uh Prophet Muhammad he said Muhammad uh speaks to God directly whereas I speak to Jesus who speaks to God and uh and I really liked that they kind of he boiled
it down to the one difference I mean of course there are other differences but we can all choose where to focus right if you have a a fixed lens camera you can focus near you could focus far you could focus on any point in the middle so he chose to focus on that as from his
point of view the primary difference between their two religions and coming from him who is who is so well-versed uh the guy really knows his stuff with Arab culture and Islam and still just holds on to his Christian values okay well that's that's what your belief this is
my belief and not trying to convince anybody otherwise but anyway as they're talking I thought well I believe in all that stuff the only difference for me then is I think it is not external that all the the powers that you're talking about I believe are not external it's
like there that's my one difference yeah and uh we share that belief by the way um I I I always uh you know I I am basically an agnostic because I think that uh what do I know I mean honestly how arrogant would I have to be to assert with absolute certainty
that there was no God it's just like somebody who asserts with absolute certainty that there is one and man he's got his eye on you right so I always try on those kinds of things to just keep the aperture as wide open as possible and and because because the other the other thing that
we touched on earlier in our first conversation but I'd like to continue talking about you made the point that many people will say I believe and then statement A or B whatever and in their minds I believe and then you know the in the one true Catholic and Faith okay
let's stay with religion for a minute um and and you made the point most people think of that that they're stating a fact even though they preface it with the word I believe they they believe that they're stating a fact and I it's always been my viewpoint that listen if
you and I found a time machine and and we went back 600 years and we found the most intelligent people on the planet um we would find that almost all of their beliefs were absolutely wrong as as we look at it now and so but then I extend the argument why are we
any different right what if 600 years from now with all of the Innovation and all the hopefully new things that we as a species will learn they did the same guess what they came back and they talked to you and me uh well certainly not me but uh they talk to you and some
of more of the other smart uh intelligent people on the planet they're going to find the same thing right H I like that it really helps to first point out how wrong other people are it's easier to say look at all these fools spouting nonsense look at what people
you look at what these idiots said in the 1800s they actually thought you know such and such what fools look what look at what somebody thought even 30 years ago look at what your um look at what this idiot said about the stock market eight years ago what fools and then like
after you know somebody's going huh yeah really the world's a bunch of idiots then it's like so are you yeah too Tony Deo has a great uh quote which is if you're wondering what your own faults are simply look at what irritates you and other people nice you know I when I read that
94% of doctors said that they are better than average doctors and 95% of drivers say that they're better than average drivers and and so on there were a bunch of these uh statistics from polls um yeah I my internally my first thought was people are stupid and it's like oh
right wait that's me too so all of these things that I think I'm better than average in right now I think it's just safe to assume that I'm not in fact I'm going to choose to counterbalance our human nature and so I will deliberately choose to assume that I'm below
average since if I assume that deliberately uh I will probably counterbalance and end up somewhere more in the middle so it's kind of like I think of the metaphor of if you're bowling and every time you roll the bowling ball it it goes too far to the right well then you
compensate and it's like you have to coun like you're aiming towards the middle wasn't working it kept going to the right so now it's like I'm going to aim to the left it feels wrong but then that curves it back to the middle same thing with uh frisbee if you're throwing
a Frisbee and it keeps going going too far left well now it's like you you have to override your instincts and throw it to what feels too far to the right and it'll get back to the right place I I try to do that with my thinking when I hear that we have a cognitive bias
that's common that I'm probably susceptible to I'll try to counteract it I I think that's brilliant and uh the idea that by the way that idea is endemic everywhere um you know you pull uh the the one I love is guys like well into their 50s or 60s uh uh still
putting themselves in the top 10% by athletic ability right and I I call it the lake wygon effect if you're familiar with jris keer yeah uh he always had Lake wgon where uh all the kids were above average and all the women were better looking than average and of course that doesn't exist
right and yeah and so and so willing your yourself to say you know what I'm probably not very good at that uh is is useful because the other effect it has if you're have a certain disposition like yours is guess what you're GNA probably try to get a little bit better
at that and you're gonna maybe try to upskill yourself a bit there no hopefully some people take that hard some people do the opposite they say well maybe I'm just not suited for that then it's when I went to Berkeley College of Music I was 17 years old it was you know
just regular four-year college and there were a lot of musicians that in their High School in Kansas or South Dakota they were the best drummer in their High School uh in the middle of nowhere and then they got to Berkeley College of Music and suddenly they were not the
best they were not good at all compared to the people around them and a lot of people found that um too depressing and they dropped out because they liked the feeling of being being good at something and they got there and they went oh I'm actually not good at saxophone so never
mind I think I'm just going to go get a job in the plumbing you know or whatever um I saw that happen a lot a lot of people dropped out after the first year because they weren't as good as they thought so yeah then some of us and yeah me uh took that as
inspiration to like double down and and uh work harder so yeah it's funny how some people react to that um yeah I you know that kind of that that that's tragic get away to me uh because um I I always try to seek out um I I joked when I invested in an AI company that I just wanted to ensure
that I was always the stupidest person in the row and and so like uh I I always look at those as opportunities rather than rather than something to be bummed out about right and and it gets back to something that you're really good at and and that's the ability to reframe the
way you look at things and I I I wonder if that isn't also um part part of the deal bucky bucky Fuller had this thing where he he was very charitable he he was talking about when other people that many others would say oh you're an idiot if you don't understand X Y or Z right
and and Bucky Fuller was used microscopes as his example when they had the first microscope nobody was aware there was a microscopic World in there and and the guy who who looked through it was like holy there's a whole different world there and so what Bucky
Fuller said was well what it really is is some people are tuned in and others are not yet tuned in I love the way it's very charitable right it's like they're just not yet tuned in but as I thought about that a lot I'm reading another or rereading another book called The the
god Problem by Howard Bloom and and he's talking about like how does all of this creativity happen right and it's so in line with the way you look at the world through constant iteration through first off what he says is basically you've got to be able to iterate iterate iterate
what you're working with and and then the winner is the one who can abstract it through a story that creates a metaphor that in fact creates a symbol in our in our minds so that we can grasp the what's being talked about and then translation across one medium to another
and you know you think Dawkins right with his the selfish Jean and that's where he introduced the the word Meme and and that's what that's really what memes do in a way right I I used to joke that St Paul um who used to be Saul and then he fell off his horse and hit his
head and uh became St Paul uh but he was the original memer he Meed Christianity into existence because like literally he came up with killer killer mind works right and and like and like one of them that was just brilliant from my point of view back then right like the gods you
worshiped were the gods where you were born right so you had a village God you had whatever a city God and everything and Paul is up there going I have good news it doesn't matter what gods you were born into it doesn't matter what color you are what sex you are what
country you come from you can all worship the one true God who sits above them all and like hello what is this but I'm fascinated by this idea of meming things into existence in in the darkin sense of a meme a meme is not just a visual on Twitter right it is it could
be a song a pop lyric uhh St Paul's uh various exhortations to uh convert people um what what what do you think um oh that's a lot um that's funny I always called him a troll I thought that uh you know Saul was trolling uh that's that's always good then but I mean it's funny that you
went there with the the meme because yeah you're right um sorry I forgot what was the uh I got so caught up on that fun image that um I forgot the context of what we were talking about well well kind of the context the context of what we're talking about is like how how how
get created and reframe right okay and and and you're really good at it and like again on in our last conversation my uh head of infinite media was so excited because he kept the letter you sent them and I read it to you so I won't do it again here but uh
from from your very very successful uh accidentally started according to you uh online record Colony um and your your letter was so reframed from the way in quotes corporate Communications came and it was lovely people people will be listening to this in a one two so they'll hear it in our
in our first time but you're really you're really good at reframing and and so I is it what's the can you give us the secret sauce what what what is yeah you know um I mean I would just do the a shucks but uh but I agree with you that I think that is
my it's like I'm not even going to say special skill I think that's it is something I'm very good at but let let me let let me let me just interrupt and say it's a superpower of yours so I know you're not gonna say that but the reason the reason I was avoiding saying that is
the danger to think that some people just have that neck and some people don't this isn't like you know uh I'm not tall some people you know we mistake um physical characteristics with um intellectual things and we think that some people just have it and some people
don't um so no I was not born with a nature to reframe but um Tony Robbins book awaken the giant within helped me a lot I read that when I was 19 and he did a lot of reframing in there uh and kind of encouraged you to do it and taught you how to do it and suggested
that so much of uh success or happiness is asking the right questions or asking different questions and if you want different results ask different questions focused a lot on these questions but the questions were things like whenever something goes wrong
asking yourself what's great about this and I really like that he said usually your first response will be nothing this is just bad it sucks he said all right we'll keep pushing through push past that first answer and whether you have to change the question to say okay well what could
be great about this uh what might somebody body else say could be great about this uh push through to find a perspective that empowers you instead of disempowers you so I think that's all I'm really doing is what I learned from Tony Robbins at 19 which is to ask different
questions that help me take something that feels disempowering like I love lost this thing failed uh where I'm at sucks you know this is a drag this this bad thing happened and to say okay hold on what's another way I could look at this what's a better way uh I could look at this
what could be great about this uh nothing okay keep going no nothing it's just bad keep going okay well maybe maybe I could say I won't make that mistake again okay that's one thing keep going like I have these dialogues with myself usually in my diary where I just open up
a blank page and and uh ask myself these questions like all right I'm really upset right now I'm really mad I'm really disappointed um what could be good about this what's another way of doing this or this isn't getting the results I want maybe it's not even really bad maybe
something is stagnated um or I'm just not thriving I'm not flourishing and I expect more from life than that so how could I thrive and flourish in this situation all right these are my limitations here how can I use these limitations uh instead of denying them
or just feeling bad about them uh yeah I just I think I do a lot of this brainstorming um yeah and I think I've also just learned through experience like somebody who maybe starts scuba diving and loves scuba diving or or goes skydiving and loves skydiving there's
some things in life that you you just go like I love this I love this feeling so to me one of my favorite Thrills in life is to change my mind when I feel my perspective on something completely change um and I just see something in a completely different way than I did five
minutes ago it's such a rush I go whoow it's like those moments that we love in um those movies was a Twist at the end like the The Sixth Sense where uh Bruce Willis was the ghost the whole time or um The Usual Suspects where oh my God it was Kaiser so is Kim bull spoiler alert
too late um so uh and we love those moments CU you go whoa oh my God hold on wait Bruce Willis was dead the whole time hold on let me think about this that's right okay I guess we never really you know he just started following the boy and the boy looked at him and he was avoiding him at first and
we just assume this oh my God and you start replaying the whole movie in your head well that's what I do with my life when somebody says um like this morning's thought every belief is an opposition to another belief and I go whoa hold on let me think about whoa
okay this makes more sense then why people were acting like that people that I thought were just kind of insane or stupid now that makes more sense oh wow so this is one of my favorite things in life is to see another perspective that gives me some insights into life and then I
get to replay my whole life story replay all those uh frustrating interpersonal uh experiences I've had in life and replay them and now maybe they make a little more sense so uh yeah I guess I really pursue those moments but but I don't think this is some I don't
want people to look at me and think oh well Derek's just weird like that like no this is just a learned skill that anybody can D I've just maybe I'm 54 now uh I've been practicing this for 33 years you know I do and it reminds me very much of what my grandfather taught me when I was
just a a youngster uh I had the great Good Fortune of living in the town he lived in and uh he was quite successful and and he would come my grandmother died and he would come to dinner for two nights a week and uh I was 13 when he died so I was really
paying attention where I was about 11 and 12 and and he taught me this thing he called premeditate and what he meant by it was think of something you might want um and or a goal or whatever and and he goes then premeditated I'm like what do you mean BR that he goes well you you start
a list and you say here's what I want and then you go here's what happens if I get what I want all the good things but then he go goes but then I also want you to do a list of here are all the bad things that might happen if I get what I want and then he had you do here's what
happened if I don't get what I want here's all the good things that might happen because of that and here's all the bad things that might happen because I don't get what I want but the way he framed it to me reframing again was the the first part was the one that made me
kind of go whoa because what do what do you mean good if I get I want bad things can happen and so the unlock for me was that right with the because the minute you start doing it Derek it's like you realize very quickly you know what maybe I don't want this or Andor
conversely I really want this and and then you kind of start articulating all the things but you also see the other side right the the contrary uh to be back to that that part of the conversation and it it it just gels so beautifully with the old doas story
about the farmer who um he lives in a little farming Village and and his uh his horse ran away and everyone in the village comes and says oh we're so sorry we're just so sorry you lost your only means of farming and every oh this is awful it's the worst and he said buy and
then the next day the horse returned and with it brought a wild uh horse that was beautiful everyone in the town rushes to congratulate him on his good fortune and he says we'll see and then the next day is s is trying to break the Wild Horse and falls off breaks his leg oh my God
they all rush they how bad it is we'll see next day the Army comes through and takes every able-bodied young man into uh the service into a battle they're probably going to all die in and it just keeps going going and going right so the attitude well we
see um is also very much kind of part and parcel to to this but you know it's it's it's also wait wait I gotta pause I got to stop you there that uh I love that story so much that not only did I retell it on my blog but I actually wrote a song about it years ago oh
really how cool um it's called still too soon to tell and it oh I love it tell tells that same story so I uh it's you can find it on my music page on my website it's uh si. RSM music is a list of all my mp3s from my music making days from God what would that be like
mid 80s through uh the end of the 90s when I started CD Baby and stopped making music but yeah still too soon to tell is that uh story of the man with the horse and it's it's funny I love that story so much hearing you tell it almost felt like you were telling a
story I wrote like I had to remember that's oh that's right I didn't write this this is uh yeah it's I really I love that so much um but damn what a cool experience you had at at 11 with your granddad framing the world like this for you that is so cool to have that so
early on to see the world through that lens um and even decide that there are some things that you decide to pursue and you're willing to pay the price like you know you might purs this in life and this will be the downside you think okay I'm willing to take that downside um and
I wanted to tell the audience a little uh story my sister who's two years younger than me um just a few weeks ago said that she really um feels a little I don't know resentful or bad that that I had a lot of business success and she didn't but she's got three happy kids and a very long
successful marriage she's been uh super happily married for like 30 years right like they met young in college and they've had this wonderful marriage for 30 years whereas uh I had business success but didn't have a kid until after I sold my company at the age of
42 and never had AER or a good relationship uh and so we talked about that I said you know you you chose this and and like I don't think I could have had a business success and a kid at the same time I probably would have if I had a kid I would have just chosen to be with the kid and ignored my
business and I think the only reason my business did well is because I was doing nothing but that 7:00 a.m. to midnight 7 days a week and that's what it took for that to thrive uh so like I I paid my price so you you got the happy family life I
didn't um and that made her feel better to realize like oh yeah that's that's right it's a trade off yeah yeah the the I I don't even know how to uh refer to him I I love this author Jed McKenna who has written uh he's kind of the anti-spiritual spiritualist a weird way um because he
he doesn't buy into most of the Happy Talk of uh Enlightenment and and but one of the things that he's he's very witty he's very funny and but one of the things that he says is be very careful what you wish for because if you're sincere the universe will turn turn you
into the tool to achieve that and and the example that he gives at length is Francis Ford copala and his making of Apocalypse Now and it nearly it nearly broke him uh and Copo was suicidal um during the time because everything went wrong everything went wrong and he had to his financers pulled
out and he was so determined to do this it was his own Journey down into the Heart of Darkness and and I love the idea that being being aware as you said right with the example of your sister you when you're aware of the things that it might cost you to get
what you want and yet you still go for it I personally believe I could be wrong but I personally believe that that that you're at least better informed uh than than the people who don't think because like everything has a cost and again again opposites right we're back to
we're back to that and if you're aware of if you're aware of them that seems that seems like you're gonna end up in a better place than if you're not yeah yeah and guess what a uh seemingly unrelated but now that I'm telling them together it's related two weeks ago a friend of mine
said if you had a time machine and you could go back like 40 years in the past and change something in your life what would you do differently and my first answer off the top of my head talking with my friend was you know I never had a good marriage like romantic
relationship like a really long lasting one so I think if I could do it all over again I would do that and I love that she knows me well enough that she said um like really are you sure cuz you know such and such I think uh I don't get that impression and I thought about it a
little more and I went actually no you're right like I think I've actually I act like that's something that I'm missing out on I think I've actually enjoyed not having that I think I've actually really enjoyed having tons of short romances instead of one long one
so I was like wow okay thanks for pushing back I was thinking that that was a regret now that you mention it that is not a regret cool thank you yeah and I I I am looking through I used to do this this is an old Journal of mine for when I was 24 and I'm showing it so anyone who watches will be
able to see this listeners are going to be able to see it but you see this little diagram here yeah what that that's what you're talking that is all of the various Futures that could potentially happen from these decisions whoa and and and and one of the things
that you just like just like your friend like that you realize when you start thinking like that you start you start figuring out you know what I kind of really did like having all those short-term relationships right and and so when I you know what I thought you
were gonna say um would have been my answer which is a more fat I would not change anything yeah right because because yeah um and and and the reason for that I think is is pretty straightforward and and and that is I mean how unusual would it have been like you we
we we always see the path we took as like inevitable or you know retrospectively of course we had have done that but that's not true at all and like so for example uh I could have gone uh to I I transferred from the University of California to the school of Foreign Service at
Georgetown and uh I met my wife of now 41 years so I'm one of those guys uh at a party um you over summer vacation right had I and I love Georgetown by the way but I loved her more so everyone was telling me you're a fool you you you only got a couple years left finish get
your degree from Georgetown you know your relationship with her will be fine I'm like I don't think so and so I literally transferred to the University of Minnesota because I loved her and then like now looking back what I wouldn't have five grandchildren I or not the same five and I and I wouldn't
have the three beautiful uh children that I have and right and so all of these things ended up like because of that single decision yeah no it's okay with me I'm just going to finish at the University of Minnesota so I'm I'm I'm you know chaos theory and metal brought
uh uh fractals and everything basically suggests that one tiny change can lead to vastly different outcomes and I think if you kind of think of it if you think of it that way then then you're kind of like again I'm more fatte love your fi I love that um I actually think about
that with politics sometimes when people talk about India I've been going to India a lot the last year and um to call India one country and to call Europe 20 countries or whatever it is both of those to me are just like the uh the sneeze of a butterfly you know so a butterfly could
have sneezed in Napoleon's ear and uh all of Europe could have been one country and all of India what we call India could have actually been 27 countries um and uh it's just these silly like when people get nationalistic about you know my country
is the best it's like ah your country is just an accident of history and and and also Al these things are Ever Changing as people in uh you know Czechoslovakia know um a few of my friends are from countries that don't exist anymore and it's hard to be nationalistic when the
country you were born in doesn't exist anymore yeah I would think so but that that's a there's probably a nice metaphor and there's probably metaphor with that for life right like the um the path that you could have chosen in life uh I mean we'll never know that that uh
those other dandelion seeds on your uh sorry if uh anybody listening Jim's drawing looked like to me like a dandelion with the kind of the uh shooting off in every possible Direction with the little poofs at the end and coming up from one central place and
you'll never know um those other paths uh what they could have been and some of them just don't exist anymore and that's that and and you know that that was I think as I listen to you I think that that is one of the things that I learned from that premeditating uh that my granddad taught
me I I I learned to see listen there's always almost infinite alternative paths that you could have taken and uh Tim Urban does a great graph that that shows this uh he's weight by why um and he's got uh he's very creative guy I think you'd like him a lot anyway he's got the
line and it's in green of with actual path that that your that your uh life took so um initial conditions and then everything that it happened but then he shows in a different color all of the branches that could have happened right and then he shows the future as much
like the drawing I showed you all of these various different paths and so I it's one of the reasons why I'm a fan of alternate history uh because like you bring up with politics you're absolutely right like you know so so much of of my country right uh
well it was a lot of people's countries until finally it end up with you and in the future who knows right it's like the Roman has thought that their empire would never die and the vandals and the Huns had different ideas yeah and and and that we had you
know the the offshoot of the Holy Roman Empire which was I always love that because it was neither Holy Roman nor an Empire nice so my last book called How To Live um I came across a really interesting idea while writing it probably my single favorite new idea that came from writing
that book was in the SE second chapter about commitment this idea that if you're ever wondering what is the right decision should I do this or should I do that should I live here or should I live there should I take this job or that job that just the act of choosing one
and wholeheartedly committing to it makes your choice the best choice it is your commitment itself that can make any choice the right choice for you that you can because they're all parallel worlds you pick one and by committing to it and making the best of it it makes it the best choice and
that's a fascinating idea to me because I spent so much of my life wondering where should I live what should I do and that it felt like such a huge Epiphany to realize that just committing to a place and making the best of it makes it the best place to live committing to a
job and making the best of it makes it the best job for you yeah that's A Great Notion and the I you know uh the Latin decide comes from the Latin which is desare which means to cut off yeah exactly um and and so when you decide and cut off give it your commitment yeah
that's the like that is your best choice and and I'm always baffled a little bit by the should have what couldas right like don't SP remember Marlin Brando I Street Car Namar I could have been a contender right yeah and and and the the idea that I that instantly draws me to
to you and the way you think and write is I think we share that I think that this idea that spending all your time filling it with Reg BRS right like that that's not a that's not a useful use of you talk and and if you think like you just expressed I love the way you
express it in the book as well it's like no no no decide cut off make the best of it commit and that is your best choice and and just I I also believe that when when you when you truly believe that right and again here we are not who knows this belief is correct or not but
it's useful right wienstein said you know don't look for meanings look for use and so this is useful and like your book about beliefs that might not be true but boy some are really useful um I think that's one of them because like you when if you really do that
you're you're probably going to end up putting much more of your all into it you're going to really 100% it's the what I call I don't I don't call it I I I've read what other people have called it for hundreds and hundreds of years which is the burning the ships
mentality and that is what what's interesting I'm sure you're aware of that of that story right where the commander comes and everyone doesn't want to be there and sometimes people talk about it as the the Spanish when they're going after the Aztecs and the commander Burns all the ships what I
didn't know about that is that's a myth in every culture so the Japanese have the myth the Chinese have the myth all of them have the same myth and it is just what you've just described right that talk about cutting off burn the ships meaning you're stuck man you can
only go forward yeah it's uh it's why I renounced my US citizenship was burn the ship okay to burn the all right you know what's fun about talking with you uh is that you know all these references that usually I feel like I'm the one that uh when I'm talking with friends
and people I say have you heard this metaphor about burning the ships they say no and I tell them about burning the ships I say have you heard the the tale about the man with the horse and they say no and then I tell them and I said did you know that the word decide is
Latin root comes from to cut off and here these things that I'm usually the one telling people I love that you know all these references already so it's like okay we can just have that as a base and build on top of that it's so much fun I know I know quantumly
entangled but then you've also read a bunch of stuff that I haven't and so every time we talk I also learn a lot from you and I go o okay hold on I got to write this down I got to remember this so um I love our conversations as do I and I just want to highlight for
our list listeners and viewers that's what makes you you I think and and I try to do the same I love when somebody Springs on me something I hadn't thought about or hadn't read and I'm like whoa wait a minute what what book was that and and then I just it's like pure joy
for me to like go and and read that book or see that movie or whatever and and I think that that kind of swings us back to uh the the beginning of our conversation we're talking about can you can you teach people to be creative right and I like your I like your idea
about the just showing right because that's one of the Hallmarks as you know very well show don't tell right yeah um and and I I think that the I I am sometimes flabbergasted and and like when people are like yeah no I don't care like um I'm just kind of like what why why not this is so much
fun and and I just wonder have you found in your many travels and all the people you've spoken with and all your experiences in life is there like an archetype for for the type of people like me and you h [Music] h hunger um we call it hunger that yearning the striving to go
further uh I suspect that cities are healthy because they can help uh demystify um it's a it's an interesting word demist IFI um I I think of it as like clearing the Mist away clear the fog living in New York City uh I watched people get successful uh get
famous um I watched people build companies from an idea into 100 employees and millions of dollars within a couple years and you'd see it happen firsthand and you'd get to know the people that did it and know that they fart and have bad taste in food and uh and so you it would
de uh glorify them you'd see that they're just regular people that make these decisions um or that that just did something and made it happen or tried something and then tried again and failed a few times and then something went better but it didn't turn out it
didn't end up the way they intended it to in the first place but they persisted and they did this and they took some chances and they made it happen when you live in a place like New York City or La you can see this happen first time even oh my God the uh the the pedestal of
Hollywood there's some people that oh my god when you see them on a big movie screen you go in person to a theater and their their face is huge and then you get to know them as people and you go oh wow that's just you know somebody applied for the gig like that producer
hired a director the director needed an actor and the casting person just needed somebody to play that role to say those lines with a certain look on the stage to make this Vision happen and this person that I know just went for the audition and got it and suddenly their
face is huge on the screen um but that's they're not a special person in a they're not a special breed they're not a different type they are just like you they just took the chance and showed up to the gig uh you know 90% of success is just showing up showing up that's Woody
Allen yeah yeah they they just went and did it they they they did the thing instead of watching TV and that's all the difference it took um that is that is so great though they just I love that I that's all don't watch TV go do the thing go do the thing yeah so I don't
think there's an archetype I don't think it's a different type of person in fact I would call that a um not useful not true belief that if you think that it's just a different type of person then that could mess with your psyche to think well I'm just not that kind of
person so I love that that that is actually that's the the incredibly useful part of what you're saying because what again what you're good at other than me is that you you are sensitive to the turning off that you right the oh I'm just not X right and and I think that I'm going to try to
incorporate that more when I like try to uh having chats with people or have are confronted by that type of attitude like no no it's like yeah just go do I like the just go do the thing right because like another thing I I referenced this book that I'm reading
by Howard Bloom the god problem and he's talking about like so you know how did numbers how did writing get started and so you got to go all the way back to ancient sumaria and it's like 2800 BC and the priests uh in Sumer are getting these barley these bushels of
barley corn as the the the member of the communities uh uh offering to the gods right in quotes to the gods um and and the priests have to literally count barley corn by barley corn how many are in there right that's very laborious and so one of them's like huh you know we
got a lot of mud around here let's let's come up with a system where we can mark it out and so the letter Y what we think of is the letter Y was their uh uh symbol for one and then the less than sign was their symbol for 10 so 10 with a bunch of y's after it was 15 or 20 and
then they iterated it and they found out hey you know what this is like really useful because now that we know how many you know give or take 10 20 30 individual barley cords now we know what one of those bags thing uh hold let's see whether we can transform through
this knowledge and then we don't have to count them anymore we can just go yep yep this works but then that all got extrapolated into hey we might be able to use these little ones and zeros are marking out Farms we might be able to you know use it for and then ultimately
they're using it for astronomy and they're using it for everything but really it was just like iteration right and and that's why I think might even maybe we make the the title of this one just do the thing um because like what's what's the worst thing that can happen right I it
doesn't work or you fail or you're unhappy with doing the thing and then you and then you stop and it gets back to memes right why why are memes so effective well they're effective because they operate the way cells in our immune system works right like when Co came
around our immune system is like whoa what the is that and all of the the cells in the immune system start attacking the problem right and then some of the cells start making a little Headway you know what happens when that happens most of the other cells go to
where the ones are making progress the ones that don't have a built-in switch on the human cells it's called apotosis it's a suicide switch they kill the and then a new cell is created so they could go do that well guess what you that also sounds very much like Matthew's parable of the talents right
to to him that has much more will be given to him that hath not what little he ha shall be ripped away from him and that is kind of the way it all works like the immune system works that way the the they make the metaphor in Matthew's gospel that uh you be that way
and then weirdly termites you know how termite Ms get uh built no okay termites are very fastidious and their their their scat is looks like little bricks and so in the termite Mound when any individual termite finds a piece of Scat they pick it up and they look around and guess
where they put it on the highest place that they can see because interesting the the highest place means it's the best so they crawl up there and they put it up there and out of that emerges these beautiful have you ever seen a termite Mound yeah yeah
they're beautiful right they kind of look like gouty architecture from Barcelona yeah and and yet and yet like it's just from that one thing these complex beautiful things happen like the Su uh uh treats who they ultimately called magicians where where we got mathematicians from uh the Magi but like
the thing that I'm really resonating with here is you're just do the thing how how give me give me a couple examples of something that like had a really great um outcome in your life where it was just just you like yeah I you know what I I'll do the TV baby you
know what I uh you just sort of like yeah you know what I'm going to do this thing um sure um Lonely Planet was an inspiration only when I found out that it was just a little newsletter that a husband and wife were sharing with their friends that they would go travel
somewhere and it was before the internet and so they just had literally like a little paper newsletter that they'd say we went to to this place and here's what we found we liked this restaurant and this was interesting and this was good but don't go there but do go here and
they just sent this newsletter to a dozen friends that started sharing it around and then that grew into the Lonely Planet Empire of books and such and when I heard that I thought okay well even baby elephants start small like even even big things start small so
sure I um I started in 2013 I had just moved to Singapore uh sorry sorry no 2011 I had just moved to Singapore and I was having a hard time learning more about the region that there were almost no books about Indonesia there were almost no books about Malaysia and these
places that I wanted to learn more about but I guess just hadn't been worth uh publishing companies writing much about and so um I decided to just start it and so all right just kind of like Lonely Planet I'm just going to start this thing now um just me and I'm just
going to keep doing this every single year and it's going to suck at first but give me 10 years and it'll be good so I uh whimsically called it wood egg uh and began in 2012 hired a bunch of writers and editors and researchers uh to learn more about each
country and I knew that the first round was going to suck I was like all right I'm just going to if I know that in advance like watching Picasso draw like learning about lonely planets newsletter um I'll just begin and I did that for a couple years and I think it's okay to
tell this story even though it didn't turn into a big success because um I had a weird circumstance happened where just because of family reasons with uh my kid being born and then his mom not wanting to live in Singapore anymore we moved to New Zealand and so suddenly the idea of
me putting a lot of of effort into writing books about Asia um seemed moot because it was like well I'm not going to live there anymore so um so I stopped after two or three years um but that was something where I'm really glad that I just began like I just started
um and um you know the so yes CD Baby was my most popular example of that but there were little examples along the way like a um an oldfashioned credit card processing machine those of you uh who were around in the 9s might have known that they used to actually take a a
carbon copy paper thing and put it into this metal machine where you'd put your physical credit card in there and they'd go ch ch ch Chun to get a carbon imprint of the digits on your credit card and that's the way that you would charge people's credit cards in a place um
before there was ubiquitous Wi-Fi or 4G or uh whatnot if you had to charge somebody's credit card at a concert you do that so I just made the call and I found out like all right how can I get one of those machines and I found out how and then I said okay how much would it cost to get a 100,000 of those
machines and I got a much better price and so then I just told the uh 200,000 musicians on CD bab I said hey if you want one of these these machines now um I can send you one dirt cheap and you just mail me your credit card slips I'll process the cards for you um and you can
charge people's credit cards at gigs which was like a first until then there was no way for musicians to do this uh and I just kind of did the thing and uh made the call and made it happen same thing with um UPC barcodes so if you were a musician or a
self-published author even putting out your own thing and you wanted to have a UPC barcode on it so that it could go into retail stores um the only way you could get a UPC barcode if you didn't have if you hadn't signed away your rights to a bigger company was to contact the universal code
Council that would charge you I think it was $700 to get an account with them but then under your account you could have up to 100,000 products so I'm the guy that did the thing and like even when it was just me in my CD for you know my own music I paid them the 700
bucks but now I had the account with them so I had 100,000 barcodes I could give away so I contacted the musicians on CD baby and I said hey if you need a barcode um I can make you one 20 bucks and so um yeah I made $2 million uh selling barcodes for 20 bucks
each and everybody was happy um I did the administration of it the recordkeeping and all that kind of stuff um so these are sorry I guess I picked a couple examples that were all like I'm the guy that did like the I call that the co-op business model where you get a
resource that many people could use somebody has to be the first one to go get that resource and then you could share it with many other people um that's how I got into web hosting it's just like I was just hosting my own website it was really difficult but I
learned how got my own server but then when my friends were complaining about their web hosting companies I'd say oh come on I'll just I'll host you on my server for free it's fine you're a friend but then after doing that for like 10 friends I said I think I've accidentally started a web hosting
business so I don't talk about it much but um host baby was my web hosting business that was equally profitable to CD baby um it was also making a couple million dollars a year web hosting and uh that was just like I just figured out how to do it and I'm the guy that just
went and got a server and just told my friends I can help you with this and um yeah I don't know do those examples help oh do they help I think they're fantastic and I think everyone listening should stop rewind to the beginning of dereck's telling this story and listen
to it again the reason is there's all sorts of things that grow wildly out of just doing the thing right like oh I need a barcode okay I'll figure out how to get one of oh I can give them to the m great I can give them to the Musicians oh I need a Chun kachunk uh credit card
uh thing get it but but see what happens is Magic I think because like you can do that and I'm speaking more to our listeners here you can do use Derek as a great example of the fact that he just thought oh that makes sense I'm gonna try that and you don't you don't have to
have this you know like we we do a lot of venture capital right at our Shi Ventures and like all so many times you get these decks from people and you know it's like we're forecasting that we will have a total addressable Market of and it's just a word salad and it's just
like come on come on like and then some of the best stuff that I've ever invested in was just like yeah you know I think that this might work and then we we've got uh several examples of just really clever people who thought said oh huh you know there's
a there's a tech bottle back here what if we could write software that routed around that so that the company would lose all their workflow boom you've got prefi IO which uh we are an investor in and it's a very very successful beta uh company and and so what I love about your examples is
you don't have to have some grand plan already formulated in your mind for for what's going to happen as a matter of fact I think again back to one of your consistent messages that you make so well iterate iterate iterate and one of the things that I found is that people
who do that like you and or Express or uh have a a demonstrated ability to be agile in terms of oh you know I wasn't planning on like meeting this credit card machine or this barcode thing but they might come in very useful let's just do it let's just see where it goes
and but that's where iteration comes in right like and now we're back to picazo's Bull because like if if you start and you look at his first bull they look they're they're good but they look just like a regular Bull and then as you go down the line it gets more and
more and more abstract because he kept iterating and like that's those examples are great examples for way for people who like instead of saying I'm not that kind of person right or that's not going to be right for me that's a small thing to try right like just just give it a
shot you said 700 bucks it cost you for the um for the barcode bar code yeah yeah like okay spent the 700 bucks give it a try that's what I love about you what what what other than your book um what else are you working on right now that um people might love to hear about
H it's a trick answer because um or or it's a s or it's a satanic question because uh because I really need to be working on nothing but my book right now I've let myself get distracted too much over the last few months um and so I literally just got
back from a month on the road and I got back yesterday and I'm like all right enough for this traveling enough of you know I've spent a lot of social time I was like yeah time to just put my head down and finish this book and then Jim says what else so um or I could do the voice for
you too Derek if you want Derek what else something else is interesting isn't it Derek there must be something besides your book that's worth doing all right so uh no so right now I'm just finishing my book useful not true but as soon as that's done um I am I'm yearning to no wait how do we put
it sometimes if you wonder what's worth doing you think of what annoys you the most um what what upsets you the most what makes you unreasonably angry so what makes me unreasonably angry is people who let the big tech companies say no no no no no you let us
take care of all your data no no that's much too complicated for you um you're just not really technically Savvy we'll take care of all this no no no put it in our Cloud give us all of your contacts and all of your data and we'll manage it for you for life um so it really upsets
me that a lot of people have um just tossed up their hands and just thought well I don't know this stuff so I'll just let the cloud take care of it for me I'll just let Google do it I'll let Apple Do It um Dropbox Apple Google uh LinkedIn whatever uh just name all the big
platforms and suddenly you're paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month in subscription fees because each one of these places has got you you know um and you're you're you don't know how to do anything without their control uh you don't know how to manage your own
photos you just let Apple do it or Google do it so anyway that really bothers me and it's not that hard it's just one of those things like riding a bicycle or it's easier than learning to drive a car is to just set up your own server to have your own data on your own
server so I'm very intrinsically motivated even if it uh even if I do it at a great uh loss to me if I spend my own money doing it I want to teach the world how to have their own server and control their own data and it's almost kind of punk it's funny I was thinking
like I don't really like punk music music but the punk attitude of like get your Corporation out of my personal life like you know screw your damn business this is my stuff um it's it's rebellious in a way um but I'm still trying to put my finger on that like why why do I have such an
aversion to uh mixing business with uh or other people's business in in my personal stuff it just just feels icky and wrong you know so um anyway I I think I I've put out two articles now called Tech Independence you can find them at uh sv. rsti as in Tech Independence and uh it's about
self-reliance um with technology I love I mean we truly are sympatico because like I I I'm basically doing the same thing I'm uh setting up servers here uh because you know what I I don't want to trust the big platforms that oh they'll take care of all my data
in the cloud yeah that they will mine it and make me the product and and I think one of the big Transformations coming with both Ai and the various platforms available to us is that we're going to be able to sell our data to them not the other way around and only if we want to
only if want to and that gives me a certain um Glee and and and your your point about punk rock uh a the the author Ryan North as he's a comedic writer but he's he makes some very serious points and one of the points that he made about the scientific method
was he said no no no science is never settled the scientific method is the is the ethos of pure Anarchy punk rock you I don't believe you nice and I want to test it and I want to make sure that like I and and when you go through the scientific method it's disdain for
existing Authority uh it's I want it I want to make sure that this works you know trust no one is the motto of uh the um Royal Society in Great Britain founded by Isaac Newton among others and like it that's a see we what's so funny about it is we've gotten so far from
that and that is what gave us all of this yeah right and and so I absolutely love that you're doing that and and I think that uh that will uh I'm going to really impose on you and ask you on the air whether you might be willing to just stop by quarterly and so that you and I
can have these strats oh great good yeah definitely I mean dude if we lived in the same town I think we'd be meeting up every week for for sure absolutely for sure for sure we would every quarter on a on a zoom call recorded like this absolutely would love to Fabulous okay
well we are I'm uh yep uh my nannies are telling me that we are close to the end and uh I'm gonna now you get a special treat I am waving a magic wand and I'm making you the emperor of the world for one day you can't kill anyone you can't put anyone in a re-education camp but
what you can do is we're going to hand you a magic microphone and you can speak two things into it that will incept the entire world's population whenever their next morning is they're going to wake up and think wow I've just had the two best ideas and now going back to our earlier
part of our conversation I am going to decide to do both of these things what are you going to incept what two things oh man I should have had this question a month ago and thought about it for a month put me on this spot um I think I in the interest of U not having the
listener uh listen to me sit here for half an hour and think um if I were to picked two things right now they would be no surprise they'd be the things that we've talked about already because they're so important to me me which is um there's another way to think about
this there's a better way to think about this like anything that's going on in your life right now um what what seems true is actually just one perspective okay there if I had to make it uh one sentence for the one of the two sentences it's what what seems
true is actually just one possible perspective and it's probably not the best one so force yourself to think of other perspectives well that's great so that's one thing and the second one there was a nice underlying theme in this whole conversation today of um humbly beginning uh just do the
thing whether it was Picasso's painting or somebody trying out for a Hollywood movie or Lonely Planet as a newsletter or [Music] um or you know we didn't get to the examples of hearing the Beatles old demo tapes hearing those unfinished songs that later became Strawberry Fields or
whatever it's so encouraging to hear rough uh demos to see unfinished paintings to to to see uh messy business plans that later became great um so I think the the second sentence in the bullhorn to the universe uh would be to um just begin knowing in
advance it will not be great at first but it will get better I love it the the first draft always kind of sucks yeah and uh as an author of so many wonderful books yourself and I've written four books boy I know at least my first draft always really sucked yeah
you just got to keep iterating and working on it well as always this has been an absolute Delight for me and uh our listeners now can know that we get to uh uh do this quarterly starting uh the next quarter thank you so much for your time great to see look forward to the next one