#777: Derek Sivers, Philosopher-Entrepreneur — The Greatest Year of His Life

0:00 Well, boys and girls, ladies and gyms, this is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. Thanks so much for tuning in. This time around, we have my good friend Derek Sibers back on the show. He is one of my favorite humans. I call him often for advice. He is hilarious. And he will do his own introduction because I am incredibly lazy or I was feeling

0:22 Playful and lazy. in this conversation. He is a philosopher, programmer, musician, king of sorts. That's how I would describe him. It is a very fun conversation. I really enjoyed it. And you can find Derek's books, including his latest useful not true, which we discuss. at his website, Sivers.com or S I V E. S, which is probably just about as confusing to people as Tim.blog. If you enjoy this episode, you should go back and listen to the 2015 conversation I did with Derek, the very first one. You can find that at Tim.blog slash Derek Sivers and many longtime listeners out of the nearly eight hundred episodes I've done. Consider this.

1:04 Their favorite or certainly one of their favorites. It is a uh Barn Burner of an episode. And Now we're gonna get to it. First, just a quick word about the sponsors who make this podcast possible. I have been fascinated by the microbiome and probiotics as well as prebiotics for decades, but

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6:54 Optimal minimal. At this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And I answer your personal question. Now we're just seeing it. My cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal emperors governing.

7:13 For people who don't know who Derek Sivers is. What is the Brief. Overview of Darek. Oh, I have to do it. Um I was a musician.

7:32 For many years. And then I started selling my music. Online in 1997, when there was no PayPal and there was, you know, Amazon was just a bookstore. So I started a little thing called CD Baby. Just to sell my music, but then it grew and became the largest seller of independent music online, and I did that for ten years. Till I got sick of it and sold it?

7:52 And then I was a TED speaker for a few years and then Kind of threw myself into that completely and then Seth Godin asked me to write a book. So I wrote a book and then people really liked it, so now I've written five. Now I'm a I don't know, Dad in New Zealand.

8:07 Thinking philosophically and living my life. How about that? I thought you did a great job. Thank you for that. You know, when when I can't find a virtual assistant to do work for me, I'll ask my podcast guest to do my job. I will also add Number one, people, if you enjoy this conversation, which I'm sure you will, not to apply any pressure to Derek, but I always have so much fun, go back and listen to the other conversations also. Because you'll notice a few things. Number one, Derek has one of the most eclectic CVs imaginable. He's worked in traveling circuses. He has played music at

8:42 Pig fairs he has. Been an entrepreneur, he has certainly been a philosopher coder. And many other things, but also I would say overarchingly crafted a life that is uniquely Derek's.

8:57 And frequently Tests assumptions and to I suppose bucket one of what we're going to discuss today changes his mind. And Finds himself.

9:11 Zigging when he might have otherwise zagged or where other people are zagging. And that is part of why I enjoy spending time with Derek, aside from the Dashing good looks and Wit and charm, of course. So let's begin. as we were brainstorming what we might chat about because we were hoping to catch up. I suggested a few things, we batted a number of things around and we landed on

9:36 Things you've changed your mind about. Mm-hmm. Things you're fascinated by, people you're studying, not necessarily in that order. So let's start with things you've changed. your mind about or On

9:50 Where shall we begin? I've got five things for you. I'm starting small and getting big. Coffee I've never liked coffee.

10:00 Every time I tried coffee I went I don't know understand how you people like this. And Even when I'd be with somebody that knew I didn't like coffee and we were out somewhere and they would go, Oh my God, this is the best coffee I've ever had in my life. Here, I know you don't like coffee, but if you're ever gonna try coffee, This is the one. Try a sip. And I'd say okay. I'd like try to get myself into this mindset.

10:20 I'm gonna like this. I just uh. Never liked it. So then I was in United Arab Emirates.

10:29 And I was the guest of this Emirati man that we will get to later. And He said, It is Emirati custom you must have. The coffee. And I went, Oh, sorry, I don't drink coffee. I just he said, You must have the coffee. I said no really I've never liked coffee in my life because

10:45 My friend, you you must have the co it is Emirati custom. You must have the coffee. Alright. I took a sip. I was like Oh my god.

10:56 I think This is really good! Use that. is Emirati coffee. I went, no, you really, there's something different about this. He goes, Yes, it's it's emirati coffee. And I said, Is that the one where they make it in the sand? He said, No, no, no, that's Turkish. He said,

11:08 This is Emirati Coffee. So Knowing that we were talking today and I was gonna Mentioned coffee. I texted him, I said, Hey, what was that coffee you'cause he'd said

11:17 There are only three places in Dubai that know how to make real Emirati coffee. So he told me one. Batil B-A-T-E-E-L If you're in Dubai and you want to try real Emirati coffee, apparent. Lee?

11:30 According to the Samarati. Try Batil in Dubai for real Emirati coffee. I've changed my mind on coffee. I now like At least Emirati coffee. Here's one.

11:40 Okay. Just for definition purposes. All right. I you know, I'll hold my follow ups. There are gonna be a couple of follow ups, including how do you define Emrati? Is that basically a Brahmin UAE? Sorry, that's what we call people from United Arab Emirates. All right. Everybody. If you are Of the lineage if you were a citizen.

12:00 of United Arab Emirates. You refer to as Emirati. What is the special technique or special ingredient that makes Emerati coffee so miraculous for you? Hey listeners, if you find out what's different about Emirati Coffee, please let me know. I went back six months later, same thing, I tried Emirati coffee and I like it.

12:18 Severe social pressure. Yeah. Maybe again that might be the magic ingredients. Severe social pressure. It makes anything tasty. You must have it. And it will it will be disastrous if you don't like it. I don't know what it is, but it's surprised. Okay. Python

12:36 So I'm just gonna include this because Twenty three years ago. I learned the Ruby programming language and I became fluent in Ruby. And Ruby and Python are as similar as Portuguese and Spanish, but let's say Ruby is

12:49 Portuguese. Where Spanish became more more popular. So When I first learned Ruby, it's like Ruby and Python were kinda side by side. Ruby was a little more popular at the time, but then over the years, Python just took off, and I refused to look at it.

13:04 I was like, no, I chose Ruby, I speak Ruby, I don't want to learn Python, it's too similar. If I'm gonna learn another language, it's gonna be Lisp or Haskell or something really different. I'm not gonna learn Python, no and so For years and years I've been Refusing and then just irrationally prejudiced against Python. When I was choosing a new language for a new project, I considered everything but Python and then I realized I had left Python out because of my severe prejudice against it for no good reason. So I finally

13:32 looked at the Python programming language and I went, huh. Oh my god. It's beautiful. It's great. Oh my God, it's wonderful. So

13:41 Now I love Python. And that just felt Amazing in my heart to be like Wow, this thing that I was prejudiced against for twenty years. Is actually wonderful.

13:50 Cool. So Coffee? Python number two. Mm-hmm.

13:54 Shall I go on? Number three. Let's go on. Okay. I brought a prop. I wanna make this a good show. For the first time ever.

14:04 Appearing. Am I little? Rats. Okay, if you see on YouTube. They're sizable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Chunky monkeys. Mm.

14:17 They are so cute and they're so wonderful and they're so affectionate. You can't maybe tell'cause I'm holding them up like they owe me money right now, you know? But Um So here's the deal. Years ago.

14:29 I used to kill rats. I hated rats so badly. I lived in a Basement apartment in Boston. that had rats in and around the apartment that would sometimes be blocking my entrance to my apartment as I would come home and I was tired. So I killed many rats with great vengeance. I hated rats. And then just

14:48 A few months ago. My boy said Hey Dad, can we get a pet rat? I was like And I just thought it was a he was kidding. And He said a week later, he said, You know, that really kinda made me sad that you just shot down my idea of the pet rat.

15:01 I said, wait, you were serious? He said, Yeah. What oh. Well Why would you want a nasty, awful rat as a pet? He said, No, they're not nasty and awful. Look. And he showed me some videos.

15:13 That Rats are really sweet and they're really wonderful. They're smart, they're trainable. You can train them to do little tricks and like pick things out and like go to a wallet and open it up and take money and bring it to you. And uh very useful in the skilled. Interesting. The little art for dodgers. So it's like the difference between a wild rat and a pet rat. It's like the difference between a wild dog and a poodle. The pet rats are really sweet, so no matter what you think of wild rats. Don't

15:41 Discounter, don't hate on Pet rats. They're actually really wonderful and cuddly, and they're even clean. They use a litter box. They can control their bladder like a cat, they prefer to go in a litter box and so they're really clean and wonderful. So Oh, and wait, the lifespan. Their lifespan is two to three years.

15:58 Which As a parent is really wonderful because when a kid says I want a pet You don't always want like a fifteen year commitment, you know. The kid's gonna be away at college and you still got the pet that your kid wanted when they were eight, you know. So I like that the lifespan is two to three years, which is Yeah, so

16:15 Rats are good pets. And so I love my little rats. We've just got these two boys. But

16:21 Even more than loving the rats? I love that I am now Cuddling what I used to kill. Like That I now love what I used to hate.

16:31 It's so sweet like I cuddle them, but it's like, God, I used to hate you. This is such a good feeling in my heart that I now love what I used to hate. And you'll see this is the theme of my five things today. Ready for this. And what are the names of the two rats? Cricket and Clover. Cully clover and Crazy cricket climber.

16:48 Do they eat crickets? What do they eat? Actually, well, they do love clover, but no, they just kinda eat rat food from the store. They eat anything. It's like when you're Making food and you've got little leftovers, you've got little bits and crusts or little things that you just give it to the rats and they usually love it. It's great.

17:05 I keep them in the kitchen. That's perfect. That's what Yeah. Some folks in South America do with Guinea pigs. Although the difference is they fatten up the guinea pigs on the table scraps and then they eat the guinea pigs. Probably not going to eat cricket and clover, I imagine. Cricket and Clover. But I do like that kinda.

17:21 Hang out near the kitchen and give'em the scraps. Okay. Number four? China Number four China. So

17:28 In 2010 I went to Guailin, China. And then I went to Taipei. Taiwan. And

17:35 At the time. China was Rough. I was like I was walking over rubble. The air was just choking me with its smoke and the sense of oil and Everything felt very third world, very rough. And I just

17:48 thought okay that's what China is China you know developing Economy, it's just rough. And then you gotta Taipei, Taiwan, and it just feels like The most refined first world beautiful.

18:01 Version. It's like Japan, but with Chinese culture, and I thought, uh, someday I want to live in Taiwan because that's The really nice part of China. Yeah. So

18:11 Here we are twenty twenty four, fourteen years later. I go to bring my kid on a school holiday to China for his first time and I thought, Well, we'll start out rough. by going to mainland China. And then we'll move on To like the best of the best with the refined

18:26 culture of Taiwan, Taipei. And It turned out to be The opposite. that China was wonderful. We went to Shanghai and it was like First world amazing

18:38 Refined silent because all the vehicles are electric now. So that was the very first thing I noticed as soon as I I took the train from the airport. We got off in downtown Shanghai. I'm surrounded by a hundred vehicles. And I hear nothing. It's just

18:53 That's so nice. And I'm like, oh my God, what's up, this is surreal. Like twenty motorbikes went in front of my face. Like right there, like you know, three meters away and I heard None of them.

19:04 The silent movement. I was like This is so nice. And the people were just So polite and cultured and it was none of this like hacking and spitting that I Associated with it before like the shouting and the spitting, you know? Yeah, that's good to hear. I remember the spitting from my visits. A lot of spitting. Yeah. And even just transactionally, you have to get

19:25 Ali pay or WeChat on your phone first before you go like attach it to your credit card. But then once you're there, all transactions Oh just Everything is so easy. And they're beautiful like rental bikes everywhere laid out in perfect color coded cues. You can just walk up to one and go beep.

19:41 And step on the bike and then just go where you want to go and you drop it off, you go peep. And everything is just So Civilized. And wonderful.

19:50 I was so im it completely changed my mind about China and then I don't wanna sound like I'm Trashing Taiwan, but it was just interesting. That by comparison, then I went to Taipei and I thought, whoa, if China's this nice, imagine how nice Taipei is gonna be.

20:05 I got there and it was kinda like stinky and trashy and They don't take credit cards or they don't have the apps and so you have to pay cash everywhere and I'm like money and paper and coins and I was like, Wow, interesting. And so I met with a Taiwanese woman. For lunch.

20:22 That I'd emailed with before. And she's an investor that goes to mainland China often. And I mentioned something about this cautiously, as like, Yeah, I don't wanna Trash your I didn't say it like that, but I just cautiously said hi.

20:36 Something. And she said, I'm glad you noticed she said. I noticed this too. She said I go to mainland China cities. Every six to twelve months.

20:45 And she said I feel like Taiwan may be plateaued. Like twelve years ago, like we kinda hit first world status. And then stayed there. Almost like Japan, you know it's like

20:55 Japan used to feel futuristic? Now it feels kinda stuck in the nineties, you know, fax machines and stuff and Which is kinda cute in a way. Like again, not to knock it, it's just it it feels like it. It got to a certain point and then it said, Okay, we're happy here. And yeah.

21:10 And she said. Every time I go to China. visible, noticeable improvements like every six months, she said It blows my mind that They just keep improving and keep pushing.

21:21 So I read a book. Called China's worldview. By David. Dao Qui Li

21:28 But Changed my perception of China's government too. It's really impressive. He's a guy that In but not in

21:36 China's government and so he kind of is trying to explain the mindset. And it's a beautiful book, I highly recommend if somebody wants to. Understand China better. China's worldview. China's worldview. Just as a sidebar note, your mention of Japan. I love Japan. And I've spent time in in mainland China and in uh Taipei. It's time for me to get back to both of those. I've spent much more time in Japan, but when people are going to Japan for the first time, they're like, I can't wait to experience this futuristic view thirty years ahead, I typically say

22:12 Look. Especially if they're gonna stay there for a longer period of time. I say You're gonna love it. And it is

22:19 Thirty to forty percent. Blade Runner. And uh Sixty to seventy percent DMV. Just like feeling filling out paperwork and triplicates and fax machines. It's going to drive you nuts if you actually try to live there on some levels, right? There's so many beautiful things about it. But yes, it does have the feeling of having Frozen in time.

22:42 In a sense. Yeah. As opposed to Continued to inflect. The way that it was perhaps some time ago. Need to get back to The East, so to speak. It's been a long time.

22:54 Because of this newfound love I'm actually going to Shenzhen and Chengdu in a few weeks. Oh wow. I just want to keep experiencing different Chinese cities. Are you gonna do any factory tours? Or see manufacturing there?

23:09 I'm just meeting with people. That's kind of how I travel these days. I tend to go to a place and instead of just Instead of seeing the sites, I wanna meet the people. So I'm meeting with people that I've emailed with over the years and just I chose those two cities because I know a lot of people there. Right.

23:23 Can't wait to hear the report. So I think. I'm no mathematician, but maybe you have one more? Smart ass. Okay, number five. Dubai.

23:35 So this is my big one. Because When I lived in Singapore, Dubai would often come up, people would compare the two, and they would tell me Things about Dubai, about the shopping malls and the millionaire pandering in the Instagram hashtag y look at me kinda

23:52 Crap. And Dubai was in my top ten Places I never want to go in my life. Fuck that place. It sounds awful. Sounds like everything I hate In one place.

24:04 You couldn't pay me to go there. But then I have to notice that feeling in myself. And this is gonna be the we'll get to like the theme when we're done with this number five. But I had a flight from New Zealand to Europe that it changed planes in Dubai and I looked at that and I went, Uh Dubai and I was like, wait a second, what is this prejudice in me against Dubai? It's like saying.

24:25 I hate artichokes, but I've never tried artichokes, right? Like I hate Dubai, but I've never been to Dubai. Maybe I should go to Dubai. So instead of making it a three hour layover, I made it like a three or four day layover. I went well, okay, I'm going to Dubai for a few days. So I read a book called City of Gold.

24:43 Which was about the founding Of Dubai and and the creation of Dubai? And dude, it was so good. It is such a great book. Anybody listening to this, if you want a great read, Read the book City of Gold.

24:56 It is Inspiring The wisdom and the foresight and the boldness it took to make that place happen. It was really just like a vision that saw its way through to the end against all thoughts, right? So super inspiring. Then somebody said, Oh, you need to read Arabian sans.

25:13 by this man named Thessager. And that gets into like the Arab Bedu culture, it was written in the nineteen forties or fifties. Kind of like a um Lawrence of Arabia kinda guy.

25:24 Like from England but went through one with the Badu people and got to know the culture and wrote about it. So that was really inspiring. And then

25:34 The United Arab Emirates itself, as I learned more about so Dubai, you know, is a city and a region inside Unit Arab Emirates. It's one of the seven states the So Sheikh Sayed, the guy that was really like the father of the nation.

25:49 was a really great dude, kind of like When I moved to Singapore and I learned more about Li Kuan Yu and started to really admire The decisions he made it became a bit of a role model, like Learning about him like makes me want to be a better person. You know, I just notice that it actually subtly influences my actions. And so when I'm in Singapore, I feel like a little bit infused with the the role model. Like I feel the presence of the role model of Lee Quan U and when I'm in UAE

26:15 I feel a l little bit inspired. Sheikh Zayed because it was just such A great, generous dude. And also I think it's interesting Arab culture gets a really bad rap in the media, like

26:25 Hollywood portrayal is usually some Like white actor with brown makeup. being stupid, saying, you know, oh I like this building, I'll buy ten of them, you know. I I think I want a penguin colony in the desert, you know, make it happen. And They're kind of Portrayed as

26:40 Fools that are too rich. And so getting to know the culture felt like This is really interesting. I I really had the wrong idea. About this culture. Okay, so

26:50 As I read these books, City of Gold in Arabian Sands I have a thing on my website where I always show what I'm reading and I take notes from the books and I put the No, it's on my website. And a friend of mine that lives in Muscat. Oman saw my reading list and he said, What is your interest in this region? I've noticed you're reading books about

27:08 Middle East. And I told him I'm just really interested in Arab culture and he said You must meet the man from Tamashi. I said, what? And he goes, go to Tamashi.com, T A M A S H E E dot com And he said you will see

27:23 A shoe store His name is Mohammed Kazan. He designs. Sandals. But underneath the surface

27:30 He's an educator of Arab culture. So the sandals are just like The storefront. It's like the pirate shop in San Francisco. Oh I haven't heard this.

27:39 There is a place in San Francisco, it's on Valencia Street, and it is used for now educating kids, writing workshops, things like that, but because they couldn't get it zoned. In San Francisco, they couldn't get permission for what they w actually wanted to do. They had to create a storefront. And then do the teaching in the back. And so they created a pirate attire store.

28:04 And all the classrooms are in the back. So That was a a bit of digression. Especially because I can't even recall the proper name of the sort of uh writing out that is is associated with this. But Tamashi. Shoe store. Sandal store on the front end.

28:24 But it's actually education in disguise. Yeah, well. At first I thought there was no connection, and then I realized that his Sandal designs are actually kind of Reflecting

28:35 Arab traditions and culture through the design of the sandals. But it's like his true passion are these cultural trips he does. So if you go to Tamashi.com and you go in the menu, you can click cultural trips, and then you'll see. So My friend introduced me to this guy. So I met with him. On my trip to Dubai.

28:53 We meet by the creek and he tells me that his grandfather built the first building in Dubai. That was his grandfather. That's how young that city is. And he's just like yeah, right. Basically right over there. There was the very first building in Dubai. My grandfather's the one that built it. So I said. Can you explain to me something about Arab culture and

29:10 And he said, Well wait, first you gotta understand The culture of the people. Of the desert. Is very different than the people of the sea. the Arabian coast, and which is very different than the people of the the hills.

29:22 I said okay well Where's your family from? And he said, Well, from the desert. But he said, But you know Two uncles.

29:29 got in a fight and so kinda half the family moved off to Iraq for a while and there was kind of like a Split in the family, but then they kind of reunited. In Abu Dhabi. And he said, But then Islam came along. And I said, wait, hold on. Islam, that was like the year six hundred. I said, Have you been telling me your family history from two thousand years ago?

29:48 And he goes. Eighteen hundred years ago, yeah, I said. Wait, how the fuck do you know your family history back eighteen hundred years? He said, Well, we keep good records. Wow.

29:58 Imagine What that does to how you see your life. If you see yourself in this long lineage of eighteen hundred years of recorded family history. Like how that affects your dating and and whatever choices on where to live. So Muhammad Kazan, this guy is a badass. I love this guy. He's such a wealth of

30:18 information and he communicates it so well. It really helps by the way that so He's got a complete American accent. He went to college in Boston for six years, like got into finance, came back, worked in finance in Abu Dhabi and then just said no my real Passion is teaching The Arab cultural traditions that I think have gotten lost in our modern skyscrapers.

30:38 So that's why he made it his passion project. You know, he could have made way more money in finance, but he As this Tamashi.com. Sandalstor, and he teaches Arab culture, and I admire the hell out of this guy. That's a really cool Easter egg. All right, so we'll link to that in the show notes. And I also pulled up this word that was on the tip of my tongue, McSweeneys. McSweeney's.net. People can check it out. There there's some hilarious writing. The one that I most recently

31:04 shared with someone after it was shared with me is Cormac McCarthy writes to the editor of The Santa Fe New Mexican by John Keenan. It's only gonna be funny for people who have read some of Cormac McCarthy, like The road or Blood Meridian, but There's a lot of really good stuff. So that is the outlet. Also wanted to mention

31:24 Because you mentioned Iraq. Iraqi music, traditional music, is some of the most incredibly intricate music I've ever heard. using a dulcimer or hammer dulcimer, there are different instruments involved. Absolutely spectacular. A lot of that has been destroyed, unfortunately, culturally and various teachers and so on due to all of the

31:45 going on in Iraq over the last while, but What is the overarching lesson that you take from the five things you have changed your mind on. Are there kind of meta lessons that you take? From this. Yeah, you can see the theme, which is like I love my rats.

32:03 But even more, it's like I love that I eat. Used to hate them. And now I don't. And I could have gone on twice as long about Dubai, by the way. The place is amazing. It is this cultural melting pot that just warms my heart. Sitting on the second floor of the Dubai Mall and watching the whole world go by, just the Nigerians and the

32:22 I don't know, the Saudis and the Russians and the Chinese and the British just all walking in through in the same place and uh it's so amazing. I just I kinda wanna live there. But as as happy as it makes me I get this extra happiness of going, wow, I used to hate this place without even knowing it.

32:40 And I take a sip of this coffee and it's like wow. For my whole life. I'm fifty five. I hated coffee. The Python programming link. But the secret has been held back from you, so now you have to go to Dubai to have the coffee that you like. Right.

32:55 The theme is that If you feel completely averse to something. Get to know it better. That whatever you feel yourself leaning away from Try leaning into

33:07 If you Hate opera. Then go learn more about opera. And if you hate sports, well then go learn more about sports. It's usually just Learning about something gives you an appreciation for this thing that you used to just

33:20 Dismiss. At the end of the year last year. I just thought God, this has been I think maybe the greatest year of my life. I think this is the happiest I have ever been in my whole life. And I think the reason why was because I had

33:34 Five major things in one year. that I used to hate that now I love. This is the greatest. Joy. Said major things. So the rats makes it into major things. I like this. Sure. I mean, you know, there might There might be

33:47 I'm not minimizing rats. I'm not minimizing rats. But it's you know, even the coffee and even the Python. I'm doing something Python going, Wow, I can't believe I I hated this for twenty years. Well, I suppose they're major in the sense that To the degree. you had a fixed position beforehand. These were kind of strong

34:08 Fixed positions. Of dislike. So that turnaround is very interesting. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. About three weeks ago, I found myself between 10 and 12,000 feet going over the continental divide, carrying tons of weight, and I needed all the help I could get. And in those circumstances, I relied on momentous products every single day and every single night. Now regular listeners

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35:12 What's on the label is exactly what you're getting. Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think. Visit livemomentus.com slash Tim and use Tim at checkout for 20% off of my performance stack. I'll spell it out. It's a long one. LivemomentO U S dot com slash Tim. So LivMomentus.com slash Tim. For twenty percent off. Let me ask you this. Since In the case of the rats that was catalyzed by your son.

35:41 Bringing up. Petrats. Dubai you had A layover. that then prompted you to extend how long you stayed there.

35:52 Python I'm not sure exactly how that About face came to be, but Having experienced the past year, you say to yourself, This is one of the greatest or maybe the greatest year of my life. high levels of happiness. I think it's because I had these changes of mind.

36:08 Are you farming for opportunities to change your mind proactively. Yeah. And if so, how are you doing that? I don't have a systematic.

36:18 Not that I'm not sharing it, I just don't have it. But It just made me notice like Now I just need to Notice in myself.

36:28 When I'm irrationally averse to something. It can't even be a thought process. Sometimes okay, this is actually in my Useful not true book. That just came out. This idea.

36:38 That was actually a little bit sparked by you. Where somebody Dismisses Everything a person says, it dismisses everything a public figure says. Because they don't like something about that public figure.

36:52 Right? Like, oh I don't like the way he acts on social media, so fuck him. I'm not gonna listen to a word he says. Yeah. inspired, I think I told you last time that the first time I encountered that was years and years ago when I saw somebody holding four hour work week. And I said, Oh wow, great book. And he goes, Pfft, Yeah, the guy's full of himself. Here, you want it. He's like He didn't want to read the book because he saw one thing in there that made him think you were full of yourself. Yeah. So that's it.

37:21 Fuck this whole thing. Fuck this four hundred page book. There's nothing in it for me because there's something I don't like about this guy. Вона тинка баба, то мітс. Trying to think of people as either true or not true. Instead of useful or not useful. That's judging the box, not judging the contents inside.

37:41 And so I think there are many things in my life where I have judged the box. Like Python. No. You know, China. Rough. Dubai fuck that place. Rats. Coffee.

37:52 Okay. Sorry, I just had to spit all five times. All of those I was judging the box. But if you learn a little bit more about it, then you get into the contents. And you go, Oh, actually the contents are wonderful.

38:04 It was just I was dismissing the package. He probably read the first edition where I had that whole chapter on my Cock size. That ended up being a little over the top, so I took it out for reprints. And then you put it in the four hour body. It was a bit much. Yeah, then I I ended up putting that as an appendix in the four hour body. So fair play on his part. I would actually Build on that to say that

38:30 I look to My close relationships. And I pause and question how I'm thinking about friendships if in Every case.

38:42 There isn't something substantial I disagree with each of those friends on. Does that make sense? Yes. I love that. I really want friends where the differences of opinion. bring us closer and make our friendships more valuable, not the other way around.

38:59 Yes. If you and your friends agree on pretty much everything I view that as symptomatic of a problem. Okay.

39:08 I'm so glad you brought this up. Sometimes I wonder about your motivation. For Continuing. These podcasts and

39:18 How you keep up the enthusiasm For doing this. For so long. And then I thought, God, wait, you must Be immersing yourself in so many diverse worldviews.

39:30 that it made me think about the comparison to investing. I was in a situation recently, you've probably had this many times, and I think it's maybe part of why you left California. Where You catch yourself in a group of people and everybody agrees with everybody else. That's like this group think.

39:46 Even if they're all really smart. But damn it, they all basically agree that sucks. And I thought about the benefits of diversification. When it comes to investing, right? So Anybody who

39:58 learns like investing one on one. Learns about Having a A low correlation between your asset allocations. So your US stocks, international stocks. Real estate commodities, bonds.

40:10 Gold. Cash. Something's risky, some things riskless, and the whole idea is they're supposed to have a low correlation. So if one goes down they won't all go down. And I thought about that

40:22 In terms of The thought Portfolio. in our head. Any given person. So you say it

40:30 With The friends you have around, but I assume aren't you then By knowing your friends so well. When you're in a certain situation you're thinking about what to do. You don't just have Tim's thoughts.

40:44 You also have this friend's thoughts, and that's friend's thoughts, and it's like how would this friend of mine Approach this. Do you do that actively? Oh yeah, I definitely do. And I'll give a real world example. And I don't know if we want to get into the the thick of it, but I was reading some of your writing. before we hopped on the phone and I was taking an ice bath also right before we got on the phone, which I I know I am fonder of than you are. But I was sitting in the tub. freezing my balls off and there were certain

41:17 statements and positions in the writing that got me all riled up. And I was sitting there getting riled up. And Thinking about

41:27 my counter positions. And Then I Thought to myself, well That's interesting to observe.

41:37 These feelings coming up, these very strong feelings. Then I thought to myself This is really good. This is good because the feelings are coming up. In a strong way. And

41:49 You're not someone to shy away from a conversation about those things. And what a gift to be able to have. civil disagreement. With friends, like what a fucking treasure that is. Because we don't have a lot of models for civil disagreement, I would say, at least not in

42:11 most media or online is just not what sells. And I very much want friends who are going to call me on my bullshit or at least take counterpositions. And help me think through things. Right. And I think that in your new book, for instance, does a very good job of discussing perspectives.

42:35 and perspective taking and how you can read many things differently. from different viewpoints and You want friends who can help you do that. So that you don't get trapped in your own thought loops. And furthermore, just on a very practical sense, you want to be able to speak truthfully to your friends and you want them to be able to do the same.

42:57 And if you do that and you talk about a really wide breadth of things, if you never have conflict, one or both of you is probably being dishonest. Yeah. Mm. If you're gonna have some friction in the system, which you probably will, if you're really being honest. Then

43:14 You're gonna need to Be good at conflict resolution or repair or talking about hard things. So That's a very long

43:24 Stream of consciousness. That I just let out. But If I look for friends.

43:32 who I can and will disagree with on things, then It becomes my dojo for life overall. with people I really care for and love. And Good God, what an amazing. Gift and advantage that is.

43:48 So yes, I do that deliberately and I invite people on the podcast. who I suspect or know I will disagree with on a few different levels. And that gives me a chance to interrogate their thinking, but also interrogate my own thinking. Love it. I've noticed within myself that when I'm around People that I know agree with me?

44:09 My Inherent curiosity level drops a bit. And when I'm around people that I know Don't think like me, my curiosity piques. So when I

44:21 Meet somebody That is like a scientist that is also Hindu. I'm like ooh. Oh my God, I have so many questions for you. I was like, can you explain to me how this Okay, dude like I'm filled with curiosity. to meet somebody that grew up Hindu and still actively has the Hindu beliefs. I I want to understand this better. I've read two books about Hinduism. I don't get it still. I have so many questions for you.

44:43 But if I'm around somebody that's like me, I'm like How you doing? What's up? Yeah, me too. Cool. All right. So I think it's a A deliberate Overweighting if we're gonna kinda

44:55 Use a Back to like quantitative and investment metaphor. I have a whole lifetime of thinking My way.

45:03 Now I wanna overweight. Learning other ways of thinking. And to me, it's just pure curiosity. There's no debate. There's no like let's work this out and get to the right answer. It's just no, please tell me this other way of Looking at things, tell me this other way of looking at your family history. eighteen hundred years. Tell me this other way of looking at

45:23 I don't know, spirituality, life after death, et cetera, please. I'm so curious. Because it reminds me That my way of looking at it is not the only way. I love dislodging.

45:35 My first impression I think Thought is an obstacle. And we have to get past it.

45:43 to realize there are other ways to look at the situation. Once you realize that you can get past your first way of looking at something, Then you can do that like uh what do you call it, systems two thinking, right? Thinking fast and slow. You can go Oh right, okay, hold on. That was my first reaction. What are some other ways I could look at this? That's what my whole

46:03 useful not true book is about. Yeah, I remember also this is I think this was on The podcast in one of our earlier conversations But I asked you, it was on the podcast, probably the first conversation.

46:17 I asked you who the first person was You thought of when I gave the word successful and your answer was along the lines of, Well, I think answer number one isn't that interesting, because I might say Richard Branson But really good memory. Or Elon Musk, but if Richard Branson wanted a life of peace and tranquility

46:38 And a slower pace. If that were his goal, then he's utterly failing. So maybe that isn't success. But perhaps overarchingly. I've used that twice now as an adverb. That's pretty funny. I never use that word. But The question should be who's the third person you think of.

46:55 When you hear the word successful. I am So impressed that you remember that. It's a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. And that is an example of what you're talking about. is getting past the first thought. I think the operative word there is thought, right? Because

47:10 Yeah. Just to draw a distinction. For me I think Paying attention to feeling. The first feeling can save you from a lot of pain in the short and the long term. In other words, along the lines of the gift of fear, Gavin Tebecker, et cetera. If your system says no

47:27 Pay very close attention to that. But If You have a Inbuilt story. I hate Dubai because A, B, and C, which is very different from

47:39 I don't feel safe in this airport and I don't know why. Those are two very different things. Very Yeah. questioning that first story can pay a lot of incredible dividends. Dude, I love this subject so much. To me that's it's kinda like the key of life. So often the difference between success and failure

47:55 Is the mindset That leads you to take different actions. But if you just look at a situation and you say That's it. That's what the situation is. I'm not talking about physical things, I mean declaring something to be a f a dead end.

48:10 Declaring something to suck. These are all things of the mind. And nothing of the mind is necessarily true. Everything that's just in the mind is just one perspective. Like physical things are true, sure. No, there are some physical realities. The number of votes cast in an election is a physical reality.

48:27 But An alien or a computer could observe and agree. But all these these things of the mind were social creatures and we treat them like they are realities. Like, hey, that person wronged me, and that's just a fact. Like

48:41 That's not just a fact. That's one way of looking at it. And you might be a lot happier and a lot more successful if you realize that that's just one way of looking at it. It's not true. It's just a perspective, it's just a thought, and there's another way of seeing that. And that other way of seeing it. Might lead to the

48:59 It would be much more effective for you. Yeah, for sure. And I think your new book pairs well with Byron Kitty's the work. Very much.

49:11 a lot of what we're discussing. And I was gonna say In addition to what we've already covered that The content is different from the mindset. And what I mean by that is You've crafted.

49:24 A very Path of Derek life for yourself. And you've made some very unorthodox decisions. Some of which I think are frankly sometimes cuckoo bananas. But Thank you. You're welcome. If I don't agree, even if I wouldn't replicate the decision. Hearing you explain why you did it. And how you navigated that.

49:47 the lenses through which you view this scenario. has allowed me to learn things that I can apply to totally different circumstances. Right. And that's really valuable. Right.

49:59 Yeah. You might not make the same house as someone else, but learning how to use the carpentry tools that they use to build that house. could actually really, really, really aid you. In a lot of disparate scenario. So that's how

50:13 I've also thought about it. I so often try to get people to Devalue the example, but value the thought. theme, the process, like you just said, that too many people focus on The example that you give them.

50:28 Try to forget the example and look for The process of Thanks for saying that. I d I do that with everything. There's a um A person that we could

50:37 Talk about here. If you want later, but he's a computer programmer, but He gets up and gives a talk about computer programming. that I see the theme in what he's talking about. I'm like, Ooh, okay, well forget the code for a second. That's a brilliant theme.

50:50 And It's fun to be able to do that. So let's pause. This might be a good segue. Is that part of the next Bucket. Of people you're studying.

51:02 Yeah. Or things you're fascinated by. Where would you like to go next? Because this might be a a good segue. Yeah, it's funny. You actually jumped Two The last thing I was gonna mention, you brought up this diversified portfolio of perspectives. So uh that was one of the things I wanted to talk about today and you didn't even know that. Oh amazing. So I did not. That was great.

51:23 Yeah, let's talk Okay, you asked me in advance. People I'm Studying. So Let's do them in reverse order since we already brought up Rich Hickey. So R I C H

51:34 H I C K E Y Wait a second, before we switch to that. Have you ever met Brian Eno? The record producer. I've not met Brian Eno, but I have His oblique

51:46 Strategies. Yes, wow. Heart set. I was just reading about how he ended up Coining the term ambient music. in the hospital because he couldn't get up and change the volume and ended up he ended up listening to very, very low volume music. a friend had put on for him. So I'm fascinated by Brian Eno, but I've never met him.

52:06 Brynino's one of these guys that His thought process is Fascinating. I Don't love his music. I like his music, I don't love it, but I love his thoughts.

52:18 By the way, if you go to the website musicthoughts.com That's my love letter to Brian Eno and John Cage and some of these music thinkers. I made that website in nineteen ninety-nine And it's a collection of inspiring quotes. From Brian Eno, John Cage, and a bunch of other musicians. Musicthoughts.com. Yep, musicthoughts.com. It's totally non commercial. I'm not gonna make it

52:38 Penny off of anybody looking at it, so I'm not trying to pitch it, but I'm just saying. It's a collection of Brian Eno's Philosophies. on music and thoughts on music that I would

52:48 read these quotes to inspire me as I was making music and kind of knock my thinking kind of like the oblique strategies cards. Two. Shift my thinking into something different. And so even just reading his interviews. One thing he said is His job as a record producer.

53:05 Is to have strong opinions in the studio. So that if He's in there producing a record by you too. And the guys are fighting about Whether to have a guitar solo or not.

53:16 Whether it should be a loud guitar solo or a quiet guitar solo. He said, Well my job then would be to say Well how about we have no guitar at all in this song? And The band members go, What, are you crazy? No, this song needs guitar. No, we Brian, we absolutely need guitar.

53:30 And he goes, All right. Happy I could help. By you disagreeing with me. I just helped you solidify your position, so that's my job here. So

53:39 On the other hand, if you would have said Oh, yeah, okay. No guitar, that's a good idea. Great. Glad I could help. I'm not saying my opinions are right.

53:47 I'm just trying to Help you. Respond. I love that. You're providing a foil. Yeah. Yeah.

53:55 Yeah, you're providing a foil. That's musicthoughts.com. Quick question on Was it John Cage? You mentioned. Yeah. So I was first exposed to John Cage in a documentary a friend of mine named Steve Jang was involved with Uh Nam Jun Pike.

54:11 Moon is the oldest TV. Which is about Nam Juk Pike, this amazing pioneer. And uh experimental art, performance art, many different media. And he was inspired by John Cage. Now I know very little about John Cage, but I did get to see a segment of a performance

54:28 That he did. Which caused like ninety percent of the audience to leave. Just like the most agonizingly uncomfortable, I would say, noise to listen to. That is my sole exposure to John Cage, but I've heard him invoked. As this

54:45 Figurehead. of great influence and I'm basing my impression of him Only on that. What I would just say is awful. performance that I saw part of in this documentary.

54:57 How would you sell John Cage, or why is he interesting? I'm no expert, but let's just say He questioned.

55:07 Things that hadn't been questioned before. A lot of Modern art. The kind where People look at it and go

55:15 What? That's it? It's a seesaw over the border between US and Mexico? You call that art? I could do that. And it's like yeah, you but you didn't. Yeah. Somebody looked at that border between US and Mexico and said, I think we could put a seesaw over that.

55:30 And in a way, that's a beautiful statement. It's not about the brush strokes on canvas. It's about the statement. So I think John Cage was doing that with music. He was questioning The core of what is this anyway? So that's why

55:43 I think his most famous piece is called Four Minutes and Thirty Three Seconds. Which is just four minutes of thirty three seconds of silence. The point was Hey, listen to the room around you. For four minutes and thirty three seconds. There are sounds going on here already. I mean, I think that was his point. Maybe he stayed mute on it, I don't know.

55:59 Okay. So is it fair to say that He's interesting to you for the same reason that Brian, you know, in the producer capacity is interesting as a provocateur. Of sorts. Like an instigator. Yeah. Of new thinking. Yeah, I want to emulate his thoughts.

56:15 Even if I don't. Love. His end results. Well that's uh you said it first. That's why I love that you It's Your friends.

56:23 You may not want to live my life here with my uh whatever, three glasses. And two rats. But you like some of my thought process. Yeah. People keep emailing me about that. Hey, I heard your Podcast with Tim Ferrett, so

56:39 Three glasses, huh? So let me explain that for people who don't don't have the content. You should get a third rat just so you have the same number of rats that you have glasses, but When I visited you in New Zealand, I was like, hey, do you mind if I have glass of water? No, no, no, knock yourself out. Wear the glasses, so they're in the cabinet. And I went and I saw three glasses, all of different like dramatically different sizes. And I was like, What happens if you have more than three people over and you're like, Oh, just buy some more glasses? I was like, Well, actually that kind of makes a certain elegant sense. So those are the three glasses. All right, you know what? On that note, do you want to hear

57:11 I am building my dream home right now. Can imagine where this is going. Just twenty minutes north of Wellington, I bought a piece of land, or I'm building my dream home It is a four by eight meter rectangle with nothing inside.

57:26 No toilet, no kitchen. No nothing, because I thought every house I've lived in Came with its default shit. And I adapted myself to its default shit. Like, well, that's just where the bathroom is. That's just The size of the living room. That's just what it is.

57:42 And I've always had to adapt myself so I've never experienced The process. Of Making the place adapt to me. Mm-hmm.

57:50 Through practice not. In theory. If I just start with a four by eight meter well insulated rectangle, Then over time we'll see What I need.

58:01 Wait, did you say four by eight? Four by eight meters. Yeah. It's the whole house. Sorry.

58:07 It's actually two. One it so it's a four by Twelve? Okay. No four by fourteen meter Rectangle is that's the two bedroom. Place where I'll sleep with my kid and then next to it is a four by eight.

58:19 Where I spend all of my waking hours. Okay. So it's the sleeping house and the waking house. And My kid actually gets his own four by eight meter. Cube to experiment with.

58:29 And the whole idea is to See what you need. So I'm starting with no bathroom, no kitchen. I'm just gonna put a little induction hob outside. And An outhouse.

58:40 And then I'll see if that's okay with me. Or if I find Through experience that I really want a bathroom inside, okay, well now I know from experience not just because it's the default setting. So I'm I'm trying to Start from scratch and this is my dream house because of the process that it will allow me.

58:57 Okay. So this is a very mundane question, but I'm curious. Generally, if you're gonna have like a kitchen or a bathroom or something, you would have The Piping or the power and so on put in a certain place. So as it stands, that is not the case. So you might have to do a fair amount of demo.

59:19 Or deconstructing your house. To add. Any of these things. Internally. I got this tip from

59:27 Stuart Brand. wrote a brilliant book that everyone should read. Anyone who's smart, that is. Called How Buildings Learn. Hellbuildings learned by Stuart Brand.

59:37 You should try to get the paperbook because it's just laid out in such a way that you kinda need the paperbook. He goes through this analytical thing. About buildings. And he said this is a reason why you should never Hide.

59:48 Your Wires and pipes, just keep the infrastructure on the outside so that it's easier to change. He's a beautiful Line in there. It's almost the opening. All buildings are predictions.

1:00:00 And all predictions are wrong. So therefore That's cool. You can make your building the better. That's why I'm just getting this rectangle.

1:00:11 Oh Pipes and wires will just be exposed, nothing buried, so that I can quickly change them, I can always see where they are. I'm very much following Stuart Brand's Philosophy. Stuart Brand is a smart, fascinating man. Just a quick

1:00:25 pitch for Stuart Brandt. So I met Stuart through Kevin Kelly. Now Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired Magazine, fascinating, genius, bizarre guy. has an Amish beard, but he's a technology futurist, built his own house by hand. Spends more time in China than probably anyone I know. He's just an eclectic combination of all sorts of things. And the title of my podcast with him way back in the day. was the real world most interesting man in the world or something like that.

1:00:55 And In the midst of the conversation with Kevin, or maybe speaking offline, he said, if you really want the person I consider to be the most interesting man in the world, it's Stuart Brand. had Stewart on the podcast a number of years ago. And

1:01:11 Boy, oh boy, you want to talk about a polymath. These something else. All right. So you've preserved the optionality. with the possibility of putting things on the outside rather than on the inside in terms of support infrastructure. And How do you see yourself

1:01:29 using a space with nothing inside. I don't know. See, that would be a prediction. I'm trying to not predict. I'm just I'm just gonna show up. It'll be ready in a few months and then I'll start living there and we'll see what happens. That's all I know. Okay. Is it gonna be totally empty? Are you gonna have some desks, a chair? I mean, are you gonna have anything at all? Are you just gonna sit on the floor and be like, what do I require at this moment? I'm bringing a mattress to start, and then over time I'll notice if

1:01:55 If I wish I had a desk here, then I'll get a desk there. You know. So I'll add things as it I feel that I really, really need them. Again, I highly recommend In how buildings learn. He kinda goes into this about like the best spaces are just rectangles and

1:02:10 The best places the ones that are easy to alter. So that if you suddenly decide he talks about this MIT building. Where people were just allowed to bash a hole in the wall because it wasn't some beautifully architecturally designed masterpiece. It was something thrown together quickly in World War Two. And people love that building because if they do need to bash a hole in the wall to run some wire through, they can just do it. 'Cause it's a trashy old building and it's and because of that it's such a creative space.

1:02:33 The places that are award winning. are often the ones that are the most hated by their residents. They might win the award for the architect. That's true. But because they're award winning They're inflexible. They're sacred. I mean, talk to people who live in a Frank Lloyd Wright home now. And it's like you know, living in

1:02:51 Masterpiece Museum and can't change a single screw or anything because it's the way he wanted it. It's a practical recommendation. I would say if you're gonna be sitting on the floor a lot, if you're not accustomed to doing that, just so you don't end up with all sorts of orthopedic issues, I would start doing Turkish get ups and getting accustomed to sitting on the floor and getting up a lot. I'll probably get a good chair almost right away. But I just wanna make sure that I really're The rectangle. All right, fascinating.

1:03:21 Yeah, another example. I'll let you be the first monkey shot into space on this particular type of home design. I can't can't wait to learn so many things. You experiment with some things I don't want to experiment with and I'll experiment for things that you don't want to experiment with. I'll renounce my US citizenship and let you know how it goes. I'll m build my dream home of a four by eight rectangle. Let you know how it goes. Yeah, you gotta divvy it up. I mean the redundancy and experimentation is kinda I don't wanna say pointless, but it's more fun to have people doing different things. Other people

1:03:53 You are studying. All right. Or things you're fascinated by. We can hop around, depends on where you want to go. I already started. Rich hickey.

1:04:01 Oh that's right. You mentioned him a uh I wrote him down because uh that was left dangling and I was like Who is this Rich Hickey? So Rich Hickey is He's a programmer, he's the inventor of a programming language called Clojure. C L O J U R E He's actually one of my number one picks for somebody.

1:04:18 that I would like to get on your show, like if we did a co hosting kind of thing, an hour to get somebody on. Yeah, actually I already Emailed him. He didn't reply. But maybe Hey, if anybody knows Rich Hickey and if he's interested Nudge, nudge, nudge. He did a brilliant talk. If you search YouTube

1:04:35 For either Simple versus easy, or I think the Name of the video on YouTube is called Simplicity Matters. Here's his point. And I actually jotted down these No. So I could try to

1:04:47 Bang out his point quickly and then we'll talk about it. And keep in mind everything I'm about to say, he's just talking about programming. He's speaking to a room of programmers. He said we mistake Simple.

1:04:59 And easy. We think that simple means easy and easy means simple. But he said they're Two different things. The word complex If you look at the definition it's actually it

1:05:09 comes from the word complex. Which is to braid things together. So if something is complexed, it means it's intertwined with other things. And so the adjective complex means that something is Bound to other things.

1:05:23 Whereas simple comes from simplex, which means it is not. Bound to other things. It stands alone. Easy. The root of that means that something is near at hand. It's something you already know how to do.

1:05:36 It's within your Well. So Easy and hard. Are subjective.

1:05:43 But simple and complex are very objective things that we can look at. Something is simple, stands alone, it's complex, fits bound to other things. And he said, Here's where it gets tricky. Is that It can be very easy.

1:05:58 So He says you could just type Gem install hairball. And with Typing three words on a computer, you can install a massive framework.

1:06:07 whether it's Ruby on Rails or WordPress, and if you start using that, well wow, you are now complexted with a huge complicated system that you're intertwined with. And so now everything I say after this, this is my take on his Analysis? But

1:06:23 It's really easy in life. To say Okay, yeah, let's get married. Or to have unprotected sex and get pregnant and have a baby. That's easy.

1:06:34 Adopt a dog. hiring people, you can have a problem and think, uh, all right, well I've got some money and I'm overwhelmed. I'm gonna get a consultant to like hire ten people. Okay, great, now I've got ten employees. Phew. That was easy to take some work off my plate, but your life Is now

1:06:48 Objectively complex. You are complicted with these other people and their needs and their Time schedules and their desires. Handing off Parts of your business to say.

1:07:00 This is hard. I'm just gonna hand off my billing or my something or my this or my scheduling to these apps. Or these subscription services. That was easy.

1:07:12 To just hand it off. But now your business is very complex. With these other services. So Hence my

1:07:22 Rant. On our last conversation over Scotch at my house, About Tech independence. His point is

1:07:30 It can be really hard. To make something simple. It can be much harder to do something that is objectively simple, that stands alone, that isn't dependent on other things. It can be harder to make that. But it's ultimately

1:07:44 Usually a better choice because It's more maintainable, it's easier. It's easier to stop and start. It's simpler, even if it's harder to make. So The point is, in his thinking is to

1:07:58 Beware of the objective measure of complexity, or beware of complexity, which can be objectively measured. And aim for doing the simpler thing. Even if it's harder. In my take, I think you can make simple things easier just by learning more.

1:08:13 Say about the fundamentals of something instead of just Adopting somebody else's high-level solution? You can spend a little time learning about the Then you can forget norms.

1:08:27 You could forget what others do, what others think. And you can just get to the real essence of what you need. I'm not just talking programming now, I'm just meaning like in life. What would be an example of that? Okay, my four by eight. House. It's like really I just need A shelter?

1:08:43 Where it's temperature controlled, so it's really well insulated. I do need a mattress to sleep on. And I do need a place I can work. But to me those are the Oh and I do need a little food.

1:08:54 To me these are the core things of a shelter. But even say with Friendships. Do I need to live in the same place with my friends? Well, not necessarily. My dear friends. My best friends are often Far, far away. I don't need to

1:09:08 Move to a place that has all my friends if I can reach them. On the phone. I'm very often talking about just the thought process, I very often find myself Asking like well what's the real outcome I'm after? What's the real point of this?

1:09:22 And once I figure that out, well then what's the most direct route to that outcome. Never mind what other people do. What the norms are. What do I think is the most important thing?

1:09:32 And then try to keep it simple along the way and be very wary of Dependencies and entangling myself with other. Things. That's my take.

1:09:42 Could you give the another example or two of how you Implement that. In your life. Sure. Or how you might I know there are more examples. The the next two might be less relatable.

1:09:56 Because it's not less relatable than the four by eight meter file. I mean well first Here's a good question to Strip away some things. Ask yourself

1:10:11 Would I still do this if If nobody knew There might be a lot of things in our actions that we do Because we like the way it would look to others, because it would be impressive to others, and That's the first thing to just strip away when you're beginning this thought process is like

1:10:28 If I were to never tell anybody and nobody were to ever know. Would I still do this thing? Okay, well then that might just be the decoration. Okay, so two examples. Programming wise, I'm constantly asking this. When I'm building something it's is just

1:10:43 I need to get This calendar entry into this database. With this time. Do I need a whole bunch of JavaScript? Do I need a bunch of CSS and things flying around? Do I need fading graphics?

1:10:56 No. I just need This thing there is What's the most direct way to get it? that calendar entry into that.

1:11:03 database. So that's like a programming example. Writing wise. My last two books, How to Live and Useful Not True. I'm spending most of my time

1:11:15 Reducing. My rough draft I always spew out everything I have to say on the subject. And then I spend A thousand hours. Every single word going, is that word necessary?

1:11:28 Wait a second, is that whole sentence necessary? Wait, can the point still be communicated without that sentence? If it can, okay, let me try to get rid of that sentence and see if the point still comes across. Actually, does the point come across without this entire chapter? Oh my god, it still does. Therefore I don't need this chapter. One of the most useful things that Happen recently is

1:11:47 A few months ago. An organization In Australia. Paid me to come give a talk. And I said, What you want me to talk about? They said, Anything. I said, How about my next book called Useful Not True? They said, Sure.

1:12:00 So It was a room of very successful, very effective people. And I had one hour on stage to communicate the whole idea of my next book. And At the time, the book was still

1:12:12 In process. And that was so helpful because I noticed that there were a few things that on stage, even though I had it in my notes. I skipped over it. And I thought, okay, well actually we don't need to do that. Okay, let's get to the next point. And so later when I was back home, I thought, wow, I just skipped over that whole point on stage. So why do I think it's worth killing trees to print that point?

1:12:34 Apparently it's not. Cool. This is now the shortest book I've ever written. I'm very proud of that fact. I compressed this four hundred pages down to I think it's um a hundred and two pages or something and So those are two examples where I'm

1:12:47 Constantly asking like what's the most direct way to just get rid of what I really want? Get the outcome. Skipping the The usual fanfare. How do you think about

1:12:59 First order simplicity versus complexity versus second order, third order. And Planning and the reason I'm asking that is You strike me as someone. Who prizes

1:13:13 Freedom. Independence. Simplicity. All very highly. But I imagine there could be cases where

1:13:25 looking at the first decision and the first order effects, you might think, well, it's much simpler for me to Do X. to renounce my US citizenship to build a box to do everything myself instead of taking on these cloud services for accounting and so on. But there are levels of

1:13:46 Second, third order. complexities that ultimately make it kind of net net. more complex than doing the Slightly more complex thing up front. Does that make sense?

1:13:57 Almost. I guess I'm wondering. How Practically. People might think about

1:14:04 Simplifying but not oversimplifying and then shooting yourself in the foot. In the long term. Give you an example. I know people who have moved to Puerto Rico to

1:14:16 Trim. Taxes. Substantially. Right. Right. But in the process They viewed that as the most direct route to reducing taxes, therefore they can do X, Y, and Z over time with more income.

1:14:28 Or preserved capital gain, whatever it might be. However, in the process of doing that They've created all of this lifestyle complexity and applied a lot of constraints to what they can or cannot do. And the taxales wagging the dog. And instead of money serving life now life is serving money and they've

1:14:51 Kind of put themselves in a topsy turvy. Upside down. situation when if you were to look at it from first principles, two years later you're like, wow, that was really bungled. And that's not true for everybody in Puerto Rico. I'm not trying to make it sound like that, but I have seen those types of examples where like the thing that seemed Simple and straightforward at the outset.

1:15:11 ended up producing a lot of ripple effects. That produced. Not just complexity, but complexity that was hard to undo. Yeah. Great example.

1:15:22 So yeah, how do you think about that kind of risk mitigation. Oof. By the way to my two little examples of that. A few years ago Tony Robbins had a Money Master the Game book.

1:15:33 I was like, Oh wow, Tony hasn't put out a book in like twenty years. I wonder how this is gonna be. Yeah and in it he's giving these Prescriptions for extremely complex like insurance things that you could set up. I was like, Ooh, wow. That's objectively complex and Another example is in Niels Strauss's book called Emergency. I'll never forget this point. He said that he's off at one of these

1:15:57 nomad, sovereign individual, I'm beholden to no country kind of events. And he meets this guy that is bragging to him about his setup. He's like, I got my income coming here, but then all expenses go here, but then I've got a trust and this, but I'm the non-managing member of the trust, which is held by the this and that. And in the end. He's gonna save thirty percent taxes.

1:16:19 And Neil said. Wouldn't it just be a lot easier or Make a lot more sense to just work thirty percent harder? Make thirty percent more money?

1:16:29 So that's a ton of work just to save thirty percent. Said it's not that much harder to just go make thirty percent more. And dude, when I read that. I love that thought process. So I think that

1:16:41 I know that you're Podcast and the Titans and all that is often about how do we Use the wisdom of others. Two

1:16:52 Avoid making these mistakes ourselves, but But Some of these things may be Just have to I don't know. I think for some of these things I'm willing to throw myself in and feel the pain to see if I've done it wrong. I know we're improv jazzing here, so let's keep going.

1:17:07 This thought just occurred to me. Because when I Here you talk about code and programming. I mean there's a poetry to it. And there's an economy to it that is Seems I'm not a programmer, but I do write. There seems to be something intrinsically rewarding to you about that.

1:17:26 presentation of elegance. And I'm wondering in the case of following Stuart Brand's principles and building this box. Or Doing certain things that seem to me

1:17:40 Optimized for Freedom, independents. Is there's even if It ends up Face planting? Is there something

1:17:48 That you find. beautiful and redeeming just about taking the simple approach, even if the outcome is suboptimal. It's related. It's finding out in fact instead of just in theory. We can sit.

1:18:03 At home. And wonder what it might be like to do such and such, but Certain point you just gotta throw yourself in and go try it. And if you try moving to Puerto Rico and you hate it. Well, now you know.

1:18:15 It was worth a try, maybe. And now you know in fact. D that doesn't work for you. That's maybe the How buildings learn idea.

1:18:24 Is Don't predict. That you will want to sink in that spot. Put yourself into that spot first. Live without a sink for a while. Yeah, I do like and eventually you'll get a good feeling for where the sink needs to be, in fact, not in theory. Yeah.

1:18:40 And so I think I do this with my Life is I'm willing to Two Mess up. Happily.

1:18:48 Because I will know that then I found out in fact. And maybe this is coming from the core of the fact that like I'm a I'm a really happy person. And so I feel that like my base level is up here. I can take

1:19:02 Some big knocks. The crazy shit I've done. I did marry somebody that I hardly knew. After a few months, because fuck it, let's see what happens. In fact, you and I have never talked about that directly.

1:19:15 But Do you know the mindset I was in at the time, I had just sold my company, I had a ton of money And I felt like I need to change my trajectory.

1:19:27 Because My first impulse after selling my company was literally the next day I set up my next company. And I thought I'm gonna move to Silicon Valley, I'm gonna do this thing, I'm gonna stay on the same trajectory. And I did that for a few months, but then I caught myself. Going weight.

1:19:43 I want a full life. I don't want to stay on the same trajectory, I wanna shake shit up. So I very deliberately Did what we might call the George Costanza principle, which is Do the opposite.

1:19:54 Do the opposite of all of my impulses. Every time I felt yes, everything in me said yes, I would say no out loud. And everything Amy says no. I say yes out loud as a way of deliberately shaking shit up. And so I was dating this woman for a few months. And we had no great connection.

1:20:13 And she said, Oh well I can't travel to California with you unless we get married. And everything in me says, Oh hell no, don't do that. That's stupid. I don't want to marry this person, so I said Yes, let's do that. And so we got married. And

1:20:30 I kept doing that in every way. I f Deliberately fucked up my life. And made a bunch of Crazy fucking decisions and Some of them worked out great and some of them didn't.

1:20:42 And I'm so happy that I did that. Like I in some ways I could say that that's my biggest regret or biggest mistake, but in other ways It was wonderful. It deliberately Sent me on a different trajectory, and I'm glad I did it.

1:20:55 That it definitely will. So for people who don't have Any of the the connective tissue here to figure out Yeah. to orient themselves to this. People are gonna want to know, right? Cliffhanger. So how did that turn out? The everything in me says no, so I said

1:21:11 Yes, let's get married. Let's do that. The marriage is awful. No, that was That was terrible. I mean and we knew it like literally like days later. Like oops, we made a big mistake. Yeah, that was that was instantly a big mistake, and that's fine.

1:21:25 Because We knew In fact. Then that it was a big mistake. Not just in theory. I could have walked away from that going.

1:21:33 Oh God, remember that woman that wanted me to marry her and I said no? God, I wonder what would have happened. Well now I get to find out. Like I I did it. Now hold on a second though. I'm gonna push on this a little bit. We could use this logic Two Be a reverse George Costanza for every decision we think is bad.

1:21:51 we could turn around and say yes to, right? But as a life strategy, I don't see you continuing that. Right. No. So you don't know for a fact that The awful idea would have been awful. But I mean, there has to be a point at which you think about self preservation and time as a finite currency. So you're like, Well When would you apply that versus when would you not apply it, right?'Cause you could apply it everywhere. Indefinitely.

1:22:14 But it Certain things are one way doors and some are two way doors. Right. I mean like for instance. Getting a pet rat. Okay.

1:22:24 Lower cost. more reversible, let's just say, than maybe Giving up your US citizenship. Right. That is a little harder to control Z.

1:22:35 Yeah, I cannot undo that. Yeah. So Moving forward for you, having learned everything that you've learned. When do you play the George Costanza?

1:22:45 Strategy. Versus not. Right, because There are lots of things we can't know for a fact unless we make the right or the wrong or the good or the bad decision, but you can't make all decisions.

1:22:57 So what do you do? You know Long ago. When I said the hell yeah or no thing and It's gonna be on your gravestone.

1:23:07 Hell yeah, or here I am. Yeah. Yeah. Some people emailed me after that. After that was on your show and they said

1:23:20 Hey man, I'm- I you know I like this hell yeah or no thing. I'm using it for everything, you know. I just got out of college, I'm getting a bunch of offers, I'm like, I'm not feeling hell yeah about any of them. You know, I'm dating and we're just like, you know, I'm not hell yeah about any of you. And I go, Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. Everything does not become a nail because you're holding this hammer. You don't this is a tool for a specific situation When you're overwhelmed with options, you have to have the wisdom to know when to use this tool. You don't use it on everything always. It's the same thing with this going against your instincts.

1:23:50 Of course you don't use it on everything always. But That was a specific time in my life. When I wanted to deliberately change my trajectory. I wanted to go against my normal way of doing things.

1:24:03 And deliberately introduce some randomness and variety into my life. Right. It's not your default. Right. But let's look at you know, I mentioned Dubai earlier. Everything in me said fuck that place.

1:24:15 And then I caught myself. Feeling that. And I thought Okay, wait, hold on. This is a good time to use this tool.

1:24:23 My impulse is saying no. I'm gonna try saying yes. I'm gonna go get to know this thing. Because that sounds to me like that would be a learning growing experience. To try it. That's a good

1:24:33 Example of integrating this into your life. But then Say like if Maybe you do hit a situation where it's like nothing is working out. You've been an idiot your whole life. You just got fired. You were just dumped by your Romantic partner you're it's skid row.

1:24:49 Maybe it's a really good time to go against all your natural impulses since it's pretty clear That your defaults Or set wrong. Not working. Yeah, they're not working very well. Yeah.

1:25:04 Question is like Is this going to be a learning growing experience for me? I like leaning into Discomfort. Whatever scares you, go do it. All right, so I have uh

1:25:15 Quite a few follow up questions. We can take them in many different directions. So we we've covered Rich Hickey Clojure. Knock knock. We'll see if if anyone lets him know he appeared on the show. And I also want to ask you a question we can cut from the conversation if we need to, but since the Dubai has come up with the That's a great lead in. I love that. This may be too risky for anybody's ears, but here we go. Do taxes fit into this at all? Is this like people who move to Nashville or Oh Austin, and they're like oh the barbecue and the music and they they will dance and dance and dance until you corner them with a broomstick and then they're like yeah, okay, fine. Yeah, the taxes is also it's a thing. Is Dubai one of those or no? Not at all.

1:25:59 I mean, I think it's a good thing I had to ask myself that. It's like one of those things, okay, when you ask yourself. Would I still be Doing this thing.

1:26:08 If nobody knew about it. I got an email from guy once that was just like, Hey man, I want to travel the whole world. I'm gonna visit every country in the world. Do you have any suggestions for me? I said yeah. Don't bring a camera. And don't tell anyone that you're doing this.

1:26:23 Is it still appealing to you now? Yeah. Probably not. Okay. So Any time. Say Dubai, for example. I was like, Whoa, this place is fascinating. Oh my God, I think I wanna live here.

1:26:35 I was like Would I still live here if the taxes were like fifty percent? I was like, Yeah, that like that has that's moot to me. I mean look, I'm living in New Zealand where Yeah, my income tax right now is is forty five percent. I pay a ton of taxes.

1:26:48 But it's worth it to me. I love it here. I don't care. So That thing I mentioned in Neil Strauss's book Emergency That Sentence hit me hard.

1:26:58 When I first sold CD Baby That was two thousand eight. There were some things I was thinking at the time. Or it's like, ooh wow, I just got mega millions. How can I Pay less taxes. And it was literally like

1:27:11 The month Before or month after I sold CD Baby? that I read that book Emergency and I saw that sentence and I went, Whoa. Good timing. He said point. Don't

1:27:24 Jump through hoops to save taxes. Jump through a hoop to go make more money. That's the growth choice, anyway. That's The thought process that leads you to make growing decisions, not shrinking decisions. So you're About to sell or have just sold CD Baby.

1:27:40 You form a new company the next day. You're planning on moving to Silicon Valley and you see yourself moving on that track and you decide to throw a Costanza curve ball in and mix things up. Why? Like what was the fear?

1:27:57 or the hazard you're trying to avoid by following that path. Was it doing something thouglessly and repeating what you've done before? That it wasn't intentional? Wha what was it? I want to live a full life. At the end of my life, I want to look back and go, wow.

1:28:13 I Did a bunch of different things. I tried a bunch of different ways of living. I followed this philosophy for a while, I followed that one, I tried this, I tried that, I lived here, I lived there. That to me is my Definition of a full life.

1:28:29 But my previous book called How to Live Was Twenty seven. Conflicting philosophies. And one weird answer. And the whole idea was that

1:28:40 It's twenty seven chapters. Each one disagrees with the rest, but each one has a strong opinion of saying, Here's how to live. No, live for the future. Then the next one's like, here's how to live. Live only for the present. And the next one's like, Here's how to live, you know, leave a legacy.

1:28:56 And these are all valid ways of living and My definition of a full life is I want to Experience the different approaches to life. I want to have the diversified portfolio. of thought.

1:29:08 And of experiences. So That was it. I just felt like if I was to Create a new company the next day and move to Silicon Valley, I'd just be doing more of the same shit I've already done. Yeah.

1:29:18 Make sense. Makes perfect sense. Who else do you have on your list of people you're studying? All right. Tyler Cowan

1:29:25 Just a few days ago. In an article on bloomberg.com called Who Was Bitcoin's Satoshi? So we still don't know who is Satoshi the inventor of Bitcoin. And You know, there's this law of headlines that if

1:29:42 If it ends in a question mark, the answer's usually no. You know. So when I first saw the headline, I thought that The answer was going to be it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter who Satoshi is, forget it. And oh my god.

1:29:56 Tyler Cowan took it somewhere else. Like even if you would have asked me, by the way, hey Derek, I'm gonna give you an hour alone in a room. To think about one question. Does it matter? Who is Satoshi, the inventor of Bitcoin? Even after an hour, I think my answer would have been of course not.

1:30:12 And I would have just sat there for an hour. Just going no. No. No.

1:30:17 Tyler Cowan took it the opposite way. I jotted down his points. But it's a masterpiece in It's kind of if then knock on thinking. So

1:30:27 He said, Okay, if we find out that Satoshi is dead. The inventor of Bitcoin is dead. Then That's a good thing because it means

1:30:37 Bitcoin will be more safe because it won't be open to future alteration. The person can't tarnish the reputation of it, you know, say like Elon Musk and Twitter kind of like you know. But Continuing to be there can tarnish the reputation of something.

1:30:52 Sorry, I shouldn't have gone there. Satoshi can't come back and change the rules for the worst. And then he even said This is why all religions Have dead founders. is because the founder can't stay in and tarnish the reputation of of the religion.

1:31:08 So I went, Okay, good point. If Satoshi's dead that is good for Bitcoin. It can stay as is and won't get tarnished. Mm can change. And he said so there's a chance that Satoshi

1:31:19 is an older guy from this previous movement around E Gold. that was generally seen as like a failed project, that a bunch of people were into this idea of e-gold and it didn't work out. If Satoshi is somebody from that group Then that means that Even projects that look like they've failed.

1:31:38 can create great things. So we should Maybe think more highly or be less dismissive of projects that seem to be failing. 'Cause who knows what they will lead to. Is it there's a chance that Satoshi is This person and I forget their name but he said

1:31:53 that would have been twenty one years old. And in grad school at the time of inventing Bitcoin, he said, If that's true That means we should raise our perception of what young busy people can do, that they can do more than we realize. This guy while in grad school also invented Bitcoin. Nave said if Satoshi is still alive. That means

1:32:15 Oh by the way. We should say for your I assume people know, but maybe not. That whoever is Satoshi. Has hundreds Okay, let's say at least tens of billions of dollars.

1:32:25 In Bitcoin. That all he'd have to do. Whoever Would have to just

1:32:31 Take it. It's it's already there in the account in the public record that we can see. So Satoshi is One of the richest people on earth, whoever Satoshi is, so he said if Satoshi's still living That means that some people don't want to be billions. Or just have incredible self restraint like maybe

1:32:48 Upon realizing what he created, he destroyed the key, destroyed the password, so that he could not Take those billions of dollars. You know, to protect himself from that. There's a chance. that Satoshi is a pseudonym for a group of people.

1:33:01 If that's true. It means a group of people can keep secrets way better than we expected. Which means That conspiracy theories are more likely to be true about anything in general, about UFOs, about JFK, or whatever. If this group of people is Satoshi and they could have hundreds of billions of dollars or tens of billions of dollars, But they are choosing not to, and they are all keeping the secret?

1:33:24 That's amazing and we should regard Secrecy. More higher than we can. That's the end of the the bullet points, but I read this one little Bloomberg article and my jaw dropped. I went, Oh my God, this is the kind of thinking

1:33:38 I aspire to that is some amazing Lateral creative I don't know, what kind of thinking do you call that, but that's what I want to do more of. Mm. Love it.

1:33:48 Yeah, Tyler's incredible. Highly recommend people check them out. That's a really good Kyler example. Cowan C O W E N. Definitely recommend people check him out. Also

1:33:58 Past podcast guest. Yeah. That was a great one. Previously to this, one of my favorite points of his is he said that Restaurants are better in places of high income inequality. Why? Because these are places that have both rich customers

1:34:13 And low paid staff. So somebody can afford to run a great restaurant because there are enough people that will pay because there are rich people around. But they're enough. Low income people that we can Have a good amount of staff.

1:34:26 They said that's why the best restaurants are in places of high income inequality. Oh. That's again a brilliant connection. That's interesting. I would also add to that that a lot of folks who want to dedicate themselves to a craft or an art. Or

1:34:42 Depending on the industry, but frequently not going to be well paid. For that. And So they're Let's just call it volitionally.

1:34:52 Poorly paid. In some cases. And I'm thinking of in this particular case San Francisco and East Bay, where A lot of restaurants in San Francisco, a lot of restaurants in different places, but as the price of living went up in San Francisco, a lot of the best Restaurateurs, meaning and I I should say chefs, a lot of the best chefs, a lot of the best line cooks, a lot of the best massage therapists. A lot of these people could no longer afford to be there, had to move to the East Bay.

1:35:19 And I would say that led to a decline in the quality. of all of the goods I just mentioned services. So that would also make sense. Yes. You want access to the artists, they're not gonna be in the most expensive areas typically. Unless it's like a Jeff Coons or something.

1:35:36 I haven't been to Pittsburgh lately, but I heard that That happened with some of the a lot of the best chefs from New York City. Went to Pittsburgh. Yeah. Hotter than you'd expect.

1:35:47 I can see that. I could totally see it. Alright, Tyler. Anybody else on the list of people you're learning from or people you're studying? Those are my two. That title it's because they're specific things.

1:35:57 I love it. All right. So I think we have one more category. We'll see how many we get to. But I heard a sharp inhale. Where should we go?

1:36:07 Okay. So Inchword Inchword.com INCHWORD.com. This is actually a bit of a call out. I don't usually do this.

1:36:17 But I would like to hear from translators. If you're a translator. Contact me. Because I've got a lot of paying work.

1:36:26 Because I'm really interested In the subject of Translations that are Always improving. Well not always. At a certain point you call it maybe you call it a release. But you know

1:36:37 As a writer The first time you write a sentence is not always the best. You improve it the second or third time. Sentence we see in your books, that might be the fourth time you've

1:36:51 improved that sentence maybe over the course of months. There's always room for improvement. When somebody makes a translation of one of your books. The incentives are a little off now. Because the translator's incentive

1:37:04 As long as they're not translating the Bible or something. Their incentive is mostly just Get it done, good enough, get paid. The publisher's incentive, the publisher who publishes a translation. Their incentive is

1:37:16 Higher A translator that will make a good enough translation. For a low enough price. That we can get this out on the market now. And make a profit selling it.

1:37:26 But my incentive as the writer That Sweated over these words. for years and really crafted it almost like song lyrics. Like I have a different incentive that's if I'm gonna have a translation of this book out in the world

1:37:41 I want it to be great, and really, really great. Which means my incentive is to work closely with the translator to make sure that What they're doing is the best it can be. And that it's communicating. What I intended.

1:37:54 How do you do that in a language you don't speak? I don't know. That's my question. So this is the I don't have the answer, but I'm fascinated with The problem So so far

1:38:05 The best idea? is what I'm putting at Intward.com, which is this idea of incremental improvement. Oh, so this is your website. Yeah, I made it. It's my little Okay. All right. So

1:38:17 It's this idea where once I I call a something done, whether it's an article or a book. I put every sentence into its own entry in the database. And then I pass it to a computer. that does the first round of a bad translation. So now we have a starting point.

1:38:30 So now If you're the first translator to come through and translate The automatic translation into your language. Let's say

1:38:39 That's a low bar, that's low hanging fruit, so let's say that will pay fifty cents per sentence. But now If you've done one round of improvements over the computer Translation. And now somebody else comes through and says, Hm.

1:38:51 I can improve that further. That sentence, not the whole thing. That sentence I can improve that one. Now that'll pay like a dollar percentage if it's an improved and now say two different people Have improved it twice.

1:39:03 And now a third person looks at that and says, Mm, I'd know how to improve that better. Okay, well now you can make Say two dollars per sentence to it. Improve it better. The the stakes are getting higher. For improving it. There are incentives now to make it

1:39:17 As good as can be. How do you know if it's been improved? So yes, how do we know it's a better translation? So then we have readers. Who reviewers, readers, whatever you want to call them.

1:39:27 That are paid a little something to Just read through and judge. And at any given sentence where an improvement has been made. Both sentences are shown. In random order and they have to

1:39:39 Vote for which one they feel is the better sentence. In that case. When a majority votes that that sentence is better then it's Chosen and that's when the translator gets paid, so translator can't get money just for coming in and spewing crap. They only get paid when the readers believe that that was a better translation. Anyway, I'm not saying this is the final answer, but I think it's a fascinating problem.

1:40:00 That I'm willing to Spend money on because I'm incentivized to have the best translation of my works out there. That's it. If they are a good translator. How do you incentivise them to go first, knowing that someone might come along?

1:40:14 and make substantially more money. by doing the fourth or fifth iteration. Or is that not a problem? I don't know. So you just asked a great question. Thank you.

1:40:26 You're welcome. You're welcome. Yeah. I know nothing about this. I'm not fluent in any other language. But You've probably seen this effect. Whenever you start to learn another language, doesn't it make you look at your English?

1:40:44 More closely? Oh, a hundred percent. That's part of the fun. Yes. Makes you look at the whole world differently depending on Yeah. How Divergent. The languages from

1:40:54 Your native language, in this case English for us. Oh yeah. So, so so interesting. It's just trying to help somebody with their approach to Japanese yesterday. And my first thought was. If you have like three or four weeks, maybe You go to South Korea first. And

1:41:13 try to pick up Korean because the reading is so much easier. So perhaps you could learn the basics. of Korean Which isn't identical to Japanese, but the grammar is very, very, very, very similar. And then you go back to Japan with your newfound knowledge of the grammar without the handicap that slows you down of having to learn. Three writing systems, right? Hiragara, katagara, and kanji.

1:41:38 And I don't I don't know if that's a good approach, but it was the first time it had occurred to me and I was like, Huh. Wonder if that actually Would be helpful or kind of like Python and Ruby, would it just be confusing as fuck,'cause now you're like learn Portuguese and Spanish at the same time and you just get scrambled. It's possible that it would be the latter. Yeah.

1:41:59 Do you remember Benny Lewis? Fluent in three months, Benny Lewis? Sure. Yeah, the Irish polyglot, I think was the nickname. Mm-hmm. Benny

1:42:09 Recommends Esperanto for that same thing that you just said. He said because of objectively Esperanto is the easiest language to learn. That's why it was invented. In eighteen eighty eight. By Zaminov to be

1:42:23 Easy to learn. Therefore. If you've never spoken a second language before, go learn some Esperanto first. Get used to having a conversation that's not in your native tongue. And then go learn your target language. Wonder if that's too much of a lift.

1:42:38 Have you done it? Well. I will report. I did it. I became fluent in Esperanto about six years ago, on Benny's advice. And I regret it.

1:42:48 Uh Um It's like less useful than Klingon, at least in communicating with others, right? See? I think Esperanto is hippie cling on.

1:43:02 It is uh I went To the annual Esperanto Conference in Seoul Korea. And it was a bunch of like sixty year olds in tie dyes singing about world peace, kinda like, you know, Woodstock nineteen sixty nine revisited. Yeah, yeah. They're all singing like, Oh, the world would have perfect harmony if we all just followed the ways of Zamenhof and had the one world language and And even though I had spent six months learning this language, I got to the event and I went I don't like you people. I'm sorry.

1:43:34 I stopped th on that day. I was like, I don't wanna speak this language anymore. Okay, but so talk about like you know the Ruby Python. I never learned any Spanish my whole life, even though I grew up in America I just thought no Spanish is too similar to English. If I'm gonna n learn another language, I want it to be Chinese or Arabic or something very different. So I never learned any Spanish.

1:43:55 But just two months ago I went to South America for my first time. And so I spent Like a month. Learning Pinsler. Basic Spanish.

1:44:05 And Tim was like, Oh my God. This is a great language. This is amazing. This is fascinating. It is. And also it is so easy That went, damn it, Benny. Shouldn't have learned Esperanto for six months. I should have learned Spanish. It's just as easy. And

1:44:22 It would have been more useful. Anyway I like that you brought up the Korean thing. I think it is Proven to be a good technique to do the easier language first to help you disconnect. Or like you say, to help you understand the grammar and then do the difficult one, but

1:44:36 It does help, I guess, if it's Korean or a language that people actually use. Not as much. Yeah, Spanish is a great language for people who are curious about Korean and just how brilliantly the writing system is designed. Is a point of national pride.

1:44:55 And it is not something that was out of the box. It was something that was developed long after Korea at first Adopted Chinese writing. Much like the Japanese. There is a cartoon online and it is something like How to Learn Read Korean in 15 minutes or How to Read Korean in 15 minutes and it's a comic book. You can find it.

1:45:19 And literally It might not be fifteen minutes, but within two or three hours you can learn Korean well enough that you can read anything in Korean. You will not understand. A damn thing. that you are reading, but you will be able to sound out phonetically. Yeah.

1:45:34 Roughly, roughly. What it is, which is great fun. And well enough that you know if you're as I was a few weeks ago in an Uber, and you see the Uber app is set to Korean. You could say, you know, thank you or have a nice day or how are you in Korean and blow that in the like, How did you know? And you'd be like, Well, it's Korean on the app. Oh my God.

1:45:55 If you want some cheap applause, that'll make somebody's day. That's that's an easy way to go. You know what's funny, it fits right in. You remember your whole like, Hey, here's how to learn how to Spin a pen with your fingers. Like here's some things you can learn in fifteen minutes. Like the old like Tim Ferris one point oh.

1:46:12 South by South West. Yeah, exactly. Speak Korean in fifteen minutes. Also, courtesy of Japan, for sure. This is what all the kids used to do. in class and now I have something that will endlessly distract and annoy everyone who sees it if I'm on an airplane or something. Thanks, Japan. Oh All right. What else do you have? Derek, anything else in that Top that.

1:46:35 I'll just say this quickly. I love this little phrase. I realized when I was like digging into the my incentives why I do things. I travel to inhabit philosophies. You can hear about life in Brazil or life in Japan. But it's a different thing to be there in it. That I think there's some philosophies, whether it's stoicism or hedonism.

1:46:56 That we can just do. Do from a chair. By just sitting and changing. But

1:47:02 You know. Brazilianism, Japanism, Arabianism, I don't know, Parisianism. These are kind of like philosophies, the way that people live in places. Are kind of Living philosophies. That I want to experience.

1:47:18 What it's like because I want to think that way, so I would really like to go there. live as close as I can to Being like a local, learn the language. Live that life according to that way to Inhabit

1:47:31 Embody This way of living. In order to feel The actual physical results

1:47:39 Living that philosophy. And I thought, this is actually the reason I travel. It's not to look at things or take pictures or Post them to impress people. I travel to inhabit philosophies.

1:47:51 I love that. What are you finding? of the philosophy. What is the philosophy of the UAE or Dubai, recognizing that the cultures are very different, depending if they're by the hills or the water or The desert.

1:48:04 But How would you try to express that philosophy? Easy. Generosity. That's the thing when I said that Sheikh Sayed, who founded it,

1:48:15 Bedouin culture underneath it. And then say Emirati culture or Arabian Arab culture. Generosity. is by far the number one. If you read this book Arabian Sands by

1:48:28 That's you sure. He has all these stories of When he'd be out in the desert on the camels. With his little crew of six guys. And they only have like this much food left, like nothing. And their tummies are grumbling and they're starving.

1:48:42 It's funny that I just said Tummy, that was cute. And uh for myself. When's my bedtime story, Dad? And also the my little rats here. I love kissing their little tunies. But then if somebody would approach them. You know like oh hello my friend. Whatever.

1:48:59 He said as soon as somebody approaches That's it, we're not gonna eat today because This is the way. You give whatever you've got. So anybody a stranger approaches you, say hello, friend, come sit with us here. No, have some soup. Don't worry, we're not hungry, we've eaten enough.

1:49:14 This is for you now. Come sit with us. When I went to Dubai that first time. Somebody I had met once From Riyadh Saudi Arabia, we met briefly in Oxford.

1:49:25 He was the only person I knew that lived in the region, so I emailed him Saying Hey man, I'm going to Dubai for my first time. Are you gonna be around? And he said, My friend, he said, cancel your hotel reservation. He said, You're going to stay at my home in the Birj Khalifa. The tallest building in the world. You're gonna stay I have an apartment in the Burj Khalifa. Stay at my home.

1:49:42 You're my guest. I said, wow, that would be great. I said, It'll be so good to see you again. And he said, No, no, I won't be there. He said, I live in Riyadh, but my uncle will get you from the airport and just give you the keys. My home is your home, stay as long as you want. So I did. I stayed in the Birch Khalifa a few days. This generosity runs so deep. It's hospitality generosity and you understand why.

1:50:03 You're in the harsh environment of the desert. Everybody's Living a harsh life. When you meet somebody that's traveling and passing, it's like oh Come in, come in here, have some don't even need to tell us your name or who you are, or your tribe or nothing, just Come in, my guest, please, have whatever you want, my food, take a bed.

1:50:20 Stay as long as you want. And That's so deep in the culture. Yes, I would like to. Inhabit that philosophy.

1:50:30 Now that I've been on the receiving end of that hospitality. Part of me kinda wants to have A home. Near the Dubai Airport. And make that my like my main home base.

1:50:41 And for whenever I'm not there and I'm traveling? To just open it up. for any of my friends in the world. Like plea you're coming through, please stay at my home. Like I wanna return that. Everything I have is yours. Wait. Derek. Quick text. Where's the bathroom? Oh no, there's no bathroom. No, my friend. Question whether you truly need it or not. You will find out.

1:51:10 Let me know where you think the sink should be. I'll be a bad Emirati. I'll be fired. How is understanding that Dubai is an international city? For a lot of different reasons. You could get by on English almost certainly. How is your Arabic coming? Have you started tackling that? I haven't spent more time in Dubai yet. I'm planning on going back very soon and getting to know more people and spending more time there and

1:51:38 Considering it as a place I really might want to live. Because I've just noticed Throughout my life, like I grew up in a suburb of Chicago, then I moved to downtown Boston. Then I moved to New York City in the middle of it, and it was like Oh yes, this multiculturalism like this feels more like Representative of the real world to me. Right. And then like I when I went back to my hometown in Hinsdale, Illinois, it's like U

1:52:01 Everybody's white. This is weird. You know, it's like I like places that are multicultural'cause it feels like I'm more in the real world, right? So I thought New York like I've also lived in London. I moved to Singapore. I lived in Singapore for years. I thought I had been in the most multicultural places in the world. No.

1:52:19 I looked up statistically. New York, London, Singapore, they're all about thirty five or so, thirty to thirty five percent. foreign born population. Duby. It is like ninety plus percent.

1:52:30 Foreign born population. Everybody is from everywhere. And so when I got there, it was like Anthropology jackpot. I was like, ah, this is amazing. Everybody's from everywhere. I get into any taxi driver, you know, anybody. You can just ask anybody you see, where are you from? And you're gonna get a different answer all the time. I'm from Cameroon. What are you doing here? I love languages. Say, okay, what does that mean? He said, Well

1:52:54 I love languages, and I thought, where can I get paid? To learn languages, I said I'll move to Dubai. I'll drive a taxi. And I can get paid to learn languages. I said, Did it work? he said, My friend.

1:53:04 I can speak eight languages now. I've been here eighteen months and I can converse with people in eight languages'cause that everybody that gets into my taxi I just talk with people all day long. He said, I speak Urdu. Hindi, Arabic.

1:53:17 I think he grew up with French. He said, I'm speaking to you in English. He said, I couldn't speak English eighteen months ago. Now look at me. And he said, I'm getting paid to learn languages. This is amazing. And I turned to somebody else, I'm like, Where are you from? She's like, I'm from Nairobi. She had the most beautiful accent, and we got into a long conversation about Nairobi, and I just thought This is what I want. Like just by being in Dubai. The whole world comes through there and you meet so many people from all over the place. Oh God, this is

1:53:42 What a beautiful place. Anyway. It's like there we are living in the cantina in Star Wars. Dude, you said it first. That's that's what I usually say. It's like Dubai is the bar in Star Wars. It's the cantina. Everybody comes from all over the world to this spot to kinda do their shady dealings, but oh my God, if you're If you're an amateur anthropologist like me, it's heaven.

1:54:04 Well, I'm excited that you're excited, man. It's fun to see. And I hope to break some bread. in person in the not too distant future. What fun. Always fun to hang, man. Always great fun. Uh is there anything that you would like to

1:54:18 Say anything you'd like to point people to, mention? Anything at all before we bring out the little buddies again for hop off and land the plane? These guys have been sleeping by my feet the whole time we've been talking. Oh adorable. Yeah.

1:54:34 If you uh don't wash your hands after you cook, then you just let them lick your fingers. Oh, he's licking me right now. It's really sweet the way they look. They never ever ever bite. You're very gentle. Hm. Well, unlike my hamsters I had when I was a kid. They were biters. Yes, yeah, same. I had gerbils, they were nasty. Anyway, I don't know. Well you know my usual call out, I really

1:54:53 Enjoy. The people that I've met through. Your podcast so Hey, anybody listen to this all the way through? I'd truly enjoy my email inbox. I spend about ninety minutes a day just answering emails and I really like it, so

1:55:06 Send me an email, say hello, introduce yourself, especially if you're a translator. Or if you live in Dubai. Or You found anything here fascinating? All right. Do you want them to do the detective work of finding the email address? Is that the hurdle? Oh sorry, go to my website. Just go to S I V E dot R S. There's a big

1:55:22 Contact me here link. Okay. That's pretty pretty low hurdle. So Yeah. If they can't clear that, then they have other problems. All right, man. Well, thanks for taking the time.

1:55:37 As always, really appreciate it. Sorry I missed you in England. Um Yeah. Next time. We'll both get our knees repaired and then we'll meet up for another walk and talk. I might ask you some tips on meniscus stuff, though.

1:55:49 Oh boy. Yeah, we'll talk about the knee repair. For everybody listening. Go to Tim.blog slash podcast. I'll link to everything we talked about, all the books, City of Gold, China's worldview, all these various things, the figures and places, musicians, and so on. Oh I should say that Useful not true is only through my website. It's not at Fuck Amazon. It's not on Amazon. I put it on my website only. So don't go to Amazon and look for it and email me and ask why it's not there.

1:56:17 'Cause I don't like them. So go to Sivers dot com. All right. Go to Simmers.com or S I V E dot. I guess those go to the same place. All things about Derek.

1:56:31 And until next time, be a bit kinder than is necessary, not just to others, but also to yourself. And thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out. every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out,

1:57:38 Just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday. Drop in your email, and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. Way back in the day, in 2010, I published a book called The Four Hour Body, which I probably started writing in 2008. And in that book, I recommended many, many, many things. First generation continuous glucose monitor. and cold exposure and all sorts of things that have been tested by people from NA and all over the place.

1:58:10 And one thing in that book was athletes. I did not get paid to include it, I was using it. That's how long I've been using what is now known as AG1. AG1 is my all-in-one nutritional insurance and I just packed up, for instance, to go off the grid for a while and the last thing I left out on my countercup to remember to take, I'm not making this up, I'm looking right in front of me. is travel packets of AG1. So rather than taking multiple pills or products to cover your mental clarity, gut health, immediately metal energy, and so on. You can sport these areas through one daily scoop of AG1, which tastes great even with water. I always just have it with water. I usually take it first thing in the morning and it takes me less than two minutes in total. Honestly, it takes me less than a minute. I just put it in a shader bottle, shake it up, and I'm done. AG1. bolsters my digestion and nutrient absorption by including ingredients optimized to support a healthy gut in every scoop.

1:59:07 AG1 in a single serve travel packs, which I mentioned earlier, also makes for the perfect travel companion. I'll actually be going totally off the grid, but these things are incredibly incredibly space efficient. You could even put them in the book, frankly. I mean they're kind of like bookmarks. After consuming this product for more than a decade, I chose to invest in AG1 in 2021 as I trust their no-compromise approach to ingredient sourcing and appreciate the focus on continuously improving one formula. They go above and beyond by testing for 950 or so contaminants and impurities compared to the industry standard of N. AG1 is also tested for heavy metals and 500, various pesticides and herbicides. I've started paying a lot of attention to pesticides. That's story for another time. To make sure you're consuming only the good stuff. AG1 is also NSF certified for sport. That means if you're nothing, you can take it. The certification process is exhaustive.

2:00:02 and involves the testing and verification of each ingredient and every finis batch of AG1. So they take testing very seriously. There's no better time than today to start a new healthy habit. And this is an easy one. Wake up, watering the shaker bottle. A G one. Oh. And right now, every week of November, AG1 will be running a special Black Friday offer for a free gift with your first subscription, which is in addition to the welcome kit with five AG1 travel packs and a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2. So make sure to check out drinkag1.com slash Tim to see what gift you can get this week.

2:00:38 That's drinkag1.com slash Tim to start your holiday season off on a healthier note while supplies last. I have been fascinated by the microbiome and probiotics as well as prebiotics for decades, but Products never quite live up to the hype. I've tried so many dozens and there are a host of problems. Now things are starting to change, and that includes this episode's sponsor, Seeds DSO1 Daily Symbiotic. Now it turns out that this product, Seeds DSO1, was recommended to me many months ago by a PhD microbiologist, so I started using it well before their team ever reached out to me about sponsorship, which is kind of ideal because I used it unbitten, so to speak, came in fresh. Since then it has become a daily staple and one of the few supplements I travel with. I have it in a suitcase literally about 10 feet for me.

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2:03:25

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