How To Live – Derek Sivers

Being on the private email list of Derek Sivers has some advantages (anyone can be on the list, it is not something elitist, just go here: https://sive.rs/list). One advantage is getting early access to Derek’s new work. How To Live is Derek’s new book, he pointed me to through the email list. I bought it and read it.

book cover

The book is a great guidance to life, as the title suggests. It is packed with great advice, categorized into 27 topics. The advice is sometimes contradictory, and Derek does not hide that: he gave the book the subtitle: “27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion”. And I don’t care either; life is contradictory.

Much of the advice Derek has thought up or gathered in this book may have its origins in Buddhism and Stoicism, and I think it also build on folks like Nassim Taleb (Antifragile), Kevin Kelly and Seth Godin.

The book is way too dense to summarize in anyway. Just some parts by topic that I found useful for myself.

Be independent.

Instead, do what you’d do if you were the only person on Earth.

Commit.

You and your best friends don’t decide anew each day whether you’re friends or not. You are friends, without question. You’re committed to each other, even if you’ve never said so. That’s what’s wonderful about it. Commit to your habits to make them rituals.

Fill your senses.

Never have the same thought twice.

Do nothing.

Expressing your anger doesn’t relieve it. It makes you angrier. Actions often have the opposite of the intended result. People who try too hard to be liked are annoying.

The stock market takes money from the active traders and gives it to the patient.

Think super-long-term.

Imagine your future self judging your current life choices. When making a decision, ask yourself how you’ll feel about it when you’re old.

We overestimate what we can do in one year. We underestimate what we can do in ten years. If you take up a new hobby at the age of forty, or whatever age you think is too late, you’ll be an expert by the age of sixty.

Your future self is depending on you. Your descendants are depending on you. Our future generations are depending on us. Use the compounding amplifier of time.

Make memories.

Remember them all. Document everything, or you’ll eventually forget it. Nobody can erase your memories, but don’t lose them through neglect. Journal every day.

Turn your experiences into stories. A story is the remains of an experience.

Master something.

Pick one thing and spend the rest of your life getting deeper into it. Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status.

Concentrating all of your life’s force on one thing gives you incredible power. Sunlight won’t catch a stick on fire. But if you use a magnifying glass to focus the sunlight on one spot, it will. Mastery needs your full focused attention.

Define “success” for yourself. Describe the outcome you want. You can’t hit a target you can’t see.

You need to understand something very counter-intuitive about goals. Goals don’t improve your future. Goals only improve your present actions. A good goal makes you take action immediately.

Once you get momentum, never stop. It’s easy to continue, but if you stop, it’s hard to start again. Never miss a day.

Take tiny breaks when working, to go longer than most.

Pursue your mission at the expense of everything else.

You do it for the journey, not the destination.

Let randomness rule.

Let the random generator decide what you do, where you go, and who you meet. When doing creative work, let the random generator make your artistic decisions, shaking up your usual style.

Random stuff happens. All you can control is your response. Every day, you’ll practice how to react to chaos: with dignity, poise, and grace.

Pursue pain.

Comfort is a silent killer. Comfort is quicksand. The softer the chair, the harder it is to get out of it. The right thing to do is never comfortable. How you face pain determines who you are. Be a famous pioneer.

This is the power of the pioneer: To enable the impossible. To open a new world of possibility. To show others that they can do it too, and take it even further.

Chase the future.

Work as a futurist and technology journalist. Stay on the cutting edge of things so new they barely exist.

Old friends and family see you as you used to be, and unintentionally discourage your growth.

Value only what has endured.

Be aware if the Lindy effect I mentioned in a previous post – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect and Grandmother’s wisdom of Nassim Taleb.

The longer something lasts, the longer it will probably last.

The world of news is noisy, because they have to hype it.

Learn.

Get out of your room and try out a new skill in the real world. Go to the physical place where it’s happening, and put your ass on the line with something to lose. A vivid, visceral feeling of danger will teach you better than words.

Follow the great book.

Rules must be absolutely unbreakable. If you try to decide, each time, whether it’s OK to break the rule or not, then you’ve missed the whole point of rules.

Discipline turns intentions into action. Discipline means no procrastination. Discipline means now.

Choose the pain of discipline, not the pain of regret. Self-control is always rewarding.

Laugh at life.

They win by being playful, creative, adaptive, irreverent, and unbound by norms.

Comedy is tragedy plus time. Time belittles anything by showing it’s not as bad as it seemed. Humor does that instantly.

Prepare for the worst.

Vividly imagine the worst scenarios until they feel real (Seneca of course). Accepting them is the ultimate happiness and security. Realize that the worst is not that bad.

Live for others.

The best marketing is being considerate. The best sales approach is listening. Serve your clients’ needs, not your own. Business, when done right, is generous and focused on others. It draws you out of yourself, and puts you in service of humanity.

The most extreme version of living for others is becoming famous. Do everything in public, for the public. Share everything you do, even though it’s extra work.

Get rich.

Money is nothing more than a neutral exchange of value. Making money is proof you’re adding value to people’s lives.

Create your own business. Come up with a brand name that can be attached to any business. (Perhaps it’s your name.) Use it for the rest of your life on everything of quality. A recognized brand can charge a premium price, earning more than unrecognized names.

Use other people’s ideas. Ideas are worth almost nothing. Execution is everything.

Be separate—in a category of your own.

Nothing destroys money faster than seeking status. Don’t show off.

I meet this young salesman he had a good year. From the bonus he bought his wife a Landrover for shopping. The car cost him more than 2000 euro per month. Quickly he realized his mistake and sold the car, 10000 down.

You only need to get rich once. When you win a game, you stop playing. Don’t be the dragon in the mountain, just sitting on your gold. Don’t lose momentum in life. Once you’ve done it, take it with you and do something else.

Reinvent yourself regularly.

Your past is not your future. Whatever happened before has nothing at all to do with what happens next. There is no consistency. Nothing is congruent. Never believe a story.

At every little decision, ten times a day, choose the thing you haven’t tried. Act out of character. It’s liberating. Get your security not from being an anchor, but from being able to ride the waves of change.

In other words – be Antifragile.

Love.

Break down the walls that separate you from others and prevent real connections. Take off your sunglasses. Don’t text when you should talk.

The hardest part of connecting with someone is being honest.

Notice how you feel around people. Notice who brings out the best in you. Notice who makes you feel more connected with yourself—more open and more honest.

Create.

Calling yourself creative doesn’t make it true. All that matters is what you’ve launched. Make finishing your top priority.
Suspend all judgment when creating the first draft. Just get to the end.

Most of what you make will be fertilizer for the few that turn out great. But you won’t know which is which until afterward. Keep creating as much as you can.

Stay in situations where you’re forced to show your work to others.

Keep a counterweight job. Something effortless that covers your bills. Something you can do a few hours per day, but otherwise not think about. It gives discipline and regularity to your life. It gives deadlines and freedom to your art.

Let the deadline of death drive you. Create until your last breath.

Don’t die.

Avoiding failure leads to success. The winner is usually the one who makes the least mistakes. This is true in investing, extreme skiing, business, flying, and many other fields. Win by not losing.

Most of eating healthy is just avoiding bad food. Most of being right is just not being wrong. To have good people in your life, just cut out the bad ones.

Make a million mistakes.

People who avoid mistakes are fragile, like the robot that only walks. Your million mistakes will make you someone that can’t be knocked down.

Make change.

Don’t accept anything as-is. Everything you encounter must change. Preservation is your enemy. Only dead fish go with the flow.
Begin by righting what’s wrong. Look for what’s ugly: ugly systems, ugly rules, ugly traditions. Look for what bothers you.

If you can fix it, do it now. Otherwise, aim lower until you find something you can do now. Make it how it should be.
Don’t worship your heroes. Surpass them.

Balance everything.

All bad things in life come from extremes. Too much of this. Too little of that.

When you’re balanced, you’re unlikely to get stressed. You’ve got a stronger foundation and a resilient structure. You can handle surprises, and make time for what’s needed.

Schedule everything to ensure balance of your time and effort. Scheduling prevents procrastination, distraction, and obsession.
Even creative work needs scheduling. The greatest writers and artists didn’t wait for inspiration. They kept a strict daily schedule for creating their art.

As said, this is the things I found important. The book is fully packed with things for you. Get the book through Derek’s site: https://sive.rs/.

Seneca over Fortuna te slim af te zijn en af en toe eens lekker doorzakken

innerlijke rust

In Innerlijke Rust (boekje uit dezelfde serie als De lengte van het leven) geeft Seneca antwoord op vragen van Serenus gesteld in een brief aan Seneca. Serenus was een vriend van Seneca (mogelijk een drinkvriend en tevens het hoofd van de brandweer van Rome – niet ter zake doend detail).
Serieus vraagt Seneca of hij hem kan helpen bij het bereiken van een meer stabiele ‘state of mind’ (hij heeft daar wat meer woorden voor nodig).

“Wat jij wilt is iets groots, iets geweldigs, iets bijna goddelijks: je door niets uit je evenwicht laten brengen. Deze psychische stabiliteit heet bij de Grieken euthymie, en daar heeft Democritus een uitstekend boekje over geschreven. (Ikzelf spreek hier van ‘innerlijke rust’, …)”

En dat is de kern dan van dit boek. (Het boek van Democritus is verloren gegaan volgens de vertaler Vincent Hunink.)
Seneca noemt een aantal symptomen, die steeds op neerkomen op ontevreden zijn met onszelf, en onvervulde verlangens koesteren. Om daar vervolgens helemaal in te verzwelgen.

seneca

“Ze vinden geen uitweg want ze zijn hun verlangens niet de baas en kunnen er ook niets mee doen. Het leidt tot stagnatie en algehele lethargie.”
Wat nu?

Vervul een publieke functie (Serenus vraagt zich af of hij zich terug moet trekken of een publieke functie moet vervullen). Dat traint jezelf en je helpt ook nog anderen. Een grote geest kan zich echter ook in het privéleven ruim ontplooien. En leert ons en passant dat dat geen probleem is want kwaliteit verloochent zich niet.

“Trek jij je dus terug om te schrijven, dan heb je meteen alle weerzin tegen het leven afgeschud. Je hoopt dan niet meer dat het avond wordt omdat je genoeg hebt van het daglicht. Je bent niet langer een last voor jezelf en een overbodige figuur voor anderen. Je trekt veel mensen aan die je vrienden worden. Echte kwaliteit blijft namelijk nooit verborgen, hoezeer die ook in de schaduw staat, maar heeft een duidelijke uitstraling.”

Seneca schrijft ook hoe belangrijk het is bij jezelf te blijven en jezelf te kennen. Bij wat je doet.

“Je moet nagaan of jouw karakter beter past bij praktische ctiviteit of bij rustige studie en reflectie. Vervolgens moet je de kant kiezen waar je talenten liggen.”

Maar je moet jezelf niet overschatten, anders kan je bezwijken onder je ambities, en het moet zinvol en eindig zijn.

Bezit en kapitaal: hecht er niet aan, zegt Seneca want het is slechts een bron van zorgen. Reken er op dat je het kan kwijtraken. Altijd.

“Daarom moeten we bedenken dat kwijtraken veel erger is dan het niet te bezitten.”

En hij verhaalt van Diogenes wiens slaaf vluchtte en hem niet wilde terughalen. Want niet te kunnen leven zonder de slaaf, dat zou pas vreselijk zijn.

“… Mijn slaaf is gevlucht. Beter gezegd: ikzelf ben vrij geworden.”

Seneca leert ons Fortuna niet te vrezen door je steeds te realiseren dat alles geleend is, op tijdelijke basis. En zo is het met spullen, en ook met het leven. En dat is dan een kerngedachte bij Seneca.

“Maar wie beseft dat bij zijn geboorte ook meteen de dood in het pakket zit leeft volgens dat contract. En zijn mentale kracht heeft tegelijk nog een ander effect: niets van wat er allemaal gebeurt komt voor hem onverwacht.”

Seneca gaat verder op zijn pad naar geestelijke rust. Mijd uiterlijk vertoon, leg ongebreidelde ambities aan de ketting. Zorg dat je weing ruimte inneemt, hoe meer je nodig hebt hoe

makkelijker je bent te vinden door vrouwe Fortuna. Bezit de boeken die je wilt lezen, maar bezit ze niet ter decoratie.

“Bij mensen die totaal niet lezen zien je complete collecties retorica en historiografie met boekenplanken tot het plafond.”

Berust toch in je toestand. Laat je verlangens niet de vrije loop, maar in plaats daarvan richt je op de dingen die haalbaar zijn. Maar ook dan moet je beseffen dat het uiteindelijk allemaal niet veel voorstelt. Stel je eigen grenzen om overmaat te voorkomen.

Maak je verder niet zinloos druk, of om zinloze zaken, maar richt je op belangrijke ervaringen. We lazen dit ook al in De lengte van het leven.

“… elke inspanning moet ergens verband mee houden, ergens op gericht zijn.”

En bij alles wat we doen moeten we rekening houden met de tegenslagen die kunnen optreden.

“Vandaar ook dat we zeggen dat een wijs man niets overkomt tegen zijn verwachting.”

Hij zegt het niet met zoveel woorden, maar met deze houding word je zelfs sterker van tegenslagen. Een robuuste houding die opties open houdt. Antifragile avant la lettre, zoals Taleb ook schrijft.
Zoek vrienden, liefst wijs, maar in ieder geval een zo min mogelijk slecht mens. Maar pas op.

“Er is in ieder geval één groep waar je alle contact mee moet vermijden. De negatievelingen. De eeuwige zwartkijkers. De lui die alles zullen aangrijpen voor geklaag en gemopper.”

Want die verstoren jouw innerlijke rust.

Tenslotte schrijft Seneca ontspanning voor, en af en toe doorzakken mag.

“Wie goed uitrust staat op in betere conditie en met meer energie. …
Soms geeft ook een rijtochtje, een reis, een wisseling vang streek nieuwe energie, of een gezellig samenzijn en ‘vrij drinken’.
Een enkele keer mag het ook wel eens komen tot een dronkenschap.”

Vlieg eens uit de bocht, dit brengt goddelijke inspiratie.

“… daarom is afwijken uit de normale baan nodig. Weg galopperen, op de leidsels bijtem, je ruiter meevoeren en naar hoogten brengen waar hij zelf niet naar had durven opstijgen.”

Ik vermoed dat Serenus de kroegmaat van Seneca was.

Design your future – Taylor Pearson on the end of jobs

Create your own job. the end of jobs

Taylor Pearson tells us in The End of Jobs. And explains how profitable this can be in today’s world.

Jobs as we know them will largely disappear. We are at the end of the Frederick Taylor work era.

Jobs are replaced by entrepreneurs. Everyone can be an entrepreneur, building a meaningful life doing what they want, now serving the long tail of markets has become profitable.

The rich mindset, the idea muscle and on-the-side-business

the rich employee

A whole book in James Altucher’s typical style. 

Packed. Informative. Entertaining. A little chaotic. Jumping quickly between styles, digressing, then getting back on track. Interlaced with stories illustrating his points.

Do expect the “rich” in the title to be taken literally. Although the book offers monetary advice, the “rich” mostly relates to a mindset.

And it is not just aimed at employees either.

Typical James. Very commercially smart title to broaden the audience for the book. It suggests richness is also achievable for the employees. And of course there are many more employees than non-employees (probably implying entrepreneurs). And these employees are craving to be rich. In many ways.

antifragile

I am thinking how you would summarize his main idea. Independence comes to mind. Make yourself independent from your employer. Make your value independent from where you work. Make sure you have plan B and C. Prepare for disaster.
Become antifragile, comes to mind (Nassim Taleb).

Even become independent of your own streams of thought, I mean do not let them dominate you. Get on top of them.
That is probably a very buddhist idea

If you have read James’ post you may have seen a lot of the content already.

Start a business on the side.

Influence - cialdini

Refers to Cialdini a couple of times. Read that one some time ago. Influence. Recommend that too.

Read about this idea muscle, how important it is to train it. And then how lazy i am writing down the stuff racing through my mind during the day. Ideas I then forget because I don not write them down. I think starting to even write down ideas you have even how stupid they may sound is a great idea.

One of these is an idea for an internet media company. Any media but video. Well, also video, but not just. Podcasts, radio, whatever.
I do not understand why cable companies do not heavily invest in this. The carrier is commodity. Content is king. That is what they said in 2000 about the internet, refering to web sites, when the carier was still important (or rather: limited. It was important because badnwidth was so scarce). And today it is even more true, now all deregulation of cables has been realised. Sorry, I mean with the disappearance of the big state owned telephone / cable companies.
That was one of my ideas today.
It probably exists already, but I am too lazy to go find out now.

Another idea, for Amazon kindle. You can put books purchased elsewhere on your Kindle (using Calibre for that great stuff), but notes will not be sync-ed with your kindle.amazon.com. Provide it. I guess it is a stupid measure to make sure you purchase your books on amazon. Is there already a service extracting notes from your kindle? O I googled and found Calibre might be able to. Will check that out.

Another one: be able to search books and add to wishlist from Kindle.

Another one: integration with Evernote (typing this in evernote).

James tosses the idea of choose yourself meetups. Chooseyourself.me. AA type gatherings. Might work, but definitely not for me. Nor James I am sure. Too shy.

References in the back great: to Fedora training creation – O now I have a new business idea for courses. I can turn any business problem from my job, generalise it and create a (micro) course out of it. In the media company too? Was just talking to my wife last night how out of date the current system for higher education is, with all the new media courses (for free) coming online.

That’s it.

Nice read.