Derek Sivers (Part One) - How to Become a Picasso | Episode 185

Over the years, Derek Sivers has been a musician, circus performer, computer programmer, author, public speaker and entrepreneur.
In the 2000s, he sold his business, CD Baby, for $22 million and gave the proceeds to charity.
Derek has optimized his life “for creating and learning” and spends as much of his time as he can (often 12 hours a day, 6 days a week) passionately pursuing his interests.
Known for his ability to compress complex ideas into succinct insights, Derek has written four books and is currently working on his fifth.
This conversation was so much fun that Derek immediately asked to return for a sequel, which we will be releasing this Thursday (26 October). Stay tuned!
Important Links:
- Website - sive.rs
- Twitter - sivers?s=21&t=r5R...
- There’s No Speed Limit - sive.rs/kimo
- Ideas Are Just A Multiplier Of Execution - sive.rs/multiply
- The Thinker and The Prover - thinkerandprover.com
- Keep It Simple, Stupid - newsletter.osv.llc/p/keep-it-... (Infinite Loops Substack)
Show Notes:
0:00:00 Intro
0:01:24 Main podcast
0:04:41 Don’t Be AC/DC. Be Miles Davis.
0:07:15 Does It Have To Be This Way?
0:15:57 Rebranding Laziness
0:21:17 Time Is A Multiplier
0:27:36 From Idea To Execution
0:40:16 Useful Not True
0:49:46 When Simple Gets Hard
1:03:52 How Derek Found Found Agency By Accepting Blame
1:12:56 Cultivating Insatiable Curiosity
1:20:35 Video outro
Books Mentioned:
- Anything You Want; by Derek Sivers
- Hell Yeah Or No; by Derek Sivers
- How To Live; by Derek Sivers
- Your Music And People; by Derek Sivers
- Tao Te Ching; by Lao Tzu
- The Two Cultures; by C.P. Snow
- Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There; by Lewis Carroll
- The Cosmic Trigger trilogy; by Robert Anton Wilson
- The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life; by Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd
- Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics; by Tim Marshall
- Au Contraire!: Figuring Out the French; by Gilles Asselin and Ruth Mastron
- Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour; by Kate Fox

[@lassala]

EXCELLENT interview! Headed to Part Two now. :)

[@binkding]

11:50 universities must teach to slower people
16:20 in French "to expect (to rain)" is the same as "to wait". Words like lazy, smug, selfish - could be positive words.
41:00 "all models are wrong, some are useful." May be factually wrong (in a spectrum, is there ultimate truth or purpose?), but could still be useful even if "wrong."
41:40 do you believe or know deity? do you believe the glass is on the table? how is that different than if you know the glass is on the table?
51:10 simple = 1/unbraided/not connected to other things. Complex = multi braided/connected/dependent on other things. We confuse simple with easy and complex with hard. But it is hard to be simple. And easy to be complex (for no reason). Also not good or bad. Occam's Razor. Action is not progress; moving dirt around is not cleaning; emptying water from a boat with a hole is not a solution.
59:00 "the point of failure is the human...the difference between intellectually understanding that your portfolio could go down 50% and then actually experiencing it in real life, is the the same as showing a person a picture of a snake and then throwing a snake in their lap."
1:11:00 "reality tunnels...all have different nervous systems, etc. Have 30 people draw the hallway when you walked in, all different drawings."
Michelangelo - wasn't interested in more varied things
vs Picasso - continually pushed to new artforms
Must determine own interest and desire to live?

[@johningham2218]

There is no inherent meaning. Thank you for the great part 1!