How To Live by Derek Sivers – book recap by Sean DeLaney

How to Live

Derek Sivers

Be independent.

Decide everything is your fault. Whoever you blame has power over you, so blame only yourself. When you blame your location, culture, race, or history, you’re abdicating your autonomy.
When you say you want more freedom from the world, you may just need freedom from your past self. You don’t see things as they are. You see them as you are. Change yourself and you change the world.

Commit.

This is a life-changing epiphany. You can stop seeking the best option. Pick one and irreversibly commit. Then it becomes the best choice for you. Voilà.
When you can’t change your situation, you change your attitude towards it. So remove the option to change your mind.
The English word “decide” comes from Latin “to cut off”. Choose one and cut off other options. To go one direction means you’re not going other directions. When you commit to one outcome, you’re united and sharply focused. When you sacrifice your alternate selves, your remaining self has amazing power.
Once you decide what’s important to you, you know how your ideal self will act and what your ideal day will be. So why not act that way and live that day every day? Commit to your habits to make them rituals. If it’s not important, never do it. If it’s important, do it every day.
Rockets use most of their fuel in the first minute of flight, to escape the pull of gravity. Once they get outside that pull, it’s effortless. Same with your habits. Starting is hard. The rest is easy. New habits are what you’re trying. Old habits are who you are.
Commitment gives you peace of mind. When you commit to one thing, and let go of the rest, you feel free.

Fill your senses.

Here’s how to live: Fill your senses. See it all. Touch it all. Hear it all. Taste it all. Do it all. Appreciate this wonderful physical world.
If you knew you’d go blind tomorrow, how intensely would you look at the world today? If you knew you’d go deaf tomorrow, how intensely would you listen? Fill your senses as if this was your last day on Earth. One day that will be true.
Maximize your inputs. See all the places. Eat all the food. Hear all the music. Meet all the people. Kiss all the beauties. Be insatiable.

Do nothing.

People make bad decisions because they felt they had to decide. It would have been wiser to do nothing.
Change your need to change things. In your most peaceful moments, your mind is quiet. You’re not thinking you should be doing anything else. When everything feels perfect, you say, “I wouldn’t change a thing.” So, live your whole life in this mindset.
Shallow rivers are noisy. Deep lakes are silent.
Silence is precious. Silence is the one thing that all religions have in common. Silence is the only way to hear quiet wisdom.
Most actions are a pursuit of emotions. You think you want to take action or own a thing. But what you really want is the emotion you think it’ll bring. Skip the actions. Go straight for the emotion. Practice feeling emotions intentionally, instead of using actions to create them.
Your whole experience of life is in your mind. Focus on your internal world, not the external world. When a problem is bothering you, it feels like you need to do something about it. Instead, identify what belief is really the source of your trouble. Replace that belief with one that doesn’t bother you. Then the problem is solved. Most problems are really just situations.
You make decisions to feel forward motion. But it’s a treadmill that takes you nowhere. When someone asks you to decide, just refuse. The longer you go without deciding, the more information is revealed. Eventually, the choice is obvious and made without an agonizing decision.
The unintelligent jump to conclusions. The wise just observe.
Peace is the absence of turmoil.
If you need money, be an investor. It’s the only career where you profit the most by doing the least.
If an action feels necessary, and you can’t let it go, just write it down for later. Everything seems more important while you’re thinking of it. Later, you’ll realize it’s not.

Think super-long-term.

In 1782, Benjamin Franklin left $10,000 to the city of Philadelphia on one condition: they couldn’t use it for two hundred years. It sat invested in the stock market, and two hundred years later, his $10,000 gift was worth over $200 million.
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. What would your future self and family thank you for?
Only spend money on things that do long-term good, like education. In other words, never spend, only invest. The earlier you start, the better, since time is the multiplier.
Put $25 a day in your investment account, and in thirty years, you’ll have over a million dollars.
But times have changed. Now the surviving fittest are the ones who plan ahead.

Intertwine with the world.

In Icelandic, the word for “idiot” means “one who has never left home to journey abroad”. Only idiots think they’re always right. You can’t see your own culture while you’re inside of it.
Ask questions until you understand why things are the way they are. Culture is often historical. Like a person’s outlook on life is shaped by what they’ve been through, a culture’s values are shaped by its recent history. Learn the local mindset. Don’t ask how “they” do things. Ask how “we” do things. That small difference is important.
From Japan, learn deep consideration for others, social harmony, and intrinsic perfection.
From Germany, learn rationality and directly honest communication.
From Brazil, learn to live in the present, and embrace every stranger as a friend.
From China, learn pragmatism and the multi-generational mindset.
From France, learn idealism and resistance.
From America, learn expressive rebellious individualism.
From India, learn to improvise and thrive in complexity.
‘In all cultures, avoid the madness of the crowd.
When you die, you leave behind your genes and ideas. The atoms in your cells will disassemble and become plants, animals, dirt, and oceans. Bits of you will eventually become part of the whole world. The way to live is to spread your seeds widely before you die.

Make memories.

Go make memories. Do memorable things. Experience the unusual. Pursue novelty. Replace your routines. Live in different places. Change your career every few years. These unique events will become anchors for your memories.
Make a story for the things you want to remember. Never make a story for the things you want to forget. Let those disappear with time.
Summarize a painful time into a tiny story—under a minute. Tell this belittled version a few times to make it stick. This is the version you’ll remember—stripped of pain and power.
Making memories is the most important thing you can do with your life. The more memories you create, the longer and richer your life feels. Making memories is how to live.

Master something.

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.
Mastery needs your full focused attention. The more you learn about something, the more there is to learn. You see what normal people don’t see. The path gets more and more interesting as you go.
The pursuit of mastery helps you think long-term. It keeps your eyes on the horizon. You resist the temptation of what you want now. You remember the importance of what you want most. You spend time intentionally. Every month has a milestone. Every day has a goal. The most rewarding things in life take years.
Decisions are easy when you have only one priority.
You need to understand something very counterintuitive about goals. Goals don’t improve your future. Goals only improve your present actions. A good goal makes you take action immediately. A bad goal doesn’t. A goal shows what’s right and wrong. What moves you towards your goal is right. What doesn’t is wrong.
Focus means head down. Big picture means head up. The more you’re doing of one, the less you’re doing of the other. If you’ve been head-down on a task for too long, lift your head up to make sure you’re going the right way. Don’t do well what you shouldn’t do at all.
You don’t get extreme results without extreme actions. If you do what most people do, you’ll get what most people get. Don’t be normal. Society’s guidelines are for the lost-not for you.
How long will it take you to become a master? It doesn’t matter. Imagine getting to a mountaintop after a long hike through a gorgeous forest. Achieving your goal would feel like taking off your backpack. That’s all. You do it for the journey, not the destination.

Let randomness rule.

Randomness helps you learn acceptance. You can’t take the blame for failures. You can’t take credit for successes. You can’t regret what you didn’t cause.
How liberating to not decide and not predict anything. Stoics and Buddhists work hard to feel indifferent to outcomes. But you’ll feel detachment as a natural side effect of every day being random. Since nothing has consequences, you’ll greet everything with healthy indifference. Neither upset nor joy—just seeing it as it is. Thanks to randomness, you’ll know that none of it has meaning.

Pursue pain.

Anyone can be their best when things are going well. But when things go wrong, you see who they really are. Remember the classic story arc of the hero’s journey. The crisis—the most painful moment—defines the hero.
Don’t wish for good luck. Good luck makes you complacent. Practice thriving with bad luck. Bad luck makes you resourceful and strong. No matter what the world throws your way, you can stand worse.
Be absolutely honest with everyone. Stop lying, completely. You lie when you’re afraid. You lie to avoid consequences. Always say the truth. Take the painful consequences.
Since you can’t avoid problems, just find good problems. Happiness isn’t everlasting tranquility. Happiness is solving good problems.
The English word “passion” comes from the Latin word “pati”, meaning “to suffer or endure”. To be passionate about something is to be willing to suffer for it—to endure the pain it’ll bring. But don’t be a masochist. Be a scholar of pain. Every pain has a lesson inside, and a reason why it hurts. Analyze it. Understand it.
Ghosts don’t leave until you’ve understood their message. Problems persist until you claim them and solve them. Face them directly and they’ll disappear.
Most people don’t get to choose how they suffer. Once you tame pain for yourself, tame it for others.

Do whatever you want now.

The past? That’s what we call our memories. The future? That’s what we call our imagination. Neither exists outside of your mind. The only real time is this moment. So live accordingly. Whatever benefits you right now is the right choice.
When people ask the meaning of life, they’re looking for a story. But there is no story. Life is a billion little moments. They’re not a part of anything.
Happiness is something to do, someone to love, and something to desire. Heaven is not what’s at the end of the path. Heaven is the path itself.

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. Explorers used to find unknown lands and bring back stories of unfamiliar cultures, which encouraged others to go exploring. The old finish line becomes the new starting line.

Value only what has endured.

So the way to live is to ignore everything new. All of it. Let the test of time filter everything. Value only what has endured. The modern life is shallow and distracted. The timeless life is deep and focused.
Become a geologist. You’ll measure things in millions of years. Your timeline will be so long that mountains seem fluid. The whole modern world will seem like a sandcastle

Learn.

You get healthy by learning healthy habits. You get wealthy by learning valuable skills. You build a great interpersonal life by learning people skills. Most misery comes from not learning these things. The biggest obstacle to learning is assuming you already know. Confidence is usually ignorance.
Don’t believe what you think. Have questions, not answers. Doubt everything. The easiest person to fool is yourself.
If you’re not embarrassed by what you thought last year, you need to learn more and faster. When you’re really learning, you’ll feel stupid and vulnerable-like a hermit crab between shells.
Be surprised by something every day. Find that exciting moment when you get a completely new perspective. Like a movie that reveals something at the end which changes the way you think of everything you’ve seen before. If you’re not having these moments often, find some new inputs.
Whatever scares you, go do it. Then it won’t scare you anymore. Whatever you hate, get to know it. Then you won’t hate it anymore.
Don’t be consistent with your past self. Only idiots never change their mind. Sacrifice the things you used to believe, and the ways you used to be.
Learning makes you a better person and makes the world a better place. Learning is a pursuit you can’t lose. As you age, you’ll lose muscle and beauty, but you won’t lose your wisdom. Learning is how to live.

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. Rules are to save you from deciding. That’s why hard rules are easier to keep.
An undisciplined moment seems harmless, but they add up to disaster. Without discipline, the tiny things in life will be your downfall.
Physical discipline helps mental discipline. Align your outer self with your inner self. Cleaning your house helps clean your mind.

Laugh at life.

To laugh at something is to be superior to it. Humor shows internal control.
No matter what you need to do, there’s a playful, creative way to do it.

Prepare for the worst.

Disasters come suddenly, without warning. Tragedy hurts the most when it’s unexpected. But if you expect it, you take away its power. Do you know what’s behind each mountain of a challenge? More mountains.
To appreciate something fully, picture losing it. Imagine losing your freedom, reputation, money, and home. Imagine losing your ability to see, hear, walk, or talk. Imagine the people you love dying tomorrow. Never take them for granted.
Your biggest enemy is insatiability. Recognize your desire to be entertained by life, and break the habit. Practice being happy with what you have.
When you realize you’re dependent on something, get rid of it to prove you don’t need it. So don’t depend on circumstances. Everything that happens is neutral. Your beliefs label it as good or bad. The only way to change your happiness is to change your beliefs.
Nothing is good or bad. You just reacted as if it was. When something bad happens, ask, “What’s great about this?” Instead of changing the world, just change your reactions.
Shallow happy is having a donut. Deep happy is having a fit body. Shallow happy is what you want now. Deep happy is what you want most. Shallow happy serves the present. Deep happy serves the future. Shallow happy is trying to conquer the world. Deep happy is conquering yourself. Shallow happy is pursuing pleasure. Deep happy is pursuing fulfillment.

Live for others.

Never say, “Not my problem.” We’re all in this together. What’s good for your community is good for you.
Whenever you’re thinking something nice about someone, tell them. A sincere compliment can put a lot of fuel in someone’s tank. People don’t hear enough compliments.
Imagine if you found out someone was going to die tomorrow. Imagine how much attention, compassion, and generosity you’d give them. Imagine how you’d forgive their faults. Imagine what you’d do to make their last day on Earth the best it could be. Now treat everyone like that, every day.
Success in business comes from helping people—bringing the most happiness to the most people. 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.

Get rich.

Instead of making a key, then looking for a lock, find something locked, then make its key.

Reinvent yourself regularly.

People say everything is connected. They’re wrong. Everything is disconnected. There is no line between moments in time. Something happened. Something else happened. People love stories, so they connect two events, calling them cause and effect. But the connection is fiction. It’s a hard fiction to escape. “My parents did that, so that’s why I did this.” No. Those two events are not connected. There is no line between moments in time. Same with definitions. “I’m an introvert, so that’s why I can’t.” No. Definitions are not reasons. Definitions are just your old responses to past situations. What you call your personality is just a past tendency. New situations need a new response.
You aren’t supposed to be easy to explain. Putting a label on a person is like putting a label on the water in a river. It’s ignoring the flow of time.
Should you try to be consistent with your past self? Should a newspaper try to be consistent with past news? You’re an ongoing event—a daily improvisation—responding to the situation of the moment. Your past is not your future. Whatever happened before has nothing at all to do with what happens next.
Get your security not from being an anchor, but from being able to ride the waves of change.
The timid cling to achievements. The wise keep their hands free.

Love.

Love is a combination of attention, appreciation, and empathy. To love something, first you have to connect with it. Give it your full attention. Deliberately appreciate it. Try this with places, art, and sounds. Try this with activities and ideas. Try this with yourself.
The hardest part of connecting with someone is being honest. If you say what you think someone wants to hear, you’re preventing a real connection. Manners are shallow. Honesty is deep. Always tell the real truth, or they’ll never know the real you, so you’ll never really feel loved.
Don’t exaggerate to be more entertaining. Don’t downplay. If you downplay your achievements to make someone else comfortable, you’re preventing connection with that person and even with yourself. Just be honest. If you’ve done something great, say so. If you’re not doing well, say so.
You don’t love someone to shape their future. You don’t judge your friendships by how successful your friend becomes. So don’t love and judge your children that way. Don’t try to change them. Just give them a great environment where they can thrive. Give them the safety to experiment, make mistakes, and fail up.

Create.

The way to live is to create. Die empty. Get every idea out of your head and into reality.
When most people see modern art, they think, “I could do that!” But they didn’t. That is the difference between consumer and creator.
Suspend all judgment when creating the first draft. Just get to the end. It’s better to create something bad than nothing at all. You can improve something bad. You can’t improve nothing.
Picasso was asked if he knew what a painting was going to look like when he started it. He said, “No, of course not. If I knew, I wouldn’t bother doing it.” Don’t just express yourself. Discover yourself. Create questions, not answers. Explore whatever excites you most. If you’re not excited by it, your audience won’t be either.
Art needs an audience. There are no unknown geniuses.

Don’t die.

For something to succeed, everything needs to go right. For something to fail, only one thing needs to go wrong. Don’t try to be more right. Just be less wrong.

Make a million mistakes.

You learn best from your mistakes. This is true. So you should deliberately make as many mistakes as possible. Try absolutely everything, all the time, expecting everything to fail. Just make sure that you capture the lessons from each experience. And never make the same mistake twice.
Writers say you should quickly finish a bad first draft, because it gets the idea out of your head and into reality, where it can then be improved. Live your whole life this way. Jump into action without hesitation or worry. You’ll be faster and do more than everyone else. What takes them a month will take you an hour, so you can do it ten times a day.
The people devastated by failure are the ones who didn’t expect it. They mistakenly think failure is who they are instead of the result of one attempt. If you’re prepared for endless failures, you’ll never think of yourself as a failure.

Make change.

In the end, the highest praise of a life is to say that person “made a difference”. Difference! Do you hear that word? Difference refers to what’s changed. To live a praise-worthy life, to make a difference, you have to make change.

Balance everything.

Virtue is in the balance between extremes. Between the insecure and the egomaniac: confidence. Between the uptight and the clown: grace. Between the coward and the daredevil: courage. Between selfishness and sacrifice: generosity. So, the way to live is to balance everything.
Imagine the different aspects of your life as the spokes in a wheel: health, wealth, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, or however you divide it. If any of these are lacking, it makes a lopsided, wobbly wheel, causing you to crash. But if you keep the parts of your life balanced, your wheel is round, and you can roll easily.
The world’s greatest achievements were squeezed into existence by deadlines.
Once you’re living a balanced life, find new layers. The wheel has infinite spokes.
Balance your response to situations. Do you tend to change yourself, change the environment, or change nothing and leave? Find which you do too much and which you don’t do enough, then rebalance.