# How to Find the Mindsets that Work For You (ft. Derek Sivers)

An episode of [SOLVED with Mark Manson](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1247526593), 2 Apr 2025, 1 h 28 min.

Audio: https://claritaspod.com/measure/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/441/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/episode.flightcast.com/vqwc7frv3ji54gwbwj5mv4lv.mp3

I’ve got a special episode for you today. I sat down in person with my longtime friend and first-ever podcast guest, Derek Sivers. We haven’t recorded live before, and honestly, it shows—in the best way. It’s raw, weird, and filled with the kind of conversations we usually when we’re just hanging out together. We dig into Derek’s new book, Useful, Not True, and the big idea behind it: that our beliefs don’t need to be true to be helpful. That spins off into everything from remixing creative influences (metal + Dixieland jazz, anyone?) to why most podcasts—including mine—have gotten painfully predictable. We talk artistic reinvention, Bob Dylan, Bowie, Miles Davis, why most “thought leaders” are just regurgitating each other’s ideas, and why I'm ending the podcast as you know it—and what’s next! We also dive into the deeper stuff: the emotional power of belief, authenticity vs. performative vulnerability, therapy culture, and why sometimes the most liberating thing you can do is reject what everyone else thinks is necessary—relationships, kids, all of it. This was one of the most honest, meandering, and creatively energizing conversations I’ve had in a while. If you’re into big questions, unconventional ideas, and the occasional musical metaphor, this one’s for you. Derek’s new book- Useful, Not True: https://www.amazon.com/Useful-Not-True-Derek-Sivers-ebook/dp/B0D86K4XF5 CHAPTERS Chapters • 00:00:00 Introduction: A Special Live Recording with Derek Sivers • 00:01:03 Finding Ideas: Chinese Dictionaries and Creative Remixing • 00:03:52 The Miles Davis Principle: Why Success Means It's Time to Stop • 00:05:59 The London Scene vs. The Welsh Countryside • 00:07:49 Mark's Podcast Pivot: Breaking Out of the Interview Format • 00:06:50 The Bookshelf Problem: Conformity in Podcasting • 00:16:20 Introducing Useful, Not True: The Core Concept • 00:20:09 Why All That Really Matters Are Your Actions • 00:32:31 Religion as Actions, Not Beliefs • 00:27:53 The Other Side of the River: Perspective Is Everything • 00:30:15 Social Norms as Useful, Not True Beliefs • 00:36:28 The Emotional Resistance to Questioning Your Beliefs • 00:37:49 Against Authenticity: Why Your First Thought Is an Obstacle • 00:38:42 Therapy Culture: When Private Concepts Go Public • 00:42:37 The Pilot Analogy: Why We Want Some People to Lie • 00:45:59 Optimistic Nihilism: The Joy of Nothing Meaning Anything • 00:49:16 Everything Is Feelings: Why Emotions Are the Ultimate Metric • 00:50:22 Optimizing for Happiness, Not Money • 00:56:03 The Jordan Peterson Paradox: Brilliant Openings, Absolute Endings • 01:03:37 Derek's Relationship Revelation: I Don't Want a Life Partner • 01:07:25 The Biology Question: Should You Want What You're Supposed to Want? • 01:08:07 Middle Age and Dating: Why Single Parents Check Out • 01:20:26 The Companionship Paradox: Friends vs. Partners • 01:21:23 Drew's Influence and the Coldplay Problem • 01:23:15 The Closing: Changing Formats and Creative Courage ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://bit.ly/4w46FMH FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: https://www.instagram.com/markmanson Solved IG: https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/ Twitter: https://x.com/markmanson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson Theme Song: Icarus Lives by @Periphery , used with permission from Periphery.

## Transcript

[0:00] I am here with the one and only Derek Sivers, in the flesh, a very special treat. We've never recorded anything live. No. Me and you. I mean, you live on the other side of the world, so I only get to see you. Actually, you live on the other side of the world. We'll get into that. We'll get into that. So, I mean, we only see each other in person, maybe...
[0:20] every five years or so. So this is a very special treat. Good to have you back on the pod. Founder of CD Baby, author of many books. The new book is Useful, Not True. And yeah, I'm excited to get into it with you. So I actually want to start every time I see you,
[0:37] It was actually like giving me anxiety because we had brunch before we came into the studio. And we had such good conversations over brunch. And I had this perpetual anxiety of like, no, save it. Put the words back in your mouth. You're going to waste it all before we start recording. But every time we hang out, we have such good conversations. I'm curious, where do you find ideas and inspiration?
[1:03] I was sitting in your hotel lobby and I was looking at this Chinese dictionary and seeing how the characters were formed. And to me, there's like, oh, there's something really interesting in there about how some characters have meaning and some just don't. You shouldn't try to put meaning into these characters. And I like taking little things like that and applying it to life in some other way. Same way is when you're writing music, you don't want to...
[1:31] You don't want to imitate the Beatles too much, right? Or whatever genre you're in. If you're doing heavy metal, you don't want to be a clone of Iron Maiden or whatever. You want to take some other influence and mix it in, something that nobody would ever expect, whether it's like some Syrian wedding dance or who knows what, some Dixie ragtime thing, but now your heavy metal band is going to do this. And people go, whoa, what a unique sound.
[2:00] But you actually know exactly what those two influences were. You know that you totally nicked this Dixieland jazz thing and mixed it with Steve Harris' Iron Maiden bass lines. It's funny because my brain works in similar ways. We're both musicians, which I find interesting in that both of us kind of work this way.
[2:21] Because in creative fields, you hear about this all the time. Everything's a remix. You know, there's the old Picasso quote of, you know, bad artists borrow, great artists steal. You know, you steal something from over here, you steal something from over here. And then the actual creativity is merging them together into something that sounds completely new or looks completely new. And it's funny because I feel like in our space, call it the thought leadership or leadership,
[2:50] Public wanking. Public wanking is probably a more accurate term. You know, authors, nonfiction thinkers, whatever, in internet personalities. Naval gazers. Naval gazers. You don't – you see less remixing. You see a lot of stealing and less remixing. And it's like I see a lot of nonfiction. I get sent a lot of books.
[3:11] A lot of nonfiction books from my space and so many of them just feel like clones. Of the other contemporary ones. Exactly. Yeah. Which is akin to what you were saying. It's like starting a metal band and trying to sound exactly like Iron Maiden. And it...
[3:27] that that's never going to work. That doesn't make sense. Unless you want to be a cover band, like that doesn't make sense. What works is taking, you know, Iron Maiden song structure and applying it to blues grass and then like throwing in jazz harmony. And then, you know, voila, you have a unique composition. All right. So audience, just before we walked into this studio, what we were talking about was, um,
[3:52] Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, this idea of once you're successful at something, it means you should stop. Like, Miles Davis was the man for bebop trumpet playing alongside Charlie Parker. So it's like, all right, I did that. Now I need to do something new. Even though my fans are going to be upset, I need to change genres and push myself to...
[4:15] to do what I don't know how to do. It's almost, it's like the artistic imperative. You must do this. You can't just rest on your laurels. Well. You can. You can be ACDC. Yes. And just do the same damn thing for 40 years. And some people really appreciate that. Sure. But if you...
[4:33] are creatively ambitious. That's not what you want. So Bob Dylan did that a bit. His fans were furious when he went electric. David Bowie made himself take on a new persona every few years. And these were my early influences in...
[4:51] because I wanted to be a successful musician. So to me, like these formative years of age 13 through 20, I was poring over these interviews with musicians, like just hanging on their every word and just watching how they live their life going, this is the way. So of course, when I do something and it's successful, I'm not going to be successful.
[5:10] It just feels completely normal to me to say like, all right, now it's time to stop doing that. Not I need to double down. Yeah. Get the money. I think, no, I need to leave that and get the challenge. Do you feel like you're reinventing yourself as a writer? Because this is your fifth book, right? Yeah. I don't know. Only my last two books, How to Live and Useful Not True, really felt like I was really writing a book. Those first three were like just a collection of blog posts.
[5:40] then, you know, How to Live was definitely like a flash of inspiration. It took four years to go from flash to finished thing. And I was like following this single vision that whole time. And this new one was definitely an exploration. But wait, before we get into that, so Led Zeppelin.
[5:59] Let's get back to the serious stuff. So Led Zeppelin, one of the band members, said something in an interview that I read as a teenager that I think of all the damn time and I think has completely shaped my life and what I'm doing and where I live and all of it because of a line I read in an interview when I was 14. And it was Robert Plant or Jimmy Page said, the reason that we stood out from the pack was...
[6:26] is we weren't part of the London scene. We lived in the countryside in Wales. We had no idea what they were doing in London. We were just off, like, listening to Arabic music and trying new things to mix Arabic scales with the blues off in the Welsh countryside. And that's why we made something unique, and that's why we stood out. To me, that's so core to how I see the world because...
[6:50] that I don't look at podcasts, for example. And when you see the guys, they always have the fucking bookshelf. What's with the fucking, why does everybody, they say, well, we're podcast, I'm going to do a podcast, so let me get the bookshelf. And I mean, look, we're actually using different microphones today, but, you know, usually everybody says the exact same microphone. The same Shure mic, yeah. The same Shure mic, the same bookshelf behind them with everything neatly stacked. And if it's their own book, then they push it facing forward.
[7:18] And there are these norms that I think, no, that is just the worst thing you could do. Yeah. That's like being in the middle of the London scene and doing the exact same thing as everybody else. I think it's like our... Our...
[7:30] challenge almost our imperative to force yourself to do something different. You look at what everybody else is doing. Okay, well, not that. But then you have to be a little more look inside instead of just deliberately doing the opposite. You think, well, in my perfect world, how would it be? How do I think it should be? It becomes a reflection of yourself.
[7:49] It's funny you bring this up because you were the first guest on this podcast. Right. And now you're also going to be the last guest on this podcast. Yay. Don't freak out, listeners. There's still going to be a podcast. It's just going to be very different. I want to hang on this for a minute. One, because this like directly affects my listeners, but also because I think this is a good example of what you're talking about. I've really enjoyed having the podcast this past year.
[8:16] But I feel like I'm in the London scene and I'm doing the same thing all the guys in London are doing. And I feel like I need to get to the Welsh countryside and start fucking with Arabic scales. Because it's, you know, when I look at all the big podcasts in this space, first of all, most of them have been doing it for like 10 years now. And they've just built this machine. But so much of it is based off of booking guests and then like...
[8:44] researching into the minutiae and getting like the perfect questions. So you can have the perfect Instagram reel of that guest that you can post and it goes viral and all this shit. And like, and look, there's a lot of guys, like I'm friends with a lot of guys in this space that like are amazing at it. And, and I look at them and I'm like, A, I probably, it's going to be really hard to compete with them. And then B, I don't want to do that. Like, I don't want to do the same thing everybody else is doing. I fuck, I hate booking guests and no offense. Like I like
[9:14] Most of the guests that have come on the show, and I've enjoyed talking to most of them, but I don't like researching for guests. It took me...
[9:21] 20 episodes to figure that out. I'm like, I don't actually like this format. And, uh, so we're actually going to relaunch the show into something completely different. There'll be a formal announcement, everybody don't worry, stay tuned. But, um, it's funny that you brought that up because that's exactly what I've been going through creatively with the show. Uh, and it's,
[9:45] And it's also, it's very, I thought it was very poetic to bring you on as both the last guest and you were the first guest as well. So. Thank you. Yeah. And this is.
[9:56] Maybe rudely blunt of me to say, but I was a little worried when you said, I'm going to do a podcast. I was like, oh, fuck, Mark. Another one. But you see, to me, your writing is so original. Yeah. Your books were so like nothing else. There was nothing until everybody started cloning. I'm going to fuck in the title.
[10:17] everything you did was so unique. And when you said you were going to do a podcast, I went, Oh no, no, no. Like don't do another fucking podcast. But I mean, luckily you did already start to take it somewhere new right away. We tried. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a huge relief. It's been change. Like any creative process, right? Like you have to learn the rules before you can break them. Right? Like we, we tried to break some rules early and we just fell on our faces. And so we kind of fell into this rhythm of,
[10:48] okay, let's just book the same guests. You know, at this point, I'm friends with half the people in this world. So it's, you know, most of the time all it took was a text message, right? And even then I was like, oh, I hate booking guests. Like you said, I have this almost like,
[11:08] compulsive need to be contrarian and original or different. Like I'd rather be different and, and suffer the consequences of failure than to just replicate what everybody else is doing. That's working. Even if it rewards you. Exactly. And especially at this point in my career. So yeah,
[11:28] Wait, let's pause right there because I think it's considerate for the audience to challenge yourself to be different. It's not that it's, it's not ego driven. And correct me if I'm wrong for you, but for me, it's not ego driven. It's like they already have this shit.
[11:43] Yeah. You know, ABC, ABC, ABC, ABC. I'm not going to jump in and go ABC, ABC, ABC. Yeah. For their sake, I want to say the thing that other people aren't saying. Yes. I want to do it in a different way that nobody had considered in every way, even my whole like, whether it's technology wise, the way I do my site, the way I do my whatever. I try to just think, well, what's the underrepresented angle in this?
[12:12] the big chorus. Like, I know I'm not the lead singer in their life. I know I am one little voice in the choir. So it's like, well, what note is not being sung that I can contribute? I like that. It's also just a critique that I have of podcasting in this space, too, is that it is getting...
[12:32] It's getting mundane. It's getting repetitive. It's the same. All the shows are doing the same thing with the same guests, same topics. You know, anytime a new book comes out, you know, I'm sure you've done your you either have done or you're going to do a bunch of the same shows, which I get. It's part of the it's part of promoting a book. Yeah, I just I don't find it interesting. And.
[12:55] Uh, and so what I find interesting is trying to reinvent the format or the medium or just do something disruptive. Even, even if it doesn't, you know, even if I make less money or I lose some audience or whatever, it's like, let's just, let's do something interesting and fun and original and see what happens. Let's break some shit.
[13:19] See, that to me goes back to the musical example. I finally just listened to the legendary David Bowie albums produced by Brian Eno called Low and... Crap, I forget the other. But he made this... Like, after he was already famous for Ziggy Stardust and such, then he went and made three really artsy albums with Brian Eno. It was just such a wonderful, bold, creative step that it's hard to imagine...
[13:47] Well, okay, it's hard to imagine Taylor Swift doing it, but it's actually easy to imagine some other popular musicians these days doing it. But even like Peter Gabriel back in the 80s and 90s, suddenly he did the soundtrack to the movie The Last Temptation of Christ. And then went out and put out a bunch of like traditional world music albums that like released through his label. And it's just something that most of his fans would not have followed him to do that. But I thought it was so bold of him to do that. Almost like a creative reset.
[14:16] It's like, all right, I'm popular, I'm popular, yeah, now let me do something that none of you will like. Except maybe like 1% of you will get what I'm doing and that's what I want. Let's reduce my audience again. It's funny because I definitely feel that tension. Like I have been very aware for a long time now that I can just keep hitting the fuck note on the piano for the next 20 years and just keep collecting the paychecks. There is a legitimate temptation to do that. Like it is...
[14:46] It's easy. It's comfortable. People know what to expect. Oh, my gosh. You could just have like an LLM just generate Martin Manson book title with those asterisks in the fuck. Seriously. I mean, we could be on fuckbook number eight by now, you know, if I wanted to go. It was funny because I remember having a conversation with my publisher pretty early on.
[15:08] And they actually brought that up. They're like, we think this could be a franchise. We think you could do eight or 10 books like this with the same cover and the same style and the same tone. And, you know, you just repeat the same advice. And, and I remember my exact response was, I will not be chicken soup for the soul for fuck faces.
[15:29] You know, you mentioned ACDC. Like, I get why. Like, if you love it and you like, like, you're happy hitting that note again and again, and it pays the bills, and the audience is happy with you hitting that note again and again, you know, why not do it? But I definitely am more, I think I'm born more of, like, the Miles Davis or, like, the Radiohead ilk of just, like...
[15:53] If I don't try to reinvent myself, I'm going to go crazy at some point. But I want to get back to you in this cross-pollination of ideas and modalities. I read your new book on the flights down here. And I found consistently my favorite parts of the book were where you brought in very, very,
[16:20] I guess, orthogonal references. Like there's a section on religion. You talk about nation states at some point. By the way, everybody, the book is about beliefs and how beliefs can still be useful even if they are not necessarily true. And so there's a lot of very individual examples, right? You know, we tend to, a lot of us have beliefs that are useful, not true. And a lot of us have beliefs that are not useful and not true.
[16:49] To me, the most exciting stuff was like, you know, is a religion a useful, not true belief? Is a nation state a useful, not true? Is culture useful, not true? Or like social norms, like all that stuff. Like that gets me super excited. That's like when you take an Iron Maiden and you play it with a banjo. Like that was a lot. Is that the stuff that you find the most fun or...
[17:13] Yeah. When you surprise yourself. Isn't that nice? When you're writing, sometimes you sit down to write, and you know what you're going to say. But sometimes you sit down with more of a question, and you privately explore this subject. You're typing, you're writing, and you're typing, and suddenly you go, whoa. And you surprise yourself. Yeah. That's the best feeling when you're writing.
[17:40] Because if, you know, you and I have read a lot of books, if I've never heard this idea before, I'm like, oh, wow, I've never heard this idea before. This is badass. Yeah. I want to put this out there because if I've never heard it, then most people probably haven't heard it. Or what happens sometimes is I can put an idea out and somebody says, you know what you should look into? What you're saying right now kind of sounds like this. Which I guess could, you know, like you think you're doing something unique musically and they say, oh.
[18:07] you should check out Tom Waits. And they go, oh, okay, wow. Yeah. Um, so that is still the thrill for me is to surprise myself. So writing useful, not true. So I surprised myself a lot because I was talking about something I didn't already know about. I went in, you know, with this question for two years and I just was devouring everything, reading all these books about philosophy and religion. And I read the Bible cover to cover we talked about in our first episode. And, um,
[18:36] reading the Quran, reading about Islam, reading about Hinduism, reading about just theology in general, which is just something I'd never looked into because in America, growing up in America, it felt like a don't-go-there subject. Because if you go there at all, you're just going to have this kind of just Christianity, just join our church, just come to Bible study with me,
[19:05] That was the only like any mention of religion felt like it was just going to go there. And that's that. Right. It could never stay one level zoomed out about why we even have religion and how it's beneficial and what what does it do for us and how does it improve our actions and all that? It's just no, it's just here's here's what my parents taught me. And that's that. So this this two year investigation into this concept of religion.
[19:29] Useful but not true beliefs. You know, in the book, you talk about how 99.9% of our views are perspectives, not facts, and how you can put down and pick up perspectives at will.
[19:46] in order to enhance yourself or help yourself. I'm curious, after this two-year investigation, what were the biggest perspectival shifts that you've experienced? Like how is Derek different post-book versus pre-book? Like what did you change your mind on or your perspective on, and what was the significance of that? I think the big one
[20:09] was realizing that ultimately all that really matters are the actions we take, that beliefs that you could choose to adopt do something for your emotional state. If you choose to adopt a belief that everything sucks, it gives you this emotional state. If you take the belief that I'm surrounded by opportunities, it gives you this emotional state.
[20:36] And then depending on your state is going to completely affect your actions. Yeah. Whether you just decide to just fuck it and eat some ice cream on the couch, or if you decide to throw out the ice cream you bought last night, stop drinking alcohol, get your shit together and go take this action. Because it's just a slight tweak of thinking. A slightly different belief completely changes your direction with your actions. And...
[21:04] None of the beliefs are necessarily true. By the way, so we've got an audience, like the first page of the book says, look, I need to define this word true. Yeah. Because for the whole book, I don't want to always say necessarily, absolutely, objectively, empirically, observably true. So whenever I say true, what I really mean is absolutely, necessarily, objectively, observably true.
[21:34] But the reason to define it like that is because whatever you've defined as true, that's closed. You're done. No more questioning that. And I think that was so interesting to realize that, yeah, opening that up again to say that might not necessarily be true. You asked the actions that changed for me or what it changed in how I see the world. It was, for one, realizing that everything is, I just need to judge it by its actions it creates. Hmm.
[22:03] And then I need to keep challenging myself whenever I still catch myself saying things like, well, that was stupid or this is bad or that's amazing. And I'm like, hmm? Is it? Not necessarily. Like, even though I've been focused on this subject for two years, I still catch myself saying,
[22:24] having viewpoints that feel absolutely true yeah i have to catch myself i wonder how much of that is is is a product of like semantics and language right because it's one of the things that you point out repeatedly in the book is that there are all sorts of normative things that we will say like she is very polite or uh the weather is bad today and we
[22:48] We just through saying that there's an implicit assumption that that is factually true. Right. But and we are unaware of all of the normative and subjective assumptions that have to happen underneath that statement. But then sometimes I wonder, it's like we just don't have the language to like. Equip that right. Like you just said.
[23:11] There is a version of this book where the word empirically or objectively is inserted before the word true 500 times. Or there might be some language on earth that has different words. Like apparently the French have 20 different words for friend, whereas in English we just have this word friend that gets suitcased in the meaning of the same thing. So like maybe we should just have a different word for truth.
[23:39] like there's a word for objective, empirical, verifiable truth. And then there's a word for like truth-ish. Right. Yeah. Works for me. It works for me. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, you know, David Foster Wallace used to call it capital T true. And, uh, and he also said that almost nothing is verifiably capital T true.
[24:02] Which, okay, by the way, you know, so I don't get into political zeitgeist. I don't follow news and try to get into the conversation du jour. But so when I told some people I was writing this book, a lot of people said, oh, are you going to finally, you know, talk about those people that just go lie in the media and deny this? I'm like, no, it's not denialism. Because denialism is where you...
[24:27] take observable facts that are verifiable and necessary and absolute facts and you say no that didn't happen that's not true you know no the we didn't lose the election no vaccines don't work it's like no you can look at
[24:44] Data. A microscope. And you can see the little vaccines doing their job. This isn't about denying what's true, but it is about drawing that line between there are some things in life that are absolutely true. Sure. And everything else of the mind is just we can choose another perspective. Well, and I think you talked about this when we talked last year of...
[25:02] you know, the first object objection that people bring up is like, well, then I'll just, I'm just going to believe that I'm Superman and that, you know, I'm a billionaire and everybody loves me and you know, all this stuff. And it, you pointed out, you said, yes, you can believe those things, but they're not useful because you're diluting yourself. You're like removing yourself from a shared reality. So there's like, there actually, there's a quote,
[25:29] This ties in really well with a quote from the book that I marked down that I want to read really quick. Because I thought this was pretty insightful.
[25:37] when it comes to why so many perspectives feel true, even though they are not necessarily like capital T true. So you said people communicate for social and emotional reasons. Socially, they want to bond judgments, gossip, ethics, and opinions are all great for signaling and connecting emotionally. They want validation. They want others to acknowledge and agree that their viewpoint is justified. When you can see someone's point of view, it tells them that you're standing on their side.
[26:01] That's why people rarely share objective, unbiased facts. Actual facts are boring as dirt. Nobody bonds over facts. They have more incentive to share their thoughts, which are never necessarily true. Which I love that because it's, you're right, like 99.9% of everything we talk about is true.
[26:24] useful, not true beliefs. And we're just, we're gauging and verifying whether, do you have the same useful, not true belief as I do? Oh, great. Now it became more useful because we both have it now and we can share it together. Right. And so I think there's like an interesting game theory situation where if you have a, a not true belief that nobody else has, you know, like I'm, I don't know, I'm the queen of England. Right.
[26:49] It immediately becomes, it's immediately rendered unuseful because it's not shared. Nobody else sees me as the queen of England. So it's, it's now a belief that's hurting me. I mean, I think this, this explains like social contagion and peer pressure, right? Because it's like, there's a, there is an incentive to share the useful, not true things that other people around you believe, because then you get to benefit from,
[27:15] Not just from the social validation, but you get to benefit from their company, their resources, their friendship, their loyalty, everything. I'm on your side. And it was fun imagining that very literally, too. When you say that you can see something from a person's point of view, it tells them you're standing on their side. Yeah. It's nice to think of that very literally. Like, yeah, we are standing shoulder to shoulder. I'm seeing that the same way you are seeing that. Yeah.
[27:39] It's kind of a nice metaphor we have in English like that. Yeah, I see it your way. I'm standing on your side. And you have that quip as well about the guy who calls out to the woman on the other side of the river.
[27:53] Oh yeah, that was a joke. I didn't make that up. I heard that joke somewhere. Yeah, Traveler is walking through a strange land and he comes to a river and he calls to the woman on the other side. He goes, excuse me, how do I get to the other side of the river? And she looks back and she goes, you are on the other side of the river.
[28:11] And I just love that. It's like, I'm in New Zealand right now. Sometimes I comment on people's accent and they go, we don't have an accent. You do. It's wonderful to remember. You have an accent. Even at the top of the show, I was like, well, you know, you live on the other side of the world. And you're like, no, you live on the other side of the world. Exactly. Yeah.
[28:32] Yeah, there was a my favorite TED talk I did was just this tiny little three minute talk where I talked about how you can see so many things from the other point of view. So one of them is addresses in Japan. We grew up in a country where the streets have names and blocks are just the unnamed bits of land in between named streets. Yeah.
[28:57] In most of Japan, it's the opposite. The blocks have numbers or names, and the streets are thought of as just unnamed spaces. Yeah. So in between. So if you ask somebody, what's the name of the street? They'll go, what? Yeah. And same thing if somebody, if a Japanese person came to America and they said, what's the name of this block? You're like, well, this is Oak Street. This is Elm Street. No, no, no. What's that block?
[29:19] What? But then you realize that so many things can be seen from an opposite point of view, including where we are in New Zealand right now. There was a map, I think, actually, I think it was in the Sydney airport. No, maybe it was in the Auckland airport. Where it was the upside down world map where New Zealand and Australia and Argentina are at the top and down below you have Canada and Russia. And it is equally valid. We live in a sphere.
[29:45] Yeah. It's a beautiful reminder. It's interesting noting all the way, like, all of these socially organizing, useful, not true beliefs. I mean, it does seem like the basis of culture, right? Like, even some things as simple as, like, you know, when you meet somebody, you shake their hand. And you say, nice to meet you. You say, please, thank you. All those things. These are simply useful, not true beliefs. Yeah.
[30:15] that we've adopted to signal certain things to each other because it helps organize us as a community and as a society. Yeah. And I guess just being aware of that is powerful because then you, once you're, you have to be aware of it in order to understand why you would ever opt out, I guess. Cause it's, it's,
[30:37] You see when people are not aware of the game, they either conform blindly, right? And that's not good. Or they rebel blindly. Like they're upset. They don't understand why. They break a bunch of rules. There's no rhyme or reason to it. It's just chaos. But when you're aware of the game, then you can be selective in choosing, okay, this is a social norm that I actually don't think is as useful as other people do.
[31:04] And I think I'm going to go the other way on this one and I'm going to bear the cost of that. Yeah, I guess I've just never thought of it this way. It's really interesting. I also find it very interesting that you spent two years writing a book about beliefs and your big conclusion is that actions matter way more. Well, no, it's the, sorry, more succinctly put, the whole point of beliefs is to affect your actions. If your beliefs are not
[31:29] improving your actions, then there's no point for the belief. Yeah. Like the person that says that they are a religious believer, but then they act like an asshole and harm everybody around them. It's like, well, then what is the point of your beliefs if they're not improving your actions? The point of these beliefs.
[31:44] beautiful beliefs handed down by religions over thousands of years is that they improve our actions for the better. Follow these 10 commandments and you will be a good person. You will be a good neighbor. You will be a good spouse, a good parent. You will be net positive for the world. If you violate these, you will be net harm for the world. But there are some people that say that they're a believer, but then they're still net harm for the world. So the beliefs are
[32:14] Mm-hmm. Except in that they affect your actions. Yeah. Yeah. And you talk about at one point, like, actually, like, the basis of religion in a lot of ways is, like, they weren't belief systems historically. Yeah. That came from a book.
[32:31] called The Religious Case Against Belief by James P. Carse, C-A-R-S-E. He's the one, he's a theology chair, was it? The theology chair at New York University and pointed out that religion is the doing, which is usually goes hand in hand with the beliefs, but doesn't have to be. So he pointed out,
[32:55] First, the obvious that there are beliefs that are not religions, you know, feminism and communism, whatever, are not religions. But he said, on the other hand, we have Zen Buddhism, which is a religion that has basically no beliefs. Yeah. So he said, first, let's be clear that these are two separate things. The religions are the actions, the rituals, the things you do. And then their beliefs are...
[33:18] Which, in my mind, are just kind of moot. And he said somewhat of the same thing, that the point of the beliefs is to affect the actions. Coming from a theological... How do you say it? Theological? I was trying to get the noun version. Theologian? Theologian? Theologian. We're writers here.
[33:39] Anyway, coming from a theologian, I thought that was a powerful point to make, is that the beliefs are basically moot because they're just in your head. And if they don't affect your actions, then they're completely pointless. Yeah. And it helps remind you.
[34:02] Okay, now let's stop talking about religion for a second. But even on like a day-to-day personal level, what beliefs you have about yourself that get you out of bed in the morning? What beliefs you have when you walk into a room of strangers? What beliefs you have when going on a first date? What beliefs you have when sitting down to do a project that you're not excited about but you're supposed to be doing?
[34:23] You choose your beliefs at any one of these, and none of them are necessarily true. You just have to look at how is this going to affect my actions for the better. And it can be a beautiful little brainstorming exercise or daydreaming exercise. When you catch yourself holding a belief that is steering your actions in an ineffective, disempowering way, you could just stop for a second and go sit on the toilet or lay down on the couch and say,
[34:53] huh, all right, how else could I think about this? Yeah. And you just play an old brainstorming exercise. It's funny though, because for a lot of people or a lot of beliefs for a lot of people, like I do think there are some benign beliefs that,
[35:09] I don't have much of an emotional response. So like, for instance, I don't know, thinking about some sort of like numerical business decision of like, am I going to spend my time doing X or am I going to spend my time doing Y? What are the costs? What are the benefits? Open up a spreadsheet, figure it out, right? It's a very unemotional task of like...
[35:31] What do I believe is the most useful thing to pursue over the next year or so, right? But then there are some things that get very emotional. And I think those are the things that are like very much tied to our identity. So like I imagine for a lot of people, and I actually experienced this when I was young too, like questioning my own religion was emotionally very uncomfortable the first time I did it.
[35:59] And the first time I questioned whether I was the piece of shit in my relationship, that was also extremely uncomfortable. First time I questioned my own political views was very uncomfortable. So I think I'm curious what you would say to like the emotional kind of the instinctual emotional resistance that happens around certain subjects.
[36:28] Like, how do you fight through that? Don't get over it. Get under it. Okay. I like leaning into whatever I notice that I'm prejudiced against. If I notice that I've got a irrational aversion to something, it makes me want to lean into it to try to figure out why. And maybe if I lean into it to find out why, I'll be...
[36:56] justify it and find out, oh, yeah, that is not for me and here's why. But maybe you'll find that it was just some leftover bullshit. You know, I'm not a fan of authenticity. Yeah. Meaning I think authenticity is...
[37:15] overrated or bullshit. Authenticity is what we call our instinctive reaction to something, which is usually just coming from some fucking shit from a movie you saw when you were 11 or something your parents told you in passing, which you maybe even misunderstood. And now that is still sitting in you, you think, oh, well, this bad, this good. And...
[37:39] But then because it was our first thought, we call it authenticity. Yeah. When it's not, it just means that's the shit that you haven't spent an extra two minutes to think through.
[37:49] I don't glorify authenticity at all. I think one of my other favorite ideas in the useful, not true is that your first thought is an obstacle. The whole point is to get past it. Interesting. Don't glorify the instinct. Acknowledge it. Say, OK, well, my first thought was this. Now what else? How else could I think about this? And maybe you'll come back...
[38:13] Five minutes later say, actually, yeah, I'm sticking with the first. I've thought about three or four other ways I could think of this. And the first one, now that I've spent a minute and thought it through, this one still works for me. But don't glorify your impulse and call it authenticity. That's really interesting. I haven't heard that critique before, but I like it. One of the themes that's been coming up on the podcast the past year that I've been thinking a lot about is, for lack of a better term, I've heard it. It's starting to be called therapy culture.
[38:42] Uh, and basically there's a great piece written by a substacker named Freddie DeBoer and he, I really liked the way he delineated it. And he basically said that there are a lot of concepts that are extremely useful in a one-on-one confidential therapeutic context, something like an authentic reaction to something, right? Like if you're talking to your therapist about some childhood trauma, uh,
[39:09] then an authentic emotional reaction is valuable. He said that the problem is, is that a lot of the concepts and practices that are very valuable in a private one-on-one therapy situation are now being glorified culturally and people are being socially validated for them.
[39:27] So these sorts of kind of trigger response emotional reactions are now being like, oh, she's so authentic, like good for her, you know, or like, oh, you're being so vulnerable right now when really you're just acting like a child. And, you know, you're throwing a temper tantrum and crying and freaking out about something and people like, oh, so vulnerable, so strong.
[39:46] And I thought, you know, it's something that there's been this growing, emerging culture of kind of glorifying authenticity, vulnerability, trauma, a lot of these things. And it's concerned me for a while now. And I've had a number of guests on who have kind of criticized aspects of it or around it or pieces of it. But I thought, I thought this piece like really nailed it, that it's, that a lot of these things.
[40:13] The context, when the context shifts, the value is completely different and you actually. Ah, right. You're taking this value out of context. Yeah. And it, and it actually backfires, right? Because what you're starting to see now is, uh, so again, in a private one-on-one situation, like let's say you're having a fight with your, your spouse, uh,
[40:36] Vulnerability is really important. You need to be able to like share your emotions and explain what you're afraid of or what you're upset about. Right. Like that's an important thing. But then now that's being socially rewarded in the town square. And so what you encourage is just a bunch of people to fucking dump their feelings. Right. Constantly and be upset all the time.
[41:00] And that's actually not healthy because now you're like socially validating people feeling upset. And so it encourages people to feel upset more often and to get upset over slighter and slighter things. And they're being vulnerable. So we're supposed to applaud them, right? And, you know, so you can see how that turns into a downward spiral of mental health. So anyway, I just I thought that was super insightful.
[41:31] It is important to know what you feel and think. Like, I think maybe a better definition of authenticity is having an accurate understanding of your own thoughts and feelings. Right. Because a lot of us mask our own thoughts and feelings. Right. And that's what that gives us. That gives the.
[41:50] social experience of inauthenticity. It's like, oh, he's very fake. Like when we meet somebody who feels quote unquote fake, it's because they feel one thing, but they say something else. They think one thing, they say the opposite, right? So I think like the proper form of authenticity is simply just being aligned in thoughts, feelings, actions. The bad version of authenticity is just like,
[42:17] Well, those are my feelings and fuck you if you don't like them, right? Which it is so easy to see the remedy, which is to just think of it flipped around from the other person's point of view. I flew here from Wellington today. Mm-hmm.
[42:37] If the pilot was in a bad mood today, would I want him to authentically crash the plane? Because he's just not feeling it today, man. Can you imagine if he came on the intercom? He's like, I didn't sleep well and my wife just left me. And, you know, you're like, get me off the plane. Just want to be real with y'all.
[42:56] Yeah, I want my pilot to lie to me. Yeah. I mean, same with the surgeon. You know, you're having important surgery and the doctor's just like, you know what? Sick of this bullshit. Yeah. Mid-surgery. I don't want to finish today. You know? Just somebody else sew him up. I'm just being vulnerable. Yeah.
[43:14] Just being real here, being authentic. So one of my favorite examples is great customer service. You do not want authenticity from the nice...
[43:33] what do you call it, concierge at a hotel or whatever. Right. You might have come in and puked on their floor or whatever and be drenched from the rain you come in. And inside they might be thinking, fuck my life. Yeah. But out front they could say, oh, sir, please let me help you in some way. Here's a towel. It's muting.
[43:55] Your id, the perverse imp inside of you that, of course, has your thing. But you made a great point that it's important to know your feelings, especially in therapy and personal relationships and all that. But to go spewing them out like a nudist.
[44:18] Is not the right strategy to get what you want in life. You have to think about it from the other person's point of view. Would you want to walk around your city if other people were being nudist? Yeah, well, look at my shit. Look at it. You don't want that. And so why would you go do that to others? Yeah.
[44:42] Great metaphor. Wonderful metaphor. Speaking of my shit, I'll be right back. That is Derek authentic as always. A few moments later. Audience, for the last 15 minutes, I have been practicing the subtle art of not taking a piss. All right. So we talked earlier about
[45:12] kind of seeing that there's this game being played, that there's all these useful, not true beliefs that we're buying into and other people are buying into. And in a lot of ways, they're competing beliefs. And a lot of them we kind of inherit from our parents and our communities, our schools, our country, our culture. I have personally experienced this, and I've talked to a number of people who have experienced this as well. It's like, once you kind of have this realization
[45:40] that nothing is necessarily capital T true. It's easy to slip into a nihilism. It's like, well, if nothing is true, then nothing's important and then nothing's worth doing. I'm curious, have you slipped into that hole at all? And if not, why not?
[45:59] And what would be your advice to somebody who does find themselves slipping into that hole? I might not have much to add here because I'm just a naturally happy person. You're so cheery. It's upsetting. Sorry.
[46:15] You know, it's funny. You laugh more than me, though. I've noticed this both on the podcast, but even audience, like even offline, Mark laughs this much. Just in like our just random pitter-patter conversation, you laugh more than me. And you are always this cheery. Yeah. No matter what is happening. Yeah. So. I have to laugh the darkness away. Oh. Okay. It's the only way I can survive.
[46:41] What's it? Pogalachi, the clown that goes to the therapist. Anyway, so I find it so joyous and liberating to say that nothing has any meaning because that means that it is all ungodly.
[46:58] free for you to reinvent and adopt whatever perspective you want on things and anytime somebody passes their morality shit on you and says that's bad this is what you're doing is wrong and that's bad this is what you should do go no that's not true
[47:16] that you just... There are no concrete, absolute moral values. And I think this is proven by the fact that there is always an exception. Anything you can think of, there's either an exception for certain situations or there's another culture on the other side of the earth operating under a different philosophy that is also thriving and doing just fine. Yeah. Without adopting your approach to life. Yeah.
[47:45] And I've found that fascinating recently, getting to know cultures in the Middle East. And I've been to China once this year and I'm going back again in nine days. And I think it's really interesting getting to know other thriving cultures that disagree with the one I grew up in. Because then to me, that's just disproving all of these truisms.
[48:14] It's almost like life itself becomes a creative exercise. Yes. Like it's a form of artistry. Just living and choosing what you believe is like an artistic expression.
[48:26] Yeah. I mean, let's go back to the music thing. If somebody said, okay, yeah, you can do whatever you want with the chords or whatever, but it has to be in 4-4 time. I mean, that's just, you just have to be in 4-4 time. Be like, really? Okay, well, maybe 3-4, but that's it. It's either 3-4 or 4-4. You're like, I don't know. Let's try this. Let's challenge that notion.
[48:44] Yeah, my immediate reaction would be to write something in like 9-8 or something off the wall. Yeah. And you can take that approach to so many aspects of life where somebody says, no, it is important. You must be loyal to your blah, blah, blah. You must live your fullest achievement. Okay, we were talking about business. There was an angle. I didn't interrupt you before. But when you were talking about making money...
[49:16] I was going to say that behavioral economics and psychology address the topic of feelings. In psychology and in behavioral economics, feelings matter. Where they can say, for example, in the book, The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, he pointed out,
[49:40] after many, many studies, that people who are made more aware of all of the options they could have chosen may objectively make a better choice, but they will feel worse about it. Right. Whereas if somebody is given only 30 seconds to make a choice and only get shown three options and they're told that their choice is irreversible, well, and the choice is irreversible,
[50:02] They might not make a technically as good decision as somebody who deeply dove into all 97 options, but they will feel better about their choice. And what I really like about psychology and behavioral economics is acknowledging that feelings matter. So then we get into business.
[50:22] and entrepreneurship. And people would say things to me like, yeah, but you could have made a lot more money with CD Baby if you would have done such and such. And I'd say, but I didn't want to. But it would have made more like just they're like, objectively, it's just the better choice. You made a stupid choice by choosing to do such and such that you didn't. I said, but this choice made me happier. And I was optimizing for my own personal happiness. I was not optimizing for the
[50:50] Yeah. And I think we don't bring that into the equation enough. Even with tech, there are some things that I do tech-wise with my server, with my laptop, with my, you know, the technology that surrounds me, that somebody could say, that's stupid. Why would you – I'll give you a real example.
[51:10] All of my video editing, I do on the command line with something called FFmpeg, which you have to use like dozens of little flags and optimizations. My God, only you, Derek. Only you. And the funny thing is, I own Final Cut Pro. I could just click, click, click and make it happen. But I'm like, but I want to figure it out using FFmpeg.
[51:30] And somebody could objectively say, you idiot is going to take you an hour to do it this way. It would take a minute to do it this way. I'm like, but this makes me happier. Yeah. And that matters. It's funny. So one thing that Will Smith used to say all the time is he used to say, everything is feelings. All that matters is feelings. And it was funny because when I first started working with him, that kind of irked me. And it, because it just kind of goes against everything.
[51:56] a lot of my assumptions and beliefs. And finally, after I spent enough time with him to kind of be comfortable challenging him on things, uh, I challenged him on it. I was like, you know, I don't think that's true. And he was like, of course it's true. And I was like, well, and I brought up business. I was like, well, what about business? Right. You know, there's started giving him different business examples. And he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But why are you in business? Right.
[52:21] And I was like, well, to make money. He's like, yeah, why do you want to make money? He's like, because it makes you feel good. He said, it's all about feelings. I was like, all right, I think you got me. Yeah, and I'd say the same thing with tech or just the various decisions we make in life about what kind of home you want to have. Yeah. You know, you could have a bigger house. Yeah. You know? There's always, you're always optimizing for something. Right.
[52:46] And A, I think it's very important to be clear about what you're optimizing for, because I think a lot of times we optimize for things and we don't realize it. We just assume the biggest house is going to make us the happiest. We don't think about whether that's true or not. We think making more money is going to make us happier. We don't think if that's true or not. And so I do think it is useful to get clear about what
[53:11] what is your metric? Like, what are you, what's the yardstick you're measuring progress by? Even if you don't get clear on that, follow your, follow that, uh, that compass inside of you that's drawing you a certain way. Even if you haven't taken the time yet to spell out exactly why, you know, like just when people look over my shoulder, when I'm using my computer, it's all just this like black terminal screen that I'm typing into. And I'm like,
[53:36] what are you doing? I'm like, I don't know. I just like this better. Yeah. And maybe you could lay me down on a shrink's couch or whatever and try to figure out why I want it this way. Or maybe I should get clear about exactly what my measure is for why I'm choosing this technology. But I just feel myself drawn this way, even though everybody else says, no, no, no, this is the way. Like clouds, for example. Everybody uses cloud technology. I'm like, I just don't want to. And I haven't taken the time to describe why.
[54:06] but I do honor my preference. So maybe it's a little bit about self-confidence and honoring your preference, even if other people are going the other way. Yeah. You know, a quip that I've, I've, I've said before is that money's kind of like oxygen when you don't have any, it solves everything. And, and then when you have a lot, it solves nothing. And I think so many people spend a lot of their lives optimizing for money. So, um,
[54:32] it's, and when you're optimizing for money, like by definition, you have to discount your own feelings. You have to suffer. You have to like do things you don't, don't necessarily want to do because you're broke. You got to pay rent, like all that stuff. And, um,
[54:46] But the whole point of making money is to not have to optimize for money anymore. Right. Like that is the reward of making money is that you don't have to optimize for money. Like, yeah, I, I canceled a big book contract this year and, uh, gave a bunch of money back. And it was funny. I was talking to my agent and she was like, are you sure you want to do it? Like she kept checking in and she's like, you're triple sure you want to do this. And I told her, I was like, the whole point.
[55:15] of all the work I've done the last 20 years,
[55:18] is to be able to hand a big check back to somebody because I don't want to do something I don't want to do. Right. Like it's that's the whole point of getting here. If I if I'm not if I'm not able to do that, then all of this was for nothing. I love that. Nicholas Nassim Taleb said somewhere in one of his books that the money you refuse tastes sweeter than the money you accept. Yes. And I thought that was a nice way to put it, too. That's very true. Yeah.
[55:46] You know who astounds me and frustrates me is Jordan Peterson. Yeah. Because in some ways, sometimes he says things that make me go, whoa, that's brilliant. And then he'll...
[56:03] conclude the point with saying, and that's just the way it is. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, Moses did this and that and therefore this then and God says this and that's that. And he ends things
[56:19] faster than I would have. He opens up things I never thought to open up, but then he closes them too early. That's an interesting way to describe him because I have a similar kind of love hate with his books and his material. Like I have, I found them so enriching over the years and I've met him a couple of times and I've had
[56:41] he's been lovely in person and have had good conversations with him. But yeah, there's a frustration there. Like there's something a little bit paradoxical about him where he, he,
[56:52] He expands your world because he's so well read and he has like such a deep understanding of psychology and philosophy and literature and religion. And he'll draw all these connections that you've never considered before. And you're just like, whoa, like Dostoevsky and the Bible and and Jung and and lobsters. And like you're just communism. Yeah. You're just like, whoa, this is incredible. And then, yeah. And then it ends in this like very pithy absolute. Yeah.
[57:18] That if you don't agree with or you don't follow this, like you're evil and you're part of – You need to get your shit straight. You're part of the problem and bucko and – and then he loses me. And I'm like, I was with you, like the Young and the Lobsters and Dostoevsky. I was like, I was fucking right there with you, dude. And it's some of the moral absolutism that comes with it. Yeah.
[57:44] It frustrates me at times. But yet I'll bet you can also understand it because, you know, you grew up religious. Yeah, for sure. And you understand the benefits of let's all agree on the values here. It's like, let's all align. It's like Iceland is a very peaceful place because it's very homogenous. Yes, yes. So if we all can just align and agree on this canon, this value system, then the world is a great harmonious place.
[58:12] I am definitely contrarian, especially living in LA. I am definitely contrarian in that I unabashedly see him as a net positive simply because I think there are a lot of people who grew up in environments that I grew up in. They grew up in very religious, conservative environments, and they never had...
[58:34] an intellectual to look up to like somebody really smart. Like that was actually my first thought when I stumbled across Jordan, like readers started emailing me about him, I think probably around like 2015, 2016. And the first time I started watching his videos, probably around then. And that was the first thing that struck me is I said, I'm,
[59:01] This is the first time I've encountered a very religious, very conservative person who is incredibly intellectually brilliant. And as a millennial who grew up in the 2000s, you know, with George W. Bush and all the evangelical shit, like I never encountered that before. It was like all the intellectuals were on the left and all the intellectuals were atheists.
[59:26] And, uh, and so I can totally see why if you're a young person growing up in that part of the world with that culture and that background and that religion, he is like a fucking lifeline for you. And, uh, so I appreciate that about him, but yeah, he, I, he sometimes loses me with some of the, the religious absolutes and the moral absolutes for sure. Yeah.
[59:50] But yet I don't always disagree. I can see where he's coming from. Totally. Even when he's like absolute and that's, I mean, one of the ones that bothered me the most is when he said, so and so and so and all these important things, all these interesting things he was saying. But, you know, but if a woman doesn't want to have children, I mean...
[1:00:07] She just lost the whole point of humanity. I mean, why do you even exist except to have children? That's what women are for. Women are here to have children. That's that. If you disagree with that, you've lost touch with your entire biological. I'm like, not necessarily true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is a. Might be useful for you to believe that. Might be useful for you, bucko. Yeah.
[1:00:33] I love that he says that. Bucko. He actually does? He does. I thought you made that up. I thought it was a great ad lib. No, no, no. He'll get on these like – it's always when he's on like one of these like angry kind of moralistic tirades. And he'll always finish it with like, well, that's good for you, bucko. And it's just – I love it. It sounds like – it reminds me of like my uncles in Texas. Hey, before we close off the subject.
[1:00:59] I didn't interject earlier about nihilism. There is a beautiful book called, I believe it's called Nothing and Everything, by a pseudonym author. It goes by Val N. Tyne. I don't know. The author wanted to stay anonymous. It's near the top of my book list. If you go to my website, like sive.rs slash book, I sort the books with my highest recommendations at the top. So Nothing and Everything is...
[1:01:28] a joyous book about nihilism. It's about the joy of nihilism, about a world where everything is permitted, nothing has inherent meaning, you are free to assign meaning where you want it to be and not where you don't. It is such a beautiful book. It was one of those ones that I had to stop underlining because it was just every sentence. Yes, yes, yes. So I highly recommend it. Well, it's funny because the nihilism thing
[1:01:54] I've definitely struggled with that on and off over the years. And actually part of my second book, everything is fucked was like inspired by my struggle with that. Uh,
[1:02:04] And the conclusion I landed on is that if there's no reason to do anything, there's also no reason to not do anything. There's no reason to not love who you want to love or make whatever you want to make or pursue the goals that you want to pursue. Like it is a liberation if you choose to look at it that way. And meaning – and I think ultimately this is what like the existentialists were getting at is that ultimately meaning is constructed. It's not found. It's not inherent. Meaning is –
[1:02:34] constructed through action and through action that feels useful. That is ultimately like what imbues our life with a sense of meaning and, and drive satisfaction. So that like, that's where I landed. And it was funny because when I was touring for that book, a number of readers came up to me and they said that they were like, you know, there's a name for this.
[1:02:56] And I said, no. And they said, it's called optimistic nihilism. They said it's like a very obscure kind of, I think there's a community on Reddit or something. But it's a very obscure kind of small niche of a sub-niche. But yeah, it's a thing. Optimistic nihilism. If nothing means anything, then you're free to be whoever you want and create the life that you want. Count me in as member number four to that group.
[1:03:26] I have listened to a lot of your episodes, not all of them, but I know that you talk about relationship things way more than I do. Mm-hmm.
[1:03:37] You think about them more than I do. And I am being way vulnerable right now to decide to talk about this. Wait, everybody applaud Derek's vulnerability. To talk about this on the podcast before we even talked about it privately. As soon as I started to mention this privately, you were just like... Save it. Save it. Save it. Because a lot of people feel the same way you do, which is...
[1:04:06] I don't want a relationship. And that took a while to admit. Yeah. Because it's just this thing that we all must do. I felt like from the age of 14 until two years ago...
[1:04:25] But like a lot of my life's energy, maybe most of my life's energy, most of my daily energy was spent either finding or minding a relationship. All those years. If I wasn't in one, I was looking for one. If I was in one, I was spending so much of my life energy, like managing it, trying to compromise and trying to make somebody else happy. And spent so many years of my life doing that.
[1:04:52] And I've got an unfair advantage in that I have a son already. Yeah. He's 12 years old, and he and I have the best damn relationship. It's amazing. And this biological reason to have a relationship, it's like even if we're to say, well, okay, if nothing else, I mean, if you want to have kids, well, then you're going to have to...
[1:05:14] I've already got that. Yeah. And I can't think of any reason why I, not you, not anybody else, should have a relationship. And I'll add the one other...
[1:05:27] unfair advantage is that I've got a little fame. So I can go to a place like London or any major city and show up and email the 400 people I know in that place and or cherry pick 10 interesting people of the 400 I know in this place and say let's meet, not with romantic intentions, but just
[1:05:51] I can't imagine that I would be that lonely in the future. Because that would be the other thing. Before I had any fame at all, I did very deliberately get into a bad relationship because I thought, if I don't, I'll be lonely. That was after I sold my company and I knew that I was leaving America forever. I was like, I need to get a girlfriend now because if I don't, I'm going to be out there as a digital nomad and I'm going to be lonely.
[1:06:20] Uh, so I just went and like, grab the first willing girl like you, you're hot. Let's, let's do this. Um, and it was a bad mistake because it was coming from the bad place. I was only getting into that relationship because I was worried that I would be lonely.
[1:06:38] Which is why a lot of people get into relationships. Right. And even somebody just two days ago, I was talking about this with one other person. This is kind of a new thing to me that I'm processing like literally this week. Even if you would have just called me privately this week and said, what's on your mind? I would have said this thing. I'm confused by my not wanting a relationship.
[1:06:58] In the same way that like, if I was not eating food and like two weeks had passed and I had no desire to eat any food, I think I'm supposed to be eating food, right? Should I make myself eat food? I'm like, I'm supposed to be wanting a life partner, right? Should I be making myself get a life partner even though I don't want one? I'm not sure how to think about this. What do you think, Mark?
[1:07:25] Well, it's interesting. I think on an episode with Drew maybe three or four months ago, he dug up a stat that found that for the first time since they've started measuring it, a majority of single people are not looking for a relationship. They're not dating. They're not actively dating.
[1:07:45] So they're not necessarily saying I won't date anybody, but they're not looking. They're not trying. They're not meeting people. They're just like being single. And anecdotally, I have noticed quite a few. It's usually middle-aged women, but I've noticed a lot of single parents that
[1:08:07] kind of land in the same boat. Because you have a really fulfilling relationship with your kid. Yeah. And like you said, that biological imperative is already taken care of. And you probably get to this place where you feel happy and stable and you're confident in yourself and dating is hard. It's awkward. It's weird. There's a lot of like...
[1:08:34] you know, awkward conversations. And I don't know, like, I think the older you get, the less patience you have for just dealing with people or social situations that you don't really want to be around. So I have...
[1:08:47] I have run into it quite a bit and I actually think that the data showing that most single people are not actively dating. My guess is that it's just because the population is aging and, uh, and older people just date less often. They're not as, I think most 20 year old single people are probably actively dating. I would guess 90% plus are trying to get a date or have been on a date the last year.
[1:09:14] I imagine once you get up into the 40s, 50s, 60s, that drops off quite a bit. I should have mentioned earlier, I was in a relationship for two years. Yeah. I broke up with her two years ago. She was a wonderful woman in every other way, but I could just tell that like our ultimate life goals were just...
[1:09:33] Way far apart. Yeah. It was like this. Sorry, if you're watching the camera. It's like we had this kind of intersection of like two lines heading in opposite directions that did intersect for a little while. Yeah. And it was good, but I could just tell like. They kept going. Stick it out. We're just going to get farther and farther apart. So I did the difficult and painful thing of breaking up the relationship.
[1:09:55] and it's been the happiest two years of my life. Oh, my God. It's like, but the last two years, oh, my God, I've been, like, so happy. Like, this, all this, maybe that's how I started this story, like, this life energy that I used to put into finding or minding
[1:10:11] is all free to be put into more things now. I'm doing my work instead of like taking care of a miserable person, you know? And I'm like making things instead of being out trying to find somebody. It's like, I've met, it's been the best two years of my life. I'm like, this is obviously something's working here. I feel great.
[1:10:30] But again, like the somebody who if any of you have ever fasted for like 10 days, one thing I found in I did it once. I fasted for 10 days and I told somebody I did that. And he goes, oh, he said, I fasted for two weeks. He said, are you still at the point? Like, you wonder why you ever used to eat? I went, yes, because that's what it feels like.
[1:10:47] After you get past the two or three day hump, like the first two or three days are hard. After the third day, it's easy to just, you wonder why you ever used to eat. And so you have to kind of like make yourself eat when you don't want to. So I've wondered if my their relationship was. It would be interesting once your kid grows up and goes off on his own. I'll be interesting to see if this shifts at all. Right. I also just understand like where you're like...
[1:11:15] Middle age makes sense to me. Like, I understand why young people are obsessed with dating because you've got your whole life in front of you and you want to find your person. And it's like a huge part of forging your identity and figuring out your your status and like all these all these things. And you're also just really fucking horny. So, like, there's all this stuff going on when you're young. That makes sense. And I also understand why older people like elderly people would want to date mostly just for companionship. Yeah.
[1:11:44] It can be very life is simple and it can be very lonely if you don't have somebody. So that makes sense to me too. Middle aged people, especially middle aged people who are single parents.
[1:11:56] It totally makes sense to me that they just check out because you're still in the prime of your life. You've got all sorts of projects going on. You've got all these trips you want to take. You've got, you know, you want to write another book. You want to go over here. You want to move to this country. Like all this stuff's going on and you're still caretaking the child, which requires a lot of your emotional energy.
[1:12:17] And, and you're also probably, if that's going well, you're probably getting a lot of your emotional needs met from your relationship with your child. You're feeling very fulfilled and a lot of intimacy and companionship and, you know, you're having a good time with somebody you love. And so I can see how that itch just isn't there and you don't, you know, your needs are being met through other means. Um,
[1:12:43] So, yeah, none of this totally surprises me. Okay. My take on this, and this is true of both children and partners, I think both are overrated in terms of happiness. And a lot of people get really upset when I say this about romantic partners.
[1:13:03] you can be a perfectly happy person being single. A romantic relationship is one method and probably a very useful method to getting a lot of your needs met emotionally, but it's not the only method. And I think similarly with children, children are a very...
[1:13:22] immediate way to fulfill a sense of purpose and meaning and, you know, have a long-term goal and vision and also get a lot of your emotional needs met. But again, they're not the only way. So it's like a lack of a child or a lack of a romantic partner. It doesn't mean you're, you can't still satiate those emotional needs and desires. It just means you have to find them somewhere else. And that can be more difficult or complicated depending on
[1:13:51] Or it could be a good thing. It's like the someone who always wanted kids and couldn't get kids. And because of that, they're out volunteering at the children's hospital and they have all this energy to give to many kids because they don't have one kid. Absolutely. I think that's almost how I'm feeling about my life the last two years. It's like because I'm not putting my energy into making one person happy, I get to...
[1:14:18] Put my energy out. I, I, so, you know, my wife and I are at a point now where it's the, it's clear we're not going to have kids. And I felt the exact same thing the last year or two. Like I really had this real, it really sunk in for me maybe like a year and a half ago where I realized I'm like,
[1:14:37] I'm going to have so much, like such a surplus of time and energy and freedom that for the next 18 years that most of my peers are not going to have. So let's fucking use this well. Like let's really take advantage of it.
[1:14:58] give back, build something amazing, do something amazing. So that's actually been very motivating for me. I've actually found a lot of, it's like reignited a lot of my ambition. Nice. Just having that realization. But-
[1:15:13] In staying faithful to your book, Useful, Not True, here we are jamming about how great it can be to not have a relationship, not have kids. Bucko. Bucko. Let's flip. Let's take the Jordan Peterson perspective. Because I do think there is a legitimate argument here, which is that the more free and autonomous we become in modern society,
[1:15:39] the easier it is to opt out of starting a family. And the more people that opt out of starting families, whether it's through marriage, kids, whatever, the fertility rate drops, you get a more fragmented, atomized community. You know, there's a lot of second, third order effects that are negative of this liberation that you and I are beaming about at the moment. Yeah.
[1:16:11] And so I hold both of those things as true simultaneously. Doesn't it feel like, can you imagine if there was some statistical reason why a certain percentage of us should be in jail? And somebody would tell you, you know, Mark, you really should sit in jail for a number of years. It's good. It's for the greater good. And you'd be like, I get your argument, but I just don't want to be sitting in jail. You know, it's like somebody saying like, well, Mark, you know, the biological daughter, you're like...
[1:16:41] I get your argument, but I just don't want kids. Yeah. And I was thinking about how some people say that they knew from an early age that they were gay. And I think, you know, my whole life looking back, I've never wanted a life partner. All of my...
[1:17:00] visions for my ideal life were always just like me in the world. It was never me partnered with one person. I always just kind of wanted to be me out in the world. Yeah. And...
[1:17:13] Some people feel very differently. Most of my friends I know, their life vision for their ultimate life, their ideal life is to be partnered with one person. And I imagine, you know, me and my spouse and we have this, we have that's my dream life. That's what I want. Great. Then they should keep pursuing that. But I think I'm admitting that my dream life.
[1:17:35] Never included that. It's weird feeling reluctant to honor that. I still somehow feel it's wrong, but maybe in the same way that if you're in Silicon Valley and you're in Y Combinator and everybody says, well, you need a co-founder. You can't be a solo founder. You know, statistically, we found out that that does not work. We'll fund you if you have a co-founder. But I just don't want a co-founder. You need a co-founder. Why am I such a bad person for not wanting a co-founder? I feel a bit like that.
[1:18:03] Really? Yeah. Where do you think that comes from? It's funny. I think this is the first time since I've known you for 12 years. I think it's the first time I've seen you express anxiety around social judgment or second-guess yourself based on social norms. Because it seems so...
[1:18:25] Right there next to biology, you know, and that's what I said. It's like, okay, I already got a kid. But it feels like the next closest thing to like, well, that's just true. You got to have a life partner. Yeah, that's just what you do. Everybody's looking for it.
[1:18:43] It's like, I mean, we hear it in every bit of fiction, every bit of, you know, Hollywood and novels and whatever. It's just like, that's what you do. It's almost like the little picture of the sperm and the egg. Well, that's what they're here for. They're just looking. That's what we're, you know, the soulmate and all of that. I think, but, yeah, don't feel it. Yeah. It's interesting. I think statistically, if you look at it, women check out.
[1:19:07] Like what you're feeling, you actually see much more among women. Like they just kind of check out of dating. They're like, I'm good. Don't need anybody. Men tend to kind of compulsively remarry or like always feel need. But it's funny because you never hear like there's no, there's way less judgment towards men. Like nobody looks at a single 60-year-old man and it's like, well, what's wrong with him? You know, whereas like a single woman will definitely get that comment.
[1:19:37] Hmm. See, I don't think of it from the outside at all. That's why when you say this is the first time I've heard you, you know. So it's not socially driven at all. No, it's not. Okay. Good. My understanding of Derek Sivers remains intact. No, it's only coming from, it's like everything I've ever read about happiness. Hmm.
[1:19:59] You know, they say that's like the greatest killer of the elderly is loneliness or whatever. Yeah. I'm coming from that place. I'm thinking like, shouldn't I be concerned? That's why I made the comparison with food. Like, shouldn't I be concerned about my lack of desire for this thing? But there's plenty of ways to get companionship and solve loneliness without having a romantic partner. Get famous. Yeah. I mean, again, it's – and again, every time I post this –
[1:20:26] I get backlash, but it's true. I mean, if you look at the research, if you look at the data, it's like people with romantic partners are statistically not any happier than people without them. It's just true. It's just, it's a fact. Whereas if you look at people with no friends versus people with a lot of friends, people with a lot of friends are much happier than people with no friends. Speaking of, Drew, Drew, Drew, you are the reason I am here, Drew, because...
[1:20:55] I live in Wellington, which is only a one-hour flight away. But when Coldplay heard that Mark Manson was going to be in town... Oh, they had to fuck my shit up completely. They came in and booked all of their stuff right this week when Mark was here because they just wanted to be in the same city as him. So there were no flights at all yesterday, and the only flight I could get up was like a 6 a.m. flight that I had to get up at 3.30 this morning, and it was a $1,000 flight. Oh, man.
[1:21:23] Oh, my God. For a silly little one hour just to come see Mark. And when he said, like, hey, I'm going to be in Auckland and this is my only free day, I thought, oh, cool. And then I looked at the flights and went, ah. And then I was listening to Drew's mentioning on it just a few episodes ago where he talked about, like, flying for a friend's anniversary. Anniversary dinner, yeah. And he was giving his arguments why I went, yeah, yeah.
[1:21:49] All right, Mark. So I was like, I'm going to spend a thousand bucks and wake up at 4 a.m. to come up to see you today. So that was because of Drew. I appreciate it. We all appreciate it. And yeah, fuck Coldplay. I can't tell you. I can't tell you. So this is like I'm doing my speaking tour. Auckland's my last stop. And I can't tell you how many New Zealanders have emailed me. And they're like, well, I want to come, but Coldplay's playing the same night. And I'm just like, God damn it. Yeah.
[1:22:18] It's not even like it's the Rolling Stones. Coldplay. Coldplay. Who cares about Coldplay? Who cares about Coldplay? But apparently Auckland. In fact, I'm babysitting two rats all week because their owners, our friends of mine in New Zealand, they're having me babysit their rats this week. To go see Coldplay? Because they flew up to Auckland for the whole week to see Coldplay three times.
[1:22:36] We're a little starved for entertainment here in New Zealand. This little Pacific Island. We need to talk. New Zealand, we need to have a heart to heart here. We need to get vulnerable here. You need bigger. You need better heroes, better stars. Anything else you would like to cover in our last few minutes here?
[1:22:59] In the last podcast. I'm really glad that you are ceasing this podcast format, even though it has been a proven success for you. It is objectively successful for you. Yes, it is. It has been a hit.
[1:23:15] Um, and, uh, I'll say, I think we probably said it in the first episode, but the first one was really funny where it was like on a Wednesday, you texted me saying, I'm going to be starting this new podcast. Do you think in a couple of weeks you might want to come on it? I said, well, in two days I'm leaving for Israel. So let's do it. Tomorrow's my only free day. Yeah. And, you know, by text, he went, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, bucket. Yeah.
[1:23:40] let's do it. See you tomorrow. And so we jumped in and did the very first one with one day's notice. I think you even said like, my producer's going to shit a brick, but fuck it, let's do this. And then, yeah, then walking in today, you told me that you were...
[1:23:58] going to not cease the podcast, but cease this format. Yes. To do something that I think is way more creative, way more you, way more innovative and all that stuff we said earlier about like it's just less done in the world. And I think it's going to be
[1:24:15] more helpful to your audience because of that. I think it's going to be more interesting, more educational, more helpful, more useful. And I'm really proud and glad that you had the balls to see something that was successful. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I...
[1:24:32] I figured you would, of all the people I know in my life, I figured you would understand immediately. It's the music comparison, you know? That really hit me hard, this idea of Bob Dylan was such a huge success as the troubadour with the acoustic guitar, man, and that's what everybody loved about him. And then he went and headlined at the Newport Folk Festival, full of other folkies, and that's where he chose to go electric. And I love that it was like, there's a recording of somebody out in the audience yelling, Judas!
[1:25:01] Like, how dare you betray this? Now you're, you know, you're... And that's what you have to do artistically to keep yourself pushing forward or maybe even just as a smart person to keep yourself interested and challenge yourself. So, yeah, audience, I hope you...
[1:25:19] Take this role model. Take it as yet another, you know, David Bowie, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan and Mark Manson did it. You can do it. Oh, my God. That's a lot to live up to. I'm going to get closing. We're trying to come to an ending here. You know, that's what we're doing.
[1:25:36] You're killing it. You're killing it. No, you're selling it much better than I would. So I appreciate that. Derek, it's been a pleasure as always. Perfect bookends to this period of my creative life. And to the audience, there will be a more formal announcement probably in the next week or two about what we're doing. I'm extremely excited. It's going to be very different. And I think you guys are actually going to like it a lot better as well.
[1:26:04] Where can people find you? Go to my website. By the way, this Useful Not True book we've been talking about, it's not on Amazon and I won't put it on Amazon for a year. Okay. This is my little way of thinking about what would make me happy. I set up my own little store where I get to sell things for the price that I think is fair, not what Amazon tells me to sell them for. So Useful Not True is only at Sivers.com. But the main thing that I...
[1:26:31] always want to tell the audience is that the reason I do these podcasts is not to sell another fucking $10 book. Who cares? But I really love the people that I meet that find me because of a show like this. And unlike most people, unlike seemingly almost everybody, I really enjoy my email inbox. So I still have an open email inbox and I spend about 60 to 90 minutes a day answering emails from strangers. And I really like it. Yeah.
[1:26:59] Maybe because I'm here on this little Pacific island. It's kind of cool to hear from people from Estonia and Kenya that heard your show and email me. So, yeah, anybody listening to this, go to my website, sive.rs, and send me an email. Introduce yourself. Say hello. Ask me anything. Amazing. Thank you, Derek. That's it. It's a wrap.
[1:27:23] The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Burney. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura. Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.

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