17. Choosing Not Reacting, The Power of Slow Thinking, and Life Beyond the Zeitgeist | Derek Sivers

Derek (: 00:00

A key moment happened for me in my life when I was feeling completely overwhelmed with my company and called a friend saying that I have to do this, I have to do that, I have so many things, I'm overwhelmed. And he said, you don't have to do any of that. I said, yes, I do. I have to pay my employees. I have to ship the items that people paid for. And he said, no, you really don't.

you're choosing to do it, but you don't have to do it. He said, it's really important that you understand this distinction.

Digby (: 00:46

Have you ever felt trapped by your own success? You know when you're caught in a cycle where the very things you've built now seem to control you instead of the other way around? Well, you're not alone. Today's conversation with Derek Sivers explores what it means to truly choose your path rather than simply react to life's demands. Derek's a fascinating explorer who's journeyed from musician to the founder of CD Baby to author, thinker, and very intentional father.

And as you've just heard, Derek shares a pivotal moment in our conversation where he realised that what felt like obligations were actually choices. And this shift in perspective changed everything for him, eventually leading him to redesign his life around what truly matters.

In our conversation, we dive into the power of slow thinking in a reactive world, the courage to create your own path where everyone else is following the crowd, and why Derek believes that living away from the constant noise of the zeitgeist is actually a competitive advantage. Whether you're feeling overwhelmed by responsibilities or simply questioning if there's a better way to live and lead, Derek's refreshing perspective might be just the permission slip you need to reimagine what's possible.

Digby (: 02:02

Hi, I'm Digby Scott and this is Dig Deeper, a podcast where I have conversations with depth that'll change the way you lead. And just a little note, we're diving right into this conversation midstream. For context, I've just asked Derek for his advice about how to break out of being in an orbit where you feel stuck. Here's his response.

move. Sorry, it's blunt, but I love moving. I love moving every time I have a breakup. I just want to get out of there and go somewhere new, just look forward, not back. I love moving just to shake things up. The world is our home and

You do.

Derek (: 02:49

The place you currently are is like one room in your house. And if somebody spent all of their time in the kitchen and just never even went to the study, you'd say, well, why don't you go over there for a bit? Why don't you go out to the deck? It's a different point of view. You don't always have to stand here in the kitchen. I feel that way with living around the world. Why aren't you living in Africa? It's huge. It's...

Wonderful, there's such a different point of view to be had. Why aren't you living in the Nordics somewhere? Go get to know your home. I really want to keep moving for the rest of my life to constantly shift my point of view, like getting to know the different rooms of my house.

And it's interesting, right? Cause you're building a new house right now. You haven't moved in yet though, right? So that's coming. Right. And for most people that would be like, I'm building my dream home. And then I reckon the addition to that sentence is, and this is where I'll be for a long, long time. And I'm reading that's not the case for you.

No, almost.

Derek (: 03:56

No, we'll see how long I stay there, but I might just keep it as a backup retreat. My kid really loves it. I've got 10 hectares of forest with a creek running through it. My kid is just in love with it. There's a wild boar in that forest that he's tracking. He wants to have that place for the rest of his life. So I'm very likely to put it into his name when he's 18 or something. There's another interesting aspect though about New Zealand is every now and then a rich

that's awesome.

Derek (: 04:25

friend is surprised that I spend no money on things. Cars or items in the home that impress guests. And I have to explain that here in Wellington, particularly for me, I don't have guests. If I were to get a Lamborghini, nobody would see it because I don't really drive very much. And if I had a mansion, nobody would see it because it's just me here.

And so there's nobody to impress. I've made a lovely private life for myself here where I just spend all my time with my kid and we're out in nature and all of my friends are spread around the world. And I'm really glad that I'm not living somewhere like Dubai or Manhattan where I might be tempted subconsciously to impress other people if I was being super social.

I might think I should have a nice home to have people over to or when I do have people over I should have nice things to present them to or a nice view out my window so that they can be impressed. But instead there's just nobody to impress here so with no audience you don't perform.

That's fascinating, isn't it? The whole driver in what you're saying seems to be what other people think. And you're like, I don't care about that. That doesn't matter.

There aren't any people in my life. I know some people have super social lives that are in the same place I'm in and they try to impress people, but in my life, my physical in-person life, there is no audience. It's wonderful.

Digby (: 06:03

It's interesting, right? So where I live, I've got an incredible view out over the water and it's a stunning spot. And I've been here about three years coming out of a marriage breakup and having in New Zealand, this is great term in Maori, Tūranga Waiwai, which I interpret to mean your place to stand where you can just, right? This is me and this is, it nourishes me and it's done all of those things, right? It serves me so well.

Yesterday, my partner and I found a different place that we're going to rent for well, at least a year. And it's miles from here. It doesn't have a view, but it has all these other amazing things. And it's in a very different part of Wellington. And I'm in this sort of in-between space of really wanting to do that and create a new chapter. And at the same time, loving this place.

And decided not to sell it, going to rent it out and rent this other place and see how it all goes. Right. And I'm noticing this tension between the old and the new and this sort of, do I transition? Well, and I think this question, how do I transition? Well, this relevant in so many concepts, not just moving home or physical location. How do you think about that? Because what I observe and I, you know, from a distance, Derek is.

that it seems to be quite a quick decision and you move. But I suspect that's not the case. don't know. How do you think about transition?

Well, sorry, I'm going back to the thing you were talking about 10 seconds before that last question. Cool, cool. There's a movie called Big Fish starring Ewan McGregor. It's a man at the end of his life, like kind of in his deathbed telling his story of his incredible fantastical life. And he starts in a little town in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi. And he

Derek (: 08:09

goes out on his big adventure. decides, I'm gonna go see the world. And the very first place he stumbles across, he goes through this dark forest and accidentally comes out in paradise. And suddenly at the very beginning of his journey, he's in the most beautiful town ever where everybody's wonderful and everybody's sweet and everybody's happy and dancing and they love him and he loves them and the weather's always perfect and everything's lovely. And...

Everybody's saying, come stay, we all love it here. It's the best place in the whole world. Come on, you have to stay. He's tempted at first, but after sleeping there a night or two, he said, I'm sorry, but I've got to go have my adventure. He said, I'd be the luckiest man on earth if I end up here, but I can't stop now. And I love that. So he goes back out into the world, leaves paradise to have his amazing adventure. And I think at the very end of the movie, he does end up back in that little place.

And so that's how I feel whenever I find some place really nice, like you're describing. If I love it so much, like, my God, I love this place. I just feel great here. I could live here for the rest of my life. Then I think, I gotta go have my adventure.

That is awesome. You know, it's funny because you've named what I feel. You know, when I go back to Western Australia, which is pretty frequently, a lot of people there will say, when you come back to live. And I go, I don't know if I ever will. When I moved here, which is a little after you actually about 17 years ago now, I didn't want to come here. My wife's a Kiwi and she was like.

keen to come here and come back and connect with their roots. And I love Western Australia. But then I got my head around it. I yeah. And I remember going to see a counselor just to get my head around moving so I wouldn't feel resentful. And I remember saying to her, oh, New Zealand, it's the end of the earth. It's purgatory, all this stuff. And she's like, what? How are you thinking that way? What is that about? You're talking like,

Digby (: 10:19

It's a one way alley that you'll never be able to reverse out of. And she said, you know, what about if you thought about like a chapter of the book of your life that you get to pick up the pen and you write it? And that's the go have your adventure spirit. And that changed everything for me. And I'm finding myself channeling that with this house move now. It's like, yeah, what's the next adventure? Right. Keep moving forward. it's reminds me of the idea of money. Money is something that

isn't designed just to sit stagnantly. Money is useful when it's in motion. And it's a bit like us, I think. We want to be in motion and we want to be adventuring, if that's our values. But I think there's something that I reckon about. It's the living the adventure, choosing what's next as opposed to holding on to what you have. Does that make sense?

Absolutely, yeah. My top value is learning and growing. Constantly expanding my understanding of the world, expanding my comfort zone, expanding what I consider home. Ideally, what I'm shooting for is I want every corner of the world to feel like home. Every part. I want to feel at home in Saudi Arabia. I want to feel at home in Tanzania. In each of these places, I want to have friends, I want to have

And I suspect you're the same.

Derek (: 11:43

Comfort and a feeling of, this is my place. I love it here. That's what I'm shooting for. In fact, that was the path I was on when I accidentally had a baby and his mother said, I hate moving. I refuse to move. So we're staying here. And I was furious for a couple of years. I felt supremely

cheated by the universe that the one thing I wanted which was to keep moving always was thwarted by this darling boy that is my top priority. So instead after a couple years I just decided, all right, I'm taking a short little 18-year hiatus from that plan. Once he's 16, 17, 18, doesn't need me around anymore, I'm

back on that plan for the rest of my life. I plan to just keep going until every part of the world feels like home.

It's so it's a four now, not a four ever, right?

Yeah, it changes the perspective. If you think of sitting in a sauna as forever, you'll hate it. If you think of it as for a few minutes, you'll love it. I would not want to live forever treading water in the ocean, but jumping into the ocean for a few minutes and swimming in treading water feels really nice.

Digby (: 13:11

That's awesome. Yeah. Like how do you make it for now? This is great. And for now won't last forever. That's a useful question, right?

We don't need to go there. We're not here to promote the book. You don't have to. can if you want to.

I can promote the book later on perhaps, but I wanted to shift gears actually. So I introduced you in part as a slow thinker. I would love you to explain what that means to you and why it matters.

Okay, let's keep it in the context of what we've been talking about already. Your instant reaction is a knee-jerk reaction. It is impulse, it's reaction, it's often the unconscious reaction that you've already had stored in there from earlier. It's leftover stuff from the past. But when you take just a second to think,

and it can be five seconds or five minutes. You connect with who you are now instead of just surfacing old stuff. You think of an alternate point of view instead of the first one that came to mind. And it's fun to think instead of just react. So for all these reasons, I find it better to

Derek (: 14:39

stop and think for a minute instead of having a quick reaction to everything. Which then makes me annoying to try to have a debate with if somebody's on the edge of their seat and frothing at the mouth and wanting to attack me. And they say, yeah, well, what about this? Huh? Huh? What about that? I go, hm, good point. I'll think about that. Well, yeah, what do you have to say about that? Hm, nothing. I'll think about it. Sometimes people want to fight.

They want to debate, but I'm not there to debate. I'm there to, for my own sake, to think about things, so.

to learn,

Yeah, those interesting thoughts usually come later.

You know, and just listening to the way you responded to that question, there was a lot of gaps between the words.

Derek (: 15:30

Guess what? What? I've started editing the transcripts of these live interviews.

And I've learned that it makes way more sense to collect my thoughts for a few seconds first and then speak. Instead of speaking in a bunch of ums and uhs and half finished sentences and changing chorus mid-sentence, I've learned to collect my thoughts first to make an easier transcript to edit.

Also, it's purely selfish.

Yes. Actually, it's also trying to get past the first answer for the sake of the audience. That if every time somebody asks me a question, like, tell me about yourself, or how did you get your start? If I impulsively start spewing out the same answer I always give, it ends up being inconsiderate for somebody that might have heard me speak before. It would be more considerate if I think for a second,

and think of a different angle to answer that same question with.

Digby (: 16:39

Let's just measure that. So I asked you, what does slow thinking mean to you? How do you think about that? And then you slowed down, you had lots of gaps and you seem to be really considering the answer. What out of your answer was the freshest or maybe the newest, given that that's the point to slow down and actually just not just have the rote answer.

the considerate part, the part that ultimately I'm doing this for the entertainment of the audience.

Let's just sit with that for a minute. It's beautiful. You know, I write a lot about this idea I call unhurried productivity. it's kind of like Cal Newport put that book out, slow productivity, a year or two ago. I've been thinking about it for a while before that came out. And this idea of, well, there's two words there, right? Unhurried and productivity. And I think productivity is a loaded term. This idea of the benefits of

I'm not because what i see is productivity being equated with being hurry and being busy and being rushed and that's how we produce more because we just cram more into an hour a day or a year whatever. So when i say i'm very productivity as a idea what comes up for you.

probably more effective because you're giving yourself time to ask whether this is worth doing. Whereas if you're just quickly reacting to everything, you're just doing it, let me just clear off my plate, then you're often not stopping to ask if this is worth doing at all. Whereas if you're saying unhurried by definition, you're taking time to think if this is worth doing. That's a huge one. So many people are busy doing things that they

Derek (: 18:34

Shouldn't bother doing it all. They could just say no to all of it.

So i've noticed our conversation is got more spaces in it just in this last five minutes we deliberately making a choice to slow down.

What thoughts have you got about how you do that? Anyone can do that. Make that choice to be responsive rather than reactive, I suppose. What's the practical there?

Key moment happened for me in my life when I was feeling completely overwhelmed with my company and called a friend saying that I have to do this, I have to do that, I have so many things, I'm overwhelmed. And he said, you don't have to do any of that. I said, yes, I do. I have to pay my employees. I have to ship the items that people paid for. And he said, no, you really don't.

you're choosing to do it, but you don't have to do it. He said, it's really important that you understand this distinction. You could right now just get up and walk away. And I said, no, I can't. I'm the owner of the company. He said, it doesn't matter. You can still just walk away. Right now, you could hang up the phone with me, change your phone number, go to Hawaii, go fishing, and never come back. He said, eventually,

Derek (: 20:02

courts and whatnot would work themselves out and they'd take some money out of your account to pay the people that sued you for it. And it's done. But you don't have to do any of this. You're choosing to do it. You really need to understand this. That hit me in a really profound way 17 years ago. And that's why I sold my company. I realized I was not enjoying it, that I could just walk away.

And it came up again last week when I was feeling really overwhelmed with work, even though it's all just self-created stuff. And I was calling a friend to complain about feeling overwhelmed again. my sweet friend, she's a brilliant author from Lithuania. I'm sorry, Romania, said, no, you don't have to do any of that, Derek. Why are you acting like you have to do this stuff? You could just choose not to.

I went, right. Thank you, I needed that reminder. So I think all of us can remember when you're feeling overwhelmed with whatever it is, cleaning the kitchen, doing the tasks you're paid to do. You don't have to do it. You could just say, I'm not doing this. I'm handing this to somebody else. I'm let this go undone and see who complains. Maybe nobody cares.

It's a nice reminder that no matter what it is, no matter what your job or your life situation, you don't have to do it.

There's always a choice. Reminds me of the Victor Frankl quote, you know, from Man's Search for Meaning that we've always come back to the choice that we have to respond to anything. You know, it's an interesting one that with this house move, right? My partner texted me this morning saying, so should we move in on this date? And I'm like, it's like a month away. I'm like, oh my God. And then I did exactly that. I said, well,

Digby (: 22:05

We could choose that or we could choose a different one, or maybe we could do an end rather than an or, you know, like we could have to have a whole three weeks to move in sort of thing. Right. And as soon as I remembered to respond, not react and go, what choices have we actually got? And then I remember that, it's all invented. We just make all this shit up. And I love working with leaders who, where they're like,

Yeah.

Digby (: 22:33

It's all about we have to do this and this is the way we do things and we've done it all this way all the time. Then I love to go, so how much of that's immutable versus invented? You know, and that's a lovely circuit breaker question. So what's unchangeable and will be forever be this way and what's invented.

My new book called Useful Not True, I think is perhaps too subtle.

Because to me this point was so profound, what you were saying, that boss saying this is how it has to be, Useful Not True was about pointing out that basically nothing people say is true if you define true as the only possible answer. If it's not the only possible answer, well then it's not true, it's just one way of looking at it.

So when the boss says it has to be this way and it has to be done by then and this is how we're going to do it, I think, that's not true. Not that it's necessarily false, but it's not the only answer. You have to open up your mind to other possibilities that this is not the only one. So that can be applied in every aspect of life. It helps so much even to your own thoughts. Like when you said, what? Moving to New Zealand, it's the end of the earth. It's purgatory. That's not true.

It's only one way of looking at it. Anything you can say, any belief, anything that feels like a social fact to you is just one way of looking at it.

Digby (: 24:09

That's awesome. Have you heard of the cone in the box exercise? I'll see if I can describe it in audio format, right? So if I draw a circle and I'll ask a group, what's this? I did this yesterday with a group and I say, this is a circle. And then I draw a triangle. So what's this? That's a triangle. And then I'll draw a 3d box. Cube. That's the word. Thank you. And I'll say this, this is box.

Not at all.

Derek (: 24:32

cube.

Digby (: 24:39

You can't open it. You don't know what's in it, but you want to find out what's in it. So I'm going to tell you what's in it. There's a cone resting inside the box in the middle of the box. And then I give you a little pin and you can poke a hole right in the top of the box and you look in and then you see this shape. Which shape would you see? Would you see if you're looking down on top of the cone, would you say

a circle or a triangle. And most people would say, why is there a circle? Something circular. And then I put a little hole in the side of the box, cube. So what shape would you see then? Say, well, it's something triangular. And then I'll say, well, which one's right?

And it's like, well, huh, that's the wrong question. You know, and it's a lovely way into a conversation about what you're talking about. It's not true. It's just your view. So useful, not true to me, incredibly powerful set of ideas around that. And it makes me wonder about where's an example maybe that. And maybe if you can think of one that you're bumping up against.

.

Digby (: 25:58

A truth that you might be holding because I'm imagining this is an ever learning process, right? It's like, that's another thing I thought was true, but maybe it's not. I'm wondering if there's something that you're living or experiencing now around that. here's one for me to challenge. Actually, I thought it was a triangle, but it's more nuanced than that.

any good answers right now. To me it's constant every day, even little tiny things, like there was a certain way I was programming my database functions and I've been doing it that way for 12 years and it's worked really well for me. And for the first time just a few days ago, I looked at it with fresh eyes and went, my god, I don't have to do it that way.

In this way, I've been doing it for 12 years. There's a whole chunk of unused cruft there. I was custom crafting error messages to be returned from my PostgreSQL database functions. And I'd put how many hundreds of hours into making these functions with these custom error messages. And then I went and looked at the rest of my code to see, have I ever once in 12 years used one of those error messages and realized, no, I had never used one. So, wow.

This changes everything.

So you do have a good answer.

Derek (: 27:20

Well, mean, sorry, that was just like my nerdy programming answer. I don't know if anybody else can relate to that, but I just mean that was just a little one. That was like, that was Wednesday's answer. And then Thursday's answer was something else. And Friday's answer would be something around parenting. And Saturday would be something around eating. Sunday would be something around exercise. Like I feel like almost every day I'm looking at the way I live my life and saying, well, how else could it be?

And I think that's it, right? It's the question like that. So your question about have I ever used this block of code or whatever, or how else could it be knowing to ask the question is the trick, right? Right. And I think I'm inspired that you seem to be able to do that for yourself. And you've also had your Lithuanian friend and your old boss as people. How do you switch?

Wait, wait, right before he asks question, I just thought of one more funny example. I'm really embarrassed to tell you, if you were to come over to my house right now, you would see a disgusting jungle. A year ago, I started asking myself why I'm mowing the lawn. For who? I asked my kid, do you prefer the lawn mowed or jungle? He said, I like it when it gets long and jungly. said, so do I. Then who am I mowing this for? So I stopped. And now,

My yard here is just completely overgrown, like some really sad, scary jungle that you'd expect a deranged person to be living here. I think they call it. Yeah, that's making it sound nice. But the point is realizing like those error messages, who am I doing this for? There's nobody I'm trying to impress. I don't have guests over. When I meet up with friends locally, we always go out to meet up on the beach or,

rewilding.

Derek (: 29:09

in the hills or whatever. And I don't have people over and I don't feel like mowing the lawn, so I stop.

That's a beautiful example. I think we could, yeah. Who am I doing this for? How is there another way or how could be there another way? Do I have to do this? All those sorts of questions, right? They're great circuit breaker questions to go, useful, not true. That, that idea you've mentioned those couple of people, your friend in Lithuania and your old boss, how do you bring people in? Where do people, other people play a role for you in that way? And how deliberate are you about that?

very deliberate in who I'm friends with. I have six or seven really dear friends that I talk with all the time. And they're spread around the world, but we talk by phone. And the reason they're my dear friends are because we have great conversations. We both learn something from each other. have a feeling of safety and trust so we can speak completely unfiltered.

and say all the un-PC shit without having to give disclaimers. We get each other. She can say something completely rude and I don't judge her because I get it. And we learn something from each other. Somebody stays in my inner circle by continuing to surprise me.

I'm holding my breath. well, what came up for me was a reflection I had over summer. I went back to Perth previous trip for this and I was there for a couple of weeks and I noticed there was sort of two forms of conversations I was having. There were conversations where it would feel like this beautiful blend of what you've just described as some awesome learning going on between two people.

Derek (: 30:36

I'll stop there.

Digby (: 31:04

me and the other person. I think that was formed up by there's lots of listening and there's lots of really great questions and deep inquiry questions. So tell me how you think about that. What's lighting you up at the moment? All these lovely questions. And it will feel really balanced and exploratory. And then there was another set of questions where people would pretty much ask no questions at all. And I would feel like I was just being monologued.

And the first type of conversation I walked away going, Oh, I'm more of that. I love that. And I'm nourished and I'm growing. the other type was kind of like, Hmm, why do I choose to hang out with this person? Where I'm going with that is I think I'm in a bit of an editing stage of who I want to hang out with. And it's not just friends. It feels like it's a broader, what experience of conversations do I want to have with anyone?

And I'm curious about your take on maybe there's the personal experience of how you've come to choose it's a smaller group of friends. Is it something like that? I suspect it is. But also what do you think causes a person on the other side of that conversation to not do the first version of ask questions? What's going on? And I'm really interested in that.

What do mean the first version?

So the first version is the two way learning generic growth. Let's take this somewhere together conversation. Whereas the second version is the, the model of, let me talk at you about my world.

Derek (: 32:45

lot about friendships. Because all of my friends are phone friends, except one. I have one local friend in Wellington. And then there's my boy, who's kind of my default best friend. He's the person I talk to most in the whole world. We spend 20 to 30 hours a week just talking and have since he was born, well, since he could talk. Every other friend is spread around the world and we call each other.

and have a very intentional phone call, usually about an hour long or so. And it's the only time that we're talking that week. And it's very deliberate and you can sense what a good conversation that was because it's so bounded like that. It's a one hour conversation and it feels great or it doesn't. So there are many times when a friend is going through a lot. They're overwhelmed.

They're going through a big change. They've got a lot on their mind. They're stressed out and they just need to vent. They're not feeling super curious. They're not feeling super patient. They're not feeling like a really good listener right now. They're overwhelmed. And in those moments you just have to be empathetic and patient and just understand in the bigger arc of friendship, okay, he's going through a lot right now. He needs to vent.

And it might be for a whole year that this friend of yours really needs to vent and is not a very good listener. And then you just have to ask yourself, is this a permanent situation? Have we created a permanent rut here where my friend is never more going to listen ever again? Or am I just being a really good listener for my friend who's going through a lot right now? Yeah, one of my best friends, mom just died suddenly, totally unexpected, otherwise perfect health.

They were super, super close and used to talk like four times a day. It was one of those kinds of relationships where they just ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, talk to each other all the time all the day. And then mom was out scuba diving, felt a little lightheaded, instantly dropped dead at the age of 60. So unexpected. And my friend has been absolutely devastated by this, of course. And we've been talking almost an hour a day for months now with me mostly just listening.

Derek (: 35:13

That's because she's not feeling super curious about learning new things right now. It's just processing. And I've been in the same position when I went through a breakup a couple years ago. I was a hard friend to tolerate. I just needed to vent and share and commiserate and hear a friendly voice acknowledge my side of things. It was some hard times. So...

This back and forth that is the ideal can happen if you're both in a good place, you're both open, you've got your lives pretty okay managed and you're able to ask questions and listen to the answers.

almost like a hygiene state, right? There's a lot of empathy in the way you answered that, you know, and it's really helped me think about, yeah, maybe I'm being a bit too selfish, you know, do I need in a conversation? Because sometimes giving someone an ear is the best gift and giving is a powerful way of feeling good too,

And ideally long term it gets reciprocated. There are years when you're the needy one and years when they are the needy one.

Yeah, that's awesome. And I love your time bounded hour a week. I had that with this three of us every Friday at 11 a.m. The other two were in Melbourne. One's now moved to the UK and it's a lot harder now that he's in the UK with time difference. Yeah. And I miss it because we had it for a couple of years and that's now we're doing more one on one. But the three way of us was.

Digby (: 36:55

Absolutely brilliant because we all gave each other roughly 15 to 20 minutes of time for us to be the one that was in the center of the conversation. And that word reciprocal, I think is key and having friends that can be that for you is gold. also wonder in the day to day hubbub of, you working life. I notice a lot of broadcasts as opposed to dialogue.

You know, there's like, here's my view. You need to hear this. And so that question about what is, what's going on when someone is on broadcast mode, that second version of a conversation. And I wonder about, you know, is it because they're not in good shape personally, or is it, this is just the way that we operate around here that my job is to tell you what's going on in here. How many thoughts about that?

I think everyone should journal.

okay, let's move.

There are very few things in life that I think everyone should do. Maybe this is the only one. Everyone should journal. Ideally every day. Not just when you're feeling stressed and in need of a diary to cry into. But to just write down what you did today, what's on your mind, how you're feeling.

Derek (: 38:25

It's sending messages to your future self that you can look back on to see what's ever changing, what stays constant in your life, to look back at times in your life, not through the lens of forgetting over time, but the word from the actual moment when you're in that time in your life. It's so useful for so many ways that I will try to talk about more later on my website. It's worth.

me figuring out how to express this more. But for the situation that you just described, somebody that just wants to go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, have everybody listen to them, I think that person should have done that in their journal first. That they have a need to get their thoughts out of their brain and they're using you as their journal when they should use their journal as a journal.

Get all of their thoughts out of their brain and then think about what needs to be said to others.

It links right back to the slow thinking, doesn't it? It's the slowing down your brain, processing before sharing really is what you're saying. What's your way of doing that? Do you have like a daily hour or a half hour or how does it work?

By the way, sometimes maybe because I've been looking at transcripts of interviews, I feel like saying for the record, I don't have a designated hour that my friends and I do. It just turns out to be about that way. We call each other while eating a meal or while running an errand or while driving from one place to another. And usually after about an hour or so it's like, well, gotta go. Gotta go. Back to work, back to life. Thanks for calling. And it's not some set scheduled thing. It's just...

Derek (: 40:19

when my friend has a minute, we call. Okay, so same thing with journaling. There's not a set schedule. Sometimes I wake up and journal right away because I've already got a bunch of things on my mind. I wanna get out. Sometimes it's in the middle of the day if something just happened. I just had a really profound conversation or a huge insight. my God, I'm going to turn to my diary right away.

and start trying to capture this, record it for my future self. Usually it's at the end of the day, right before bed, when I'm winding down, about to turn off the computer, I've shut off all the devices and things, I will spend 15 minutes, 30 minutes just saying what I did today. It's all for the benefit of my future self to look back at. That was the big inspiration. At the age of 42,

I wished that I would have had a daily journal I could have looked back at to know what I was doing in my 20s. I have a few memories, but was I happy? Was I elated? Was I terrified? I don't really remember. I just have a few little snippets of memories. Damn, that would be precious to have a daily diary from my adventurous 20s. And well, I wish I would have had that, but the second best...

time to plant a tree is now. So at the age of 42, I started keeping a daily journal and I never miss a day. And it has been so useful to help me look back at times in my life that were different than the current times.

How often or what's the trigger for you to look back when you go, I'm going to open this and just flick through it.

Derek (: 42:07

It's rarely just a random walk. It's usually a specific question about how was I feeling at that time in my life? When I met my ex, did we click right away? I don't remember. I think we did. And then I'll read my diary and find out that no, we didn't. It was really difficult at the beginning. It took a long time. I will look back at a time I took a trip.

Eight years ago. Was I happy on that trip? Should I take a trip like that again? That was a pretty extreme thing to do. What was I thinking at that time? it's actually better than I remembered. I think it had a bad ending. So I remembered it not so well, but actually despite that last day, the rest of the trip was brilliant. I should do that again. Endings taint stories. Yes. Stories taint stories. Yes.

Memories taint stories.

Yeah, looking back at your actual recount of the day's events is a much more trustable source than your poor tainted memory.

And it's a way of seeing a triangle versus you might be thinking about a circle. Right. And it's like, what's that perspective from 20 years ago rather than my perspective now? Right. It's the same idea.

Derek (: 43:28

use your cone in the queue metaphor. The journal is the point of view of the cone itself. It is the cone that is journaling. The no need for the pinholes to look from different directions. The cone itself has a detailed journal.

Yes, there you go.

Digby (: 43:45

is it that's awesome. It's interesting that you use it for that purpose because I did morning pages for a long time, you know, and which I found had a different purpose. In fact, I think the rules or the guidelines were never look back at what you wrote down. It's not for that purpose. It's for it was almost like a clearinghouse for your thoughts. Just get all the noise out of your head, not right nonstop for three pages and then shut the book and do it all again the next day.

I haven't done it for a little while, but I found that process really good to set me up for the day. was like mental clutter. What's in there? What's up? Let's just dial it down. And then what came through was, ah, here's what matters for me now, you know, as opposed to all of the champagne stuff, it was more like settling to the red wine and very different reason. But I think if we came back to the original point of this, which was everyone should journal so they can kind of think about what they want to share.

Both of those can be useful, both of those processes.

Yeah, I do use it 95 % just for the present, like you described with morning pages. I use it just to sort out my thoughts, to get it out of the clutter of my brain into a slightly more structured format, which helps me think of it better. There's a therapeutic benefit to having to explain your jumbled thoughts to somebody else.

I think a lot of the benefit of going to a shrink or whatever you want to call it, counselor, is that you have to explain this tangled knot of thoughts in your head. You have to get it out of your mouth to somebody else. And just doing that helps it straighten out. By the way, anybody not watching on video, I'm doing that kind of action like the magicians that pull the ribbon out of their mouth.

Derek (: 45:43

I just realized it is like that. It's like in your head, it's a tangled ball. And just trying to get the words out of your mouth turns it into a single stream that's less tangled,

That's a great metaphor. Yes.

And now when you're in group therapy, I've never done this personally, but I've heard that when you're in group therapy, like AA type things, it has the further benefit of you've only got a few minutes. You don't have a whole hour and this isn't all about you. There's 10 of us here. If you want to share something with a group, you've got a few minutes. You need to simplify your situation to explain it to the group in four minutes. the very

act of simplification helps you represent it to yourself in a simpler way, which then helps you feel better about the situation, going, really? It's just that. It's not a giant tangled thing. It's as simple as this. Now I feel better about it. So writing in the journal is a little bit like that. It takes some effort to write, to pull the tangled mess out of here into here.

and put it down, it simplifies things, it organizes them, it helps you go, right, I can do this.

Digby (: 47:01

It's a way of getting to simplicity on the other side of complexity, right? And to work through it. You know, there's a guy, Hal Gregerson, I think he's MIT and he came up with this technique called question burst, which is takes, I think it's like 15 minutes or something. And you work in a group and you have two or three minutes to explain your problem or your challenge or your thing. And that's it. I think it might even be two minutes, You have two minutes to explain it. And then.

The group might be four or five people asks only questions for four minutes and you have someone writing down all the questions and you're not allowed to answer the questions at that time. just have to listen. Four minutes questions, usually about 15 questions can come out, something like that. So there's all these questions and then you get to pick the one that might be.

most interesting to you to go down a rabbit hole on or explain or explore together. And you might spend another five minutes doing that. And then at the end of that, you go, where am I at now? And what might I do next? And that's it. And I've used this a lot in group settings. So it's not really therapy or counseling. It's more of a group problem solving process. But I reckon it's exactly what you say. It's the first two minutes that makes all the difference.

The questions can kind of give some color and maybe some possible courses of action. But it's the forcing of you to go, what am I actually trying to say? Yes.

What am I actually asking? What's the real problem? What's the real question? Yeah. Try that before thinking that you need a mentor. Before wishing that you had some genius mentor to tell you what to do. First, succinctly describe your context and your question and what's the actual problem. What is the one thing you don't know that you think somebody else knows? And just formulating that into

Derek (: 49:06

A succinct explanation of the context and the problem will probably solve the question for you.

There you go. That's awesome. What great advice.

I've even been using this with the AI LLM tools, chatgbtclaw.ai. Sometimes I go to them with a programming problem, but even to ask the question, say, I've got this database table, and I've got that database table. I need to join these two together. But just to ask the question, I don't give it the entire table with 27 fields and 13 fields here. I simplify it down to the two fields I have a question about.

And I want to give it an example. So I create a little test John Doe Main Street ABC example to ask the question of. And once I've done that, I go, I see the solution now. That's always the winning approach is to simplify the question, to define your actual question sharply usually will help you just see the answer clearly.

You don't even have to press enter.

Derek (: 50:14

Right, I ended up deleting the whole question. Never mind. Got it, thanks for your help.

Yeah. It's interesting actually, because I use Claude mostly and I find that I spend a lot of time defining my prompt because I know if it's a general broad thing, I'm just going to get wooliness back. And if I go really specific, I'll still press enter because I think maybe partly I just need some validation of what I think the answer is, but it's often, and what else? Right. And so there's a learning piece to it. Yet the work again is in defining the prompt, defining.

question to finding the request so you can get really crisp feedback that is probably more I'm finding more and more it's about validation. Oh yeah, I already knew that. Thanks. Awesome. Feels like we're coming into final approach. Coming into land here. So my last question is what have you learned?

through this conversation or been reminded of maybe something that's become clearer as a result of us hanging out together for a bit.

I love our exploratory conversations. You and I have met up twice in person, and now this conversation. And all three times, we have a little random chit chat at the start, and then we get into the good shit. I have such good memories of sitting with you at the Te Papa Museum in central Wellington.

Digby (: 51:35

person.

Derek (: 51:57

talking about breakups and relationships and such good shit that I don't usually talk about with people. That was so fun to get into. And so today I had a lot of fun getting into these subjects of slower thinking and pointed questions and the cone in the cube.

Let's do it again. I've been really, I mean, so long between drinks metaphorically, right? And it feels like it's been this, I don't know, all of this been waiting to come out in our conversations. I love to do it more often and I've treasured this. It's such a rich exploration and talk about, you know, conversations that might be one way it's felt like it's been an awesome learning conversation and a reminder that it's good to go deep. It's good to slow down.

And so thank you for making the start of my day really rich. And I hope for anyone listening, just, it feels like a, your glass of red wine.

You and that red wine!

Yeah. I'm actually not a big red wine drinker, but I am. So how can people get a hold of you,

Derek (: 53:06

in this conversation you are

Derek (: 53:11

just go to my website. As you can tell, I do not do social media. Everybody should go to my website, S-I-V-E dot R-S, and you should email me, because that is my connection to the world. Beautiful. I really like hearing from people, so.

I Sterik's been awesome. See you soon.

Thanks, Dave.

Digby (: 56:38

reflecting on this conversation with Derek before I.

press record for this part, I wrote down a bunch of thoughts and I practiced that idea of slowing down and doing some processing. I think that's my big takeaway, this idea of developing the habit of going, what do I want to say or what do I want to ask and getting that clarity before speaking or sharing. And I think something like that for me at least as a more of an extroverted preference where I tend to think as I talk will be really, really useful. And I think if you're an introverted

preference type person, you'll know the value of this. I'm wondering what our conversation has got you thinking, what piqued your interest, what questions came up. Perhaps you could practice that idea of just writing that down and processing and then perhaps sharing it with someone else. There's a couple other episodes that I reckon you might find really helpful if you like this one. Episode six with James Miller on creating space and episode eight with Suzanne Rosa on

challenging the rules that we live by and perhaps questioning our perspectives. They're both really rich episodes that get into that. If you like this and you want to stay connected around it, please follow or subscribe in your podcast app. And if you like some of the ideas I was sharing, then you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter, is digbescott.com forward slash subscribe.

I try to make it thought provoking and practical. Just ideas around leading people well, making change happen and living life deliberately. Until next time, this is Dig Deeper, I'm Digby Scott. Go well.

Digby (: 58:25

you