Hell Yeah or No by Derek Sivers
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Sivers writes succinct lessons he took on throughout his travels. Reads like lite Meditations, with philosophy of Alan Watts and a few key self-help books of the last three decades. Most of the writing resonates with me, as I concluded similarly on what my core believes of the world are. Few surprises because of it, much of validation thanks to it.
Your actions show you what you actually want. ... How you do anything is how you do everything. It all matters. - I've been saying and living by that for years. Ignore what others say, pay attention to what they do. Include yourself in this criticism. Same goes for understanding
Keep earning your title. ... Old opinions shouldn't define who we are in the future. ... Unlearning - Combination of thoughts around continued growth and validation of who you are today. The idea of unlearning (subtracting) rather than learning more, is a nice new framing I'll use going forward.
There's you and then there's public you. - The separation of your public self as a whole different persona as a way to deal with the criticism and stress sounds helpful.
There's present-focused and future-focused people, just like there's introverted and extroverted people. This all lives on a spectrum. - I've added the spectrum bit, but like with everything about people I assume it is. Present-focused people look for pleasure, play, and easily lose track of time. They come from uncertain backgrounds. Future-focused people delay gratification, love their work, and tend to live in their minds. They come from cold climates where winter requires you to prepare ahead. You are inclined to be one, but throughout the day can flip between. I like this little rubric developed to get a quick grasp of on people.
If you're not feeling hell yeah, that would be awesome about something, say no. - The base of the book, which I've lived by a while. I've never had a hard time saying no and agree that people need to be more protective of their energy.
Personal change needs some space to happen. - Connected to protecting your time and energy with "no" is the thought that you cannot achive everything you set out to do at the same time. Take it one thing at a time, even if each thing takes 10 years. Sivers mentions learning to sign for 15 years, while touring, being professional musician and everything telling him to stop.
There's no speed limit. The system is designed so anyone can keep up. If you are more driven you can do way more than others. - This is a lesson I took from my dad around the age of 20. He kept pushing and saying there's always more strength in you. Essentially the same concept, just more blindly brutish. The schooling and society is build around respect to those who need it and it is all too easy to lose yourself in the back seat just because that's what everyone else is doing. You can go in the front if you have the guts for it.
Disconnect to be more successful. - This is overly generic without a context. Connected with the other thought that execution from learning yearns results it makes a bit more sense. Creators who immerse themselves only in knowing without doing will end up like the
Do the dull work when you are unmotivated. - Common sense to me, as I understood when I'm effective with my time. Leave boring work for later, when you don't feel like doing the exciting stuff. Burn the fire on making new, not on maintaining the old.
Don't be a donkey that died of hunger and thirst because it couldn't decide whether to go to the hey or the water. - Pinging between different avenues has always been my painpoint. I like the little cautionary tale. Sivers says to think in future "people overestimate a year ahead, underestimate ten years ahead."
Admit you are average / wrong ... Don't think others are stupid. - To grow you have to see yourself as not perfect.
Everybody's ideas are obvious to them. Even to a genius. - I had this realization recently the more I shared of my own deeper philosophies I saw people's eye pop out as if it was a revelation, for me it was just a regular common sense. It's very motivating and one of the reasons that made me started writing down my thoughts publicly.
Do something for love and something for money. Don't try to make one thing satisfy both. - Nice and clear lesson coming in from many creators. Stability brings piece of mind, peace of mind brings space for creativity. Struggles can be found elsewhere than looking for a place to sleep.
Learn the lesson not the example. - I feel that this one comes from my high-school teachers, who were good about making us think the "why" about the subject matter, rather than remembering the facts. Well that and my inability to remember a verbatim of anything.
Nothing has inherent meaning. We choose to project meaning. - Very Alan Watt's understanding of the world. Easy to remember example of the Chinese character based language saying "language" as "five" + "talking" + "mouths".
Judge a goal by how much it changes your actions in the moment. - Basically if you can't sleep because of your goal, that's good, otherwise it might not be as important to you. In vaccuum I agree, but contextualy changes especially when considering work-life balance, whether you are getting paid or whether it's your own life goal.