39 Lessons to a Hell Yeah Or No.
What’s worth doing.
This book by Derek Sivers grounds me every time. I check it out often because it helps me gain courage, patience, and perspective in the best and worst times. “Saying No” has never been so important. Here are my favourite 39 notes from the book, which I hope you enjoy and use, too!
Updating Identity
No matter what you say, your actions reveal the truth. The secret? (1) Stop lying to yourself and admit your real priorities (2) Start doing what you say you want to do, and see if it’s really true. Success comes from doing, not from declaring.
Social norms are powerful. A great talk, book, or video can instantly change how you think. Whatever you do, you need to optimise for that goal, and be willing to let go of the others. Whatever you do, brace yourself, because people will always tell you you’re wrong.
Go against the stereotype. Yes, some will always say you’re wrong. If you are not into money, many people will say you’re foolish. If you’re not into charity, many people will say you’re greedy. If you are not into crowds, many people will say you’re missing out. But when you go against the stereotype, people get confused: The entrepreneur who’s not into money, the musician who avoids crowds, the ambitious conservationist, the artist who is into discipline.
Imitate. We are imperfect mirrors. You can imitate and still be offering something valuable and unique. You plus something equals something new.
Old opinions shouldn’t define us. We shouldn’t preserve our first opinions as if they reflect our pure, untarnished true nature. They’re often the result of inexperience or a temporary phase.
Public comments are just feedback on something you made. Never forget that the public you is not you.
How you do anything is how you do everything. It all matters.
Are you present-focused or future-focused? Both mindsets are necessary; you need present focus to enjoy life. But too much present focus can prevent the more profound happiness of achievement (shallow happy vs deep happy).
Small actions change your self-identity. When you take one step, you start to think of yourself as brave, an achiever, or a bit of an expert on a subject.
Saying No
Saying no makes your yes more powerful. Refuse almost everything, do almost nothing. But the things you do, do them all the way.
Art is useless by definition; no wonder we value it so much. The same happens with you. When you stop obsessing over being useful, you gain more me-time. It’s such a luxury not to think about you, out there, and how you might value me.
Your first reaction is usually outdated. When someone asks you a deep question, say “I don’t know.” Come with an answer the next day. Don’t try to win a debate. If someone asks you a question, you don’t need to answer.
When you notice that something is affecting your drive, find a way to adjust your environment, even if that’s a little inconvenient to others. A simple tweak can make all the difference between achieving something or not.
For personal change to happen, you need to quit something else in your life. Otherwise, how are you going to add it?
Before you start something, ask, “How will this game end?” Sometimes the smart choice is to say no to the whole game.
Making Things Happen
The best way to be successful? Disconnect, even if just for a few hours. Unplug. Turn off your phone and WiFi. Focus. Write. Practice. Create. That’s what is rare and valuable these days. You get no competitive edge from consuming the same stuff everyone else is consuming. It’s rare, now, to focus. And it gives such better rewards.
Do you need to go to the top of a mountain to find silence, or rather just find it by being alone now, away from everyone? Do you need to go to Southeast Asia to find spirituality, or can you meditate and study it with a local mentor? Separate the real goal from the old mental associations. We have old dreams and images we want to recreate. They’re hard to untangle from the result we want. Otherwise, they become excuses and reasons to procrastinate.
Comparing down instead of comparing up. Think like a bronze medalist, not a silver. Most of the time, you need to be more grateful for what you’ve got, how much worse it could have been, and how nice it is to have anything. Gratitude versus ambition.
Even if you say you want to do something, if you catch yourself thinking of it in many tedious steps, maybe you don’t really want to do it. Why would you? It sounds awful.
There are always more than two options. Great insight comes only from opening one's mind to many options.
Beware of advice. When successful people give advice, it’s better to hear it like this: “Here are the lottery numbers I played: 14 29 71 33 8. They worked for me!” Success is based on so many factors. Some are lucky. Some not. It’s hard to know which is which. So, which do you learn from? Listen to advice as an echo to get the whole picture instead. Ultimately, only you know what to do.
Switch strategies: Early in your career, the best strategy is to say yes to everything. Then, when something is extra rewarding, focus all your energy on this one thing. If it hits a dead end, switch strategies again. Eventually, your focus on something will pay off.
Focus on one thing at a time, knowing you can do the other stuff afterwards. Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.
Changing Perspective
Assume you are below average. Listen more. Ask a lot of questions. Stop thinking others are stupid. Assume more people are smarter than you. To assume you’re below average is to admit you’re still learning.
Get obsessed with being wrong, because that’s the only time you learn. Get crazy in love with being lost, even though it fuels fears, because that’s when you can go somewhere unexpected. Be passionate about little lessons that surprise your expectations and change your mind. If you are not surprised, you are not learning.
Amazingly rare things happen to people every day. Don’t underestimate the odds of impossible things. Get out there and try your luck.
Don’t overestimate your current reality. Instead of cursing your strike of bad luck, or sitting back in your fairy tale fortunes, live in the “we’ll see” reality. Never settle on your current results and always play forward.
What’s Worth Doing
Everybody’s ideas seem obvious to them, yet they are amazing to others. Are you holding back something that seems too obvious to share? We are already bad judges of our own creations. We should just put them out there and let the world decide.
Live a life that intersects between being happy, smart and useful. Why? If you are only smart and useful, you will likely live in the praising reality of your parents or circle, “what you want doesn’t matter. This is what’s best for you and your family.” But happiness is the oil. On the other hand, if you are a happy and smart person, you might live in the addictive reality of self-help: always learning, always improving, and obsessively focused on how to be happy and create the perfect life, but ultimately, you need other people to be lifted. Then there is the happy and useful person, the charity person, who’s doing a job that a local can do for one-tenth of his price. They have great intentions but lame strategies, wasted effort and unused potential. And last but not least, is the just-be-happy person, maybe a great perspective? Yes, but just for the present-focused, living full of regrets if he doesn’t think about anything but today, and doesn’t prepare for the tough times.
You don’t need confidence; you just need to contribute. If you can do something that people find useful, then you should. It doesn’t matter if it’s a masterpiece or not, as long as you enjoy it.
Fixing Faulty Things
“What got you here won’t get you there.” The solution is deliberate unlearning (1) Doubt what you know (2) Stop the habit of thinking “I know it” (3) Require current proof that it’s still true today. Otherwise, let it go. You don’t get wise just by adding; you must also subtract. Many people learn only in the first third of life, so schools don’t teach unlearning.
Most of us have too much baggage, too many commitments, and too many priorities. It’s easy to think you need something else. It’s hard to look at what to remove. Most people die from eating too much rather than from eating too little.
Reading a book is about you and what you get out of it, no matter the source. It doesn’t matter if the person who gave you the idea doesn’t pay taxes or if you find that the person is an alcoholic. Apply the knowledge in your way.
You are the way you are because of what you have experienced. If you had grown up on the other side of the world, you would have a different set of values and thought patterns. But if you keep experiencing the same things, your mind keeps the same patterns. You really learn when you’re surprised. Eventually, you’ll realise that your beliefs were not correct; they were just the local culture where you grew up. Move to other places: Every country has a shared and working philosophy. Dive in and really understand it.
Nothing has an inherent meaning. We just choose to project meaning onto things. You can just easily take all the meaning, all of it.
Saying Yes
It’s dangerous to think in terms of “passion” and “purpose” because they sound like such huge, overwhelming things. Instead, just notice what excites you and what scares you on a small moment-to-moment level.
A bad goal makes you say, “I want to do that someday.” A great goal makes you take action immediately. The purpose of goals is not to improve the future. But rather, how well it changes your actions in the present moment.
Whatever scares you, do it. Once you do something that scares you, you’re not scared of it anymore.
It’s overwhelming to feel so in awe of the people who seem to do this naturally. Search and be guided by them; nothing is truly inspiring unless you apply it to your work.