How to Live by Derek Sivers
I want to avoid competition. I don’t ever want to be a contender in the crowd, fighting for scraps. It doesn’t pay to do something anyone can do.
I want to keep a strict daily schedule for creating art. I don’t want to sit around waiting for inspiration.
I want to be fully committed to getting rich, or it won’t happen. I want to adjust my self-image so that I congruently feel I should and will be rich, because if I subconsciously feel I don’t deserve it, I’ll sabotage my own pursuit.
I don’t want to be a fragile being, who avoids mistakes and stays deeply ensconced in one’s shell. I want to make a million mistakes and develop a rugged exterior.
I want to improve my quality of life. I understand that the quality of my community, my neighbourhood and my country influence them. I understand that one can’t be healthy in a sick society.
I want to handhold enthusiasts who sincerely wish to complete their first draft. I understand how hard it can be, and I want to offer support without any judgement. I will tell them what I wish I told myself: You can improve something bad. You can’t improve a blank page.
I want money until it buys me freedom. Freedom means doing what I want, when I want, with whoever I want. The day these conditions are satisfied, I will relinquish my desire to make money.
I want to share the process and residue of my work. I realise now that people really want to see how the sausage gets made, so I’m willing to become a documentarian of what I do.
I want to see the world. I know I can do it as an influencer, but being a salesman is better. I choose sales because it will always be valuable. And I’ll get to talk to strangers on the road.
I want to shun luxury. Luxury is the enemy of happiness because you adapt to its comforts. I like first principles thinking, or jugaad as we call it back home. To me, that’s the pinnacle of human ingenuity.
I want to spend a lion’s share of my work hours in flowstates. I’ll either write, edit, shoot or record things into existence. I know I’ll look back on it at the end of my life as the times I was happiest with my life.
Whenever I think something nice about someone, I want to tell them. Compliments only bloom when shared.
I want to be a perpetual traveler, living out of a suitcase. I want to travel slowly, spending only enough time to clone the rhythm of a local. I want to live like a frog sitting on a lily-pad. I’ll stay until I feel like jumping again.
I want to buy more pre-used stuff. The amount of waste I generate bogs me down. I want to unburden myself.
A famous pioneer does more for human progress than a billion others who live a normal life. I want to cross paths with famous pioneers and thank them for their contributions to mankind.
All misery comes from dependency. I don’t want to depend on income, people or technology. I want to break all dependencies.
I want to always remember that the best things in life -- friendship, nature, family, learning and community -- are not things.
I want to commit to the path of lifelong writing. I want to hone my craft and reputation as a writer. I want to cut off all other options and focus on writing alone. I will stay on this path even if it takes a lifetime. I want to remember that it’s not failure until I give up.
I want to spend time in a society that values what I value. I value time, civic responsibility and personal freedom.
I want to own a small business with many small customers to avoid depending on any big client. I want to offer products, not a personal service, so my business can run without me. I want to create many sources of income like this.
I want to remember always that this world belongs to our children, not us. I want to give more than I take. When I’m gone, it must be as if I wasn’t here at all.
I want to remember that nobody cares what I’m bad at. I want to make things without the fear of others’ judgement.
I want to empower my trauma by re-writing experiences into fictional stories. I delight in this act, and I want to keep doing it as long as I can.
I want to be competent, not successful. Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. It can only be earned through hard work.
Every year, I want to be a better husband, father and a son.
I want to plan my death. I want my loved ones to know where everything is. I don’t want anyone to be inconvenienced by my passing.
I want to internalise the idea that you don’t get extreme results without extreme actions. I don’t want to do what most people do because I don’t want to get what most people get. At all times, I want to be iconoclastic.
I want to blame no one. If something bad happens, I am at fault. If something good happens, it is luck. That way, everything that happens to me is in my control. Fate and I are my only masters.
I want to go on a 5 km walk on the last day of my life.
I want nothing. Because then nothing will disappoint me. I want nothing, and nothing will be outside my control. I want nothing, and fate can’t hurt me.
Note: Ideas here have been reproduced near verbatim from Derek Sivers’ incredible book, How To Live. It’s so dense with wisdom that I will need a whole lifetime to glean all possible value from it.
Note Note: This is not a book summary. This is a collection of my favourite ideas from the book.