Derek Sivers
23 statements across 2 episodes · 8 bullish · 3 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Jul 21, 2020 by Derek Sivers · said 4 times in 3 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Derek Sivers's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Seth Godin (2), Shane Parrish (1), James Clear (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 2 mentions in 1 episode
2017 1 mention in 1 episode
Everything said about Derek Sivers, oldest first
Jul 21, 2020 negative
Sivers would immediately give away $100M because wealth distracts from learning
“Like if you were to give me a hundred million dollars, I just give it right away because I just won't use it for anything. I just don't want it. All the things that I love the most in life, just learning, thinking, and creating, it doesn't take any money. And …”
Jul 21, 2020
Jul 21, 2020
Jul 21, 2020
Delegating increases a founder's workload before creating long-term operational leverage
“You have to have the longterm perspective. You have to know that's like, all right, this is going to be harder. Yeah, it's going to be harder at first for the long-term gain, right? Like, if you realize that you're at this breaking point, your time is already …”
Jul 21, 2020 neutral
Jul 21, 2020
Jul 21, 2020 positive
Sivers distills core ideas from books into concise eight-word statements
“I underline every surprising or interesting idea that I want to think more about later. And so then when I'm done, I take all of those underlying ideas and I put them into a text file. I usually just kind of put them into my own words. I remove They're unneces…”
Jul 21, 2020 neutral
Sivers hired and trained his replacement before quitting Warner Chappell
“So I found someone to replace me. It was an old friend that I knew would be perfect for the job. I knew that she would do it really well. She had the right temperament. She was in the right stage of her life. I knew that she'd be psyched about it, and Really g…”
Jul 21, 2020
Reading and remote conversations teach culture better than physical travel
“Wouldn't I have learned more about Turkey by reading three books about Turkey, maybe watching the top five most popular movies in Turkey, and maybe scheduling phone conversations with 20 people from Turkey? You know, that's the same number of hours invested, b…”
Jul 21, 2020 negative
Jul 21, 2020
The 'Hell Yeah or No' rule doesn't apply when starving for opportunity
“There are other times in your career when really the most strategic thing to do is to say yes to everything because it can be like lottery tickets, you know, like if you got nothing going on and somebody's offering you an infinite amount of lottery tickets for…”
Jul 21, 2020
Musician Amber Rubarth originally coined the 'Hell Yeah or No' framework
“Amber Rhubarth is actually the one that said, so basically you're not trying to decide between yes and no, you're deciding between fuck yeah and no. I just laughed and I loved it and I, So I blogged about it the next day. I changed the word to hell to soften i…”
Jul 21, 2020 positive
Jul 21, 2020 negative
Sivers left San Francisco because he hated everyone thinking like him
“I actually, I tried living in San Francisco for a little while. I had to leave after a few months. I hated it because everybody thinks like me. And so I'm happier living in a place like Singapore, where most people don't think like me.”
Jul 21, 2020
Business value is idea quality multiplied by execution quality
“What I wrote is that I think of ideas as a multiplier of execution, right? So let's pretend that we have two columns of numbers here. So an awful idea, let's say that's a negative one, but a weak idea is a one. An okay idea is a 10, and a great idea is a 20, o…”
Jul 21, 2020
Jul 21, 2020 positive
Have no loyalty to locations, corporations, or past public statements
“Choose opportunity, not loyalty. Have no loyalty to location, corporation, or your past public statements. Be an absolute opportunist, doing whatever's best for the future in the current situation, unbound by the past. Have loyalty for only your most important…”
Jul 21, 2020 positive
Jul 21, 2020 positive
The most succinct way to convey an idea is commanding the action
“The most succinct way to communicate an idea is to focus on the action itself. Like, if you command the action, then the action, like a seed, I think there's like a nature metaphor in here somewhere, that the action has the seed of the idea in it, that the act…”
Jul 21, 2020
Sivers obsessively focuses on one pursuit at a time for months
“I just don't find myself to be that kind of person that can do one thing for an hour and something else for two hours, and then this for an hour, and this for 30 minutes, that I just, I throw myself Completely into whatever I'm doing, almost to a fault. I love…”
Jul 21, 2020 positive
Inventing from first principles beats blindly imitating complex industry standards
“Like people imitate others without questioning it enough, but I don't want to learn their ways. I don't want to be like them. So instead I just ignore it all and ask myself, What's the real point? Meaning, like, what am I really trying to do here? What's the r…”
Jul 4, 2023 positive
Sivers: Commanding specific actions is the most succinct way to communicate ideas
“Probably the most succinct way to communicate an idea is to focus on the action itself. Like, if you command the action, then the action, like a seed, I think there's like a nature metaphor in here somewhere, that the action has the seed of the idea in it, tha…”