cover image for Hell Yeah or No

Hell Yeah or No

Derek Sivers

10/10
Fantastic, short and thoughtful, and raises tons of intereting questions about life. Particularly relevant to me at the time of reading was the concept of keeping your work and art seperate, creating a business only after people beg you to sell something you created for personal use mainly
  • Our actions reveal our values, stop lying to yourself and admit your real priorities or start doing what you say you want to do and see if its really true
  • ****Whatever you decide is important (money, performing, freedom, learning, fame), you need to decide and optimize for that and will end up letting go of other things
  • ****When you copy or imiate your copy will be different in ways your style or imperfections or value or tastes exemplify, as a result it will become unique and a whole peice of art unto itself and this is a great and very valid way to create (find something you kinda like and adapt it to your very specific preferences and interpretation)
  • Be flexible about your self image, you can change your preferences over time
  • Public comments are just feedback about something you made, (they are not a personal attack on everything you are, those people don't actually know you deeply at all)
  • You need a balance of present and future focus. Present to enjoy life and not be disconnected, future to achieve deeper happiness and act disiplined
  • ****Say no to almost everything to make space in your life for things that actually matter. Say yes only to the things that make you say Hell Yeah
  • Do some things for yourself, play
  • People say your first reaction is most honest, I think your first reaction is outdated
  • A simple tweak can give you better motivation when your failing (don't only ignore the toxic comments but make them impossible to see)
  • ****New habits mean quitting old ones you cannot create more space in your day by sheer effort alone
  • Before you start, think about how it could end
  • Getting out of a bad state, meditate and be in your body in the moment (not so bad right?), say no to anything less than great, focus on your goal (creating learning, improving etc, the 10 year plan kinda stuff), Do all the necessary stuff
  • There is no speed limit, the standard pace is for chumps, if you want to go fast and you're driven go fast
  • ****Sometimes the hyper stressed pace and the nice relaxing pace get you there almost just as fast
  • Disconnect from tech for success
  • The thing that gets us to the result and the dream vision of what it looked like to get there don't need to be the same, and isn't an excuse not to do so (if you want to learn german you don't need to go to germany even if thats how you initially envisioned it)
  • Compare down not up (bronze metalist mentality, just happy to be on the podium and happy I edge out fourth rather than silver who wishes they edged out gold)
  • If you love something it tends to seem simple, if you don't it seems like lots of tedius steps. Useful in finding out your true emotions about something
  • Try changing your list of preconditions to do something from x and x and x to x or x or x
  • When people say they only have 2 options they're stuff and there are always more than 2 options
  • It is powerful to assume everything is your own fault and in your contorll by extension
  • ****What seems obvious to you can seem extrodinary to someone else and vice versa, don't hold back publishing things becasue you think they're obvious
  • Life sized decisions should be happy, smart (long term good for you) and useful to others (which is fulfilling). 2 of 3 isn't good enough and leads to problems
  • ****Seperate work and art because we need both in life but mixing them. (full time artists end up doing a lot of business operations and most end up poor). For work pursue money, for art persue expression. Don't make your job your whole life don't make your art your sole income
  • Wath do you hate not doing
  • Learning without doing is wasted
  • ****Don't start a business until people are asking you to based on your work, prove real demand
  • Write to record your ideas and preserve them for others
  • Don't jump to conclusions, don't assume other people are stupid
  • Value peoples work for what it can give to you, not who they are,
  • Nothing had inherent meaning, we just choose to project meaning onto things
  • No one has that much natural skill, its all practice
  • Judge a goal by how well it chagnes our actions in the present moment, a great goal make you take action immediately, find a variant that excited you
  • Day draming of possible futures is fun, make sure you now them as possible futures
  • Finding something that excited or scares you is how you find your passion
  • Do what scares you and it won't scare ou anymore
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