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Episode 1605:
Derek Sivers challenges the notion that relentless self-improvement is always beneficial, arguing that constant growth can become an addiction rather than a means to happiness. He contrasts this with the importance of being present, embracing who you are now instead of endlessly chasing who you could be. By shifting focus from perpetual self-betterment to deep self-acceptance, he suggests a path to genuine fulfillment.
Read along with the original article(s) here: https://sive.rs/ayw7 & https://sive.rs/dbt
Quotes to ponder:
"Self-improvement is a slippery slope. It starts as a way to get better, but it can become an endless treadmill of never feeling good enough."
"Instead of always trying to be better, try being. Not becoming. Just being."
"If you stop improving, who are you? If you stop trying to be someone else, what’s left?"
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[00:00:00] This is Optimal Work Daily. Make It Anything You Want by Derek Sivers of Sivers. That's S-I-V-E dot R-S. After your business has been up and running for a while, you'll hit an interesting crossroads. Everyone assumes that as the owner of the company, you'll be the traditional CEO, having high-powered lunches with other high-powered CEOs and doing all the big business deals.
[00:00:22] But what if you don't like doing that? What if what you love the most is the solitude of the craft or talking to customers? Never forget that you can make your role anything you want it to be. Anything you hate to do, someone else loves. So find that person and let him do it. For me, I loved sitting alone and programming, writing, planning and inventing, thinking of ideas and making them happen. This makes me happy, not business deals or management. So I found someone who liked doing business deals and put him in charge of all that.
[00:00:52] If you do this, you'll encounter a lot of pushback and misunderstanding, but who cares? You can't just live someone else's expectation of a traditional business. You have to just do whatever you love the most, or you'll lose interest in the whole thing. On a similar note, people also assume that you want to be big, big, big, as big as can be. But do you really? Huge growth means lots of meetings, investors, bankers, media, and answering to others. It's quite far from the real core of the business.
[00:01:21] Happiness is the real reason you're doing anything, right? Even if you say it's for the money, the money is just a means to happiness, right? But what if it's proven that after a certain point, money doesn't create any happiness at all, but only headaches? You may be much happier as a million-dollar business than a billion-dollar business. Funny thing is, I didn't want CD Baby to grow at all. Even from the start, I didn't want this website hobby to take away from my career as a musician, but it did.
[00:01:47] I didn't want it to have more than a couple employees or outgrow my house, but it did. When I had 20 employees, I vowed to keep it that small, but customer demand kept growing, and I had to keep the customers happy. When I had 50 employees, I swore that was enough, and we needed to curb this growth. But the business kept growing. When people would ask, what are you doing to grow your company? I'd say, nothing, I'm trying to get it to stop growing. I don't like this, it's too big.
[00:02:12] They thought that was the weirdest thing. Doesn't every business want to be as big as possible? No. Make sure you know what makes you happy, and don't forget it. Why You Need a Database by Derek Sivers of Sivers. That's S-I-V-E dot R-S A database is just an organized collection of information. You could have a database of your music or your books,
[00:02:38] but I'm going to talk about a database of all the people you know. Your email app is a kind of database. It has an address book of everyone you've emailed and a history of your emails with each person, so you've already done half of what I'm going to describe here. But I'm going to recommend you go further than that, and also keep track of your private notes about people, like served in the army, loves talking politics, tags to help you find people, drummer, programmer, agent, physical location, London, England,
[00:03:07] and when you should contact this person next, three weeks from today. Once you have this information, you can easily find every agent you know in London and email them about a gig. Because the other best feature of a database is that it can personalize your communication. Instead of blasting out a message like, hey everyone, how are you? Your database will send out personalized emails like, hey James, how are you? Hey Sarah, how are you? Not only does it get their attention better, but it's just more polite. It will keep a history of your communication with
[00:03:35] everyone. This helps when you hear from someone for the first time in years. It can remind you who they are and show you the last time you spoke. It also helps you do things like find just the people you haven't heard from in over a year. You can set calendar reminders so it can remind you to follow up with someone later. As for which database to use, I have three recommendations. 1. Close. Go to close.com. That's C-L-O-Z-E dot com. Link it with your existing inboxes and social
[00:04:03] media accounts and it'll pull in the information of everyone you've got in there already. It's brilliant and full of features. 2. Monica. Go to MonicaHQ.com. It's the most personal and people-focused, encouraging you to keep track of everything you know about everyone. It's also open source and free to install on your own server. 3. I ended up programming my own database software, which I plan to share for free someday. Maybe by the time you read this, it'll be ready. Just email me to ask.
[00:04:32] Using a database is one of the most powerful things you can do for your career. Please don't put it off. It's not as complicated as it sounds. And the sooner you begin, the better. You just listened to the posts titled Make it Anything You Want and Why You Need a Database. Both by Derek Sivers of Sivers. That's S-I-V-E dot R-S.
[00:05:26] ServiceNow unterstützt Ihre Business Transformation mit der KI-Plattform. Alle reden über KI, aber die KI ist nur so leistungsfähig wie die Plattform, auf der sie aufbaut. Lassen Sie die KI arbeiten, für alle. Beseitigen Sie Reibung und Frustration Ihrer Mitarbeiter und nutzen Sie das volle Potenzial Ihrer Entwickler. Mit intelligenten Tools für Ihren Service, um Kunden zu begeistern. All das auf einer einzigen Plattform. Deshalb funktioniert die Welt mit ServiceNow. Mehr auf ServiceNow.de
[00:05:56] Okay, thanks to Derek for the post today. And I'm going to keep this ending nice and short for you. Thank you for being a subscriber and for being here with me each and every day. We could not do this without you. So have a great rest of your day and I'll see you back here tomorrow, where your optimal life awaits.