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I write to see what I can write. I code to see what I can code.
Derek Sivers
everything from my site: articles, tweets, book notes, interviews, etc.
Latest posts
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17 conversations in Jakarta, Indonesia: https://sive.rs/met/at-14
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16 conversations in super-multicultural Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur: https://sive.rs/met/at-13
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India tech friends: I just bought my ticket to IndiaFOSS in BLR Sept 26-27: https://fossunited.org/indiafoss/2026 Want to meet? Email me: https://sive.rs/contact
Writing for Emotional Impact - by Karl Iglesias
About the craft of writing a great film screenplay. A bit tedious (with sloppy repetitive writing) but I always love these books for making me see the craft behind movies I know well, and pointing out how to use this craft to make better stories in any medium.
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Fight Club: I liked it the first time years ago, but watching a second time when you already know the end reveal? Elevates it from good to great. So many brilliant details in the screenplay. What else in life is better the second time?
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Prepare your “no” and keep it handy: https://sive.rs/n0
Prepare your “no” and keep it handy
Someone asks you to do something, and you feel that pressure to answer immediately.
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My life was changed by four sentences in four books : https://sive.rs/4s4b
My life was changed by four sentences in four books
Last week someone asked why I prefer books.
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Geography is four-dimensional: https://sive.rs/4d
Geography is four-dimensional
Forty years ago, a family moved from India to Canada, and raised their children with “Indian values”.
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1993 communal internet shaped me: https://sive.rs/netizen
Cambridge Language Surveys: Chinese - by Jerry Norman
80’s book about Chinese, helped me understand how simplified Chinese writing came about: not as much top-down as bottom-up formalizing of shorthand and cursive that had been in use for centuries.
Netizen
I can relate to the original meaning of this old term that means to be good citizen of the internet.
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I’m not autistic, but my heroes are.
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Since we moved from city to rural land, to a house where the bathroom and kitchen are outside, my boy observed: “This year there are way more full moons.”
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My favorite LLM prompt: “List the top cities in {COUNTRY}, and anthropomorphize each one, listing the good-natured stereotypes and jokes that other people in {COUNTRY} say about people in this city.”
You Can Just Do Things - by Cate Hall and Sasha Chapin
How to be agentic - to take charge and make things happen, no matter how unusual or uncomfortable it may be. Make your world the way you ideally want it to be, instead of normal. Cate Hall embodies this, so it’s great to hear it from someone really living it instead of just writing about it.
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Good book on cultural psychology: Tribal. Great insights and examples of how change happens on the personal, cultural, and institutional level. My notes at https://sive.rs/book/Tribal
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Fascinating book: Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness - https://sive.rs/book/Conscious19 - uses one true story, 19 times, of the laughing brain patient - https://sive.rs/u12 - in the format of Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei - https://sive.rs/book/WangWei - to explore the subject.
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Great book: Elephant in the Brain: https://sive.rs/book/BrainMotives You have hidden motives and subconscious incentives. Two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason. Instititutions do this too: wasteful because they’re serving hidden purposes no one acknowledges. Great insights throughout.
Travelling While Black - by Nanjala Nyabola
Thoughts on human rights, race, gender, travel, inequality, tribe, home, visas, poverty, Kenya, Africa, and Bessie Head.
Tribal - by Michael Morris
I love cultural psychology. Great insights here, and examples of how change happens, on the personal level, cultural level, and even institutional level. American, but lived in Hong Kong for years and I appreciated his example of Singapore.
Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness - by Patrick House
Using the story of Anna - the patient who laughed when the surgeon stimulated parts of her brain - the author looks at the subject of consciousness from 19 different angles, writing in slightly different styles. He used the format of another book I have notes on here, titled “Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei”. Some beautiful poetic writing here.
Elephant in the Brain - by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson
You have hidden motives and subconscious incentives. Two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason. Instititutions do this too: wasteful because they’re serving hidden purposes no one acknowledges. Great insights throughout.
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People of India! My OCI + Airtel + HDFC has culminated in a massive achievement and rite of initiation. I have made my first UPI payment. I’m now unstoppable.
China in Ten Words - by Yu Hua 余华
Famous fiction author. I loved the movie from his book “To Live”. Memoir of growing up in China filtered through ten topics. Sometimes it’s cultural insights, but sometimes just his personal stories. Deep insights on “copycat” and “bamboozle”. Note those words are rough English translations of the real Chinese words he’s discussing.
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“Purpose” and “passion” are words we use when we’re not working.
I was inconsiderate but now I’m everywhere
When I was in the music business, there was a record producer who lived in New Jersey, but refused to come into New York City.
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I was inconsiderate but now I’m everywhere: https://sive.rs/socials
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I love people. I love when they’re not around.
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Great book: “You’re Not Listening” by Kate Murphy. My notes: https://sive.rs/book/NotListening
About my book notes
At a href="/book"sive.rs/book/a I have a collection of my notes from the 420+ books I’ve read since 2007.
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I highly recommend the book "Factfulness" by Hans Roling. My notes: https://sive.rs/book/Factfulness
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I’ve been offline 23 hours a day: https://sive.rs/off23
Maintenance of Everything, part one - by Stewart Brand
Because I loved his book “How Buildings Learn”, I expected a more philosophical look at maintenance, but it’s mostly a deep dive into a few specific examples of boats, guns, and cars.
Offline 23 hours a day
Last month, I moved into my new home in the woods.
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Got my own ActivityPub server running at https://sive.rs/d though still super basic and testing
You’re Not Listening - by Kate Murphy
Being a great listener when people speak. Deep insights about understanding, connection, helping people express themselves, overcoming assumptions, the ethics of gossip, and more. Specific techniques for the support response, encouraging elaboration, and keeping it balanced. You can’t be ethical without being a good listener. When people say, “I can’t talk right now,” what they really mean is “I…
You Will Not Stampede Me - by Bryan Caplan
Tiny blog posts about non-conformity. I love his writing in general, but these were topics that I’d already read his writing on before, or too out of my realm (like academic life) to be interesting to me.
What next?
I have so much more to say on this subject, but this book is done now because I believe short books are useful.
Reframing death
For the last three years, my boy and I have had a pet mouse.
You are what you pretend to be
Your outside doesn’t need to match your inside.
Keep tuning and adjusting
When I got my first guitar, the nice man at the shop put on new strings and tuned it.
Take the first step immediately
I spent basically my whole life in America, and had no desire to travel or be anywhere else.
Why your choice is wrong
No matter what choice you make, someone will tell you it’s wrong.
Talk with friends to solidify it
After you privately internalize a belief, talk about it with friends.
Private journal to internalize it
Once you find a viewpoint you want to adopt, a great tool to internalize it is a private journal.
No new instructions for the computer
You load the program into the computer, and it begins its calculations.