27 Ways to Live: Lessons from How to Live by Derek Sivers

Derek Sivers has been a musician, circus performer, entrepreneur, and speaker. He's a slow thinker, explorer, xenophile, and loves a different point of view. A california native, he now lives in New Zealand.

There are few people more fitting to write a book on how to live. Even fewer could write a book that explains 27 different ways to live. It’s a philosophical discovery of ways a person can live. Read it, and you will find yourself in some of them. But also get inspired by other ways to live, and you just might change your life in the end. Here’s a one-sentence description of every single way to live from the book.

1. Be independent. You will only truly be yourself and be happy if you break free from society, income, your job, news and drama.
2. Commit. Focus on one thing that truly matters to you, commit fully to nothing else.
3. Fill your senses. Do everything possible to experience new things in life: from touching everything to skydiving.
4. Do nothing. When in doubt, do nothing - don’t speak, sell, buy, try too hard…just let go.
5. Think super-long-term. Make every decision by thinking how it will affect your future self in 10, 20, or 50 years - from habits and investing to exercise and relationships.
6. Intertwine with the world. Live and do everything everywhere to leave traces across the world.
7. Make memories. Live in a way no day, week or month is forgettable.
8. Master something. Devote yourself to one thing and spend the rest of your life mastering it.
9. Let randomness rule. Accept randomness and only control your response to it.
10. Pursue pain. Choose pain over comfort to gain new skills and become more resilient.
11. Do whatever you want now. Ignore the past and the future, and do exactly what you want now.
12. Be a famous pioneer. Do something that hasn’t ever been done before and leave the world forever different.
13. Chase the future. Stay forever immersed in the future - visit futuristic cities, use new tech and consume the latest shows.
14. Value only what has endured. Despise what’s new and only consume what stood the test of time.
15. Learn. Make it a daily habit to learn new skills and knowledge, and always assume you don’t know everything.
16. Follow the great book. Pick any book - from the Bible to The 4-Hour Workweek - and follow it to a T.
17. Laugh at life. No matter the situation, good, bad or deadly, find something funny in it and always make jokes about it.
18. Prepare for the worst. Assume prosperity is over, and the future will be difficult, so prepare yourself mentally to face it.
19. Live for others. Forget about yourself and focus only on what’s important for others.
20. Get rich. Make it your life goal to become rich and spend every day striving for it, but never act rich.
21. Reinvent yourself regularly. Disconnect from your past and completely change yourself - wipe the slate clean regularly.
22. Love. Love everything and everyone around you.
23. Create. Make it your life’s mission to create books, companies, movies, music, paintings and die with nothing left uncreated.
24. Don’t die. Spend every waking hour of every day avoiding death.
25. Make a million mistakes. Get experienced and smart by making as many mistakes as you can every day.
26. Make change. Don’t accept anything as-is, but change everything radically.
27. Balance everything. Be wary of your inner balance and do everything in your power to balance all aspects of your life - work, relationships, health.

There are countless ways to live, and no single “best” one. But in every approach lies an idea you can adopt—big or small—that may change your life.

Highlights

• People think we live in a world of politics, society, norms, and news. But none of it is real. They’re just interpersonal drama. They’re the noisy waste product of unhealthy minds.
• Don’t believe anything anyone says. Listen if you want, but always decide for yourself. Never agree with anything the same day you hear it, because some ideas are persuasively hypnotic. Wait a few days to decide what you really think. Don’t let ideas into your head or heart without your permission.
• You can’t be free without self-mastery. Your past indulgences and habits might be addictions. Quit a harmless habit for a month, just to prove you can.
• Own your own business with many small customers to avoid depending on any big client. Offer products, not a personal service, so your business can run without you. Create many sources of income like this.
• Focus your attention on the few things you’re committed to, and nothing else.
• Commit to your habits to make them rituals. If it’s not important, never do it. If it’s important, do it every day.
• Rockets use most of their fuel in the first minute of flight, to escape the pull of gravity. Once they get outside that pull, it’s effortless. Same with your habits. Starting is hard. The rest is easy.
• Falling in love is easy. Staying in love is harder. Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.
• Actions often have the opposite of the intended result. People who try too hard to be liked are annoying. People who try too hard to be attractive are repulsive. People who try too hard to be enlightened are self-centered. People who try too hard to be happy are miserable.
• People will appreciate your silence, and know that when you speak, it must be important. Shallow rivers are noisy. Deep lakes are silent.
• When a problem is bothering you, it feels like you need to do something about it. Instead, identify what belief is really the source of your trouble. Replace that belief with one that doesn’t bother you. Then the problem is solved. Most problems are really just situations.
• If you need money, be an investor. It’s the only career where you profit the most by doing the least. It should take no more than an hour per month. The stock market takes money from the active traders and gives it to the patient.
• Actions amplify through time to have a massive impact on the future. Let this fact guide your life. Use a time machine in your mind, constantly picturing your future self and your great-grandchildren’s world. Act now to influence that time. The actions are obvious. Put money in an investment account and never withdraw. Eat mostly vegetables. Exercise always. Get preventative health checkups. Make time for your relationships. Do these, yes, but let’s look at less-obvious ones.
• Only spend money on things that do long-term good, like education. In other words, never spend, only invest. The earlier you start, the better, since time is the multiplier.
• Be extra-careful of habits that seem harmless. Imagine each choice continuing forever. Eat a cookie, and eventually you’re obese. Shop for fun, and eventually you’re deep in debt. When you choose a behavior, you choose its future consequences.
• Go make memories. Do memorable things. Experience the unusual. Pursue novelty. Replace your routines. Live in different places. Change your career every few years. These unique events will become anchors for your memories.
• 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. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status.
• Pioneers have a massive impact on the world because their stories help people do things they wouldn’t have dreamed of otherwise.
• The biggest obstacle to learning is assuming you already know. Confidence is usually ignorance.
• If you’re not embarrassed by what you thought last year, you need to learn more and faster. When you’re really learning, you’ll feel stupid and vulnerable — like a hermit crab between shells.
• The best way to be safe is to help others be safe. The best way to be connected is to help others be connected. People look out for each other. But nobody helps the unhelpful. You can’t actually pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Ultimately you are lifted by those around you.
• Find an old industry and solve an old problem in a new way.
• Speculating is not investing. Never speculate. Never predict. Be humble, not arrogant. Never think for one second that you know the future. Remind yourself over and over again that nobody knows the future. Ignore anyone that says they do.
• Money is your servant, not your master. Don’t act rich. Don’t lose touch with regular people. Stay frugal. Reducing your expenses is so much easier than increasing your income.
• If you have feelings for someone, and you don’t let that person know, you’re lying with your silence. Be direct. It saves so much trouble and regret.
• When we lack balance, we’re upset. Over-worked, under-loved, over-eating, under-sleeping. Focused on wealth, but ignoring health. Focused on the present, but ignoring the future.
• Even positive traits, when taken too far, become negative. Like when someone is generous to a fault, or amusing to a fault. Too much of a specific strength is a weakness. If you rise to great heights in only one area, you’re a one-legged giant: easily toppled.