Tag Archives: Derek Sivers

Share your work

Here is a wonderful (first) blog post by Marcus Blair (@MrBlairsClass):

Teaching Ancient Greek Philosophy in a 21st Century Classroom

The lesson shared is on Stoicism for Grade 12 Philosophy, but there is a bigger lesson: Share your work!

I’m sure that to create this post Marcus had to reflect far more on his lesson than he had any time before writing. So, in the process of writing, he not only helps others, but helps himself too.

He made a fan out of me, but even if no one read the post, it still would have been a valuable exercise to write it. The fact that others like myself get to benefit as well is a positive by product of sharing work on a blog.

Keeping Derek Sivers idea of ‘Obvious to you, amazing to others‘:


I think one of the best professional development opportunities educators have is to share their work… so get blogging!

Derek Sivers on Goals

I’m a fan of Derek Sivers. I loved his first interview with Tim Ferris. I knew him before that from ‘The first follower‘, and I think this little video about ‘Obvious to you. Amazing to others.‘ is brilliant.

I recently purchased and listened to his book, ‘Hell Yeah or No’ and this chapter really resonated with me: ‘Goals Shape the Present, not the Future‘.

From the chapter:

If it was a great goal, you would have jumped into action already. You wouldn’t wait. Nothing would stop you.
The purpose of goals is not to improve the future.The future doesn’t exist. It’s only in our imagination. All that exists is the present moment and what you do in it.
Judge a goal by how well it changes your actions in the present moment.

I think this is what I’ve always struggled with when teaching or talking about goals with students… they all focus on the plan ahead, the future, and not on the habits and attitudes needed right now. We don’t teach the ‘Hell Yeah’ part of creating goals that kids really want to do.

We don’t teach them about goals, we teach them about wishful thinking.

Present habits and actions lead us to future outcomes, and these need to be emphasized when we teach goal setting.

Adapt, Adjust, and Amplify

“Lose 25 pounds in a month.”

“Earn $1,000 a day.”

“Look 10 years younger.”

“Discover your potential.”

“Live the life of your dreams.”

“Anything is possible…”

…But none of it is attainable for the vast majority of people. The plans are made to look simple, but the goals are lofty, and the path to success is anything but easy. How many of us are excessively rich, looking and feeling healthier and younger than we are, and living our ideal dream life? We aren’t going to get all these things from some motivational speaker or some club membership or program. As Derek Sivers says,

“If [more] information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”

It’s amazing how easy it can sound, but real, incremental, and meaningful change often takes two things:

  • Consistent effort.
  • More time than you think.

I’ve written about my healthy living goals, and the shoulder injury that I’m recovering from. In the past, an ice-pick-like stabbing pain in my shoulder would have been enough to derail my entire workout schedule. I would have stopped everything and gone into lazy mode.

Instead, my treadmill run, which bounced my shoulder too much, became a stationary bike ride; my weights set became a core strength set. My other routines remained as well. I think this happened because I am not on some crazy, unrealistic path to health goals I’ll never achieve. I’m on a slow, attainable path, that I want to maintain.

Here is the path that worked for me:

Adapt, Adjust, and Amplify.

It wasn’t easy at first, and it was not going to happen overnight. There wasn’t a romantic appeal, it wasn’t sexy or overly inspiring. It took patience. And unlike the fads and crazes, it lead to significant change over time.

1. Adapt – The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If at first you don’t succeed, try something different. I made changes that were realistic and sustainable. Twenty minutes of cardio – totally doable to fit into my schedule. Before, I’d incrementally move that up to close to an hour. Now, I can put in over an hour on the basketball court, running hard, even though I haven’t done more than a 25 min. hard cardio workout in over a year. I won’t win any marathons, but I’m not dumb enough to ask my body to try. I adapted a workout schedule that optimizes my fitness in a minimal amount of time.

2. Adjust – My schedule had to adjust when I started writing this daily blog before my morning workouts. I kept running out of time. Now I’m writing this at 10pm, in bed on Sunday, rather than early tomorrow morning. I write longer posts on weekends, when inspired, and keep them short, with limited writing time on weekdays. I’ve adjusted a few things along the way, each time I do so, it’s to reduce friction and to make maintaining my wellness regimen easier. A great example of an adaptation is that when I felt I was stagnating a bit on my runs, I started doing some interval training. I increased my speed for minute or minute-and-a-half intervals, and I watched my top speed increase. When I got to a good speed, one that I used to run when I was in my 30’s, I made that my new maximum for my hard days… I adjusted again, rather than pushing myself to some unreasonable goals.

3. Amplify – When things are working, I highlight them. I’m public with them on my blog, and with family and friends. This isn’t bragging, it’s holding myself accountable. When I see results from interval training, I push myself to do this more often. When I got injured, I focussed on my daily calendar, and the things I could do, rather than the things I couldn’t. By amplifying the small successes, and the commitment I made to myself, I’ve created a positive feedback loop that inspires me to keep going.

As catchy as Adapt, Adjust, and Amplify may sound, it’s the other two tips that really make this work:

  • Consistent effort.
  • More time than you think.

Keep going, knowing that long term goals are more sustainable than flashy weight loss or instant muscles. Low motivation or injuries will happen, they don’t need to break the pattern of consistency, they will just slow down the intensity, and the timelines to the goals that were created.

There are times to aspire to be great, and to put everything you have into success and achievement. And, there are times to focus on self care… Times to realize that mentally and physically, we need to be consistent, show up, and maintain as well as tweak, the patterns and behaviours that make us incrementally better over time. It’s not fast, it’s not glamorous, it is achievable and rewarding, as long as you are dedicated and show patience.

Good-enough-meme

Good enough is good enough, now share it!

Writing every day for the past few months, I’ve noticed that some days I’m not completely happy with what I’ve written, but I made a commitment to write every day and to share it here. Sometimes I write something that is pretty good and it gets very little uptake, sometimes the ‘good enough’ posts get more attention than I expected. However, if I’m completely honest, most of the ‘good enough’ posts are not ones that I am proud of, should be proud of, and they really don’t get any attention at all… And that’s OK. It really is.

At school, I watch perfectionism crush students. It completely overwhelms and debilitates them. It’s sad to see highly capable students buried under the weight of something not being good enough to hand in, when while it may not be their best work it actually is good enough. Last year I was actually challenging a student to hand in some mediocre work. “What’s the minimum you need to do to hand that in?”

Don’t get me wrong, there are times when I push for students to do more, and to give their best, but for some students the bar of excellence they place on their own work is so high, they are continuously challenged to attain their own high standards. And when that bar is placed on everything they do, that becomes an impossible task.

Writing here every day, I’m not going to be publishing masterpieces. But it’s a slippery slope to say to myself, ‘I just won’t post something today’. Because tomorrow might be another one of those days, and the next day I might consider the post good, but not great. Then my daily blog is no longer daily, and my passion for writing dwindles again, as it has in the past.

Sometimes good enough is good enough. We don’t have to produce great work all the time. We don’t have to impress others and showcase only our best. Social media is filled with that, with kids taking 30 selfies because the look isn’t perfect and deleting their Instagram photos because the ‘Likes’ didn’t come fast enough. Our schools have student that do not hand in an assignment because it’s not A+ quality. And adults don’t publicly share their work because they don’t have anything of value to say… not realizing that what’s obvious to them, might actually be amazing to others.

Your work is good enough… share it.

The long format podcasts experience

I don’t listen to the radio in my car anymore, and I only listen to music when I’m with other people. If I’m alone in the car, even on my very short commute to work, I’m either listening to an audio book or I’m listening to a long format podcast.

What’s the appeal of the long format?

I have gotten very tired of the typical news-style interview format. That format is designed to work in one of two ways:

1. Three to seven minute interviews that focuses on one key idea, one good, quotable sound byte (and glosses over many other interesting and big ideas).

2. A panel discussion where discourse is trumped by arguments from the extremes with blatant disregard for anyone with a centrist view.

On the other hand, a long format discussion can go deep. It can meander to different topics. It can invite you in as if you are in the room with the interviewer and interviewee.

No one does this better than Joe Rogan. He has become a master interviewer! He is skilled at interviewing people smarter than us, and asking the right clarifying question for us to take the journey along with him.

I don’t listen to all his interviews (too many, and I focus on the interviewees I can learn a lot from), but I’m currently listening to his interview with Edward Snowden. At the time of writing this, the YouTube version has 7.4 million views, and several million more people listen to an audio version like me. As an aside, Joe Rogan is changing the way people listen to media. His podcasts routinely get more views than television shows and newscasts. And his unbiased reporting, not having to pander to broadcast networks, and advertisers that are restrictive, are exactly why he could get 3-hours of Edward Snowden’s time that the networks would never get.

What I like about his podcasts is that he can get guests like Peter Attia or Dr. Rhonda Patrick, and while they both have podcasts, when I listen to their podcasts, they get too technical and go over my head. Whereas, Joe will ask clarifying questions and help me take the journey with them.

Here are a few more longer format interviews/podcasts that are worth listening to:

1. Derek Sivers or Jamie Foxx on The Tim Ferriss Show

2. Stephen Fry or Yuval Noah Harari on the Sam Harris podcast.

3. And I’ll be going back to podcasting again, here are two of my favourites so far, Remi Kalir and Roy Henry Vickers.

The long format podcast is an engaging way to learn, and to pass time normally consumed with talk radio and annoying commercial interruptions. Give them a try!