Big fan of Derek and Tim, there episodes together typically have a lot of great nuggets and I use them as jumping off points to make me better.

Here were some things I thoroughly enjoyed…

his job as a record producer is to have strong opinions in the studio.

The story where he tells the musicians that they don’t need a guitar and they respond heavily, and he says “thanks my job here is done” you need (or don’t need) a guitar. Ask the question in the extreme to find out who cares. Said simply, thinking about making a change? Test the extreme and see where your first thought takes you.

You call that art? I could do that.

And it’s like, yeah, but you didn’t.

Ah, yes. That’s my favorite. “I could do that.” Yeah, but you didn’t. Otherwise you’d be John Cage (or insert other talented artist in whatever field).

He did a brilliant talk. If you search YouTube for either simple versus easy or I think the name of the video on YouTube is called Simplicity Matters

Thank you for bringing Rich Hickey to my light. This is … so my jam. There’s something that feels so good about using the right words for things. I have an ever growing text document “words mean things, this vs. that” where I have a list of words that are commonly used incorrectly and how I understand them to be used properly (e.g. hot vs. spicy). It’s not a document I proclaim to be perfect, but it’s my own understanding… hot is related to temperature, spicy is related to taste. you can have cold spicy wings or hot sweet wings, you can also have hot spicy wings. Most people will say something is hot when they mean to say spicy. Similar to Rich, some people will say easy when they mean to say simple.

My last take away on this listen:

Would I still do this if no one knew about it?

Insert the :mindblown: here…

That encapsulates so much of modern life. Keeping up with the Jones’ if you will.

As with any distillation, it’s always best to go to the source, #777: Derek Sivers, Philosopher-Entrepreneur — The Greatest Year of His Life.

Looking forward to hearing how your house turns out. Maybe you’ll have 4 glasses next time Tim comes over.