Meeting Derek Sivers

Quality conversation with Derek, Tastefluencer, Victor Hugo and many more...

Feb 19, 2023

gm 👋 Prado here

We are 3930 interesting people reading the newsletters every week.

Every Friday, I publish one essay & 10 interesting things that will help you become healthy, wealthy and wise 👇

Essay of the week - Meeting Derek Sivers

It’s the last week of Jan and I get a DM from web3gurung about Derek coming down to India. - sive.rs/meet-chbg

I sent him a mail introducing myself and would love to host him at DSH (The place I’m currently staying)

I was not expecting this reply 👇

He said no to a meetup and wanted to do a 1-on-1 with me. I was like HELLLL YEAHHH.

I quickly changed my travel plans a bit and made sure I’m in town to meet him.

Fast forward to 17th Feb.

I got done with my cousins’ weddings in Rajasthan and took a flight out from Ahmedabad. I bought his latest book “how to live” and read it on the flight.

It’s the 18th morning now. I’m meeting Derek in 3 hours. I spent some time last night going down rabbit holes on his website and blogs. Started taking notes and got a few questions ready.

There are more notes but I wanted to add only one screenshot

Here are the questions I wanted to ask him 👇

I took a quick shower and left for his hotel. Even though the place was 20mins away It took me 35mins to reach there (bc I live in BLR lol)

I stood at a single traffic light for 15mins because some big politician was passing by (probably from yesterday’s Aero show)

I texted Derek up and told him I’ll be late.

I reached 12.05 PM (I’m 5mins late and now I only got 55mins)

We quickly said hello, ordered some coffee and he asked me how did I get the name Prado.

I told him my full name is Pradarshan and I shortened it because I was meeting lots of foreign travellers when I was backpacking India. They couldn’t pronounce my big name (matter of fact only a handful ever got my full name right)

Anyway, back to the conversation.

Derek asked me about backpacking stories and even asked me to write a book about it.
He was intrigued & invited me on 1-on-1 because he read this part on my website 👇

Derek is a Swiss Army Knife too. I guess.

He told me that he liked the simplicity of my website. This is by far the best compliment I got because my website was inspired by AustinKleon.com, Sive.rs, Seths.blog, and many more…

We talked about his kid being half Tamilian and where my roots and values come from.

Then we started talking about interesting rabbit holes, here are a few of them:

Travelling to Japan was his first trip outside the US
I asked him about his interest in making music and does he regret not making them after starting CDBaby. He said no. At some point, everyone goes from being an athlete to coaching an athlete.
His next book - Useful but not true. (Read more)
We talked about two books in detail:
- Lessons of history (Will & Ariel Durant) and how much we both love this book
  I asked him to refer back to the Religion chapter for his next book 🙌
- Kural by Thiruvallur and it’s the English translation.
What’s something didn’t change about you in the last 10 years?
Derek: I think my ability to go down rabbit holes and find motives. Finding the Why. It’s alright if I don’t find the answer, it’s the pursuit that matters.
This is something that didn’t change in the last 30 years and it won’t change going forward too.
We ended our conversation on the question of how to run a website for 500 years without asking our kid’s kids and their kids to pay for it.

I came across this question on HackerNews and when I asked him he got fascinated by it. He told me that he does not think 500 years down the lane. He thinks in 100 years and he thinks that he will set up a non-profit trust where the only goal is to run and maintain his website.

Because after our death, our personal website will be the only thing that’ll be left of us.

The real legacy.

It was incredible meeting Derek in real life. He’s been a part of my life for over 8 years now and I finally was able to meet and have a quality conversation with him.

P.S: He does a good New Zealanders accent.

10 Interesting things for you 🙌

1. How to write an essay that spreads (Blog)

2. Something from my Twitter👇

3. Tastefluencer (Blog)

4. The Deep State (Blog)

5. Interesting animal of the week:- A Stork mother, making a tough decision, by throwing one of her chicks out of the nest to enhance the survival probability of her other chicks. Watch the full video here

6. Question of the week:- Who is someone young you personally know that will have an incredible impact on the world one day?

7. Interesting human of the week:- Victor Hugo

I was scrolling through Reddit and came across this question - Living or dead, who do you think has been the most powerful sex symbol the world has ever seen?

I quickly highlighted a few interesting things I read.

Victor Hugo (Author of Les Miserables) is clearly the winner.

8. Current read: How to live by Derek Sivers.

9. Meme of the week:-

10. Quotes of the week:

Alas! My envious eye, turning toward the past,
Without anything else down here able to console me,
I look continually at that moment in my life
Where I saw her spread her wings and fly away!
I will see that instant until I die,
That instant, nothing beyond!
Where I cried: "The child I had a short time ago,
What! I have her no more!"

Victor Hugo wrote this poem after his Daughter (19) died.
"But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands." - Daphne du Maurier
(Tweet this quote)
Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it. ~Vincent van Gogh
(Tweet this quote)

Check out some previous newsletters:

Diderot Effect (Read)
Life’s lines of Closeness (Read)
Cathedral Thinkers (Read)

Join in if you want me to trigger your curiosity every week👇

Personal Announcement 🚨

I’m finally done with wedding travel and will be in BLR for a couple of weeks before going back to my hometown for a few weeks because my sibling sister is 9 months pregnant and I want to be there.

Also, I’ll be getting back to writing the newsletter every friday. I promise.

Thanks for understanding.

In This Together,

Sharing & commenting on this newsletter will help it reach more curious people ❤️

Pradologue Newsletter

Discussion about this post