Derek Sivers
sivers.org · Personal blog · on HN since 2008
Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, writes short essays on business, creativity, and life, and keeps notes on books he has read.
What HN saysCommenters praise his book list with notes, link him as a founder who built things for love, and credit HN with leading them to his site.
605HN people shared it
390linked it in comments
459stories submitted
22Kstory points
3 years agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Ideas are just a multiplier of execution50 people · 29 points · first shared 2009 · 3 comments on HN
- 2There's no speed limit (2009)40 people · 1.3K points · first shared 2009 · 194 comments on HN
- 3Derek Sivers: Books I've Read36 people · 369 points · first shared 2009 · 88 comments on HN
- 4Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)33 people · 750 points · first shared 2009 · 173 comments on HN
- 5Memorizing a programing language using spaced repetition software26 people · 291 points · first shared 2013 · 91 comments on HN
- 6How to hire a programmer to make your ideas happen20 people · 225 points · first shared 2010 · 52 comments on HN
- 7Why I gave away my company to charity17 people · 341 points · first shared 2009 · 83 comments on HN
- 8No more yes. It's either hell yeah or no.16 people · 144 points · first shared 2009 · 56 comments on HN
- 9A new responsive Sivers.org13 people · 9 points · first shared 2008 · 4 comments on HN
- 10My favorite fable (塞翁失马, 2009)13 people · 4 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 11After 15 years of practice..12 people · 314 points · first shared 2010 · 97 comments on HN
- 12Simplify: move code into database functions12 people · 137 points · first shared 2015 · 74 comments on HN
- 13Obvious to you. Amazing to others.11 people · 249 points · first shared 2010 · 52 comments on HN
- 14And if only 1% of those people...11 people · 212 points · first shared 2009 · 43 comments on HN
- 15Delegate or die: the self-employed trap10 people · 689 points · first shared 2011 · 72 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
et-al · 2016-08-20
Since we're discussing online record stores, CD Baby needs to be mentioned as the indie music retailer back in the early 2000s. Its founder, Derek Sivers, is one of those awesome Web 1.0 geeks that built things for love, not money: https://sivers.org/
NumberCruncher · 2015-07-25
Thanks to HN I discovered the homepage of Derek Sivers [1] and the book "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport [2].
He sais that a great job has to offer you great creativity, impact, and control over what you do and how you do it. IMHO this is why so many people are mesmerised by startups. Anyhow, if you miss one or more of these three traits in your current job than you have to find an other one which fits better to you.
Read the book! I hope it will help you as much as it helped me!
[1] https://sivers.org
[2] https://sivers.org/book/SoGood
sivers · 2020-08-02
It's weird to come to my favorite forum, and see my name in the title of a post.
It's weirder to read comments claiming to know about my personal life and motivations, though they're all wrong. (Both the good and the bad.)
The public me is not me - https://sivers.org/publicu - so I don't feel a great need to correct the errors here.
But thanks (tw04, lukego, marcinzm, s_a_p) for the reminder that anything I do can be spun negative.
throwaway888abc · 2020-07-30
Congrats on making it 'there'!
Aside from obvious advises (which i'm sure will come) on grow, VC, investment, outsourcing, scaling et cetera.
Please consider this approach:
https://sivers.org/book/StartSmallStaySmall
Start Small, Stay Small - by Rob Walling and Mike Taber
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0615373968
Wish you all the best
mark_l_watson · 2020-07-22
I only skimmed/watched about 5 minutes of this, so my comment is really to recommend Derek Silver's recommended books with notes: https://sivers.org/book
I have used this list to buy several books.
brudgers · 2020-05-27
One of my favorite HN reads, https://sivers.org/below-average
kotharia · 2020-05-04
My solution to this is to keep my programming as a "hobby", to only do it for love without regard for money - and have an unrelated day job to fund my living expenses. This is also what Derek Sivers recommends https://sivers.org/balance
jcomis · 2020-02-26
or check https://sivers.org/book for some great summarization from Derek Sivers
n00bdude · 2020-02-19
I am also in quest to learn JavaScript & found this Derek Sivers link on the subject quite insightful:
https://sivers.org/prog
weinzierl · 2020-01-01
For programming and tech topics:
Dan Luu's Blog
https://danluu.com/
Drew DeVault's Blog
https://drewdevault.com/
For a broader scope:
Derek Sivers' Blog https://sivers.org/blog
If you love books, Maria Popova's Blog
https://www.brainpickings.org/
nevf1 · 2019-12-29
Fantastic list, and thanks for the links.
Personally, I would put "Sapiens - A brief History of Humankind"[0] in the list rather than it's successor "21 Lessons for the 21st Century".
While some people have some gripes about The 48 Laws of Power and Robert Greene's other books, in my opinion, they serve as a really valuable tool for understanding how most medium and large companies work. And for anyone interested, a great way to dip your toes into it is by having a look at Derek Sivers' book notes - https://sivers.org/book/48LawsOfPower
[0] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/009959…
tren · 2019-12-19
I think it's good advice for a lot of people. You're a role model for them, if you're always checking your phone your distraction will rub off on them. I try to spend a couple of hours each day with my kid focusing 100% on what we're doing.
I try to follow Derek Sivers advice as much as possible: https://sivers.org/pa
coldtea · 2019-11-02
I follow him occasionally on his blog for about a decade, and I'd say that his need to write is greater than his frequency in contributing something insightful. YMMV.
(Of course even more people could say that about me, that is, if they knew me enough to care!)
That said, he used to write some great posts in the past (e.g. https://sivers.org/kimo ), but for the past 5 or more years it's like he just writes because he feels some compulsion to write a post.
He does seem like a nice guy to have beers with though, and he did had an interesting adventure building his startup back in the day. And the podcast is a totally different medium, so all bets are off, he could very good there!
To contrast, I'm not a hardcore fan of PG, but he has been consistently interesting/insightful in his posts even in topics that I don't care about (though he sadly has stopped).
siquick · 2019-10-03
Start Small, Stay Small - by Rob Walling and Mike Taber
"Great how-to guide about being a micropreneur: an entrepreneur running many small but profitable businesses."
Here's a Sivers summary of the book
https://sivers.org/book/StartSmallStaySmall
splittingTimes · 2019-10-03
When I started to listen to the "manager tools" podcast, I started to get a much better understanding of corporate politics and it became easier to navigate that space. Jocko Willings podcast also has some insights how to deal with complex political situations.
For your mental health I can recommend some of the modern Stoic approaches to life. Most prominent candidate here is "A guide to the good life". Good luck.
https://sivers.org/book/StoicJoy
yourbandsucks · 2019-10-01
Fish don't know they're in water. https://sivers.org/fish
The fact that we have the illusion of choice between candidates who will all do mostly the same things, and won't affect the bureaucracy that much anyways, doesn't make us meaningfully more free.
"But my candidate had a great take on the bathroom bill controversy!", as we continue bombing weddings in afghanistan, imprisoning more people than China (!!!), etc..
jseliger · 2019-07-22
I've admired all of the Haidt books I've read, including Coddling: https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/27/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind-j… His earlier book The Happiness Hypothesis is underrated and highly recommended: https://sivers.org/book/HappinessHypothesis
patrickk · 2019-05-05
Exactly. Derek Sivers gives some good examples for programming in this essay[1], e.g. overcoming a common mistake, cool trick or suprising feature of a language. These are obviously useful things to have immediately when you need them. I think the article lists some bad examples (not worth committing to memory) for programming to be honest.
[1] https://sivers.org/srs
runjake · 2019-04-14
Yes, great comment.
Also, it's recommmended just about every hour on here but So Good They Can't Ignore You covers this topic quite a bit.
Here is Derek Sivers' book notes on it: https://sivers.org/book/SoGood
jpamata · 2019-04-13
Derek Sivers' blog. One of my favourite pieces of his, There is No Speed Limit:
https://sivers.org/kimo
SyneRyder · 2019-04-13
Derek Sivers wrote about exactly this:
Obvious To You, Amazing To Others
https://sivers.org/obvious
There's also an animated video version, if you prefer video.
https://youtu.be/xcmI5SSQLmE
knight17 · 2019-03-30
Similar to this post, Jack Kinsella has written how he used Spaced Repetition Software to learn and keep programming knowledge in the following articles:
http://www.jackkinsella.ie/articles/janki-method
https://www.jackkinsella.ie/articles/janki-method-refined
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JCHkqVoX598Ob_111khrGoJ5cpeh_ahU/view…
Derek Sivers also has written on memorising a programming language using SRS software: https://sivers.org/srs
One important thing in the original article is about flow, or the feeling of being in the state of flow if you don't need to remove yourself from the task for looking up documentation. I think that is a worthy goal to aim for but I am amazed at the amount of cards he has created, nearly 10,000 over a period of three years. He has put in lot of effort and reaped the reward.
owens99 · 2019-03-12
Edit: for those who haven’t seen this before (talking to you idea guys), I was shared this formula by one of the top VCs in New York almost 10 years ago.
https://sivers.org/multiply
“
The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20.
The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.
That’s why I don’t want to hear people’s ideas.
I’m not interested until I see their execution.
“
I’ve since heard this referenced and repeated by numerous successful entrepreneurs.
Let me know if you disagree.
sjcsjc · 2019-02-13
I can think of one non-fiction book in particular that benefits hugely from being read as a summary[0]. The E-Myth contains some great information, but the storytelling style it is written in is absolutely excruciating.
[0] https://sivers.org/book/EMythRevisited
(I liked this summary - I found the link a few weeks ago on here. Thanks to https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sivers)
corobo · 2018-08-07
The editing brought out the best for the home viewer, the people at the show were probably still laughing however, which naturally does not have the editing
As a side note when you're calling something stupid you come off as not thinking it through https://sivers.org/ss
glibgil · 2018-08-07
> The editing brought out the best for the home viewer, the people at the show were probably still laughing however, which naturally does not have the editing
Yes, that's why specials are almost always film the same routine twice with the space hair and makeup for each show. It's better after editing. Anfter editing you cannot talk about any big findings on timing of laughs in the routine because you are only talking about the timing of the editing.
> As a side note when you're calling something stupid you come off as not thinking it through https://sivers.org/ss
Derek Sivers is an actual idiot. He didn't know you could write a macro to control a desktop UI and also write a mock WAV file to CD-ROM driver for Mac OS. The guy is lucky, not smart https://sivers.org/itunes
He also hates paying taxes so he can fuck right off
beaverbeats · 2018-07-19
Another one which is close to it is this: https://sivers.org/
feelin_googley · 2018-04-07
Its encouraging to be reminded that still not everyone who uses Apple hardware runs MacOS exclusively.
https://sivers.org/openbsd
http://www.sacrideo.us/openbsd-on-macbook/
However I have not heard any reports of anyone running an alternative OS on iPhone or iPad hardware.
With every passing year I continue to think it would be interesting to observe how users would choose if Apple hardware and Apple software were sold separately.
Would all users choose Apple software?
Expecting to take a little karma subtraction from the thought police for daring to entertain such a nonpermissible idea. Par for the course here and well worth it.
a_d · 2018-03-14
Brilliant model. PayPal's fraud detection is usually the most cited human intervention model for building "smart systems", but the idea goes back further: Amazon's backend in the 90s, CD baby's recommendation engine [1] and one can probably find examples that are decades old. I have built large operations teams around this central idea. Happy to chat if you want to compare notes and experience doing this.
[1] https://sivers.org/hi
_nedR · 2018-02-22
I believe his point is that although it is useful to analyze someone to see what they're doing wrong (so that you don't repeat the same mistake), it would be more useful to study what they are doing right so that you can apply those lessons to your situation. The former is quite easy to do and runs the risk of lulling one into complacency and a false sense of security, while the latter exercises your brain and demands greater effort and a more impartial assessment of the situation.
http://www.aaronkharris.com/presumption-of-stupitidy
https://sivers.org/ss
In the grandparent commenter's case, he is saying that everyone is focusing on the negatives of Chinese research when there are some useful lessons regarding regulation that could possibly be ported to the US.