Book Notes — Anything You Want

Simplify your life

Derek Sivers is one of my favorite humans and I have been following his journey for a while. The best part I like about him is how he simplifies his life without getting trapped in societal pressure. In his book Anything You Want, he shares lessons he learned from his entrepreneurial venture CD Baby. And here are my key highlights from the book and I hope you get to take away something interesting from my notes.

My Notes

Most people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. They imitate others, go with the flow, and follow paths without making their own

Don’t be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your one chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams

Making a company is a great way to improve the world while improving yourself.

You don’t know what people really want until you start doing it.

Revolution is a term that people use only when you’re successful.

If you think your life’s purpose needs to hit you like a lightning bolt, you’ll overlook the little day-to-day things that fascinate you.

We’re all busy. We’ve all taken on too much. Saying yes to less is the way out.

Necessity is a great teacher.

Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers.

Just thrill them, and they’ll tell everyone.

If you want to be useful, you can always start now, with only 1 percent of what you have in your grand vision. It’ll be a humble prototype version of your grand vision, but you’ll be in the game. You’ll be ahead of the rest because you actually started, while others are waiting for the finish line to magically appear at the starting line.

Starting small puts 100 percent of your energy on actually solving real problems for real people. It gives you a stronger foundation to grow from. It eliminates the friction of big infrastructure and gets right to the point.

But notice that most businesses are trying to be everything to everybody. And they wonder why they can’t get people’s attention!

Never forget why you’re really doing what you’re doing. Are you helping people? Are they happy? Are you happy? Are you profitable? Isn’t that enough?

For me, it’s how many useful things I create, whether songs, companies, articles, websites or anything else. If I create something that’s not useful to others, it doesn’t count. But I’m also not interested in doing something useful unless it needs my creative input.

People fall in love with people who won’t give them the time of day. It’s a strange law of human behavior. It’s pretty universal.

You should feel pain when unclear.

It doesn’t matter how things are done everywhere else. In your little world, you can make it as it should be

Customize your E-mail

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing. Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration afterward and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 6th. I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year.”We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!

Little things make all the difference.

But the whole point of doing anything is because it makes you happy! That’s it!

In the end, it’s about what you want to be, not what you want to have

When you sign up to run a marathon, you don’t want a taxi to take you to the finish line.

Never forget that you can make your role anything you want it to be.

Anything you hate to do, someone else loves. So find that person and let him do it. For me, I loved sitting alone and programming, writing, planning, and inventing. Thinking of ideas and making them happen. This makes me happy, not business deals or management. So I found someone who liked doing business deals and put him in charge of all that.

You have to just do whatever you love the most, or you’ll lose interest in the whole thing. On a similar note, people also assume that you want to be big big big — as big as can be.

Happiness is the real reason you’re doing anything, right? Even if you say it’s for the money, the money is just a means to happiness, right? But what if it’s proven that after a certain point, money doesn’t create any happiness at all, but only headaches? You may be much happier as a $1 million business than a $1 billion business.

The less I own, the happier I am. The lack of stuff gives me the priceless freedom to live anywhere anytime

Business is as creative as the fine arts. You can be as unconventional, unique, and quirky as you want. A business is a reflection of the creator

Just pay close attention to what excites you and what drains you. Pay close attention to when you’re being the real you and when you’re trying to impress an invisible jury.

Whatever you make, it’s your creation, so make it your personal dream come true.