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Comment vivre - Derek Sivers

There’s only one law of nature: if you survive, you win.

Be paranoid.
Avoid failure to survive.

For something to succeed, everything needs to go right.
For something to fail, only one thing needs to go wrong.

Don’t try to be more right.
Just be less wrong.

Avoiding failure leads to success.
The winner is usually the one who makes the least mistakes.
This is true in investing, extreme skiing, business, flying, and many other fields.
Win by not losing.

Most people die of cancer and heart disease.
So yes, avoid that.
But those who die from accidents die younger, losing more years of potential life.
So try even harder to avoid accidents.
Reduce risks.

What do you want out of life?
That’s hard to answer.
What don’t you want?
That’s easy.

More than anything, we want a lack of negatives.
A life with no pain, no injury, no regrets, and no disaster is a good life.
It’s easy to find joy in everyday things, if you can just avoid the bad.

Bad has more power.
Insults affect you more than compliments.
Injuries affect you more than back rubs.
Poison affects you more than medicine.
A great relationship or reputation built over years can be destroyed by one bad deed.
An otherwise perfect meal can be wrecked by one cockroach on the plate.
But a lack of negatives is harder to talk about.
So people focus on having the upsides in life.
Instead, focus on avoiding the downsides.

Most of eating healthy is just avoiding bad food.
Most of being right is just not being wrong.

• • To have good people in your life, just cut out the bad ones.**
    

Don’t waste a single minute.
Life can be long if you use time wisely.
But wasting time brings death quicker.

• • Time is the only thing that can’t be replaced.**
    

• • Death reminds us that time is limited and precious. **
    
  • Without death, there would be no motivation.**
    
  • Death gives value to life — gives us something to lose.**
    

• • Keep your eye on death.**
    

Avoid the mistakes that end life.
Avoid the negatives that wreck life.
Avoid the time-wasting that brings death sooner.

1. 1. 25. Voici comment vivre : Fais un million d'erreurs.
      

You learn best from your mistakes.
This is true.
So you should deliberately make as many mistakes as possible.

Try everything, all the time, expecting everything to fail.
Just make sure that you capture the lessons from each experience.
And never make the same mistake twice.

You’ll be extremely experienced.
You’ll get incredibly smart.
You’ll learn more lessons in a day than others learn in a year.

Deliberate mistakes are inspiring.
Trying to write a great song is hard.
Trying to write a bad song is easy and fun.

• • You could do it in one minute, right now.**
    

Writers say you should quickly finish a bad first draft, because it gets the idea out of your head and into reality, where it can then be improved.
Live your whole life this way.
Jump into action without hesitation or worry.
You’ll be faster and do more than everyone else.
What takes them a month will take you an hour, so you can do it ten times a day.

Do what everyone says not to.
Ignore every warning so you can find out for yourself.
Learn by hands-on experience.
The more mistakes you make, the faster you learn.
Once you’ve made all the mistakes in a field, you’re considered an expert.

See, you only really learn when you’re surprised —when your previous idea of something was wrong.
If you’re not surprised, it means the new information fits in with what you already know.
So try to be wrong.
Try to disprove your beliefs.

Never believe something on faith.
Prove it or disprove it.
While other people have one idea that they think might work, you will have thousands you can prove didn’t work, and one you couldn’t make fail.

Just keep a log.
A mistake only counts as experience if you learn from it.
Record what you learned, and review it.
Otherwise, it was a waste.

Take on big challenges.
Start a company in Silicon Valley.
Ask investors for millions.
Audition for Hollywood movies.
Invite your dream date to dinner.
While everyone else is nervously preparing, you jump right in, unafraid to fail.

Create predicaments.
Get into trouble.
Being desperate leads to creative solutions.

• • This gives you emotional stability.**
    
  • No mistake will upset you.**
    
  • You’ll never think that a failed attempt means you’re a failure.**
    

• • The people devastated by failure are the ones who didn’t expect it.**
    
  • They mistakenly think failure is who they are instead of the result of one attempt.**
    
  • If you’re prepared for endless failures, you’ll never think of yourself as a failure.**
    

• • There’s only one difference between a successful person and a failure.**
    
  • A failure quits, which concludes the story, and earns the title.**
    

Your growth zone is your failure zone.
Both are at the edge of your limits.
That’s where you find a suitable challenge. Aim for what will probably fail.
If you aim for what you know you can do, you’re aiming too low.

It’s easy to make a robot that walks.
It’s hard to make a robot that can’t be knocked down.
Same with people.
People who avoid mistakes are fragile, like the robot that only walks.
Your million mistakes will make you someone that can’t be knocked down.

Mistakes are the fountain of youth.
The old and successful get fragile.
They think they know everything.
They over-invest in one solution.
They have only answers, not questions.
If you’re never wrong, you never change.
Keep making mistakes, so you can keep changing, learning, and growing.

Share your stories from all your mistakes for the benefit of the world.
Every plane crash makes the next one less likely.