'Hell Yeah or No, What's Worth Doing' by Derek Sivers - Book Impressions

About Derek Sivers: 

Derek was formerly a musician, circus performer, entrepreneur, programmer and speaker (including TED talks).  He sold his first company for $22 million and gave all the money to charity. He continues to write articles and books.  Derek currently lives in New Zealand.

My Impressions:

I heard about the release of this book from Derek’s website and decided to buy it. 

The premise of the book is that if you are going to spend your time doing something then it has to be a ‘Hell Yeah’ – otherwise it’s a ‘No’.  Time is too precious to spend it doing things that don’t inspire you.

It is written as a group of short writings on Derek’s personal thoughts/ ideas, collected together in the form of bite size articles to form the book.  The book is organized under different topics. Within the topics are 2-3 pages contained under different headings.  

It is a nice touch that the reader can click on the hyperlinks at the end of each chapter.  These link to Derek’s website and allow the reader to comment or read other peoples comments.  It shows how Derek really cares about forming a relationship with his audience.

I enjoyed Derek’s style of writing. It is very conversational.  It felt like he was in the room reading to me.

However, I found that the bits that resonated with me did not go deep enough.  They just scratched the surface. It felt a bit ‘flat’. Maybe because each idea was only represented in a few pages.  I would have liked it to have been filled out with the views of others (but accept that this may not have been the intended style of the book).

I would recommend this book to anyone that wants a light hearted, easy to read book.  It may suit someone that is new to self help books.

10 Learning points:

1. When you learn new stuff, you need to do something with that new learning, or it is wasted.  So turn your new learning into actions.
2. If people judge your public persona try not to let it bother you.  Just remember, they aren’t judging the real you because they don’t really know ‘you’. 
3. If you can do something that you would enjoy and that people would find useful then just do it - it doesn’t have to be a masterpiece before you put it out there!!
4. When reading or learning new things, try to take the lessons that you learn and apply them to your own life, even if your life is in a completely different context to the learning.
5. Your actions should reflect the things you really want to do - if they don’t then you are deluding yourself.
6. Our past opinions don’t have to reflect who we are today - we grow and change over time.
7. When you’re stuck and procrastinating over a decision, remember that there are more than 2 choices - brainstorm every single option and then decide which one works for you.  If no option works, then maybe it’s the decision that is wrong!!
8. You can ask for other people’s advice and see many more potential options you might not have recognised on your own, but, ultimately, the final decision will always be yours.
9. At times when you need new things to come into your life, say yes to everything until you find the thing you want to focus on.  At times when you feel overwhelmed with opportunities and offers, only say yes when it’s a “hell yeah”, otherwise it’s a “no”. This is to protect you from drowning. 
10. Find your passion by: a) noticing what excites you, and; b) noticing what scares you. Do these things and you will grow as a person.

If you enjoyed this, you may enjoy my other book impressions.

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