COLLECTED & CONSIDERED
Collected & Considered
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Cover of Useful Not True

Useful Not True

by Derek Sivers

Personal Growth & Wellbeing

Added to the collectionDecember 28, 2025

Selected Passages

Selected passages

Facts can be true, while the perspective is not. No picture is the whole picture. It’s just one of many possible angles.

To know whose problem it is, think who benefits most from solving it.

People’s motives are unknowable, even to themselves. Let go of the need for a reason. Ignore their explanations. The only true facts are their actions.

It’s better to be curious than correct.

A traveler comes to a river and sees a local woman on the opposite bank. He yells across, “How do I get to the other side of the river?” She yells back, “You are on the other side of the river!” An American woman went on a vacation to Scotland. Talking with a group of people there, she said, “I just love your accent!” They said, “We don’t have an accent. You do.”

The more emotional the belief, the less likely it’s true

You choose your reaction. Not the first one, but the next