‘Micro-ambitions’: Tim Minchin updates his famous nine rules for life

In the wake of his viral speech, comedy star Tim Minchin reflects on his nine life lessons – and why he’s ‘not getting sucked into drama’ on social media.

Fans of Tim Minchin know what to expect: a comedy powerhouse delivering pathos and on-point lyrics from the piano stool with his trademark shaggy-haired, barefooted showmanship.

Away from the stage, the multi-hyphenate star has taken a step back to reflect on his wide-ranging career – and the viral speech that started it all – in a new book.

In a new interview on the Stellar podcast Something To Talk About, Minchin parses his success, explains what prompted him to leave social media and considers the role that luck has played in his career.

‘Bugger it, I’m just going to do me on stage.’ Tim Minchin is making his own rules. Picture: Daniel Nadel for Stellar

Stellar: You’re about to release your first nonfiction book, You Don’t Have To Have A Dream, which is inspired by an honorary doctorate speech you gave in 2013 about nine life lessons. Did you ever think that speech would go viral?

Tim Minchin: I’m proud of that speech. Weirdly, of all the things I’ve done, the thing that’s gone most viral – that tens of millions of people have seen – is this speech that I wrote in 36 hours in the

two days before the doctorate ceremony. I’m glad I didn’t overthink it. I’m glad I didn’t know it was going to go viral and it was one day going to be a book because I think you can get scuppered by the weight of expectations. What’s been interesting for me, and I think I’ve negotiated OK, is that I wasn’t a wunderkind, I wasn’t 18; no-one spotted me and went, “You’re so handsome and good at singing, let’s make you a pop star.” I did the graft and did

the 10, 12 or 15 years of just working for free. So when eventually something hit – and what hit was my satire, my comedy, which was always much more music than comedy – it was its own thing.

Listen to the full interview with Tim Minchin on Something To Talk About below:

At some point in my late 20s I went, “Bugger it, I’m just going to do me on stage. I’m going to be quirky.” Having gained success there, I then got asked to write Matilda The Musical [in 2008] and I also didn’t think too much about what the audience wanted. I just thought, what would I want? I then had such an established career that it’s tempting at that point to start thinking, “Right, I’ve got a market now. What do they want? How do I get another hit like Matilda?” [But] that’s not how I got here. Identifying a market and going, “I’m going to reverse-engineer something that they’ll consume” is how much popular art is made. And I’m not being a snob about it – I just don’t think I’ll do that well; I don’t think that’s my thing. My thing is, “What do I think about now and what’s a fun way to do it?” I think I’m still doing that. I hope I’m still doing that.

Stellar: Your first life lesson is the same as the title of the book: You don’t have to have a dream …

Tim Minchin: I think what people related to or got some solace from is slightly a reaction to what in the 2010s and still now in the 2020s is this rising sense of individualism. Gen Z is the most pessimistic generation and I think it’s partly because they’ve been told that what success is, what they should aim for, is something huge. They get it all the time on Instagram – there’s some virtuoso 10-year-old playing guitar and my kid [Minchin’s 15-year-old son Caspar with his wife, Sarah], who’s a really good guitarist, he feels like, “What’s the point?” So what I was reacting against, which has only got worse, is the idea that to have a satisfying life, you have to be a black swan. You have to be an outlier. It’s statistically not going to happen. And that, of course, is rich coming from me because I got to be an outlier. I just mean through luck, which is another thing I talk about … The data shows happiness is most likely [achieved through] a meaningful contribution to your community. That’s all kids should ever hear, because that’s what makes you happy and it’s achievable. It doesn’t mean you don’t end up with a dream. It just means that in the moment, you’re not distracted by the idea that you’re going to punch the ceiling out. So what I say is be “micro-ambitious”, and that was the thing that really hit in that lesson.

Tim Minchin is on the cover of the latest issue of Stellar. Picture: Daniel Nadel for Stellar

Picture: Daniel Nadel for Stellar

Stellar: As you’ve mentioned, another life lesson revolves around luck. What does luck mean to you?

Tim Minchin: I’m a determinist, which means I actually think we’re just emergent entities of the universe and that every single thing that we do or say – the fact you’re blinking now or the air temperature in the room – they all are things that come at the end of an unbroken chain of causality that started at the Big Bang. I don’t really believe in free will. When people hear someone say, “I don’t believe in free will” and they haven’t really looked into it, they just go, “Oh, don’t be an idiot.” But I really believe – I’m a genuine determinist. And that means I don’t think people can really be blamed or credited for their actions, which comes with a whole raft of ethical and philosophical problems – and also solutions. It’s not one that we can get through now but what I say in the speech is: if you understand that people are the way they are because of where they come from, what their genes and environment was basically, then it increases your empathy and hopefully increases your humility.

I know there will be people [reading] this who don’t think I’m very humble and I don’t really care, and I don’t know if I am or not, but certainly philosophically, I genuinely don’t think that the fact how hard I’ve worked is … I go, “It’s all luck” and people go, “But you’ve worked so hard.” But there are people who’ve worked harder who haven’t got where I’ve got. I don’t just mean luck as in “I got a break.” In fact, I didn’t really get many breaks. I got born with this brain that loves doing this stuff. When I sat down at 14 and taught myself piano, obsessing over how fast I could play a blues scale, I didn’t do that – it came out of me. It’s just luck, you know?

Listen to the full interview with Tim Minchin on Something To Talk About below:

Stellar: A few years ago there was a movement, particularly among millennial women, to really say to other women, “Don’t ever say that it’s just luck.” I was being interviewed on radio once and said, “I’ve had a lot of luck in my career,” and someone I knew who was listening texted me and said “It’s not just luck!”

Tim Minchin: Like, “That’s just because you’re a female and you think you don’t deserve it.” It’s like, yeah …

I understood their intention, but I told them: “You’re right – it’s not just luck, but

it is a factor. And I’ve also had bad luck.”

I think people who deny luck exists often haven’t had terribly bad luck. That’s such a beautifully articulated observation. I don’t think I’ve ever framed it quite like that but yeah, if you don’t know what it’s like to have been given a circumstance that’s just completely freaking unfair … that humbles you. People are solipsistic by nature. We see the world through our lens: “I am the hero or the victim of every moment.” You listen to people talking, “I told him …” and “He said to me …” You’re either the hero or the victim and that’s totally fine and normal, but just a bit of awareness … The idea that you’re letting down the sisterhood by acknowledging the role of luck, that stuff doesn’t feel right to me. I think all humans, regardless of gender, should be aware of the circumstances by which they are privileged, and if all the women don’t acknowledge their luck, then all the men start feeling, well, I’m going to take ownership of mine. It’s not a binary thing.

The book has been described as “a rallying cry for creativity, critical thinking and compassion”. How are we collectively faring with these values in 2024?

I think that social media is a mechanism for suppression of compassion. Social justice forced through social media, which unfortunately is where most of it exists – I think we will look back and decide we did as much harm as good, even though really good things have happened out of the mobilisation of previously suppressed voices. What I saw every day and that distressed me so much that I have finally got off all [social media platforms] – and it has, for the record, definitely improved my mental health and my capacity to do good in the world because I’m not getting sucked into other people’s drama and pain and bullying and nastiness and illogic … What I observe is that social media allows you to not extend your compassion past what you perceive to be “your tribe” as designated by an algorithm that you didn’t design.

Picture: Daniel Nadel for Stellar

The way I’ve been treated online – I mean, I’m not crying, but even me, a nice moderate guy who mostly writes musicals, but yes, I’ve said edgy things and I’ve hurt people’s feelings and stuff in the past so I’m not complaining – but the way people talk to you, and having a thousand people call you whatever, and you don’t recognise it in yourself, you’re like, “Hold on, no – that’s not me.” It changes your brain. It’s really poisonous and it makes you think those people are your enemy. Social media creates a mechanism by which people can justify the suppression of compassion for people who don’t look like them or have a different gender or have a different sexuality … and it’s bad whichever direction it flows in. I’m not saying racism towards white people is the same as racism towards black people, but I’m saying the harm done by suppressing your compassion for what you see as “the other” is not quantitatively consistent but qualitatively, it is harming to society … Our job is to extend our empathy as widely as we can, and for some that will be harder. If you’re an Aboriginal Australian who’s got terrible intergenerational trauma, it will be hard to extend your empathy to some suited rich white bloke. But most of us, most of the time, should extend our empathy as far as we can bear. And if everyone does that, we’ll still have lots of wars and fights, but it won’t be the norm.

Tim Minchin and his wife Sarah, pictured in 2020. Picture: News Corp Australia

‘I’m always concerned that she’s not being put in a position where she just feels like a spare prick at a wedding.’ Picture: Rupert Thorpe

You have a famous song, ‘I’ll Take Lonely Tonight’, which is about the challenge of staying faithful. You’re happily married to Sarah, with two children (Caspar and daughter Violet, 17). What did Sarah think when you first played the song for her?

She didn’t love it, because it feels very personal, and there are two mitigating things. One is, when I write a song, you have a seed of an idea: “No-one’s really written that song about that feeling of really wanting to shag someone and then not” and I had the conceptual idea of the orgasmic release of waking up the next morning having not screwed up. I understand some women have sex drives like some men, but I think when I talk to female friends, I’m like, “I don’t think you know what I have felt.” My brain, in the times in my life when I’ve wanted to sleep with someone – and I’m not making any excuses and I’ve made good choices in my life – but the battle is like I’ve got an ape in me. ‘Lonely Tonight’ is not a pop song. It doesn’t go to a chorus. It’s a story. So I’m trying to write a song about a person who’s trying not to have sex with a woman. I’m not writing a song about me. I’m tapping into a feeling I’ve had.

About 18 months ago, you and I were backstage at the premiere of the second season of (Foxtel drama) Upright and you were looking out at the audience to make sure Sarah had found a good seat.

I’m glad you caught me getting it right! Sarah is not the same personality as me. Opening nights are not her favourite thing, and when I turn up to an opening night [and] suddenly I’m surrounded by people putting me on a red carpet, and she just feels like such a dick … She feels like, what am I even doing here? Then we get a photo together and of course they won’t use that one. It’s all humiliating being the partner and she’s also not an extrovert. I’m always concerned that she’s not being put in a position where she just feels like a spare prick at a wedding. But we’ve been together for so long [the pair met in their teens], and I’ve done enough stuff now that the initial flush of “Oh my God, look at me go” has gone away and when it becomes more procedural – not that I’m ever not grateful and excited [for] a night like that – but when you’ve done it a few times and a red carpet is no longer the most exciting thing ever and you revert to your norm, and the norm is to go, “Right, what do I care about? Oh, Sarah is on her own.” So, it’s nice to be a bit older and not to be so tossed on the sea of fate. I feel a bit more in control of stuff now – and the way you do that is not get too swept up.

You Don’t Have To Have A Dream by Tim Minchin (Penguin Random House, $36.99) is out September 10, and available for pre-order now.

See the full shoot with Tim Minchin in the latest issue of Stellar and listen to him on the new episode of Something To Talk About now. For more from Stellar, click here.

Originally published as ‘Micro-ambitions’: Tim Minchin updates his famous nine rules for life