Mind Management, Not Time Management

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DQGLPSN

by kadavy • 6 years ago

4 1 6 years ago

kadavy• 6 years ago

I got the inspiration for this book when I started writing Design for Hackers 10 years ago (I got my book deal thanks to the HN community).

I couldn’t figure out why nothing I had learned about productivity had prepared me for writing a book. I was banging my head against the wall 12 hours a day just to get 15 minutes of flow.

The gist:

- People say “there’s only 24 hours in a day” as if you need to make use of those hours. What it really means is “time management” is like squeezing blood from a stone.

- We’re entering the Creative Age. You have to be creative to stay relevant in the robot apocalypse.

- We know from the work of neuroscientists John Konious and Mark Beeman that insightful thinking is unique. It’s promoted by a relaxed mood. It’s a fragile state: Hard to get into, easy to ruin.

- We each have “peak” and “off-peak” times of day. Counterintuitively it’s the off-peak times when you’re more creative. (If you’re groggy in the morning don’t ruin it with a cup of coffee).

- There are four stages to creativity: Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, Verification. Respect these stages and you won’t get blocked.

- You can work with natural cycles in the day, week, month, or year to go through the four stages. For example, you can use a night’s sleep as Incubation.

- Organize your tasks not by project but by mental state. I’ve identified seven mental states by which I organize my tasks: Prioritize, Explore, Research, Generate, Polish, Administrate, Recharge. (I personally prefer Todoist’s “labels” feature).

- Not all hours are equal. When I was working with behavioral scientist Dan Ariely on Timeful, we noticed there aren’t 24 hours in the day – there’s an hour here or there for various mental states.

- By harnessing cycles and working according to mental state, you can build systems that account for Incubation. For my podcast, tasks that used to be 1 grueling hour are now spaced into three five-minute bursts, with space for Incubation.

- In a chaotic world, you want your creative systems to be antifragile. Leave slack for chaos, and be ready to capture the opportunities chaos presents, for breakthrough ideas.

Mind Management, Not Time Management

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