Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters (Getting Art Done) Paperback – October 15, 2020

This is one of those books I will read again and again. And I'm DOING the book, not just reading it. It is not just information, but ways to renovate and restructure how we think about managing our lives to do the creative work better and with much less frustration. As David says, it is about managing our MINDS, not (just) our Time.As I practice this stuff, I can go back and get more to work on, and I keep making progress. You can read it and check another self improvement or productivity book off your list, but I think there is enough here that a lot of the other stuff out there fits with this and supports it; or, maybe better said, this book gives us a foundation to build on, taking anything and everything we might have already known to the next level, or even the level above that, if we DO what David has given us.The Four Stages of Creativity: Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, and Verification.Just knowing what these are is very helpful for people who create (pretty much all of us), but David helps us see that we can't just call up these on demand; our minds need to be in the right state for them. We can build our lives, or at least our work or creative lives, around respecting these four stages by understanding the Seven Mental States of Creative Work, and matching what stage we want to be in with our mental state, or use our mental state to pursue the appropriate stage."Even time management is valuable, up to a point. But mind management picks up where all these methods leave off. Time management optimizes the resource of time. Mind management optimizes the resource of creative energy." This is a promise of the book, and I believe it delivers, if we are willing to DO it.David Kadavy knows of many of the great books and tools for productivity out there. In fact, he has interviewed some of their creators on his podcast.I liked this book a lot, not only because he takes things like the wonderful Getting Things Done and Atomic Habits and Deep Work and recent neurobiology to the next level, but he also weaves the wisdom of great creators together with his own hard won lessons on what works and what doesn't.Jason Fried, Bill Gates, Stephen King, Steve Jobs, George Carlin, Elizabeth Bishop, Alice Walker, Marian Anderson, Maya Angelou, John Konious, Robert Levine, Meridith Monk, Lillian Hellman, Ari Meisel, David Rock, Seth Godin, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and David Allen, to name some of the people who are woven into this in big or little ways, not just as cute quotes on the margins, but as signposts along the way to a life where creativity increases and becomes easier because we learn to structure our lives around the way our mind works, rather than pounding ourselves into arbitrary industrialized notions of productivity and management and wasting a great deal of mental energy on distractions or trying to do something when we are not in the right mental state for it.The Seven Mental States of Creative Work: Starting with the ideas from Deep Work, but realizing there were different flavors, David has done the experimentation and verification in his own life, confirming what he was finding with other creators and teachers and scientists along the way, and given us the fruit, that we can apply in our own lives, experimenting and tweaking as he encourages us.Prioritize, Explore, Research, Generate, Polish, Administrate, and Recharge are the Seven Mental States.They are all necessary, and they are all different. They can be cultivated by environment and rhythms, but for each of us they are not all available all the time. Once we find out what these states are for us, and how they line up with the Four Stages of Creativity, we are well on our way to being both more creative and more at peace with how we are ordering our lives because a lot of the stress has been removed.A few of the other things David helps us with in this book: Creative Cycles, Creative Systems, our Creative Sweet Spot, nourishing our interior Passive Genius, and other useful tools and paragigms that all work together.Also, what happens when life throws you for a loop, and then another loop, and then you find out that those two loops were small compared to the next loop life throws you? David's been there, done that. All of the stuff in this book can go with you on that journey if you are willing to learn it and apply it. This is because you have learned to harness the power of your own mind, and work with it as you face whatever life throws at you.I don't usually write reviews. But I think this is an important book. You may need to do a little (or a lot) of your own thinking and experimenting to get all the benefits this book offers, but the meat (or, insert your favorite plant-based protein) is there, if you are willing to eat it and digest it.

A welcome insight that exposes the limitations and possible obsolescence of yet another industrial age artifact.

This is a very good book on a topic that I read and write about a lot. Well done and interesting takes on productivity. Very well presented stories to capture a concept. What a life!

Fantastic and practical way to navigate the creative journey.

Book about traveling, writing and podcasting. Really? The whole essence of the book can fit into 1-2 articles, everything else is empty chatter and uninformative stories. The author likes to talk about himself forgetting the essence of the book and at the same time boasts that he can write. I do not regret that I read it, but only because I did not come across such articles. And so 95% of the book does not contain useful information.

There are countless self-help and productivity books out there that focus on time management. Kadavy acknowledges them and even enlightens us to one of his favorites (David Allen's Getting Things Done). However, using our time well is only a part of the equation, the other part is ensuring that our minds are able to do their best work within that time, and that different creative activities require a variety of environmental optimizations.From the book:"This is my proposal to humanity to let go of the notion that we can squeeze more from our time. Instead, let's think about how to get more from our minds."Mind Management, Not Time Management continues to describe how to optimize the building block of creative thinking: the moment of insight. Kadavy explores the differences between insightful thinking and analytical thinking, and how to find your Creative Sweet Spot. The creative process is broken down into Four Stages of Creativity, and how we can make room for them.With Kadavy's principles, we can stop struggling to achieve solutions and start letting those solutions "come to us."The book continues by describing the Seven Mental States that move creative projects forward, and how to match your mental state to the task at hand. Finally, Kadavy explains how to leverage the power of Creative Cycles and how to develop Creative Systems that are repeatable and applicable to any of your current and future projects.Kadavy is not simply a self-proclaimed guru, he has developed these systems while building his career as a writer. From the struggles of earlier books to the inspiration he has found while escaping the brutal Winters of Chicago in the far-away climate of Columbia. A digital nomad, Kadavy is sharing the tools that have helped him churn out numerous books, podcast episodes, and other writings.I give this book 5 stars not only for the unique angle of the subject matter, but also for Kadavy's thorough exploration, systems development, and personal experience spread throughout. Highly recommended for any individual looking to maximize their creative output.