Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters (Getting Art Done Book 2)

by David Kadavy

when inevitable crises did arise.

On Mondays, I have fresh creative energy from a weekend away from work.

Tuesdays

I’m ready to explore the loose ends that showed

up in my Monday Generate session. My projects are ready for some more Preparation, done either in the Exp...

It turns out we are all bad at estimating how long things will take. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky coined this “the planning fallacy.”

Usually, the actual time it takes to complete the tasks you’ve planned will be much longer than what you’ve estimated.

calendar. I usually missed my estimates for one of three reasons: I was unprepared for the task, I got interrupted, or I was simply overly-optimistic.

You can draw a timeline on paper the next time you sit down to do some work.

Practice estimating time and you’ll be better at using your time – but when creativity matters, sticking to too strict a schedule will backfire.

The Four Stages of Creativity also influence how best to allocate my creative energy throughout the week. For larger projects, Monday mornings are good for the Illumination stage, because Mondays come after the weekend – which is a period of Incubation.

Here’s how my mental states fluctuate during the course of a typical week: Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Morning Generate Generate Generate, Research Generate, Research Generate, Administrate Afternoon Generate, Prioritize, Explore Research, Polish Research, Polish Research, Explore

Prefrontal Monday

“Prefrontal” refers to the prefrontal cortex – that “spoilsport” area of the brain that is responsible for urge suppression, planning, and long-term thinking. The prefrontal cortex is small, but it’s incredibly energy hungry.

If I need to spend a lot of energy in the Prioritize mental state, there’s no better day than Monday.

Choosing what you won’t do, so you can focus on

what you will do, is the job of an executive, and it’s also the job of the prefrontal cortex.

The main distinction between my Sunday weekly review and a Prefrontal Monday is that Prefrontal Mondays are strictly for evaluating my priorities in my business. My Sunday weekly review, however, is mostly concerned with my general schedule and life.

Here’s the checklist of items I follow for my weekly review: Process inboxes Review calendar Make dinner invitations Confirm appointments Review upcoming Plan workout Do @thisweek items Cut vegetables Organize supplements

To begin reviewing my calendar during my weekly review, I type out my schedule in a bullet-point list. I create bullets for each day of the week, sub-bullets for “day” and “night.” Under those sub-bullets, I then type out any events on my calendar.

As sub-bullets of the event, I then type out things I may need to do to prepare for that event.

“@thisweek” is the actual filename of the note in which I do my weekly review, such as my bullet-point calendar review.

Throughout the week, whenever something comes up that I need to address during my weekly review, I put it in my @thisweek note.

The items in my @thisweek note are often ongoing projects with a long time horizon. This allows me to treat these projects just as I would a creative project.

use this Passive Genius intentionally in our daily creative work.

I’m working on my most important creative project each morning. The rest of the day, and overnight as I sleep, that project is in Incubation – my Passive Genius is working on it.

Alternating Incubation Method. With this method, you can complete two projects in parallel, while harnessing the power of Incubation.

By alternating five-minute bursts on the two scripts, I can finish, in only twenty minutes, what might normally take an hour.

Not all projects are good candidates for the Alternating Incubation Method. The amount of Incubation you need in order to achieve a solution depends upon how hard it is to achieve that solution in the first place.

the ideas behind this book came from a week I spent in the Explore mental state. When I am between projects, I sometimes declare what I call a “Week of Want.”

The purpose of the Week of Want is to reconnect with the things you want to do.

there are special benefits to taking an entire week that’s dominated by the Explore mental state. The more time you spend away from goal-directed thinking, the more expansive your thinking gets. You get to ideas hiding way below the surface of your consciousness, that you wouldn’t get around to thinking about otherwise.

Additionally, those ideas get more space for Incubation. Instead of incubating only while you work on other things, those ideas from below the surface get to incubate during the course of several nights of sleep, all in a row.

“This insightful state of mind is very fragile, and it doesn’t take much to make it go away,” John told me. “It’s easier to get into an analytical state of mind than it is to get into a creative, insightful, state of mind. So if you can create this whole block of time for a week, it allows you to really sink into that state.”

Google’s 20% time was designed to prevent goal-directed activity from stifling innovation.

20% time was a way of keeping executive thinking from interfering with creative thinking.

Creative Systems are repeatable processes that help you bring creative works from idea through execution. By formalizing parts of the creative process and turning them into actionable steps, Creative Systems save mental energy. Through repetition, Creative Systems help you ship more work, and higher-quality work, in less time, and with less energy.

Creative Systems harness the power of Creative Cycles. Creative Cycles are the trips your creative works take through the Four Stages of Creativity. Creative Systems are the itinerary for taking those trips. When will you arrive at each destination, how long will you stay, and what mode of transportation will you take to get to the next destination? These questions are all answered by the Creative System.

The essential building block of Creative Systems is what I call the Minimum Creative Dose.

the Minimum Creative Dose is the smallest action you can take on a creative project to make progress on that project.

But your Passive Genius has nothing to work with – nothing to incubate – if you don’t first give it raw materials. This is where the Minimum Creative Dose comes in. The power of the Minimum Creative Dose highlights an important way that creative productivity differs from traditional productivity. It has to do with open loops.

Open loops are your enemy when it comes to traditional productivity. Open loops remind you to do things that you can’t currently do. But when it comes to creative productivity, open loops are a gift. Open loops give your Passive Genius something to work with. The way to get the most out of Incubation, with minimal conscious effort, is by using the Minimum Creative Dose.

The next time you have an idea for something – whether it’s a short story, a painting, or a song – give your Passive Genius the Minimum Creative Dose. Jot down just a few things, make a sketch, or hum a few bars into a recorder. Set a timer for two minutes if it helps. Then, forget about it. Go about whatever you were doing. Now, set a reminder. Remind yourself to revisit this idea the next day. Work on it again, just for a few minutes. It will be easier to make progress than it was the day before.

the Minimum Creative Dose is especially powerful when working on tough creative problems.

When you commit to working on a problem for only a couple minutes, it prevents – as I talked about in The Heart to Start – “Inflating the Investment.”

When you’re working on your toughest creative problems, that’s when you need Incubation the most. There are so many loose ends to consider, you’ll create a logjam if you try to power through the problem all at once. The Minimum Creative Dose helps you activate those loose ends. It helps you create open loops. As you go about your day, work on other projects, or even sleep, your subconscious is working with the Minimum Creative Dose you’ve given it. Additionally, having open loops on your creative projects opens you up to random source materials that you encounter throughout your day.

Once a creative problem is planted in your subconscious, you more easily notice the solution when you happen upon it.

Creative Systems are different from other processes, because Creative Systems also demand a respect for the Four Stages. So, building Creative Systems demands a different mindset toward batching.

Sloppy Operating Procedures are living documents. You approach them with the mindset that they are always changing – they are never done. So, they’re anything but “standard.”

have several to-do items for each intro script: one for writing the draft, another for revising the draft, a third one for finalizing the script, and a fourth for recording it. These items are strategically spaced out to allow for Incubation.