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

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Everyone has something to teach to those a few rungs down the ladder from them, and something to learn from folks a few rungs above them, too. David Kadavy, an independent creator, "knowledge worker," and host of the popular Love Your Work podcast, is someone many creators can learn from. Let's learn that mind management and time management are separate concepts that focus on different aspects of personal productivity and well-being. Time Management:

Focus: Mind management is about maintaining and improving one's mental and emotional well-being. It involves strategies for handling stress, emotions, and thoughts and maintaining a positive mindset.In today's world, it is important to manage your mind effectively. Time management is essential, but it's not the only thing that matters. To be truly productive, you need to be able to concentrate on your goals, stay motivated, and overcome challenges.

This was my Routine, yours might be different. You can work all night and sleep at day hours or make a different Routine that suits your lifestyle. Know How Your Mind An observation, if not quite a criticism, is that I could have used a little more "how to do" with the "what to do." For example, it's one thing to understand that one should monitor one's energy levels throughout the day to figure out the best times to execute on the various modes of creativity Kadavy describes. It's another to really understand what it is, exactly, one is measuring, and how to do so objectively... especially for those of us who don't have the luxury of living alone and setting up our own daily routines independent of others. Most of us don't have a windfall we can use to finance building a life in whatever our own optimal environment is.That takes you away from being able to create something that only you can create. I think that that generally pushes you in that direction. Again, I understand the motivation, especially if this isn't your full-time job. It's a great use of your resources to just do KU, don't even think about it and just get out of the cubicle first. You might've bought cryptocurrency or you might do some angel investments or little things that you could lose that 15% of your portfolio but that's all that you would lose. And if you made 15 bets out of that 15%, one of them might be explosive and go up 1,000X. Joanna: I have conflicting feelings on this because first of all, I completely get what you're talking about in that sometimes it doesn't matter how many hours you work on something. You just can't figure out what that character should be like or how that plot point should work.

What kind of mental state am I in right now? Am I in the mood for draft writing, outlining, researching, exploring, or polishing? (Throughout the process, I began to codify the different types of work required to produce my writing.) There's a lot of steps and frameworks like this in the book that anyone can use to maximize their productivity. ✍️ David: A day is better than nothing. Google was famous for having this 20% time that their engineers would use. 20% of their time they could spend on whatever they wanted to work on regardless of what their manager wanted them to work on and this is a common thing a lot of people do.

That's harder and harder to do with potential inflation. I'm not a financial adviser but things like gold and bonds and like things that aren't going to go down in value. And then the other 15% is these wild card things that have unlimited potential upside.

Love your prefrontal Cortex: Your prefrontal cortex is your brain’s “newest” part. Your prefrontal cortex is in charge of suppressing things like – prioritizing, planning, and urges. But your prefrontal cortex is small and needs a lot of energy. So when it’s tiring, it’s hard to think about what you’re doing right now. Therefore, relax to allow your prefrontal cortex to function well. The seven states of mind that we operate in are generate, prioritize, research, explore, administrate, polish, and recover. The man saw that the monk’s life was like that of ordinary people; he did not do any particular work. The only thing that surprised the man was that the sage used to wash the utensils every night before sleeping and did the same after waking up in the morning. This went on for some days. So depending upon the skill level that I have with this problem and the size of the insight that I'm looking for, that's how I manage the amount of space that I feel like I need to make a creative insight happen. In fact, the idea for this book, Mind Management, Not Time Management, came to me during a thing that I like to do once in a while called the week of wants.Yes, I have ideas during those times, but oftentimes it just happens to be after that. This is an interesting thing about time. The goal of mind management is to align your mental state with work that needs to be done, while also allowing your mind to do the work that it wants to do. Key Takeaways of Mind Management Productivity is less about time management than it is about mind management. We all have the same number of hours during the day. How effectively we spend those hours really depends upon how well we can manage and harness our fragile mental energy. The mind,” Seinfeld says, “is infinite in [its capacity for] wisdom. The brain is a stupid, little dog that is easily trained. Do not confuse the mind with the brain. The brain is so easy to master. You just have to confine it. You confine it…through repetition and systematization.” [2]