From Clock Time to Mind Time: A Conversation with David Kadavy | Ep. 053

Welcome to another enlightening episode of the MindHack Podcast! Today, we're thrilled to feature David Kadavy, a trailblazing author and designer who's challenging the way we think about creativity and productivity. David takes us on a transformative journey, sharing why he sold all his belongings and moved to Colombia to explore a groundbreaking concept: "Mind Management, Not Time Management."

In this episode, David delves deep into the neuroscience of creativity, explaining those all-too-familiar moments when we feel creatively blocked and how to break free. He introduces us to the concept of "event time," a way of thinking about time that's prevalent in Colombia and argues that it's more natural and conducive to creativity than our conventional "clock time."

David doesn't just share theories; he offers actionable advice, routines, and rituals that have not only worked for him but can also help you manage your mind for better productivity. This episode is a treasure trove of insights that could revolutionize your work life.

More on David Kadavy:
Website
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters (Getting Art Done Book 2)
Other books here

Books and other interesting mentions:
The Heart to Start by David Kadavy
Frederick Taylor | Scientific Management
Geography of Time by Robert Levine
Clock Time Versus Event Time by Tamar Avnet and Anne Laure Sellier
The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Address
Maya Angelou Quotes
Simon Sinek
How to Increase Motivation & Drive | Huberman Lab Podcast #12 | Andrew Huberman
The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain by John Kunios
Scubapro WetNotes Underwater Notebook

Transcript

David: 0:00

When it comes to being creative, being productive isn't so much about time management as it is about mind management, getting yourself into that state where the ideas are coming easily.

Cody: 0:24

Welcome to the Mindhack Podcast. Our guest today is David Kadavy, a renowned author, designer, and entrepreneur who has reshaped the landscape of creativity, productivity, and design. With a career spanning decades, David is celebrated for his best selling book, which also debuted in the top 20 on Amazon, Design for Hackers, Reverse Engineering Beauty, where he demystifies design principles for all. Having spoken in eight countries, including appearances in South by Southwest, TEDx, the New York Public Library, the Museum of Contemporary Art, David's influence extends far and wide. His writing has graced prestigious platforms such as Observer, Ink, Lifehacker, and more. In his latest book, Mind Management, Not Time Management, Productivity When Creativity Matters, David challenges norms, urging us to prioritize mental states and embrace the intricacies of the creative process. Join us as we delve into the mind of this visionary thinker, exploring David Kadavy's transformative journey and the invaluable wisdom he shares. Welcome David.

David: 1:28

so much for having me. It's an honor.

Cody: 1:31

So four years ago, you found yourself sitting on a hardwood floor and a Chicago apartment eating lunch from a takeout container with a plastic fork. You have no furniture, no plates, no silverware. Tell me about that.

David: 1:44

this point, that was about seven years ago. Yeah, it would have been in 2016. And I had sold all my things and decided to move to Colombia from Chicago. And so, you know, to actually... Get rid of all your things and, you get yourself to the airport. Well, you got to eat that last meal before you go to the airport while you still have all your, your suitcase and you're waiting for your lift driver to show up. And so there I was, somebody on, had just bought my last chair off Craigslist, maybe 20 minutes prior and, that was the start of a new adventure.

Cody: 2:24

what spawned this adventure?

David: 2:26

it starts even further back than that. When several years prior to that, I got my first book deal, and I was to write my first book designed for hackers. And I had plenty of experience working as a creative, as a designer. And I had very many times been through those. That feeling of being in a project where you're kind of are blocked and you don't really know what the next step is gonna be And it feels like you're never gonna figure it out. But then eventually you finally do figure it out So even though I had never written a book, I had never really written anything longer than a few thousand word blog post I took that opportunity to write that book which involved signing a Publishing contract and, receiving in advance and there being things in the contract saying, oh, you have to hit these deadlines and hit, hit these milestones. Otherwise, the whole thing is called off. Well, it turned out that that's, it's really hard to write a book. especially if you haven't written one before and that's where I really, confronted these moments of feeling very stuck and. I cleared away everything I could, I cleared up as much time as I possibly could, I fired my clients, I had some passive revenue on the side, so that was there to supplement my advance and, get me through writing the book financially, but what I found was I was just sort of banging my head against the wall 12 hours a day, but then, seemingly out of nowhere, I would suddenly be able to write. And within, like, 15 minutes, I would have an entire chapter draft finished. And so I was saying to myself, Well, why can't I just sit down for those 15 minutes and write, and then get on with the rest of my day? Now, I did manage to suffer through it, and I did manage to finish that book. But as I was doing it, I also started to dig into the creativity science and the neuroscience of creativity. to try to find out, where do these moments come from where the ideas are finally coming to you? Why does it take so much agony to, to get to that point? And I started to develop kind of a grab bag of routines and rituals that would get me to that point. And I started managing my energy instead of my time. and that is when I started to think that, maybe. When it comes to being creative, being productive isn't so much about time management as it is about mind management, getting yourself into that state where the ideas are coming easily. And, I later found after spending a couple months in Colombia a couple of times that I was really doing some of my best work. There that it was a place that, I could really get into a routine and it might be a good place for me to explore this idea of mind management, not time management, where I could, really kind of have a controlled life built entirely around creative output and see if I could formalize. what sort of patterns are there to get into that state where the ideas are coming easily and see if I could pull out, some ideas that other people could use who, uh, maybe don't move to South America just to design their entire life around creativity. And so that's, how that journey began.

Cody: 6:06

What were some of the creative ideas that you were able to come up with while you were there?

David: 6:11

well, I'm still in Colombia. It turned out, uh. It started as an experiment, but, turned into, into my home. but I think the main thing that people can take away, or if people want to get started with, managing their minds instead of their times, would be to first ask yourself on a regular basis, what's the state of mind that I'm in right now, or what's the mood that I'm in right now. And then if you really search yourself and ask. What work needs to be done right now that might fit that mental state? know, there's certain times when you are ready to sit down and write a marketing report. There might be other times where you want to do your finances. And there might be other times where you're ready to do some research for some project. Uh, that you're working on and you're not necessarily ready to, come up with the fully formed idea, or there might be other times where you just want to follow your curiosity. There's these different mental states that we inhabit, throughout our days in our life and work. And I think we just don't notice it because we. Are sort of programs to live according to the clock, to live according to how long does something take? When is a certain thing going to happen? I was surprised to learn that that's actually a pretty new idea. I would trace it back to the birth of scientific management with Frederick Taylor, who would stand there with a stopwatch and literally time the movements. Of various industrial workers, such as stacking bricks or moving, chunks of iron and then program them like robots. Okay, hold this in this way, bend in this way, this part should take this much time. This part should take that much time. And he was able to, really improve efficiency, improve productivity in that way. But we've sort of held on to that, before that was, in agrarian society, we weren't living by the clock so much. It was, there were different seasons, uh, based upon, you know, are we planting crops or are we, plowing the field or are we, um, harvesting and then, you would measure the productivity of your day by, well, how much, Land. Did you do that on between sunrise and sunset? It wasn't so much, Oh, I've got this meeting at this time. And I've got this other thing at this time. That's kind of like a, a new thing. And so I had to live according to, my mental state and. Look closely at what it was that I wanted to accomplish and what were the mental states that I embodied while doing that. And this is something that people listening can do, start with asking yourself, what's the mood I'm in right now? What work fits that mood and just continuously ask yourself that maybe at the end of the day, write down what was a time that I felt really aligned mentally with what I was doing. And then you can start to find certain patterns. for that sort of thing, for example, a lot of people are actually more suited to creative work in the morning. Now, this is partly because you're often groggy in the morning, maybe even before your coffee, and there's some interesting research that supports this, for example. Patients with prefrontal cortex damage, your prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that's, responsible for urge suppression planning. It's really the thing that separates us from other primates, and other animals in general is that we have that ability to. To plan ahead and to suppress our urges and such well, patients who have damage in that area are actually better at solving creative problems or in the lab. They make what's insight problems. They make little, puzzles that can be solved by connecting disparate ideas in your brain. none of us want prefrontal cortex damage if we can help it, but it does tell us something about. What it means to be creative such that, you know, first thing in the morning, if you're feeling a little groggy, your prefrontal cortex, your ability to plan and to, uh, suppress urges and such isn't, isn't really in its top state during that time of day. And so that's a good time to. Maybe brainstorm about things that you're working on or, or problems that you're thinking about. Now, very important part of what I just said is brainstorm. And one of the rules of brainstorming is, you know, no judgments. So you're not necessarily going to have good ideas. but some of those ideas are going to be good. Just give yourself a chance with that time. That's really golden time. If you happen to be one of these people who is a little groggy when they first wake up, to get, to do some of that thinking. And then later on, when you're feeling a little sharper. You can start to, polish that thinking or coal through those ideas. So that's just one of the main things that I started to design my life and my schedule around down here in Colombia.

Cody: 11:40

Yeah, and I think that's a fantastic concept of managing your energy, not your time. And that's very different from how I think. I think our society, particularly in the US views productivity, is that we worship productivity. We idolize those who are always productive. I, myself have had been, I, I've had this self-help or this. The productivity addiction ever since I was young and I had my first business as an entrepreneur And i've also seen that myself where I wanted to get validation from others And I have this concept that i'm going to work hard I'm going to show people that I can be successful and I can run a business And then you achieve that thing and then you kind of feel empty inside And i've seen that with so many other entrepreneurs who were super hard working. There is some core driver in them that causes them to want to work really, really hard. And that's also partly our society, is that we're in a society that, again, idolizes producing. And in your book, you mention this concept of productivity and this idea of producing. Can you, first of all, you can, you're welcome to comment on anything else I just

David: 12:47

Sure. I love to comment. First of all, on that whole, Sort of cultural programming to want to feel creative, because actually one of the things that I, that's been hard for me to deprogram myself of is this idea that for me to believe that I'm being productive, that I have to be seated upright or standing at a computer. and the more that I've experimented with this, the more I've realized. No, I that's actually counterproductive to be like that all the time. I now make sure that I'm using different tools Using my body in different ways throughout the day in ways that suit what it is, and I'm trying to accomplish So if I'm standing at this computer and I'm trying to say, uh, write, an article, it really depends what part of the article I'm in. It's generally not going to be the right tool, not going to be the right state, and I mean, body position for me to be in when I am trying to write that article. So. There might be a period of time where I'm sitting down with a whiteboard on my couch and I'm just writing kind of bullet point thoughts about what, what the article might be about. There might be another time where I'm laid back in my hammock and I'm reading, some source material that I'm going to be using in my research and I'm highlighting and, and trying to take in information and figure out, well, how am I going to use this research? In the article and then if I'm actually going to be writing the article, but not necessarily getting ready to publish it, writing a first draft, then I'll be in my recliner. I have an overbed table and I'll use my iPad with a keyboard. I've got a 5 year old iPad. i can't that easily Like go look up stuff on the Internet on it, but it keeps me focused on that task of just writing that draft. Then maybe when it's time to, like, put in some images and put the finishing touches on it and format it, then maybe. It's time for me to be on my computer. And, uh, as I've experimented with that, I've often found in myself that sort of feeling of anxiety, like, Oh, I need to really, I need to get productive today. And then when I realized, Oh, I actually am. being productive right now, just, it's not readily apparent what the output is going to be. I've started to relax in that way. Now, another important thing that I have noticed down here in Colombia is that they have a different way of thinking about time. And that's been great for me and great for... helping deprogram that, sometimes it drives me a little crazy, but, it's ultimately good for me and it, I think it makes me more creative and gives me better ideas. I'll give you an example, a very culture shock example. When I first got here, I remember meeting with a friend for coffee or trying to meet with a friend for coffee and we had to reschedule. See, it was like, say it was a Wednesday afternoon at 3 PM and they weren't able to make it, but they were able to make it the next Wednesday afternoon at 3 PM. Well, they said, well, let's do it in Ocho Diaz. I'm thinking, oh, okay, well, that's a weird way to, reschedule. But, I would just say next Thursday is what I would say. but no, they didn't mean next Thursday. They meant next Wednesday, even though it was Wednesday. And then I started to see this over and over again, where people would refer to one week as ocho días, which is eight days. Okay, now us... As North Americans, we think, well, that's just objectively wrong. A week is not eight days. It's seven rotations of the earth between now and when we're going to have coffee. What are you talking about? How could it be eight days? But obviously they're not wrong because everybody here agrees that a week is eight days. And I mean, it's hard to believe if you haven't lived in it, but a week is eight days here. And now I didn't realize, it just made no sense to me at all. By the way, two weeks is quince días, fifteen days. didn't make any sense to me at all, until I read this book by Robert Levine, who was this social psychologist who went around the world. It's called the Geography of Time. He went around the world researching people's attitudes about time. And he found, well, there's these two different ways of thinking about time. Main ways. Clock time. Versus event time now we know that we North Americans, we're on clock time. Okay. So when I say, yeah, a week from now, it's, that's a unit of time that is based upon the way that we count time. Seven rotations of the earth is going to be one week from now. If somebody asks us how many days it would be, we would say it was seven days. but when you think about it from an event time perspective, the Ocho Diaz thing, the Quince Diaz thing starts to make sense because today counts. Each day, it's not seven rotations of the earth. Each day is an event that takes place. And this event, this day is still taking place. And that's kind of mind blowing and hard to wrap your head around at first. And I've been living here for years and it maybe still hasn't totally sunk in. but that's, I mean, it's very clear that they do that. But by the way, when I said next Thursday. If I said next Thursday on a Wednesday in North America, we would mean not tomorrow, but the Thursday a week from tomorrow. But here, generally, if you say next Thursday, it's the next Thursday. It's literally like on the event, like our week is already over to us. But to them, the next Thursday is the next time it's Thursday tomorrow. and there's some interesting implications to this, Tamar Avnet and, Anne Laure Sellier did some research on clock time and event time, and they found that, people, first of all, people might be predisposed to being more event time people. Versus clock time people, you if you're an event time person, you want to, you look at a task as like an event, okay, this thing isn't over until I achieve a certain goal. If you're a clock time person, you're just kind of going by the clock, okay, well, we're not, we didn't really reach a conclusion in this meeting, but, I've got another meeting in five minutes, so I got to go and that's. That's clock time and first, first of all, some people will have a tendency to be one way or the other, but also some tasks are better suited for clock time and other tasks are better suited for event time. Like if you're thinking of an anniversary gift for your spouse, well, there's a deadline there. There's a clock time element there, but you want to get it right. You don't want to just go grab some random thing you want to. You want to actually think about what would make a good gift. but if I am flying on a airplane and I, uh, have a connecting flight, I hope that everybody working for the airline is on clock time. and so one of the things that they've found is that people who are on event time, whether that's because they're predisposed to it. Or because they can actually, do some sort of experimental things to put somebody in event time or clock time when somebody's in event time, they're more open to new opportunities. So like if you're in an event time and someone says, Oh, I, you just want a new trip, you just want a trip away, but you've got to go this weekend. If you're an event time person, you're a little more likely to say, well, Hey, you know, I had, I had, maybe I had, maybe you had something planned. Maybe you didn't cause you're an event time person. I'll go on the trip. That sounds like an exciting opportunity. I'm going to do it. If you're a clock time person, you're probably more likely to say, well, I'm busy. Sounds great, but I can't make it. Well, this is important when it comes to doing creative work, because if you haven't noticed, uh, You can't always plan when the great ideas are going to come to you, which is what I experienced when I wrote that first book, 12 hours a day, banging my head against the wall, somewhere in that, in that 12 hours, there's going to be 15 minutes where the ideas are coming to me. I don't necessarily know, or certainly didn't upfront know when that was going to happen, or, you know, you always have like the best idea for a Halloween costume. Like on November 1st, it's never, or you always have the best ideas for, uh, gifts for the holidays, like right after the holidays or right after somebody's birthday, it never seems to come at the time that, you want them to. and so when you are trying to be creative, you have to be open to. These new sort of opportunities that come at you, things that you don't expect that sometimes result in great ideas, but if you're on clock time, if you're always thinking about how long is this task going to take me and what's the next next task and when does all this have to be done, you're not quite so open, to be able to, um, Be open to what things are there to give you the ideas that you crave.

Cody: 23:00

brilliant. I can see the difference from this productivity task perspective in that when we're on event time where we're just okay spending time on the thing. And that allows us to be more present with the thing that we're doing, and also to be more open to other opportunities or ideas, whereas in this clock time kind of mindset, we're just focused on accomplishing the goal of on getting the thing done, and we can't allow ourselves to feel good. Until we complete that task or that objective or that milestone, whereas in this event time, it allows us to kind of feel this, perhaps the sense of satisfaction of like, you know what I'm, I did okay today. I was productive, you know, even though I didn't accomplish anything substantive, I was able to think about that thing. And sometimes Just thinking about an idea is the most important thing because we end up just having this cycle of busyness and I've seen a lot of hard working people, but it doesn't mean that the harder you work the more successful you are It's the ones who have a plan and are able to think and be aware and be present and also To not stress themselves out over trying to complete tasks all the time because that's certainly not the objective For in life,

David: 24:17

Yeah. If you're going to be innovative, you really have to be open to these types of things because that's part of being innovative is that you don't know that you don't know how long something's going to take. You don't know what you're going to find. there's this great quote by Jeff Bezos, basically saying, if you're going to be, if you're going to invent. You're going to fail. and so let's say you wanted to sit, you've, you've heard about this AI thing and you want to sit down and, and, uh, figure it out. Well, you can't really go into that thinking having a clear cut. Here's what I'm going to find. And here's what I'm going to come up with. You have to tinker with it and To do that, you have to make the space to really play around and see what comes of it. I love that, um, the iPhone the touchscreen that, became the, the iPhone interface that didn't come out of trying to develop a phone. It came from like this interface group that was just experimenting with different types of interfaces. And then it morphed into, well, we could make a tablet out of this and. That was gonna be the iPad, but then the iPad had to get put on hold, because it later was decided, oh, we can use this touch interface thing on the iPhone. And so it's this circuitous route that things go through and you can't be too attached to some kind of outcome when the task at hand is really. Exploring and figuring out what kind of outcome you even want.

Cody: 25:53

Now, I know that you mentioned this concept of waiting for this idea or desire or motivation to do this thing. And then that might be the strike of motivation and you try and rush into it. And even if you're only able to be motivated for that 15 minutes that you have the awareness to see, Hey, I feel like doing this thing and I'm going to go and do it. And that seems counter to. Other writers in the past, like Ernest Hemingway or Stephen Pressfield, who talks about the resistance, I think Ernest had this, this idea where he would sit down and he would force himself to sit down out of his chair. And the way he got himself to do that is he told himself that he didn't have to write. But he couldn't do anything else. And it's only by having the discipline to sit down and face the resistance and that pushback because writing is never an easy process, as I'm sure you know. And so, I'm curious about this perspective of kind of sitting down and forcing yourself to write even when you're not feeling creative or in that mindset because that could be a different way of doing something, of having that routine and perhaps some might work better with that

David: 27:00

an interesting question and I'm not, uh, I don't think necessarily that one is better than the other. I used to really be a person who, I'd only write when I was inspired. And every once in a while I'd get inspired and I'd write and sometimes those things would, turn out to be quite good. And then the last several years I've written more on a schedule where, okay, here's a time. When I write and I would time it according to, you know, when I felt I had the creative energy for it and also before other stuff, in my day got in the way and, uh, sometimes things come out of that that you didn't expect, but that can also be eventually get stifling as well, but I don't think it's necessarily incompatible with working according to your energy. because aside from one thinking about what mood you're in right now and matching that to some sort of task. there can also be times where you deliberately put yourself in some kind of mood and that can really, uh, you know, how does that really happen? And it could be as simple as just deciding that, okay, now I'm in the mood to write, whether I like it or not, I've, I've set up this habit. and now I'm doing it now. There's, there's certain ways, maybe that you can condition yourself to, uh, get into some sort of state. I love this idea from, the art of learning. Josh Waitzkin talks about coaching some executive who, felt very distracted during his meetings and. Waitzkin asked him, well, when do you feel the way that you would like to feel in your meetings? And he said, well, when I'm playing catch with my son. He said, okay, well, I want you to play catch with your son, before your next meeting, play catch with your son, and then, um, do this series of stretches, listen to this song, eat this snack, and then go to your meeting. And try to maintain that mental state all the way into your meeting. And now through repetition, though, he was able to start removing pieces of that thing where he didn't have to play catch with his son right before the meeting, which isn't always the most convenient thing. but he was able to just think of the song and then he would put himself into that state. And that's one of the great things about habits and routines. Is that you kind of just sort of train yourself. Uh, it's like, um, well, I think there's a Seinfeld quote. I'm probably going to butcher this, but he was saying that, uh, you know, the, the mind is infinite in wisdom, but, uh. don't know. It's just basically that just you're, you're a stupid little dog. You can just teach yourself how to sit down and do the writing. if you, you know, do it over and over again, you can get yourself into that stage. I think it's worth playing a little bit with, with both ways. I think you do get a lot of output by having some sort of routine. It takes away a lot of the indecision out of it for writing is fantastic. I mean, there's just an endless list of writers who write that way and not a ton who just kind of write, wrote whenever they felt like it. but you have to, they're both tools.

Cody: 30:20

basically what you're saying is also having a ritual right is that when you have or in this is something that a lot of sports athletes have that they put their hat on or they they do some weird movement before they swing the bat or they throw the ball all the pictures seem to have some kind of ritual. And it's this association between doing this thing and then having the right mindset that you're going to have a chance at winning. And it's weird how we create these associations. And I think there's this concept that you can apply that to even productivity or work is to put yourself in that mindset. And I know James Clear who talked about the idea of habit stacking is that we all have all have these core habits throughout our day. And so it's easier to associate a habit or a new habit they were trying to form with one of these solid, more foundational habits, like having lunch, for example, is maybe you want to meditate. Maybe you decide to meditate before lunch. And so there is that concept of habits and routines that. Do you seem to help if we're having willpower concerns of being able to do the thing? Because I guess there's always going to be some things that we don't want to do but that actually brings me to this this concept of writing and so You've written a few books and you've achieved some level of success with writing and that's a difficult thing I think for a lot of people especially when you don't even have a book and you don't have the audience to give you feedback Or even know if anybody's going to want to read the book How were you able to either find that motivation, where did that creative energy come from? Was it like a fire inside of you that decided that this is the thing that is important to me, I'm going to write it. How did you find that intrinsic motivation?

David: 31:58

Well, it certainly started as a fire where I was starting a blog in 2004 in Nebraska and everybody in my life is like, why are you doing that? Is somebody paying you? No. Why would you do that? They didn't they didn't get it. I think I couldn't give them a straight answer either I just was compelled to create but you know, it took another six years or so before I Wrote some blog posts that were popular and a couple publishers reached out to me and said hey Would you like to write a book about this and I'm glad that they did practically I could have just kept going and kept writing about that stuff and built a bigger audience that way. And, self published a book and sold it that way. but the honest truth is I wouldn't have had the self confidence to do that. At that point in time in my life. And so it was their vote of confidence to have the vision of me as, um, not just some guy playing around on his blog, but actually an author that they wanted to put some money behind and, release a book and see how it, how it does, and to assign me an editor who is really more of a project manager and. And to have that, contract there and, you know, have to tell your friends and family that you got a book deal. And, besides just returning the money, how humiliating would it be to also, to tell them all that it fell through and you didn't, you didn't do it. and so that was like a, a really tough project to get through. I had set up everything for something like that. I wasn't quite sure what it was. I left Silicon Valley in 2008. I had job offers, to work as a designer for various companies, recruiters contacting me and stuff. But I just left and I went to Chicago and I didn't have a plan other than, well, I'm just going to get myself a relatively cheap apartment. And experiment, and so it was a couple of years of experimentation before that book deal came, and I did kind of have things in place. I wasn't sure what I was making the space for, but I was making the space for something. around that time, if there was something that did give me the confidence, did give me the faith that I would find something, um, through my explorations, it was the Steve Jobs Stanford commencement address, which hopefully a lot of your listeners have already seen where he's basically saying, you just follow your curiosity because it already knows, what you want to become and you can't connect the dots moving forward. You can only connect them in reverse. It's like we were talking about this process of innovation. you don't always know what you're going to find, but you might have an inkling that there's something. And for me, that inkling was. Maybe just not feeling like it was a fit for me to be working, in a job. so I did get that wonderful opportunity to write that first book and it was a Disappear for six months, lock yourself in your apartment. Pretty unhealthy, really. Way to go about things in the short or in the long term, very unhealthy in the short term. It was, you know, I was relatively young. I was 31 and I didn't have a lot of obligations. So I made the space for it and just told myself, get through this and your life will hopefully be different. And that was correct. you know, I probably could have written a better book if. I had more space and time and maybe was a little happier even at that period of time, but I did it. And that, changed everything. And so now when I write a book, I take a lot more time and I give it a lot more revisions and try to just keep making the best book that I can. There's always this, what I call the finisher's paradox. Which is that by the time you get to the end of any project that is a project of Characteristics and scale that you haven't yet Completed before by the time you get to the end of that project. You will have learned and so whatever you've come up with you can already see what's wrong with it and aside from you can't just start over because you'll never be done and the process will repeat itself. So you can't ship anything without some part of you saying that this sucks, like you're doing the best you, I love that Maya Angelou quote, do the best you can until you know better than when you know better, do better, which is a slight contradiction because you know better when you're putting it out there like but it is as good as you can do right now. And so it's just. The way that I've approached it is trying to just get a little bit better every day. I know that when I first got that book deal, I had a friend who I knew one author and I uh, talked to him and he was like, do not do this. This is going to be the most work you've ever done in your life for so little money. And if you don't already have some kind of business that the book is going to help you grow, it's a complete waste of time. And, I listened to that, but I said, you know, I kind of don't care. This is going to be my first book and maybe 10 years from now, I'll be, you know, I'll write a good book or a better book, or I'll just keep doing it. Maybe 10 years from now, I'll have the hang of this. Now it's 13 years. since then, and I'm getting the hang of it. I'm a lot better than I was then. Can still be a lot better and you know, hopefully a little more success comes along with that But for now, I'm making enough to get by in uh Colombia and I'm getting paid enough to keep making things and so that's where I find the motivation I think is just The joy of doing what I do. the motivation has to change over time I think I've heard other authors say that I think it was Simon Sinek was saying that when he was talking with Seth Godin on some Facebook live. They're like, I just noticed that every book I write, like I've got to find a different source of motivation. I think that's true. It's got to be where you are now.

Cody: 39:14

I think I've also had people that would say similar things like this is not going to work out, you're going to fail. And that only empowers me. It was recently on an episode of Andrew Huberman, where he mentioned, it was on an episode of Motivation, and he actually mentioned that that is one way to motivate yourself, is find somebody who doesn't believe in you, thinks you're gonna fail, and you will find this urge of motivation to prove them wrong.

David: 39:38

That's, yes, that's actually, I wrote about that in The Heart to Start. I call it that which pulls you through, and that was certainly something that was there when I wrote my first book. You know, I didn't have, like, I certainly didn't have family who had any idea what I was doing. It was sort of weird to them. they weren't, In creative fields. Nobody in my family had started a thing before from zero, It was a fixed mindset type of upbringing. and so there wasn't a frame of reference for them to understand that. And, maybe there were other people in my life that, uh, doubted me, uh, either explicitly or, or I made it up in my head and, Both of those work really, just make up somebody in your head that doubts you. And if, if that's what pulls you through, that's what pulls you through. I don't, I don't think that's like, not the longterm strategy that I would want, but at some point there's different motivations for different points in your careers, I think.

Cody: 40:43

Yeah, that's true. and you seem to think a lot about creativity, and I think we, in some ways we idolize productivity, but I think we should idolize creativity because that is really truly where at least the person who has that creative output, whether you're producing a song or you're making a video, there's a certain creative component to it and you're trying to tweak and optimize and make it better. And there is this, this intrinsic motivation that you can feel just as a function of trying to be creative. And I think perhaps that's because we feel a sense of ownership over a thing. Whereas when you're just doing email, you're just, you're responding to other people's tasks and obligations and not your own. How can we utilize this idea of creativity, in our day to day lives?

David: 41:35

Yeah, I'm thinking about this idea of how, how enjoyable it is to be creative, you know, part of it, I think it's just associative thinking, uh, there's research that suggests that it improves mood and also being in a good mood makes you better at associative thinking. it's enjoyable to be creative. and to your point about whether we value creativity or productivity, I think more and more, we need to value, creativity, or more and more creativity is where value comes from. It takes the same amount of productivity to write a good novel as a bad one. You have to hit the same number of keys, you and you have to lay down the same number of words. And one of those novels could sell really, really well, and one of those novels could sell really, really poorly. And while, yeah, William Goldman said nobody knows anything, and you can't really tell what's gonna be a hit, there's also a lot of evidence that, you can at least, you can have some idea that something's gonna do at least okay. Versus a complete flop nonsense novel that, that makes no sense. and I think this is going to be more and more important as we have AI and automation doing a lot of our drudgery for us. So it's doing some of our creative tasks for us and it's impressive. to me, it's more impressive in the way that a talking dog is impressive. I haven't yet seen anything that really made me feel like. Oh, that's better than a human could do. Part of what is impressive about what AI does is that a computer did it. And maybe it'll change, who knows? It could be a, it could be a really long ways off. but if computers are doing our drudgery for us, then it's the quality of your ideas that, that matter. And I think like a really basic way of putting that into practice is to think of, uh, what Naval Ravikant said of. of Warren Buffett that he spends a year thinking and a day acting a year thinking about, what's the decision he's going to make, what's the company he's going to invest in. And then it takes him a day to buy the company. It probably takes him longer than a day to buy a company, honestly. But I mean, it's the quality of your decisions. It's the quality of your thinking and think about in whatever work you do, what is the difference in value between a quality decision? And a poor decision. Now, it might sound like I'm sort of conflating creativity and decision making, but I find them to be really similar overlapping things. Uh, they both involve, multivariate systems where doing things in one way is going to affect this other thing. And then that other thing is going to affect some other thing. And there's not really just like a straightforward, here's the answer. I find those to be very cognitively similar ideas. Like if it's, you're planning a trip and you're figuring out, I need to see these different sites and I have this much budget. And it needs to be on these dates, but if I do, if I go to this place first, then I won't be able to do that. But if I go to that place first, then I won't be able to do this, et cetera. And then after messing with it long enough, all of a sudden, you have this idea where it, where suddenly you find a solution that, okay, this makes sense. I know that this is the best I can do. it takes a long time to get to that. and I guess so, so is the question more about how do we, well, how do we be creative or how do we value, get ourselves to value creativity more?

Cody: 45:40

Yeah, I think it's, it is that concept of valuing creativity because we tend to idolize product productivity a lot more. And we have this association of being productive in order to feel happy that we had a good day and that we have a good life. And rather, there's, if you, there's like the, you know, the whole chopping, you know, spend eight hours sharpening the axe and then, you know, one hour chopping the tree down. And it's a age old, adage, this concept of thinking more before we act. And yet it's still difficult to actually put that into but

David: 46:14

it's hard to get to the end of a day during which all you did was sharpen the axe and say to yourself, that was a worthwhile day. Is that right? I earned my place on earth today by sharpening that Axe. that I feel takes time and you need to build your vision muscle, because one big skill of making things is just the act of making things, whatever the domain. So there's domain specific skills in anything you do, whether it's. Writing or recording a podcast or developing, an app, developing, a product there's domain specific skills, but then there's also like general shipping skills, having a vision, thinking through the steps that will take to achieve that vision. Making some kind of prediction about what might go wrong, what might not go as planned, how will things go, and then executing on that plan and then reacting when things don't necessarily go as planned and they never seem to, and then putting that thing in the world, knowing that it could be better, and then Sort of collecting the response and see what you can, what you learned so that you can, do it all again. I think it's, that's a skill that is often overlooked. Like it's easy to see that if you've never picked up a golf club, you're not going to go challenge Tiger Woods. And come anywhere near beating him, or if you've never touched a basketball, you know, LeBron James, Michael Jordan, whatever, like that's easy to see, but it's very easy to say, Hey, I'm starting a company and, you know, go to the cafe with your laptop and kind of do things. who can tell the difference? it's not that easy to see the difference. But if you actually look at that as its own skill, what are things I've done... Where I have had some sort of creative vision and then tried to achieve that vision and given it a shot and put it in the world and given it a chance to succeed or fail. That's its own skill. Shipping is a skill. It's its own separate skill that needs to be practiced and that doesn't necessarily have to be practiced on huge projects. So for myself, I found at some point that I was starting a lot of projects and not finishing them. when I was first on my own and that's when I started to, I, I encountered a friend who was very good at starting projects and finishing them. Just like plan this amazing Thanksgiving, on a vineyard and like all the food was all prepared. So I'm like, how did you do that? Well, I had spreadsheets and all this stuff like, wow, that's a level of forethought and planning I've never seen before or hadn't seen before. At that point in my life, I would like to be like that. Well, how do I get more like that? We're going to have a vision. Way in advance, put together some sort of plan and execute that vision. Start small. I'm like, there's these little projects all over your life, whether it's like planning a date, what's the sort of mood that you want to create? What's the, the right venue for that? What's the right date and time, et cetera. Planning a party. Who do you want to invite? How are you going to make it, uh, how are you going to make sure that they actually say that they want to go, who are the, who do you want to invite first? How are you going to build up social proofs that other people see on the invite that like, if they don't know you super well, that they're not going to like show up and it's gonna be one of those awkward things, or a recipe you look at a recipe on some website. And, you know, for me starting out, it was like, I could hardly make a recipe. I would like look at a recipe and be like, okay, I need these ingredients and like write them down and I would go to the grocery store and I'd buy those ingredients and I'd come back and I'd start cooking and be like. Oh crap, I forgot this other thing. I mean, it's right there on the, on the recipe, but for somehow I forgot it. Okay. Well, fortunately I lived around the corner from a grocery store. So I would go get it. And just practicing that over and over again of any size of creative vision, having it, making a plan, executing it way too often. We just dream way too big. It's great to dream big, dream big, but we dream like way beyond our abilities. Very often, I like to say, like, if you're doing some project and you're kind of unsure about whether you're procrastinating on it or not, just ask yourself, have I ever done something very similar to this, but slightly smaller from vision to execution? Have I? If you haven't, then what you're calling research is probably just resistance. And so it just has, it's its own separate skill that you have to, that you have to work on. It's your own muscle that you have to build.

Cody: 51:43

a lot of people tend to be creative when they're in their shower. And I think that's because we have this lack of external stimuli that is distracting us or trying to alleviate that sense of boredom. do you set time aside to be creative? how do you find this creativity,

David: 51:59

you're absolutely right. We are, we tend to be more creative in the shower. I've spoken with a neuroscientist, specializing in creativity on my podcast, episode eight, John Kunios. He talks about this very thing. He was basically saying, That, uh, a few things are going on. One is, it's a, there's no stimuli around you. You're, you're just doing this one thing. You're not trying to create something. So, you're in somewhat of a relaxed state, plus you have warm water. and so that puts you in a relaxed state. letting water run all over your head and your body and all this stuff. and then there's the white noise, which, can also enhance creativity. It's, it's a lack of stimuli that might interrupt you. And then we tend to have these ideas in the shower. Uh, we tend to have them sometimes, as we're falling asleep. one, I think it needs to be, you need to ABC, you need to always be capturing. So I have, a little pad with pencil that I keep in my shower. they're called. I don't know if they're called wet notes. They're on, on Amazon and it's a little pencil and a special type of paper that you can write in the shower. And so if you have an idea, you need to be ready to capture it. You know, keep something by your bedside. If you have an idea, if there's some place where you tend to have ideas, just like always have a place where you can just capture the idea, just jot down the general thing. And then move on, you don't have to like go, go full force on it. so I, I think that's, the main thing, but, also try to see if you can recreate that. for me, I definitely do set aside that time. First thing in the morning is sacred time. That from a creative standpoint, for me, that first hour in the morning is several times more valuable than. An hour in the afternoon when it comes to coming up with ideas. So not all times created equal. We intuitively kind of know that, like we don't make schedule our meetings at 2 a. m. If we can help it. but is there, are there other pockets of time during the day that are better for certain types of things for a lot of people that's going to be in the morning? And that's the time where they can have those. open minded ideas and you know, it might, you might not come away from that feeling the first couple of times, like, Ooh, I earned my place in the world today, sharpening that ax, but through repetition, you'll be surprised how those things sort of creep into your day. Not even just necessarily the ideas that you had during that session, but you might just find yourself being more creative during other times of your day, just because you've, carved that neural pathway. Of thinking outside of the box.

Cody: 54:49

repetition and a little bit of belief in yourself and a little bit of discipline and a little bit of awareness.

David: 54:58

belief in yourself, I think is an important point as well. this is a reason why I encourage people to have two different notebooks. depending on where you are and what you need. Help with where you need growth. I think it's very useful if you're not somebody who's gotten in the habit of writing down your ideas, get yourself a nice notebook with a nice pen and go to a cafe with just that notebook and just think about everything. Do a brain dump. Don't be afraid. You're not going to break the paper that is there to teach you that your ideas have value. You know, you invest in like a nice notebook for whatever your budget is. And then you invest in a nice pen and it's a nice sensual experience to write on nice paper with a nice pen. So that's one notebook. Now the other notebook... It's just crappy paper, just a simple ballpoint pen. James Altucher advocates for buying like these, waiter pads that waiters use to take orders that you can buy a huge box of them on Amazon. I don't go that low quality, but, you know, have like a low quality. One, and, and that's, it's a little bit more freeing sometimes to write in that. So the first notebook is to teach you that your ideas have value, and then the second notebook is to teach you that, you know, ideas are a dime a dozen and, it helps you get your juices flowing.

Cody: 56:31

I love all the ideas, the concepts this is all presumably most of it's in your book, mind management, not time management.

David: 56:38

it is, a lot of it will be in my next book whenever that happens, but those are ideas I'm thinking about, but, yes, a lot of what we talked about today is in my book, mind management, not time management. and, it's doing pretty well,

Cody: 56:49

it's been an absolute pleasure to have you, David. Thank you for being on the podcast.

David: 56:53

Cody. Thank you so much.