Mind Management, Not Time Management for Productivity When Creativity Matters with David Kadavy

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like The Product Boss. Today, we'll be breaking down mind management, not time management for productivity when creativity matters. To drop these value bombs, I brought David Kadavy into EO Fire Studios. David is the author of Mind Management, not Time Management. He's the former design and productivity advisor to Timeful, a productivity app bought by Google and integrated into Google Calendar. In today's foundation, we will talk about time management, the limitations of it, the four stages of creativity, and so much more.

0:45And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to David and our sponsors. Hustle and Flowchart, hosted by Joe Feer, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Join Joe as he discusses systems, mindset tweaks, reframes, and strategies to help you build a business that gives you freedom and fuel for your life. A recent episode on using AI for effortless content creation is a must listen. Listen to Hustle and Flowchart wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world.

1:17And four-time TEDx speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions. David, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Oh, hello, Fire Nation. It is awesome to be here. Thanks so much for having me again, John. Yeah. I don't think that you need to be filling all moments of every day with activity. I think that we're always trying to fill our days with things that will fit some idea of being productive.

2:00We're in meetings, we're answering emails, we're putting out fires. And this kind of keeps us feeling like we're doing something. And if we're doing something, we must be moving towards success, right? I think James Clear said it well. He said there's a difference between motion and action. And we often spend a lot of our days in motion, but not necessarily action. And we're in this hyper-connected world. There's all these tools that do most of the work for us. So I think that it's increasingly our ideas that lead to success. more than just simply doing a lot of things. And so what that means is that moving towards success doesn't always look like what we think of as being productive.

2:41You know, sometimes it's laying on the couch, brainstorming some notes on our phone, or sometimes it's just lying in a hammock, spacing out and looking at the clouds. So execution matters, yes, but ideas are mattering more and more. And we tend to think of successful people as being super busy, as always having some activity going on, but ideas that are going to lead to success just don't happen that way. Fire Nation, I actually love this topic. And one thing that I dive into is there's a huge difference between being quote unquote busy, which a lot of people are running around in circles all day, and being productive.

3:18Are you producing the right content? Are you producing the right environment to come up with the right ideas for your business, for your life. Now, we're talking today about a really cool topic, mind management, not time management. So what are the benefits of having good time management specifically? Let's start there. The benefits of having good time management? Well, I think that it's a foundational way to be productive, to be thinking about your time and the way that you're going to use that time. But you start to hit the point of diminishing returns pretty quickly. And that's what I want to dive into next, because again, we're talking mostly today, Fire Nation, about the focus around mind management.

4:06So what are the limitations of time management? The basic promise of time management is this idea that if you put in more time to something, that you're going to get a certain unit of extra output from that. It's left over from the scientific management movement from the 1800s, where Frederick Taylor would literally sit there with a stopwatch next to a guy that was stacking bricks and actually time every movement that that person was doing and then say, well, you should do it exactly this way. And he increased productivity that way. But we've held on to those relics through the age of knowledge workers and into our age now, which I don't even know if knowledge work would be the proper way to say what a lot of us are doing.

4:58and it doesn't really work that way anymore. We're still working on this paradigm of time management, a lot of us, but it's not so much how much stuff can you output in a certain amount of time. How long does it take to type a novel? You could do it in several hours. Now, how long does it take to write a good novel? Anybody who's been through NaNoWriMo or read some of the novels that were written in NaNoWriMo will know that like even with a month, it's pretty hard to write a decent novel. And so what is important increasingly is being able to get into that right mental state to have those ideas that are actually worth executing.

5:42And you can only do so much of that with time management. You often hear this phrase, there's only 24 hours in a day. And I suppose that the takeaway of that is supposed to be, well, you should use your time really wisely, and you should. But another takeaway from that should be that, well, if you only have 24 hours in a day, there's a limit to just how much extra productivity you can squeeze out of that. There's just a limit to how much extra things you can squeeze into your time. Eventually, you are just squeezing blood from a stone. Fire Nation, I love that visual, squeezing blood from a stone, because you can visualize that just not happening.

6:20So I love how we're breaking down this mind management versus time management, whole productivity topic and focus. And that kind of leads me to the four stages of creativity, something that you birthed, David. So let's talk about the first two stages now. I think that what we're all looking for when we are trying to solve creative problems is we're looking for that aha moment. We're looking for that light bulb moment. We're looking for that insight. We're looking to get unstuck, to have the breakthrough idea. And this is why it's important to understand that there are stages to creativity. And this is something that we've actually known or creativity scientists have actually known for over 100 years, but it doesn't really get applied that well.

7:09And we're often going for that insight, which happens to be associated with the third stage of creativity, which is illumination. And illumination is that aha moment. It is the light bulb. It is when suddenly you gain clarity. And when I say creative projects, it doesn't have to be like, oh, you're doing a painting or something like that. Something like even planning a trip can be a creative project. It's multivariate. There are trade-offs. there's not always the right answer to it. And it's really hard to reach clarity on those things. But if you first address the first stage of creativity, which is preparation, that is the getting familiar with the problem at hand.

7:57That is learning everything about the problem space and what it is that you'd like to accomplish. And it's only after you do that that you can sort of set everything in place for that illumination, that aha moment to happen. Let's dive into that second stage. Yeah, well, that second stage is incredibly important because we have to have that preparation and we're going for that illumination. But in between those, we need to have some incubation. And this is why a lot of people, what they notice is, I have all these great ideas when I'm in the shower. I have all these great ideas when I'm about to fall asleep.

8:40I have all these great ideas when I wake up in the morning. That's because some incubation has occurred. That is some time spent away from the problem, not immersed in trying to figure it out. It allows some of that information to move from your working memory to your long-term memory, and it allows you to rejuvenate. It allows you to have some energy again so that you can try to address the problem with everything that you've learned. And so that incubation is incredibly important to get from that first stage of preparation to that third stage of illumination. Fire Nation, Dave is dropping value bombs around mind management.

9:26And if you think that we're even close to done, you've got another think coming. Kick back, relax. We'll be right back as soon as we thank our sponsors. The amount of software required to run a growing business can be daunting. And how do you even know if you're using the right tools? There's help desk software, payment software, email marketing tools, blogging tools, SEO tools. Well, I've got some great news for you, Fire Nation. You don't need more tools to get more out of your business. You just need HubSpot. Their all-on-one customer platform is a dream come true for every member of your team.

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10:31Visit HubSpot.com to grow better today. Do you have a message inside that you know is meant to be shared with the world? Giving a TEDx talk is one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world and Thought Leader can help you get there. Thought Leader is a speaker coaching company that has helped over 550 and counting coaches, speakers, entrepreneurs, authors, and experts land TEDxTalks. Thought Leader is not affiliated with TED or TEDx, but they're able to get these results because their founder, Taylor Conroy, is a four-time TEDx speaker himself and past EO Fire guest. You might be thinking a TEDxTalk sounds great, but where do you start?

11:06Taylor has put together a free training that's going to teach you how to land a TEDxTalk in as little as 90 days. Join Taylor to learn exactly what TEDx organizers are looking for in their speakers, how to write a talk that goes viral once it goes online, and more. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire. Join Taylor for this free training and get your message out of your head, out of your heart, and out into the world where it belongs. That's thought-leader.com slash fire. All right, David, we are back, and we talked about the first three stages of creativity. So quickly run through those three stages and then let's dive into number four.

11:44One, preparation. Two, incubation. That's the getting away from the problem. Three is that illumination, the aha moment. And then there's the fourth stage, the verification. That is looking at the ideas that you've had and trying to see if it actually works with the limitations that you have with what you're trying to accomplish. And so So it is amazing once you understand that there are these four stages of creativity, how much easier it is to actually address big, hairy, creative problems that you're trying to solve. Because if you aren't just trying to drive ahead to that illumination and you take the time to do that preparation and then you step back and allow that incubation to happen, what you end up with is you are able to have much better and more effective ideas while putting in a lot less time invested.

12:45And then, of course, you do that verification to make sure that it actually fits with your needs. Fire Nation, we just went through the four stages of creativity. And David, I want to dive into the fact that you actually believe that time management stifles this creativity that we're trying to create. Can you share some examples around this? So actually, I'm talking to you from Columbia. There is this social psychologist named Robert Levine who went around the world and he studied all these different attitudes about time. And what he found was that there's two different ways to approach time. There is the clock time, and then there's the event time.

13:26Now, those of us who live in the United States or have lived in the United States are extremely familiar with clock time. That is when you are going by the clock, and that's the main priority. Now, event time is something that is very prevalent here in Colombia. It might be prevalent in Puerto Rico as well, where it's really more about meeting the objective than it is staying on the schedule. So, you know, in clock time, the meeting ends at a certain time, and that is just when the meeting ends. On event time, the meeting ends when you meet your objectives, and that might drag on for hours. And so there are these two different attitudes about time.

14:07And there's been studies about people who are oriented to one way of addressing time versus another, and they've really found that the people who are working on that event time, who aren't watching the clock second by second, are more creative. They are more open to new opportunities, which is a really important part of being creative. And they also tend to be a lot more anxious. It really puts you on edge when you're constantly watching the clock, because honestly, the world doesn't really always cooperate with you. And if you're in an anxious state, it's really hard to be creative. You have to be in a relaxed, chill state to really get into that mindset, that mind state where you can have those insights, where you can reach that illumination that we talked about.

14:52Fire Nation, I want you to reach that illumination because it is such a fantastic place to be for multiple reasons that we may be talking about in a minute here, but I really want to dive into the minimum creative dose. Because when I saw this, I didn't really know what it meant. I know that I wanted to learn more because you always want to try to find out like, hey, how do I get there in the most meaningful and direct and efficient way? So what is that, the minimum creative dose? Glad you asked. This is a great way to get a little sampling of what mind management is like instead of time management.

15:32The way to get a taste of mind management is with this minimum creative dose. And what you want to do is take any sort of project that you're working on where the solution just isn't really clear to you. It could be like a trip that you're planning. And pull out your phone, set a timer for two minutes, maybe five, and just type out every little thing that you can think of associated with that project. Everything. And then once that timer is up, forget about it. Close the document, move away from it, get on with whatever it was that you were doing before. Now, this is basically giving you a little bit of that taste of the first stage of creativity, the preparation.

16:14And then in the meantime, you're going to have that incubation. And if you return to that problem tomorrow, a couple days from now, maybe even a week from now, you will be amazed at how much more clarity you have around that. You know, it's kind of funny. We already have this cultural understanding that you should sleep on it if you have a complex problem to solve. Here in Colombia, they call it consultar la almohada. You might have heard that in Puerto Rico. That means consult the pillow, basically sleep on it. But how often do we actually make use of this incredible thing called incubation? not that often.

16:54And so with the minimum creative dose, you basically just give yourself the minimum amount that you need to get your brain thinking about this problem, whether that's consciously while you're doing other things or subconsciously while you are doing other things or while you're sleeping even. Fire Nation, I love that phrase, consult the pillow. It's something that I'm probably going to have to start using a little more often because a lot of times you're just trying to think about something or you're talking to somebody about something and you just feel you need to come to a solution right now.

17:23But sometimes, you know what, consult the pillow, let the next day be the next day and the next time that you think about that thing, because that six, seven, eight hours of sleep that can do some some pretty positive things for you in that direction. Now, David, this whole conversation today was about mind management, not time management for productivity when creativity matters. So take the mic, bring us home. What do you want to share with Fire Nation around this topic? Well, I think that we live in a world that we kind of have this time religion, this time worship. There are so many things in our everyday parlance, that has to do with time.

18:14If we are interrupting somebody, say, at work, we often say, do you have a minute? We don't ask, do you have the focus? Are you in an interruptible state right now? There's just not as much respect for mental state and whether or not now is the right time for something as I feel like there should be. I think Constantine Brancusi, the sculptor, said something that was very powerful, which is basically that it's not the making of things that is so difficult. It's putting ourselves in the state of mind to make the things. And mind management is all about putting ourselves in that state of mind or working with our natural fluctuations in state of mind and matching that with the task that is at hand.

19:03So David, give Fire Nation a call to action? Where can they connect with you? Where can they learn more from you? What do you want our listeners to do today? Go check out my website. It is at kdv.co. That's an easy way to type it into a mobile device. And sign up for my Love Mondays newsletter. It comes out every Monday. It's all about creativity. There's about 10 ,000 different CEOs and artists and writers and filmmakers out there. And we are just exploring what it means to be productive when it matters whether or not you're being creative. Fire Nation, you are the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with DK and JLD today, so keep up that heat.

19:50For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type David in the search bar, and the show notes page will pop right up. And David, give us that URL one more time. That's kdv.co. Yes, it's that short. David, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you so much. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and David for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation's successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals. That is why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days.

20:25And we're talking step by step. Visit thefreedomjournal.com. And I will catch you there or on the flip side. Hustle and Flowchart, hosted by Joe Feer, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Join Joe as he discusses systems, mindset tweaks, reframes, and strategies to help you build a business that gives you freedom and fuel for your life. A recent episode on using AI for effortless content creation is a must listen. Listen to Hustle & Flowchart wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world.

21:00And four-time TEDx speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions.

21:21Thank you.