Restorative activities, such as exercising, sleeping, and spending time with loved ones help your brain reorganize.

The standard definition of the 4 stages of creativity is: preparation, incubation, illumination, verification. In his defense, he did describe in detail a personal example of a tragic family illness to illustrate how he contends with circumstances beyond his control, along with another example of visa problems during an extended stay in Colombia that thwarted his plans, but these felt more like rare anomalies, extreme events that recede back to a time of normalcy. Exercising, massages, different types of music, different types of teas, epsom salt baths, and neurotransmitter-supporting amino acids all eventually served their own purposes. David should decide if he want to present those tools, himself and his life or some actual creative work (personaly I would present those parts separately).I’ve delayed administrative tasks, like expense reports, scheduling meetings, or other administrative tasks until the end of the day, when my mind is less receptive to clear thinking. The structure of Kadavy's approach to creative work is incredibly flexible, giving you a concrete place to start with your efforts while also leaving room to shape every part of the process to your specific needs. We’re constantly bombarded with advice on how to manage our time more effectively to achieve our goals.

Other examples of this include building the financial model in Excel, creating a lesson plan, or crafting a sales narrative. I love the concepts about Four Stages of Creativity, the Seven Mental States of Creative Work, the Minimum Creative Dose, and the Creative Sweet Spot. Mind management promotes self-awareness, helping individuals recognize signs of burnout and stress before they escalate, leading to a healthier work-life balance.

From a company’s perspective, they create strength “ by lavishly using the executive’s time,” [3] as Drucker noted, which results in the imposition of meetings and activities that don’t fit within a framework easily. Throughout the process of writing Design for Hackers, I did start to gain an intuitive sense of what was going on with my brain, and how to navigate my own mental landscape. Instead of banging your head against it, attempting to focus your way into a solution… give your brain something to chew on and explore, then let your “Passive Genius” work on it. Like many books, it is about getting things done, but it faithfully serves its specific audience: creatives. Your brain is plastic: Every time your neurons fire, it makes it easier for those same pathways to fire again.

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. It’s a proactive approach that empowers individuals to take charge of their cognitive processes and shape their reality. The most interesting part of the book, or at least the part I found most original, was the segment on clock time vs event time. To give you a sense of how these mental states operate on us, let’s assume that I want to create a presentation to propose a new strategy for my company.Kadavy’s framework led me to consider how time and energy work together to influence, and perhaps dictate, what I produce in the world, and it is the most valuable part of the book. Any new venture requires all of my mental focus, but then once I have it down, I can shift it to "back burner"--which for me means essentially auto pilot (I'm thinking of editing podcasts and then uploading them for distribution while listening to audiobooks or CMEs, or doing the same with newsletters). In a tweet shortly after publication, the author showed an example of how he categorizes his tasks in his task manager, using labels, by each type of mental state. 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?