Mind Management, Not Time Management by David Kadavy

Author:David Kadavy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kadavy, Inc.
Published: 2020-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

5

Creative Cycles

A great inequality is observable in the vigor of the mind at different periods of the day.

—Thomas Jefferson

“Can I talk to you for a second?” Jonathan said. I stopped in the doorway. “Are you sure about this?” he continued. “This seems kind of rash. You’ve been unemployed for a year, you’ve been working on your business until 4 a.m. every night, and it’s not going so well. I’m not sure you’re making the right decision.”

My roommate was right to be concerned. My behavior was unusual. I had spent the past year working twelve- and sixteen-hour days, and not making a dime. Meanwhile, startups were recruiting me. I had design and coding skills, I lived in San Francisco, and it was 2008. I had incredible opportunities in front of me, but I wasn’t interested in them. Instead, without warning, I announced that I was moving. “Who moves from San Francisco to Chicago?” Jonathan said. “It’s supposed to be the other way around.”

But there was a method to this madness. I wanted to produce an effect. I was working with and against the forces around me to achieve that effect. I was employing what I would later call Creative Cycles.

Two years later, my plan bore fruit. It came to me on a mild July day, as I was sitting at a picnic table on the porch of Noble Tree Coffee. Is this real? I asked myself. I did a quick search on the web. Nothing. I checked to see if the website domain I wanted was available. It was. My breath quickened. My heart pounded. My hands shook. I said to myself, This is it. It was my Big Idea.

It had started with a feeling. A feeling that I had more thoughts than I could hold in my brain. I sensed that something in there was worthwhile. I had an inkling that if I gave myself the time and the space to explore those thoughts, I would find something unique. My Big Idea.

To begin, I cashed out a good portion of my retirement account. For the next year, I turned down every freelance gig and every job offer. I even turned away a Facebook recruiter – an opportunity that may have been worth millions. I didn’t want any distractions. I needed to sort through what was in my mind.

Eventually, that desire for space and quiet – and cheaper rent – drove me out of San Francisco. I needed to isolate myself from whatever the hot new trend was in startups and tech. None of it would help me find what I was looking for.

Jonathan was right. For much of that first year of working on my own in San Francisco, I was up until 4 a.m. But, I was still getting plenty of sleep. I had simply shifted my schedule. From midnight to 4 a.m., I did a solid block of focused work. When I did lose focus, there were no distractions for me to escape to. I’d hit refresh on

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