617: Enhancing Your Productivity by Managing Your Mental Energy with David Kadavy

Pete Mockaitis
David, welcome back to the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

David Kadavy
Pete, it is good to be here. And I have to say, I’m so much more comfortable this time than I was last time that we spoke.

Pete Mockaitis
That was wild. That moment is etched in my memory for several reasons. One, it was one of my last hurrahs in my apartment of 10 years that I called the Strat because I got married just a few weeks later. Two, it was insanely hot.

David Kadavy
Insanely hot for the record.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I was sweating because it was hot and I was sweating because I hadn’t done very many podcasts, like, live in person. Most of them were over the internet but you were in my apartment, and it’s like, “Oh, I think I clicked multi-track.” And I remember here’s how committed you are to the craft, David. I don’t know if you remember this. I think of you all the time because I offered you a LaCroix, and you said, “After the show because I don’t want to be belchy when we’re recording.” And I was like, “Now, there’s a man. It’s a hot day. Turning down a delicious cold LaCroix so he won’t burp on the show, that’s commitment.”

David Kadavy
Well, but, seriously, could you drink a LaCroix while recording? I know I can’t.

Pete Mockaitis
I did it before. I just go off to the side for a burp off mic.

David Kadavy
I had the same thing happen with another podcast host who was like, “Hey, let’s order some Indian food. We can eat it right before the show.” I’m like, “What? Are you serious? You think you can eat food, like Indian food, and then immediately record?” Maybe he can. He’s a great podcaster. But maybe he’s got an amazing digestive system or something, but I couldn’t record after that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no. Hey, why risk it? Well, speaking of risk, one thing you did which was pretty adventurous and exciting was straight up moving to Colombia, and that’s where you live now. From Chicago to Colombia. How is that going?

David Kadavy
It’s going great. I had some problems. They kicked me out a couple times. But I’m back. I was having trouble with the visa that I had. I had just like a freak incident and had to leave because of it. So, now I’ve been here for five years. And one of the main things that really attracted me to being down here is this project that I’m working on right now, this book that I have coming out. And so, now is kind of the end of the experiment, but now I have a life here, so I’m not leaving.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom. So, Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters. It’s fun. Like, when we spoke last time, it seemed like you were just sort of in the middle of formulating and honing these ideas. And now, we’ve got a polished gem of a finished something. Lay it on us, what’s sort of the main idea behind this book?

David Kadavy
Yeah, thank you. And middle is about right because I’ve been working on this thing for about 10 years when we talked roughly five years ago, something like that. And it really all started when I got my first book deal about 10 years ago, almost to the day, and I sort of found that, first of all, I wasn’t a writer. I hated writing as a kid. I didn’t think of myself as a writer, and, all of a sudden, I get this book deal after doing a little bit of writing, and I decide to go ahead and accept that, to take it on, take on the challenge.

Only, it was way more difficult than I had expected. I just found that everything that I had learned about productivity totally did not prepare me for writing a book. One of those things would be time management. So, to write this book, I just cleared away as much time as I possibly could. I cleared away my schedule, I started to outsource things like my grocery shopping and my meal preparation and having my house cleaned, and doing certain errands and all these things. Cleared away as much time as I could and sat down to write. And I couldn’t do it. I was just like banging my head against the wall all day.

And, eventually, I did realize that I could have this sort of 15-minute bursts where, all of a sudden, the writing would come really easily. And I did some experimentation, I sort of came up with a grab bag of rituals that I could go to, to get this writing done. And when that book was finally done, I sort of looked back on the experience, and thought, like, “Wow, what happened?” And I started to look into the behavioral science research, I started to look into the neuroscience of creativity, and I started to realize that there were a lot of different things that supported the patterns that I had come up with in terms of trying to make this creative work happen.

And we already have quite a bit of knowledge about how creative work happens, but the pieces haven’t really been put together, and a lot of us are still working on this kind of old paradigm of time management in trying to get things done. And so, that’s what I’m talking about in the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, beautiful. Let’s dig in then. So, what makes the difference in those moments of 15 minutes, “Whoa, words are flowing easily,” versus, “I’m banging my head against the wall. Nothing is happening”? What’s kind of the core differentiator there?

David Kadavy
Yeah. So, I think it helps to first understand what we’re going for when we’re going for creativity. Sort of the building block of creativity is the moment of insight and there’s a couple of neuroscientists, one is actually in the Chicago area, Mark Beeman and then John Kounios, who was at Drexel University, and they have examined in people’s brains the moment of insight.

You know, when you had these kind of aha moments where you’re like working on a problem and you’re really struggling? And then, all of a sudden, you kind of have an aha moment. It’s like you feel lit. It’s like a jolt. They found out that that is actually a neurologically distinct moment in time. They made an image of the brain as that happens. There’s this moment where the brain goes quiet, and then there’s just bursts of activity, and that is the moment of insight. And what happens, and what people report during these moments of insight, is they just go from not having the answer to the problem to, all of a sudden, having the answer to the problem.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I love it.

David Kadavy
Yeah, it’s pretty amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
More please.

David Kadavy
And what happens is there’s just these different regions of the brain that are all kind of communicating with each other at once, connecting these concepts that are very disparate. If you think about your brain like a racquetball court, and there’s just all these balls bouncing around in the racquetball court, and every once in a while, a couple of those balls, or a few of the those balls collide, and that’s like a moment of insight.

So, what you’re going for when you’re going through those moments is actually the opposite of what a person would expect. We normally think that if you’re going to do some work that you want to be alert. You want to really be on your toes, etc. Well, it turns out, when you want to be creative, actually the thing that makes those moments of insight happen is a brain state that’s completely different from that. That’s more like you want more of a relaxed state.

And one of the ways to describe that is that your prefrontal cortex, the front part of your brain, is less active in these moments. And so, your prefrontal cortex, that’s what helps you plan, it helps you suppress urges, it’s the thing that’s like, “We’re just going to cook at home because we’re saving for this trip to Hawaii,” or, “I’m not going to have that extra donut. I’m trying to lose weight.” Like, that’s your prefrontal cortex at work helping you with all that planning, prioritizing, etc.

Think of your prefrontal cortex as being in that racquetball court, and your prefrontal cortex is obsessed with the rules of the game. It’s seeing all the balls bouncing around, and it’s like, “Oh, no, I have to make sure that all these balls hit the front wall before they hit the floor,” it’s the rules of racquetball basically. And so, the intention of the prefrontal cortex is to follow the rules, but the result is fewer collisions, fewer insights.

And so, one of the things that is really helpful when trying to make creative work happen is to kind of pick some time of day to work on your creative problems when your prefrontal cortex is sort of out to lunch or still sleeping. For a lot of people, that’s like first thing in the morning. A lot of people, wake up, you’re groggy, people reach for the coffee immediately. That grogginess is a gift. It’s a good time to start trying to think creatively.

Now, the process of being creative doesn’t stop there, but I’ll stop there because I’ve said a lot already.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love that. We had Michael Breus on the show, a sleep doctor, and he used the term groggy greatness, which I loved in terms of, yeah…

David Kadavy
I like that.

Pete Mockaitis
…a lot of times ideas, insights, show up right there, and I want to be able to capture them in the moment. So, that’s beautiful. So then, the thesis here is, and it might not only be creative work but there are sorts of different brain states in different types of work, and you’re looking for a match. Can you sort of lay out the whole framework for us here when it comes to we want to do great work, be it creative or another flavor, and lots of it, how do we do that?

David Kadavy
I think we can start with let’s pull apart this title Mind Management, Not Time Management. There’s a specific reason why I put the “Not Time Management” part in it. It’s because we’re obsessed with time management as a culture. A lot of us don’t even realize it. It’s sort of like the water that we, the fish, are swimming in. This is something that I realized now, living in Colombia, which has a completely different conception of time.

And it was interesting when I looked at this, like, “How long has time management been around? How long have we been thinking about time?” We take it for granted. We don’t realize that people didn’t know what time it was, most people, until 150 years ago where there might be a clock tower in the middle of the village, or something, and there weren’t time zones until we had to deal with all the trains that were crossing through time zones, and trying to get time tables that looked right.

And basically, the birth of time management is the moment when scientific management was created. This guy, Frederick Taylor, basically, standing with a stopwatch next to a worker, watching the worker stack bricks for example, and saying, “Oh, well, grab the brick this way, turn it this way, bend over in this way, etc. and then put the brick there. Okay, now, here’s the prescribed movements for stacking bricks. We’re even going to build a scaffolding so that you don’t have to bend over to pick up the bricks, etc. And now we have made the process of stacking bricks as efficient as possible. We have put the maximum amount of work in the time available, and now we’re just going to be so much more productive because of that.”

And so, this is a relic that is still with us today, is that we are watching our time all the time. We have, what I call, time worship as a culture. Time is so pervasive in our culture we hardly even realize it. Notice the way that we negotiate with time quite often. I know I used to… might be coding in my cubicle years ago when I worked in a cubicle, and I’m just like ears deep in it, I’m just totally in it, it’s taken me all day to get to this moment, and, boom, somebody taps me on the shoulder. What do they say? “Hey, Dave,” “Got a minute?” “A minute? Is a minute what we’re looking for here? I mean, because I’m focused. It took me all day to get to this point. I’ve got momentum going. I’m in this mental state, and now you want me to show you how to change the paper on the printer. And now, because I go do that, and it only takes me a minute, but, hey, now I’ve just lost the entire afternoon because I can’t get back into that state.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

David Kadavy
And that’s what we’re looking for is not to treat time as a commodity. Time is not like bushels of corn. It’s not like blocks of frozen orange juice concentrate that you can just line up one after another as if they’re the same thing. If you spend an hour a day writing, at the end of a year you’ll probably have a book. But if you sat down and say, “Well, I’m going to write for 365 hours straight,” you’re not going to get the same result. You’d probably be dead.

So, it’s different. Time isn’t this fungible thing that you can just trade out one after another, and this is one of the things that really frustrates me when I hear people say, “Oh, there’s only 24 hours in the day. Time is the most precious commodity that we have.” No, there’s not 24 hours in the day. There’s like two, maybe four hours in the day. And, by the way, if there’s only 24 hours in the day, that tells you that, at some point, you’re squeezing blood from a stone. Like, yeah, you can manage your time up to a point but, eventually, you’re not going to have gains anymore from managing your time more.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Yeah, that totally makes sense in terms of if that’s the finite thing, you’re going to have a hard time getting big gains out of slicing that up a little bit differently.

David Kadavy
Well, actually, think about it like this way. I don’t know how many of your listeners are golfers, or if you’re a golfer, Pete, I don’t know if you’ve done much golfing.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve done it a couple times and it goes super well.

David Kadavy
Have you ever heard the expression, “Drive for show, putt for dough”?

Pete Mockaitis
I haven’t but I kind of get what you’re driving at, what you’re trying to convey, that the driving makes a huge long movement of that ball, that’s like, “Wow, that’s impressive. We all think you’re cool.” But it may well be those, the finer putts that make you a professional who gets a low score and earns money.

David Kadavy
Right. Well, this was the opinion for like 200 years in golf, was that, “Oh, putting is the most important part of the game.” Why? Because in like a standard round of golf, putts make up half of all the strokes in golf. But there was a guy out of Columbia University his name is Mark Broadie, and he really did a lot of statistical analyses in the game of golf, and has completely changed statistics in the game of golf.

And what he found was that putt for dough is not true. That when you really break it down, that is not the thing that separates amateurs from pros, it’s not the thing that separates the pros from the rest of the field necessarily when they win. That even though putts make up half of the game, they only make up 15% of the difference between, say, pros and amateurs. And so, this is what I call a raised floor. It’s this area where it looks like there’s a lot of room for progress because there’s a lot to work with there. And you get to a certain point, and you think you can keep making progress there but your efforts are better spent somewhere else.

Another example would be like with money. How much money can you save, really? Like, you’ve got to live your life, like spending a minute in the aisle trying to figure out whether this soup is worth five cents more than this other soup is not worth it at a certain level. And so, instead of trying to lower this raised floor, you try to raise the ceiling. And so, instead of how much time can you really save, instead of trying to do that, well, make better use of your time by finding your best energy and making the best possible use of that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah. I’m down. So, you lay out some three key questions for mind management along the lines of, “Hey, what kind of work do I need to do right now? What kind of mental state am I in? And then, how could I get into the right mental state?” which I think is just very tactically dead-on in terms of, “Here I am.” And so, maybe can you orient us, I guess, to the menu or to the categories of kinds of work? So, stacking bricks is different than writing a book. So, how would you go about categorizing these different flavors of work?

David Kadavy
Yeah, this goes pretty deep, but I do want to just add on at this point about those questions because that is really the best way to get the taste of it because we do go deep in the book, and there’s a lot to cover. But, really, just asking yourself this question next time that you’re about to work on something, “What is the mental state that I’m in right now?” And then ask yourself, “Well, what do I need to do that fits that mental state?”

And if you happen to be in a situation where you really need to do a certain thing, then you can ask yourself, “Well, what is the mental state I would like to be in to be able to do that thing?” And you can kind of reverse-engineer it. A good way to do that is to say, “Well, when was the last time I felt that way?” And then you can start to look at the conditions, “Where was I sitting? What time of day was it? What day of the week was it? Was there something that I ate? Was there something that I drank? Did I drink a LaCroix right before?” Things like that.

Now, that’s a good start, by the way. That’s a good start to ask yourself that question, be aware of this idea that the time that you’re most creative is not necessarily the time that you’re most alert. It’s probably not the time that you’re most alert. Now, I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve got it broken down to seven different mental states of creative work.

Pete Mockaitis
Bring it.

David Kadavy
Okay. It’s an acronym. I’ve got a little acronym for it, makes it easier to remember. PERG PAR. Now, we’ve got two main words here we’re thinking about if we want to remember this acronym. PER and PAR. Talking about golf again, the G stands for the game of golf, PER golf PAR, so PERG PAR. And those stand for prioritize, explore, research, generate, polish, administrate, and recharge.

I don’t know if you’ve got time for all those, but some of my favorites there, I think, the distinction between generate and explore is a very interesting one. Generate is, as a writer myself, when I’m in the generate state, I plan to get some writing done, some writing that I can actually use, use to a point.

There’s the famous quote, supposedly from Hemingway, “Write drunk, edit sober.” That’s what the polish is the edit part. So, I’m not worried too much about, “Is this fact exactly right? Am I spelling this correctly?” I’m just trying to get some sentences together that I can later go back when I’m in a different mental state, when I’m more alert. And if I ran across something where I’m just kind of stuck, I just make some brackets, type it in there. So, I’m staying in state. I’m not switching state all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
“Cool story about…that’s inspiring AF.” Moving on.

David Kadavy
Yeah, right. Exactly. That’s actually a great example. You have a situation in that where you want to illustrate something, and you’re like, “Yeah, cool story that’s inspiring AF,” right? And then, later, you go sit down in your recliner that evening with a brandy, and think, “What are some cool stories that I know,” and you do that part separately.

Now, if you’re somebody who already has a grab bag of stories, you’re a writer like me and you collect these things, you might already have something ready to go and you write it. But if you get stuck, you’ve got that. You’re trying to stay in state because it’s a waste of mental energy to be switching these mental states all the time.

Think about a car that’s switching gears. Gears are coupled with one another, that’s moving the car forward, and then as you’re switching gears, well, for a moment, those gears aren’t coupled anymore, and so there are some energy that’s going to waste that way. And so, it’s much better to just stay in state. So, that’s generate.

Now, I did mention I promised that I was going to talk a little bit about explore because there are some fuzzy borders in between these categories where there might be some things where it feels like it’s a generate activity but it’s actually an explore activity. And this happens with me when I write, quite often. So, I actually have a habit that’s very weird that I do every single morning. With my eyes still closed, I have a little portable word processor that I keep in my nightstand drawer. With my eyes still closed, it’s basically a keyboard with like an old-school LCD screen that you might see on a calculator, it’s called an AlphaSmart. You can DuckDuckGo it and see what I’m talking about. They cost 20 bucks, 30 bucks, and they’re really just for writing. I have it in my nightstand.

So, I’ll just grab it out of my nightstand with my eyes still closed, turn it on, and I just write a hundred words. At least a hundred words. I sometimes write more, sometimes a thousand, sometimes just 2,000, but it’s at least a hundred words. I make sure to do that every single morning. Just make a really simple goal for myself.

Now, I’m writing but it’s not generate. It’s explore, because when I’m done with that activity, what I do is I delete it. Now, why would I write, why would I bother writing in the morning and I’m just going to delete it? What do you think about that, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I have a number of ideas in terms of it can…I think you delete but I imagine you read it before you delete it.

David Kadavy
Actually, I don’t.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

David Kadavy
Here’s the thing, all right, and this is where I think a lot of people get stuck on creative work, and trying to write my first book, this is where I got stuck because I thought, “Well, I’ll just put 250 words a day on my calendar,” and I was banging out my 250 words a day. Well, it doesn’t work that way. There are stages to creativity. There are stages to creative work.

Before you reach that moment of insight, before you make those connections from various parts of your brain, you have to have the source material in your brain first. And this is where a lot of the struggle with writing, is we sit down and we think, “All right, I’m going to write this press release. And, okay, where do I even begin?” You expect that you’re going to have this wonderful polished prose that comes out, and there’s all these different facts you need to look up, and you’re like, “Well, wait. Let me go talk to the CEO really quick and see what the CEO has to say so I can collect that quote,” etc. but there’s always things that you need to collect first.

And our brain power is very limited. Our working memory, or our short-term memory, not exactly the same thing but they can be used interchangeably for our purposes, is limited. We can remember two, four, seven things, this is why phone numbers are broken up into groups of four, credit card numbers, etc. so we can remember them. That’s what we’re doing when we’re trying to take in information and solve a problem at the same time is we’re trying to use our working memory for all of that. Well, it doesn’t work that way. You need to get the information into your long-term memory first. And then, later, when your working memory is clear, then you can start to dig into that long-term memory and start trying to make those different connections.

So, when I do my morning writing sessions, which I call an explore session, I’m really just exploring whatever is in my brain. It’s exercising those thoughts in my mind. And those kind of seep in, and it’s one of these things where not everything is going to be useful. Most of it is not going to be useful, but it’s going to help me exercise some different connections. And then, later on, next time that I’m actually sitting down and writing, maybe I’ll say, “Oh, yeah, I had that interesting thing I was writing about the other day,” and it’ll come out.

Now, if I do need to capture something that’s just really great and I just don’t want to miss it, then I have ways of capturing it and transferring it to my computer, but most of the time I just delete everything because it’s a different state. It’s a state of exploration, as the name implies, where that’s one activity that can be explored. But another activity that can be explored is like if I’m reading something.

When I’m writing my book about design and learning about the history of typography, I might be in a situation where I am actually not reading about typography. I’m reading about some other possibly, maybe related subject, like the Protestant Revolution, that might lead me to something, but I actually have no idea.

And so, that’s why I make the distinction between, say, that exploration and generate. And that’s also why I make the distinction between explore and research because if I’m researching, that implies that I’m searching again. That implies that I’m searching for something that I already have, some kind of idea what I’m looking for, and I’m a little bit more focused on trying to find it.

So, you can start to see this is an introduction for a few of those categories, the ways that we’re starting to break up these things that seem like they are things that we just sit down and do all at once. We’re starting to break them up into different situations where we’re doing different things, we’re using different energy.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I get you. And I’d love it if you could maybe just give me sort of like the one sentence-ish definition of each of these things, “So, prioritizing is this, explore is this, research is this.” Because I think I’ve got my perception of what these words mean, but as you’ve just done some distinguishing, there could be some insight there. So, lay it on us, rapid fire, put you on the spot, what’s prioritizing?

David Kadavy
Okay. Prioritizing is you’re planning. This is something I do every week. I look at my calendar and I make a bullet point list, and I rewrite everything on my calendar, and I just make sure that if I’m going to the airport, I know what time I’m going to go to the airport, depending on traffic, how long it’s going to take for me to get to the airport, when I’m going to leave, when I’m going to eat lunch, all that stuff, instead of just waking up that morning and just trying to figure it out and getting to a different state. That’s what prioritize is. It’s very energy-hungry. Your prefrontal cortex does that prioritization, something you want to do separately.

Explore is that you’re collecting information. Collecting information might be going through ideas or brainstorming. You’re collecting information but not necessarily specific information, right? You kind of have a vague idea of what you’re looking for and you are allowing yourself to be in an open-minded state of looking for that. Starting to click?

Pete Mockaitis
It’s chill. Versus research, which we’re going to next, it’s kind of like, “I want my answer. Give me the answer.”

David Kadavy
Exactly. Research is, “What year was Snoop Dog born? I need to know that for this article that I’m writing.”

Pete Mockaitis
Facts first.

David Kadavy
Yeah, like if you want to know the fact, or you want to know, like, “I want to know exactly how confirmation bias works, and who discovered it, etc.” I need to look that up before I can fill out the brackets in this thing that I wrote when I was in the generate state, which is our next one, right?

Generate. We are trying to produce something that we can turn into usable, shippable work. And next is polish. We’re putting the finishing touches on it. Dotting the Is, crossing the Ts, putting the finishing touches. Refining it. Getting it ready to ship. Now, administrate. This is the stuff that you’ve got to do it. It’s hard to delegate but you got to do it. Maybe like you’re filling out your expense report, going through your email inbox and getting rid of this stuff is kind of low priority. For me, it’s always looking at financial statements.

And then, finally, recharge. And that’s the giving yourself a chance to get that energy back, giving yourself the evening, the weekend, taking a nap even in the afternoon to replenish that energy. And it also helps solve a lot of the problems that you’ve been working on while you’re not even actively thinking.

Pete Mockaitis
And I guess with administrate, so we’re talking about creative work, I’m also thinking about like people-y stuff. Like, much of this sort of benefits from the quiet, the silence, the non-interruptedness. And then I’m thinking there’s another vibe, I think like maker versus manager. Like, when you’re in the manager vibe, it’s almost like, well, heck, we almost can make a whole list separate list for like people activities because there’s like connect, there’s delegate, there’s coach, there’s challenge, there’s respond to be of service with quick answers to everybody who needs a slice and a quick bit of info to continue doing what they’re doing.

How do you think about that, the people-y stuff?

David Kadavy
Well, it’s funny because I’m an ambivert, more on the side of introvert so I do think about the people-y stuff about, “Am I going to be in the mood to talk to somebody at this particular time?” But, actually, the people-y stuff and my administrate stuff kind of I put them next to each other even though I’ve never actually thought about them as being related. So, like this conversation that we’re having right now, I consider this to be explore mental state. But I have these conversations later in the day because that’s when I’m just a little more alert, and I can think more on my feet, and have a conversation like that.

Now, as it happens, I have these conversations later in the week so I’ve got a rule, no meetings on Mondays or Tuesdays, because I want to be completely immersed in whatever it is that I’m working on. A lot of the things I’ve been working on have incubated over the weekend. I want to make the best possible use of that on Monday and Tuesday.

Now, towards the end of the week, my creative energy has started to wane. I’ve gone down a lot of different dead ends that maybe aren’t working out, yet I have produced some things but then I’ve got those dead ends. And so, it’s nice to have a conversation where I can start to explore and play with some of the things that I’ve been thinking about. But, also, that makes it a good time to work on administrative stuff, which is why Fridays, especially Friday afternoons, is when I spend time in the administrate state.

If I get an email from my accountant on a Monday, and it says, “Hey, review these financial statements,” I use a plugin called Boomerang, and I send it out of my inbox, and then it comes back into my inbox on Friday afternoon. I don’t even know that exists during that time. So, Friday afternoon, I’ve tapped out my creative energy, and I can do some stuff. Like, it’s not hard for me to look at financial statements, really. It’s not something that I want to spend my best creative energy on.

And so, I don’t necessarily think about the people part as being part of administrate necessarily. But I also do think about, if I’m going to be interacting with people, when is a good time for me to do that, and when are times that I don’t want to be doing that?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, so I think that just having some of these language, and I think some folks might even really make it their own in terms of, like, “I like to call it task annihilation,” in terms of like how that energy feels in terms of, “I got a big list of quick things that I’m just going to go dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah,” whatever.

David Kadavy
One of the most powerful things you can do, I think, to be productive is the moment that you know that a task needs to be done that you’re able to stop and think, and say to yourself, “Okay, this doesn’t need to be done now. When is the right time for me to do this? And what’s the state that I need to be in to do that?” And for a lot of people’s work, it’s going to be different. When they do have those chunks of time, when there’s a certain type of activity that they’re doing and there’s a certain energy they’re going for, and they can save everything for those times.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so that’s great when you can do that, and sometimes you can’t, and it’s sort of like it’d be ideal if you could slot the task in where the state just naturally are, and other times you need to do the thing. So, how does one change their state?

David Kadavy
Yes. Well, first of all, fortunately, I think a lot of people are noticing with the quarantine, a lot of people are suddenly in more control of their time so they are actually grappling with this for the first time, where it’s like, “Oh, my gosh, I actually have control over this. There’s something other than the clock dictating what I’m going to do so I need to figure out how to manage my energy in a way.” But sometimes you still have certain deadlines, you’ve got stuff that needs to get done. And, like I said, before, a good way to do that is to sort of think about a time when you were in that mental state.

There’s a great story from the chess champion Josh Waitzkin from his book The Art of Learning, where he talks about this executive who has a lot of trouble concentrating in meetings. And so, what Josh did with this executive was asked him, “Well, when’s the time when you feel in flow?” And the guy said, “Well, when I’m playing catch with my son, that’s when I really just feel in the moment. I wish I could feel that way when I’m in a meeting.” Well, it’s a little hard for him to play catch with his son while he’s in the meetings. Maybe you could do that today with Zoom.

But what Josh did was set up this sort of series of triggers that the executive could use. He said, “All right, before you play catch with your son, do these stretches, eat this snack, listen to this Bob Dylan song, then play catch with your son, and keep doing that.” And what he did was basically classically conditioned himself to have these different triggers that could get him into that state. And so, what he did was then he gradually removed certain things where he couldn’t play catch with his son, but before going to a meeting, he would do the stretches, eat the snack, listen to the Bob Dylan song. And, just through time, was eventually able to get to the point where he could just think of the Bob Dylan song and he would be in that state, and he could go into that meeting in that state.

Now, this isn’t something that you’re going to necessarily do with every little thing in your schedule, but maybe your key most important things, the most important states that you’re trying to get into, that maybe you’re in situations sometimes where you don’t have control over being able to get into that sate, then you have certain triggers setup.

Me, before I do a podcast interview, I actually have a whole set of warmups that I do. I took voice lessons when I was living in Chicago, and I’ve got the audio files for the warmups for that, I’ve got different tongue twisters I say, I got sort of a process that I use to take myself from that, I’ve been in my head writing all morning state, to this I’m going to be talking to Pete state. So, this is something you want to do with those important things that maybe you don’t always have the most control over.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I like that a lot. Like, music in particular, it’s sort of like there’s so many varieties of music. They could just naturally say, “Oh, yeah, this is the mood, and it’s like the soundtrack for that.” So, I think that’s a very versatile and helpful one to have.

David Kadavy
And not even just soundtrack. I want to also talk about if you have control of your environment as well, especially with the quarantine, a lot more people working from home. If you have control over your environment, you can start to change certain things. I’ve got a standing-sitting desk that’s different for different mental states. I’ve got a hammock that I sometimes sit back and brainstorm in. I have a recliner with an overbed table that goes over the recliner. I sort of lay back and write in that recliner. So, you can change certain things.

When I first started on my own, I had a tiny bedroom in San Francisco, and that was where I worked, and that’s where I slept. I worked in cafes during the day but I was still working at night. And so, I didn’t want to confuse working with sleeping, and so I had a little shoji screen, a little room divider, that I would set up around my desk, and I would clip a lamp on there and bounced light in a certain way and a certain album I would listen to, I’d put a certain aromatherapy scent on, and that would trigger me to be ready to work.

Now, when it was time to sleep, I would go immediately from working to sleeping, I had a whole different set of things I did. I hid the desk behind the screen, I’d maybe put on a different scent, maybe put on a different music, and change my environment so that I could change my mental state.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s excellent. And so then, a good bit of this is that self-reflection in terms of last time you were in this groove, what was going on, what was the setup.

David Kadavy
And you could have a journal that you keep for this stuff too, and just kind of, at the end of the day, like observe, “When was the time that I felt really in congruence between what I was doing and the way that I felt? And when was the time when I didn’t?” And you’ll eventually start to find those patterns.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, David, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

David Kadavy
No, I think that we’ve covered a lot of cool stuff. I mean, I obviously have an entire book, it’s very dense. I’ve worked 10 years on this thing, so there’s a lot to tackle, way more than we could talk about in this conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

David Kadavy
Oh, I like this one from the investor, Naval Ravikant, who was an early investor in Uber and other different companies, and is a great philosopher sort of to follow on Twitter, “Earn with your mind, not with your time.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

David Kadavy
I saw an interesting sort of meta-analysis recently in the neuroscience publication called Neuron, and it was about beliefs. And it was basically saying that we form beliefs not just to reduce uncertainty in our world, which is very important for moving through the world, to be able to quickly assess things. This is where biases come from. But that having a belief in itself is a reward. And so, they’ve noticed this through a number of different experiments that being able to hold a belief and confirm a belief actually looks like a reward in the brain. And so, this is sort of the idea of confirmation bias, the neural correlates of confirmation bias.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, “See, I’m right.” Like, that feels good?

David Kadavy
Yeah. And it is critical to our sort of echo chamber world that we live in, but it’s also important to doing creative work, I think, it’s very relevant. So, if I’m somebody who’s like, “I believe, one day, I’m going to become a famous comedian,” that belief feels good. And they’ve even noticed that if you’re looking for a certain belief, your brain will change what it looks for to confirm that belief.

And so, if you believe you’re going to be a famous comedian someday, then you’re going to seek out information that’s going to confirm that belief, and you’re going to avoid information that would challenge that belief. So, information that might confirm that belief would be, “I’m going to go take another comedy class.” Information that would challenge that belief would be, “I’m going to get on stage and tell some jokes in front of people,” because, likely, you’re not going to get the laughs that you expect.

And so, this is a way that we kind of have what I call aspiration procrastination, which is what my previous book The Heart to Start was about, which is the situations where having this belief that this thing, you’re going to do this someday is such an enjoyable feeling that we put off doing anything that would challenge that belief. So, it’s really interesting to see the actual neuroscience behind that.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

David Kadavy
I really enjoy the work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Black Swan I think is a fantastic book.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

David Kadavy
Todoist. Great to-do app.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

David Kadavy
My 100 words on my AlphaSmart in the morning.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

David Kadavy
Well, the idea of mind management, not time management is something that people tend to respond to.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to get in touch, where would you point them?

David Kadavy
Twitter. I’m really active on Twitter. I know all the kids love Instagram these days, I know all the old people love Facebook these days, but Twitter is where I’m at @kadavy.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

David Kadavy
Yeah, final challenge is the next time that you have something to do, ask yourself, “What would be the ideal mental state for me to do this?” That’s it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. David, this has been a treat. Keep on rocking and we’ll see each other maybe in five years.

David Kadavy
I hope sooner than that but, yeah, Pete, it’s an honor. Your show is wonderful, so thank you.