David Kadavy - Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters (Getting Art Done Book 2)

The Heart to Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

Design for Hackers: Reverse-Engineering Beauty

Short Read

How to Write a Book

2020 David Kadavy. All rights reserved.

Cover design by David Kadavy
Illustrations by David Kadavy
ebook designed and coded by David Kadavy

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Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them.

Theres only twenty-four hours in a day. The conclusion were supposed to draw from this common observation is: If there are only so many hours in a day, you should make the most of each of those precious hours. Time management, it seems, is critically important.

When you start managing your time, you find you really are getting more done. Youre keeping a calendar, so you dont forget things. Youre building routines, so you can get repeating tasks done faster. Youre learning keyboard shortcuts for the apps you use every day. You may even start saying no to some opportunities, so you can make better use of your time.

But it becomes harder and harder to get more out of your time. Your calendar becomes jam-packed with a kaleidoscope of colored blocks. You start speed reading, and listening to audiobooks and podcasts on 3x speed. You start cutting out all but the most essential activities that move you toward your goals. No more lunches with your friends youll eat at your desk.

Next, you figure, you can get more out of your time if you do two things at once. So you start multitasking. Youre checking your email while brushing your teeth. Youre holding conference calls while driving to work.

You start searching for extra bits of time, like loose change under couch cushions. You used to sleep eight hours, but now youll sleep five. You can check emails at family dinners. You can steal extra hours of work on your laptop after everyone in the house has gone to bed.

Youre tired all the time. Theres not enough coffee in the world to keep you going. Your anxiety levels are sky-high, and youre becoming forgetful. Youre always in a rush.

With each new tactic you learn, each new life hack, each new shortcut, life gets more hectic. You would start outsourcing some of the load, but youre so busy and so exhausted, you cant even explain whats keeping you so busy. The harder you try to get more out of your time, the less time you have. Even if you did have the time, you wouldnt have the energy.

Until one day you realize: Theres only twenty-four hours in a day. Maybe that doesnt mean what I thought it meant?

I thought it meant I should get the most done in the least amount of time possible.

What Im learning is, if theres only twenty-four hours in a day, that means theres a limit.

I can only get so much out of my time. Time management is like squeezing blood from a stone.

This story is not too different from my own. For my entire adult life, I have been a productivity enthusiast, with time management as one of my key strategies for getting more done. It started in college. As a graphic design student, I learned all the keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop. I used training software to learn to type faster. When I graduated and got a job, I constantly experimented with different ways of keeping a to-do list and prioritizing my tasks. I pontificated with any colleague who would listen about how to cut down on the number of emails in my inbox. One thing I loved about working in Silicon Valley was that there was no shortage of tech geeks with whom I could swap tips on the latest productivity apps.

Eventually, I ran out of ways to get more done in less time, and my quest went on a detour. That led me to embark on the adventure Im sharing in this book.

Four years ago, I found myself sitting on the bare hardwood floor of my apartment in Chicago, eating lunch from a takeout container with a plastic fork. I had no furniture, no plates, no silverware. I had sold my last chair to some guy from Craigslist fifteen minutes prior.

I was about to embark on my most audacious productivity experiment yet. As I looked around at the three suitcases which housed my final remaining possessions, and the painters erasing from the walls any trace that I had lived there for seven years, I was trying to wrap my head around one fact: That night, I would fall asleep in another country. For the foreseeable future, I would be a foreigner an extranjero in a land with a checkered history, where I barely spoke the language.

It all started, six years earlier, with an email. It was the kind of email that would trip up most spam filters. I wasnt being offered true love, millions of dollars from an offshore bank account, or improved performance in bed. I was being offered a book deal.

I had never thought of myself as a writer. In fact, I hated writing as a kid. As I considered accepting that book deal offer, every author I talked to warned me: Writing a book is extremely hard work, with little chance of success. But I figured, How hard can it be?, and signed my first literary contract.

I didnt know how to write a book, but the most obvious method was: time management. I needed to make sure I had the time to write the book.

In an attempt to meet my tight deadline, I used every time management technique I could think of. I scheduled writing sessions on my calendar. I developed a morning routine to start writing as quickly as possible after waking up. I time boxed, to limit the time I would spend on pieces of the project.

Still, I didnt have enough time. I fired my clients. I cancelled dates and turned down party invitations. I started outsourcing my grocery shopping, my meal preparation, even household chores. If there was anything I had to do myself, I made sure to batch it into blocks of time when I could do it all at once.

Writing the book became my one and only focus. I cleared away any time I could, and I dedicated it to writing.

But it still wasnt enough. I spent most of my day hunched over my keyboard, rocking back and forth in agony. I felt actual physical pain in my stomach and chest. My fingers felt as if they had been overtaken by rigor mortis. I struggled to write even a single sentence. I was spending plenty of time on my book, but I wasnt getting anything done.

My case of writers block was so bad that, weeks after signing my contract, I accepted a last-minute invitation to go on a retreat to Costa Rica. Logically, it wasnt the best use of my time, but I desperately hoped that a change of scenery would work some kind of magic.

A few days into the trip, I was more worried than ever. According to my contract, if my manuscript wasnt twenty-five percent finished within a few weeks, the deal was off. Yet I still hadnt written a single word. Unless a miracle happened, I would write a check to the publisher to return my advance, and I would humiliatingly face my friends, family, and blog readers to tell them I had failed. Does that sound like a lot of pressure? It was.