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My new book, Mind Management, Not Time Management
TL;DR: Buy Mind Management, Not Time Management right now »
It’s surreal. Ten years ago I started writing my first book. That was when I ran into a problem.
Eight years ago, I had an idea how to fix that problem and wrote a blog post about it.
Six years ago I started drafting a book and making cover mockups.
Five years ago I moved to South America to redesign my life around the ideas in that yet-unwritten book.
Since then, I’ve written and trashed two book proposals. I’ve also written and trashed a completed book and a couple 50%-false-starts that weren’t quite right.
It’s a little over a year now since I finally started a draft that I would finish.
A 10-year journey comes to an end today. I’ve written probably 600,000 words just so I could publish 60,000. It seems as if I should collapse on the floor from exhaustion or rocket into space from excitement, but I don’t feel either of those things.
Writing my first book made me feel like dying. Thanks to the methods in this new book, today is just another day doing work I love. The only thing that feels unusual about today is that it doesn’t feel unusual.
Today I’m launching my third book, Mind Management, Not Time Management. It’s my best book. The biggest project of my life.
Creativity matters now more than ever. If someone can teach you the steps to follow, there’s no point in doing it. A machine can do it better, faster, longer.
What the machine can’t do is be you. Only you have your combination of curiosities and experiences and passions and weird-but-delightful idiosyncrasies.
We live in a high-leverage world. You can write a tweet that changes minds, or you can write a tweet that disappears into the abyss. You can write a book that sells zero copies, or you can write a book that sells a million. You can make a decision that bankrupts the company, or a decision that saves it.
You can put the same amount of work into each of these. The difference between success and failure isn’t tied to how much time it took to do the work. The difference between success and failure is in the quality of your ideas.
As the entrepreneur/investor/philosopher Naval Ravikant has said, “Earn with your mind, not with your time.”
What got us here won’t get us there. We’re still stuck on the assembly line. We still think in terms of inputs and outputs: How long will it take to do these actions, to get this result?
On the assembly line, we need parts that fit together. If one part breaks, we need to be able to slip in a new one.
And so humans have been made into interchangeable parts.
We’ve forgotten what it feels like to explore curiosity. We’ve forgotten what it feels like to embrace our weirdness and to even think our own thoughts.
When was the last time you lost track of time making something? When was the last time the deadline didn’t dictate what got done? When was the last time you let yourself follow a path that wasn’t on the map just to see where it took you?
(I said today didn’t feel different, but as I write this it’s starting to.)
I did all those things over the past decade. I’ve been lost in the woods, stuck in the weeds, swallowed into the belly of the beast. It was so dark in there I wondered if I’d ever find my way out.
Some things you’ll learn in Mind Management, Not Time Management:
- How did we get here? We’re praying to the false god of time. See the “time worship” around you and break free.
- What is it we’re trying to do here? When you’re trying to have great ideas, you need to think differently.
- Why do we get blocked? Create the conditions in your mind to make breakthroughs happen.
- When you have the time, where do you find the energy? Stop trying to squeeze more out of time, and start getting more out of energy.
- How can you change your mental state? As Constantin Brancusi said, “Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them.”
- How to put it all into a system that not only withstands chaos, but that benefits from it, and much much more…
Please buy Mind Management, Not Time Management today.
Truth be told, I’m not doing this launch “right.”
What I should do is have some special giveaway, like buy five books and get this beer koozie or buy 100,000 books and I’ll fly you to a private island where you’ll meet a billionaire and we’ll ride purple elephants.
I should have a huge list of blurbs from famous authors who – coincidentally – have the same publisher and agent as I do.
Well, I don’t have an agent. I don’t have a publisher. I’m not friends with any billionaires, and actually a lot of “important” people I used to be friends with stopped returning my emails after I went of the deep end and moved to Colombia.
(And don’t ride elephants. It’s cruel.)
Besides, doing a launch the “right” way is to shoot for a best-seller list at one of those newspapers in New York. I’m not shooting for a best-seller list. Amazon will probably have one of those “best-seller” tags on my book at some point today, and that’s more than enough validation for me.
Every time I thought about things I “should” do to launch this book “right,” I figured I could just not do those things and instead put that work into making the book a little better.
The only blurbs I have are from people to whom I sent the book, and who read the book. For example Nir Eyal, who wrote Indistractable liked it. He said:
Mind Management, Not Time Management arms you with the tools you need to make the most of your creative energy, helping you get more enjoyment and life out of your work.
—Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable
There’s a few more blurbs on the Amazon page. I’ll add some when they come in. There have been printing delays due to COVID, so lots of people who might blurb the book haven’t gotten it yet (the paperback is now shipping on-schedule). If I were doing the launch “right” that would be really stressful but instead it’s okay.
Please buy the shit out of Mind Management, Not Time Management (today)
I don’t have an agent and I don’t have a publisher, but what I do have is readers like you. More than 200 people bought the Preview Edition of the book (if you’re one of them, you should have received a download link for the First Edition this morning.)
Many of those readers also helped edit the book. Thank you to those readers – they’re all mentioned in the acknowledgements.
For those who didn’t buy the Preview Edition, please do buy Mind Management, Not Time Management, and please do so today.
Why buy it? Hopefully it sounds so interesting to you you can’t help it. But if you’re on the fence then ask yourself if you’ve ever liked anything I’ve written or if you’ve ever wanted to thank me or support my work.
If the answer is yes, then please buy Mind Management, Not Time Management.
Seriously, this is my biggest ask of the past ten years. Some of you have been reading this blog for that entire ten years. Maybe you’ve been reading for sixteen years.
I’ve produced over 200 podcast episodes – all free. I’ve written hundreds of articles – all free. I’ve sent out 80 Love Mondays emails – all free.
I left a lucrative career in Silicon Valley and moved to a cheaper country so I could do that work and give you those things for free.
And now I’m asking you to please buy Mind Management, Not Time Management.
Why buy today? I don’t have a beer koozie or a tropical getaway with a billionaire to offer you for buying today.
If I were going for a bestseller list at one of those newspapers, that would be a reason to buy today. But I’m not so that’s not the reason.
It would certainly help with the Amazon algorithm, and help more people see the book and couldn’t we all use a little mind management these days? That’s a decent reason.
But also I’m just asking. Would you please buy Mind Management, Not Time Management? It would mean a lot and frankly it would be nice to have some idea by end-of-day that I’m not completely insane for having sacrificed what I have to make this book real.
Now maybe you’ve bought or you can’t afford it and you’d like to help in some other way. Here are some ways you can help:
- Share the book with your audience. Here’s a handy click to tweet link.
- Email your favorite podcast host and tell them you want to hear me on their podcast.
- Email or DM your favorite YouTuber or bookstagrammer and tell them to review this book.
- Email your favorite journalist and tell them you’d love to see them cover this book.
- And if you can afford it, Buy Mind Management, Not Time Management for all your friends, for your dog, and for your parakeet.
That is all. Thank you for your support and for making this normal day a special one.
Best,
David
