David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start & Design for Hackers.

Posts from the Creative Productivity Category

Eventually, you get there

November 12, 2012

At age 31, I couldn’t swim. Every time I tried to swim, my Lizard Brain would send my body into a panic. My heart rate would skyrocket, my muscles would tense, and within 25 yards, I’d be out of breath. keep on reading »

Permission to Suck

November 02, 2012

My friend is one of those people who swears she “can’t” meditate. She can’t sit still that long. She can’t think of “nothing.” The times that she tried meditating, she kept thinking of things, and got frustrated.

It probably doesn’t help that my friend was once a soloist in one of the top ballet companies in the world. She has been trained to achieve perfection, and can’t accept any less. keep on reading »

Thinking is a thing

October 29, 2012

Thinking is a thing. Its own separate thing – crammed within the cracks between all the other “things.”

Thinking gets compressed, but it is limitlessly expansive. It can stretch as vast as the ocean, or tower as high as the stars. Thinking just needs the time to achieve its own bounds. keep on reading »

Prefrontal Mondays

October 22, 2012

Productivity is less about time management than it is about mind management. Knowing when is the best time to use different parts of your brain can help you use those parts to their fullest potential. The better you understand how a tool works, the more effectively you can use it. There’s no more powerful tool in your brain than your prefrontal cortex. keep on reading »

Mind Management (Not Time Management)

October 16, 2012

This blog post is now a book! Buy it here.

An audio version of this post is available here.

Productivity is less about time management than it is about mind management. We all have the same number of hours during the day. How effectively we spend those hours really depends upon how well we can manage and harness our fragile mental energy. keep on reading »

The “Bicycle for Our Minds” Needs Gears: Restrictive Interfaces

May 10, 2012

Steve Jobs has famously described the computer as a bicycle for our minds. In this video, he eloquently describes exactly what he means by that. keep on reading »

The 10-Minute Hack

February 28, 2012

The hardest part of doing most things is just starting. We often think about how big of a project we have ahead of ourselves, and that’s what makes it hard to start. I know when I was writing my book, it seemed like most of my day was spent fighting the agony of just getting started. It was hard to ignore just how big of a project it was. keep on reading »

The Way I Work

December 26, 2009

I recently saw a piece by Jason Fried about how he works, and I found it pretty interesting. To truly be yourself for a living, you have to find a work style that makes the most of your natural ways of operating. I think I’ve developed some eccentric but effective working habits over the past few years, so I thought I would be fun to share them similarly. keep on reading »

How to tie a winter scarf

October 22, 2009

how_to_tie_a_scarfThere are plenty of ways to tie a winter scarf; but after a friend showed me this method, I don’t think I’ll ever tie a scarf another way again. Most scarf tying methods I’ve found are bulky and uneven; but this method yields a knot that distributes the mass of the scarf evenly. So, it looks dandy underneath your winter coat. keep on reading »

How to Fuck Up Properly: Vote for my SXSW Panel

August 20, 2009

SXSWPanelPicker-lgThe SXSW panel picker is live for the 2010 SXSW Interactive conference. This year, I submitted the panel idea, How to Fuck Up Properly, where we’ll explore just how integral failure actually is to success; and how to tell the difference between failure, and lack of follow through. It will be a great panel, and I promise not to fuck it up; but, it can’t happen without your vote. Please vote now! keep on reading »

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