Love Your Work

Here's a brain teaser for you: Imagine we've got a room full of people. We're trying to figure if any two people in the room have the same birthday.

For us to reach a fifty-percent probability that there are two people in the room with the exact same birthday, how many people need to be in the room?

I told you this was a brain teaser, so suffice to say that the answer -- to how many people need to be in a room for there to be a fifty-percent probability that two people have the exact same birthday -- is not what you would intuitively expect.

The "birthday problem" tells a lot about how we fail to see hidden complexity

For the sake of this puzzle, let's assume there are no twins, no leap year birthdays, and there are no seasonal variations. No spike in birthdays nine months after Christmas or some big snowstorm.

Most people start with a rough calculation like this: There's 365 days in a year, so for there to be two people in the room with the same birthday, take 365, divide it by two -- you've got about 180, give or take. With 180 people in a room it seems you'd have about a fifty-percent chance that two of them have the same birthday.

This intuitive calculation is wrong. It's very wrong. If you had 180 people in a room, the chances that two of them will have the same birthday is damn close to 100%. Even if there were only 100 people in the room, rather than 180, the chances that two of them would have the same birthday would be 99.99997%.

The actual answer is fun to know, but it also tells us a lot about our minds. It tells us a lot about how bad we are at understanding complexity. It tells us a lot about how complexity tends to get out of hand, and weigh us down, and cause us to stagnate. Complexity creep.

If we know the answer to what is known as the birthday problem, maybe -- just maybe -- we can fight against complexity creep: That insidious tendency for us to make things more complex and more complex and more complex, until we find ourselves paralyzed.

And there's a flip side. If you can understand complexity creep -- if you can understand how things that seem simple are actually complex, you can also use that to your advantage.

Each "one thing" interacts with every other thing

So how do you actually find the answer to the birthday problem? Let me start by saying that if you have trouble following the next minute or so, don't worry about it. That's the point. Our brains aren't wired to intuitively understand this.

On a basic level, you wouldn't just calculate based upon the total number of people in the room and the total number of potential birthdays.

In actuality, you would calculate based upon potential interactions amongst the birthdays of every person within the room.

Like this: If there's only one person in the room, there's a 365 out of 365 -- 100% -- chance that person does not share a birthday with another person in the room. There are no other people in the room, after all.

Add a second person, and there's a 364 out of 365 chance that person does not share a birthday with the first person in the room.

With each person you add, you take away one from the numerator of that fraction. With the third person, instead of 364, it's a 363 out of 365 chance that person does not share a birthday with either of the first two people in the room.

So on and on, that numerator gets lower -- from 363 to 362 to 361 -- with each additional person in the room. So far, there's five people in the room, and a 361 out of 365 chance that fifth person does not share a birthday with any of the other four people in that room.

That's a 98.9% chance of no match. A merely 1.1% chance that this fifth person shares a birthday with one of the other four people in the room.

But wait. If there are five people in a room, the chances that any two of them share the same birthday is not 1.1%. It's 2.7%. More than double. Why?

Because with each person you add, there's a probability that a person shares a birthday with one of the other people. But as we add people to the room, each person's individual probability is added to the total probability. This total probability is an aggregate of all probabilities we calculated each time we added a person to the room.

So adding a 1.1% probability with the fifth person to get a total 2.7% probability may not sound like much, but when you keep adding people, that new probability you're adding onto the total probability gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

The answer: The number of people who have to be in the room for us to have a fifty-percent probability that two of those people share the same birthday is: twenty-three. If there are only twenty-three people in the room, there's about at fifty-percent chance two of them have the same birthday.

We aren't wired to see complexity. We're wired for survival.

I don't know about you, but when I first heard this puzzle, that is not the answer I expected. In fact, even now that I understand how these odds are calculated, it's still hard for me to believe.

But as I say, we're not wired to understand these things. We're individual creatures, wired to survive, wired to take mental shortcuts that drive us toward safety and pleasure and help us avoid pain.

In the millions of years of human evolution, I can't think of any good reason for a human to understand the hidden complexity we see demonstrated in the birthday problem. Things were simple: How many berries are in that bush? Not How does each of those berries interact with every other berry? If there's anything we want to know about besides those berries, it's Is there a tiger in that bush?

But, we aren't hunting and gathering in the Sahara anymore. We live in a dizzyingly complex and interconnected world.

We're getting a lesson on this in the coronavirus pandemic. Since the beginning, those of us who aren't trained epidemiologists have struggled to comprehend how quickly a virus can spread. How a five-percent-per-day increase in cases starts to really add up. If and when we reach herd immunity -- that will probably be equally as counterintuitive to our primitive brains.

Keep complexity from holding you back as a creator

Understanding complexity creep, and understanding that we struggle to understand complexity creep, also applies to our work as creators.

Because the single most valuable thing you have as a creator is your creative energy. The better you can make use of that energy, the more and better work you can do.

It's hard to make use of that energy if you're being weighed down by hidden complexity.

This is something I'm personally looking out for a lot lately. Remember when I told you about the time I killed that $150,000 passive income stream, back on Episode 214? That was about mitigating hidden complexity.

Here I had something that was making me some money. I wasn't doing any work on it. But I sensed that complexity lurked within.

There was the complexity of opportunity costs. It was occupying space within my brain. Our thoughts have opportunity costs. When you choose to think of one thing, you choose not to think of another thing. That's hard to see when you're too busy thinking.

There was the complexity of Black Swans. Day to day, I wasn't doing any work on this site. But one day, something could have happened like a server could go down, and next thing I'd know, I'd be thinking about this other website, and not about the more important parts of my business.

I still don't know what I missed out on by killing that website. That's the nature of complexity creep. You can't see it, you kind of have to act on faith.

But I do know that it's a relief to have it out of my life. It's created space for me to work on this podcast and my upcoming book, Mind Management, Not Time Management.

Hidden complexity in everyday life

You can see complexity creep in your life, too. Ever since I sold everything and moved to South America, I've been trying to practice practical minimalism. I had a furnished apartment, which got rid of lots of complexity.

I just got my first unfurnished apartment in Colombia, and every day, I see complexity creep in to take my precious energy. It's in buying furniture and having to pay bills I didn't have to pay before. It's in deciding whether or not to purchase an item: It looks like it will make my life better or easier, but it's never just "one more thing." Like the birthday problem, it's one more thing, and the way that thing interacts with everything else.

Leverage hidden complexity. Turn small things into big things.

I promised you that hidden complexity isn't only a thing to be avoided. It's also a thing to be leveraged. If one little thing can also interact with many other things, that means a small thing can lead to bigger things. That's what we see in the power of tiny habits, like BJ Fogg talked about in episode 107. That's the power of something like the Ten-Minute Hack. I've noticed it myself lately as I've been focusing more on Twitter: That a tiny tweet can lead to a Love Mondays newsletter, which can lead to a podcast episode, which can become a book.

Hidden complexity can weigh you down, or hidden complexity can be leveraged to lift you up.

Both the devil and the angel are in the details.

Image: Flowers in Stone, Paul Klee

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David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/complexity-creep/

When I was working with Timeful -- the productivity app co-founded by behavioral scientist and Love Your Work guest, Dan Ariely -- we had a great feature. You could put todo items on your calendar.

You could estimate how long a todo item was going to take, and then you could drag that todo item onto your calendar. It would be right there on the timeline, along with any other events you had planned for the day.

This todo-items-on-calendar thing was a handy feature. It makes sense, really. Too many of us have a todo list a mile long. We know what we intend to do, but we have no idea when we'll actually do those things.

When Timeful built this feature, and I finally got to use it regularly, I made a discovery. We're really bad at estimating time. It shouldn't have been a surprise. Our vision is distorted by our "time worship."

Our perception of time is warped

My own faulty time estimates went both ways. I might think it would take me less than fifteen minutes to respond to an email. I'd be shocked to discover that it took half an hour. I might think it would take an hour to draft a blog post, and I'd be pleasantly surprised to see I could do it in only ten minutes.

Instinctively, we know that our perception of time is warped. We know the saying that "time flies when we're having fun." Our perception of time changes. It changes according to our mood, our personality, or the number of events that happen within a certain amount of time.

But if our perception of time is so warped, why is time so important to us? Why do we treat time as if it's the only thing that matters? Why do we practice "time worship?"

The way we measure time is arbitrary

It turns out, the way we measure time is pretty arbitrary. There's nothing in the natural world that says that we should divide our days up by twenty-four hours, with sixty minutes in each of those hours, with sixty seconds in each of those minutes.

Our heart may beat about sixty times a minute, but if we're exercising, it could be 160 times a minute. We breathe about fourteen times a minute, but if we're running, it might be forty times a minute.

Aside from the rotation of the earth and the earth's revolutions around the sun, there's nothing about the natural world that says we need to measure the time the way we do.

Dividing the day up into twenty-four hours, sixty minutes an hour, sixty seconds a minute -- that's leftover from a 4,000-year-old Babylonian numbering system.

And hours weren't even originally a fixed length of time! Back in the days of sundials, hours were relative to the amount of daylight in the day. Hours in one season were shorter than hours in another season.

It wasn't even until the late 16^th^ century that there was a mechanical clock that kept track of sixty minutes in an hour. To measure seconds, we had to wait until a century later -- the 17^th^ century.

Even the earth's rotations are unreliable

Yet even with this mechanical precision, the way we measure time doesn't totally match up with the natural world. In an atomic clock, 9,192,631,770 cycles of radiation in the caesium-133 atom represents one second. The atomic clock uses this atom's radiation to keep time, because it's one of the most reproducible and stable things in all of nature. Certainly more reliable than grains of sand falling through an hourglass, or even the vibrations of a quartz crystal.

But still, even with the help of one of the most reproducible and stable things in all of nature, the atomic clock is not perfect. We still have to add an extra second -- a "leap second" -- to our measurement of time. We add a leap second eight times a decade.

It's hard to match mechanical or even atomic precision to time, in part, because even the thing that time is based upon isn't perfect. There are tiny, portions of a millisecond, differences in the length of a day -- that is, the amount of time it takes for the earth to rotate. These differences fluctuate over the course of multiple years and throughout the year, as well as every several days.

So why does time rule our lives?

So if our perception of time is warped, if our measurement of time is arbitrary, if even the things upon which we measure time are unreliable, why are we so reliant on time?

Most of us wake up to an alarm clock. We break for lunch at a certain time. We meet for coffee at a certain time, through synchronized clocks on our phones. We go to bed at a certain time. You probably looked at how long this podcast episode was before you decided to listen to it.

One reason we're so reliant on time is because keeping track of time is useful. It allows us to do more things in less time. It allows us to coordinate with others, so we can synchronize complex systems that make our world work. Keeping track of time helps us make connecting flights, it makes sure the grocery store shelves are stocked, and it even helps us remember to do things we might otherwise forget.

Time is our "God value" (and it shouldn't be)

In a complex world, there are only so many ways you can make a decision. This is where values become critical. Values help us choose which factors are the most important in a given decision.

The "right" decision in any situation varies according to our values. If we value family over money, we'll decide one way. If we value money over our mental health, we'll decide yet another way.

We use different values in different situations to make different decisions. But we tend to have some values that dominate over all of the others. Whatever we value the most is what author Mark Manson would call our "God value."

Too often, time is our God value. Too often, time is the one big factor we use to make decisions. It's time worship, and it's bad.

Time worship at work

Think about the way time is used in many organizations. In many companies, you can see the open slots on the calendars of your coworkers. You can then fill those open slots by inviting your coworkers to meetings.

This is easy to miss, so I'll spell it out. The logic is as follows: This time is open. Time filled is better than time not filled. Therefore, I will fill this open time with a meeting.

Time is the God value in this decision.

When we're on the receiving end of these invitations, we also tend to think of it only in terms of time. Again: Time filled is better than time not filled. There is unfilled time, therefore, I will fill it with this event.

Again, time is the God value.

Notice that we also tend to negotiate with time. Ever been really focused on something, only to have a coworker tap you on the shoulder and ask, "Got a minute?" A minute. That's the thing they want from you. Time is the God value. If you hesitate, maybe they'll assure you, "This will only take a minute."

Your focus is broken, and someone is impeding on that focus. Maybe you're a little annoyed. But you don't want to look uncooperative, so you go along with it. You stop what you're doing, and help your coworker out. Then somehow, you burn away the rest of your afternoon trying to get back to where you were before that coworker tapped you on the shoulder.

You lost a whole afternoon of productivity, all because time is the God value in your office. You lost a whole afternoon of productivity all because of time worship.

Time worship in life

There are some situations where other values take over. You won't stop delivering a eulogy to check your stock prices because it will take "just a minute." You won't stop having sex to answer a text message because it will take "just a minute." (The text-message response, that is.) It's obviously inappropriate in both cases to treat time as the God value.

Yet there are too many other situations where time shouldn't be our God value, yet it is. Time worship permeates throughout our culture, affecting the way we treat one another.

Am I the only one annoyed when a waiter slams a check on the table before you've finished chewing your last bite? The logic is a remnant of Taylorism, which I talked about on episode 226: The amount of time a table is open for business is a "production unit." The more paying customers you can fit within that time, the better.

It's not the waiter's fault. In the U.S., there's a good chance I'm a "clock-time" person -- as I talked about on the previous episode -- ready to get moving to my next activity. There's a good chance I'll be annoyed if the check isn't on my table by the time I'm done with the act of eating.

Time worship in schools

Consider the way we use time as a God value in schools. We send children to school not according to when they're awake and ready to learn. Instead, we send them according to time. When can parents drop them off? When are busses available?

Down with time worship. Up with performance.

Daniel Pink's When outlines a number of drawbacks for sending kids to school whenever it's convenient: Testing kids late in the day leads to a reduced test performance on par with missing two weeks of school a year, or having parents with lower income or education.

By contrast, rescheduling schooling according to what works with kids' energy levels improve learning. Having math early in the day improved students' math GPAs. Providing breaks improves performance. Overall, Pink finds, "delaying school starting times improves motivation, boosts emotional well-being, reduces depression, and lessens impulsivity."

Fortunately, both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC have issued policy statements recommending that middle schools and high schools start later in the morning, to better accomodate the shifted sleep rhythms of adolescents.

And it's not just in schools that we could improve performance by reducing time worship.

Olympic records tend to be broken in the late afternoon or early evening. Jurors produce less-discriminatory verdicts in the morning. Hospital workers who are well-rested and are working with fresh energy wash their hands more, diagnose diseases more accurately, and make fewer life-threatening errors. That's right, time worship kills people.

Think of time descriptively, not prescriptively

What's the alternative to time worship? Don't think of time as prescriptive, think of time as descriptive. You can use time as a general guide, but using time as a mold into which to forcefully fit activities is unnatural, and ineffective.

Next time you're making a decision, and you start to think about how much time it's going to take, try a mental shift.

Instead of asking how the decision will affect your time, think about how it will affect your: focus, momentum, mood, motivation, mental state, energy level -- literally anything other than your time!

Stop the time worship!

Image: Separation in the Evening, Paul Klee

Thanks for sharing my work!

In Instagram, thank you to @letterbworld, @poor_bjorns_book_lab, @livroschatos.

My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays

Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/time-worship/

Before I moved to Colombia, I lived several "mini lives" in Medellín. I came and lived here for a few months. I escaped the very worst portion of the Chicago winters.

There was a phenomenon I experienced every time I came here, which taught me a lot about how I think about time. It always happened right around the three week mark.

Getting used to a slower pace of life

The pace of life in Medellín is different from the pace of life in Chicago. It's slower. People talk slower, people walk slower. That thing where you stand on the right side of the escalator so people can pass on the left -- yeah, people don't really do that here. They stand wherever they like. It's usually not a problem. It's rare that anyone climbs up the escalator while it's moving, anyway.

Whenever I came on a trip to Medellín, the same thing happened: The first week, the slower pace of life was refreshing. The second week, as I was trying to get into a routine, it started to get annoying. The third week, some incident would occur, and I would -- I'm not proud to say -- lose my shit.

A comedy of errors

The last time I went through this transition, it was a concert malfunction. I showed up to the theater to see a concert, and the gates were locked. A chulito wrapper rolled by in the wind, like a tumbleweed. Nobody was around, except a stray cat.

Is it the wrong day? I confirmed on the website: The concert is today, at this time, at this place. So where is everybody?

As I walked around the building, looking for another entrance, I saw a security guard. He told me the concert was cancelled. Something broken on the ceiling of the theater.

This was especially aggravating because of everything I had gone through to get these tickets. My foreign credit card didn't work on the ticket website, so I had to go to a physical ticket kiosk. But then the girl working the kiosk said the system was down. So I came back the next day, and the system was also down. No, it wasn't "still" down -- it was just down "again." So I waited in a nearby chair in the mall for forty-five minutes. Then I finally got my tickets.

And now the concert is cancelled. I go to the ticket booth at the theater to get my money back. But they tell me I can't do that here -- I have to go to a special kiosk, across town. Oh, and I can't do it today -- they won't be ready to process my refund until tomorrow.

I take the afternoon off to go get my refund. After standing in line for half an hour, they tell me they can't process my refund on my foreign credit card. I have to fill out a form, which they'll mail to the home office in Bogotá. I should get my refund within ten days.

I'm always wary that I'm an immigrant living in another country -- that sometimes the way they do things in that country makes no sense to me. I never want to come off as the "impatient gringo." But at this point, I become the impatient gringo. I demand my money back, and recount the whole experience to the clerk. In my perturbed state, my Spanish is even more embarrassingly broken.

I give in, fill out the form, and leave the ticket kiosk -- without my money. And I've been through this enough times to know what's coming.

Out on the sidewalk, in an instant, as if a switch were flipped in my brain, I go from steaming with anger, to calm as a clam. Months worth of pent-up tension melts away from the muscles in my neck and back. I feel relaxed -- almost high.

Flipping the "temporal switch"

I call this moment the "temporal switch." I've talked to other expats about this phenomenon, and they report something similar. That when you first come to Medellín, it takes awhile to get into the rhythm of life here. But once you're in that rhythm, you're more relaxed, more laid back. You're even happier.

You might wonder what my concert catastrophe has to do with the rhythm of life in Colombia. I might be wrong, but somehow it seems that malfunctions are incredibly common here. It certainly seems so to myself and other expats that live here, and even Colombians agree. (If the concert incident is any support for this theory, I'll add that I never did get a refund -- I ended up calling AMEX to do a chargeback.)

These malfunctions have a symbiotic relationship with the rhythm of life. The internal chatter I experience whenever I make the temporal switch might provide some insight. I'm telling myself, "Things aren't going to work out the first time you try them. You might as well relax, go with the flow, and enjoy the moment."

So perhaps everyone is telling themselves that. "Things aren't going to work out the first time you try them." That could be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In any case, even if things don't work out on the first try, don't worry. It will work out eventually. As the Colombians say, ¡No pasa nada!

Some people are on "clock-time." Other people are on "event-time."

The main reason I chose Colombia as a place to double down on writing was that I simply do better writing while I'm here. I think this temporal switch has a lot to do with that.

In his global studies in attitudes about time, social psychologist Robert Levine identified two distinct approaches to time: There's clock-time, and there's event-time.

Clock-time people schedule according to the time on the clock. Lunch is at this time, this meeting will end at this time, and the next meeting will begin at this other time.

Event-time people schedule according to events. When I'm hungry, I'll eat lunch. This meeting will end once we've met the objective, and if that doesn't take all afternoon, we'll have this other meeting after that one.

Event-time and the "eight-day" week

I went through the temporal switch several times before I knew about these two time orientations. Now that I know about clock-time and event-time, much of the behavior that I found puzzling now makes sense.

There's no better illustration of event-time than how Colombians view a week. If a Colombian wants to meet with you a week from now, they will say, "en ocho dias" -- in eight days.

The first time I heard this, I was incredibly confused. Today is Wednesday, so -- ocho dias: next Thursday? I was surprised to learn that the eight-day "week" is the standard here in Colombia, as well as many other event-time countries. If today is Wednesday, eight days from now is also Wednesday.

As a clock-time person, I was initially convinced that this was objectively wrong. Counting on the clock, the meeting will take place more or less exactly seven days from now -- seven rotations of the earth.

But if you think about it from an event-time perspective, it's not wrong at all. Today is an event, which has not yet ended. There will be six additional days -- each day its own event -- between now and the meeting. The day the meeting takes place is an event in itself. Add that up -- one, six, one, -- and you've got eight days between now and the meeting which takes place a week from now.

This is not the Beatles' Eight Days a Week. That was a malapropism -- said by a chauffeur to illustrate that he was working hard. Instead, this is literally how event-time people see the week. It's a refreshing thought, really: Today counts.

Both clock-time and event-time have their place

It can come off as politically incorrect to even point out these different attitudes about time. If any of these observations sound judgemental to you, stop and think: Is it because one approach sounds better to you than the other? Well there's your problem!

Both event-time and clock-time are useful, for different contexts. Researchers Tamar Avnet and Anne-Laure Sellier found that both clock-time and event-time approaches can lead to good outcomes. It depends what you're trying to accomplish.

If you're trying to be efficient, clock-time is the way to go. If you're stacking bricks, Frederick Taylor's approach to timing movements will get the wall up faster. It's a clock-time approach.

But if you're trying to be effective, event-time is the way to go. If you're trying to think of the perfect gift for your tenth wedding anniversary, getting it right is more important than doing it quickly.

Avnet and Sellier's study also demonstrated that clock-time and event-time approaches aren't strictly cultural. Most of us change our approach based upon what we're trying to accomplish. It's when we use a clock-time approach, when an event-time approach would be better, that we get ourselves into trouble.

Clock-time is a creativity killer

Think about the things you've learned in previous episodes of Love Your Work. Remember from episode 218 that creative work follows four distinct stages. Remember from episode 226 that when Frederick Taylor tried to treat time as a production unit] his productivity eventually collapsed.

Consider this study from Stanford. They found that the busier knowledge workers were, the less creative they were. The more they struggled to fit work into the time available, the more they let creativity fall by the wayside.

Remember some of the ways that creative work is not like moving chunks of iron or stacking bricks. Ideas can be worthless, or they can be priceless. Ideas can also arrive in an instant. And when they do arrive, the moment they arrive is often far removed from the work that produced the idea.

When the work you're doing right now isn't immediately bringing results, and when those results may come unpredictably -- at any time -- you can see how working on clock-time is a stressful recipe.

Use time as a guide, not as restriction

So what's the solution? Should you be a clock-time person, or should you be an event-time person? Obviously, if you can't do anything on-time, you're going to have a tough time. You'll disrespect people by showing up late, you'll miss deadlines. You'll end up racing against the clock.

But I prefer to think of time as descriptive, not prescriptive. The minutes and hours on the clock are not little boxes that you need to stuff work into. The minutes and hours on the clock are instead rough measurements for how to allocate your energy.

Time is a useful proxy for measuring and dividing up energy. It's not a strict template for guiding every action you take.

If you read roughly an hour a day, you'll read a lot of books. If you meditate roughly fifteen minutes a day, you'll be more present the rest of your day. If you brainstorm something for five minutes today, the solution will come to you sometime tomorrow.

If instead, you're trying to finish reading a chapter in the next ten minutes, or you're trying to come up with the perfect company strategy before the meeting ends at noon, your efforts are just going to backfire. Avnet and Sellier have found that people who depend too much on the clock to dictate their schedules are less present, are less able to savor positive emotions, and are less open to the unpredictable and emerging opportunities that are inherent to creative work.

Pay attention to how you're scheduling your work. Ask yourself: Am I working according to the clock -- trying to fit work into restricted time; or am I working according to events -- trying to get it right? If you're trying to be creative, try to practice less clock-time, and more event-time.

Image: Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, Giacomo Balla

My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays

Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
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Subscribe to Love Your Work

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Support the show on Patreon

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/clock-time-event-time/

Maya Angelou was right, "People will forget what you said...but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Because I don't remember what this woman said to me, but I do remember how I felt: Attacked.

My heart was racing. I had two options: Lash out and defend my position, or excuse myself from the conversation.

My brain hastily searched for the best way out: Slip into the kitchen to get another drink? Go to the bathroom? Awkwardly appeal to my need to mingle?

But then I realized something: I felt attacked, but she wasn't attacking me. She wasn't even disagreeing with me. She had merely asked a question.

Don't be other people. Be a thinking person.

Only now, years later, do I understand why I felt so threatened. I had met a thinking person.

Oscar Wilde said it well,

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are some one else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. -Oscar Wilde

Forgive the quotation, but it accurately describes who I was. I was someone else. Whatever I had said to that woman at that cocktail party, it wasn't a thought. It was someone else's opinion.

And I was encountering someone who was not someone else. She was herself. She was someone who didn't speak in pre-programmed sound bites. Someone who didn't merely parrot the latest news headline or social media meme. Someone who listened to what you said, asked questions about it, and expected a response. Someone who, in good faith, assumed I, too, was a thinking person.

Since that day, I have endeavored to become a thinking person. I'll never truly master thinking. If I thought I could master thinking, that wouldn't be very thinking-person-like of me.

But once in awhile, I do have a genuine thought. Some people agree with me. Because I've tried to become a thinking person, I was proud when an Amazon reviewer of my latest book called me "a very original thinker," and when best-selling author Jeff Goins called me "an underrated thinker." (Though it would be nice to be an appropriately-rated thinker.)

So, I humbly submit to you the way I think about thinking. How to have a thought.

There are four keys to having an original thought:

1. Read widely (not the same shit as everyone else)
2. Stop having opinions (stop defending your "beliefs")
3. Stop wanting to be liked (start being intellectually honest)
4. Write regularly (explore what you really think)

In sum, assume nothing, question everything.

https://twitter.com/kadavy/status/1217900835503558656

Now, a little more about each of these points.

1. Read widely (not the same shit as everyone else)

Haruki Marakami said,

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. -Haruki Marakami

The same way you are what you eat, you also are what you read. This is a little counterintuitive, because, in trying to become a thinking person, we're trying not to have all of our thoughts be mere re-hashings of something we've read.

Don't think of reading as a way to put thoughts into your brain. Think of reading as a way of trying on someone else's brain for a little while.

This is why a book is such a bargain: Someone spends their whole life thinking. They write all of that down. Now for ten bucks you get a lifetime worth of thinking, sewn into a costume you can try on for a few hours.

Charles Scribner, Jr. said, "Reading is a means of thinking with another person's mind; it forces you to stretch your own." With a book, you can try on someone else's thoughts, and see how they feel. You can question those thoughts, and compare them to your own thoughts.

Sometimes a book completely reorganizes the way you process the world. Other times, you just get one or two good ideas.

But to have original thoughts, you can't be reading the same thing everyone else is reading. This is tough, because we're all fishing from the same stream. The stream of information that rushes by each day in the news and in our social media feeds.

Every week, thousands of new books are published. A few dozen will be hot. Most of those books won't have a lasting impact on culture.

And they shouldn't. Most of the books mainstream publishers are publishing are crap. They're blog posts with 250 pages of filler. They don't have new ideas in them. Even when the book is written by someone who has done original research, you're better off reading one or two of their twenty-page academic papers than you are reading their 250-page book.

If you want to have a thought, you can't read the same shit as everyone else. I love the story of Tyler Cowen, who I interviewed on episode 155. He talks about how he drove all over New England going to used book stores. Used book stores are great, because that's where you can get stuff that isn't even available on Kindle. And cheap, too.

When I graduated college, and recognized that I was still clueless, I did something similar to Tyler. The Omaha Public Library frequently had these used book sales. I'd come out of there with tote bags packed fat with books that were two dollars, one dollar, sometimes twenty-five cents.

My policy was basically: If I had heard of it, I bought it. I suppose at some point in my education I was supposed to read Plato and John Stuart Mill, Jane Austen or J.D. Salinger. But somehow, I hadn't.

You might think that if I heard of it, that contradicts this idea that I should be reading something different from everyone else. But honestly, few people have read the classics. They're too busy reading whatever new book is being shoved in their face.

Besides, you've gotta start somewhere. Starting with classics, you can start digging into what books are in the bibliographies of the books that really move you. That's where you come across the really weird gems.

If you're going to break free of The Matrix, you can't be taking in the same source code as everyone else. Key number one to having a thought is to read widely.

2. Stop having opinions (stop defending your "beliefs")

There truly are few things in this world that any of us know enough about to have an opinion. That doesn't stop people, though.

Mostly, we have opinions based upon emotions, not facts. Yes, we may have enough information to feel 70% confident about an opinion, but after that, it's all ego.

Someone else has a different opinion. We don't want to be proven wrong. So, we defend our 70% certainty as if it were 100% certainty. Then, we all end up in echo chambers where we're parroting sound bites to one another and nodding our heads, or we're talking shit about the people in the other echo chamber. It's all so we can feel good.

This is why many conversations these days are like using Photoshop without realizing you have "snap to grid" turned on. When snap to grid is turned on, you try to draw something in one place, but the grid forces it to show up in another place.

With most people you talk to, you say one thing, and they immediately interpret what you said as meaning some other thing. Some other thing that's only remotely related to what you actually said.

You're not talking to a thinking person. You're talking to someone filtering everything through their inaccurate opinion. The inaccurate opinion that's actually someone else's opinion.

Most people get their opinions from the news. This is unfortunate, because Phillip Tetlock has proven that the pundits who show up on the news the most, are also the pundits who are terrible at predicting the future.

Here's why having opinions prevents you from having original thoughts: The stronger you hold onto an opinion, the harder it will be for you to change your mind if you see new information. It's a threat to your ego. It's called "motivated reasoning" and Annie Duke talks about it on episode 197.

Opinions are like impressionist paintings. They're fun and may even look beautiful from far away, but up close, you can see opinions are never an accurate representation of reality.

It can be fun to hold an opinion and argue the position of that opinion, but you ultimately have to accept that your opinion is not fact. The alternative is to think of your opinions in terms of percentages. As in, I'm 95% certain global warming is caused by humans. Tyler Cowan talks more about using percentages for your opinions on episode 155.

3. Stop wanting to be liked (and start being intellectually honest).

Many conversations, in fact much of day-to-day interactions, are just people using their feelings as filters for selecting which pre-packaged sound bites they're going to repeat.

It's all driven by identity. If somebody identifies as a conservative -- whether consciously or unconsciously -- what they hear is going to be filtered by that identity, what they feel will be dictated by that filter, and how they respond will be dictated by a combination of that feeling and the collection of scripts available for them within that tribe.

And it's no different for a liberal or a libertarian or an anarchist.

This identity effect could also be called "tribalism." It's human nature to feel like we want to belong to a tribe.

From an evolutionary psychology perspective, long ago, being cast from the tribe was the worst thing that could happen to you. You would have no resources and no social contact. You'd be left to fend for yourself, and you'd end up getting strangled by a giant anaconda.

So, staying in-line with the tribe was an advantage. If you were ostracized, you weren't going to survive.

Fortunately, we no longer live in tribes. We live in a global civilization. You have to do a lot more than speak out of turn to truly be left to fend for yourself.

You won't be cut out of the meat share from the latest hunt -- you can order Seamless to your house. You won't be shunned out of finding a partner -- you can connect to millions through the internet. You won't even miss the next play by the fireside -- you can stream the best actors in the world on Netflix.

But that old wiring is still there. It's still human nature to want to be accepted, and to want to be liked. But wanting to be liked gets in the way of having thoughts.

Think about how I felt when that woman at the party asked me a question. My limbic system took over, and my heart started to race. Deep down, I was worried I had said the wrong thing. Deep down, I was worried I would be left to fend for myself.

As Tyler Cowen -- there he is again -- said on episode 155, "Develop a thick skin." Don't worry about upsetting people with your actual thoughts and questions.

This is easier said than done. It's especially hard in real-time conversation. And really -- fine, have the polite conversation at the party, or at work, avoid the conflict and have a better night or keep your job.

But to start having thoughts, you can train yourself in how you react to things people say on the internet. If something upsets you, you can step away and examine that feeling. Meditate on it. Start to develop your own mental model for processing what people say. Train yourself to separate your emotional reaction from your thought process.

Remember, just because someone gets upset with you, that does not automatically mean that you did something wrong.

People have different conceptions of reality, and sometimes those differing conceptions simply collide. Like, you could tell me, "hey, I like your glasses," and maybe I'm offended because I hate my glasses, because other kids made fun of my glasses in sixth grade. Nonsense. Feelings are not facts.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura talks about this more on episode 219.

If you stop wanting to be liked, you'll also be less apt to the "motivated reasoning" that makes us eager to defend our opinions.

4. Write regularly (explore what you really think)

I used to treat words as if they were liquid gold. If I bothered to go through the work of writing some words, those words were rare and precious, and they had to be salvaged.

This was an impossible standard to meet. It set up a Catch-22. The words that I wrote had to be great. But it was hard to write great words, because I didn't get much practice writing, because I thought every word I wrote had to be great.

Now, I think of writing differently. It's not liquid gold. It's the water in a river that's constantly flowing by. I'm always writing, and I treat my writing with the attitude of: There's always more where that came from.

Meanwhile, as that river is flowing by, it's carving through the landscape. Think about it: The Grand Canyon didn't form overnight. The Colorado River has been there, carving it for millions of years.

Not everything I write ends up in some final product, such as a book or a podcast episode, or even a tweet. It's only after I've written something enough times to organize my thoughts that it usually makes it into some final product.

Like a river flowing though a canyon, don't write to have a place to store your words, write to carve out a place for your thoughts to flow.

Don't always write because you plan to publish. You just add an extra layer of censorship onto your writing. This is a sure way to never truly get to what you really think, and to never truly have a thought.

My favorite writing ritual is my morning habit with my AlphaSmart, my crappy little portable word processor. I grab it while I'm still in bed, and type at least one-hundred words, with my eyes closed.

Sometimes it's just simple word play. Other times, it's anything I want to write about. Sometimes it's my "shadow journal" like Dr. Aziz Gazipura talked about. The place where I write about anything that comes to mind, with no judgements.

And when I'm done, I delete it all. Again, it's not about storing the words that you write, it's about carving out a space for your true thoughts to flow.

Go forth & have thoughts

So, there you have it. How to have a thought. Again, those keys are:

1. Read widely (not the same shit as everyone else)
2. Stop having opinions (stop defending your "beliefs")
3. Stop wanting to be liked (start being intellectually honest)
4. Write regularly (explore what you really think)

Then again, don't take my word for it. Find your own road to having a thought.

Image: Siblings, Paul Klee

Thanks for sharing my work!

On Twitter, thank you to @nextlevel_mind.

On Instagram, thank you to @itsjoeranda.

Thank you also to the Spark Joy podcast for having me on the show.

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David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/device-divorce/

When it came time for me to choose a college, I had no idea what I was doing. For reasons I still can't explain, I chose to go to The University of Nebraska at Kearney. At least until I recognized my mistake.

Kearney is a town in the middle of Nebraska. I grew up in Omaha, a city on the east edge of Nebraska. You may laugh, thinking, What's the difference? It's a flyover state. But to most of my classmates, I was a "city slicker."

So, I regularly made the drive. Two and a half hours down I-80. Two and a half hours at eighty-miles-an-hour, with a steady stream of semi trucks passing by.

Each time a truck passed, the powerful winds blowing across the plains of the oxymoronically-named Platte River Valley would disappear. Those winds, blocked by the massive eighteen-wheeler, once it passed, would then reappear with more force than ever, sending my little Honda Accord swerving.

I couldn't swerve too far. My tires were firmly embedded in grooves. Grooves like wagon tracks on the Oregon Trail I-80 follows. Grooves pressed into the concrete by the tires of those heavy semi trucks.

I made this drive -- often over a mixture of ice and snow and gravel and salt -- to leave a city. A city with plenty of educational options, and arrive in a cow town where one of the main forms of entertainment for my classmates -- and I'm not exaggerating here -- was hunting raccoons.

Path dependency: Your future depends on it

One time, I missed the exit for Kearney. This was especially frustrating, because I-80 exists mostly for big trucks to drive through Nebraska. It's not so much for the sparse scattering of people living in Nebraska to get from point A to point B. Which means, there aren't a lot of exits.

So, if you missed the exit for Kearney, that added a bunch of time onto the end of what was already a long trip. You had to drive another twelve miles past your destination, get off the interstate and turn around and get back on the interstate and drive back another twelve miles. So we're talking an extra twenty minutes tacked onto a two-and-a-half-hour drive, if you missed that exit.

It was the kind of mistake that you only made once. And it was a good lesson in path dependency. The concept of path dependency states that once you go down one path, it's difficult or impossible to go down another path. You've passed the fork in the road.

Our lives are full of path dependencies. If you eat a bunch of donuts in the afternoon, you won't have room for a healthy dinner. If you go to one party, you can't go to another. A single moment can be the difference between dying young, or living another fifty years. Matters of life and death are the ultimate path dependency.

In other words, path dependency is really, really important. It's important to making decisions, and it's important to designing your behavior.

One area of life where path dependency has a big impact is with the devices that we use. Take your mobile phone, for example. Think of your mobile phone as like I-80, running through central Nebraska. Once you get on the interstate, once you touch your phone, at what exit will you get off?

There's Facebook Parkway, or there's Kindle Boulevard. There's Meditation Timer Square, or there's Twitter Plaza. There's Instagram Alley, or there's Scrivener Circle.

Like any interstate, once you get off at an exit, it takes some time to get back on the road. If you miss an exit, or take the wrong exit, it will take you a little longer to get where you're going.

You can get to the same place through multiple paths

There are often multiple ways to get to your destination. I remember one time, I drove home from college on an old highway, instead of the interstate. This seemed outrageously adventurous at the time. The highway is slower, it's more narrow, it cuts through towns. Part of me wondered if I'd ever make it home.

Yet, it turned out to be a nice drive. It took longer to get home, but not much longer. And I didn't have to deal with so many eighteen-wheelers. It was probably a safer drive.

This ties into the grippy and slippy tools I was talking about on episode 230. Sometimes speed isn't the most important thing. Less time isn't always more better.

Choosing the right road to take is important for designing your behavior, so you can do more of what matters to you and less of what doesn't matter to you. But once you're on that road, path dependency also matters a lot.

You don't want to take the wrong exit. If you want to go down Scrivener Circle and get some writing done, it's a problem if you accidentally pull into Instagram Alley. If you're trying to settle in for the night to read a book on Kindle Boulevard, it's a problem if you take a detour on Facebook Parkway. And God forbid, if you mean to go to Meditation Timer Square, you instead end up in Twitter Plaza.

Introducing the Device Divorce: Stop taking the wrong turn on your devices

This is why I'm a big advocate of divorce. No, not divorcing from a marriage (though, if you need a divorce, get one). I mean divorcing your devices. A "Device Divorce."

When a marriage goes through divorce, you split up. You split up your possessions, you split up your assets, you divide custody amongst your children. You split up the paths. You say, "That path I was going down, I don't want to go down that path anymore."

A Device Divorce is where you split up your devices. The activities you do with your devices, the paths you can go down once you're on a device, you split them up.

Let's say you have a computer, a tablet, and a smartphone. Each of these devices can do a lot of things. Just like you can get to one destination through many different roads, you can do one thing with each of these three devices.

You can check email with your laptop, your tablet, or your smartphone. You can use social media with your laptop, your tablet, or your smartphone. You can write a book on your laptop, your tablet, and yes, even your smartphone.

But, should you? Should you use each device you own to do every little thing each device can do?

Fortunately, most of us don't evenly distribute all of our activities amongst all of our devices, anyway. If we're going to write a book, we'll do it on our laptop. If we're going to make a call, we'll do it on our smartphone. If we're going to watch a movie, we'll do it on our tablet.

But, even though we don't evenly distribute all of our activities amongst all of our devices, we still do a little of everything on all of our devices. Maybe we do most of our social media on our phone, but we also do a lot of social media on our laptop. Maybe we do most of our email on our computer, but we also do email on our tablet.

The problem with this is, it exposes us to path dependency, gone rogue. If we take a wrong turn, we end up on the wrong road. Once we're on the wrong road, it takes that much longer to get where we're trying to go.

Think of it this way: You can do a lot of things with a toothbrush. You can scrub your teeth with a toothbrush. You can also scrub your toilet with a toothbrush. But would you scrub your teeth and your toilet with the same brush? No!

So why use the same device to do two things that are completely at odds with one another? Why surf the web with the same device you use to write? Why chat with your friends on the same device you use to meditate?

You need to split up. You need a Device Divorce. You need to make it easy to get to the places you want to go, and hard take a wrong turn to the places you don't want to go.

A simple exercise to begin your Device Divorce

To begin a Device Divorce, try this exercise: Draw three columns on a piece of paper. At the top of each of the respective three columns, write laptop, tablet, and smartphone. Now, in the respective column, write down the activities that you primarily do on each of these devices.

Do you see any contradictions? If you go down one path to do one of these things, will that take you farther and farther from another path to do another thing?

Will it break your focus? Will it dampen your momentum? Will it alter your mental state to go down Instagram Alley instead of Scrivener Circle?

If so, you aren't using your devices, your devices are using you.

Next, make a decision. Decide what activities you will do on each of the three devices. But, just as important, decide which activities you will not do on each of these three devices.

My personal device arsenal

Me, I do most of my writing on my iPad, with an external keyboard. I do not do email on my iPad. I do not do messaging on my iPad.

I try to do as much email as I can on my iPhone. But, I don't have Twitter or Facebook installed on my iPhone. I'd be taking wrong turns, left and right.

My laptop, I simply try to limit its usage as much as possible. My laptop is a "slippy" tool. Too many side roads and detours.

Your Device Divorce doesn't have to stop at your primary electronic devices. According to a poll I did on Twitter, three out of four of you already have an extra tablet or smartphone just lying around.

These old devices often can't run the latest software (thank you, planned obsolescence). But just because a device can't do everything, doesn't mean it can't do something.

I have an extra iPad. It's so old, I can't even run most apps on it. But, I use this old iPad for listening to a relaxation recording by former guest Andrew Johnson, I use it for reading on the web, and I use it for reading PDF articles.

I have a friend who has an old iPod Touch. When he works out, he listens to music, and writes down his progress on the iPod Touch. But he knows he won't get interrupted by a message or a phone call, and he won't be tempted by social media.

Love Your Work listener Adam Thomas told me he has a "study nook" in his apartment. In his study nook, he keeps an old laptop. He uses an app called Freedom to block any distracting websites on that laptop. The laptop is only for reading research.

Fortunately, product designers are starting to create devices with specialized functions. I recently got a dedicated Kindle, just for reading books. Our former Love Your Work sponsor, Offgrid Mindfulness, has made an awesome meditation timer/alarm clock.

Interestingly, you have to go back in time to get one of the best limited-function devices. There have been some attempts to create dedicated word processors, but they still have too many functions and are too expensive for my tastes. I still love my old portable word processor, the AlphaSmart. It was originally intended as a cheap way for schools to teach typing, and it's unfortunately discontinued, so you have to buy them used.

Get creative with your Device Divorce. Look at what functions are important to you, what detours you want to avoid, and what devices you have. Be intentional about what your devices do and don't do. You'll have deeper focus, and do more of what matters, and less of what doesn't matter.

Image: Six Species, Paul Klee

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David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/device-divorce/

I used to be a time management enthusiast. I say "used to be," because time management eventually stopped working for me.

How I became an accidental author

It all started with an email. It was the kind of email that would trip up most spam filters. I wasn't being offered millions of dollars from an offshore bank account, true love, nor improved performance in bed. I was being offered a book deal.

I had never thought of myself as a writer. In fact, I downright hated writing as a kid. I remember reading about how Stephen King said that when he was a kid, he was "on fire" to write. I remember saying to myself, That makes no sense! Who on Earth would enjoy writing?

I had never thought of myself as a writer, but I had fantasized about being an author. I guess that means I didn't think so much about writing, but I liked the idea of having written.

As I considered taking this book deal, I talked to everyone I knew who had written a book. They all warned me that writing a book is extremely hard work, with little chance of success. One author simply said, You'll want to die!

But, I figured, how hard can it be? So, I signed my first literary contract.

How I tried to write a book, when I didn't know how to write a book

I didn't have any idea how to write a book, so I did it the only way I could think of: through brute force time management. I simply needed to find enough time to write this book.

So, I used every time management technique I could think of. I put writing sessions on my calendar. I developed a morning routine that would get me writing first thing in the morning. I "time boxed" to try to limit the time I would spend on parts of the project. I fired my clients, I outsourced my meal preparation, I cancelled dates and turned down party invitations. I did everything I could to focus all of my time on writing my book.

But it still wasn't enough. I spent most of my day hunched over a keyboard. I felt actual physical pain in my stomach. It felt as if rigor mortis had taken over my fingers, as I struggled to write even a single sentence.

Sure, I had the time to write my book, but I wasn't getting anything done.

My case of writers' block was so bad that, a few weeks after signing my book deal, I accepted a last-minute invitation to go on a retreat to Costa Rica. With a signed contract in my file drawer and a deadline breathing down my neck, it wasn't the most logical thing to do with my time. But I desperately hoped that a change of scenery would work some kind of magic on my writer's block.

But a few days into the trip, I still had nothing. Zero! Zilch! My contract said that if I didn't have my manuscript twenty-five percent done within a few weeks, the deal was off. So, 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 readers to tell them I had failed.

Does that sound like a lot of pressure? It was.

The chance encounter that changed the way I thought about writing productivity

I wanted to feel sorry for myself, by myself, so I went for a walk. I was dragging my feet down the gravel road in Costa Rica, with my head hung down. How could I be so foolish?, I asked myself.

Not only had I signed a contract to write a 50,000-word book, with little writing experience under my belt, I had wasted time and money going on this retreat.

Just then, I heard someone call out. I looked up, and saw a man on the next road over waving big in my direction, with his entire arm, ¡¿Como estááááás?!

I had noticed this man earlier in my walk. He was gripping onto the simple wires of a fence, leaning back in ecstasy, singing to himself. I had felt vaguely embarrassed for him, assuming he didn't know someone else was around.

I looked behind me, trying to figure out who he was waving at. But there was no one. He was waving at me.

I hesitated. What could he possibly want? I had just passed a fork in the road, and the man was on the other side of the fork. I didn't want to backtrack. I wanted to get back to the house and make one more attempt at writing. But, I was beginning to feel rude for ignoring the man's friendly invitation. So, I reluctantly walked over to the man, trying my best to fake enthusiasm.

What followed was the first conversation I ever had entirely in Spanish. Though, I'm using the word "conversation" loosely. The man, Diego was his name, taught me the words for the beach, the rain, the sea, and the sun. Mostly, we pointed at things, and he would say the word in Spanish.

My conversation with Diego was refreshing. I was used to everyone ignoring one another on the streets of Chicago, yet here was a guy who wanted to talk to someone on another road entirely, about nothing in particular.

My first breakthrough in writing my book

I was in such a relaxed state that, after bidding Diego farewell, a few minutes passed before I realized I was going the wrong way. I had continued down Diego's side of the fork in the road. At first, I panicked at the prospect of getting lost in a foreign land. But then I shrugged it off and continued down the road. It turned out I got back to the house just fine anyway.

Between my conversation with Diego, and the pep talk Noah Kagan gave me the day before -- as described in my book, The Heart to Start -- I felt as if I had turned over a new leaf.

I set up my laptop on a desk on the interior balcony of the house. There, overlooking the sapphire blue Pacific Ocean, I had my first breakthrough writing session. By the end of an hour, I had most of a chapter drafted. It seemed as if I might make my deadline after all.

Throughout writing that first book, I still got stuck all of the time. But, I had discovered a different way of getting things done.

Writing a book is not about time management

It was clear that creative work wasn't so much a matter of time. After all, I was still spending most of my day banging my head against a wall. But, every once in awhile, writing would come easily. The pain in my stomach would subside, the rigor mortis in my fingers would dissolve, and, suddenly, I'd be writing. Sometimes I did an entire day's writing in only fifteen minutes.

Why can't I do that fifteen minutes of writing, then get on with my day?, I asked myself.

That random conversation on that Costa Rican road became the seed of an idea that would eventually drive me to sell everything I owned, and move to South America.

Throughout writing my first book, patterns started to emerge. At first, when writing came easily, it seemed to be a random occurrence. Over time, I realized it wasn't random at all.

There were certain conditions that had to be met for writing to come easily. Most of all, I realized that, in order to write easily, I had to be in the right mental state.

As the great sculptor Constantin Brancusi said, "Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them."

Writing a book is about mind management

Creative productivity isn't about having enough time to do the work. It's not about typing faster, so you can type more words in less time. It's not about shoehorning as much work as possible into every sliver of time available.

Like planting a seed in nutrient-rich soil, and feeding it the water and sunlight it needs in order to grow, creative productivity is about creating the conditions within your mind to have valuable thoughts. Creative productivity isn't about time management, it's about mind management.

Image: [Guitar and Fruit Dish, Juan Gris]

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About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/time-management-book-writing/

Sometimes people tell me, "Hey David, The Heart to Start is a great book, but now that I've figured out how to start, how do I finish?!"

If you're anything like me, finishing is tough. You can always find a good reason not to finish what you've started. It's not fun anymore, you don't want to paint yourself into a corner if it goes well, or – my personal favorite – now you have an even better idea! (which you soon abandon, like the thousand projects before it.)

Our guest today can help you stop floundering, and start finishing. In fact, he's the author of a book called Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done. He's got all of the discipline of an Army officer, and all of the wisdom of a philosophy professor – he's even been both of those things. He's Charlie Gilkey (@CharlieGilkey). Whether you're flip-flopping, floundering, or fluttering about from project to project like a butterfly in a botanical garden, Charlie can help you start finishing with his book, or start flourishing, with his podcast, Productive Flourishing.

Today, we'll talk about:

• Charlie says, "be courageous enough to commit more fully to fewer projects." For lots of us, that's easier said than done. Hear Charlie psychoanalyze me out of my own straitjacket.
• Finishing a big project changes who we are. How can you push past your comfort zone just when you're about to make a transformation?
• You've heard of "fear of success." I've always had trouble believing in it. But Charlie cleared it all up. Hear the four stories we tell ourselves that hold us back from success.

P.S. Charlie is the last guest for awhile. Because I'm dedicating every ounce of creative energy to my upcoming book, Mind Management, Not Time Management. (Remember, the Preview Edition is available for a limited time.) I'll still be workshopping ideas from the book in my bi-weekly essay episodes, so stay subscribed for those. Interestingly, since Charlie is all about finishing, and I'm on the home stretch for finishing this book, that makes him the perfect final guest.

New Book: Mind Management, Not Time Management (Preview Edition)

Read my upcoming book months before anyone else. Grab it, for a limited time, here.

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/charlie-gilkey/

One day, I was in a coworking space, here in Colombia, writing in my Moleskine notebook. One of the other co-workers came up to me and asked me a question.

He said, in Spanish, and with a sense of earnest curiosity, "Why are you writing in your notebook? Your computer is right in front of you. You can write much faster on your computer. Why aren't you writing on your computer?"

That question really stuck with me, because I thought the answer was obvious -- though I guess it wasn't.

And it got me thinking about the tools we use to create, and why we use them.

Creativity is hard

You already know, from listening to episode 218 about the Four Stages of Creativity, that we don't solve creative problems all at once. We need to go through stages. We need to go through Preparation, learning about the problem. From there, the problem goes through Incubation. Our subconscious works on it while we do something else. Only then can we reach Illumination -- our "aha" moment. Finally, to get it ready to ship, we need to go through Verification.

And you also know, from being a human being, that when you're up against a really tough problem, anything in the world suddenly becomes more appealing than that problem.

You'll get "shiny object syndrome," and want to escape to another project. Or you'll check social media. I even find that I sometimes procrastinate on a really tough project by working on a slightly less tough project, that I have been procrastinating on until now.

Ayn Rand called it "white tennis shoes syndrome." That if she came up against a tough problem while writing, she'd suddenly remember that there were some white tennis shoes in the closet that had smudges on them, and needed to be cleaned. Distractions, it seems, are nothing new.

Choose the tool for the creative job

But, I've found, depending upon where you are in the Four Stages of Creativity, the tool you use can make all of the difference in whether you keep moving forward, or fall off the tracks.

Through lots of trial and error, I have collected for myself the perfect arsenal of different tools for different situations. Here are some of them.

First thing in the morning, I write, with my eyes still closed, while still in bed, on my AlphaSmart. It's a portable word processor. Discontinued. Available used on Amazon for about forty bucks.

I do my morning writing session on an iPad, with a wired external keyboard.

I have multiple 9" x 12" whiteboards lying around the house. I jot down ideas when they come to me. Sometimes I'll even take a whiteboard to a cafe and write on it in long form.

Then, I have my 6" x 9" Moleskine Classic notebook. I also carry with me everywhere the tiniest notebook I could find: the Moleskine Volant, which is 2.5" x 4".

And, of course, I have an iPhone SE, on which I occasionally brainstorm, if there's no better tool around.

Sometimes, I even find it useful to simply pace around and talk out loud.

Finally, there's plain, old-fashioned thinking. Just sitting in the park or swinging in my hammock, trying to navigate the twists and turns of a problem in my own mind.

Oops, I almost forgot. I also have a laptop. I try to avoid using it, but sometimes I simply need to be on a full-blown computer.

Some tools are slippy, some tools are grippy

Some of these tools are "slippy." Some of these tools are "grippy."

Slippy tools are tools are efficient. There's little friction. You can create your final product quickly with a slippy tool.

Grippy tools are inefficient. There's lots of friction. You can't create your final product quickly with a grippy tool. Often, you can't create your final product at all with a grippy tool.

Slippy tools sound great, but they have a drawback: Because slippy tools are so powerful, you can more easily get distracted. Yes, I can type fast and switch between documents and quickly do web research on my laptop. But I can also just as easily check my email, putz around on social media, or waste a couple of hours on Reddit.

Grippy tools sound terrible. Writing by hand is slow, and worst of all, you can't even use the writing. When I write on a whiteboard, I have to erase it all eventually.

The right tool isn't about the fastest output

Some people will protest: But David, you could get an iPad with Pencil, and you could write by hand, and it would convert the characters into text. Or, David, you could get a special pen that would store the writing as text in the cloud.

When I wrote about my AlphaSmart, my beloved portable word processor, people had all sorts of objections and suggestions. Why don't you just get a Chromebook!?, they'd say. Or, Don't you know there's this word processor that costs ten times as much but that syncs with the cloud!? Or, my personal favorite, Why don't you just get some self control and learn how to focus!?

Sigh. It Shakes My Head. This is the sad state of our world. This is how little respect we have for real thinking, and the space and time and mental energy that it requires. If we don't wake up, we, as a species, are fucked.

Your tools & your thoughts are one

Fortunately, that was five years ago that I wrote about my AlphaSmart, and since then people are starting to get it. They're finally starting to realize that they don't have perfect control over their thoughts and actions. They're finally starting to realize that others want control of their thoughts, and that others profit from that control. They're finally starting to realize that the tools they decide to use shape those thoughts -- whether that's through enabling clearer thinking, or making them vulnerable to disruptions in their thinking.

Imagine the most simple example possible of a primate using a tool. Imagine a chimp fishing ants out of an anthill with a twig. In the moments when that chimp has her hand wrapped around the twig, she cannot use that hand for some other purpose.

This is the nature of tools. Tools give us new powers, but, in the process, tools take away other powers.

Imagine you're Superman, and you have the power of X-ray vision. Wouldn't you prefer to be able to turn off your powers of X-ray vision? If you had X-ray vision all of the time, that would actually suck. You'd be bumping into things, because you couldn't see them. Everyone you saw would be naked. Before you get too excited, remember: Everyone you saw would be naked.

Tools help exercise thoughts, or record them. They rarely do both.

Here's another thing that surprises most people when I tell them about my arsenal of tools. Much of what I produce on these tools disappears. My morning writing session on the AlphaSmart? When I'm done, I delete everything I just wrote. The writing I do on the whiteboards? I usually erase it all as soon as I've run out of space. When I speak out loud? I usually don't record it. And when I sit and think? Those thoughts disappear into the ether.

Yes, if I really come across something great using any of these tools, I have options. I can write down a thought in a notebook, I can record my own speech, I can take a picture of a whiteboard. I can even hook up my AlphaSmart to a computer, and transfer my writing.

But that's not the point. The point of each of these tools is not what I produce with these tools -- it's the way these tools enable thoughts.

In the early stages of any project, the thinking I do with these tools serves as Preparation, one of the Four Stages of Creativity I mentioned in episode 218. Preparation can be about research, but Preparation can just as easily be the exploration of a problem in your own mind. What do you think about this? What questions do you have? What are the ins and outs and ups and downs of it all?

I know that once I've done that Preparation, the next stage, Incubation, will take over. I know that when I return to the problem, I may have my "aha" moment. I may have my moment of Illumination.

Grippy tools for thinking, slippy tools for producing

This is why I want "grippy" tools for the early stages of any project. In a way, your progress on the project is itself slippy or grippy. When I'm in the early stages of a project, it's like I'm scaling up a wet rock face. I don't have a firm grasp of the problem. I need all of the grip I can get. I need any threat of dis-traction to be as far away as possible. I don't need dis-traction. As Nir Eyal would say, I need traction.

Yes, after the tools -- like training wheels on a bicycle -- have enabled the thoughts, after I've explored the twists and windings of the problem in my head, I eventually have a grip on the problem. The rock face is no longer wet. I don't need grippy hiking boots to keep going. I can wear more comfortable and nimble cross trainers.

When it's time to turn clear thoughts into finished products -- when the project is ready for Verification -- then I can use a slippy tool, such as a laptop, connected to the internet, and all its myriad dis-tractions.

So the next time you're working on a tough problem, and the next time that tough problem is making distractions more attractive, ask yourself: Am I using the right tool? Let go of the dangerous expectation of an instant breakthrough. Trade in your slippy tool for a grippy tool.

Thanks for sharing my work!

On Twitter, thank you to @geekosupremo, and @mtr_amg. Thank you to @balancethegrind for naming Love Your Work in their Top 26 podcasts you can listen to about work, life, and balance.

On Instagram, thank you to @wepublishhorror @success_from_books @jasonjclement, @ecemtombas, @shelbsimone, @eifgul, @wetherscold, @bluevalewriting, @mel_thecreative, @almahoffman, @michigan_st8ler

Image: [Boaters Rowing on the Yerres, Gustave Caillebotte]

New Book: Mind Management, Not Time Management (Preview Edition)

Read my upcoming book months before anyone else. Grab it, for a limited time, here.

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

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Support the show on Patreon

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/grippy-slippy-tools/

Offer expires soon. You don't want to miss it! It's the investment of a lifetime! It's going to be the party of the century!

Can you feel the anxiety piling up? You know what it is – it's FOMO. The Fear of Missing Out. In a hyper-connected world, FOMO is more intense than ever.

Our friends are sharing amazing travel photos on Instagram, people are talking about the hot new investment opportunity on Twitter, news headlines bait us with the mystery of what we'll find out if only we'd click.

Even social distancing isn't enough to calm FOMO. Sure, you have little choice but to stay home, but then you see the screenshot of the Zoom party you weren't invited to.

Having a fear of missing out is an innately human thing – it's been around forever. But FOMO is relatively new. In fact the term FOMO – so ubiquitous it's in the dictionary – was invented in 2004, by today's guest, Patrick McGinnis.

Patrick McGinnis (@pjmcginnis) is the author of Fear of Missing Out: Practical Decision-Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice. When Patrick invented FOMO, he was a student at Harvard Business School – a choice-rich environment. More than fifteen years later, Patrick still thinks about the dark side and the bright side of FOMO – as a venture capitalist.

If you're going to love your work, you have to make great decisions. That's what this conversation will help you do.

There's more to FOMO than you think. In this episode, you'll learn:

• How can FOMO be a good thing? If you're feeling the FOMO, it might be a sign.
• With all the lip service FOMO gets, it's a shame more people don't think about FOMO's cousin: FOBO. What is FOBO, and why is it all bad?
• FOMO and FOBO can wipe out your mental energy with decision fatigue. Learn a quick and fun hack for saving brain cycles called "ask the watch." You'll love it.

P.S. Patrick McGinnis is one of the last guests we'll have on Love Your Work for awhile. Why? Because I'm dedicating every ounce of creative energy to my upcoming book, Mind Management, Not Time Management. (Remember, the Preview Edition is available for a limited time. I'll still be workshopping ideas from the book in my bi-weekly essay episodes, so stay subscribed for those.

You don't want to miss this conversation. If you do, you'll regret it!

New Book: Mind Management, Not Time Management (Preview Edition)

Read my upcoming book months before anyone else. Grab it, for a limited time, here.

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

Subscribe to Love Your Work

• Apple Podcasts
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Support the show on Patreon

Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/patrick-mcginnis-fomo/

To get exceptional results, you need to do exceptional things.

Most things that are normal are normal only because very few people can resist them.

Just because it's normal, doesn't mean it's good for you. It often means the opposite.

It's like the Ancient Chinese proverb says, "If five million people do a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

Don't let them get a piece of you

If you want to carve out your unique place in this world, you need to rise above the noise that other people succumb to.

Which means that you have to ruthlessly eliminate the self-destructive things that most people do.

The economy runs, like a flywheel, off of exploiting our weaknesses. Sell us addictive and unhealthy substances, then you can sell us drugs to treat the diseases they cause. Hold our attention with news that convinces us we can't trust one another, then you can sell us suburban developments and home security systems. Then there's even more attention leftover to sell to advertisers because our social isolation makes us bored and lonely.

Getting us to do things that aren't good for us is great for the Growth Domestic Product.

We're so vulnerable to these things that if you can cut out the things that break you down, and replace them with the things that build you up, you can be way more effective than most people.

I say you could be one hundred times more effective than most people.

Here are eleven things you can do to be one hundred times more effective than most people.

Before I go further, I want to acknowledge that this list really pisses some people off. I posit that it threatens their self-perception.

I'm not saying you're a bad person if you do or don't do these things. I'm saying you'd be better off if you did all of these things. Let's be honest -- it's darn near impossible to do all of these things. I know I don't. This is just the list I aspire to.

Also, some people hear this list and think it sounds like a boring life. I would encourage those people to get a life -- I'll explain at the end of this episode.

Okay, on with the list.

1. No sugar

Sugar is an addictive substance. Sugar stimulates dopamine, and the more dopamine you stimulate, the more dopamine you need in order to feel stimulated. If you want to hear more about that, listen to Robert Lustig in episode 186. It is downright criminal how much sugar surrounds us every day. The last time I was in a hospital, the only things in the vending machine were products filled with sugar -- in a hospital.

2. No alcohol

Again, why is this normal? Just look at how many bars and liquor stores are on every city street. At some point in my 20's I realized that each Saturday night I was regularly spending the equivalent an entire working day going from bar to bar -- not to mention the way that drinking affected me the next day (and likely throughout the week). You can accomplish a lot if you cut out alcohol.

I'm lucky enough to not be addicted to alcohol, but economist Tyler Cowen shared an interesting perspective on this podcast: that alcohol is so harmful to much of the population -- those who are addicted to alcohol -- that the only responsible thing to do is to not drink, so it won't be such a normal thing anymore.

3. No caffeine

This one is hard for the coffee lovers. Caffeine, again, is an addictive substance. What happens when you're addicted to something? You don't use it, it uses you.

The more caffeine you use, the more caffeine you need, until you simply can't get enough. Many people don't realize that their caffeine use is at the root of other conditions, such as anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, even schizophrenia.

Additionally, using caffeine, even in the morning, can reduce the quality of your sleep that night -- whether you know it or not.

4. 8 hours of sleep a night

Speaking of sleep, one of the best things you can do for your health and well being is get enough sleep. Sleep is especially important for creativity: To have great ideas, you need to have knowledge to connect into great ideas. To have knowledge, you need to form memories. To form memories, you need to sleep well. Yet another reason to cut out caffeine. Sleep is the new coffee.

5. Throw your TV in the garbage

According to Neilson, Americans watch an astounding four hours a day of television. Imagine everything you could do in four hours a day.

I think there's a neurological component to this, too. As someone who watches very little TV, when I do finally see TV, it's jarring. The way people interact is childish, everything is broken down for short attention spans. Even if you do something productive while watching TV, I bet you would do it better if you would turn it off.

6. Delete social media from your phone

Social media can be fun and valuable. Trying to function in this world with no social media accounts is a tall order (though some people manage to do it). A good compromise is to delete social media from your phone. Only use it on your computer.

The danger of having social media on your phone is all of those pockets of time and focus that it steals from you. When you're waiting in line, or on the bus, or just lounging on the couch, it's way too easy to go straight to social media. If you must be on your phone, why not read a book, or jot down some notes for your next creative project in a text file?

7. Keep your phone in silent mode

A great way to keep your phone from sucking up your time and attention is to simply keep your phone in silent mode, or "Do Not Disturb." This, in addition to eliminating as many app notifications as possible.

Check your phone on your schedule, not on your phone's schedule. If you're concerned about emergencies, you can set up certain contacts to bypass silent mode.

8. Read 1 hour a day

It's a lot easier to cut out lots of attention-stealers, such as social media and television if you replace them with an attention cultivator. Reading in long form, such as books or long articles, cultivates your ability to focus, which makes it easier to focus.

I recently experimented with cutting out reading during a media fast. It was a valuable exercise, but I did eventually notice a drop in my ability to focus. Now that I'm back to reading an hour a day, I'm re-gaining that focus.

9. Meditate 15 minutes a day

Meditation rewires your brain for focus. Meditation makes you more aware of what's happening in your body and mind. And self-awareness boosts creativity.

It may not make sense that by sitting and doing nothing for fifteen minutes a day, you can be more creative. But when you let your thoughts settle, each action you take can be more purposeful.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if you don't want to meditate, try simply doing nothing for fifteen minutes. Just stare at a wall, or look at birds. Much of the benefits people see from meditation come simply from what they're not doing. So, try doing nothing.

10. Journal 10 minutes a day

I think of writing like training wheels for thought. When you write down your thoughts, whether that's in a journal, on a scratch file, or on an AlphaSmart, it helps solidify those thoughts. Like meditating, taking some time to journal will help you take more decisive action in your life and work.

It doesn't have to be fancy. You'll be surprised what mental clarity you can achieve by writing down even your most mundane thoughts.

11. Get therapy

When I published this list on social media, some people proclaimed that they don't need therapy, and that therapy is "for crybabies."

I don't know where these people got their ideas of what therapy is -- probably from watching too much TV. Therapy, I'm thinking of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in particular, is not about being a "crybaby" or even "venting." It's hard work, but it helps undo thought patterns at the root of self-destructive behaviors. It also eliminates the feelings that trigger those self-destructive behaviors. If you try it and stick with it, it can be like magic. One day, you just find yourself not reacting in the way you once did to something that used to make you feel sad or anxious.

Here's the list again:

1. No sugar
2. No alcohol
3. No caffeine
4. 8 hours of sleep a night
5. Throw your TV in the garbage
6. Delete social media from your phone
7. Keep your phone in silent mode
8. Read 1 hour a day
9. Meditate 15 minutes a day
10. Journal 10 minutes a day
11. Get therapy

Discipline is a byproduct of meaning

Now some people protest that following this list sounds like a boring life. I think that just shows how deep the cultural programming is that we should for some reason seek pleasure at every turn, and avoid pain whenever possible.

As someone who follows much of this list, most of the time, I can tell you I don't find my life boring at all. But that's because I have meaning. Discipline, if that's what you want to call this, is not the cause of meaning -- discipline is the byproduct of meaning.

"Get a life," by that I mean find meaning in your life, and the opportunity costs of not being disciplined skyrocket.

How do you find meaning? Well, that can be a future episode. Let me know if you want to hear about it.

Image: Composition with Grid IX, Piet Mondrian

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About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
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• Facebook
• YouTube

Subscribe to Love Your Work

• Apple Podcasts
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Support the show on Patreon

Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »

Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/100x-more-effective/