I wrote this book! (thanks @robbiea for sharing).<p>It started when I was writing Design for Hackers 10 years ago. Couldn’t figure out why nothing I had learned about productivity had prepared me for writing a book.<p>The gist:<p>- People say “there’s only 24 hours in a day” as if you need to make use of those hours. What it really means is “time management” is like squeezing blood from a stone.<p>- We’re entering the Creative Age. You have to be creative to stay relevant in the robot apocalypse.<p>- We know from the work of neuroscientists John Konious and Mark Beeman that insightful thinking is unique. It’s promoted by a relaxed mood. It’s a fragile state: Hard to get into, easy to ruin.<p>- We each have “peak” and “off-peak” times of day. Counterintuitively it’s the off-peak times when you’re more creative. (If you’re groggy in the morning don’t ruin it with a cup of coffee).<p>- There are four stages to creativity: Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, Verification. Respect these stages and you won’t get blocked.<p>- You can work with natural cycles in the day, week, month, or year to go through the four stages. For example, you can use a night’s sleep as Incubation.<p>- Organize your tasks not by project but by mental state. I’ve identified seven mental states by which I organize my tasks: Prioritize, Explore, Research, Generate, Polish, Administrate, Recharge. (I personally prefer Todoist’s “labels” feature).<p>- Not all hours are equal. When I was working with behavioral scientist Dan Ariely on Timeful, we noticed there aren’t 24 hours in the day – there’s an hour here or there for various mental states.<p>- By harnessing cycles and working according to mental state, you can build systems that account for Incubation. For my podcast, tasks that used to be 1 grueling hour are now spaced into three five-minute bursts, with space for Incubation.<p>- In a chaotic world, you want your creative systems to be antifragile. Leave slack for chaos, and be ready to capture the opportunities chaos presents, for breakthrough ideas.