An exhilarating but highly structured approach to the creative use of time.
In this guide, a product designer and author shares principles of “mind management.”
Writing his debut book, Design for Hackers (2011), made Kadavy realize he needed to practice mind management instead of time management. In his latest work, the author both recounts his writing journey and offers a novel system for being creatively productive. “Too many of us live by the to-do list,” notes Kadavy, as he urges readers to rethink the concept of time management. To support his argument, he points to a Harvard study indicating “the busier knowledge workers were, the less creative they were.” Instead of readers being victimized by time, he describes first how to recognize and incorporate “divergent” and “convergent” thinking into creative work and then how to embrace the “Four Stages of Creativity”—Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, and Verification. To illustrate these stages at work, Kadavy uses the contemporary example of how Paul McCartney crafted the celebrated Beatles song “Yesterday,” referencing a similar process employed by other renowned creatives as well. Next, the author explores what he defines as the “Seven Mental States of Creative Work”—Prioritize, Explore, Research, Generate, Polish, Administrate, and Recharge. This discussion is especially illuminating; it suggests a distinct relationship between one’s mental state and creative productivity, which Kadavy explains in lucid detail. The author helpfully shares some of the techniques and tools he uses to encourage the desired mental state. A subsequent description of “Creative Cycles” and “Creative Systems” may cause concern among some individuals that the creative process is being too tightly controlled. But Kadavy assures readers that while “the creative process is characterized by unpredictability,” it is possible to “predict how you’ll arrive at the final solution.” The author diligently demonstrates how his self-discoveries apply to his own creative processes, particularly writing and podcasting. Some of his nomenclature—for example, “Minimum Creative Dose,” “Sloppy Operating Procedure,” and “Creative Cascade”—may be a bit too slick for some readers’ tastes, but these labels aptly describe elements of an original way of doing things. If nothing else, Kadavy’s approach is likely to spark a new evaluation of conventional time management.
An exhilarating but highly structured approach to the creative use of time.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-578-30175-4
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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