David Kadavy > Quotes

“The user experience design of a product essentially lies between the intentions of the product and the characteristics of your user.”
― David Kadavy, Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty

“The first step to controlling your world is to control your culture…. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art. —Chuck Palahniuk”
― David Kadavy, The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

“Permanent notes are the ultimate destination within your Zettelkasten for the best ideas you have or come across. In fact, your permanent notes are your Zettelkasten. The permanent note is the last stop for an idea before you synthesize it into something new.”
― David Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples

“We dream of building a fortress when we should be starting with a cottage. We fool ourselves into procrastinating by exaggerating how much time we really need. We create mental blocks by imagining our work will follow a linear progression.”
― David Kadavy, The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

“The only way to become your true self is to find the art inside you and make it real. Your art is the best expression possible of who you really are. You make art when you take your passions, your interests, and even your compassion for others, and combine them to make something uniquely yours.”
― David Kadavy, The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

“Zettelkasten is German for "slip box"(Plural: Zettelkästen). In analog form, a zettel is literally a box filled with slips of paper witha note on it, as well as metadata used to organise those notes. The Zettelkasten method is a way of organising paper in a non hierarchal way. Instead of being restrictedb to keeping a note in only one place,or having to make multiple copies of the same note to put in various places,notes are organised so that you can arrive at one individual note through multiple routes, and that note can lead you to various other notes-much like today's internet, but in paper form.”
― David Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples

“Look at the highlights of your highlights and re-write the interesting ones in your own words. You're now turning your fleeting notes into a literature note. It's okay not to summarize every highlight. Only worry about the information you most want to learn or that you can foresee wanting to use in the future.”
― David Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples

“The idea appeared to come randomly, but your past knowledge and experience, mixed with the right mental conditions, set the stage for the idea to happen. 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.”
― David Kadavy, Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters

“The "someday/maybe" designation helps reduce worries that the idea might fall through the cracks, without obligating you to follow up on the idea right now.”
― David Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples

“Export the highlights When you're finished with the book, export the highlights.”
― David Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples

“Permanent Notes Permanent notes are explanations of a single idea, annotated with metadata about the subject of the note, other notes that note is related to, and the source of the note. You usually write permanent notes using literature notes as your source. You take only the most important ideas from your literature notes, and turn them into singular notes you can connect with other notes. Once you have many permanent notes, you can construct a rough draft for an entire article or book.”
― David Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples

“There is one final way that we prevent ourselves from starting, and it’s the strongest and most dangerous force of all. It’s perfectionism, and I’m so grateful I was able to overcome it in that moment. As I said, “I’m glad I decided to just jump into it.”
― David Kadavy, The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

“In the time management world, mental context doesn’t exist. You’re trying to get as many things done in as little time as possible. But in the mind management world, mental context is everything. You may be in the right physical context to write – you’re sitting at your desk. You may be in the right temporal context, too – it’s working hours, during the week. But it’s a waste to try to force yourself to do work you aren’t in the right mental state to do.”
― David Kadavy, Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters

“If I have a thought I want to capture, I'll leave a note”
― David Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples

“Yes, it’s useful to know what time it is. It’s useful to know what day it is. It’s useful to know the approximate length of a human life, and to try to plan accordingly. But in measuring time, we’ve lost sight of the point of time. The point of time is not to fill as much life as possible into a given unit of time. The point of time is to use time as a guide to living a fulfilling life.”
― David Kadavy, Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters

“indestructible”
― David Kadavy, The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

“But whether it’s your fault or not is irrelevant. You are responsible.”
― David Kadavy, The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

“hitchhike?”
― David Kadavy, The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

“By giving myself permission to make a small investment in my art, I sometimes build momentum”
― David Kadavy, The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

“Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks about systems that benefit from chaos. That when something is too rigid, it becomes fragile. If you slam a ceramic coffee mug onto a granite countertop, the mug will shatter. When something benefits from chaos, it’s not only flexible enough to withstand stressors – those stressors trigger growth. When you lift weights, you make tiny tears in your muscles, and when those tears heal, your muscles are stronger. Your muscles, unlike the coffee cup, benefit from chaos.”
― David Kadavy, Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters

“We tend to think of creating a hit movie, opening a restaurant, or building a nonprofit, as one start. The reality is, you never stop starting.”
― David Kadavy, The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

“I suggest three other folders: Inbox Someday/Maybe Raw”
― David Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples

“each start is important. Each start helped me learn how to make the next start better.”
― David Kadavy, The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

“herculean”
― David Kadavy, The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

“When you were reading the book, you were more focused on reading it, not on thinking deeply about whether or not a passage was useful.”
― David Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples

“uniformity”
― David Kadavy, The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

“Processing the contents of the inbox will be a regular ritual in managing your Zettelkasten.”
― David Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples

“chatter”
― David Kadavy, The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

“vignettes,”
― David Kadavy, The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

“Your edge as a human is not in doing something quickly. No matter how fast you move, a computer can move faster. Your edge as a human is in thinking the thoughts behind the doing.”
― David Kadavy, Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters