Arrange your time and tasks according to these seven mental states, and you’ll be a creativity machine

Learn more about the seven mental states of creativity in my new book, Mind Management, Not Time Management.

Art is hard. Creative insights are hard to predict, and just when it gets difficult, your mind immediately jumps to a distraction: something easier to do, an excuse, a scapegoat.

To get the most out of your creative energy, carve out space for creative work. To make that space, you need to make space for the other types of work, too. The key to this is understanding how creative insights happen.

The four “stages of control” that build creative insights

In 1891, German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz — whose accomplishments included inventing the ophthalmoscope — was honored with a party for his 70th birthday. He got up to make a speech, and shared how he achieved his creative insights:

Often … [ideas] arrived suddenly, without any effort on my part, like an inspiration.… They never came to a fatigued brain and never at the writing desk. It was always necessary, first of all, that I should have…