Skip to content

Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day by Jake Knapp

Highlight

Choose Your Highlight

1: Write It Down

we know this sounds obvious, but there’s a special, almost magical power to writing down your plans: The things you write down are more likely to happen. If you want to make time for your Highlight, start by writing it down.

You can put your Highlight on your calendar as an all-day event. You can jot it down in a notebook. But if we had to pick one method for writing down a Highlight, we’d choose sticky notes. They’re easy to get and easy to use, and they don’t require batteries or software updates.

You can write down your Highlight and never look at it again—or you can stick it to your laptop, phone, fridge, or desk as a persistent but gentle reminder of the one big thing you want to make time for today.

2: Groundhog It (or, "Do Yesterday Again")

There are lots of great reasons to repeat your Highlight:

  • If you didn’t get to your Highlight, it’s probably still important. Repeat for a second chance.
  • If you started your Highlight but didn’t finish it or if your Highlight was part of a bigger project, today is the perfect day to make progress or start a personal sprint (#7). Repeat to build momentum.
  • If you’re establishing a new skill or routine, you’ll need repetition to cement the behavior. Repeat to create a habit. If yesterday’s Highlight brought you joy or satisfaction, hey, there’s nothing wrong with more of that! Repeat to keep the good times rolling.

4 : Batch the Little Stuff

to-do lists aren’t all bad. They let you capture things so you don’t have to hold them all in your brain. To-do lists let you see everything in one place. They’re a necessary evil.

7 : Run a Personal Sprint

Run a Personal Sprint Whenever you begin a project, your brain is like a computer starting up, loading relevant information, rules, and processes into your working memory. This “boot up” takes time, and you have to redo it to a certain extent every time you pick up the project.

This is why, in our design sprints, teams work on the same project for five days in a row. Information stays in people’s working memory from one day to the next, allowing them to get deeper and deeper into the challenge. As a result, we can accomplish exponentially more than we could if those same hours were spread across weeks and months.

8 : Schedule your highlights

JZ Early in my career, I didn’t have many meetings, so I never used a calendar. But I had a to-do list. Every day I’d get to the office, take a look at my to-do list, and think, “What should I do today? Ooh, that!” I’d pick out something that seemed easy and time-sensitive and get to work. But by the end of the day, I was often disappointed: I hadn’t necessarily done the most important things, and I never finished everything on my to-do list.

Later, I started working at Google. You can’t work at Google without using a shared calendar. Not only do you need it to keep track of your meetings (there are a lot), but colleagues also can see your schedule and invite you to meetings by adding them directly to your calendar.

Ironically, it was the busy, meeting-heavy culture of Google—and the required use of a calendar—that helped me make time for things that were important to me. With a calendar, I could see how I was spending my time, and my colleagues could see, too. And as my schedule got crazier, I realized I had to schedule my Highlight if I wanted to make time for it.

9 : Design Your Day

When we ran our design sprints for Google Ventures, we planned each day hour by hour and even minute by minute. Every sprint was another opportunity to perfect our formula. We kept track of the ebbs and flows of work throughout the day—when people’s energy dipped, when things moved too fast or too slow—and adjusted accordingly.

Blocking your calendar and scheduling your Highlight is a great way to start making time. But you can take this proactive, intentional mindset to another level by learning from our sprints and designing your entire day.

19 : Nix Notifications

Notifications are not your friends. They’re nonstop attention thieves.

20 : Clear Your Home Screen

To slow things down, try making your homescreen blank. Move all the icons to the next screen over (and from the second screen to the third and so on). Don’t leave anything behind on that first screen except a nice clean view of your beautiful background image.

A blank homescreen provides a tiny moment of quiet every time you use your phone. It’s an intentional inconvenience, a small pause—a speed bump keeping distraction one step away. If you unlocked your phone reflexively, a blank homescreen offers you a moment to ask yourself, “Do I really want to be distracted right now?”

24 : Block Distraction Kryptonite

Most of us have one especially powerful Infinity Pool we just can’t resist. We call it “distraction Kryptonite.” Just as regular Kryptonite overwhelms Superman, distraction Kryptonite gets past our defenses and sabotages our plans. Your distraction Kryptonite might be something common and obvious such as Facebook, or if you’re an oddball like JZ, it might be some obscure Yahoo Group for sailboat nerds. Here’s a simple litmus test: If after spending a few minutes (or, more likely, a few minutes that become an hour) with this website or app you feel regret, it’s probably Kryptonite.

There are a number of ways to block Kryptonite, depending on how serious you want to get and how serious your addiction is. If your Kryptonite is a social network, email, or anything that requires a password, logging out might be enough to slow you down (#18). If your Kryptonite is a specific website, you can block it or turn off the Internet altogether during your Laser time (#28). To step it up, you can remove the app or account or browser from your smartphone (#17).

25 : Ignore the News

The whole concept of breaking news runs on a very potent myth: You need to know what’s going on around the world, and you need to know now. Smart people follow the news. Responsible people follow the news. Grown-ups follow the news. Don’t they?

We’ve got some breaking news of our own: You don’t need to follow the daily news. True breaking news will find you, and the rest isn’t urgent or just doesn’t matter.

To see what we mean, check out today’s newspaper. Or go to your favorite news website. Look at the top headlines and think critically about each one. Will that headline change any decisions you make today? How many of those headlines will become obsolete by tomorrow, next week, or next month?

How many of those headlines are designed to provoke anxiety? “If it bleeds, it leads” is a newsroom cliché, but it’s true. Most news is bad news, and none of us can shrug off the nonstop bombardment of stories about conflict, corruption, crime, and human suffering without it taking a toll on our mood and our ability to focus. Even once-a-day news is a persistent, anxiety-provoking, outrage-inciting distraction.

We’re not saying you have to cut yourself off completely. Instead, we suggest reading the news weekly. Anything less frequent is likely to make you feel like you’re at sea, unmoored from human civilization. Anything more frequent and you’ll feel fogged in, able to focus only on what’s in front of you. That fog can easily obscure the important activities and people you want to prioritize.

27 : Fly without Wi-Fi

One of our favorite things about airplanes (apart from the sheer wonder of flying through the air) is the enforced focus. During a flight, there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do, and even if there were, the seat belt sign requires you to keep your butt in your chair. The strange parallel universe of an airplane cabin can be the perfect opportunity to read, write, knit, think, or just be bored—in a good way.

28 : Put a Timer on the Internet

When we were growing up, we had to dial up the Internet over a phone line (crazy, right?). Download speeds were slow, and we paid by the hour. It was a total pain in the ass.

But dial-up had one big advantage: It forced us to be intentional. If we were going to all the hassle of getting online, we’d better have a good idea of what we were going to do when we got there. When we finally dialed in, we’d have to stay on task to avoid wasting money.

Today’s always-on, superfast Internet is a wonderful thing, but it’s also the world’s biggest Infinity Pool. It can be hard to stay in Laser mode when you know the endless possibilities of the Internet are just milliseconds away. But the Internet doesn’t have to be on all the time. That’s just the default. When it’s time to get into Laser mode, try turning the Internet off. The simplest methods are switching off the Wi-Fi on your laptop and putting your phone in airplane mode. But those methods are also simple to undo. It’s much more effective to lock yourself out.

29 : Watch Out for Time Craters

When Jake was a kid, his family took a road trip to a place called Meteor Crater, Arizona. Meteor Crater is not just a cool name; it’s a real meteor crater in the middle of the desert. Tens of thousands of years ago, a 150-foot-wide chunk of rock smashed into the earth’s surface, blasting a crater about a mile in diameter. A young Jake stood on the blistered rock and imagined the awesome force of impact. The crater is thirty times the size of the meteor! It’s crazy to think about such a small object making such a big hole.

Or maybe it’s not so crazy. After all, the same thing happens in our daily lives. Small distractions create much larger holes in our day. We call these holes “time craters,” and they work like this:

  • Jake posts a tweet. (90 seconds)
  • Over the next two hours, Jake returns to Twitter four times to see how his tweet is doing. Each time, he skims the newsfeed. Twice he reads an article somebody shared. (26 minutes)
  • Jake’s tweet gets a few retweets, which feels good, so he begins mentally composing his next tweet. (Two minutes here, three minutes there, and so on)

A tiny tweet can easily smash a thirty-minute crater in your day, and that’s without switching costs. Each time Jake leaves Twitter and returns to his Highlight, he has to reload all the context into his brain before he’s back in Laser mode. So that time crater might actually be forty-five minutes, an hour, or even more.

But it’s not just Infinity Pools that create time craters. There’s also recovery time. A “quick” fifteen-minute burrito lunch might cost an extra three hours of food coma. A late night watching TV might cost you an hour of sleeping in and a whole day of low energy. And there’s anticipation. When you don’t start your Highlight because you’ve got a meeting coming up in thirty minutes, that’s a time crater, too.

30 : Trade Fake Wins for Real Wins

Sharing tweets, Facebook updates, and Instagram photos can create time craters, but they’re dangerous for another reason: They’re fake wins.

Contributing to the conversation on the Internet feels like an accomplishment, and our brains tell us, “We’ve done some work!” But 99 times out of 100, these contributions are insignificant. And they come at a cost—they take up time and energy you could be using on your Highlight. Fake wins get in the way of focusing on what you really want to do.

Like time craters, fake wins come in all shapes and sizes. Updating a spreadsheet is a fake win if it helps you procrastinate on the harder but more meaningful project you chose as your Highlight. Cleaning the kitchen is a fake win if it burns up time you intended to spend with your kids. And email inboxes are a never-ending source of fake wins. Checking mail always feels like an accomplishment even when there’s nothing new. “Good,” says your brain. “I’m on top of things!”

35 : Schedule Email Time

To help establish a new end-of-day email routine, try putting it on your calendar. Yes, we want you to literally add “email time” to your calendar. When you know you’ve got time set aside later, it’s easier to avoid wasting time on email now. And if you schedule your email time before a firm commitment such as a meeting or leaving the office, you’ll get an additional boost: When email time is done, it’s done. Do as much as you can in the allotted time, then move on.

48 : Shut the Door

The closed door is your way of telling the world and yourself that you mean business. —STEPHEN KING, ON WRITING

Steve’s right. If your Highlight requires focused work, do yourself a favor and shut the door. If you don’t have a room with a door, look for one you can camp out in for a few hours. And if you can’t find one, put on headphones—even if you don’t actually put on any music. Headphones and closed doors signal to everyone else that you shouldn’t be interrupted, and they send a signal to you, too. You’re telling yourself, “Everything I need to pay attention to is right here.” You’re telling yourself it’s time for Laser mode.

49 : Invent a Deadline

Nothing’s better for focus than a deadline. When someone else is waiting expectantly for results, it’s a lot easier to get into Laser mode

The trouble is that deadlines are usually for things we dread (like doing taxes), not for things we want to do (like practicing the ukulele). But this is an easy problem to solve. You can invent a deadline.

Invented deadlines are the secret ingredient in our design sprints. The team schedules customer interviews on Friday of every sprint week so that starting on Monday, everyone knows the clock is ticking. They have to solve their challenge and build a prototype before Thursday night;

50 : Explode Your Highlight

When you’re not sure where to start, try breaking your Highlight into a list of small, easy-to-do bits. For example, if your Highlight is “Plan vacation,” you can explode it into bits like these:

  • Check calendar for vacation dates.
  • Skim guidebook and make list of possible destinations.
  • Discuss destinations with family and choose favorite.

Note that each item includes a verb. Each one is specific. And each one is small and relatively easy. We learned this technique from productivity shaman David Allen, who has this to say about breaking projects into physical actions:

Shifting your focus to something that your mind perceives as a doable, completable task will create a real increase in positive energy, direction, and motivation. - Getting things Done, David Allen

In the vocabulary of Make Time, tiny doable to-dos help you build momentum and lock into Laser mode. So if your Highlight feels overwhelming, add a little dynamite.

52 : Set a Visible Timer

The Time Timer is a special clock designed for children. You set an interval from one to sixty minutes, and a red disk slowly disappears as time elapses. When it gets to zero, the timer beeps. It’s very simple. It’s pure genius—it makes time visible.

Jake

I often set a Time Timer when I’m playing with my younger son. I know this sounds horrible—judge me if you must—but it makes it clear to him how much time we have and reminds me that this time is precious and fleeting and I should go all in and enjoy the moment.

53 : Avoid the Lure of Fancy Tools

Everyone has their favorites. The Internet is home to many a treatise about the Best This or the Cool New Way to Do That. But this obsession with tools is misguided. Unless you’re a carpenter, a mechanic, or a surgeon, choosing the perfect tool is usually a distraction, yet another way to stay busy instead of doing the work you want to be doing.

JZ

I’ve been burned by fancy tools. Back in 2006, I discovered the perfect productivity software: a simple but powerful app called Mori that allowed for infinitely customizable note taking and filing.

I was elated, and spent countless hours configuring Mori on my laptop and loading all my projects into it. And I was right: It was perfect. Mori became an extension of my brain.

But after a few months, things started breaking down. I upgraded my computer’s operating system, only to find that Mori wasn’t compatible with the new version. I’d want to look at my notes at home but realize I had left my laptop at work. And then the developer shut down Mori altogether. I was distraught.

That’s the other problem with fancy tools: they’re fragile. Anything from a technical glitch to my own forgetfulness could keep me from getting into Laser mode and spending time on my Highlight.

After Mori vanished, I started using simple, readily available tools to manage my work: text files on my computer, notes on my phone, basic Post-its, free hotel pens, that sort of thing. More than ten years later, my everyday tools work as well as ever. And whenever I get tempted by a new fancy tool, I just remember Mori.

54 : Start On Paper

we found that we did better work when we turned off our laptops and used pens and paper instead. And the same is true for your personal projects.

Paper improves focus, because you can’t waste time picking the perfect font or searching the Web instead of working on your Highlight. Paper is less intimidating, too—while most software is designed to guide you through a series of steps that will lead to a finished product, paper allows you to find your own way to a cohesive idea. And paper opens up possibilities, because whereas Word is designed for lines of text and PowerPoint is designed for graphs and bullet points, on paper, you can do anything at all.

55 : Make a Random Question List

It’s natural to feel twitchy for your phone or browser. You’ll wonder if you have any new email.You’ll feel a burning desire to know Who was that actor in that movie?

Instead of reacting to every twitch, write your questions on a piece of paper (How much do wool socks cost on Amazon? Any Facebook updates?). Then you can stay in Laser mode, secure in the knowledge that those pressing topics have been captured for future research.

58 : Be Stuck

Being stuck is a tiny bit different from being bored. When you’re bored, you don’t have anything to do, but when you’re stuck, you know exactly what you want to do—your brain just isn’t sure how to proceed. Maybe you don’t know what to write next, or where to begin on a new project.

The easy road out of Stucksville is to do something else. Check your phone. Dash off an email. Turn on the TV. These things are easy, but they cut into the time you’ve made for your Highlight. Instead, just be stuck. Don’t give up. Stare at the blank screen, or switch to paper, or walk around, but keep your focus on the project at hand. Even when your conscious mind feels frustrated, some quiet part of your brain is processing and making progress. Eventually, you will get unstuck, and then you’ll be glad you didn’t give up.

60 : Go All In

Wholeheartedness is complete commitment, holding nothing back. It’s letting go of caution and allowing yourself to care about your work, a relationship, a project, anything. Throwing yourself into the moment with enthusiasm and sincerity.

We believe wholeheartedness is fundamental to everything this book is about: presence, attention, and making time for what matters. And Brother David’s case for wholeheartedness is a new (for us, at least) way of approaching Laser mode.

We’ve seen teams in a design sprint get the chance to work in a wholehearted way—finally focusing on a project they really care about—and become filled with energy. And we’ve felt it ourselves.

the biggest obstacle is when your heart isn’t really in the current task—for example, when you’re working at a job that’s not right for you. In fact, that’s the context for Brother David’s quote: He was advising a friend who was burned out at work to leave and focus on his passion. We aren’t advising you to quit your job, but we are reminding you that it’s important to be proactive and seek out moments when you can be passionate about your efforts. If you choose exciting ways to spend your time, being wholehearted isn’t so hard.

61 : Exercise Every Day

What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while. —GRETCHEN RUBIN

65 : Eat Like a Hunter-Gatherer

Michael Pollan, a food enthusiast and author. In his bestselling book In Defense of Food, Pollan addressed the “supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy”: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

77 : Get Woodsy

When walking through nature, you’re freed from having to direct your attention, as there are few challenges to navigate (like crowded street crossings), and experience enough interesting stimuli to keep your mind sufficiently occupied to avoid the need to actively aim your attention. This state allows your directed attention resources time to replenish.

78 : Trick Yourself into Meditating

Jack

For years, I heard great things about meditation, but I couldn’t get into it. Then my wife persuaded me to try the Headspace app on my iPhone. “You’ll like it,” she said. “Andy is very plainspoken.”

Andy is Andy Puddicombe, cofounder of Headspace and the voice in your headphones. His British accent took some getting used to, but Holly was right. I liked it a lot.

I started tracking how I felt after each session to see if Headspace improved my focus. It did. Then I got way into a feature of the app that tracks how many days in a row you’ve meditated. Eventually, by squeezing in short sessions while riding the bus, I got my streak up to 400 days!

As I used Headspace, it became easier to concentrate for long periods. My thoughts had more clarity. And, though I know this sounds odd, I felt more willing to be myself. (Which I think is a good thing.) Using technology to combat the stress and distraction of modern life—much of which stems, of course, from technology—may seem counterintuitive, but the meditation app totally worked for me. If you’re curious, give it a try.

81 : Spend Your Time With Your Tribe

All of us, even the most introverted, have a hardwired need for human connection. This shouldn’t come as a big surprise; after all, Urk lived among a tribe of 100 to 200 people. Humans evolved to thrive in tight-knit communities.

People with strong relationships are more likely to live long, healthy, fulfilling lives. We’re not claiming that talking to strangers in the grocery store checkout line will help you live to be 100—but spending time with people face-to-face can be a big energy booster.

Even in the twenty-first century, you have a tribe. If you work in an office, you have colleagues. In your family, you might have siblings, parents, kids, and/or a significant other. And you (we hope) have friends. Sure, those people might annoy you or frustrate you sometimes, but more often than not, spending time with them is energizing.

Here’s a simple experiment to try:

  • Think of one of those energy-giving people.
  • Go out of your way to have a real conversation with her or him. You can talk in person or on the phone, but your voice must be involved.
  • Afterward, note your energy level.

83 : Make Your Bedroom a Bed Room

For Urk, bedtime would have marked the end of an hours-long process to remove mental stimuli gradually and shift into sleep. When you look at social media, email, or the news before bed, you sabotage this process. Instead of winding down, you’re revving your brain up. An annoying email or distressing news story can make your mind race and keep you awake for hours.

If you want to improve your sleep, keep the phone out of your bedroom—at all times. And don’t stop there. Remove all electronic devices to transform your bedroom into a true sanctuary for sleep. No TVs, no iPads. No Kindles with backlights. In other words: Make your bedroom a bed room.

Reading in bed is a wonderful alternative, but paper books or magazines are best. A Kindle is okay, too, because it’s not loaded with apps and other distractions; just make sure to turn off the bright white backlight.

84 : Fake the Sunset

When we see bright light, our brains think, “It’s morning. Time to wake up!” This is an ancient and automatic system. For Urk, the system worked great: He fell asleep when it got dark and woke when the sun rose. The natural cycle of the day helped regulate his sleep and energy.

But for modern humans, this poses a problem. Between our screens and our lightbulbs, we’re simulating daylight right up until we climb into bed. It’s as though we’re telling our brains, “It’s day, it’s day, it’s day, it’s day—WHOA, IT’S NIGHT, GO TO BED.” No wonder we have trouble sleeping.

85 : Sneak a Nap

Napping makes you smarter. Seriously. Lots of studies14 show that napping improves alertness and cognitive performance in the afternoon. As usual, we’ve tested the science ourselves.

86 : Don't Jet-Lag Yourself

our friend Kristen Brillantes, who’s one of the most ambitious and productive people we know. (You may remember Kristen and her Sour Patch Kid method for saying no from tactic #12.) In addition to her day job as a design producer at Google, she’s a food-truck owner and a life coach for all kinds of entrepreneurs and young professionals.

“It’s tempting to try catching up by sleeping late,” Kristen said. “The problem is, it doesn’t work.”

She told us that sleeping late on weekends is basically like giving yourself jet lag: It confuses your internal clock and makes it even harder to bounce back from the original deficit. So just as you would when traveling to a different time zone, she recommends resisting the temptation to oversleep and trying to stick as closely as possible to your regular schedule.

“Sleep debt” is a real thing, and it’s bad news for your health, wellness, and ability to focus. But one Saturday of sleeping until noon—glorious as that is—won’t do much to pay off your debt. Instead, you need to chip away at it, using the tactics in this chapter to help you catch up by sleeping well in day-by-day installments. So to keep your battery charged, keep that alarm set to the same time every day whether it’s a weekday, weekend, or holiday.

Overview

We each spent years in Silicon Valley, where one of the favorite business terms is pivot. In startup-speak, a pivot is when a company starts out doing one thing but realizes that a related (or sometimes unrelated) idea is more promising. If they have enough confidence (and funding), they’ll pivot to the new direction.

A shopping tool called Tote pivoted and became Pinterest. A podcasting company called Odeo pivoted and became Twitter. An app called Burbn for checking in to restaurants and bars pivoted and became Instagram, and a company making an operating system for cameras pivoted and became Android.

For much of our own careers, we were too distracted, scrambled, busy, and exhausted to make time for the things we cared most about. First, Make Time helped us find control. Over time, it helped us start those classic “someday” projects we had been putting off for years and could have continued putting off indefinitely.

When you create a practice of setting your own most important priority, daily life changes. Perhaps you’ll find your inner compass perfectly aligned with your current work, in which case you’ll now be that much more capable of identifying and acting on the most important opportunities. Make Time could provide a long-term sustained boost to your career. Your hobbies and side projects, strengthened with Make Time, could be a perfect complement.

We’re constantly rebalancing our priorities, and it’s extremely unlikely that what either of us is doing today is what he’ll be doing two, five, or ten years from now. By the time you read this, we may have changed course yet again, and that’s fine. As long as we’re making time for what matters to us, the system is working.

Overview

Fine-Tune Your Days with the Scientific Method

  • OBSERVE what’s going on.
  • GUESS why things are happening the way they are.
  • EXPERIMENT to test your hypothesis.
  • MEASURE the results and decide whether you were right.

Make Time uses the scientific method, too. Everything in this book is based on our observations about the modern world and our guesses about why bad things happen to our time and attention. You might boil Make Time down to three hypotheses:

The Highlight hypothesis

If you set a single intention at the start of each day, we predict you’ll be more satisfied, joyful, and effective.

The Laser hypothesis

If you create barriers around the Busy Bandwagon and the Infinity Pools, we predict you’ll focus your attention like a laser beam.

The Energize hypothesis

If you live a little more like a prehistoric human, we predict you’ll enhance your mental and physical energy.

Take Notes to Track Your Results

Collecting the data is super easy. Every day you’ll reflect on whether you made time for your Highlight and how well you were able to focus on it. You’ll note how much energy you had. You’ll review the tactics you used, jot down some observations on what worked and what didn’t, and make a plan for which tactics you’ll try tomorrow.

Jack

It’s one thing to read about a research study in the news and quite another to experience the results firsthand.

Sample Agendas

It’s possible to fit a lot of tactics into one day, and that’s not even counting tactics like Design Your Day, Log Out, Wear a Wristwatch, and Try a Distraction-Free Phone that don’t show up on the calendar. But even though it’s possible to fit a lot in, it isn’t necessary. These are extreme cases—remember, we’re Time Dorks.

FURTHER READING FOR TIME DORKS

Brain Rules by John Medina

A fun and fast overview of brain science, easy to understand and easy to remember. (For a much harder read with a lot more detail, check out The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World by Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen.)

Headspace app starring Andy Puddicombe

Andy does more than guide you through meditation—he teaches a great mindset for the modern world.

Mindset by Carol Dweck

Habits are very powerful, but sometimes you need a mindset shift to change your behavior.

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

Many of the Make Time tactics are based on the idea of learning from ancient humans. Sapiens is a detailed, remarkable history of, well…humans.

Jake

On Writing by Stephen King

Naturally, this is a must-read for an aspiring fiction writer like myself. But you don’t have to be a writer or a horror fan (I’m not) to love this book. It’s packed with lessons on doing any work with diligence and passion. And it’s hilarious.

Sprint by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz

If you like the ideas in Make Time, try a design sprint at work.

QUICK START GUIDE TO MAKE TIME

There are a lot of tactics in this book. If you’re not sure where to begin, try this recipe:

Highlight: Schedule Your Highlight(#8)

A simple way to be proactive, give form to your day, and break the reaction cycle.

Laser: Block Distraction Kryptonite(#24)

Free yourself from one Infinity Pool, and see how your attention changes. Energize:

Pound the Pavement (#62)

A few minutes of walking each day provides a boost for the body and quiet for the mind.

Reflect every evening for three days

Don’t worry about committing to a lifetime of evening journaling (we’re not there yet, either). Just try the three tactics above and, for three days straight, take notes in the evening. See what you learn and take it from there. Also, check out maketimebook.com for tips and apps to help you start.

Overview

We do not remember days, we remember moments. - Cesare Pavese

What Will Be the Highlight of Your Day?

Your Highlight gives each day a focal point. Research shows that the way you experience your days is not determined primarily by what happens to you. In fact, you create your own reality by choosing what you pay attention.

Introduction

The Backstory

Being more productive didn’t mean I was doing the most important work; it only meant I was reacting to other people’s priorities faster.

Four Lessons from the Design Sprint Laboratory

  • Something Magic happens when you start the day with one high-priority goal.
  • we got more done when we banned devices. Since we set the rules, we were able to prohibit laptops and smartphones, and the difference was phenomenal. Without the constant lure of email and other Infinity Pools, people brought their complete attention to the task at hand, and the default switched to focus.

How Make Time Work

Make Time is Just Four Steps, Repeated Every Day

The first step is choosing a single highlight to prioritize in your day. Next, you’ll employ specific tactics to stay laser-focused on that highlight—we’ll offer a menu of tricks to beat distraction in an always-connected world. Throughout the day, you’ll build energy so you can stay in control of your time and attention. Finally, you’ll reflect on the day with a few simple notes.

Highlight : Start Each Day by Choosing a Focal Point

The first step in Make Time is deciding what you want to make time for. Every day, you’ll choose a single activity to prioritize and protect in your calendar.

Your Highlight can contain multiple steps; for example, finishing that presentation might include writing the closing remarks, completing the slides, and doing a practice run-through. By setting “finish presentation” as your Highlight, you commit to complete all the tasks required.

Laser : Beat Distraction to Make Time for Your Highlight

Adjust your technology so you can Find Laser Mode.

This may include logging out of social media account or scheduling time to check your emails.

Reflect : Adjust and Improve Your System

Finally going to bed, you'll take a few notes.

Decide what works for you , Which tactics you want to continue and which one you need to refine and drop.

The Everyday Mindset

So instead of thinking of these tactics as “more things you have to do,” consider ways to make them part of your normal life. That’s why we suggest, for example, walking to work (this page) and exercising at home (this page) rather than an expensive gym membership or an hourlong fitness class every morning.

The best tactics are the ones that fit into your day. They’re not something you force yourself to do; they’re just something you do. And in most cases, they’ll be things you want to do.

Overview

The defaults of today’s world assume that the brain is the one driving the bus, but that’s not really how it works. When you don’t take care of your body, your brain can’t do its job. If you’ve ever felt sluggish and uninspired after a big lunch or invigorated and clearheaded after exercising, you know what we mean. If you want energy for your brain, you need to take care of your body.

Act Like a Caveman to Build Energy

  • Keep it Moving
  • Eat Real food
  • Optimize Caffeine
  • Go Off teh Grid
  • Make It Personal
  • Sleep in a Cave

Overview

Why Infinity Pools Are So Hard to Resist

  • Passion for technology : Naturally When people are passionate about what they are doing they do great work. So first thing that make Infinity Pools so irresistible is that they are made with Love.
  • Second Secret Ingredient is evolution : Tech products improve dramatically from one version to next.
  • Competition is third ingredient : Competition makes modern technology so compelling. Every time service add new features or Improvement it became difficult to resist.

Don't wait for technology to give back your time

Look, we love technology. But there is a very serious problem here. Combine the four-plus hours the average person spends on their smartphone with the four-plus hours the average person spends watching television, and distraction is a full-time job. Here’s where we have to point out the (obvious) fifth secret ingredient: Tech companies make money when you use their products. They won’t offer you small doses voluntarily; they’ll offer you a fire hose. And if these Infinity Pools are hard to resist today, they’ll be harder to resist tomorrow.

When you immerse yourself in Laser mode rather than ping-ponging between distraction and attention, you not only make time for what matters most, you make higher-quality time. Every distraction imposes a cost on the depth of your focus. When your brain changes contexts—say, going from painting a picture to answering a text and then back to painting again—there’s a switching cost. Your brain has to load a different set of rules and information into working memory. This “boot up” costs at least a few minutes, and for complex tasks, it can take even longer. The two of us have found it can take a couple of hours of uninterrupted writing before we’re doing our best work; sometimes it even requires several consecutive days before we’re in the zone.

It’s like compound interest. The longer you remain focused on your Highlight, the more engaging you’ll find it and the better work (or play) you’ll do.

But the benefits of Laser mode aren’t just about you and your Highlight. Part of the reason we’re all so hooked on distractions is that everybody else is, too. It’s the fear of missing out—FOMO—and we’ve all got it. How will we make small talk if we haven’t seen the latest HBO series, or read the latest Trump tweets, or studied the cool features of the brand-new iPhone? Everybody else is doing it, and we don’t want to get left behind.