Book – Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day

Book – Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day

By Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

Ever ask yourself at the end of a day, “what did I do today?” The day was consumed but nothing meaningful got done. Yeah, join the club, happens too often in the tech utopia that we are both clamoring for, and dying from. 

Knapp and Zeratsky point to two causes in our modern world: 

  1. The Busy Bandwagon – the tech-fueled pace that constantly demands us to be more efficient and more productive until we are flat-out busy for twelve to sixteen hours a day and eyeing the remaining sleep hours as unused turf. All the while, steadily fragmenting our day into smaller and smaller time slices that we are expected to conduct meaningful work in. The costs of mental switching be damned. 
  2. And to relax from the bandwagon, they point out the aptly named “Infinity Pools”– the apps, social networks, games, and shows designed to get and keep our attention. In essence, designed to addict us. 

I think they nailed the problem. The authors don’t paint a picture as stark as I do, but for those living in the busy bandwagon and infinity pools, it’s catastrophic. Why? Because the 1-2 punch of always busy and constantly distracted kills both the opportunity and energy to dream. Work pays the bills, play makes us happy, but dreams… following dreams takes us places we have never been.  

Taking lessons the authors learned from creating and optimizing Design Sprints* at Google Ventures, the authors created and tested the Make Time framework for pulling more time out of your day: Highlight, Laser, Energize, and Reflect.  

Personally, my favorite part of the framework is Highlight- picking out one highlight for each day, one thing that you plan to focus on for at least 60 to 90 minutes. When you carve out time for that, your whole day feels more valuable even if all your other plans went to hell after you opened your email.

Why 60 to 90 minutes? enough time to really get engrossed in it, to feel flow. It’s difficult to get there in less time than that.      

For each part of the framework, they provide a long list of practical tactics to free up time and stay focused.  Some are simple, like wearing a watch so you pull out your phone less often. Some are controversial, like removing your email account and deleting all internet-connected apps and your browser from your smart phone. They emphasize that the long list of tactics is just to give options so you can test and customize the Make Time framework for you.  

If you feel “hamster wheel” busy but accomplish nothing or are drowning in an Infinity Pool, this book is worth your time. 

Practical, actionable, well researched 

Book: hardcover – 304 pages  

Audiobook: 4 hours, 58 minutes

*Design Sprints – Started in the tech industry but used across multiple sectors today. Time set aside, usually one to two workdays, where everyone on a team is focused on one design challenge and all other tasks (email, phone calls, meetings, paperwork) are put on hold. To maintain focus, often the goal of a design sprint is to produce a rough but viable product at the end of the sprint. The same approach can be used to fix a difficult coding glitch, design a marketing campaign, or any number of business challenges.   

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