Book Summary: MakeTime
How to focus on what matters every day.
Author: Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky
Book Size: 275 pages
Book available: Amazon, For Free PDF You can contact me.
Moral and Introduction:
In today’s world, it often feels as though there is still not enough time in the day to accomplish all of our goals. But, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll recognize that it’s not just the modern world that’s to blame; it’s also ourselves. We keep ourselves busier than we need to be all of the time. Then, once we’ve exhausted our to-do list, we spend the remainder of our time addicted to social media, television, and email!
To reclaim our energy and pursue the projects and initiatives we’ve put off, it appears that the solution is simple: quit being more occupied than we need to be, and resist the diversions that are squandering our days. Of course, saying these things is far easier than doing them. We’ll need to grasp the fundamental reasons for congestion and distraction if we want to have a real chance of completing things. Then we must devise a strategy to deal with them. We’ll need some practical measures to put that strategy into action.
Key Takeaways
- The identities and hidden nature of the Busy Bandwagon and the Infinity Pool, a dynamic duo of time-wasting super-villains;
- Why attempting to be more efficient can seem like you’re on a rat race; And
- a clever way to avoid caffeine crashes
#1: We waste time due to diversions and bustle.
Why do we feel as if there is never enough time to do the things we truly desire? The obvious answer appears to be that there is simply too much to do on any one day — too many emails to respond to, too many meetings to attend, and too many Facebook updates to keep track of. However, this is only partially correct. The truth is that, to some part, our lack of time is self-imposed.
There are two phenomena at work in this situation. The Busy Bandwagon is the first. This is the modern attitude, which teaches us that we must cram as much work into each day as possible. It encourages us to be busy at all times, resulting in overflowing inboxes, overflowing calendars, and never-ending to-do lists.
The growth of Infinity Pools is the second phenomenon. You’re probably already familiar with these unless you’ve been hidden in an underground bunker for the past decade. Consider social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Netflix, and news websites. They’re essentially applications and other digital sources of infinite, inexhaustible, constantly-replenishing content — whether it’s information, entertainment, or a mix of both — that are instantly available with a simple tap of the screen or click of the mouse.
These Infinity Pools can be quite the time-wasters, as anyone who has met them knows firsthand — and statistics back this up. We spend four hours per day on average watching television and four hours per day staring at our cellphones — the equivalent of a full-time job! Combine that second job with our regular full-time occupations, which are already stressful enough and frequently spill over into our off-work hours as a result of the Busy Bandwagon. Isn’t it obvious where all the time goes?
Worse, the Busy Bandwagon and Infinity Pools have teamed up to become a time-traveling pair. We’re easily seduced into plunging into the Infinity Pools and passively soaking up their content, exhausted by the Busy Bandwagon. The consequence is a constant stream of activities and distractions, with us bouncing back and forth between them all day, every day.
So, how can we get out of this situation? That is, after all, what the remainder of this book review is all about! We’ll start by looking at what not to do. Then we’ll figure out what to do next.
#2: Productivity by itself only leads to increased activity.
As the Busy Bandwagon careens along the highway of modern life, it’s trailed by a slew of gurus peddling various organizing systems, each promising you a more efficient way to get your work done.
The logic that underpins these systems follows a fairly straightforward pattern. You have a specific amount of work to complete; let’s call it X. If X amount of work consumes all of your time, the solution appears to be straightforward: perform X faster to free up more time!
Unfortunately, because X is a variable rather than a constant, things aren’t quite as straightforward. There’s an unending succession of chores we could be doing in today’s always-asking-for-more environment, so as you accomplish one, it’s replaced by another. After you’ve cleared your inbox, a new email arrives. One request comes from you, while another comes from a colleague.
As a result, you can speed through your to-do list in the hopes of reaching the fabled finish line, but the ink on your last checkmark will barely dry before another item appears. The more work you complete, the more work you discover. On a hamster wheel, it’s like chasing a carrot. You can run faster and faster, but you’ll never get there since the wheel will continue to spin faster and faster.
As a result, increased production leads to increased busyness. It also perpetuates the mindset that led you to jump on the Busy Train in the first place. You’re not only setting yourself up for failure by giving yourself an unachievable target, but you’re also elevating busyness to a pedestal by focusing so much on getting through your to-do list as quickly as possible.
And you’re putting your own needs on hold. Consider where the tasks on your to-do list originate from to understand why. Are these things you’d do if you were given the freedom to do whatever you wanted? No, for the most part. They’re things that have been forced upon you by others. They’re not your priorities; they’re the priorities of others.
You’re deprioritizing yourself by prioritizing them. You lose time and energy for your hobbies and projects as you subordinate yourself to other people’s priorities. You eventually put them off till “another day,” which never comes.
You’ll be especially prone to sliding into the Infinity Pools of distraction, which we’ll discuss next, if you’re exhausted from racing on the hamster wheel of productivity, making no more progress toward your genuine callings.
#3: Willpower alone isn’t enough to keep us from becoming distracted.
Couldn’t you just avoid joining the pool in the first place if you don’t want to get stuck in an Infinity Pool of distraction like Facebook or Twitter? Why not use your willpower and simply say no?
Unfortunately, the concept of “simply saying no” is a pipe dream. Infinity Pools are masterfully created to overcome your resistance and suffocate you in their never-ending content. It is in the best interests of the firms that make them do so. They get more money the more you use their programs.
Armies of skilled, well-intentioned techies leap into action, employing sophisticated data analysis tools to see what catches your attention. They can cycle through variants of their app until they find the one that’s most appealing because it’s much easier to rebuild and relaunch an app than, say, a car.
But don’t get too worked up about them or the CEOs of internet companies. They’re only trying to perform their jobs, driven by a real passion for technology and the pressures of a highly competitive sector. Instead, you can blame your forefathers and mothers. Infinity Pools are simply exploiting how our brains were hardwired evolutionarily in prehistoric times. It was profitable for us to be easily distracted back then. We avoided being eaten by a saber-toothed tiger by keeping an eye out for abrupt changes in our surroundings, such as a rustling shrub!
We lived in close-knit tribes back then, so being fascinated by stories, gossip, and social status may help us learn from one another, stay up with tribal news, and understand our place in the tribal pecking order.
Finally, because going out to hunt mastodons or pick berries meant never knowing when or where you may strike it rich, our brains evolved to be motivated by unpredictably rewarding experiences. We’d keep looking for food even if a specific valley or clump of shrubs turned out to be mastodon- or berry-free.
These predispositions served us well back then. However, they have made us vulnerable to phone notifications that pique our interest, clickbait headlines that pique our interest with stories, Tweets that relay gossip, Instagram follower counts that quantify our social status, and endless Facebook feeds that promise the unpredictability of interesting links hidden among boring posts.
We can’t fight the combination of beautifully built apps and prehistorically molded minds with our resolve alone. We’ll move on to strategies and tactics after that!
#4: To combat bustle and distractions, you must alter your behavior’s default settings.
How do we break free from the confines of Infinity Pools if willpower alone isn’t enough, and production only strengthens the Busy Bandwagon? The answer, like defeating a supervillain, is to find the ultimate source of their superpower and take it away from them.
That source can be summed up in a single word: responsiveness. The strength of both the Busy Bandwagon and Infinity Pools is derived from our unconscious reaction to environmental stimuli. You receive an email from a coworker with a query, and you feel pressured to react right away. You feel compelled to look at the screen when your phone vibrates with a notification.
You do these things without even realizing it, which is exactly the problem. Our instinctive behavioral responses to professional obligations and digital technologies have become riding the Busy Bandwagon and wallowing in Infinity Pools.
If we consider our minds to be computers and our behaviors to be software, we may say that unconsciously reacting habits have become our default settings. This is how we’re already set up to respond to the expectations and technology we’ll confront at the start of each day. This is comparable to how when you initially turn on your phone, it sends you certain notifications, displays a specific wallpaper, and plays a specific ringtone by default.
#5: You’ll need strategies and a strategy to establish obstacles for both you and your time slackers if you want to adjust your default settings.
Odysseus meets his kind of Infinity Pools in Homer’s Odyssey: the Sirens. They’re winged creatures whose seductive sounds enticed seafarers to crash into the cliffs from which they sang. Odysseus was aware of his limitations as he sailed toward them. He knew he couldn’t fight the sirens with his determination alone.
Odysseus came up with a simple but brilliant technique to hear the Sirens’ singing without crashing into the rocks. He tied himself to his ship’s mast and forced his crew to put beeswax in their ears so they wouldn’t hear the Sirens’ song.
Thinking and acting like Odysseus, is the simplest way to express being consciously proactive. The Sirens can be as enticing as the Busy Bandwagon and Infinity Pools. We can, like Odysseus, erect barriers between ourselves and them, preventing their songs from drawing us in or even reaching us at all.
To erect these barriers, you can use basic yet effective strategies. We’ll go over this in more detail later, but for now, here’s an example: Set up a website blocker to avoid the temptation of scrolling through Facebook!
“Enough already, just tell me the techniques!” you might be thinking at this time. Hold on just a little longer, because listing a bunch of tips and tricks would be pointless. That’s because tactics alone aren’t sufficient. You’ll need a plan to steer them in the right direction.
This is especially true in this case because there is no one-size-fits-all strategy that will work for everyone. Each person is unique, so you’ll need a set of strategies tailored to your unique personality. The technique that follows will help you identify the collection of tactics that are most effective for you. This method is quite simple in its general ideas, and it can be broken down into four steps: spotlight, focus, energize, and reflect.
#6: Choose a hobby or activity that will be the spotlight of your day to help you focus on the present.
As you’ve seen, being more productive isn’t enough to fix the problem of being overworked. Indeed, because your to-do list never ends, it might exacerbate the situation by contributing to the Busy Bandwagon.
Giving yourself more and more short-term chores will not free up time for you to complete what you want to do. It also doesn’t work to try to get as much done as possible or to organize your schedule in a neurotic manner to accomplish chores as quickly as possible. Instead, you’ll just keep yourself busy, causing your days to blur and leaving you fatigued by the time you’re done with work and chores — hardly ready to, say, write that novel you’ve always wanted to write or spend some quality time with your family.
If focusing on the completion of short-term activities isn’t the answer, then perhaps it’s time to think about long-term objectives. These, on the other hand, aren’t much help. They’re too abstract, too disconnected from the present moment, and too preoccupied with the future.
To be clear, none of this is intended to discourage the use of to-do lists, schedules, objectives, or goals. Long-term goals assist you in orienting your life’s journey. To-do lists, schedules, and short-term goals assist you in keeping track of your progress and completing tasks. They’re necessary, yet they’re insufficient to help you reclaim your time.
There’s a sweet spot between your short- and long-term goals: a goal you can focus on today while also serving as a guiding star as you traverse it. This is a daily highlight — a long-term activity or project that you can look back on with pride at the end of the day.
You’ve probably been asked this question before: What was the best part of your day? Instead of waiting till the end of the day to find out the response, come up with one ahead of time by slightly altering the question: What do you want your day’s highlight to be?
#7: Select a significant, fulfilling, or enjoyable highlight that can be completed in 60 to 90 minutes.
Highlights come in three fundamental flavors, like Neapolitan ice cream: important, meaningful, and delightful. Each requires a different approach, so let’s go over them one by one.
“What — if anything — is my most urgent, absolutely important task or endeavor today?” is the first approach. Take a glance at your to-do list, email inbox, or calendar to find these highlights. Perhaps a customer is anticipating a proposal today, or your daughter requires assistance with her Halloween outfit tonight.
Now, let’s say you need to fill out a ten-minute form today. By all means, finish the form — but don’t make it your highlight! For a highlight, you want something that takes about 60 to 90 minutes. Shorter activities don’t give you enough time to get in the zone. For longer ones, you’re unlikely to be able to sustain your focus.
Ask yourself, “What will make me feel the most satisfied at the end of the day?” for the second approach. It’s all about what you want to do here, not what you have to do. Projects you’ve been meaning to finish but have been putting off because they aren’t time-sensitive are ideal candidates for this type of highlight. You’ll usually obtain this satisfaction from something that either allows you to practice a skill you want to learn or accomplishes a goal you care about. For example, perhaps you’ve been dying to get started on a pet project at work, or perhaps you’d like to do some research on suitable holiday spots.
The third method is to think about “what will offer me the most joy?” The purpose of becoming less unmindfully reactive and more consciously proactive is to live a richer and happier life, not to construct some type of perfectly planned day with a goal-obsessed mentality. To live that life, you must occasionally let go and do something simply because you enjoy it, whether it’s learning a new song on the guitar or reading a book. Permit yourself to do whatever it is that makes you happy!
So there you have it: the three types of highlights and their methodologies. Which one are you going to choose? Every day, trust your instincts and choose the option that feels right to you.
#8: Experiment with several strategies to assist you in selecting your highlights.
You may still require assistance in selecting your highlights. We’ll take a look at some potential strategies in a bit. But first, let’s go through some tips on how to put these into practice.
In a word, don’t try to implement all of these strategies at the same time. You’ll become overwhelmed and most likely give up. This is because there are much too many methods to complete in one sitting! Furthermore, you are not required to complete all of them; rather, you are only required to try out a few of them. Examine which ones function and which ones don’t, then keep the ones that do and discard the others.
Let’s move on to our initial set of strategies. We’ll just skim over some of these because they’re self-explanatory. We’ll look into some of them further.
As a first step toward locating your highlight, make a list of your priorities and rank them to remind yourself which one is the most important. “How can I pursue this today?” Ask yourself. You can utilize your ranked list to break a tie if you’re torn between two prospective highlights.
If you didn’t get to it, didn’t finish it, want to create a new skill or habit, or simply enjoyed it so much that you want to do it again, you can use the second method.
Third, you can aggregate a slew of minor annoyances into a single large, composite task. This strategy has a two-fold benefit. To begin with, it gives you the gratification of completing duties that have been weighing on you. Second, by assuring you that you’ll get to them eventually, these non-urgent chores may pile up without continually competing for your attention, putting a stop to the Busy Bandwagon.
Another strategy is to look at your to-do list and do the item that is most important to you.
Finally, you can take a multi-day highlight that is a lengthier project, break it down into steps, and link those phases together.
#9: Find time for your highlights by employing strategies.
It’s one thing to set a reasonable but not excessively lofty objective and announce, “Today, this will be the highlight of my day.” It’s a different matter to accomplish it. You must schedule time for your highlight to accomplish this. Here are a few strategies to consider.
You may estimate how long it will take to complete your highlight and schedule it into your day.
Alternatively, take it a step further and set up a regular time in your schedule for doing highlights.
Alternatively, take it a step further and create a precise calendar for your day — possibly even half-hour by half-hour, with items like “drink coffee” written down. This may assist you to squeeze as much time as possible out of your day — just make sure you include your highlights as well as your responsibilities!
Alternatively, if possible, rearrange or cancel your commitments to free up time in your schedule. You might be able to reclaim a surprising amount of time if you rearrange certain meetings.
Finally, you may either become a morning person or a more efficient night person to reclaim time for yourself at the start or close of each day. That is someone who does not waste time on Facebook or YouTube when the clock strikes midnight.
These final two strategies are more difficult to implement than they appear, therefore some more guidance is required. It helps to use light to recreate the conditions of our ancestors’ existence — falling asleep at sunset and waking up at dawn — to become a morning person. To replicate this, reduce your home’s lights a couple of hours before bedtime, set your screen gadgets to night mode, and turn them off as you enter your bedroom.
Make sure you go to bed early enough the night before to get adequate sleep before waking up early the next day, which you can make easier by exposing yourself to plenty of light. A dawn simulator — a device that progressively bathes you in stronger and brighter light in the morning — can provide this.
Set aside time for your highlight in the late evening or early night to become a more productive night owl. Do something to refuel yourself before the highlight, and then log off social media to stay focused when it’s time for the highlight.
#10: Avoid distractions by employing strategies to stay focused on your highlights.
Let’s look at some strategies for keeping focused on our highlights, avoiding distractions, and making use of that time now that we’ve seen some ways to make time for them.
First, remove Infinity Pool apps from your phones, such as Twitter and Facebook. You’ll still have access to your GPS, music, and other vital apps, so don’t panic.
You can even uninstall your phone’s email app for more drastic steps. This may seem absurd, but consider this: how often do you send an email reply on your phone’s tiny, inconvenient keyboard? Probably not regularly. Your email app mostly serves as an anxiety-inducing notification app. So, try to get rid of it.
Install software and website blocking applications to limit the amount of time you spend on your computer using social media or email.
You might also take a more moderate approach and log off from your social media accounts. You’ll have to enter your login credentials whenever you feel the urge to check them. The extra effort will make you think twice about using social media needlessly, and it will give you a chance to reflect on whether you want to be doing this with your time.
Additionally, rather than keeping up with the news on a daily or even hourly basis, you can do it once a week. Yes, you will be a little behind the times. But how much of the news you read provides you with knowledge on decisions you must make right now? Isn’t it possible that most of it could wait a week? Some of it is genuinely life-threatening, but you’ll almost certainly hear about these stories in some form or another, whether it’s around the water cooler or via a text message alert warning you that the volcano is about to erupt.
Furthermore, when you have a spur-of-the-moment question, such as “who’s that actress on that TV show?” Instead of instantly Googling it, jot it down on a piece of paper and keep it for later. You’ll be able to avoid plunging down a Google rabbit hole of one follow-up question after another while also knowing that you’ll be able to do your “essential” study later!
#11: Keep your mind energized by taking care of your body.
People in modern society frequently act as if the mind and body are different entities as if the body’s sole role is to transport the mind. Meanwhile, you occupy your time mostly with modern-day cerebral chores such as navigating computer screens.
Of course, anyone with a body is aware that this is not the case. You can feel the connection between the mind and body whether you feel intellectually sluggish after consuming too much food or clear-headed after exercising. As a result, taking care of one necessitates taking care of the other.
If you want a focused mind, you must take care of your body — but how? There’s a lot of contradictory advice out there. How do you make sense of it all?
Fortunately, the majority of what you’ll need to know is straightforward and dates back to human history. A varied and sparse diet, a sleeping schedule that mirrors the rhythm of the day, plenty of social interaction, and nearly constant low-key movement like walking, punctuated by bursts of more intense activity like lifting heavy objects are some of the simple but important factors behind our ancestors’ healthiness.
That’s how people lived for the first 188,000 years of their 200,000-year existence on Earth until the agricultural revolution around 12,000 years ago. Humans are still built to accomplish all of the activities stated above, but modern life’s defaults no longer encourage them. Instead, they push you to sit, stare at devices, eat processed foods, and get as little sleep as possible.
As a result, lifestyles are no longer in sync with physical necessities, and as a result, bodies — and thus minds — suffer significant consequences. Aside from the obvious health hazards, when you’re short on energy, you’re more likely to become sidetracked and lose time, whereas when you’re energized, you feel ready to take on almost anything.
Returning to the ideas that underpin our forefathers’ way of life while preserving the benefits of modern life is the key to taking care of your body. This isn’t about following a strict paleo diet or anything like that; rather, it’s about aligning your evolutionary demands with your societally constructed lifestyles.
#12: Use techniques to energize both your thoughts and your body.
The strategies for taking care of our minds and bodies can be divided into four categories, similar to the important aspects of our prehistoric ancestors’ lifestyles: exercise, diet, social connection, and sleep. For each of these, we’ll look at one or two strategies.
Remember that we don’t need to do a triathlon or anything else extreme for a workout. The benefits of 20 minutes of moderate daily movement, such as running or swimming, have been scientifically demonstrated to improve our cognitive capacities, mood, and general health.
We don’t even need 20 minutes if we’re truly pressed for time. According to new research, seven minutes of high-intensity interval training can provide even more benefits than an hour of leisurely exercise. By mixing sprints, push-ups, pull-ups, squats, and lifting weights, we can get in a re-energizing workout in as little as 5 to 10 minutes.
Eat real food in moderation, just like our forefathers did: plants, nuts, fish, and meat. Here’s a quick way to reduce serving sizes without feeling deprived: Place the salad in the center of your platter first. Then, around it, add the rest of the dish. The entire platter will be filled this way, but largely with greens.
Caffeine crashes can also harm our energy levels. Re-caffeinate around 30 minutes before a crash, which is usually after lunch, to avoid them. It’s too late if we wait until we’ve already crashed. The scientific principles at work here are a little convoluted, but the simple line is that we need to replace old caffeine with new caffeine before an army of drowsiness-inducing chemicals known as adenosine can sweep in and take control of the brain.
When it comes to sleep, resist the need to catch up. This throws off our internal clock, causing sleep disruption. Stick to your guns. Every day, even on weekends, get up at the same hour.
Remember that we have a natural urge to socialize, just like our prehistoric ancestors who lived in small, close-knit groups. Our “tribe” in today’s environment consists of our friends, colleagues, and extended relatives. Any of these people can help us meet our desire for connection, but some of them are particularly adept at elevating our spirits. Make an effort to spend time with these individuals in particular.
Better still, sit down with them and eat a good dinner while they put their phones aside. Connecting with our tribe, eating healthily, avoiding Infinity Pools, and getting off the Busy Bandwagon may all be accomplished at the same time in this manner.
#13: Consider the outcomes of putting these strategies to the test.
This book provides you with a total of 20 techniques for implementing the Make Time strategy’s first three steps: spotlight, focus, and energize. That’s a lot of different strategies to try out!
You can feel overwhelmed by the number of options available. Even if you remember to only try out one new strategy at a time, it may still feel like there’s a lot you’re missing out on.
Here’s one approach to combat that sensation. Consider the approaches as cookbook dishes, and the strategy’s first three steps as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. At most, you try just one recipe per meal per day. You wouldn’t feel obligated to cook through a full cookbook, and you shouldn’t feel the same way about these strategies.
The purpose of a cookbook is to provide you with a variety of options to try. You select the ones that best suit your requirements. You put them to the test, taste the results, and then decide what to do next. The same can be said for the “recipes” offered by these strategies. The goal is to figure out which ones perform best for you, so try them out and track, document, and analyze the outcomes.
Simply take a few minutes each day to write down what your highlight was, if you made time for it, which techniques you used, what worked and what didn’t, what improvements you could make, and which tactics you’ll use tomorrow. The Make Time technique comes to a close with this stage.
You may also rate your focus and energy levels on a scale of 1 to 10 to keep track of how you’re doing. You might also jot down a moment for which you are glad to bring a good vibe to the whole thing. That way, you’ll be more aware of any beneficial changes that occur in your life.
These changes will be significant if all goes smoothly. They’ll give you more time, energy, and concentration for the things, initiatives, and people that matter most to you. You can even rediscover an old passion or discover a new one by freeing yourself up to pursue them. Perhaps you’ll be able to re-energize your career. Alternatively, one of your initiatives or interests could turn into a new calling.
This is precisely what occurred to the authors. One of them quit Google to pursue a career as a writer. The other dropped out of YouTube to pursue a career in sailing. What will be the destination of your journey? There’s only one way to learn, and that’s to get started!
