18 Minutes

Just finished reading 18 Minutes: Find your Focus, Master Distraction and Get the Right Things Done book by Peter Bregman. An amazing read. Each chapter is short and in each an insightful message wrapped with a personalized story. The chapters are well structured with a take away message called out for each chapter and summary for each section.

Part 1 Pause: Hover Above Your World:

• Slow: Reducing your forward momentum is the first step to freeing yourself from the beliefs, habits, feelings, and busyness that may be limiting you.
• Pause: A brief pause will help you make a smarter next move.
• Stop: Regular rest stops are useful interruptions. They will refuel your body and mind, naturally reorient your life toward what’s important to you, and create the time and space to aim your efforts more accurately.
• See: The world changes – we change – faster than we tend to notice. To maximize your potential, you need to peer through the expectations that limit you and your choices. You need to see the world as it is – and yourself as you are.
• Reorganize: Life isn’t just about some of you; it’s about all of you. Don’t negate, integrate.
• Don’t settle for being less than you are. It won’t serve others and it won’t serve you.
• Target: Knowing what outcome you want will enable you to focus on what matters and escape the whirlwind of activity that too often leads nowhere fast.  

Part 2: What Is This Year About? Find Your Focus

• Start experimenting from who you are and choose your next move—your focus for the year—at the intersection of the four elements. That’s where your power lies. (p. 47)
• Strength: The first element is your strengths. Over the coming year, play the game that is perfectly suited to your strengths. (p. 51)
• Weakness: The second element is your weakness. Rather than avoid them, embrace your weaknesses and spend your time this year where they’re an asset instead of a liability. (p. 55)
• Differences: The third element is your differences. Assert them. Don’t waste your year, and your competitive advantage, trying to blend in. (p. 60)
• Passion-Desire: The fourth element is your passion, which is sometimes hard to find. One way to recover your passion is to pursue your desire. As you choose your focus for the year, pay less attention to “shoulds” and more attention to “wants.” (p. 64)
• Anyone can do anything as long as three conditions exist: (1) You want to achieve it; (2) You believe you can achieve it; (3) You enjoying trying to achieve it. (p. 67)
• Persistence: To home in on your passion, think about what you love doing—what’s important enough to you that you’re willing to persist over the year, even when it feels like you’re not succeeding at it. (p. 69)
• Ease: Your year will be best spent doing work that you enjoy so much, it feels effortless. You’ll always work tirelessly at your passions—hard work will feel easier. (p. 75)
• Meaning: Focus your year on the things that matter to you. On things that have specific meaning to you. (p. 80)
• Tunnel Vision: Staying connected to your guideposts will help you avoid tunnel vision and keep you moving in the right direction. (p. 84)
• Surrender after Failure: Failure is inevitable, useful, and educational. Just don’t give up—stay focused over the year—and it will pay off. (p. 88)
• Paralyzed: Don’t be paralyzed by an uncertain future. Just keep moving. (p. 94)
• Rush Judgement: The time to judge your successes or failures is never. (p. 99)
• Focus your year on the five areas that will make the most difference in your life. (p. 105)

Part 3   What Is This Day About? Get the Right Things Done

• Plan: Plan your day ahead so you can fly through it, successfully maneuvering and moving toward your intended destination. (p.114)
• What: Reduce your overwhelm by putting your tasks into an organized list, focused on what you want to achieve for the year. (p. 120)
• What Not: To get the right things done, choosing what to ignore is as important as choosing where to focus. (p. 124)
• Schedule: If you really want to get something done, decide when and where you are going to do it. (p. 129)
• Off List: Never leave thing on your to-do list for more than three days. They’ll just get in the way of what you really need to get done. (p. 133)
• Minute Every Hour: The right kind of interruption can help you master your time and yourself. Keep yourself focused and steady by interrupting yourself hourly. (p. 138)
• Evening Five Minutes: Spend a few minutes at the end of each day thinking about what you learned and with whom you should connect. These minutes are the key to making tomorrow even better than today. (p. 143)
• Just 18 minutes a day can save you hours of inefficiency. The trick is to choose your focus deliberately and wisely, and then consistently remind yourself of that focus throughout the day. (p. 147)

Part 4   What Is This Moment About?

Mastering Your Initiative 

• Motivation: Create an environment that naturally compels you to do the things you want to do. (p. 158)
• You need to be motivated for only a few seconds. Know when you’re vulnerable and you’ll know when you need to turn it on. (p. 162)
• Fun: Fun reduces our need to motivate ourselves because fun is motivating. (p. 167)
• Start: Fear can be a useful catalyst to change—then pleasure sustains it. If you need help getting yourself going, don’t choose one or the other. Choose one before the other. (p. 173)
• Your Way: A good story—one you feel deeply about and in which you see yourself—is tremendously motivating. Make sure the story you tell about yourself (sometimes only to yourself) inspires you to move in the direction you want to move. (p. 179)
• Your mind can help you move forward or can get in the way. Choose the fantasy world that supports you. (p. 184)

Mastering Your Boundaries

• Yes: Resist the temptation to say yes too often. (p.190).
• No: When you say no, mean it, and you won’t needlessly lose your time. (p. 195)
• Act: Don’t wait too long to bring something up. People can only respect boundaries they know are there. (p. 198)
• Transition: A few moments of transition time can help make your next task shorter, faster, and more productive for you and others. (p. 203)
• When you shorten transition time, you create a boundary that helps you and others adjust to a new reality. (p. 208)
• When you take a vacation—or any other time you want to be undisturbed—schedule a specific time to take care of the things that would otherwise creep into each and every available moment. (p. 212)

Mastering Yourself

• Distraction: Distraction, used intentionally, can be an asset. (p. 219)
• Context Switch: We don’t actually multitask. We switch-task. And it’s inefficient, unproductive, and sometimes even dangerous. Resist the temptation. (p. 225)
• Perfection: The world doesn’t reward perfection. It rewards productivity. (p. 230)
• Don’t settle for imperfect. Shoot for it. (p. 236)
• Flexible: Stay alert and adapt to changing situations. Keep your eye on the ball, whichever ball that may be. (p. 241)

I am visual person, I want to have the complete digest of the book in a handy summary. Here you go.

I strongly recommend this book, It gives new perspective, I see my focus shaping up.