Make Time

Insights from Make Time by Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky

Two forces are eroding your time: The Busy Bandwagon and Infinity Pools. Busy Bandwagon When you ask someone at work how they're doing, they'll probably tell you, "Busy! Really, really busy." People wear their busyness like a badge of honor. You and I feel pressure to join the ‘busy’ club and spend the day responding to emails, running from meeting to meeting, and adding tasks to our to‐do lists. If we step off the Busy Bandwagon to relax, ‘Infinity Pools’ are waiting to pull us into their vortex. Infinity Pools “Infinity Pools are apps and other sources of endlessly replenishing content. If you can pull to refresh, it’s an Infinity Pool. If it streams, it’s an Infinity Pool.” – Make Time Infinity Pools, like Instagram, YouTube, and Netflix, are powerful because they track our behavior, know what we like, and make it effortless to consume their content. “While the Busy Bandwagon defaults to endless tasks, the Infinity Pools default to endless distraction. Our phones, laptops, and televisions are filled with games, social feeds, and videos. Everything is at our fingertips, irresistible, even addictive. Every bump of friction is smoothed away.” – Make Time “With the average person spending four‐plus hours a day on their smartphone and another four‐plus hours watching TV shows, distraction is quite literally a full‐time job.” – Make Time To prevent the Busy Bandwagon and Infinity Pools from turning our daily lives into a blur of meaningless activity, focus on daily highlights.  The Daily Highlight If you answer 100 emails and complete 20 errands but don't have a big win or a peak moment (i.e., a highlight), your days and weeks will be a blur (like a dream you can hardly remember). To define your daily highlight, imagine that a friend calls you at the end of the day and asks: "What was the highlight of your day?"  If you can answer that question at the start of the day, you give yourself the best chance to experience a peak moment. To help you define your daily highlight, authors Jake and John provide three highlight categories: Urgency Find a highlight in the ‘urgency’ category, by asking yourself, "What's the most pressing thing I need to do today?" This might be a proposal you promised a client or a test you need to study for. I find it helpful to ask, “Of all the urgent things in my life, what would provide the greatest sense of relief?”  Satisfaction When searching the satisfaction category for a potential daily highlight, ask yourself, "At the end of the day, what would give me the most satisfaction?" Maybe that's drafting 2,000 words for your next book or completing the first module of a computer programming course you’ve wanted to start. Satisfaction highlights are things you want to do but don't necessarily need to do. Joy Find a highlight in the ‘joy’ category, by asking yourself, "When I reflect on my day, what experience would give me the most joy?" Stop searching for things you can accomplish, and start identifying the people you enjoy and activities that bring you joy (i.e., activities you do for the sake of doing them). A joy‐based highlight may be going to the playground with your child, or having a guitar jam session with your friend, or taking a cooking class with your spouse. Select your highlight 1. Write down all the potential highlights on a blank piece of paper (call it your “might‐do” list). Each highlight should be bigger than a task but smaller than a major project, and each highlight should take between 60 to 90 minutes to complete. 2. Rewrite the top three potential highlights on a new sheet of paper, then circle the one highlight you want to focus on today. Now write that highlight on a Post‐It note and put that Post‐It note in a place you’ll see throughout the day. 3. Block out a 60 to 90 minute chunk of time in your calendar to dedicate to your highlight. That's it! By identifying and focusing on one highlight each day, you'll pull yourself away from the Busy Bandwagon and Infinity Pools, and start living more intentionally