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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Sahil Bloom
Read between
February 7 - March 1, 2025
“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”
Urgent: A task that requires prompt attention Important: A task that advances your long-term values or goals
The Eisenhower Matrix creates a visual awareness of the types of tasks on which you are spending your time. This awareness allows you to adjust course as necessary in order to spend most of your time on the important, long-term projects and opportunities.
The fanciest productivity systems often require a lot of thinking and maintenance. If you’re spending time thinking about your productivity system, you’re focusing on movement over progress. The simple index card strategy harnesses the core principles of focus and momentum to allow you to get more of what matters done. Always remember: Simple is beautiful.
Open time frames lead to a lot of movement and very little progress—the rocking-horse phenomenon of busywork culture. We tend to be more efficient and productive when constraints come into play. We also tend to focus on the important when pressed for time.
Establish time blocks that are shorter than you’re comfortable with for low-importance but necessary tasks. Use this artificial pressure to avoid procrastination and free up time for important, high-value tasks.
Shorten standard meetings to twenty-five minutes. The tighter window makes participants more efficient (avoids “How about the weather” small talk) and gives you a five-minute break to reset in between meetings.
The forced constraint of time-bound blocks generates an intensity that meaningfully improves my output quantity and quality.
better way, to paraphrase entrepreneur Naval Ravikant, is to work like a lion: Sprint, rest, repeat.
You procrastinate when it’s easier to delegate a task to your future self.
The anti-procrastination system involves three core steps: Deconstruction Plan and stake creation Action
To the procrastinator, large, long-term projects are a big, scary black box. Your imagination fills that box with endless complexity and horrors. The whole is too intimidating, so you push it out to your future self. Deconstruct the big and scary project into small and individually manageable tasks.
Public declaration: State your process intentions publicly. Put it on social media, post it on LinkedIn, tell a bunch of friends at a dinner. No one wants to break their word. Social pressure: Make a plan to meet a friend somewhere to do the initial work. Schedule a time and place to meet and decide exactly what work you’re going to be tackling while you are there. Reward: Plan a reward if you do what you’re supposed to. Allow yourself to have a nice walk, a coffee break, or dinner with friends. Penalty: Plan a penalty if you don’t do what you’re supposed to. Use stakes to gamify big projects.
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Plan a sync session: Similar to the social-pressure stake above, meet a friend for the initial movement. Reward initial movement: Attach a small reward to completing the initial movement (for example, a walk outside). Use the lion technique: Commit to a single short (thirty-minute) sprint followed by luxurious rest.
Deconstruction: Deconstruct the big, scary project into small, manageable tasks. Plan and stake creation: Create a project document with specific, time-bound tasks. Create stakes to gamify their completion. Action: A body in motion tends to stay in motion. Create systems that spark initial movement. Engineer small wins (they become big wins over time).
You’ll build your focus muscle progressively: Start with thirty minutes, once per day. Work your way up to one hour two to three times per day by the end of the first month. From there, extend the periods to two hours (my personal maximum) or four hours (an ambitious target) as your focus muscle strengthens.
The sequence can be built around the five core senses: Touch: What movement/body action you engaged in prior to start Taste: What you’re drinking, chewing, or snacking on Sight: What you see in your environment Sound: What you hear in your environment Smell: What you smell in your environment
For personal commitments, use the Right Now test: When deciding whether to take something on, ask yourself, Would I do this right now? Functionally, you can think of right now as today or tomorrow. The aim is to eliminate the future time distortions observed by psychologists; by pulling the event into the present, you make a more clear, rational decision. If the answer to Would I do this right now? is no, say no. If the answer is yes, take it on.
Rather than manage your life through a to-do list, you manage your life through your calendar. Time-blocking leverages the well-established psychological principle that setting an intention for your time is critical for driving progress.
The Four Types of Professional Time There are four types of professional time: Management Creation Consumption Ideation
To paraphrase Atomic Habits author James Clear, everything you create is downstream from something you consume.[12] Consumption Time focuses on quality upstream to ensure quality downstream.
Leverage Parkinson’s law and work toward a batched schedule: Create discrete blocks of time each day when you will handle major Management Time activities. Have one to three email-processing blocks per day. Have one to three call and meeting blocks per day.
The key question then becomes this: What should you do with this newly created time? What activities should you take on? What pursuits are calling you? Whom should you spend more time with? This is the power of taking control over your time: You have the freedom to choose exactly how to spend it.
Review your calendar from the previous year. What were the Energy Creators in your personal and professional life? What activities outside of work felt life-giving and joyful? Who made you feel energized? What new learning or mental pursuits sparked your interest to go deeper? What rituals created more peace, calm, and mental clarity? What physical pursuits did you enjoy? What professional or financial pursuits felt effortless (or even fun)?
The only thing that matters at all is the quality of the relationships with the people we love.”
“We all have obligations in life that need our attention, and those things pull us away from contemplating love with one hundred percent of our awareness. But we must remember what’s behind our desire to do those things in the first place; we must remember our center. And it’s not the money.”
What are you doing to cherish the people who hold those special seats in your world? How are you letting those people know what they mean to you? Are you prioritizing time with them or letting it float by and disappear?
Technological innovation has increased your connectedness to the world around you. You have more connectedness, but you feel less connected.
Conventional wisdom says one should focus on the journey, not the destination. I disagree. Focus on the people.
Focus on the company—the people you want to travel with—and the journey will reveal itself in due time. Nothing bad has ever come from surrounding oneself with inspiring, genuine, kind, positive-sum individuals. Find your Front-Row People. Cherish them. Be one to someone else.
The human desire and need for connection, love, cooperation, and support is what allowed our species to survive and thrive.
Dr. Vaillant put it bluntly. “The key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships.”
The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age fifty were the healthiest at age eighty.”
The single greatest predictor of physical health at age eighty was relationship satisfaction at age fifty.
Teenagers and young adults are spending 70 percent less time with their friends in person than they did two decades ago.
When you fail to measure and value your Social Wealth, you fail to consider it in your decisions.
What’s the point of all that financial optimization if you’re alone? How many people have sold their homes and moved to areas with lower taxes to save money only to realize that without their families and friends, they don’t feel at home? How many people have jetted around the world and seen incredible sights only to realize that seeing them alone isn’t quite as meaningful? How many people have taken high-paying jobs in new locations only to find themselves deeply unhappy without their support networks, friends, and family?
Proximity to people you love is worth more than any job will ever pay you.
You may need food, water, and shelter to survive, but it is human connection that allows you to thrive.
By the time your children are eighteen, you’ve already used up the vast majority of the time you’ll have with them.
“20 years from now, the only people who will remember that you worked late are your kids.”
