Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day

by Jake Knapp

Every day, you’ll choose a single activity to prioritize and protect in your calendar.

adjust your technology so you can find Laser mode.

charge your battery with exercise, food, sleep, quiet, and face-to-face time.

before going to bed, you’ll take a few notes.

On your first day using Make Time, we suggest trying one tactic from each step. That is, one new tactic to help you make time for your Highlight, one that keeps you laser-focused by changing how you react to distractions, and one for building energy—three tactics total.

Perfection is a distraction—another shiny object taking your attention away from your real priorities.

Plenty of self-help gurus have offered suggestions for setting goals and plenty of productivity experts have created systems for getting things done, but the space between has been neglected. We call the missing piece a Highlight.

If, at the end of the day, someone asks you, “What was the highlight of your day?” what do you want your answer to be? When you look back on your day, what activity or accomplishment or moment do you want to savor? That’s your Highlight.

Three Ways to Pick Your Highlight Choosing your daily Highlight starts with asking yourself a question: What do I want to be the highlight of my day?

We use three different criteria to choose our Highlight.

The first strategy is all about urgency: What’s the most pressing thing I have to do today?

Satisfaction The second Highlight strategy is to think about satisfaction: At the end of the day, which Highlight will bring me the most satisfaction?

Look for activities that are not urgent. Instead, consider projects you’ve been meaning to get around to but haven’t quite found the time.

Joy The third strategy focuses on joy: When I reflect on today, what will bring me the most joy?

Which strategy should you use on any particular day? We think the best way to choose a Highlight is to trust your gut to decide whether an urgent, joyful, or satisfying Highlight is best for today.

A good rule of thumb is to choose a Highlight that takes sixty to ninety minutes.

Make writing down your Highlight a simple daily ritual. You can do it at any time, but the evening (before bed) and the morning work best for most people.

You can write down your Highlight and never look at it again—or you can stick it to your laptop, phone, fridge, or desk as a persistent but gentle reminder of the one big thing you want to make time for today.

Not sure what to choose for your Highlight? Just like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day, you can do yesterday again.

If you’re feeling stuck choosing a Highlight or if you’re feeling a conflict between competing priorities in your life, try this

1. Make a list of the big things that matter in your life.

2. Choose the one most important thing.

Consider what’s most meaningful to you,

Think about what needs the most effort or work.

Follow your heart.

Don’t sweat it—this list isn’t set in stone.

3. Choose the second, third, fourth, and fifth most important things.

4. Rewrite the list in order of priority.

5. Draw a circle around number one.

6. Use this list to help you choose Highlights. Keep this list around to remind yourself of your one highest priority—and to break ties between two activities when you’re not sure how to spend your effort.

Bundle up the small tasks and use batch processing to get them all done in one Highlight session.

The Burner List

Run a Personal Sprint

Whether you’re painting the living room, learning to juggle, or preparing a report for a new client, you’ll do better work and make faster progress if you keep at it for consecutive days. Just choose the same Highlight for several days in a row (breaking it up into steps for each day if you need to) and keep your mental computer running.

Schedule Your Highlight

Block Your Calendar

Bulldoze Your Calendar

pushing events around.

Flake It Till You Make It

There will be days and weeks when you feel so busy and overscheduled that you can’t imagine how you’ll ever make time for your Highlight. When this happens, ask yourself what you can cancel.

We think bailing is fine provided that you do something worthwhile instead.

Just Say No

the best way to get out of low-priority obligations is never to accept them in the first place.

Sour Patch Kid method when she says no. Just like the candy, Kristen’s answers are sour at first but sweet at the end. For example: “Unfortunately, my team won’t be able to participate. But you might ask Team X; they’d be perfect for this kind of event.” The key, says Kristen, is to make sure the sweet ending is authentic, not an empty add-on.

Design Your Day

Blocking your calendar and scheduling your Highlight is a great way to start making time. But you can take this proactive, intentional mindset to another level by learning from our sprints and designing your entire day.

three-part strategy for turning nighttime into Highlight time:

Recharge First

activities take my mind out of “busy mode” and recharge my mental battery—a

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