Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day

by Jake Knapp

The Busy Bandwagon is our culture of constant busyness—the overflowing inboxes, stuffed calendars, and endless to-do lists. According to the Busy Bandwagon mindset, if you want to meet the demands of the modern workplace and function in modern society, you must fill every minute with productivity. After all, everyone else is busy. If you slow down, you’ll fall behind and never catch up.

The second force competing for your time is what we call the 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.

Both forces—the Busy Bandwagon and the Infinity Pools—are powerful because they’ve become our defaults. In technology lingo, default means the way something works when you first start using it. It’s a preselected option, and if you don’t do something to change it, that default is what you get.

While the Busy Bandwagon defaults to endless tasks, the Infinity Pools default to endless distraction.

Even if you don’t completely control your own schedule—and few of us do—you absolutely can control your attention.

We want to help you set your own defaults.

It’s about making time for what matters.

Then it hit me: Being more productive didn’t mean I was doing the most important work; it only meant I was reacting to other people’s priorities faster.

a simple framework for avoiding distractions, maintaining energy, and making more time.

He looked through the lens of a product designer and figured this “system” would work only if it changed our defaults, making distractions harder to access instead of relying on willpower to constantly fight them.

The first thing we learned was that something magic happens when you start the day with one high-priority goal.

This focal point creates clarity and motivation. When you have one ambitious but achievable goal, at the end of the day, you’re done. You can check it off, let go of work, and go home satisfied.

Another lesson from our design sprints was that we got more done when we banned devices. Since we set the rules, we were able to prohibit laptops and smartphones, and the difference was phenomenal. Without the constant lure of email and other Infinity Pools, people brought their complete attention to the task at hand, and the default switched to focus.

We also learned about the importance of energy for focused work and clear thinking. When we first started running design sprints, teams worked long hours, fueled by sugary treats. Late in the week, energy would plummet. So we made adjustments, and saw how things like a healthy lunch, a quick walk, frequent breaks, and a slightly sh...

Lastly, these experiments taught us the power of, well, experiments. Experimenting allowed us to improve the process, and seeing the results of our changes firsthand gave us a deep confidence that we never could...

And this experimental approach also allowed us to be kinder to ourselves when we made mistakes—after all, every mistake was just a data point, and we could always try again tomorrow.

Instead, change comes from resetting defaults, creating barriers, and beginning to design the way you spend your time.

The first step is choosing a single highlight to prioritize in your day. Next, you’ll employ specific tactics to stay laser-focused on that highlight—we’ll offer a menu of tricks to beat distraction in an always-connected world. Throughout the day, you’ll build energy so you can stay in control of your time and attention. Finally, you’ll reflect on the day with a few simple notes.

That’s why the third component of Make Time is to charge your battery with exercise, food, sleep, quiet, and face-to-face time.

Finally, before going to bed, you’ll take a few notes. It’s super simple: You’ll decide which tactics you want to continue and which ones you want to refine or drop.2 And you’ll think back on your energy level, whether you made time for your Highlight, and what brought you joy in the day.

I was happiest when I had something I could hold on to in the present—a chunk of time that was bigger than a to-do but smaller than a five-year goal.

Urgency 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?

These projects are super vulnerable to procrastination, because although they’re important, they are not time-sensitive, and that makes them easy to postpone. Use your Highlight to break the “someday” cycle.

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

good rule of thumb is to choose a Highlight that takes sixty to ninety minutes. If you spend less than sixty minutes, you might not have time to get in the zone, but after ninety minutes of focused attention, most people need a break. Sixty to ninety minutes is a sweet spot. It’s enough time to do something meaningful, and it’s a reasonable amount of time to create in your schedule. With the tactics in this chapter and throughout the book, we’re confident you can make sixty to ninety minutes for your Highlight.

2. Groundhog It (or, “Do Yesterday Again”)

Repeat for a second chance.

Think about what needs the most effort or work. For example, exercise might be very important, but if you already have a strong habit in place, you might shift your focus elsewhere.

5. Draw a circle around number one. If you want to make progress on your number one priority, you’ll need to make it your focus whenever possible. Drawing the circle reinforces this prioritization—there’s something symbolic about putting your decision in ink.

4. Batch the Little Stuff

Most to-dos are just reactions to other people’s priorities, not yours.

To-do lists also can obscure what’s really important. We’re all susceptible to choosing the path of least resistance, especially when we’re tired, stressed, overwhelmed, or just plain busy.

5. The Might-Do List

I call my approach the Might-Do List. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a list of things you might do. Projects sit on your Might-Do List until you decide to make them your Highlight and schedule them on your calendar.

But we still wanna do the easy stuff right how can it help

6. The Burner List

1. Divide a sheet of paper into two columns.

The left-hand column is going to be your front burner, and the right-hand column your back burner.

2. Put your most important project on the front burner. You are allowed to have one and only one project, activity, or objective on the front burner. Not two, not three—just one. In the top left-hand corner, write the name of your most important project and underline it. Then list the to-dos for that top project. This should include any task you can do in the next few days to move the project forward.

Leave some counter space. Leave the rest of the first column empty. It might be tempting to fill the space with every task you can think of, but the Burner List is not intended to fill the paper’s surface area efficiently; it’s intended to make good use of your time and energy. The blank space gives you room to add more tasks for the top project as they come up, but just as important, extra visual space makes it easier to focus on the important stuff.

4. Put your second most important project on the back burner. At the top of the right-hand column, write the name of your second most important project and underline it, then list the related to-dos underneath.

5. Make a kitchen sink. Finally, about halfway down the right-hand column, list any miscellaneous tasks that you need to do but that don’t fit with project 1 or project 2. It doesn’t matter if they’re part of project 3 or project 4 or are totally random; they get chucked into the kitchen sink with everything else.

I generally “burn” through a list every few days and then re-create it over and over. This act of re-creating the list is important. It allows me to discard some unfinished tasks that no longer matter, and it also allows me to reconsider which projects belong on the front and back burners right now.

7. Run a Personal Sprint

Whenever you begin a project, your brain is like a computer starting up, loading relevant information, rules, and processes into your working memory. This “boot up” takes time, and you have to redo it to a certain extent every time you pick up the project. This is why, in our design sprints, teams work on the same project for five days in a row. Information stays in people’s working memory from one day to the next, allowing them to get deeper and deeper into the challenge. As a result, we can accomplish exponentially more than we could if those same hours were spread across weeks and months.

Our friend Kristen Brillantes uses what she calls the 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. If she can, she’ll offer a connection to another person with capacity or interest for whom the invitation might be a cool opportunity. If not, she offers encouragement or gratitude. Something as simple as a “Thank you for thinking of me; this sounds really fun” goes a long way.

Rather than using my calendar or a journal, I used an approach recommended by Cal Newport in Deep Work: writing my schedule on a piece of blank paper, then replanning throughout the day as things change and evolve, like this:

Start with Light, Coffee, and Something to Do Don’t underestimate the importance of light in waking up. Humans are hardwired to wake when it’s light and get sleepy when it’s dark. But if you want to make time for your Highlight before the workday, you can’t wait for sunrise; for most of the year in much of the world, you need to wake before dawn.

Coffee is also super important to me. Sure, the caffeine is nice, but the preparation routine is essential to my morning. It takes me fifteen minutes to make coffee using a simple pour-over technique: boil water, grind beans, position filter, add grounds, pour water. This process is more labor-intensive than using a machine, but that’s the idea. My slow coffee ritual keeps me occupied during the low-willpower period when I would otherwise check email or look at Twitter, both of which are likely to send me into a reactive vortex of unproductivity.

It’s not always easy for me to wake up at 5:30 a.m., but I’ve learned to love mornings. And the payoff is amazing; by 9:30 a.m. most days I’ve had an hour of productive work, showered and dressed, walked two miles, had breakfast, and enjoyed two cups of coffee.