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The biggest challenge was that even though I could easily stay awake till 11:30 p.m., my battery was often drained. I didn’t have the mental focus to do anything significant, so I was in the habit of squandering those bonus hours on low-energy, low-benefit activities such as checking email and reading about the Seattle Seahawks.
Recharge First If I’m planning to stay up and work on a project, I’ll start by refreshing my brain with a real break (#80). After my younger son goes to bed (around 8:30 p.m.), I might sit down with my wife and older son and watch part of a movie. Or I might read a few pages in a novel. Or I might clean the kitchen and put away toys in the living room. These activities take my mind out of “busy mode” and recharge my mental battery—a major difference from the frenzy of checking email, reading clickbait news articles, or watching an intense TV show designed to suck me into a black hole of binge
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Even with a quick battery recharge, my focus is usually not at 100 percent, so I put a vacation timer on the Internet (#28), allowing me to concentrate on my writing with minimal willpower.
Don’t Forget to Wind Down I learned the hard way that I have to spin down my brain after late-night work or I’ll seriously mess up my sleep.
In our design sprints, we found that if we ended each workday before people were exhausted, the week’s productivity increased dramatically. Even shortening the day by thirty minutes made a big difference.
Back in 2005, I started working at a tech startup in Chicago. It was my first full-time office job and the first time I had to figure out how to manage my energy throughout a long workday. I quickly learned that it was easier for me to focus on work in the hours before lunch, so when I found myself struggling with a not-so-hard task late in the day, I’d give myself permission to quit and pick it up again in the morning.
And we evolved to love unpredictable rewards, whether from a blackberry bush or a smartphone notification, because the possibility of those rewards kept us hunting and gathering even when we returned home empty-handed. Our caveman brains are the fourth secret ingredient. Of course we love email, video games, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat—it’s literally in our DNA.
You can’t wait for companies or government regulators to give your focus back. If you want control, you have to redesign your own relationship with technology.
These tactics are all based on the same philosophy: The best way to defeat distraction is to make it harder to react.
2. Delete other Infinity Pools.
23. Skip the Morning Check-In
Put it off. The longer you postpone the morning check-in—until 9 a.m., 10 a.m., or even after lunch—the longer you preserve that feeling of rested calm and the easier it is to get into Laser mode.
JZ has been using the once-a-week news strategy since 2015. He prefers The Economist, a weekly magazine that summarizes the major events in sixty to eighty information-packed pages,
26. Put Your Toys Away
That means signing out of apps like Twitter and Facebook, closing extra tabs, and turning off email and chat at the end of each day. Like a well-behaved kid, clean up after yourself when you’re done. Take it a step further and hide the bookmarks bar in your browser (we know you’ve got a couple of Infinity Pools in there) and configure your browser settings so that your homepage is something unobtrusive (like a clock) rather than something noisy (like a collection of sites you visit frequently).
27. Fly Without Wi-Fi
28. Put a Timer on the Internet
There are many software tools for temporarily blocking the Internet. You can find browser extensions and other apps to limit your time on specific sites or to disable everything for a predetermined length of time. New versions of these tools come out all the time; you can find our favorites on maketimebook.com
30. Watch Out for Time Craters
Small distractions create much larger holes in our day. We call these holes “time craters,” and they work like this:
But it’s not just Infinity Pools that create time craters. There’s also recovery time. A “quick” fifteen-minute burrito lunch might cost an extra three hours of food coma. A late night watching TV might cost you an hour of sleeping in and a whole day of low energy. And there’s anticipation. When you don’t start your Highlight because you’ve got a meeting coming up in thirty minutes, that’s a time crater, too.
Your Highlight is the real win.
Start by identifying why you use a particular app. Is it purely for entertainment? Is it to keep in touch with friends and family? Is it to stay updated on certain kinds of important news? And if so, is it actually adding value to your life? Next, think about how much time—per day, per week, per month—you want to spend on that activity. And consider whether this app is the best way to accomplish it. For example, you might use Facebook to keep in touch with family, but is it really the best way to do that? Would you be better off calling them? Finally, consider when and how you’d like to use
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33. Become a Fair-Weather Fan
34. Deal with Email at the End of the Day Instead of checking your email first thing in the morning and then getting sucked in and reacting to other people’s priorities, deal with email at the end of the day.
35. Schedule Email Time To help establish a new end-of-day email routine, try putting it on your calendar.
38. Be Slow to Respond Above all, taking control of your inbox requires a mental shift from “as fast as possible” to “as slow as you can get away with.” Respond slowly to emails, chats, texts, and other messages. Let hours, days, and sometimes weeks go by before you get back to people. This may sound like a total jerk move. It’s not.
Online, anyone can contact you, not just the highly relevant people in your physical vicinity. They have questions about their priorities—not yours—when it’s convenient for them—not you. Every time you check your email or another message service, you’re basically saying, “Does any random person need my time right now?” And if you respond right away, you’re sending another signal both to them and to yourself: “I’ll stop what I’m doing to put other people’s priorities ahead of mine no matter who they are or what they want.”
39. Reset Expectations
“I’m slow to respond because I need to prioritize some important projects, but if your message is urgent, send me a text.”
40. Set Up Send-Only Email
41. Vacation Off the Grid
42. Lock Yourself Out
You, too, can create a deadline that will help you make time for something you want to do. Register for a 5K run. Invite your friends over for a homemade pasta dinner before you’ve learned how to make it. Sign up to exhibit at an art show before you’ve painted the pictures. Or you can simply tell a friend what your Highlight is today and ask them to hold you accountable for getting it done.
50. Explode Your Highlight When you’re not sure where to start, try breaking your Highlight into a list of small, easy-to-do bits.
Shifting your focus to something that your mind perceives as a doable, completable task will create a real increase in positive energy, direction, and motivation.
51. Play a Laser Sound Track If you’re struggling to get into Laser mode, try a cue. A cue is any trigger that causes you to act consciously or unconsciously. It’s the first step in the “habit loop” Charles Duhigg describes in The Power of Habit: First, a cue prompts your brain to start the loop. The cue triggers you to perform a routine behavior without thinking, on autopilot. Finally, you get a reward: some result that makes your brain feel good and encourages it to run the same routine again the next time you encounter the cue.
52. Set a Visible Timer Time is invisible. But it doesn’t have to be. We’d like to introduce you to the Time Timer.
53. Avoid the Lure of Fancy Tools What’s the best to-do-list app? The most exquisite notepad and pen for taking notes and sketching? The finest smartwatch?
54. Start on Paper
55. Make a “Random Question” List It’s natural to feel twitchy for your phone or browser. You’ll wonder if you have any new email.17 You’ll feel a burning desire to know Who was that actor in that movie?18 Instead of reacting to every twitch, write your questions on a piece of paper
56. Notice One Breath Pay attention to the physical sensations of a single breath: Breathe in through your nose. Notice the air filling up your chest. Breathe out through your mouth. Notice your body softening. You can repeat this if you like, but one breath really can be enough to reset your attention. Paying attention to your body shuts up the noise in your brain. And even a pause that lasts only one breath can bring your attention back to where you want it—on your Highlight.
57. Be Bored
In separate studies, researchers at Penn State and the University of Central Lancashire found that bored test subjects were better at creative problem solving than were their nonbored peers.
58. Be Stuck
Instead, just be stuck. Don’t give up. Stare at the blank screen, or switch to paper, or walk around, but keep your focus on the project at hand. Even when your conscious mind feels frustrated, some quiet part of your brain is processing and making progress. Eventually, you will get unstuck, and then you’ll be glad you didn’t give up.
59. Take a Day Off
Energy—especially creative energy—can fluctuate, and sometimes you need time to replenish it. Most of us can’t take the day off work whenever we want, but you can give yourself permission to take it easy. Try taking real breaks throughout the day (#80) and switching to a joyful Highlight that’ll help you recharge.
60. Go All In
course, both physical rest and mental rest are extremely important. But if you’re feeling worn out and unable to focus, Brother David says you don’t always need to take a break. Sometimes, if you go all in and embrace the current task with wild abandon, you may find it becomes easier to focus. You may find the energy is already there.
