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.

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. This always-available, always-new entertainment is your reward for the exhaustion of constant busyness.

Just about everyone has doom scrolled in their life, it’s truly addictive and very convenient. Many apps like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other platforms that offer instant new content with every refresh are so hard to break away from when it’s easy to access (right at your fingertips or a simple tap of a button). After you spend hours and hours on said Infinity Pools, you feel guilty and ashamed that you didn’t get much of anything done.

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.

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.

Ah, this goes hand-in-hand with people pleasing. We react to other’s priorities before our own more often than not. It’s destructive because we want to care for others, to be nice, or to be pleasant enough so they like us but in the end, we are neglecting our needs or wants.

your Highlight isn’t the only thing you’ll do each day. But it will be your priority. Asking yourself “What’s going to be the highlight of my day?” ensures that you spend time on the things that matter to you and don’t lose the entire day reacting to other people’s priorities.

Long-term goals are useful for orienting you in the right direction but make it hard to enjoy the time spent working along the way. And tasks are necessary to get things done, but without a focal point, they fly by in a forgettable haze.

Your Highlight gives each day a focal point. Research shows that the way you experience your days is not determined primarily by what happens to you. In fact, you create your own reality by choosing what you pay attention to.1 This might seem obvious, but we think it’s a big deal: You can design your time by choosing where you direct your attention.

Focusing on a daily Highlight stops the tug-of-war between Infinity Pool distractions and the demands of the Busy Bandwagon. It reveals a third path: being intentional and focused about how you spend your time.

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

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

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

A 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.

Most to-dos are just reactions to other people’s priorities, not yours. And no matter how many tasks you finish, you’re never done—more to-dos are always waiting to take their place. To-do lists just perpetuate the feeling of “unfinishedness” that dogs modern life.

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. To-do lists make it worse because they mix easy tasks with hard-but-important ones.

Projects sit on your Might-Do List until you decide to make them your Highlight and schedule them on your calendar. Here’s how the pieces fit together:

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.

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.

To keep your battery charged, pretend you’re a toddler or, more accurately, the parent of a toddler. Look out for crankiness and frustration and be prepared with a nutritious remedy.

Ha, this relates to me so much! When I get hungry, my body/mind signals to me by becoming grumpy or a “goblin mode” where I can’t focus much and I’m angry or cranky toward everyone. Once I’m fed, everything turns back to normal and my goblin mode quiets down until I get hungry again.

caffeine doesn’t technically give you an energy boost; instead, it blocks you from having an energy dip caused by adenosine-induced sleepiness. But once the caffeine wears off, all that adenosine is still hanging around, ready to pounce. If you don’t recaffeinate, you crash.

Every day you’ll reflect on whether you made time for your Highlight and how well you were able to focus on it. You’ll note how much energy you had. You’ll review the tactics you used, jot down some observations on what worked and what didn’t, and make a plan for which tactics you’ll try tomorrow.

Small shifts can put you in control. If you reduce a few distractions, increase your physical and mental energy just a bit, and focus your attention on one bright spot, a blah day can become extraordinary. It doesn’t require an empty calendar—just sixty to ninety minutes of attention on something special.