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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Jake Knapp
Read between
June 7 - August 28, 2024
be honest, explain why you’re bailing, and let it go. Bailing is not a good long-term strategy; over time, you’ll get a feel for how many commitments you can take on while still making time for your Highlight. But in the meantime, it’s better to ruffle a few feathers than to always push your priorities off for “someday.” Go ahead and flake out.
Blocking, bulldozing, and flaking are great ways to make time for your Highlight. But the best way to get out of low-priority obligations is never to accept them in the first place.
be nice but honest. Over the years, we’ve heard about many tricky techniques for deflecting requests, making up excuses, or deferring indefinitely, and we’ve tried some of them. But they don’t feel good, and they’re not honest. Worse, they just delay the hard decision until a later time, and those half choices can weigh you down, sticking to you like barnacles on the hull of a boat. So ditch the tricks, shed the barnacles, and tell the truth.
Being this scheduled might sound annoying: “Where’s the freedom and spontaneity, man?” But in reality, a structured day creates freedom. When you don’t have a plan, you have to decide constantly what to do next, and you might get distracted thinking about all the things you should or could do. But a completely planned day provides the freedom to focus on the moment. Instead of thinking about what to do next, you’re free to focus on how to do it. You can be in the flow, trusting the plan set out by your past self.
If you can’t make time for your Highlight in the middle of the day, you might try creating some space in the early morning or late evening.
When should you quit? Instead of trying to answer every email (not happening) or finish every task (dream on), you need to create your own finish line. Perhaps you can find a perfect time of day to stop—in our design sprints, we used 5 p.m. as our cutoff.
When you’re in Laser mode, your attention is focused on the present like a laser beam shining on a target. You’re in the flow, fully engaged and immersed in the moment. When you’re laser-focused on your Highlight, it feels fantastic—it’s the payoff for proactively choosing what’s important to you.
We evolved to be distractible because it kept us safe from danger (check the flash in your peripheral vision—it might be a stalking tiger or a falling tree!). We evolved to love mysteries and stories because they helped us learn and communicate. We evolved to love gossip and seek social status because that allowed us to form tight-knit protective tribes. 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
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Don’t Wait for Technology to Give Back Your Time
Be the Boss of Your Phone 17. Try a Distraction-Free Phone 18. Log Out 19. Nix Notifications 20. Clear Your Homescreen 21. Wear a Wristwatch 22. Leave Devices Behind
Stay Out of Infinity Pools 23. Skip the Morning Check-In 24. Block Distraction Kryptonite 25. Ignore the News 26. Put Your Toys Away 27. Fly Without Wi-Fi 28. Put a Timer on the Internet 29. Cancel the Internet 30. Watch Out for Time Craters 31. Trade Fake Wins for Real Wins 32. Turn Distractions into Tools 33. Become a Fair-Weather Fan
Here’s a simple litmus test: If after spending a few minutes (or, more likely, a few minutes that become an hour) with this website or app you feel regret, it’s probably Kryptonite.
Small distractions create much larger holes in our day. We call these holes “time craters,”
There is a year-round limitless supply of news, rumors, trades, draft picks, blogs, and projections. It doesn’t stop. You probably could spend twenty-four hours a day staying up to date and still not be up to date.
Even when your team wins, the euphoria creates a time crater (#30) as you get sucked into watching highlights and reading follow-up analysis.
Slow Your Inbox 34. Deal with Email at the End of the Day 35. Schedule Email Time 36. Empty Your Inbox Once a Week 37. Pretend Messages Are Letters 38. Be Slow to Respond 39. Reset Expectations 40. Set Up Send-Only Email 41. Vacation Off the Grid 42. Lock Yourself Out
“I’m slow to respond because I need to prioritize some important projects, but if your message is urgent, send me a text.”
Make TV a “Sometimes Treat” 43. Don’t Watch the News 44. Put Your TV in the Corner 45. Ditch Your TV for a Projector 46. Go à la Carte Instead of All-You-Can-Eat 47. If You Love Something, Set It Free
Try canceling cable, Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and the like, and instead rent or buy movies and episodes one at a time.14 The idea is to change your default from “let’s see what’s on” to “do I really want to watch something?”
Find Flow 48. Shut the Door 49. Invent a Deadline 50. Explode Your Highlight 51. Play a Laser Sound Track 52. Set a Visible Timer 53. Avoid the Lure of Fancy Tools 54. Start on Paper
When you’re not sure where to start, try breaking your Highlight into a list of small, easy-to-do bits.
It’s easier to set up fancy writing software on your laptop than to actually write the screenplay you’ve been dreaming of.
Stay in the Zone 55. Make a “Random Question” List 56. Notice One Breath 57. Be Bored 58. Be Stuck 59. Take a Day Off 60. Go All In
When writing nonfiction, he plays Master of Puppets by Metallica, but he’s too embarrassed to admit it.
Keep It Moving 61. Exercise Every Day (but Don’t Be a Hero) 62. Pound the Pavement 63. Inconvenience Yourself 64. Squeeze in a Super Short Workout
7 Minute Workout combines twelve simple, fast, scientifically proven exercises into a routine that lasts only, yep, seven minutes (thirty-second bursts with ten seconds of rest in between).
Eat Real Food 65. Eat Like a Hunter-Gatherer 66. Central Park Your Plate 67. Stay Hungry 68. Snack Like a Toddler 69. Go on the Dark Chocolate Plan
Optimize Caffeine 70. Wake Up Before You Caffeinate 71. Caffeinate Before You Crash 72. Take a Caffeine Nap 73. Maintain Altitude with Green Tea 74. Turbo Your Highlight 75. Learn Your Last Call 76. Disconnect Sugar
The tricky thing about caffeine is that if you wait to drink it until you get tired, it’s too late: The adenosine has already hooked up with your brain, and it’s hard to shake the lethargy.
Go Off the Grid 77. Get Woodsy 78. Trick Yourself into Meditating 79. Leave Your Headphones at Home 80. Take Real Breaks
Meditation is just a breather for your brain.
Meditation is also exercise for your brain.
Make It Personal 81. Spend Time with Your Tribe 82. Eat Without Screens
It’s a cruel irony of modern life that we’re surrounded by people yet more isolated than ever.
Sleep in a Cave 83. Make Your Bedroom a Bed Room 84. Fake the Sunset 85. Sneak a Nap 86. Don’t Jet-Lag Yourself 87. Put On Your Own Oxygen Mask First
Reading in bed is a wonderful alternative, but paper books or magazines are best. A Kindle is okay, too, because it’s not loaded with apps and other distractions; just make sure to turn off the bright white backlight.
He needed to fake the sunset. Here’s how to do it: Starting when you eat dinner or a few hours before your ideal bedtime, turn down the lights in your home. Switch off bright overhead lights. Instead, use dim table or side lamps. For bonus points, light candles at the dinner table. Turn on your phone, computer, or TV’s “night mode.” These features shift screen colors from blue to red and orange. Instead of looking at a bright sky, it’s like sitting around a campfire. When you go to bed, kick all devices out of the room (see #83). If sunlight or streetlight is still sneaking into your bedroom,
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sleeping late on weekends is basically like giving yourself jet lag: It confuses your internal clock and makes it even harder to bounce back from the original deficit.
Fine-Tune Your Days with the Scientific Method
OBSERVE what’s going on. GUESS why things are happening the way they are. EXPERIMENT to test your hypothesis. MEASURE the results and decide whether you were
The Highlight hypothesis If you set a single intention at the start of each day, we predict you’ll be more satisfied, joyful, and effective.
The Laser hypothesis If you create barriers around the Busy Bandwagon and the Infinity Pools, we predict you’ll focus your attention like a laser beam.
The Energize hypothesis If you live a little more like a prehistoric human, we predict you’ll enhance yo...
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Gratitude rituals have been showing up in different cultures for thousands of years: They’re central to Buddhism and Stoicism; they’re in the Bible; they’re part of Japanese tea ceremonies; and, of course, they’re the foundation (and namesake) of our Thanksgiving holiday. But regardless of its illustrious history, we’re including gratitude for a very simple reason: We want to bias the results of your experiments.
Do not ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. —HOWARD THURMAN
