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.

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.

Infinity Pools are apps and other sources of endlessly replenishing content.

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

Make Time is a framework for choosing what you want to focus on, building the energy to do it, and breaking the default cycle so that you can start being more intentional about the way you live your life.

Four Lessons from the Design Sprint Laboratory The first thing we learned was that something magic happens when you start the day with one high-priority goal.

Here’s a zoomed-out view of how each day looks:

Highlight: Start Each Day by Choosing a Focal Point

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

I love the idea of JZ’s “Might-Do” framework, but I need something more detailed to help me choose and track the most important Highlights. My method is called the Burner List. It won’t track every detail of every project or help you juggle a million tasks. But that’s exactly the point. The Burner List is intentionally limited. It forces you to acknowledge that you can’t take on every project or task that comes your way. Like time and mental energy, the Burner List is limited, and so it forces you to say no when you need to and stay focused on your number one priority. Here’s how to make one: 1. Divide a sheet of paper into two columns. Get out a single blank sheet of paper and create two columns by drawing a line down the middle. 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.

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.

Cal Newport in Deep Work:

Instead of reacting to every twitch, write your questions on a piece of paper

Have a notepad handy