More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The first is what we call the Busy Bandwagon. The Busy Bandwagon is our culture of constant busyness
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.
Most of Our Time Is Spent by Default
What makes our perspective unusual is that we’re product designers who spent years in the tech industry helping to build services like Gmail, YouTube, and Google Hangouts.
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.
Every day, you’ll choose a single activity to prioritize and protect in your calendar.
Of course, your Highlight isn’t the only thing you’ll do each day. But it will be your priority.
And one day I woke up with a shocking realization: I couldn’t remember the last two months.
I realized I didn’t need perfectly planned task lists or well-crafted long-term plans. Instead, it was simple but satisfying activities that helped stop the blurring of time.
In other words, I needed to make sure every day had a highlight.
This might seem obvious, but we think it’s a big deal: You can design your time by choosing where you direct your attention. And your daily Highlight is the target of that attention.
We use three different criteria to choose our Highlight.
The first strategy is all about urgency: What’s the most pressing thing I have to do today?
At the end of the day, which Highlight will bring me the most satisfaction? Whereas the first strategy is all about what needs to get done, this strategy encourages you to focus on what you want to get done.
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.
make a batch of small things your big thing.
And when you catch up all at once instead of constantly trying to keep your inbox or to-do list empty, you supercharge that feeling of satisfaction.
This is a once-in-a-while tactic, a way of dealing with the necessary chores and tasks that otherwise invade our days.
Use daily “do not schedule” blocks to make room for your Highlight.
From 6 to 11 a.m. each day, Graham had scheduled time with himself. “That’s my time. I wake up early, get to the office early, hit the gym, grab breakfast, then work for a couple hours before my meetings begin,” Graham said.
Giving yourself something to do in the morning will help you wake up early, but for me it’s also why I wake up early.
I’d give myself permission to quit and pick it up again in the morning. Almost every time, I’d breeze through and finish in a fraction of the time it would’ve taken me the previous night.
Postpone it when out of fuel
The best way to defeat distraction is to make it harder to react.
Small distractions create much larger holes in our day. We call these holes “time craters,”
Time craters
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.
Updating a spreadsheet is a fake win if it helps you procrastinate on the harder but more meaningful project you chose as your Highlight. Cleaning the kitchen is a fake win if it burns up time you intended to spend with your kids.
To help establish a new end-of-day email routine, try putting it on your calendar.
Empty Your Inbox Once a Week
You can check your inbox rarely and let messages pile up till you get around to answering them in a batch
create a schedule and then lock yourself out. In fact, you can do the same thing for any Infinity Pool.
if you’re constantly exposed to other people’s ideas, it can be tough to think up your own.
When you’re not sure where to start, try breaking your Highlight into a list of small, easy-to-do bits.
Make a “Random Question” List
that is my do it later list
Pay attention to the physical sensations of a single breath:
boredom is actually a good thing.
The easy road out of Stucksville is to do something else.
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.
Exercise for about twenty minutes … Research shows that the most important cognitive, health, and mood benefits of exercise can be attained in just twenty minutes. … every day …
the caffeine binds to the receptors where the adenosine is supposed to go. The adenosine is left to just float around, and as a result, the brain doesn’t get the sleepy signal.
Wake up without caffeine (in other words, get out of bed, eat breakfast, and start the day without any coffee). • Have the first cup between 9:30 and 10:30 a.m. • Have the last cup between 1:30 and 2:30 p.m.
drink some caffeine, then immediately take a fifteen-minute nap. The caffeine takes a while to be absorbed into your bloodstream and reach the brain. During your light sleep, the brain clears out the adenosine. When you wake up, the receptors are clear and the caffeine has just shown up.
To keep a steady energy level throughout the day, try replacing high doses of caffeine (such as a giant cup of brewed coffee) with more frequent low doses. Green tea is a great option. The easiest and cheapest way to run this experiment is to buy a box of green tea bags and try substituting two or three cups of tea for every cup of coffee you’d normally have. This keeps your energy level more consistent and steady throughout the day, avoiding the energy peaks and valleys you get from something super caffeinated like coffee.
Green tea
You also can try the Italian solution: the classic espresso. If you like espresso—which I do—and have access to it—which I occasionally do—it’s another great low-dose option. A single espresso is roughly comparable to half a cup of coffee or two cups of green tea.
Espresso is ok
Try to time your caffeine intake so that you’re wired right when you start your Highlight.
shinrin-yoku, which can be translated as “forest bathing”
Dungeons & Dragons podcast
Collecting the data is super easy. 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. This step takes only a few moments; you just answer these simple questions:
