🎯 The Book in 3 Sentences:

1. Break the "someday" cycle and start acting now.
2. Create more space in your life for what truly matters.
3. Use daily highlights, laser focus mode, energizing breaks, and regularly reflect on how you spend your time.

Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

As creators of Google Venture's "design sprint", Jake and John have spent years experimenting with their own habits and routines, searching for ways to help people optimize their energy, focus, and time.

'Make Time' is not about productivity. Instead, it's a four-step framework that anyone can use to create more time in your day for the things you care about.

Make Time: How To Focus On What Matters Every Day

By Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

A World of Distraction

We live in a world of distraction. The structure hasn't changed at all: consumption creates data, data sells ads, ubiquity creates demand, and demand sells services. There are two powerful forces that compete for every minute of our life:

• The Busy Bandwagon mindset: If you want to fulfill the demands of the modern workspace, you must maximize productivity in every minute
• Infinity Pools: Apps and sources of endlessly replenishing content.

It's natural to think that we need more discipline, willpower, and focus to resist these temptations. But authors Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky suggest it's not enough.

"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 you can start being more intentional with the way you live your life."

The Four-Step Framework

1. Highlight
2. Laser
3. Energize
4. Reflect

Highlight: Choosing a Focal Point

• Decide what you want to make time for — a single activity to prioritize and protect in your daily schedule.
• It does not have to be something you need to do, it can something you want to do.

Three Types of Highlights

1. Urgency: What is the most pressing thing you have to do today? (Needs)
2. Satisfaction: Which highlight will bring you the most satisfaction? (Wants)
3. Joy: What will bring me the most joy?

• You only waste time if you're not intentional about how you use it.
• A highlight should take 60 to 90 minutes of your day.
• It is OK to change your highlight during the day.

Choosing your Highlight

1. Write it down
2. "Do Yesterday Again": Repeat for a second chance. Repeat to build momentum. Repeat to create a habit.
3. Stack rank your life: Rank the things you care about most in your life
4. Batch the little stuff
5. The “might do” list: A quantitative list of things you could do

Laser: Beat Distraction

• Redesign the way you use technology to stop the reaction cycle
• Adjust your technology to enter Laser Mode.
• The best way to defeat distraction is to make it harder to react
• The longer you remain focused on your Highlight, the more engaging, you'll find it and the better work you'll do.
• If you're changing your priorities, people will notice. You're setting a good example for the people around you.

Make Time for your Highlight

1. Schedule your highlight
2. Block your calendar: Time Block
3. Bulldoze your calendar: Compress activities
4. Flake it till you make it: Cancel anything unnecessary
5. Just say no
6. Design your day

Be the Boss of Your Phone

1. Try a distraction-free phone: Delete Social Apps. Delete Infinity Pools
2. Log Out of your Accounts. Increase the friction required to access distractions
3. Disable Notifications
4. Clear your Homescreen
5. Leave Devices Behind

Stay Out of Infinity Pools

1. Skip the Morning Check-in: Don't start the morning with a daily dose of the internet
2. Ignore the News. Breaking News Headlines are designed to provoke anxiety. Most headlines will not change the way you  make decisions in the day
3. Put your digital devices away: Make them Invisible (a concept in Atomic Habits)
4. Put a Timer on your Internet:  Use an app blocker like Freedom that automatically locks yourself out after a preset time.
5. Trade Fake Wins for Real Wins: Sharing tweets, Facebook Updates, and Instagram Photos are fake wins.

Slow Your Inbox

1. Schedule Email Time
2. Imagine Messages Are Letters: Respond at your own pace. You do not have to put other people's priorities ahead of yours.
3. Be Slow to Respond: Shift your mindset from "as fast as possible" to "as slow as you can get away with"
4. Reset People's Expectations: People will value your time more
5. Go à la cart instead of all you can eat

Find Flow

1. Shut the Door: Closed doors and signals are cues to everyone else that you shouldn't be interrupted
2. Invest a Deadline: Create Time Pressure
3. Set a Visible Timer

Energize: Recharge

• Make time to take care of your body through exercise, food, sleep, quiet, and face-to-face time.
• If you have energy, it's easier to focus on your priorities and avoid reacting to distractions
• With a full battery, you have the power to be present, think clearly, and spend your time intentionally

Keep it Moving

1. Exercise
2. Small in-door workouts

Optimize Caffeine

1. Wake Up before you Caffeine: Wait for your cortisol levels to reduce
2. Take a 20 Minute Nap: 20 minutes is the ideal duration
3. Learn Your Last Call: Caffeine has a half-life of 5-6 hours

Go Off The Grid

1. Meditate
2. Take Real Breaks (without technology)
3. Eat Without Screens
4. Make Time with Your Tribe

Sleep in a Cave

1. Make your Bedroom a Bed Room: Keep your devices outside of the bedroom. Associate each room with one essential habit
2. Fake the Sunset: Gradually reduce bright light at night. Switch on "night mode". Dim the overhead lights.

Reflect: Adjust and Improve

Build a customized daily system that best suits you

Find-Tune your Days with the Scientific Method

• Obverse 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 are right

Take Notes to Track Your Results and Be Honest

Download it here.

In a Nutshell

1. Break the "someday" cycle and start acting now.
2. Create more space in your life for what truly matters.
3. Use daily highlights, laser focus mode, energizing breaks, and regularly reflect on how you spend your time.