Take control of your time by choosing where you direct your attention. And your daily Highlight is the target of that attention. Principles for picking your Highlight:
<ol>
<li>Urgency. Think about the most pressing thing you have to do today.</li>
<li>Satisfaction. Ask yourself which Highlight will give you the most satisfaction.</li>
<li>Joy. Ask yourself: When I reflect on today, what will bring me the most joy?</li>
</ol>

How To Pick Your Highlight (Your Priority)

<ul>
<li>No notifications; leave only the really critical and useful ones enabled.</li>
<li>Log out when you're done with an app, and keep a clean Homescreen.</li>
<li>Stay out of Infinity Pools: don’t reach for your phone first thing in the morning, read the news weekly, not daily, put a timer on your internet use, and remind yourself what are your real priorities.</li>
<li>Deal with email at the end of the day or have a designated time in your day just for that; answer messages in batch.</li>
</ul>

Try a Distraction-Free Phone

Make Time is a framework that can help you create more time for the things you find important, in 4 steps, repeated every day:
<ol>
<li>Highlight: Pick a single activity to prioritize in your schedule.</li>
<li>Laser: Use certain tactics to stay laser-focused on your priority.</li>
<li>Energize: Charge your battery with exercise, food, sleep and quiet time.</li>
<li>Reflect: Adjust and improve your system.</li>
</ol>

The "Make Time" Framework

Laser mode happens when your attention is truly focused on the present: you’re in the flow, meaning you are fully engaged, and immersed in the moment.The key to getting into Laser mode and focusing on your Highlight is to defeat distraction. To do that, make distraction hard to access. When distractions are not accessible, you don’t have to worry about willpower.

Being In Laser Mode

<ol>
<li>Observe what’s going on.</li>
<li>Guess why things are happening the way they are.</li>
<li>Experiment to test your hypothesis.</li>
<li>Measure the results and decide whether you were right.</li>
</ol>
Take time for daily reflection: did you made time for your Highlight? How well you were able to focus on it? If you fail at first, don’t be hard on yourself when you fail. Use your notes to Give it time and use the notes improve your process.

Reflect And Fine-Tune Your Days

<ul><li>Write down your highlight of the day. Put it in a visible place, to create a visual reminder.</li><li>Trust your gut to decide whether an urgent, joyful, or satisfying Highlight is best for today.</li><li>Repeat to build momentum and create a habit.</li><li>Choose the same Highlight for several days in a row.</li><li>Schedule your Highlight in your the calendar and block time for it.</li><li>Highlights should take 60-90 minutes.</li></ul>

Highlight Tactics: Choosing Your Daily Highlight

When you don’t take care of your body, your brain can’t do its job.
<ul>
<li>Exercise every day: Go small and go every day.</li>
<li>Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.</li>
<li>Optimize your caffeine intake.</li>
<li>Take breaks without screens and go outside.</li>
<li>Be present in the moment (eat without watching TV, for example).</li>
<li>Remove all electronic devices to transform your bedroom into a true sanctuary for sleep.</li>
</ul>

Increase Your Energy Every Day

"A charming manifesto—as well as an intrepid do-it-yourself guide to building smart habits that stick. If you want to achieve more (without going nuts), read this book."—Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better From the New York Times bestselling authors of Sprint, a simple 4-step system for improving focus, finding greater joy in your work, and getting more out of every day. Nobody ever looked at an empty calendar and said, "The best way to spend this time is by cramming it full of meetings!" or got to work in the morning and thought, Today I'll spend hours on Facebook! Yet that's exactly what we do. Why? In a world where information refreshes endlessly and the workday feels like a race to react to other people's priorities faster, frazzled and distracted has become our default position. But what if the exhaustion of constant busyness wasn't mandatory? What if you could step off the hamster wheel and start taking control of your time and attention? That's what this book is about. As creators of Google Ventures' renowned "design sprint," Jake and John have helped hundreds of teams solve important problems by changing how they work. Building on the success of these sprints and their experience designing ubiquitous tech products from Gmail to YouTube, they spent years experimenting with their own habits and routines, looking for ways to help people optimize their energy, focus, and time. Now they've packaged the most effective tactics into a four-step daily framework that anyone can use to systematically design their days. Make Time is not a one-size-fits-all formula. Instead, it offers a customizable menu of bite-size tips and strategies that can be tailored to individual habits and lifestyles. Make Time isn't about productivity, or checking off more to-dos. Nor does it propose unrealistic solutions like throwing out your smartphone or swearing off social media. Making time isn't about radically overhauling your lifestyle; it's about making small shifts in your environment to liberate yourself from constant busyness and distraction. A must-read for anyone who has ever thought, If only there were more hours in the day..., Make Time will help you stop passively reacting to the demands of the modern world and start intentionally making time for the things that matter.

productivity

Productivity

timemanagement

Time Management

books

Books

From the New York Times bestselling authors of Sprint comes “a unique and engaging read about a proven habit framework [that] readers can apply to each day” (Insider, Best Books to Form New Habits). “If you want to achieve more (without going nuts), read this book.”—Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit Nobody ever looked at an empty calendar and said, "The best way to spend this time is by cramming it full of meetings!" or got to work in the morning and thought, Today I'll spend hours on Facebook! Yet that's exactly what we do. Why? In a world where information refreshes endlessly and the workday feels like a race to react to other people's priorities faster, frazzled and distracted has become our default position. But what if the exhaustion of constant busyness wasn't mandatory? What if you could step off the hamster wheel and start taking control of your time and attention? That's what this book is about. As creators of Google Ventures' renowned "design sprint," Jake and John have helped hundreds of teams solve important problems by changing how they work. Building on the success of these sprints and their experience designing ubiquitous tech products from Gmail to YouTube, they spent years experimenting with their own habits and routines, looking for ways to help people optimize their energy, focus, and time. Now they've packaged the most effective tactics into a four-step daily framework that anyone can use to systematically design their days. Make Time is not a one-size-fits-all formula. Instead, it offers a customizable menu of bite-size tips and strategies that can be tailored to individual habits and lifestyles. Make Time isn't about productivity, or checking off more to-dos. Nor does it propose unrealistic solutions like throwing out your smartphone or swearing off social media. Making time isn't about radically overhauling your lifestyle; it's about making small shifts in your environment to liberate yourself from constant busyness and distraction. A must-read for anyone who has ever thought, If only there were more hours in the day..., Make Time will help you stop passively reacting to the demands of the modern world and start intentionally making time for the things that matter.

Jake Knapp created the Design Sprint at Google, where he also helped build Gmail, cofounded Google Meet, and was a design partner at GV. He has since coached hundreds of teams on product strategy at places like Miro, Slack, Nike, LEGO, IDEO, the Wall Street Journal, and the Harvard Business School. Today, Jake is a cofounder at Character, where he helps startups find product-market fit with Design Sprints.


Jake Knapp

John Zeratsky is a design partner at GV and the co-author of Sprint. Before joining GV, he was a design lead at YouTube and an early employee of FeedBurner, which Google acquired in 2007. John has written about design and productivity for Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Wired, and Time. Originally from rural Wisconsin, John now lives in San Francisco with his wife.

Highlight Tactics: Choosing Your Daily Highlight

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