How to Focus on What Matters Every Day: A Book Summary of Make Time
“Make Time is not about productivity”, it declares in the opening chapter.
Rather, it is a system designed to help recognise the conscious and unconscious defaults in your life so you can re-budget your time and allocate it to areas you'd prefer to focus on.
The concepts of budgeting time, prioritising tasks, and designing systems for efficiency aren't new. On the surface, one might think this book seems too obvious and perhaps even reductive. But, I propose, it's in Make Time's simplicity that genius lies; the ideas in this book are so readily applicable to your life they become immediately effective.
Make Time gives you a playbook and tactics you can customise and personalise to your liking depending on your personality, work habits, or the season of life you're in. This removes a lot of the guilt other books of this nature seems to dish out if you don't follow their system to the letter.
I first heard of Make Time through the YouTube channel of Ali Abdaal, a productivity YouTuber who sung its praises. I knew I wanted to achieve a lot in 2021, so as I planned my reading list for the year, Make Time seemed like the obvious choice to help me develop some habits and strategies to make those projects possible. I read Make Time first over Christmas and New Years 2020 and have revisited it several times over the last six months, which I will reflect on at the end of this summary.
The Problem
Most of our time is spent by default; preselected options or behaviour and unless we do something to change it, that default is what you'll get.
Interestingly, a majority of the defaults distracting you from the things you'd rather be doing aren't chosen by you. They are decided upon by external forces, some blissfully unaware they're doing it (like distracting colleagues or family group texts), while others are extremely aware (intelligent app designers and tricky marketing teams).
The two powerful forces competing for every minute of your time are: The Busy Bandwagon and Infinity Pools.
The Busy Bandwagon
We live in a culture of constant busyness. A state of always being on and defaulting to checking off a perpetual to do list. A lot of busyness is performative; a badge of honour we wear to justify our choices, our wage, our value, our place in the world.
This culture has taught us that "if you're not busy, you're lazy" but this is a false dichotomy and only serves to punish those who believe it. We fill our calendars far into the future, we fill time at work and at home with frivolous tasks, we say "yes" to every invitation and responsibility.
If we abandon busyness, we're made to think, "Am I really contributing?" or "What do I actually want?".
Confronting? Yes. Necessary?
Infinity Pools
Infinity Pools are apps and other sources of endlessly replenishing content and influences us to default to endless distraction. The bottomless pits of time-sucking excess can include social media, news websites, games, television, and more.
These defaults are chosen for you by clever marketing and a lot of research into behavioural psychology to make you click the red notification or pay attention to the new alert.
Not just our devices; our workplaces and our culture have built-in defaults that make busy and distracted the normal. But is constant busyness really mandatory? Is endless distraction really a reward?
The Solution
The point of Make Time is not to get rid of distractions altogether, nor is it declaring that social media or emails or TV are the devil. Make Time simply asks one question: What would happen if you could override these defaults and create your own?
And if you’re intrigued to answer this question for yourself, then Make Time is a practical system for choosing what you want to focus on and how to building the energy to do it, thus breaking the default cycle.
You can absolutely can control your attention, unlock creative energy, and make time for what matters to you.
The Make Time System
Make Time is a daily system tailored to your unique habits and routines, your unique brain and body, and your unique goals and priorities.
One thing to keep in mind while you make this system is to avoid perfection at all costs (something I still struggle with). Don't even try to do it perfectly.
“Perfection is a distraction, another shiny object taking your attention away from real priorities.”
What is this system? It is simply four steps, repeated every day: Highlight, Laser, Energise, Reflect.
Highlight
Choose a single activity to prioritize and protect in your calendar, something that you commit to completing each day to the best of your ability.
It's not the only thing you will do each day but it will be your topmost priority. This is a North Star, a direction, that will guide your day.
By focusing on a single highlight each day, there is a far greater likelihood we’ll actually achieve what we set out to do. No more neverending to-do lists! And the momentum gained by accomplishing your Highlight each day has a huge positive affect. Your mood and drive will shift dramatically, flowing into the next day and causing a ripple effect of accomplishment.
The authors suggest 3 criteria for choosing your Highlight
Urgency
Naturally the most pressing and urgent tasks that are time-sensitive or have deadlines should be made a priority.
Satisfaction
Consider the sense of accomplishment in projects you've been meaning to get around to but haven't quite found the time. You might be trying to upskill in a particular area, or make some progress on a personal project. These projects are vulnerable to procrastination because, although they're important, they aren't time sensitive. And naturally fall off your to do list.
Joy
We rarely make time for joy in our lives. So we need to create a system in which joy becomes a metric for success. Now, to other people, some of your joyful highlights may look like a waste of time or indulgence. But I propose joy is the least wasteful way to spend your time.
Protect your highlight at all costs, especially if it is built around joy.
If you have competing ideas of what your highlight may be, trust your gut. You’ll know what feels right to do.
Note: Your highlight can be singular or contain multiple steps. Example, your highlight is “Finishing a Brochure”. That highlight could be broken down into copywriting, layout, design, client calls, etc. The idea is that your highlight will get done that day. If you think it might span several days, then break your highlight up.
Laser
Once we select our highlight for the day, our task - believe it or not - is to stay on task. Distractions are everywhere and they're not going away. It is up to us to redesign the defaults in our lives.
There are numerous ways to stop the reaction cycle, eg. customising your phone notifications, setting a scheduled time for television, or choosing when you respond to group messages. Remove distractions and hone in on what you need to do so.
Energise
How do you build energy so you can stay in control and keep up the momentum throughout the day.
You can charge your internal battery with things like exercise, food, sleep. Some of us might require quiet time and other may prefer face-to-face time with friends or family. Or a mix a both!
The way you energise could even include learning how to caffeinate appropriately for your body and sleep schedule.
Reflect
Reflect on the day to adjust and improve your system. Before going to bed each day, take a few notes on what worked, what didn't, and what can be adjusted for the next day.
Make Time isn't supposed to stay the same, never changing. An imperfect mindset helps us find freedom in shifting, adapting, and adjusting regularly. Decide which tactics you want to continue, and which ones you want to refine or drop.
This is the secret sauce to the whole thing, iteration.
Each of us will have our own imperfect formula. The goal is not monastic vows, but a workable and flexible set of habits. You create your own reality by choosing what to pay attention to pay attention to.
The “Everyday” Mindset
Before we dig into some of my favorite tactics from the book, the author's make a special mention of “The Everyday Mindset”. The best tactics are the ones that you can fit into your day - easily picked up or put down - not something you force yourself to do
Scrap the ambitious 3 hour gym sessions and consider fitting in small bursts of exercise between other things.
A “someday” life is demoralising. Most of us are happiest when we have something we can hold in the present, something we can work on today, instead of hoping things will be better in the future.
Slow down and bring satisfaction to your daily life. As Annie Dillard said in The Writing Life:
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing”
Favourite Tactics
Make Time has 87 different tactics that you can use to help implement the Highlight, Laser, Energy, Reflect system. Like a cookbook, you wouldn’t try all the recipes at once and the authors recommended you Pick, Test, Repeat often. Use what works, ditch what doesn't. Find your own favourite recipe(s) and formulas within the system.
The following tactics are some of my favourites and are, by design, subject to change.
7. Run a Personal Sprint
Whenever you begin a project, your brain is like a computer starting up. It takes time to load all the systems to get back into flow. You inevitably find yourself repeating the same work over a few times just to find where you left off. Jake and John recommend we take their now famous design sprints (Sprint: How To Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days), where teams work on a single projects for 5 consecutive days for deep focus, and adapt it to our personal lives and run a "personal sprint". This allows you to focus solely on one project or task with intense focus to make significant progress.
12. Just Say No
The best way to get out of low-priority obligations is never to accept them in the first place. It's much easier to say no to an initial invitation than a looming commitment. The key is to not make excuses when you say no, just be nice but honest, "I can't, I'm focusing on some projects at the moment" or "Sorry, I don't have the capacity to do a good job at this". You might find you're much happier when you default to no, rather than yes.
14. Become a Morning Person/23. Skip the Morning Check-In
I used to be a night owl, staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning wasn't out of the ordinary and I would usually bounce back fine the next day. I'm still fond of late nights, I love working when the city is asleep, but I have shifted my routine to include more mornings and - if done right -it's great!
The morning is a golden moment. The day is fresh, your brain is rested, and you have no reason to feel distracted yet. The longer you postpone the morning check-in, the longer you preserve that feeling of rested calm and the easier it is to get into Laser mode.
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. It starts my brain turning over, priming it for the day ahead.
Humans are hardwired to wake when it’s light and get sleepy when it’s dark. I've found my dimmable ring light with a warm clip-on filter is a nice way to ease my eyes into the day. I try to always watch the sunrise, even if it’s an hour or two after I get up.
17. Try a Distraction-Free Phone
Recognising how much potential time I could win back (and the overwhelmingly negative effect social media had on my mental health), I went all in on the Distraction-Free phone idea. Removing email and other Infinity Pool apps from my phone might be the simplest, most powerful change I’ve made to reclaim time and attention.
I started by deleting all social media apps. As someone who has lived and breathed social media since before MySpace, this has been a huge shift to make. Turning off all notifications besides phone calls also helped me reclaim a substantial amount of time.
Then I reorganised the leftover apps away from my home screen - making them only available via “search” - unless they were in service of my Highlights and other personal goals.
The only apps I have easy access to are:
Notion - A completely customisable app I use as my “LifeOS” and “Second Brain”. I have iOS widgets pointing to various pages and dashboards within my Notion ecosystem for quick access.
Kindle & Pocket - For reading.
Spotify, Airr & Noisli - For listening.
Voice Memos & Drafts - For idea capture and content creation.
Toggl & Timery - For time tracking.
Health, Balance & MyFitness Pal - For health tracking.
38. Be Slow to Respond/39. Reset Expectations
Taking control of your email or text message inbox requires a mental shift from “as fast as possible” to “as slow as you can get away with.” This may sound like a total jerk move. It’s not.
If you respond right away, you’re sending a signal both to them and to yourself: “I’ll stop what I’m doing to put other people’s priorities ahead of mine no matter who they are or what they want.” Worried about coming off like a jerk? Remind yourself that being focused and present will make you more valuable as a colleague and friend, not less.
You could say something like this: “I’m slow to respond because I need to prioritise some important projects, but if your message is urgent, give me a call.” The wording is carefully designed. The justification “I need to prioritise some important projects” is eminently reasonable and sufficiently vague. And the barrier of actually calling is enough for people to recognise that what they need from you might not actually be all that important.
51. Play a Laser Sound Track
Try an audible cue, like playing the same song or album every time you start your Highlight. It helps not to play the songs at other times, reserving them for moments of deep focus. After a few repetitions, the music becomes part of the habit loop, cuing your brain to get into a distinct version of Laser mode.
I have a few audible cues:
Noisli - an app for personalised soundscapes. My favourite combo includes recordings of rain, thunder, fire crackling, a train track, and coffee shop chatter.
A 10-hour long fireplace video on YouTube. Don’t knock it until you try it.
The Goat Rodeo Sessions an album that blends classical and bluegrass music with Stuart Duncan, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile.
58. Be Stuck
When you’re stuck, you know exactly what you want to do — your brain just isn’t sure how to proceed. The antidote is usually to do something else.
Instead, just be stuck.
Don’t give up. Stare at the blank screen, or switch to paper, or walk around, but keep your focus on the project at hand. Some quiet part of your brain is processing and making progress. Eventually, you will get unstuck, and then you’ll be glad you didn’t give up
Sit with something until it’s done, not until is hard. A game-changer for me.
60. Go All In
"You know the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest... The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness." Brother David Steindl-Rast Make Time
Wholeheartedness is complete commitment, holding nothing back. presence, attention, and making time for what matters. 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. Wholeheartedness is not easy.
62. Pound the Pavement
Change the default from “ride when possible” to “walk when possible”. Besides the obvious health benefits, walking helps make time you can use to think, daydream, or meditate. I use walking time to plan and think, getting most of my writing done on walks. I speak new story ideas and blog ideas into my Voice Memos app to be transcribed later. This article was written largely by talking into my phone.
83. Make Your Bedroom a Bed Room
Remove all electronic devices to transform your bedroom into a true sanctuary for sleep. I now keep my phone on the other side of the bedroom, which means I’m never looking at it in bed and I’m forced to actually stand up and walk over to it to turn off my alarm, thus starting my morning routine.
“It’s easier to change your environment than to rely on willpower to change your behavior.” - Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky
Make Time in My Life
In a previous post, Finishing Fears, as a way of keeping myself accountable and to rid myself of some bad habits, I laid out my creative goals for the year. Looking at these goals and the metrics for success I set for myself, it's clear that the biggest driver of progress will be time spent. I knew success or failure would come down to how many hours I put into the work.
I'm hesitant to say, "your time is only well spent if you produce something." I might like to live that way, but I'm aware of the potential stress and anxiety caused by declaring whether or not your time is "successful" or "productive".
For me, Make Time has been a great tool in working towards my goals, here are some examples of how I'm implementing what I've learned.
Writing a Musical "The El Dorado" “Hummingbird”
This is my priority project and I've made more progress in the last month than I have in the 3 years preceding. It's confronting to know I might have made this progress sooner if I had dedicated the time before now, but I'm just so over the moon that the momentum now exists. I've completely outlined Act 1 to a place I'm happy with and I'm in the thick of detailing Act 2 now. Before now, the musical was mostly a "bunch of ideas" that I hoped might work together.
Tactics used:
Run a Personal Sprint
Go All In
Pound the Pavement
Be Stuck
Personal Blog
I mentioned in 'Finishing Fears' that I have struggled with Writer's Block for many years. This is born out of a lot of self doubt coupled with perfectionism and being uncomfortable actually doing hard work.
Instead of spending my work breaks mindlessly staring at my phone and eating, I'm going for a walk and writing (this article included!). It's surprising how you can bend time depending on how you choose to spend it. If I sit and scroll through my phone in the tea room, that 15 minute break feels like 5. If I grab a coffee, walk around the block and write, It feels like 20-25. Almost like I'm... MAKING TIME. Buh dum tsh! Plus I'm getting something out of it!
Tactics used:
Become a Morning Person
Skip the Morning Check-In
Pound the Pavement
Just Say No
Bonus: Health
The above are creative goals, outside of that, I recognised last year I had to make drastic changes to my health and lifestyle. My weight had recently reached a high of 128kg and I was extremely unhappy with my body and habits around eating and exercise. I set a goal to lose 30kgs and by Christmas 2020 I had lost 10kgs, primarily by watching what I ate and tracking my food.
I have continued to make considerable progress since January this year, losing another 10kg. I can't contribute that success solely to Make Time, but I would be remiss to not acknowledge the impacts of habits and mindsets I adopted from this book.
Tactics used:
Become a Morning Person
Pound the Pavement
Inconvenience Yourself
Exercise Every Day (But Don’t Be a Hero)
Final Thoughts
I knew I wanted to be far more intentional this year than in previous years and Make Time was a great book to set me off on the right foot. Make Time laid a very stable foundation for me to go forward into the year with a plan in place and some tactics I could lean on, to achieve those things. I've fallen off track - several times - which is fine. I'm human, not a machine. I have needs and wants that exist outside of being productive all the time. And also, you know, COVID.
At first, I adopted a lot of the tactics suggested; reevaluating my social media usage and dependency, creating a single achievable highlight to focus on each day for clarity and momentum, etc. These things alone were exceptional boosts to my momentum and focus, I have been able to tackle larger projects I previously thought to be completely out of reach. Conversely, I've been able to recognise which things don't contribute to these larger goals and should probably be dropped.
Revisiting Make Time six months later, I have noticed my tactics and approach have changed but the beauty of this book is, I don't have to throw out what I previously had and completely reset the system (or feel guilty I couldn't stick to yet another routine a book suggested). Rather, Make Time suggests I try some of the other tactics offered and shift how I approach a task.
So now, I'm not selecting a single highlight each day but rather I'm timeblocking my days and working on the project that is most exciting or urgent within that time frame. My social media usage is still almost non existent, but I allow myself time on the apps on weekends to find creative inspiration for my projects
The beauty of Make Time is in its simplicity and adaptability. Instead of enforcing a dogmatic regimen for entrepreneur bros or a set of strict principles for mindset gurus, it offers flexibility. "Do it, or don't" seems to be the attitude of the authors and in this niche, that's really refreshing. Jake and John often share examples of their contrasting views on preferred tactics to demonstrate the system is flexible for those who implement it. It doesn't judge you for choosing particular tactics over others or not anchoring your projects in a "why". Make Time just says "Look, whatever you choose to do, here's some ways to help."
For someone who always has several projects on the go at once, who has ever-shifting work priorities (working in the COVID response), and trying to have healthy relationships, I appreciate the flexibility.
Memorable Quotes
"You know the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest …. The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness." — Brother David Steindl-Rast
“Perfection is a distraction — another shiny object taking your attention away from your real priorities.” - Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky
“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
“It’s easier to change your environment than to rely on willpower to change your behavior.” - Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky
