Book review. Make time. How to focus on what matters every day by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

This book is preaching to the convert. I stopped using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram some years ago and I don't check work email on my phone. Yet I found enough good ideas that I think reading the book was a good investment.

The core argument of the book is that you should choose one activity as your focus for each day and make time for it. A typical daily focus would be to work on a big project. The book defines a three-step loop. The first step is "highlight". Highlight means to choose what you are going to prioritize. They call the second step "laser" for laser-focused. This is about beating distractions. At the end of the day you reflect. The purpose of reflecting is to fine-tune the system.

The book argues that in order to focus you need to have energy and remove distractions. A substantial part of the book deals with how to manage your energy throughout the day. Each piece of advice, in isolation, seems good. But if you have to follow them all—exercise, home cooking, meditation and more—you would have no time to focus anyway.

I liked that the authors are not dogmatic. Sometimes, authors will tell you that their system is the only true way. Knapp and Zeratsky are open about the fact that they do not use all the tactics in the book all the time, or even at all.

If you are familiar with the getting things done (GTD) method, you will remember how it handles big projects. You divide big projects into a number of next steps that you add to your to-do list. To-do lists in GTD are supposed to be categorized by context. For example, you batch all the telephone calls together. As I understand it, Make Time suggests that if you choose making progress on a project as your highlight for the day, you would devote 60 to 90 minutes to making progress on your next activities. The difference between GTD and Make time is whether you perform your next activities in your to-do list according to your energy and context (GTD) or concentrated in time (Make Time).

The book provides a list of tactics to use in each step of the method. Most tactics address how to avoid distractions. Some of the first advice is to remove social media apps from your phone. They advise removing email as well. They encourage you to plan your workday in advance and schedule dedicated time to process email. I found that waiting to check email until after lunch, helps me stay focused on whatever I want to do. If you start your day checking your email, it is common to become distracted.

It is difficult to resist temptation, so the authors advise the use of apps to block access to email, social media or certain websites as a way to tie oneself to the mast. They also recommend not following the news daily. This is an idea that also comes up in the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Exercise can be incorporated into your daily routine. For example, you can walk to and from work. If the commute is too long, you can get off one or two stops before your destination and walk. This is something that I already do. Walking is a pleasant activity for me, that helps me disconnect between work and home. I don't think it is a proper substitute for more intense training, but it can't hurt.

The authors discourage people from using headphones all the time. Listening to music or podcasts adds mental work on top of whichever activity you want to accomplish. I agree with the authors. It is a frustration for me to see my kids listening to music while they struggle with their math homework. It would be so much easier if they just paused the music for a while.

I think the book works as a list of tactics if you already have a clear idea about what you want to focus on. If you have too many priorities, no tricks will help you make enough time to accomplish them all. You won't make significant progress if your daily focus is shifting every day.

Another weakness of the book is that it is written with a certain type of reader in mind. Not everyone is a knowledge worker with the flexibility to manage their own schedule as they please. Nor is ignoring email a real alternative for many people. In many occupations you are expected to answer fast and it may be a core part of your job, for example if you are working in sales or support.

Maybe you get distracted and waste time on social media or email because deep down you really think that the work you are supposed to do is not important. If you follow this book, instead of confronting this fact directly, you will block all distractions until meaningless work is all you have left to do. Wouldn't it be better to step back and reflect on whether the work you are performing is aligned with your goals?

I found that I am perfectly capable of procrastinating without social media or email. In fact, I am pretty sure that procrastinating was a thing even before the internet. The authors fixate on social media, watching YouTube and email as alternatives to real work. In practice, more often than not, when I am not doing what I am supposed to do, I am doing something else that may also be useful. One can be a productive person by using structured procrastination. The downside is that it is more stressful, as you are constantly having bad a conscience for not doing what you should.

I am somewhat skeptical about the sprint model that the authors presented. They suggest that in order to make progress on a big project, you schedule a whole week to work on it. Every day you are supposed to build upon the conclusions of the previous day. In my experience, it is better to let things mature. I can read about a topic, then forget about it for 3 or 4 days, while my subconscious mind works on it. Nuances and new ideas come during these rest periods. I can incorporate them into my work. I would argue that working on something one day each week for five weeks, in many cases, produces better results than working on it for five consecutive days.

These are minor flaws. The book is quite engaging and useful. I bet everyone can find at least one technique that can be incorporated into their daily routine.