Simply everybody has the wish deep inside oneself to do something particular but never find time to realise it in everyday life. Let us call it the "someday project" that will never come true if you do not change something from now on. Usually, the main missing resource is not money or something else but time. We all face the same situation as well as the New York Times bestselling authors of "Sprint" (already presented on albrechtproductions.net), Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, both former Google designers and Google Ventures employees. Their latest book "Make Time - How to Focus on what matters every day" shall help us with its more than 80 tactics to "achieve more (without going nuts)" and to finally find time to start (and complete) our someday projects and spend time on other activities we always looked after but never found time to begin or do them regularly. I will summarise their central concept shortly that acts as the fundament of all explained tips and tricks and present some of my favourite tactics of this book afterwards.
Highlight - Laser - Reflect
To get rid of time-consuming, distracting defaults that just do not have positive impact but are somehow implemented in our modern, always busy and by news and notifications polluted life, the authors created a concept of three main steps of Highlight, Laser and Reflect along with the important component of Energise to be able to repeat those steps over and over again.
The first step is to choose a single highlight to prioritise every day. Knapp and Zeratsky give you tools to identify and prioritise your highlights, so it is easy for you to have one for each day. Working on the highlight each day and seeing results after that makes happy. You will realise it afterwards!
Laser summarises the step spending time to focus on your highlight. Both authors provide you with a lot of tactics to try out that can help you to beat distractions and to focus on your chosen highlight and be concentrated.
The step Energise is essential and takes place at the same time as Laser. Throughout the day you need to build and recover energy so you can achieve everything you have planned. A broad range of options are presented in the book - some you may already do, others are worth to try. The importance of the right way to energise is highlighted in this chapter.
As the last instance of the activity loop, it is time to reflect. Reflect if you were able to spend the needed time on your highlight and if the applied tactics helped you to achieve this. If it did not work like expected, find out the reason for your failure to eliminate it the next time. In this chapter, it is all about adjusting and improving your system until you found a routine that works for you best.
Some Of My Favourite Tactics
Restructure & Organise Your Day
It helps to start restructuring and organise your days to find time for your highlight, and to see where is space for optimisations and what can be identified as real time killers. That also may include becoming a morning person. If this is impossible for you, you have the option to be productive during the late hours as well like the nighthawk Jake does (see page 73, Nighttime Is Highlight Time). Going to bed and waking up at precisely the same time every day of the week (yes - including the weekend!) may also be worth to consider.
Read more in detail:
Design Your Day (page 66), Become A Morning Person (page 69), Don't Jet-Lag Yourself (page 233)
Change Your Phone Consumption
A so-called distraction-free phone is a huge time saver. You do not have to be that extreme like advised in the book, and you will see significant changes even so. The procedure to change your phone consumption and make adjustments to get the distraction-free phone may feel difficult first, but the benefits of it will result in a lot more time available for really important things and a substantial increase of your concentration/focus. Turning off most of the phone's notifications, reading news only weekly than daily and to drastically limit or even stop the consumption of infinity loops like social media, online newspapers and TV can be the key to success.
Read more in detail:
Distraction-Free Phone (page 93), Nix Notifications (page 99), Ignore The News (page 110)
Change Your E-Mail Habits
Closely connected to phone consumption are probably your e-mail habits that can be a serious time killer. Knapp and Zeratsky recommend you to slow down your e-mail handling and to schedule limited e-mail time at the end of the day.
Read more in detail:
Deal With E-Mail At The End Of The Day (page 128), Schedule E-Mail Time (page 128)
Optimise Your Caffeine Consumption
Yes - it matters when and how often you consume caffeine, e.g. in the form of coffee. The book explains everything you need to know to optimise the consumption to get the best results regarding your energy and focus time. If you are not a coffee junkie, it is quite easy to implement those changes straight away and to realise its advantages.
Read more in detail:
Wake Up Before You Caffeinate (page 203), Caffeinate Before You Crash (page 204), Learn Your Last Call (page 206)
I hope I could inspire you again with that book recommendation.
Some tactics were already implemented by myself without reading this book (e.g. my well-planned days by using a calendar app), but I still could optimise certain aspects of my everyday life to finally MAKE (even more) TIME for the things that matter!
6 thoughts on “Make Time – Optimise Yourself & Work On Your Someday Project”
Heya i’m for the first time here. I came across this blog and I find It truly useful & it
helped me out much. I hope to give something back and help others like you helped me.
Thanks for publishing this awesome article. I’m a long time reader but I’ve never
been compelled to leave a comment. I subscribed to your blog and shared this
on my Facebook. Thanks again for a great article!
Hello there! I’m definitely enjoying your blog and look forward to new updates.
Great post!
Ꭲhis is very interesting, You are a very skiⅼled blogɡer.
I’ve joined your rss feed and look fⲟrward to ѕеeking more
of yoᥙr wonderful post.
Howdy! This blog post couldn’t be written any better!
Looking through this article reminds me of my previous roommate!
He continually kept preaching about this. I will send this information to him.
Pretty sure he will have a very good read. I appreciate you for sharing!