What I learned from Make Time by Jake Knapp | Book Summary and Review

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Make Time Book by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky Review

It has been a month since the start of the new year. Here is my question. How is it going on your new year’s resolution? If you are in the majority, you could’ve put it down the drain already. But don’t worry. This book is how you would make time to achieve your various goals and dreams in life. Hence the title: Make time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day. Here is the summary of the book Make Time.

Make Time is a book that teaches us how to use our time for our own because if we want to live our life to its fullest, we need to know how to focus on what matters each and every day of our lives. This means that we have to get our time back from technology.

If you are someone who asks yourself what has been happening in your life lately and have no answer, or thinking of a project, goal that you think you would do someday but someday never comes, then this book is for you.

We tend to ride on the wave of life where we do what is suggested to us. We are constantly being filled up with advertisements, time sucking applications and meaningless things in life. Here is the thing.

Most of us are in autopilot and someone is manipulating it.

There is a thing in this book called infinity loops which sucks out our time. Our finite time here on earth, which is used to work on our goals and dreams in life.

I mean we live in this time in our lives where we should be having the luxury of time unlike our predecessors which has no time because of how life has been before. But we still think that we don’t have time. Something is wrong.

Distractions and how infinity loops are affecting us

Why do you think various applications have no ending on their feed? Simply because it is designed to be that way. Applications are designed to be effective because it is how they make money. It is also  not  their fault that they designed it to be that way because if not, their competitors will beat them. The goal of our current apps is to hook us into it for a long  time. That’s why they  designed it to be as addictive as possible.

No wonder most people are mindlessly browsing social media feeds or such. That is also why things such as a social media detox challenge has been born.

But don’t be discouraged. Apps maybe distracting but they are tools that we can use to help ourselves. This is also a time where we can send messages and videos easily and instantly. Imagine the convenience it has given us.

The thing we need to do is to control our usage of them and be mindful on how it affects us.

How to know Infinity loops

So how will we know if the app or something is an infinity loop? Basically, it is a thing which has feeds that have no ending to it. Designed to be scrolled through on hours. But the thing is that you will know if it is an infinity loop if you’ve experienced this.

Have you experienced moments where time suddenly flew like all you did for hours was to use an app on your phone?

That’s exactly what infinity loops are. We feel like we are in a loop and it can suck our time forever.

No wonder people think that they have no time to do what they want to do in life.

Now that you know about this infinity loop, the next thing you need to do is to check on yourself on this. The book has numerous tips on how to reduce infinity loops in your life since willpower is over rated in this type of situations. If you want to know more about willpower, I made a willpower guide in this blog. Click on the link to get tips on how to increase your willpower.

How to Focus on What Matters

The next section in this book and perhaps this is the one that needs attention. I mean knowing infinity loops are a great thing to make time for yourself and for me, it is the first step to do the next thing which will make you focus on your goals in life but to fully focus on your goals in life, you need to use the time that has been freed up wisely.

The book comes with four steps on how to do this. Highlight, Laser, Energize and Reflect. All of them are important to start with this.

To give a short explanation. Highlight is the goal you want to achieve that day. Laser is how to focus on that  goal while working on it. Energize is giving you energy to do it and Reflect is constant improvement upon yourself for a better you.

Highlight

The Highlight is very important as it is the one you want to achieve. I know that you are interested in the book because you want to know achieve your goals in life which is called the highlight. There are numerous tips in this book but for me, there is one thing that affected me the most until now and it has been my companion these days in reading full producitivity,

One thing. Focus on One thing

Focus on only one thing everyday. That means having a single goal you need to achieve today to reach your goals.

Why does this matter? Especially to me?

I am someone who gets overwhelmed by lots of things to do. I imagine most of us are. I imagine how big my goals and dreams are and just the amount of work it takes to reach there gives me fear. Fear that it is too much for me or the feeling of doubting myself on why I am doing this. To fight being overwhelmed, I learned to focus on one thing. Only one thing that takes at most an hour of my day of work.

Remember this: Just one achievement everyday gives you 7 in a week. around 30 in a month and 365 achievements in a year! That’s how it compounds and making sure you have accomplished something during the day gives you confidence that you are getting near your goals in life.

And gone are the days where I ask myself what I’ve been doing these past months. I have a journal where I put my highlight for that day and make sure I finish it.

I am not perfect though, there might be days where I don’t finish a highlight and that’s okay. As long as I don’t make it a habit where I finish 80-90% of my highlights, then I’m fine. I’m not perfect. This alone is a great lesson for me. It gave me a breather on my tasks and the confidence that I am not going through life without any meaning.

If there is one thing I want you to get from this article then this is it. FOCUS ON ONE THING EACH DAY> DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO FINISH IT. You’ll be fine that way.

Focus

If I tell you that there is a hack to do 4 hours worth of work in just an hour, would you take it?

If yes, then welcome to the world of laser focus. Or on other book, Flow. on Other, Deep Work. If you are interested in this crazy amount of increased productivity, then check this areticle out: Deep Work by Cal Newport.

Basically, there is a reason why I said that make your highlight only one thing and takes only an hour to finish.  It is because we will harness the power of Focus in finishing tasks. Focus is our superpower. In the Book The Rise of Superman, they call it flow state where humans reach their highest potential by removing distractions in life and challenging their own selves to reach the highest form of  power.

Same with this. I found out that working on laser focus makes my work better and faster. Something irreplaceable for a content creator like me.

So how would we achieve laser focus? This is where infinity loops or distractions come in.

The enemy of focus is distraction. Constant notification, messages, email, application has degraded us of our inborn focus. Most masterpiece are made because of their intense focus on making a difference. Why not you?

Remember that you need to remove distractions to achieve this state and I tell you that it is so worth it. When I started learning about it and applied it, I can never go back. Try it. If you can, turn off your phone while working, put it on airplane mode. Whatever it takes, try to remover distraction. try it for 30 minutes. If you did not see any difference in your productivity then don’t. At least you’ve tried. For me, it works amazing!

Energize

You can not be very productive and expect to work on your goals if you are in poor health. We might not be born with perfect genes but we can at least adjust our habits to have energy to tackle our dreams in life.

I was born with asthma. Until now, I still have it. Thanks to Wim Hof Breathing I’ve lessen it and I only suffer mild attacks now and not using any medications. I wrote about my experience on this article: Wim Hof Breathing Experience You can check it out if you’re interested.

So I am not bragging. This is just an example on what I mean. Nobody is perfect, we all have imperfections but at least, we can do something with it to improve ourselves.

Just like our energy. Take care of your health because it is very important. Eat healthy, exercise, have the right sleep. Those will give you energy.

Because without it, you can’t expect yourself to give the best results you can give.

When working on your goals, do not forget how our body reflects our energy, and our energy is reflected in our work.

Reflect

Having that in mind, never forget to constantly improve upon yourself. Reflect on your work and see if you can improve something. See if there are mistakes done that needs attention. It comes with four parts which are observe, guess, experiment and measure.

Spend time with yourself for a few minutes each day. Reflect on yourself. It sounds weird for some but it works.

Also, this is the perfect time to decide on your highlight.

As for me, I spend my early waking hours on reflection where I write my highlight for the day and reflecting on what I can do to improve upon myself.

Remember this: Pick, Test, Repeat.

Conclusion

In this distracted world, make sure to give time for yourself. Everybody has been taking your time. It is time to retake it for ourselves. Remember that making time is not just working on your goals. it might even be to give yourself the dream vacation you’ve always wanted. The key here is for you to reflect on what you want to do in life and to remove the distractions that gets in your way. Because the only way to hit a goal, is to have a clear view on it..