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Make Time: A book to free up time


Currently, I am reading a book named Make Time: How to focus on what matters every day by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. The book was recommended by Ali Abdaal, a doctor turned famous YouTuber. He is a productivity expert and his recommendations are always spot on. 

Make Time is about finding time to pursue your passion or spend more time with your family or have the freedom to do something that you really love but could not do due to modern-day tech-enabled busy life. 

I would be covering the book through multiple posts as I am just halfway through and got impressed by the book that I have decided to buy a physical copy so that my wife can also read and benefit from it. 

Make time is not really old wine in a new bottle. It is different in the way it approaches tackling the endless distractions that technology has brought into our lives. It gives actionable plans and tools to stop the distractions particularly given by the Gadgets and Internet and also a road map on how to use the freed-up time for one's liking. 

The book opens up by detailing three steps to make your day productive. Highlight, Laser, and Reflect and then Energize each step. These are thus a series of steps to complete the most important activity that you choose for yourself. 



Highlight is like a "One thing" that you decide a day before or in the morning before starting your day. Then you use Laser focus to get it done. Later you Reflect on it and Energize in between while the task is being done. Highlight is not particularly a to-do list but a larger chunk of work that may take anywhere between 60-90 minutes. 

After you decide what your highlight for the day is you sit back without distractions and complete the highlight at a predetermined time during the day while also completing other necessary tasks for which Jake gives the plan to prioritize called the Front burner, Back burner, and Kitchen sink method. It is a way to compartmentalize your highlight in contrast to other important tasks which require lesser attention or time than the highlight. 


He goes on to encourage us to use a Blank Page each day to write down these compartments and then review them at the close of the day. 

My take at using Jake's method 

The next section of the book speaks about "Laser" focus. More so, it discusses the impediments to focused work. Internet and in particular the apps which he calls "Infinity pools". These applications are social media apps on our phones such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or any other application that provides endless feed. They have been termed "Infinity pools" because they have no end like a bottomless pit. These are the applications that make you compulsively reach out for your phone the moment you get the first hint of boredom. 

Of all these distractions Numero Uno Infinity Pool is Google Chrome or Safari. These have endless information about the world and one is sure to ride a chain of mindless searches starting off from an impulse to google something. 

For me, the Infinity pools that eat up the majority of the time and distract me are WhatsApp, YouTube, and Google Chrome. WhatsApp has become a necessary evil as most office communication uses WhatsApp in one way or the other. Then there are endless social groups with endless feed that keeps you hooked and distracted. After you are done with WhatsApp or want to further investigate something you read on WhatsApp or heard from someone, you tend to google it or watch a video on the topic on YouTube. Infinity pools drown you through a web of click baits and never-ending feed specially programmed to keep you hooked on the site. 

The authors mention about the Meteor crater in the Arizona Desert in the U.S. which was created when a 150 feet meteor hit Earth around 10,000 years ago. The impact created a large crater almost 30 times the size of the Meteor. The distractions act in a similar fashion. Even a 2-minute distraction will create a time crater that will run into several minutes or maybe even hours. 

There are a series of tips to stay focused starting up with cleaning your mobile. They suggest limiting its usage to a minimum. They also suggest keeping just the bare minimum of apps and deleting all "time craters" apps such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and even Google Chrome or Safari browsers. There is always an option to get them back if you start getting life-threatening withdrawal symptoms but it is good to give it a try and look for yourself whether you freed up time for important things. They also suggest putting mobile on airplane mode once your reach home and keeping the device away from impulsive reach. 

There are many tips they have given in the book that I have tried to implement. I have started writing down the highlight on a page first thing in the morning and getting it done by the end of the day. 

I have removed some Infinity Pool applications such as YouTube, Google Chrome, and Reddit to name a few. I have cleaned up my Home screen and only kept 4 apps on the home page- Podcast app, Kindle app, Phone, and Messaging app . All remaining apps have been pushed to second and third pages. The rationale is that it may give me a brief moment to think whether I actually need to use my phone or it was just an impulsive pick up of my phone. 

I have started using airplane mode on my phone as an experiment to see how far I can take this. 

More to come once I complete the book.

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