Book SummaryMake Time, by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Make Time

If there’s one word that best describes modern life, it’s “frazzled.” People today feel overwhelmed by work, endless meetings, other peoples’ demands, and to-do lists that never stop growing. Meanwhile, it’s impossible to focus on any single task without being interrupted by phone calls, emails, social media, the news, and an information landscape that’s purposefully designed to grab your ears and eyeballs. It takes a conscious effort to reclaim your life, your attention, and control of your time.

Tech industry insiders Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky propose that by making straightforward adjustments to your lifestyle, you can wrest control away from the thousand distractions that chip away at your time, leaving you free to focus on the things you care about most. As opposed to streamlining life’s small-level details or worrying about long-term goals and ambitions, the authors find a middle ground: identifying one central task as the focus of each day, and arranging your time and energy to support that key activity.

(Shortform note: Knapp’s early experiments in time management were the “design sprints” he initiated at Google, as described in his first book, Sprint. In design sprints, a team within a company is given one project to delve into for a week, while postponing all other meetings and obligations. This lets them focus all of their output onto the single task at hand.)

In Make Time, the authors freely admit to having been part of the problem they’re trying to solve. They both spent years designing products for the information industry, and they had front row seats in the Big Tech competition to...

Make Time Summary Focus Your Attention

As stated before, we spend most of our days reacting to a barrage of intrusions and demands: emails, phone calls, and notifications, not to mention other human beings encroaching on our time with action items, meetings, committees, and chores. Even when we squeeze in some time of our own, the siren call of social media, 24-hour news, and TV tricks us into frittering away the hours we otherwise might have spent pursuing some long-forgotten goal or dream.

Knapp and Zeratsky suggest that the most important step to reclaiming control and being proactive with your time is to choose one task to be your Focus each day. This won’t by any means be the only thing you do, but it’s the one thing you’ll prioritize over everything else. It might be a project you’ve been putting off at work, or it might be something you’ve always meant to do in your free time. Whatever you choose, it’s the thing you’ll look back on with a feeling of satisfaction, or even joy, at having accomplished.

(Shortform note: The authors weren’t the first to hit on this idea. In The One Thing, published in 2012, real estate expert Gary Keller argues that the...

Make Time Summary Protect Your Focus

Once you’ve established your Focus and learned what practical methods will help keep you “in the zone,” you’ll still need to fend off all the distractions that will try to tear your attention away. In order to do that, you’ll need to set healthy boundaries—not just for other people, but for all the technology you’ve come to rely on: your computer, your TV, your WiFi, and most of all your phone. Knapp and Zeratsky suggest dozens of strategies to limit the ways that colleagues and devices can distract you from your Focus. Some techniques are simple and some are extreme, but all are based on the central premise that your time is more important than the latest shiny thing shouting for your attention.

The Roots of Distraction

Knapp and Zeratsky talk about distraction as if it originates from external sources. However, in Indistractable, behavioral expert Nir Eyal argues that the primary source of distraction is inside ourselves.

Eyal proposes that what motivates us most isn’t punishment or reward, but discomfort. We allow ourselves to be distracted to avoid the discomfort of what we should be...

Make Time Summary Create Energy Through Self-Care

Once you’ve selected your Focus for the day and set healthy boundaries to ward off distraction, you’ll still have a hard time pursuing what’s important if your body and mind don’t have the energy to engage. Many of us spend a lot of our time feeling beaten down and exhausted.

Knapp and Zeratsky say that this is because the human body isn’t designed for our modern, sedentary, staring-at-screens lifestyle. They argue that in some ways, we were all better off as hunter-gatherers. Technology has brought us many wonders that we’d never dream of giving up (not to mention health care), but the evolution of our bodies has been unable to keep pace with the changes in lifestyle that have occurred since the agricultural revolution.

Were We Better Off as Cavemen?

In Sapiens, historian Yuval Noah Harari backs up these claims, stating that our foraging ancestors worked less, ate a more varied diet, and suffered less disease than their descendants in agrarian and urban societies. Today, Harari identifies [technological disruption as an existential...

Make Time Summary Implementing the _Make Time_ Strategy

The sheer scope of Knapp and Zeratsky’s recommendations will no doubt seem overwhelming at first. Setting priorities and boundaries, changing your digital habits, and learning to lead a healthier lifestyle are each, on their own, monumental tasks. Thankfully, you shouldn’t expect to tackle any or all of it at once.

The author’s tips and suggestions are merely that. By trying what works and what doesn’t for you personally, you can incrementally rearrange your life in a way that will be transformative over time. To begin, you might only pick one recommendation to follow from each of the three big categories: selecting your Focus, protecting your Focus, and taking care of yourself. Keep doing the ones that work; forget the ones that don’t. Since the last thing you want is to add to your to-do list, the best tips to employ are the ones that fit into your life with the least amount of hassle. (Shortform note: Many authors tout how small, incremental changes have a snowball effect over time. In Small Move, Big Change, Wall Street executive Caroline Arnold espouses the idea of...

Shortform Exercise: Assess Your Electronic Interruptions

It’s hard to make time for anything if you’re constantly responding to other people’s demands, and modern technology makes it even easier for the outside world to intrude. Assess the level of electronic distractions in your own life.

While reading this guide, how many times were you interrupted by your phone or your computer?

Shortform Exercise: Lead a More Active Life

Knapp and Zeratsky say that there are opportunities everywhere to add more activity into our sedentary lives. Consider how you can add more activity into your own life.

Hours spent sitting in one place cause stiffness, back problems, and general fatigue. How does your body feel when you get up from your desk or climb out of bed?