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Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day Hardcover – Illustrated, Sept. 25 2018
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“If you want to achieve more (without going nuts), read this book.”—Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit
Nobody ever looked at an empty calendar and said, "The best way to spend this time is by cramming it full of meetings!" or got to work in the morning and thought, Today I'll spend hours on Facebook! Yet that's exactly what we do. Why?
In a world where information refreshes endlessly and the workday feels like a race to react to other people's priorities faster, frazzled and distracted has become our default position. But what if the exhaustion of constant busyness wasn't mandatory? What if you could step off the hamster wheel and start taking control of your time and attention? That's what this book is about.
As creators of Google Ventures' renowned "design sprint," Jake and John have helped hundreds of teams solve important problems by changing how they work. Building on the success of these sprints and their experience designing ubiquitous tech products from Gmail to YouTube, they spent years experimenting with their own habits and routines, looking for ways to help people optimize their energy, focus, and time. Now they've packaged the most effective tactics into a four-step daily framework that anyone can use to systematically design their days. Make Time is not a one-size-fits-all formula. Instead, it offers a customizable menu of bite-size tips and strategies that can be tailored to individual habits and lifestyles.
Make Time isn't about productivity, or checking off more to-dos. Nor does it propose unrealistic solutions like throwing out your smartphone or swearing off social media. Making time isn't about radically overhauling your lifestyle; it's about making small shifts in your environment to liberate yourself from constant busyness and distraction.
A must-read for anyone who has ever thought, If only there were more hours in the day..., Make Time will help you stop passively reacting to the demands of the modern world and start intentionally making time for the things that matter.
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCurrency
- Publication dateSept. 25 2018
- Dimensions14.45 x 2.39 x 21.77 cm
- ISBN-100525572422
- ISBN-13978-0525572428
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Product description
Review
“As someone obsessed with time and how to spend it wisely, I loved this fun and useful book. Not your normal productivity fare.” —Ev Williams, founder of Medium and Twitter
"I defy you to read this book and not come away with ideas that make you happier and/or more effective in accomplishing what you want in life. It’s smart, entertaining, and packed with field-tested insights." —Dan Heath, bestselling co-author of The Power of Moments and Switch
"Time is the single biggest ingredient for creative work. Time to focus, time to experiment, time to master creative skills. Make Time provides ways for each of us to find new reserves of that precious commodity. It is an excellent guidebook for taking control of the design of your life." —Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO and author of Change By Design
"Make Time is practical and engaging, offering tips on everything from designing your day to the benefits of cutting out cable news and eschewing plane Wi-Fi in favor of time away from work. Especially useful for me was the guidance on e-mail. It turns out that being slow to respond is a terrific way to take control of your time. (Sorry, colleagues.)" —Harvard Business Review
“In today’s fast-paced, technology-saturated world, readers are sure to glean insights from this powerful book.” —Booklist, starred review
About the Author
Jake spent 10 years at Google and Google Ventures, where he created the design sprint process. He has since run more than 150 sprints with companies including Nest, Slack, 23andMe, and Flatiron Health. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and sons.
John has written for the Wall Street Journal, Time, Harvard Business Review, Wired, Fast Company, and many more publications. For nearly fifteen years, he was a designer at technology companies, including YouTube and Google Ventures. Originally from Wisconsin, John and his wife now live aboard their sailboat, "Pineapple."
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
This is a book about slowing down the crazy rush. It’s about making time for things that matter. We believe it’s possible to feel less busy, be less distracted, and enjoy the present moment more. Maybe that sounds a little hippy-dippy, but we’re serious.
Make Time is not about productivity. It’s not about getting more done, finishing your to-dos faster, or outsourcing your life. Instead, it’s a framework designed to help you actually create more time in your day for the things you care about, whether that’s spending time with your family, learning a language, starting a side business, volunteering, writing a novel, or mastering Mario Kart. Whatever you want time for, we think Make Time can help you get it. Moment by moment and day by day, you can make your life your own.
We want to start by talking about why life is so busy and chaotic these days. And why, if you feel constantly stressed and distracted, it’s probably not your fault.
In the twenty-first century, two very powerful forces compete for every minute of your time. The first is what we call the Busy Bandwagon. The Busy Bandwagon is our culture of constant busyness—the overflowing inboxes, stuffed calendars, and endless to-do lists. According to the Busy Bandwagon mindset, if you want to meet the demands of the modern workplace and function in modern society, you must fill every minute with productivity. After all, everyone else is busy. If you slow down, you’ll fall behind and never catch up.
The second force competing for your time is what we call the Infinity Pools. Infinity Pools are apps and other sources of endlessly replenishing content. If you can pull to refresh, it’s an Infinity Pool. If it streams, it’s an Infinity Pool. This always-available, always-new entertainment is your reward for the exhaustion of constant busyness.
But is constant busyness really mandatory? Is endless distraction really a reward? Or are we all just stuck on autopilot?
Most of Our Time Is Spent by Default
Both forces—the Busy Bandwagon and the Infinity Pools—are powerful because they’ve become our defaults. In technology lingo, default means the way something works when you first start using it. It’s a preselected option, and if you don’t do something to change it, that default is what you get. For example, if you buy a new phone, by default you get email and Web browser apps on the homescreen. By default, you get a notification for every new message. The phone has a default wallpaper image and a default ring tone. All these options have been preselected by Apple or Google or whoever made your phone; you can change the settings if you want to, but it takes work, so many defaults just stick.
There are defaults in nearly every part of our lives. It’s not just our devices; our workplaces and our culture have built-in defaults that make busy and distracted the normal, typical state of affairs. These standard settings are everywhere. Nobody ever looked at an empty calendar and said, “The best way to spend this time is to cram it full of random meetings!” Nobody ever said, “The most important thing today is everybody else’s whims!” Of course not. That would be crazy. But because of defaults, it’s exactly what we do. In the office, every meeting defaults to thirty or sixty minutes even if the business at hand actually requires only a quick chat. By default other people choose what goes on our calendars, and by default we’re expected to be okay with back-to-back-to-back meetings. The rest of our work defaults to email and messaging systems, and by default we check our inboxes constantly and reply-all immediately.
React to what’s in front of you. Be responsive. Fill your time, be efficient, and get more done. These are the default rules of the Busy Bandwagon.
When we tear ourselves away from the Busy Bandwagon, the Infinity Pools are ready to lure us in. While the Busy Bandwagon defaults to endless tasks, the Infinity Pools default to endless distraction. Our phones, laptops, and televisions are filled with games, social feeds, and videos. Everything is at our fingertips, irresistible, even addictive. Every bump of friction is smoothed away.
Refresh Facebook. Browse YouTube. Keep up on the nonstop breaking news, play Candy Crush, binge-watch HBO. These are the defaults behind the ravenous Infinity Pools, devouring every scrap of time the Busy Bandwagon leaves behind. With the average person spending four-plus hours a day on their smartphone and another four-plus hours watching TV shows, distraction is quite literally a full-time job.
There you are in the middle, pulled in opposite directions by the Busy Bandwagon and the Infinity Pools. But what about you? What do you want from your days and from your life? What would happen if you could override these defaults and create your own?
Willpower isn’t the way out. We’ve tried to resist the siren song of these forces ourselves, and we know how impossible it can be. We also spent years working in the technology industry, and we understand these apps, games, and devices well enough to know that they eventually will wear you down.
Productivity isn’t the solution, either. We’ve tried to shave time off chores and cram in more to-dos. The trouble is, there are always more tasks and requests waiting to take their place. The faster you run on the hamster wheel, the faster it spins.
But there is a way to free your attention from those competing distractions and take back control of your time. That’s where this book comes in. Make Time is a framework for choosing what you want to focus on, building the energy to do it, and breaking the default cycle so that you can start being more intentional about the way you live your life. Even if you don’t completely control your own schedule—and few of us do—you absolutely can control your attention.
We want to help you set your own defaults. With new habits and new mindsets, you can stop reacting to the modern world and start actively making time for the people and activities that matter to you. This isn’t about saving time. It’s about making time for what matters.
The ideas in this book can give you space in your calendar, in your brain, and in your days. That space can bring clarity and calm to everyday life. It can create opportunities to start new hobbies or get to that “someday” project. A little space in your life might even unlock creative energy you lost or never found in the first place. But before we get into all of that, we’d like to explain who the heck we are, why we’re so obsessed with time and energy, and how we came up with Make Time.
Product details
- Publisher : Currency; Illustrated edition (Sept. 25 2018)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0525572422
- ISBN-13 : 978-0525572428
- Item weight : 522 g
- Dimensions : 14.45 x 2.39 x 21.77 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: #8,828 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Jake Knapp is the author of "Make Time" and the New York Times bestseller "Sprint".
Jake spent ten years at Google and Google Ventures, where he created the design sprint. He has coached over 150 companies on the process, including teams at Slack, Uber, the New York Times, and LEGO. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and sons.
John Zeratsky is the bestselling author of Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days and Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day.
John’s writing has been published by The Wall Street Journal, TIME, Harvard Business Review, Wired, Fast Company, and many other publications. He has appeared on stage nearly 200 times, including at Netflix, IDEO, McKinsey, the Code Conference, and The London School of Economics.
For nearly 15 years, John was a designer for technology companies. At Google Ventures (GV), he helped develop the design sprint process and worked with close to 200 startups, including Uber, Slack, 23andMe, Flatiron Health, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Nest. He was also GV’s in-house copywriter, editor, and content strategist; he created and edited the GV Library, which has reached millions of readers since 2012. Previously, John was a designer at YouTube and Google, and an early employee at FeedBurner, which Google acquired in 2007.
John studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from the UW School of Human Ecology, where he’s now an advisor to the Dean and faculty.
Originally from small-town Wisconsin, John and his wife Michelle have lived in Chicago and San Francisco. They spent 18 months traveling in Central America aboard their sailboat Pineapple before moving to Milwaukee in 2019.
Customer reviews
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Authors are so honest sharing their own stories and experiences to make the book more sensible. I highly recommend it to whom want to have a happier life!
Top reviews from other countries

One of my biggest fears in life is the sense that I'm not using my time in the best way that I can. There's so much I want to make time for but it just never works out - new things come up, other things take longer than expected, I'm constantly interrupted or interrupting myself. (After finishing the previous sentence, for instance, I wanted to have a "quick" Twitter check.)
Make Time was a therapeutic read in more than one way.
First, it made me reassured that I'm not the only one. If two superstar designers, who also happen to be NYT bestselling writers and ex-Googlers, have the same uphill struggle against distractions, then I'm not a complete write-off.
Second, it's hilarious. The silly sketches, opinion battles, descriptions of oh too familiar bad habits made this an entertaining read, as opposed to a dry self-help book.
And third, it's incredibly useful. It's basically a list of techniques to ring-fence your own time and stay focused. Once you've read it, a quick browse of chapter headings is enough to refresh your memory on how to stay focused.
I still occasionally procrastinate, but I'm also about 200% more efficient and 200% calmer. If you read this book, prepare to be relieved of guilt, pressure and stress.

Make Time is about creating space in your life for what truly matters using highlights, laser-style focus, energizing breaks, and regularly reflecting on how you spend your most valuable asset.
# 🎨 Impressions
This is a life changing book. There are so many practical tips, or golden nuggets, throughout this book that will help us find time for what is important in our life without making even the slightest dent in our regular schedule. A must read for everyone.
# 🔍 How I Discovered It
This book was featured by youtuber Ali Abdal in his YouTube channel as one of the three books that changed his life.
# 📖 Who Should Read It?
- Anyone who feel exhausted by the busyness of modern life and are unable to find time for what is important to them.
- Social media and smartphone users who feel like their devices and apps own them, rather than the other way around.
- Quarter, mid and late-life crisis sufferers who sense their lives are slipping by in a busy, distracted blur.
# ☘️ How the Book Changed Me
This book changed my life immediately in many ways -
- I understood that I waste a considerable amount of time in my day scrolling through instagram and facebook, which were my distraction kryponites. So, I uninstalled both. It was tough at first, but soon I realised my life is a lot more peaceful now, and that I don't miss them anymore.
- I used to create to-do lists. But this book made me realise that anyone who has a to-do list will try to check maximum boxes quickly, so will take up the easy tasks first, and hence the important ones are left out. This had a scary resonance with my own practices. Now, I started micro-managing my day, by creating a weekly agenda based on the to-do list, and adding those to my calendar each day, and reflecting at the end of the day on whether I could find time to do everything planned, and adjusting for the coming days accordingly. This has helped me finish off my tasks more efficiently
- I now have a highlight for (almost) every day, and using the above tactic, I am able to find time for the highlight
- I no longer get all panicked thinking I have wasted my day unintentionally.
- Also I now realise that I do not have to achieve all the to-dos for the day and still be happy that I have finished the highlight, which is the most important thing I planned for that day.
I am sure that as I start implementing more tactics detailed in this book, it will keep on changing my life in ways I couldn't imagine before I started reading this book.
# ✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
- Being more productive didn’t mean I was doing the most important work; it only meant I was reacting to other people’s priorities faster.
- Part of the reason we’re all so hooked on distractions is that everybody else is, too. It’s the fear of missing out—FOMO—and we’ve all got it.
- You only waste time if you’re not intentional about how you spend it.



Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 12, 2018


so easy to read (even for non 1st language English speakers like myself). Everything in there is flexible just like life itself, also offers the perfect
proportion of visuals and text.
I always wondered why all the organize your life systems doesn't work for me. Was thinking I am a failure. If other people succeed by doing something, why wasn't working for me? Now I know the answer! I am not the same person and I don't have the same life and life's changing constantly anyway. Also not all of us are super humans, willing to use drugs etc.
This book makes so much sense, so if you are someone who feels overwhelmed, busy and stressed all the time, you must read it! Thank me later by doing what you always wanted but never had time for :)


Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 13, 2021
so easy to read (even for non 1st language English speakers like myself). Everything in there is flexible just like life itself, also offers the perfect
proportion of visuals and text.
I always wondered why all the organize your life systems doesn't work for me. Was thinking I am a failure. If other people succeed by doing something, why wasn't working for me? Now I know the answer! I am not the same person and I don't have the same life and life's changing constantly anyway. Also not all of us are super humans, willing to use drugs etc.
This book makes so much sense, so if you are someone who feels overwhelmed, busy and stressed all the time, you must read it! Thank me later by doing what you always wanted but never had time for :)

