This week One Book One Week (OWOB) series is on “Make Time” by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. They’re the authors of the New York Times bestseller Sprint. Jake spent ten years at Google and Google Ventures and he has coached over 150 companies on the process, including teams at Slack, Uber, the New York Times and LEGO. John has written for the Wall Street Journal, Time, Harvard Business Review, Wired, Fast Company and many more publications.
I categorize this book Productivity and it intends to help us to solve our important problems by redesigning our working week. The book focus on four core elements ; Highlight, Laser, Energize and Reflect. I really love the tactics shared with more than 80 tactics that will help me on how to select the key tasks for the day / week, stay laser focus on the task and stay energetic!
The praise for this book from Amazon.com;
“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
One my key take away from this book is this; Highlight. It is the first core portion of this book.
Highlight
What is all about? The authors said it well, “If, at the end of the day, someone asks you, “What was the highlight of your day?” what do you want your answer to be? When you look back on your day, what activity or accomplishment or moment do you want to savor? That’s your Highlight.”
It is the key and meaningful tasks that you want to accomplish in the day. Something that you put spotlight on…something that you focus on. Of course, we cannot just do the tasks under our Highlight category. But, the key point is that we spend more time and put priority to those under our highlight.
How to choose on what to be our Highlight for the day? Authors suggest three criteria;
- Urgency 2. Satisfaction 3. Joy
Once you have decided the highlight of the day; can be three to four task per day, block you time (60 to 90 minutes each task) to focus on this task. The priority for the day is to complete these tasks!
The book offers 16 tactics for this Highlight segment and one that I like to share with you here is this;
Run a Personal Sprint
Pick a project or task you need to complete. Work for this project for five days straight. Sprint it for 5 days! Focus on same Highlight and maybe you can break that Highlights into several steps. However, it need to done consecutively within the focus time.
Call For Action
Identify the key project you need to complete this week / month. List down the key tasks needed to complete the project. Give time line to this project and assigned these tasks as part of your daily Highlight.
Visit the authors here : http://www.maketime.blog