Random musings: How to Make Time for What Really Matters Every Day

Today's blog post is from a podcast by The Art of Manliness:

Do your days seem like a continuous blur of busyness, and yet you don’t seem to get much done, nor remember much about how you spent your time?

As a former employee of Google, my guest today worked on the very apps and technology that can often suck away our time. Today, he’s dedicated to figuring out how to push back against these forces to help people take control of their time and attention.

His name is John Zeratsky and he’s the co-author of the book Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day. Today on the show, John shares how the experience of feeling like he was missing months of his life led him to spending years experimenting with his habits and routines, looking for the best ways to to optimize energy, focus, and time. He then shares the simple 4-step daily framework that developed from this research and walks us through that system. John talks about choosing one “highlight” each day to ensure your most important work gets done and that your life is full of memorable moments. He also shares how to reduce the time you spend wading in what he calls “infinity pools,” why energy management is just as important as time management, and how reflection is essential in figuring out if what you’re doing is working.

Lots of valuable direction in this show for how to get your life on track and find more hours and meaning in the day.

I think this will tie in well with Darla DiGrandi-Aguilera's presentation today on calendar mapping, which I've also discussed here.

Here are the highlights from the program:

How John’s experience in the tech industry led to a productivity obsession
Why your life isn’t about what happens, but what you pay attention to
Why to build “highlights” into your daily life
Should highlights be work-related or personal?
How are highlights different from goals?
How highlights can help you move toward your goals
Why most time management and self-help advice is intimidating
Why goals are risky and can actually blind us to the present moment
The importance of flexibility and forgiveness in your time management
Ditching your to-do list (and what to replace it with)
What’s an infinity pool? What makes them so dangerous to our productivity and happiness?
How to rid your life of infinity pools
How spending less time on email makes you better at emailing
The case against fancy time management and productivity tools
Why energy management is so important
The case for cooking (and other strenuous/active hobbies)
How to make time to reflect every day
Keeping up with this framework day after day

For more on the effect that social media has on our lives (an infinity pool), check out "The Social Dilemma", which has a link to the video on Netflix on the subject.

And for more on energy management, check out this post on "Calm Energy".