Make Time Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

Audio available

Brief Summary

Wouldn’t it be great if you had some extra time every day? With John Knapp’s Make Time, you can learn how to master your schedule and be more productive with the time you DO have. Read on to learn his most useful tips, including how to work with your brains hardwiring to increase energy, tips for preventing caffeine slumps, and how to resist the lure of time-wasting applications like Facebook, Twitter, and more.

About the Author

Jake Knapp is the inventor of the Design Sprint and is a New York Times best selling author. He worked for Google and Google Ventures for 10 years, where he created the Design Sprint process. He is the author of Sprint and Make Time. He coaches various teams on design strategy and time management. He also worked on Gmail, Google Hangouts, and Microsoft Encarta.

Topics

Self Development

Make Time Book Summary Preview

Wouldn’t it be great if you had some extra time every day? You could spend an extra hour doing something productive, sleeping, or just relaxing. Unfortunately, we don’t have the ability to give you that extra hour (we would if we could!). However, creating extra time in your schedule is possible, even if it doesn’t feel that way. Let's face it: if the solution to better time management was as simple as more discipline and fewer distractions, we would all be able to do it. Luckily, with John Knapp’s Make Time, you can learn how to master your schedule and be more productive. Read on to learn his most useful tips: including how to work with your brains hardwiring to increase energy, tips for preventing caffeine slumps, and how to resist the lure of time-wasting applications like Facebook, Twitter, and more.

Ever noticed that it seems like in some applications, you can scroll infinitely and there will always be more content to distract you? These applications can take up huge amounts of time. The author calls these sorts of distractions Infinity Pools because they deliver seemingly infinite content - and consequently can waste infinite amounts of time. Research shows people will often spend 4 hours or more per day on distractions like phone applications. That’s a lot of time! Infinity Pools often combine with another problem for those wanting to make the most of their time: The Busy Bandwagon. The Busy Bandwagon is the tendency of most modern folks to keep attempting to complete tasks that are seemingly never completed. Having a to-do list is an example of this phenomenon. You’ll be chipping away at your list of tasks, and once you finally accomplish all of the ones on your list, you get another task. It's a never-ending cycle. The most aggravating part? Usually, these items aren’t anything you’d chose to do, they’re tasks you must accomplish for other people. And as you’re doing these things for others, you abandon the projects and ideas that actually mean something to you. The exhaustion and stress of the Busy Bandwagon lead you back to Infinity Pools for some relief and distraction. You might think a little self-discipline should be enough to help you get over distractions that cause you to fall into infinity pools. However...

Applications that suck you in and distract you are expertly designed to be that way. They play into how our brains have always been hardwired: what was useful to us in prehistoric times is being manipulated by these applications. Innate tendencies like our reactivity to a sudden noise, the draw of an unpredictable reward, or our desire to feel connection can be manipulated to make you obsessed with an application or game. This is why self-discipline can be so hard to muster in situations where you are faced with your favorite time-waster: your biology is being played upon. Ok, this all sounds like a total nightmare, right? If it's so deeply hardwired, how can we stop? Well, there is...