#Things to consider

  • Beware of the busy bandwagon. Our culture is one of constant busyness. According to The Busy Bandwagon mindset, if you want to meet the demands of modern society, you must fill every minute with productivity. But this is a way to keep yourself distracted, a way of not having to deal with your true values. Busywork is not meaningful work.
  • Beware the infinity pools. You have to be very conscious of infinity pools, which is the other source of our cultural distraction. Apps and other sources of endlessly-replenishing content makes up these infinity pools. This always-available, always-new entertainment is your reward for the exhaustion of constant busyness. You rob yourself of the opportunity to create any meaningful work.
  • Choose a highlight to work on every day that will be your main focus. The highlight won’t be the only thing you do but it will be your priority. By choosing a highlight—and protecting it—you become more proactive with how you spend your time.
  • When you don’t take care of your body, your brain can’t do its job. Want energy for your brain? Take care of your body.
  • Walking is a wonder drug. Change the default from ride whenever possible to walk whenever possible. You will start to see opportunities everywhere. Walking may be the world’s simplest and most convenient form of exercise.
  • The Japanese government is suggesting a practice called shinrin-yoku, which translates to something like “forest bathing”. The forest recharge the battery in your brain.
  • Meditation is a breather for your brain. Thinking is the default position. Constant thinking means your brain never gets rest. Meditation gives your brain a break.
  • Paper is less intimidating than a screen. It improves focus because you can’t waste time on other things. When you struggle to get into laser mode, try starting on paper.
  • Small distractions create much larger holes in our day. Posting a tweet only takes 90 seconds, but the aftermath is the real waste. Watch out for time craters!
  • Contributing to the conversation on the internet feels like an accomplishment. But these contributions are insignificant, they’re “fake wins”. “I’m slow to respond because I need to prioritize some important projects, but if your message is urgent, send me a text.”
  • Clean up after yourself. Think of the few minutes it takes to straighten up after yourself as an investment in your ability to be proactive, not reactive, with your time.
  • Charge your battery with exercise, food, sleep, quiet, and face-to-face time. The lifestyle defaults of the twenty-first century ignore our evolutionary history and rob us of energy.
  • Experimenting allows you to improve your process. Change comes from resetting the defaults. Remember that experimenting also could be the spark for a new practice.

#Batch process the small stuff

All those small, shallow, administrative tasks that you have to do in the course of a day—bundle it up and batch process them in one session. Email, to-do lists, news sites helps perpetuate this feeling of “unfinishedness” that dogs modern life. Don’t nibble on these things throughout the day—batch-process and give them your full focus at certain times in the day and be done with it.

#Stack-rank your life

  1. Make a list of the big things that matter in your life.
  2. Choose the one most important thing.
  3. Choose the second, third, fourth, and fifth most important things.
  4. Rewrite the list in order of priority.
  5. Draw a circle around number one.

This list can be reshuffled with time when you feel your priorities change.

#Avoid the defaults

The average person spends 4 hours a day on their smartphone and another 4 hours watching TV-shows. Distraction is literally a full-time job.

More productivity isn’t the solution. Remember that the faster you run on the hamster wheel, the faster it spins. But even if you don’t control your own schedule—you absolutely can control your attention.

  • Stop reacting to the modern world.
  • Apply design to the invisibles in your life—like how you spend your time.
  • Redefine how and when you use technology.

#Environment often matters more than motivation

You can alter your “choice architecture” to provide a better design for your goals. Your habits change depending on the room you are in and the cues in front of you. Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.

Every habit is context dependent. You don’t have to be a victim of your environment, instead you can choose to be the architect of it. Making better decisions is easy and natural when the cues for good habits are right in front of you. Our behavior is not defined by the objects in the environment but by our relationship to them.

You can train yourself to link a particular habit to a particular context. Think about how you can use different spaces for different purposes.

#Make watching TV a special occasion

People watch an average of 4 hours of television every day. TV time is a gold mine: a large pile of perfectly good hours ready to be reclaimed. Change the default and make TV time a “special treat”. Streaming subscriptions are like an all-you-can-eat buffet of distractions in your living room, at all times.