Find Your Focus and Make Time for What Matters Most in 2023 with These Tips from the Book

One week down into the new year – How are those new year’s resolutions coming along? Making progress? Or has it already been quite a year from just this week alone?

I resolved that the theme for this year is Action, and so just like many of you, I have many goals that I’d like to achieve this year to make things a little bit more creative and exciting. Just to list a few things on the agenda for me... There's a 30 day writing challenge I'm currently doing, I just joined a new gym to learn Muai Thai to help be 10 kilos lighter, my day job occupying 8am to 4pm on weekdays, my social life, a desire to go overseas this year and all sorts of creative ventures and classes. But how do I make time for everything?

This book – Make Time: How To Focus On What Matters Every Day gave me insight on how I can make the most out of each day to make it feel more fulfilled and how it can help me achieve my goals. In this article, I’ll highlight the key takeaways from this book and some examples they shared on time management strategies which will help you make time for everything important for you this year too.

The principle of Make Time is four steps that are repeated every day –

Highlight, Laser, Energise, Reflect.

Let's dive into our first aspect...

Highlight

Highlight is all about choosing a single activity to prioritise and protect in your calendar. This can be anything that is the most important thing to you, whether it’s finishing something at work, getting a work out at the gym, working on your business after your day job, reading several pages or chapters of your current book or spending time with your loved ones. A highlight can be something you either have to do, or want to do, but the key aspect that this highlight is a priority for you. This ensures that at the end of the day, the most important thing to you that day was completed and was something you decided on without having to give into other people’s priorities.

It’s important to note that your highlight is NOT the only thing you’ll do that day. There’s still plenty of other things to achieve and obligations to fulfil. But choosing a highlight gives your day a focal point and allows you to be intentional with your time.

How do you choose your daily highlight?

There’s three perspectives on this –

What is the most urgent thing I need to do today?

Is it sending a quote from your business? Preparing a delicious meal for the family? This urgent thing is something that is a priority for that day – It’s usually time-sensitive, important but not that would take days to accomplish.

What will give me the most satisfaction?

Is it finishing an article for next week’s edition of newsletter? (That’s mine today!) Is it researching your next holiday destination? This activity is something that focuses on what you want to get done. It’s not necessarily urgent but something you’ve been meaning to do. The problem with these goals is that they’re prone to procrastination because they aren’t necessarily time-sensitive and urgency can trump these goals, but are nevertheless important to you. Having a highlight will break the “someday” cycle and reduce your to-do list.

What will bring me the most joy?

Is it practicing the guitar? Taking your children to the playground? Having lunch with a friend? Not every highlight has to be about working towards a goal or resolution. Sometimes the highlight simply just needs to bring you joy for that day. It’s all about one day at a time sometimes! Just do things because you enjoy doing them. This might appear like a waste of time, but it’s only wasteful if you’re not being intentional on how you spend your time.

Here’s the top 3 points I enjoyed about Highlight (There’s many more to be found in the book!) –

1. Write it down - This is a daily ritual, make it known on what your highlight is. The things you write down are more likely to happen.
2. Make time for your highlight - Consider how much time your highlight needs, when you want to do it and time block it on your calendar. Then commit to it.
3. Know when it’s best to fulfil your highlight - Are you a morning person or night person? Is this highlight dependant on anyone else and their schedule? What time suits best? Design your day to make your highlight happen.

Laser

Our next key aspect is a state of mind called Laser. It’s a state of flow where your attention is focused on the present like a laser beam shining on a target. Being laser focused on your highlight feels amazing – It’s the payoff for proactively choosing what’s important to you.

The enemy of Laser is Distraction. It’s a disco ball that disrupts your laser focus and disperses it everywhere except your target.

Distractions appear in many forms – Emails, social media, the news, messages and people chatting to you in real life too. Willpower might help block distractions, but this alone is not enough to protect your focus.

The top points I enjoyed about Laser and protecting our focus –

1. Be the boss of your phone – Make it distraction free; log out of your apps, minimise notifications, clear the home screen of apps, wear a watch instead of relying on your phone for the time and leave devices behind when you can help it.
2. Stay out of infinity pools – Don’t let checking your phone be the first thing you do, ignore the news, beware of time craters that continue to take time even after the initial distraction is done e.g. checking how your social media post is performing
3. Slow your inbox down – Tend to emails later in the day instead of the morning to protect your interests and not having to cater to everyone else, empty your inbox once a week to have a fresh start, set expectations on response times and don’t feel the pressure to reply immediately, vacation off the grid
4. Find flow – Shut the door, put the headphones on to signal to people you’re not to be interrupted, invent a deadline if there isn’t one, break your highlight down into smaller achievable chunks, KISS principle (Kiss it simple stupid!)

Energise

Simply put, increasing our energy gives us more time for our highlights. It’s preventing our battery from running dry leaving us exhausted and finding ways to recharge and keeping ourselves full. To keep us energised –

1. Keep it moving – Exercise everyday , get your steps in and being practical by cooking dinner and taking the stairs
2. Eat real food – Become more of a hunter-gatherer by eating food without non-processed ingredients, portion control your food
3. Optimise caffeine intake by having it later in the morning or having it before you crash i.e. not drinking it when you’re already down and out.
4. Go off the grid – Take breaks going into nature, enjoy meditation to give your brain a breather, spend time with your tribe and eat without screens with you.
5. Sleep – Make your bedroom a bed room – i.e. No TV, remove other electronic devices, fake the sunset to regulate sleep cycles

Reflect

The forth and final step of Make Time is Reflect. Take time to review your progress to know if the results you’ve achieved is working. They suggest these simple questions

• What was your daily highlight today?
• Out of 10, how was your laser focus today?
• Out of 10, how energised did you feel?
• What tactics did you try today to achieve your highlight, stay laser focused and energis? How did it go implementing these tactics? Did those reflect in the rankings you set?
• What tactics will you try tomorrow?
• What is something you’re grateful for?

Everyone is unique, so success comes down to our individual preferences and alignment on what works. These practical tips will help me for the year ahead, and I highly recommend this book to everyone – It’s a light read and very practical.

Here’s to all our goals and success in the year ahead. Don’t wait for someday to make time for what makes you come alive. Start today.

If you enjoyed this read, consider subscribing to The Creative Catalyst Newsletter to avoid missing out on future articles. I also invite you to join the Proximity Is Power group, which is a tight-knit community get-together every Wednesday night where we discuss various topics to learn and grow together, and is a great way to meet new people and expand your network!

Feel free to get in contact with me too! Happy to connect and hear about your creative ventures.

Stay creative, always.