From Medium Articles

Feeling Busy and Distracted? It’s Not Your Fault

But you are the only one who can fix it All illustrations by Jake Knapp from our book Make Time You’ve got a new email from your boss, plus a dozen old ones that still...

Making Time at Work

How to give your team (and yourself) the time to thrive at the office We make choices, every day, about how to spend our time. Most of our decisions are small, but over time they...

Six Years With a Distraction-Free iPhone

And how to try your own low-stress experiment In 2012, I realized I had a problem. My iPhone made me twitchy. It called to me from my pocket, the way the Ring called Bilbo Baggins....

The Perfect Workspace Is All In Your Head

Here’s what is really necessary for making good use of your time I’ve been sitting in front of computers since I was about 10 years old. In that time I’ve designed a thousand newspaper pages, built...

Choose a Highlight To Make Time Every Day

If you want to make time for things that matter, the Busy Bandwagon—our modern culture of constant busyness—will tell you the answer is to do more. Get more done. Be more efficient. Set more goals...

Redesign Your Day: Four Lessons from the Design Sprint Laboratory

While working at Google, I created something I called a design sprint: basically a workweek redesigned from the ground up. For five days, a team would cancel all meetings and focus on solving a single...

How to Stop Sabotaging Your Sleep

According to a 2016 study by the University of Michigan, Americans spend around eight hours in bed every night, as do folks in Britain, France, and Canada. But despite what seems like a decent amount...

It’s More Important Than Ever to Ignore the News

From the moment I clicked “Publish” two years ago, I’ve been uncomfortable with my post about ignoring the news. Not because it’s wrong, or because it’s bad advice. On the contrary, I think ignoring the...

Seven Health Habits You Can Use to Build Energy and Get More Done Every Day

I am writing this on a Friday morning. Last night, I stayed out a little too late. I didn’t get enough sleep. I had one too many drinks. I ate dessert after dinner. The night...

One Thing at a Time

I’m a big fan of doing one thing at a time. This approach is powerful because, among other reasons, it works well at different “zoom levels” in life. I'll try to explain what I mean...

Stuck? Switch to Play Mode

I get stuck a lot. I get stuck writing, editing, making slides, doing designs, replying to email. I get stuck anytime I want to get something right. My friend Stefan suggested I try a different...

The Burner List: My Simple, Paper-Based System for Focused To-dos

Man, I hate to-do lists. Checking off finished tasks feels good, but the glow of accomplishment masks an ugly truth: Most to-dos are just reactions to other people’s priorities, not mine. And no matter how...