Making time for what matters

Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky are co-authors of Sprint and Make Time and co-founders of the venture firm Character, with prior roles at Google and Google Ventures. The conversation focuses on Make Time, their framework for protecting time for what matters through a highlight, laser, energize, and reflect approach, along with practical tactics for managing distraction, email, and news. They also briefly introduce the design Sprint method from Sprint.

01Key learnings

• Start each day by choosing a highlight: imagine the day is over and decide what you'd want to call the highlight, then protect a 60-90 minute block for it.
• Don't rely on willpower; change your environment by logging out of apps, deleting infinity-pool apps from your phone, or adding friction like separate devices or Wi-Fi timers.
• Use your calendar as a design tool by blocking focus time, meals, exercise, and personal priorities, then adjust the template based on what actually happened.
• Reset expectations around responsiveness with email signatures or autoresponders that explain you're slowing down to focus on an important project, and add a 'because' to make it more persuasive.
• Slow your inbox by checking email only once or twice a day, which also slows the cycle of people expecting fast replies.
• Treat each day as an experiment: reflect on whether the highlight happened, what helped or hindered it, and tweak tactics with curiosity rather than self-judgment.
• You don't need to adopt all of the tactics; trying one or two small changes, like writing down a highlight on a sticky note, can make a meaningful difference.
• Sprint's design approach compresses an idea into a five-day cycle from zero to a tested prototype, useful when a startup must prove product-market fit quickly.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.