Free to Focus

by Michael Hyatt

  8. Willis Towers Watson, “Global Benefits Attitudes Survey 2015/16,” https://www.willistowerswatson.com/en/insights/2016/02/global-benefit-attitudes-survey-2015-16.

  9. Michael Blanding, “National Health Costs Could Decrease If Managers Reduce Work Stress,” Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, January 26, 2015, https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/national-health-costs-could-decrease-if-managers-reduce-work-stress.

  10. Chris Weller, “Japan Is Facing a ‘Death by Overwork’ Problem,” Business Insider, October 18, 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-karoshi-japanese-word-for-death-by-overwork-2017-10. Jake Adelstein, who has worked in Japanese media, said 80-to-100-hour weeks are routine: “Japan Is Literally Working Itself to Death: How Can It Stop?” Forbes, October 30, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/adelsteinjake/2017/10/30/japan-is-literally-working-itselfto-death-how-can-it-stop.

  11. “Man on Cusp of Having Fun Suddenly Remembers Every Single One of His Responsibilities,” Onion, May 30, 2013, http://www.theonion.com/article/man-on-cusp-of-having-fun-suddenly-remembers-every-32632.

  12. Liz Alderman, “In Sweden, an Experiment Turns Shorter Workdays into Bigger Gains,” New York Times, May 20, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/business/international/in-sweden-an-experiment-turns-shorter-workdays-into-bigger-gains.html.

  13. “Ford Factory Workers Get 40-Hour Week,” History.com, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-factory-workers-get-40-hour-week.

  14. “Ford Factory Workers,” History.com.

  15. Basil the Great, “Letter 2 (to Gregory of Nazianzus),” trans. Roy J. Deferrari (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926), Loeb 190, 1.9.

  Chapter 2 Evaluate

  1. See the findings summarized in Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, Peak (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016). Also see Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008).

  2. See Tom Rath, StrengthsFinder 2.0 (New York: Gallup, 2007), 105–8.

  3. To go deeper on the subject of limiting beliefs, including a process for transforming them into liberating truths, see “Step 1: Believe the Possibility” in my book, Your Best Year Ever (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2018), 25–62.

  Chapter 3 Rejuvenate

  1. Alexandra Michel, “Participation and Self-Entrapment,” The Sociological Quarterly 55, 2014, http://alexandramichel.com/Self-entrapment.pdf.

  2. John M. Nevison, “Overtime Hours: The Rule of Fifty,” New Leaf Management, December 1997.

  3. Morten T. Hansen, Great at Work (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018), 46. Based on Hansen’s research, workers might profitably work more than fifty hours a week, but he advises against it. Says cognitive psychologist Daniel J. Levitin, “A sixty-hour work week, although 50% longer than a forty-hour work week, reduces productivity by 25%, so it takes two hours of overtime to accomplish one hour of work.” The Organized Mind (New York: Dutton, 2016), 307.

  4. Sarah Green Carmichael, “The Research Is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies,” Harvard Business Review, August 19, 2015, https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-research-is-clear-long-hours-backfire-for-people-and-for-companies.

  5. Bambi Francisco Roizen, “Elon Musk: Work Twice as Hard as Others,” Vator.TV, December 23, 2010, http://vator.tv/news/2010-12-23-elon-musk-work-twice-as-hard-as-others.

  6. Michael D. Eisner, Work in Progress (New York: Hyperion, 1999), 301.

  7. Jeffrey M. Jones, “In U.S., 40% Get Less Than Recommended Amount of Sleep,” Gallup, December 19, 2013, http://news.gallup.com/poll/166553/less-recommended-amount-sleep.aspx.

  8. Diane S. Lauderdale et al., “Objectively Measured Sleep Characteristics among Early-Middle-Aged Adults,” American Journal of Epidemiology 164, no.1 (July 1, 2006), https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/164/1/5/81104.

  9. Tanya Basu, “CEOs Like PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi Brag They Get 4 Hours of Sleep. That’s Toxic,” The Daily Beast, August 11, 2018, https://www.thedailybeast.com/ceos-like-pepsicos-indra-nooyi-brag-they-get-4-hours-of-sleep-thats-toxic. Katie Pisa, “Why Missing a Night of Sleep Can Damage Your IQ,” CNN, April 20, 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/01/business/sleep-and-leadership. Geoff Colvin, “Do Successful CEOs Sleep Less Than Everyone Else?” Fortune, November 18, 2015, http://fortune.com/2015/11/18/sleep-habits-donald-trump. According to one study, 42 percent of leaders get six hours of sleep or less each night. Christopher M. Barnes, “Sleep Well, Lead Better,” Harvard Business Review, September–October 2018.

  10. Nick van Dam and Els van der Helm, “The Organizational Cost of Insufficient Sleep,” McKinsey Quarterly, February 2016, https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-organizational-cost-of-insufficient-sleep.

  11. N.J. Taffinder et al., “Effect of Sleep Deprivation on Surgeons’ Dexterity on Laparoscopy Simulator,” The Lancet, October 10, 1998, http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140673698000348.pdf.

  12. Maggie Jones, “How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?” New York Times Magazine, April 15, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sleep-t.html.

  13. On these and related points, see Shawn Stevenson, Sleep Smarter (New York: Rodale, 2016); David K. Randall, Dreamland (New York: Norton, 2012); and Penelope A. Lewis, The Secret World of Sleep (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

  14. Lewis, The Secret World of Sleep, 18.

  15. Jeff Bezos, “Why Getting 8 Hours of Sleep Is Good for Amazon Shareholders,” Thrive Global, November 30, 2016, https://www.thriveglobal.com/stories/7624-jeff-bezos-why-getting-8-hours-of-sleep-is-good-for-amazon-shareholders.

  16. Matthew J. Belvedere, “Why Aetna’s CEO Pays Workers Up to $500 to Sleep,” CNBC, April 5, 2016, https://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/05/why-aetnas-ceo-pays-workers-up-to-500-to-sleep.html.

  17. Alex Hern, “Netflix’s Biggest Competitor? Sleep,” Guardian, April 18, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/18/netflix-competitor-sleep-uber-facebook.

  18. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Rest (New York: Basic, 2016), 110–128.

  19. Barbara Holland, Endangered Pleasures (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995), 38.

  20. For optimizing your nighttime sleep, I recommend Shawn Stevenson’s Sleep Smarter and for naptime Sara C. Mednick’s Take a Nap! Change Your Life (New York: Workman, 2006).

  21. “Just One-in-Five Employees Take Actual Lunch Break,” Right Management ThoughtWire, October 16, 2012, https://www.right.com/wps/wcm/connect/right-us-en/home/thoughtwire/categories/media-center/Just+OneinFive+Employees+Take+Actual+Lunch+Break.

  22. “We’re Not Taking Enough Lunch Breaks. Why That’s Bad for Business,” NPR, March 5, 2015, https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/05/390726886/were-not-taking-enough-lunch-breaks-why-thats-bad-for-business.

  23. “Physical Activity and Health,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, February 13, 2018, https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/pa-health/index.htm.

  24. “Physical Activity and Health,” CDC.

  25. Ben Opipari, “Need a Brain Boost? Exercise,” Washington Post, May 27, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/need-a-brain-boost-exercise/2014/05/27/551773f4-db92-11e3-8009-71de85b9c527_story.html.

  26. Russell Clayton, “How Regular Exercise Helps You Balance Work and Family,” Harvard Business Review, January 3, 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-regular-exercise-helps-you-balance-work-and-family.

  27. Clayton, “Regular Exercise.”

  28. Tom Jacobs, “Want to Get Rich? Get Fit,” Pacific Standard, January 31, 2014, https://psmag.com/social-justice/want-get-rich-get-fit-72515.

  29. Henry Cloud, The Power of the Other (New York: Harper Business, 2016), 9, 81.

  30. Emily Stone, “Sitting Near a High-Performer Can Make You Better at Your Job,” KelloggInsight, May 8, 2017, https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/sitting-near-a-high-performer-can-make-you-better-at-your-job.

  31. Cloud, Power of the Other, 81.

  32. Stone, “Sitting Near a High-Performer Can Make You Better at Your Job.
”

  33. Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies (New York: Free Press, 1998), 188.

  34. Stuart Brown, Play (New York: Avery, 2010), 127.

  35. Jeremy Lott, “Hobbies of Highly Effective People,” MichaelHyatt.com, November 7, 2017, https://michaelhyatt.com/hobbies-and-effectiveness/.

  36. Paul Johnson, Churchill (New York: Penguin, 2009), 128, 163.

  37. Winston S. Churchill, Painting as a Pastime (London: Unicorn, n.d.). He wrote this essay in 1948.

  38. Shirley S. Wang, “Coffee Break? Walk in the Park? Why Unwinding Is Hard,” Wall Street Journal, August 30, 2011, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904199404576538260326965724.

  39. Chris Mooney, “Just Looking at Nature Can Help Your Brain Work Better, Study Finds,” Washington Post, May 26, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/05/26/viewing-nature-can-help-your-brain-work-better-study-finds/.

  40. Ruth Ann Atchley et al., “Creativity in the Wild: Improving Creative Reasoning through Immersion in Natural Settings,” PLOS One 7, no. 12 (December 12, 2012), http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0051474.

  41. Netta Weinstein, Andrew K. Przybylski, and Richard M. Ryan, “Can Nature Make Us More Caring?” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, August 5, 2009, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167209341649. Diane Mapes, “Looking at Nature Makes You Nicer,” NBCNews.com, October 14, 2009, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/33243959/ns/health-behavior/t/looking-nature-makes-you-nicer.

  42. Jill Suttie, “How Nature Can Make You Kinder, Happier, and More Creative,” Greater Good, March 2, 2016, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_nature_makes_you_kinder_happier_more_creative. Cecily Maller et al., “Healthy Nature Healthy People: ‘Contact with Nature’ as an Upstream Health Promotion Intervention for Populations,” Health Promotion International 21, no. 1 (March 2006), https://academic.oup.com/heapro/article/21/1/45/646436. “How Does Nature Impact Our Wellbeing?” Taking Charge of Your Health & Wellbeing (University of Minnesota), https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/enhance-your-wellbeing/environment/nature-and-us/how-does-nature-impact-our-wellbeing.

  43. “Unplugged for 24 hours,” New Philosopher, February–April 2016.

  Chapter 4 Eliminate

  1. Steve Turner, Beatles ’66 (New York: Ecco, 2016), 47.

  2. As Friederike Fabritius and Hans W. Hagemann put it, “No one questions the fact that you are unavailable when you’re already in an important meeting, but there’s often an unspoken assumption that when you aren’t in a meeting, you’re free. And yet when you need to focus, you are in an important meeting—with yourself.” The Leading Brain (New York: TarcherPerigree, 2017), 91–92.

  3. William Ury, The Power of a Positive No (New York: Bantam, 2007), 10–15.

  4. Ury, Positive No, 14.

  5. Ury, Positive No, 16–18.

  Chapter 5 Automate

  1. “Ritual,” Dictionary.com, http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ritual.

  2. Mason Currey, Daily Rituals (New York: Knopf, 2015), xiv. Also see Pang’s discussion of morning routines in Rest, 75–92.

  3. Atul Gawande, “The Checklist,” New Yorker, December 10, 2007, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist. See also Gawande’s book, The Checklist Manifesto (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009).

  Chapter 6 Delegate

  1. Ashley V. Whillans et al., “Buying Time Promotes Happiness,” PNAS, August 8, 2017, http://www.pnas.org/content/114/32/8523.

  2. Adapted and expanded from Stephanie Winston, The Organized Executive (New York: Norton, 1983), 249–50.

  Chapter 7 Consolidate

  1. John Naish, “Is Multi-tasking Bad for Your Brain? Experts Reveal the Hidden Perils of Juggling Too Many Jobs,” Daily Mail, August 11, 2009, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1205669/Is-multi-tasking-bad-brain-Experts-reveal-hidden-perils-juggling-jobs.html.

  2. Cal Newport, Deep Work (New York: Grand Central, 2014), 42.

  3. Christine Rosen, “The Myth of Multitasking,” New Atlantis, no. 20, Spring 2008, https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-myth-of-multitasking.

  4. Rosen, “Myth of Multitasking.”

  5. Today we usually produce our Lead to Win podcast three to four episodes at a time. We set aside one day a month for recording.

  6. Jason Fried and David Heinemeier, ReWork (New York: Crown Business, 2010), 105.

  7. Silverman, “Workplace Distractions.”

  8. William Shakespeare, As You Like It 2.7.139–42.

  9. Garson O’Toole has the backstory on the line here: “Plans Are Worthless, But Planning Is Everything,” Quote Investigator, November 18, 2017, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/18/planning.

  10. I first encountered the idea behind the Ideal Week in Todd Duncan’s work, especially Time Traps (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2006), and Stephanie Winston’s The Organized Executive (New York: Warner Books, 1994). I’ve adapted the idea over the years as I’ve applied it to my own practice, as well as helping my coaching clients.

  11. Pang, Rest, 53–74.

  12. Daniel H. Pink, When (New York: Riverhead, 2018), 9–35, 71. Pang echoes this advice in Rest; see his discussion on rhythms, 81–85.

  13. Rosen, “Myth of Multitasking.”

  Chapter 8 Designate

  1. Air Traffic Organization, Air Traffic by the Numbers, Federal Aviation Administration, October 2017, https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/by_the_numbers/media/Air_Traffic_by_the_Numbers_2017_Final.pdf.

  2. Kiera Butler et al., “Harrowing, Heartbreaking Tales of Overworked Americans,” Mother Jones, July/August 2011, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/stories-overworked-americans.

  3. Matt Potter, “Harrowing Tales of Lindbergh Field Air Traffic,” San Diego Reader, December 6, 2013, https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2013/dec/06/ticker-harrowing-tales-lindbergh-field-landings.

  4. J. D. Meier presents a similar concept in his book, Getting Results the Agile Way (Bellevue: Innovative Playhouse, 2010), 56, 88.

  5. See Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), 160ff; Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill, and Rebecca R. Merrill, First Things First (New York: Fireside, 1994), 37ff. The simple four-sector grid was developed by Covey, based on an observation of Gen. Eisenhower, quoting an anonymous college president: “‘I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.’ Now this, I think, represents a dilemma of modern man.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Address at the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches,” Evanston, Illinois, August 19, 1954, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-second-assembly-the-world-council-churches-evanston-illinois.

  6. Meier presents a version of this idea in Getting Results the Agile Way, 56, 65. He calls it the Rule of 3 and says that picking three items to focus on works because our minds naturally organize in threes. See Chris Bailey, The Productivity Project (New York: Crown Business, 2016), 40.

  7. Gwen Moran, “What Successful Leaders’ To-Do Lists Look Like,” Fast Company, March 25, 2014, https://www.fastcompany.com/3028094/what-successful-leaders-to-do-lists-look-like.

  8. Christina DesMarais, “The Daily Habits of 35 People at the Top of Their Game,” Inc., July 13, 2015, https://www.inc.com/christina-desmarais/the-daily-habits-of-35-people-at-the-top-of-their-game.html.

  9. Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, trans. C.D.N. Costa (New York: Penguin, 2005), 1, 2, 4.

  Chapter 9 Activate

  1. Matt Novak, “Thinking Cap,” Pacific Standard, May 2, 2013, https://psmag.com/environment/thinking-cap-gernsback-isolator-56505.

  2. Nikil Saval covers the history of this trend in his book Cubed, and Cal Newport counts the cost it levies on focus in Deep Work.

  3. “Can We Chat? Instant Messaging Apps Invade the Workplace,” ReportLinker, June 8, 2017, https://www.reportlinker.com/insight/instant-messaging-apps-invade-workplace
.html.

  4. I first started thinking about the distinctions between instant and delayed communication in 2017 when noticing the negative effect of instant communication on my own team. See Allan Christensen, “How Doist Makes Remote Work Happen,” ToDoist Blog, May 25, 2017, https://blog.todoist.com/2017/05/25/how-doist-works-remote; Amir Salihefendic, “Why We’re Betting Against Real-Time Team Messaging,” Doist, June 13, 2017, https://blog.doist.com/why-were-betting-against-real-time-team-messaging-521804a3da09; and Aleksandra Smelianska, “Asynchronous Communication for Remote Teams,” YouTeam.io, https://youteam.io/blog/asynchronous-communication-for-remote-teams.

  5. David Pierce, “Turn Off Your Push Notifications. All of Them,” Wired, July 23, 2017, https://www.wired.com/story/turn-off-your-push-notifications/.