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It Starts with a Highlight, Not a To-Do List You wake up, check your phone, scroll a bit—nothing urgent, just inertia. By noon, your attention’s sliced into a hundred tabs, pings, and half-read threads. You were “busy,” but nothing moved. Another day filled, not shaped. Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky is a reset. A reminder that time isn’t managed—it’s designed. Their move? Pick a highlight. One thing. Not the most urgent. Not the loudest. The one that, if protected, makes the day matter. Then build around it. Deceptively simple. Quietly radical. Knapp and Zeratsky treat your day like a buggy system. The biggest bug? The “Busy Bandwagon” and “Infinity Pools”—email, social, Slack, YouTube. Always there, always pulling. Left unchecked, they eat your day in slices. So instead of strict systems, they give tools. Tiny experiments. Block Instagram till noon. Switch your home screen to grayscale. Batch email into two check-ins. Write your highlight on a sticky note and slap it on your laptop. Each is a micro-prototype. No dogma—just try. Track energy. Keep what works. Drop what doesn’t. It’s not about more. It’s about what matters—on purpose. Craig Mod did this by nuking social apps. A Kyoto café became his ritual space. Not for hustle. For attention. For flow. Andrea Loubier, a founder with a tiny team, used Make Time to fight calendar clutter. She cut meetings. Protected flow blocks. Guarded creative time like code. The book’s packed with moves. From tactical—batching, blocking, energizing—to philosophical. Swapping FOMO for JOMO. Noticing what really recharges you. A walk. A micro-meditation. Lunch without your phone. But the unlock: these aren’t hacks. They’re attention experiments. That hits home for indie hackers and founders—people juggling shifting roadmaps, side gigs, endless tabs, shiny distractions. We don’t need hustle porn. We need focus fuel. And it starts with one highlight. Maybe it’s drafting your landing page. Recording a demo. Or a run that clears your head before Figma. Whatever it is—make it the centerpiece, not the leftovers. When you build around one meaningful thing, the rest snaps into place. Not perfectly. But intentionally. So tomorrow—before your phone, before the scroll—pause. Pick one highlight. Write it down. Guard it. Don’t just fill your day. Make it.