The Daily Highlight: My favorite productivity tip (that actually works)
How often do you feel overwhelmed by your tasks?
Doing more does not mean that you make better use of your time. In fact, it is quite the opposite, by believing that you are “busy” with all kinds of tasks, you lose track of what is really important. I am sure that if you focus on the activities that advance your long term goals you will be able to enjoy a sexy, happy and productive life. For that there are hundreds of entrepreneurship gurus who write about how to set goals and several productivity experts with the systems you need to accomplish what you have to do.
This is the problem, you have different important goals and you plan to achieve them in different ways. So what do you have to do now? What is your priority? How can you make progress in one without feeling bad about not making progress in another?
This article should solve that problem with daily highlight, a concept I learned from the book “Make Time” by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky.
What is a daily highlight?
The idea is to choose an activity to place it on your calendar and protect it.
Activities like writing an article, editing a video, researching a client’s strategy or exercising and even going for a walk. Choose a single task that is vital and important to you. You may have a shitty day but if you did the most important task you will feel great satisfaction from a successful day. Of course, it is not the only activity that you will do in the day but it is the one that you will definitely make time to fulfill.
As the authors of the book Make Time wrote, “Having a daily highlight at the beginning of your day makes you intentional and focused on how you use your time.”
The 3 ways to pick your daily highlight
Choosing a highlight can seem confusing, considering that many of your tasks are important. The author suggests that you focus on these 3 variables to choose
Urgency: What do I have to do today, yes or yes?
Has it ever happened to you that you spent hours answering emails and in unproductive Zoom meetings all day only to realize that you did not do anything valuable?
I understand you all, we have been in that position, it feels like an unproductive and miserable day. If you have something that is urgent and you can’t let it go another day. Make it your highlight. Check your mail and calendar for projects that require immediate attention.
Completing them shouldn’t take 10 minutes, nor should it take 10 hours.
Examples of urgent highlights
- Send the brief to your client who is waiting for it this week
- Prepare dinner and organize your house if you have friends who will arrive
- Help your child with his science project for tomorrow’s science fair
Joy: What will give me the most joy?
It’s impossible to optimize your entire day in 5-minute blocks for maximum efficiency unless you’re Elon Musk.
The goal of the articles I publish is to make the impossible vision of having a perfect and organized day disappear. Instead, direct him to a happier, less reactive, and more autonomous life. In other words that you can do things because you really want to do them. Going out to see a movie or reading a fiction book may seem like “wasting time” activities but you’ve already completed all the tasks that move the needle to your biggest goals.
Why couldn’t you enjoy an afternoon doing what you love?
These are some examples of highlights that can give you joy
- Practice on your piano solo
- Go out on a romantic dinner with your partner
- Game night with the boys
- Go for a walk with your dog
Satisfaction: What task will give me the most satisfaction?
Leaving aside what you “have” to do, now focus on what you “want” to do like exercising, reading, meditating, spending more time with your family or working on your personal projects.
These are extremely vulnerable to procrastination because they do not demand immediate attention. In the words of Brett McKay, “Important tasks are those that contribute to our long-term mission, values, and goals.”
Using your highlight you can break the vicious cycle of “someday I will”
Here are some examples of satisfying highlights:
- Draft of 1000 words of your next article.
- 30 minutes of intense training
- Record the videos of your YouTube channel
How to create time for your highlight
Schedule your highlight: Never in life will you say “I feel like doing my daily highlight”. It is not an event that happens naturally, plan it in advance.
Lock your calendar: Schedule it in a space on your calendar, protect it and treat it like another meeting or commitment.
Learn to say no: Saying yes to everything distracts you, blurs your focus and makes you unproductive. When you learn to say “no”, you can say yes to what matters.
Your day starts the night before: Planning your day shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. But doing this can save you 1–2 hours of your day.
Create a “daily list”: Every night write down your tasks and your daily highlight. The most important ones that help you move forward. David Allen suggests that once a day you review your schedule and decide what you will do with the tasks you wrote down.
You know yourself better than anyone, trust your instinct
Choosing a highlight of the day does not have to be complicated, trust your intuition.
External events can happen that prevent you from fulfilling your highlight, such as emergencies and distractions. The important thing is that you be intentional about it and correct the schedules and times so that you can comply.
There’s no way to screw this up
By the way, this are my highlights of this week.
- Monday — Write article.
- Tuesday — Write article
- Wednesday — Plan client strategy
- Thursday — Write article.
- Friday — Spend time with my girlfriend
- Saturday — Read a new book
- Sunday — Plan the week
