How to do what matters to you everyday

Choose a daily highlight

May 10, 2023

Hi friends,

If you have ever read the book Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, you’ve probably come across this idea of a Daily Highlight. I’m about halfway through this book and I’ve already found so many practical strategies that I can start experimenting with in order to manage my time better.

The book really spoke to me because I’ve been struggling with carving out time for the things that I really care about. I always find myself saying: I don’t enough time because there is so much going on. The truth is there is always a lot going on. Everyone is busy. There are a lot of tasks that you must do. And there are also many tasks that you should do and want to do. How do I restructure my day to align with what is important to me?

person holding gray and beige roman numeral alarm clock — Photo by Elena Koycheva on Unsplash

With starting a new job, I’ve been adjusting to a new schedule and redesigning my days around my workload and lifestyle. So I’ve been looking at how to implement this idea of a Daily Highlight.

What is a daily highlight?

A daily highlight is a single activity everyday that you prioritise and protect in your calendar. This activity can be a huge goal or a small task, but it has to be something that you treat as your non-negotiable for the day.

I’ve experimented with different types of tasks as my daily highlight from “Finish writing this newsletter” to “Take a walk outside”. What I’ve found after my experiment was that adjusting the magnitude of the task depending on the day will help you stay consistent because there are some days that will feel heavier than others. Another tip for choosing your daily highlight from the book is to consider these three factors:

Joy: Does it bring you joy?
Satisfaction: Is it going to be satisfying after you get it done?
Urgency: Is this task urgent?

Sometimes these factors can really conflict with one another eg: It is quite urgent, but it doesn’t bring you joy. However, I found that thinking about the level of joy and satisfaction from completing my daily highlight is quite motivating and reminds me of why I consider it an important task, even if it not a “productive” task.

So after you choose your daily highlight, you can note it down somewhere. Preferably somewhere where you will keep glancing at throughout the day.

Then comes the hard part. Actually scheduling it in and protecting it in the calendar.

This part takes a little bit of trial and error, but here are some strategies that the book suggests and which I recommend as well.

Decide on a time of day to do your daily highlight: I’ve found that splitting my days into more sections also helps (eg: early morning, late morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, night)
Block time in your calendar: helpful for those who time block already
Stick with the same daily highlight for the week if you don’t get it done: the repetition will annoy you and hopefully push you towards getting it done

That’s it! A simple yet powerful way to get a important task done every day. Let me know if you try it out.

Too Good Not To Share

Discussion about this post