People talk about "time management" and "work-life balance" but these concepts are flawed. You can't "manage" time, you can only decide how to use the time you have. And there's no such thing as perfect "balance." Instead:

1. Get crystal clear on your top priorities and commit to them fully.
2. Schedule your days around actions that support those priorities.
3. Take massive action on those few priorities. Forget about trying to do everything.
4. Be fully present and engaged in whatever you're doing, whether work or family time.
5. Accept that you'll feel uncomfortable. Push through and keep going anyway.

Section: 1, Chapter: 17

Author: Grant Cardone

Calculate how many times you'll see your loved ones before the end of their lives through this simple exercise:

1. Write down the name of a friend or family member you love deeply but don't see enough
2. Approximate how many times per year you see that person
3. Subtract the older person's age from 80 (their estimated remaining years)
4. Multiply the number of times you see them per year by their remaining years

This terrifyingly simple math creates a powerful awareness that can spark new priorities. When the author realized he would only see his 65-year-old father about 15 more times before he died, it prompted him to move across the country to be closer to family.

Section: 1, Chapter: 9

Author: Sahil Bloom

Estimates, especially long-term ones, are always wrong. The solution is to break big tasks and time frames into the smallest possible units. Instead of one 12-week project, frame it as 12 one-week projects.

By planning one week at a time, your estimates get more realistic. Your assumptions are regularly tested. You avoid investing heavily into plans that prove misguided later. When timeframes or tasks prove bigger than expected, you can adjust tactically without derailing the whole project.

Section: 1, Chapter: 5

Author: Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson

Develop the habit of letting small bad things happen. If you don't, you'll never find time for the more important things. Three tips that help:

1. Make people who send you e-mail do more work. Don't respond to open-ended emails. Have senders filter themselves by making them fill out a form or answer specific questions before you'll engage.
2. Do more work when you send or reply to emails. Break down tasks into processes in your messages. Don't just send one-line responses that require many more rounds of back-and-forth to resolve. Minimize friction by clearly describing the process (next steps, deadlines, etc.).
3. Don't respond. Use a sender filter with an auto-response indicating you are busy and may not respond. Don't respond if the email is ambiguous, not truly important or interesting to you, or if nothing really good would happen if you did respond and nothing really bad would happen if you didn't.

Section: 2, Chapter: 4

Author: Cal Newport

We can say no without actually uttering the word:

• "I am flattered that you thought of me but I'm afraid I don't have the bandwidth."
• "I would love to but I'm overcommitted at the moment."
• "Your project sounds wonderful. I would not be able to do it justice given my current commitments."
• "I am in the middle of something that I need to focus on, so I am afraid I will have to pass on this."
• "Let me check my calendar and get back to you." Saying no gracefully allows us to focus on our essential intent without damaging relationships.

Section: 3, Chapter: 11

Author: Greg McKeown

Use the Eisenhower Matrix to differentiate between urgent and important tasks:

1. **Important and urgent**: Do these tasks NOW
2. **Important but not urgent**: SCHEDULE time for these compounding activities
3. **Not important but urgent**: DELEGATE these tasks
4. **Not important and not urgent**: DELETE these time-wasting activities

Your goals with this matrix:

• Manage the important tasks so they rarely become urgent
• Spend most of your time on important, non-urgent tasks
• Minimize time spent in the bottom half of the matrix

Section: 1, Chapter: 9

Author: Sahil Bloom

To combat the pressure to be always available, establish clear boundaries to protect your time:

• Set a cut-off time for checking email at night and stick to it
• Take vacations and truly unplug from work (no sneaking off to check messages!)
• Block off personal events like doctor's appointments or school performances in your calendar and don't allow work meetings to be scheduled over them
• Turn off notifications on evenings and weekends to be more present with loved ones

Boundaries only work if you commit to upholding them consistently. Doing so gives you more control over your time and energy to focus on what matters most.

Section: 1, Chapter: 9

Author: Sheryl Sandberg

• Be very clear on your role and responsibilities. Gracefully turn down requests outside that scope.
• Create a system for saying no. Have go-to phrases or strategies to decline nonessential requests.
• Suggest an alternative. "I can't take on that project, but here is something I could do..."Offer a referral. "I'm not able to do it, but I know Sarah is great at that sort of analysis."
• Appeal to your essential intent. "My top priority is delivering Project X, so I need to focus there." Setting boundaries is an ongoing practice, but it gets easier with time as others learn to honor them.

Section: 3, Chapter: 14

Author: Greg McKeown

Parkinson's Law states that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. Use this principle to be more efficient:

1. Set shorter time blocks for low-importance tasks
2. Batch-process email in 1-3 constrained windows each day
3. Shorten standard meetings to 25 minutes
4. Work on big projects in 1-3 hour focus blocks
5. Batch dreaded personal tasks (cleaning, laundry) into short sprints

When you establish long fixed hours, you find unproductive ways to fill them. Instead, work like a lion: sprint, rest, repeat. The artificial pressure of time constraints makes you focus on what's truly important.

Section: 1, Chapter: 9

Author: Sahil Bloom

Practice zero-based budgeting. Instead of just continuing what you've always done, start from scratch and justify each activity anew.

• Apply selective criteria. If your initial evaluation of an opportunity doesn't score 90% or above, change the rating to 0 and walk away.
• Run a reverse pilot. Temporarily remove an initiative or activity and see if anyone notices. If not, consider eliminating it permanently.
• Get over FOMO (fear of missing out). Focus on the upside of what you'll be able to accomplish by uncommitting, not what you might miss out on.

Section: 3, Chapter: 12

Author: Greg McKeown

Ready to start time-bucketing your life? Here's how:

1. Brainstorm a list of all the experiences you'd like to have in your lifetime. Go wild - include anything that excites you, regardless of cost or difficulty.
2. Group these experiences into 5 or 10-year "buckets" based on when you'd ideally have them. Be realistic - put physically demanding activities in your younger buckets.
3. Within each bucket, rank your experiences by priority. Which matter most to you?
4. Begin pursuing your top-priority experiences in your current bucket. Don't put them off - remember, every bucket has an expiration date!
5. Repeat the process every 5-10 years.

By time-bucketing, you ensure you're always investing your life energy in the most fulfilling way possible. You live life by design, not default.

Section: 1, Chapter: 7

Author: Bill Perkins

To navigate information overload, treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket. Instead of seeing it as a container that gradually fills up and that you must empty, view it as a stream flowing past you.

From this stream, pick a few choice items without feeling guilty for letting all the others float by. The mere existence of something readable creates no obligation to read it.

Remember that consuming information is a present-moment activity - reading something interesting, moving, or amusing might be worth doing not just to improve your future self, but for the sake of that very half hour of being alive.

Section: 1, Chapter: 5

Author: Oliver Burkeman