18 Minutes:Book Review

Book Review

 

18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done

By 

Sadia Wali

“One way to keep the momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.”
– Michael Korda

As I began reading the book ‘18 Minutes’,  I pondered over my life; where did those years go?  Instead of focusing on my strengths and devoting time to the responsibilities that really mattered, I struggled with physical, mental, or emotional strain. The book, “18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done” written by Peter Bregman helped readers to find solution to their struggle and frustration. Peter Bregman has worked with CEOs and senior leaders for over 30 years to develop their leadership skills and personal growth and collaborative team work to bring organizational change.

 18 Minutes is an essential guide, providing comprehensive approach to how to manage a day, a moment and a year. Its goal is to teach us how to keep focus on to achieve meaningful work. If we look back and analyze our whole day, week or year, we simply say, Time Flies So Fast! How we can slow it down.

I quote the inspiring words of the author, 

“Time is the only element in the world that is irretrievable when it’s lost. Lose money and you can make more. Lose a friend and you can patch up the relationship. Lose a job and you can find another. But lose time and it’s gone forever.”

The author words, “Somehow I was missing that feeling of I’m doing the right things with the right people in the right way to make the most of who I am”     stirred me to think since we are highly obsessed with achieving success, we hardly reflect upon satisfying our inner joy and happiness. We are engaged with personal obligations and probably spend less quality time with family and friends.

 

“How can we work less and survive? Stepping away from your work might just be the key to increasing your productivity.”  the author expresses.

Stepping away from work can boost our mood, reduce anxiety and spark productivity. Some suggested tips in the chapter are to get involved in multiple identities, enjoy dinner with family or play tennis with a friend are meaningful activities that helps to make a modest life style. Bregman evaluates how he’s spending his time as according to him, “Most important, be consistent—doing the something repeatedly over time solidifies your identity”.

The book 18 Minutes is divided into four parts. 

Part 1: Pause   helps us to focus on the right things, follow a daily plan and avoid inevitable distractions that cause hindrance in achieving our goals. Reading part one was stimulating for me. I learned how to enjoy life and happiness and unlock my hidden potentials. The chapter focuses on building momentum and consistency of adopting positive habits that helps to accomplish goals. Peter Bregman in his book suggested two ways to pull back momentum. If we start to lose its force, gently begin to change direction. Slow Down and Start Over. 

 Part 1 discusses how to control emotional response “If you take a breath and delay your action, you give the prefrontal cortex time to control the emotional response. A brief pause will help you to deviate from impulsive behavior to rational. 

Here I would like to quote the case study given in the chapter.

When Luigi yelled at me in the hall, I took a deep breath and gave my prefrontal cortex a little time to win. I knew there was a misunderstanding and I also knew my relationship with Luigi was important. So instead of yelling back, I walked over to him. It only took a few seconds. But that gave us both enough time to become reasonable.

Similarly, I learned another tactic of settling down any important matter. Take a pause and ask yourself a single question: What is the outcome I want? Instead of reacting to any event taken place in the past, react to the future outcome. If your aim is “An improved relationship,” don’t yell back. Respond to the person in a normal voice; ask some questions which diminish his anger. This is the reaction that will help to boost up better relationship. Positive attitude will help to embrace weakness, focus on strengths and follow your passion and succeed.  

Part 2: What Is This Year About?  states how to organize and prioritize things in our life. 

I quote author’s words, “We’ll look at the four elements—your strengths, weaknesses, differences, and passions—that form the foundation of your success and happiness.”

I learned the significance of staying flexible while planning. Opportunity, persistence and luck helps you to move towards the right direction. After analyzing the plan for the day, we need to carry over for tomorrow’s plan. We should prioritize our tasks for the next day.  What’s no longer important need to be scratched out.

We model ourselves and our businesses after other people or businesses! The book highlights the fact that we need to develop self- analysis, analyze our thoughts and behavior. As author says, “If you look like other people, and if your business looks like other businesses, then all you’ve done is increase your pool of competition.  Self- Reflection and personal development help us to stay focused on our priorities.

Peter Bregman says, “One way to recover your passion is to pursue your desire. As you choose your focus for the year, pay less attention to “shoulds” and more attention to “wants.” Explicating this strategy, he said we need to reschedule our tasks by developing our passion to accomplish it. We need to ask ourselves  the following questions, “What about our daily work, does our daily life matter to us  Why are we doing it?

Three essential conditions should be followed:

·        You want to achieve it.

·        You believe you can achieve it.

·        You enjoy trying to achieve it.

I quote the inspiring words of the author,

“This is why you’d better enjoy trying to achieve your goals. Because you’ll never spend ten thousand hours doing anything you don’t enjoy. And if you don’t enjoy the trying part, you’ll never do it long enough to reach your goal.”

 “To home in on your passion, think about what you love doing—what’s important enough to you that you’re willing to persist over the year, even when it feels like you’re not succeeding.” writes the author.

At the end of part 2, the author emphasizes that demotivated people can be encouraged to pursue their goals if the goal is challenging and they are provided with the opportunity to achieve. The fear of failing may detain us from moving forward, however, if we comprehend the meaning of failure in our life, we will have great opportunities of success.

I personally feel failure is a process of learning. As I ponder over my success in life, I know it has not occurred over night.  My efforts were recognized and valued in different challenging environment, hence my learning boost up.

“If you believe your talent grows with persistence and effort, then you seek failure as an opportunity to improve. People with a growth mind-set feel smart when they’re learning, not when they’re flawless.”

“Failure is inevitable, useful, and educational. Just don’t give up—stay focused over the year—and it will pay off.”

Part 3: What Is This Day About, emphasizes how we focus into an 18-minute daily plan, make sure that the right things get done at the right moment. We need to prioritize and focus on five big things for the year ahead. Consequently, we need to create a to-do list for this purpose. The chapter begins with motivating words that really touched my heart, “If you pay attention to what’s happening now, the future will take care of itself. Don’t regret the past; don’t worry about the future; just be here now and all that.”

The author elucidates the idea by giving the example of driving a car. Distracted driving causes violent collusion. When you are driving, you never pay attention to where you are; you always pay attention to what is happening on the road ahead. As author says, “Plan your day ahead so you can fly through it, successfully maneuvering and moving towards your intended destination.” We should know where to focus and what to ignore .So the author suggests creating another list of unimportant things that can be ignored. 

As Bregman says, “To get the right things done, choosing what to ignore is as important as choosing where to focus.” The author further suggests three-day rule. This rule ensures that no task stays on your list for more than three days.

Part 3 ends with   thought-provoking words, 

“Spend a few minutes at the end of each day thinking about what you learned and with whom you should connect. These minutes are the key to making tomorrow even better than today.”

The last part 4: What Is This Moment About?  elucidates how to master distraction, you will learn how to get motivated and how to follow through even when it’s tempting to give up. How to protect yourself and your time by creating the right kind of boundaries. This section is divided into three subsections: Mastering Your Initiative, Mastering Your Boundaries, and Mastering Yourself.

The chapter emphasizes to   “Create an environment that naturally compels you to do the things you want to do.” We need to focus on real problems and opportunities. “What’s important is that your moment of choice is when you are in the right state of mind—when you need the least willpower—to make the best decision.”

Part 4 provide guidelines to help you stay on track.

• Resist the temptation to say yes too often 
• When you say no, mean it, and you won’t needlessly lose your time
• A few moments of transition time can help make your next task shorter, faster and more productive for you and others 
• When you take vacation—or any other time you want to be undisturbed—schedule a specific time to take care of the things that would otherwise creep into each and every available moment
• Distraction, used intentionally, can be an asset
• Don’t try to get it right in one big step. Just get it going.  Smaller steps give you the opportunity to succeed more often
• Stay alert and adapt to changing situations

Finally, I learned to embrace change in life. Change is inevitable. Change is constant. We must analyze ‘self’, the self- knowledge help us to maximize our efforts for change. Change in our approach leads to for personal growth and success.

 As I quote author’s words, “Welcome to life. The conditions are constantly shifting—almost as fast and frequently as the weather—and if you keep doing the same things in the rain that you did when it was nice and sunny, you’ll crash. You need to change your approach.”

As we master ourself with flexibility, we should stay on track and continue to move forward.

 I would end by quoting the words of Simone de Beauvoir,

“One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compass