18 Minutes 

Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done 
Peter Bregman 
 

Book Overview from the Publisher 

Based  upon  his  weekly  ​Harvard  Business Review columns (which is one of the most popular columns on 
HBR.com,  receiving  hundreds  of  thousands  of  unique  page  views  a  month), ​18 MINUTES clearly shows 
how  busy  people  can  cut  through  all  the  daily  clutter  and  distractions  and  find  a  way  to  focus  on those 
key items which are truly the top priorities in our lives. 
 
Bregman  works  from  the  premise  that  the  best  way  to  combat  constant  and  distracting  interruptions  is 
to  create  productive  distractions  of  one's  own.  Based  upon  a  series  of  short  bite-sized  chapters,  his 
approach  allows  us to safely navigate through the constant chatter of emails, text messages, phone calls, 
and  endless  meetings  that  prevent  us  from  focusing  our  time  on  those  things that are truly important to 
us.  
 
Mixing  first-person  insights  along  with  unique  case  studies,  Bregman  sprinkles  his  charming  book  with 
pathways which help guide us -- pathways that can get us on the right trail in 18 minutes or less. 
 

KEY POINTS COVERED IN THIS SUMMARY: 

1. Pause ​- Pausing where we are right now to take stock of the 
situation 
2. Year ​- Thinking about what the focus is for the year 
3. Day -​ Thinking about what to focus on for the day and how to plan 
and manage it 
4. Moment ​- Ways to manage your life from moment to moment 
 
18  Minutes  by  Peter  Bregman  is  part  management,  part  self-improvement,  and  part  business 
philosophy. All in all it’s a great book on how to manage your life as time flies by.  
 
The following are the big ideas from the book: 
 
1. It's impossible to get it all done.​ It's dangerous to even try. Therefore: 
○ Let's not try to fit in everything.  
○ Let's not try to do everything.  
○ Let's identify what's most important to us and do only those things. 

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 2. Planning  by  itself  is  good,  but  it  is  incomplete.  ​The hardest part about managing your 
time is not in the planning but in the doing. Therefore: 
○ Get started.  
○ Stick to the momentum.  
○ Avoid that busyness that gets you stuck for a lot of days.  
○ Execute. 
 
The  ideas  from  the  book  are  further  divided  into  4  broad  areas,  going  from  a  large  time  scale 
down to a small time scale: 
1. PAUSE: Pausing where we are right now to take stock of the current situation 
2. YEAR: Thinking about what the focus is for the year  
3. DAY: Thinking about what the focus is for the day and how to plan and manage it 
4. MOMENT: Thinking about how you can manage your life from moment to moment 

1) Pause 
 
What this principle means: We should not see the world as we expect it to be but as it is. 
  
We  have  to  pause to be able see where we are and what's going on as it is rather than as what 
we expect it to be so that we can accordingly plan how to tackle it.   

Expand your view of yourself 

 
The idea of ​not limiting ourselves​ is one of my favorites in the book.  
 
There  are  so  many  different  possibilities  of  who  you  are,  so  don’t  be  limited  in  your  view  of 
yourself on just the professional side.  
● See yourself in all of your glory in all the different areas of life.  
● You  may be a CEO or an engineer or a doctor or an employee or a businessman -- but at 
the same time you may also be a golfer, a skier, a musician, a parent, a child…  
● Think of yourself as a complete person. 
● When  you  allow  yourself  to  believe  that you are much bigger and when you spend time 
on  these  different  areas,  you  get  a  perspective  beyond  your  scope  that  helps  you solve 
problems when you get stuck. 

Stop reacting to the past and start acting towards the future 
Whenever there is an event and we react to the event, ​there i​ s an outcome.  
 
 

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 Let’s think of the outcome that we want and then act accordingly  
rather than react and then find the outcome.  
 

2) Year 

What do we need to do in a year? 

4 elements to identify in order to get a better grip of ourselves:

 
1. Our strengths  
○ The things that we are good at 
○ Our passion 
○ Things that get us the most excited 
○ Play  to  your  strengths:  Don’t  play  other  people’s  game;  play  a  game  that  you 
design and that you can win in 
 
2. Our weaknesses 
○ Rather than trying to overcome weaknesses, make them a part of who you are 
○ Live with them and integrate them to make an impact in the world 
 
3. Our differences 
○ Identify what makes you different, rather than trying to fit in with the society 
○ Don’t try to be the person who is all things to all people. 
○ Don’t keep trying to blend in. 
○ It  is  much  easier  to  be  different and to be who you are because that is when you 
stand out and get noticed.  
○ As you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.  
○ You may polarize a lot of people but you will win. 
 
4. Our passions  
○ Our strengths and passion tie in together very strongly 
○ 4 components that make passions successful: 
i. Desire  
● Understand  your  obsessions  and  you  will  understand  your 
motivation, the thing for which you would do anything.  
● Ask yourself:  
○ Where am I obsessing?  
○ What are the things that really drive me well?  
○ What is it that I'm always motivated to do? 

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 ● These things are a clear indication where your passions might lie.  
ii. Persistence  
● You can do anything as long as -- 
○ You want to achieve it 
○ You believe you can achieve it 
○ You enjoy trying to achieve it 
● To  enjoy  trying  hard  to  achieve  it,  not  just  wanting  it,  is  a  critical 
concept.  
● Outliers  ​by  Malcolm  Gladwell  (which  I  highly  recommend)  talks 
about  10,000  hours of practice -- the number hours of practice he 
says we need to actually become great at any skill or craft.  
○ If  you  enjoy  those  hours  of  practice,  then  you  will  spend 
that time.  
○ But  if  you  don't  enjoy  that  practice,  then  10,000  hours 
would seem to be a lot of time.  
○ If  you spend 1 hour every day on that thing, you can spend 
almost  30  years  trying  to  master  what  you  want.  Unless 
you  enjoy  it,  you  will  not  really  stick  to  something  for  30 
years.  
● If  you  want  to  be  great  at  something,  you  also  have  to  allow 
yourself  to  be  clumsy  and  enjoy  it.  Allow  yourself  to  fail,  to  learn, 
to  not  protect  your  ego,  to  just  keep  going  with  it.  That  is 
persistence.  
iii. Ease 
● Although  it  runs  kind  of  counter  to  the  idea  of  persistence,  it  all 
fits  together.  You  can  be  persistent  but  at  the  same  time  feel  it’s 
easy. This is because you ​enjoy the effort and you ​enjoy the failure 
as well, thanks to the l​ earning​ involved in it.  
iv. Meaning 
● Understanding  what  matters  to  you  and  then  spending  time  on 
that 
● First,  take  stock  of  what  you’re  spending  time  on,  and  then 
ask/understand: 
○ What  is  working  for  you  right  now?  What  matters  to  you 
the  most  on  a  daily  basis,  on  a weekly basis, on the things 
you do in life?  
○ What  are  the  things  that  you  don't  really  care  about 
(things you do just because you have to do them)?  
○ What  are  the  things  that  bother  you  so  much  that  you 
don't  like  to  do  them,  but  unfortunately  you  are  spending 
time doing them? 
○ Simply  put,  to  sum  up  these  3  questions  --  ​what's 
awesome, what's neutral, and what's alienating you?  

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 ○ And  then  ​spend  time  only  on  what's  awesome  --  the 
things that are working for you​ and are ​enjoyable for you.  
 

What do we need to avoid this year?  

2 Components:  
1. Do not surrender after failure.  
○ The  path  to  success  in  any  endeavor  in  life  is  just like bodybuilding. To build our 
bodies -- 
■ We have to push ourselves to higher and higher weights.  
■ We  have  to  push  ourselves  to  failure  with  the  current  weight  that  we 
have. That is the only time the muscle will draw. 
■ If  the  muscle  is  not  failing  with the weight that we have, it's probably not 
drawing.  
○ Growth  mindset  vs.  Fixed  mindset  -  a  concept  based  on  the  book  ​Mindset  by 
Carol Dweck, where she talks about the 2 different mindsets:  
■ Growth mindset 
● We believe that our talents and abilities are not fixed 
● We  can  grow  and  learn  and  do  whatever  we  want  to  do  in 
whatever we wish to do.  
■ Fixed mindset  
● We are stuck with what we believe is possible.  
● We  believe  that  are  our  innate  talents  and  skills  at  anything  are 
beyond our capability.  
● We  are  scared  of  failures  and  of  trying,  because  if  things  are  not 
within our innate ability, then why do them?  
■ The  key  for  success  in  any  endeavor  is  to  have the growth mindset, with 
which we always try to boldly figure things out. 
2. Do not get paralyzed by overwhelm; just keep going. 

Annual focus  
● The secret to success is to not do too many things. 
● Successful  people  who  are  those  who  are  spending  most  of  their  time doing the things 
that  they  enjoy  the  most.  They  focus  on  what’s  important  to  them  and  cut  out 
everything else.  
○ Tiger Woods plays golf all the time.  
○ Warren  Buffett  is  an  investor  and  that's  all  he  does  and  thinks  of  all  the  time. 
Investing is what he believes in.  
○ Richard Branson enjoys what he does as an entrepreneur all the time.  

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 ● Identify 5
​ areas of focus​ that will comprise your year.  
○ Spend  time  95%  of  your  time  on  those  and  5%  on  other  things.  (That  part  may 
be hard to do but the key is to be able to get as close to it as possible.)  

3) Day 
 
1. Plan the day ahead.​ If we don’t plan the day, we’re going to lose today. 
 
2. Decide  what  to  do.  ​This  should  be  within  the  5  areas of focus (as previously discussed 
here). 
○ If  we  are  not  spending  the  95%  of  our  time  on  those  5  areas  of  focus,  we need 
to find ways to refocus. 
○ Again,  identify  all  the  different  things  that  you could be doing within the 5 areas 
of focus identified for the year. And then decide what not to do.  
 
3. Decide  what  not  to  do  ​-  Deciding  what  to  do  and  deciding  what  not  to  do  are  equally 
important.   
○ The  key:  Have  an  “Ignore”  list  along  with  the  equally  important  To-do  list.  In 
order  to  get  the  right  things  done,  choosing  to  ignore  is  just  as  important  as 
choosing to focus.  
○ Related  to  this  is  a  news  article  in  which  Marissa  Meyers,  CEO  of  Yahoo!,  is 
saying how she makes her to-do list every day.  
■ She  does  a  prioritization  by  going  over  the  top  things  and  the  bottom 
things on her list. 
■ She does not worry about the things at the bottom that do not get done. 
■ She's glad that she gets the most important things in her to-do list done. 
■ That  is  what  we  need  to  cultivate:  the  habit  of  ignoring  what  we  don't 
need to do. 
 
4. When tomorrow​ - Calendaring it in. 
○ If  you  really  want to get something done, decide beforehand and when you'll get 
it done.  
○ Research  has  shown  numerous  times  that  if  you  put  the  specific  time  and place 
you'll  get  it  done,  you  are  around  80% likely to get it done.  But if you do not put 
a time on it, your likelihood of doing that task falls to below 30%.  
○ Note  the  drastic  difference  between  calendaring  it  in  and  not  calendaring  it  in, 
which indicates your likelihood to do that task or not.  
○ The  same  goes  for  rituals.  The  power  of  a  ritual  is  in  its  predictability.  It  is  very 
important  for  us  to  be  able  to  say  what,  when,  and  where  we're  going  to  do 
something important. 
 

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 5. 18-minute ritual​ - How to spend 18 minutes to focus your life 
○ 5 minutes in the morning​ - Identify the key items and put them in your calendar 
○ 5 minutes at nighttime​ - Look at how did the day went and ask yourself: 
■ What were the successes and challenges?  
■ What  were the things I learned? What should I improve tomorrow? What 
should I do differently? 
■ Who  do  I  need  to  reach  out  to?  Who  are  the  people who I need to thank 
or give feedback to or ask something from?  
○ 1 minute every hour for the 8 hours of work  
■ Take deep breath at the beginning of every hour.  
■ Think about the last hour: Did you use your hour properly?  
■ Think  about  the  hour  to  come:  How  are  you  going  to  use  the  next  hour? 
Who  are  you  going  to  meet?  Who  are  you  going  to  be?  What  are  you 
going to do?  
○ Again,  the power of ritual is in its predictability. If you make this ritual predictable 
by putting it in your calendar, then it's highly likely that you'll get it done.  
 
So  that's  the  day  for  you:  planning  it  ahead,  deciding  what  to  do,  deciding  what  not  to  do, 
putting it in a calendar, and using the 18-minute ritual.  
 

4) Moment 
 
So  far  we  have  tackled  the  steps  and  the  plans  we  need to make. Now, we have to actually do 
them. This is where the rubber hits the road.  
 
There  are  times  when  we  decide  to make these grand plans, put them in the calendar, but then 
somehow  we  fail  to  take  action.  We  fail to get started. Here are various techniques we can use 
to actually get going on that plan.  

INITIATIVE 
 
1. We  need  less  motivation  than  we  think.  A  lot  of  us  think  in  order  to  do  certain  tasks, 
we need a lot of motivation just to get started. But that's not the truth at all.  
○ We actually don't need a lot of motivation.  
■ If  you  need  to  go running for an hour, the only motivation you need to do, 
in  all  likelihood,  is:  Put  your  running  shoes  on  and then walk outside that 
door and go walking for 2 minutes.  

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 ■ A  total  ritual  that  would  take  you  just  a  few  minutes  is  all  the  action you 
need  and  then  the  motivation  will  come.  You  do  not  need  the motivation 
for an hour.  
■ Act  in  order to motivate yourself, rather than motivate yourself in order to 
act.  
■ The hardest part: That initial moment of discipline. But after that it’s easy. 
● EXAMPLE:  Jumping  in  the  cool  pool  on  a  cold  morning.  You don't 
want to jump in, you try to dilly-dally with it, you put your foot and 
then  your  leg  in  there.  It’s  much  easier  to  just  jump  into  it  in  that 
little moment.  
● EXAMPLE:  Doing  accounting  or  some  billing  or  your  taxes.  Don't 
try  to  get  motivated  and  do  it  for  the  next  few  hours.  ​Just  set 
yourself  the  first  5  minutes.  Say,  “I'm  just  gonna  do  it  for  5 
minutes  and  I'm  going  to  take  this  action  for  5  minutes  and  see 
how  it  takes  over.”  What  eventually  happens  is  that  in  5  minutes 
-- 
○ You'll find the motivation that you need  
○ You’ll continue on.  
○ You'll actually start enjoying it and you will not give up. 
 
2. “Nintendo Wii” 
○ Instead  of  rewarding  ourselves  with  money  or  things  that  do  not  excite  us, ​let's 
make  it  fun to motivate ourselves rather than make a problem big. ​This usually 
comes  in  when  there  are  challenging  problems  to  solve  and  we  are  not  able  to 
find solutions. 
○ How  this  idea  came  to  be:  One  of  Peter’s  clients  was  trying  to  solve  a  problem 
for  2  years.  They  put  up  a  cash  bounty  of  up  to  around  $5,000  for  anyone  who 
solves the problem. Yet people would not come forth and solve the problem. And 
then,  one  time,  they  decided  to  make  it  a  little  more  fun.  They  announced  that 
whoever  solves  the  problem  gets  a  Nintendo  Wii.  Everyone  was made aware of 
it.  Within  a  week,  an  engineer  solved  the  problem  --  because  it  was  fun.  It  was 
motivating and exciting.  
○ That's  the  concept.  If  you  have  any  part  of  your  life  where  you're  getting 
challenged, make it fun for yourself as well.  
 
3. Move the table 
○ What this idea means:  
■ The environment can help us a lot in taking action.  
■ Making  it easy to do the things that we need to do and making it hard not 
to do the things that we don't need to do.  
○ EXAMPLE:  Just  a  10-second technology hiccup can dissuade as much as 50% of 
users  from  following  through  on  doing  what  they  need  to  do,  like  filling  out  a 
timecard. It was all that was preventing them from doing it. 

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 ○ Therefore,  let’s  make  it  easy  on  ourselves.  It  could  be  as  simple  as  cleaning  up 
your  work  desk  pristine,  making  it  very  nice  and  appealing  for  yourself  so  that 
when  you  are  there  you're  going  to  actually sit there, enjoy working, and not get 
distracted. M
​ ake your environment help you take action.  
 

BOUNDARIES 
1. Say  no.  Every  time  you get interrupted, there’s a 40% likelihood that you will not  return 
to  the  task  that  you  started.  Hence,  you're  losing  a  lot  of  efficiency  or  productivity 
because  of  interruptions.  So  draw  boundaries  and say no when you are doing what you 
need to do. 
 
2. Increase  transition  time.  There  are  times  when  you  have those important things where 
you need to transition them, and that can save you tremendously.  
○ What  increasing  transition  time  means: Making the important task that you have 
coming  up  faster  and  shorter,  and  therefore  you’re  more  productive.  Even  a 
5-to-10-minute  planning  can  shave  off  30  minutes  out  of  the  task.  So  spend 
those transition times to plot how you're going to maximize the outcome. 
 
3. Put  it  on  the  calendar.  Think  about  the outcome and then do all the things beforehand 
so  that  during  the  task  /  meeting  /  important  assignment,  you  will  be  much  more 
focused on getting it done.  
 
4. Shorten  transition  time.  Sometimes  you're  just  spending  too  much  time  spinning  in 
circles trying to do something.  
○ For  example,  you have to jump into that cold pool. You're spending so much time 
just  dipping  your  toe,  then  your  leg,  and  then  your  waist  instead of just jumping 
in. You would have shortened the transition time by going for it.  
○ In  some  ways  it  ties  to  the  initial  idea  of not needing so much time, because you 
could just get started with the smallest change and then you can keep on going.  
 
5. Say  yes  appropriately.  Don’t  just  continuously  say  yes  to  everything and everyone that 
comes your way.  
 

YOURSELF 
This  part  is  about  managing  yourself  by  getting  over  perfectionism.  The  key  here  is  that  we 
should not worry about perfectionism. 

1. Get over perfectionism 

○ The world does not reward perfectionism, it only rewards productivity. 
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 ○The  key  to  managing  and  defeating  perfectionism:  ​Don't  try to get it right in one 
big step. Just get it going.  
○ The  smallest  steps  give  you  the  opportunity  to  succeed​,  and  that  builds  your 
confidence. So don't try to get it right in one big step. Examples: 
■ Don't try to write a book, just write a page.  
■ Don't  try  to  do  the  whole  project,  just  do  the  first  10  minutes  of  the 
project.  
○ Good enough is good enough​. The key:  
■ Get started. 
■ Get it going. 
■ Do it often.  
■ If  you  do  it  often  enough,  you  will  get  it  right.  So  it's  still  trying  to  get  it 
right in order to get close to perfection.  
 
2. Single-task 
○ The key is ​not to multitask​ because -- 
■ It's inefficient  
■ It's unproductive 
■ It's stressful 
■ The quality of our output is low.  
■ It is by far one of the most unproductive and stressful things we can do to 
ourselves.  
○ Several  experiments  that  had  been  conducted  show  that  when  people 
multitask-- 
■ Stress levels go up 
■ Quality of work goes down 
■ The time that takes to get things done ​goes down  
○ A  lot  of  people  think  they  can  multitask.  It's  not  true.  ​The  human  brain  is  a 
single-tasking machine.​ Here’s how to use single-tasking: 
■ When you focus on something, turn off all your distractions. 
■ Give yourself very tight timelines to complete certain tasks. 
● Instead  of  trying  to  give  yourself  all  the  time  in  the  world,  give 
yourself  30  minutes  for  a  task  that  usually  takes  you  an  hour  to 
do. 
● Focus  all  your  energy  on  finishing  in  30  minutes.  When  you  give 
yourself  shorter  timelines,  you  do  not  have  time  for  other  things 
(e.g.,  checking  the  browser,  answering  the  phone  or  that  email, 
etc.). You only have time to do this thing.  
● Cutting  down  your  time  will  allow  you  to  focus  singularly  on  the 
task.  When  you  have  half  the  time  of  what  you  normally  would 
have  to  complete  the  task,  you're  not  going  to  spend  the  time 
dilly-dallying  (or  thinking  about  your  email  or  that  phone  call  or 

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 that  text  message  or  that  Facebook  update).  You're  just  going  to 
go focus on it because you have much less time now.  
 
3. Shoot for imperfect 
○ To  get  over  the  whole  perfectionism  syndrome,  just  say,  “I'm not going to go for 
perfect.  I'm  going  to  shoot  for  imperfect  because  that's  going  to  be  enough  for 
me.” 
 

GETTING STARTED IS THE HARDEST 

 
Now,  having  gone through all of these key points from the book, one of the important things for 
us to understand is that -- we can do all the planning and the thinking, but getting started is the 
hardest  part.  It  can  feel  like  it's  a  very  daunting  task.  It  will  take  a  lot of thought and effort and 
energy.  
 
But  all  we  need  to  do  is  to  have  the  moment.  Get  started,  and  once  you  get  started  you  will 
have all the momentum, and once you have momentum, it will be hard to stop.  
 
So get started. Don't try to do the whole thing, just get started.  
 
Related Books: 
●  
 
 

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