PDF Summary:Free to Focus, by Michael Hyatt

Modern society constantly pushes us to achieve more, while at the same time offering more distractions to siphon away our time and energy. Free to Focus offers a solution to this paradox: Achieve more by doing less. Leadership and productivity expert Michael Hyatt suggests that you streamline your schedule and eliminate as many tasks as possible—leaving you free to focus on what really matters.

In this guide, we’ll explain Hyatt’s definition of productivity, which emphasizes what you get done rather than just how much you get done. We’ll then introduce the Productivity Matrix, a crucial tool for determining how you could spend your time more effectively. Finally, we’ll discuss four strategies for maximizing your productivity.

Our commentary will compare Hyatt’s ideas with those of other influential productivity guides, such as Stephen R. Covey’s First Things First and Ali Abdaal’s Feel-Good Productivity. We’ll also suggest some steps to help you get started on your personal journey of productivity.

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Hyatt adds that the Productivity Matrix is the perfect tool for evaluating requests and opportunities. Before committing to something, consider whether it falls into your Productivity Zone, meaning the area where your skills and interests align with each other.

If this new task is in your Productivity Zone (and you have the time for it) you’ll most likely want to accept that commitment. If not, you should strongly consider turning the other person down.

Consider Whether Your Commitments Meet Your Needs

Free to Focus shares many principles with the book First Things First by management expert Stephen R. Covey. One of the most notable similarities is both books’ emphasis on eliminating tasks and activities that don’t serve a purpose. However, Covey adds to this idea by identifying four essential needs that everyone shares:

1. Survival: To sustain life, people need physical necessities like food, shelter, and medicine.

2. Connection: People need to socialize in order to stay mentally and emotionally healthy. Connection includes both friendships and (for most people) romantic relationships.

3. Learning: People naturally crave knowledge and new experiences. Without such novelty, we tend to become bored or even depressed.

4. Giving back: People want to feel important and useful, like they’ve improved the world in some way. This is also closely related to the desire to be remembered after death.

So, when deciding whether to make a commitment, first consider whether it will help you meet one of your fundamental needs—and if making that commitment will force you to pass up another opportunity that would meet your needs more effectively.

Tip: Make a “Do Not” List

To help keep yourself on track, Hyatt says that creating a list of things not to do is just as important as maintaining a to-do list.

This involves examining your current commitments and activities and identifying which tasks can be permanently eliminated from your life. Then, write those tasks down so that you remember not to do them, or to make commitments relating to them, anymore.

For instance, if you often stay up late playing a particular video game instead of getting a good night’s sleep, that game is a good candidate for your “do not” list.

(Shortform note: Permanently removing something from your life—even something you’ve identified as unproductive—is often difficult because of what psychologists call loss aversion, where people feel loss more strongly than they would feel an equivalent gain. For example, the happiness you feel from a bartender handing you a drink is much less intense than the disappointment you’d feel if you then spilled it. Due to loss aversion, adding something to your “do not” list feels very risky; the benefits of doing so would have to far outweigh the loss of what you gave up in order to seem worth it.)

Turning People Down

As we’ve discussed, it’s important to carefully choose your commitments. To help you do so, Hyatt offers some advice on how to effectively (but politely) turn people down.

First of all, remember that your time and energy are finite, and decide who you’re willing to spend those limited resources on. These are most likely people such as your family, your boss, your friends, and so on. Making these distinctions helps you feel ready to protect your productivity by saying no if someone who isn’t on your list of important people tries to request your time and attention.

Second, recognize that you can (usually) reject a request without causing any serious resentment or hurt feelings. Hyatt says that you can do so simply by setting your refusal in the proper context. When turning someone down, it’s usually best to start by making it clear that you listened to their request and gave it due consideration. Next, clearly and firmly decline the request. Finally, offer an alternative solution if possible. Now the other person understands that you heard them out, and you do want to help, but their request just wasn’t feasible for you.

(Shortform note: In many cases, the fear of upsetting someone else by turning down a request is overblown. As psychologist Matthew Boland writes, most people will be understanding, rather than angry or disappointed. If saying no is something you find difficult to do, they may even be pleased that you’re taking care of yourself by putting your own needs first. Conversely, those who do get upset over being rejected were probably trying to manipulate or exploit you in some way—they’re only angry because they consider themselves more important than you, and they expected you to do the same.)

What if Saying “No” Feels Impossible?

Psychotherapist Amy Morin, author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, writes that some people have a very hard time turning others down. People like this are commonly known as “people-pleasers,” and their fear of saying no usually comes from a lack of self-esteem.

Such people feel the need to be accepted and liked because they get their sense of self-worth from other people. As a result, the thought of disappointing someone else—in this case, by telling them no—causes intense anxiety for the people-pleaser. In extreme cases, this can lead to burnout and self-destructive behavior because they continually place other people’s wants above their own needs.

Morin recommends breaking out of people-pleasing habits by starting small. For instance:

• Say “no” to something relatively unimportant, like a project that you know someone else can handle, or a dinner date you don’t want to go to.

• Give your honest opinion about something simple, like a popular movie you didn’t care for.

• Stand up for something you believe in. While this is more consequential than the other options, you’ll likely find that having the “courage of your convictions” makes it easier to break through your anxiety.

Strategy #2: Give Your Tasks to Other People

We’ve discussed getting rid of unproductive tasks in order to free up your time and energy for meaningful work. However, it’s most likely impossible to eliminate every activity outside of your Productivity Zone, which is why this section will discuss another strategy: letting other people handle tasks for you.

By delegating tedious or time-consuming responsibilities to others, you can dramatically improve your productivity and your satisfaction. While this approach is more difficult at first than handling tasks yourself—you need to find the right people, negotiate their compensation, and train them—the long-term benefits will far outweigh that initial investment of time and effort.

(Shortform note: Hyatt writes as though delegation is a simple matter, but for those who don’t have a lot of money, compensating others for such work isn’t feasible. One possible solution is skill bartering: Instead of paying people with money, arrange a fair trade where they help you with a task they’re good at, and in return, you help them with a task that you’re good at. For example, perhaps someone you know would be willing to help you make a financial plan in exchange for your help with a marketing campaign.)

In this section we’ll review various types of delegation, then share Hyatt’s advice on choosing which tasks to delegate.

Choosing the Right Kind of Delegation

Hyatt notes that there are various types of delegation, each of which provide different levels of autonomy and responsibility. It’s thus important to clarify exactly what you expect the other person to do and how much freedom they have in choosing how to do it. This will help prevent confusion and frustration for both parties.

The most basic type of delegation is for when you simply want a specific task done. The person you assign the task to will have minimal autonomy, but also minimal responsibility—all they have to do is follow your instructions.

(Shortform note: Free to Focus was published in 2019—since then, many AI tools have emerged as efficient ways to handle simple but time-consuming tasks that you might have previously used this type of delegation for. For example, ChatGPT and Claude are useful for writing first drafts of emails or other documents, Otter has a variety of tools for transcription and note-taking during meetings, and Jasper can create marketing materials like blog posts or social media content.)

Hyatt’s next type of delegation is for when you want someone to look into a particular subject or problem. For instance, you might need information about what movies are currently popular with a certain demographic or what software could help with a particularly tedious part of your workflow.

This kind of delegation requires you to provide a bit more autonomy. Step-by-step instructions won’t always work for conducting research, so your worker needs to have enough freedom to explore the issue as they see fit.

After completing their research, they should report their findings, and offer recommendations if asked. However, at this level of delegation, all final decisions are up to you.

(Shortform note: Another benefit of delegation, particularly when you allow your workers a degree of autonomy, is that it encourages them to actively seek feedback. This is because, by giving them autonomy, you’re showing trust and confidence in their abilities, and they’ll naturally want to live up to your expectations. Furthermore, employees who ask for feedback of their own volition—and use that feedback to improve their job performance—will make you even more productive in the long run, because you won’t need to spend as much time checking and correcting their work.)

The final kind of delegation Hyatt discusses is empowering the person to make decisions and implement them without your approval. Even at this level of autonomy, it’s common to require regular reports and updates: what decisions the person made, how they executed those decisions, and their results. With that said, if you trust the person enough, you can give them complete autonomy by waiving that requirement.

(Shortform note: While allowing someone else to make and implement decisions without your oversight can be risky, it may also lead to better outcomes for both of you. The authors of Humanocracy say that empowering your workers to make decisions—and holding them accountable for the results of those decisions— boosts their engagement and job performance. This is because autonomy and accountability give people a sense of ownership; the work feels like it’s truly theirs, so they’ll try to do work they can be proud of. Conversely, companies that push bureaucratic ideals like efficiency and compliance don’t foster that sense of ownership, so their employees tend to be apathetic toward their work.)

Strategy #3: Automate as Much as Possible

Delegation works well for difficult or complex tasks. Unfortunately, in many cases, simple tasks that you need to do regularly take up a great deal of time that you’d prefer to spend on more meaningful work. Hyatt says that automation offers a powerful solution to this problem.

In this section we’ll review three areas where automation can significantly reduce your mental load and boost your productivity: the small tasks you do every day, your communication methods, and repetitive or tedious tasks you have to handle while working.

Automating Your Daily Tasks

Hyatt’s first strategy is what he calls self-automation, which focuses on creating consistent habits and routines in your daily life. This strategy ensures that you complete simple-but-important tasks efficiently and frees your mind to focus on more meaningful issues.

For instance, if you wake up at the same time every morning, then shower, shave, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, and leave for work—in that order—pretty soon that routine will become a habit, and you’ll carry it out more or less automatically. This means that, while you’re carrying out your morning routine, you can be thinking ahead and planning how you’ll tackle that day’s tasks and challenges.

(Shortform note: Hyatt recommends developing work and lifestyle habits in order to “automate” simple tasks, but he doesn’t give much guidance on how. In Atomic Habits, James Clear says that the best way to create new habits and stick with them is to start by identifying what kind of person you want to be. If you commit yourself to becoming, say, a disciplined and devoted worker, you’ll naturally try to develop habits in line with that identity. For instance, you might start waking up earlier than you’re used to—this may be difficult at first, but over time, you’ll find that it just becomes part of your routine. Clear adds that, eventually, you’ll internalize your new identity and start waking up early simply because that’s the kind of person you are, rather than because you’re consciously choosing to do so.)

Additional Benefit: Automating Your Mindset

Hyatt adds that another reason to create routines is because habits also serve as cues for you to get into certain mindsets.

If you always start your workday by, say, checking your emails, then opening your inbox will subconsciously signal to you that it’s time to be focused and productive. Similarly, a consistent end-of-day habit (perhaps turning off your work computer at the same time each day) will let your mind know that it’s time to stop thinking about work. This will free you up to focus on other important activities like resting or spending time with your family.

Performing small rituals like these throughout the day will help you automatically shift into the right mindsets at the right times. This will enable you to be fully present and engaged with whatever you’re currently doing.

How Habits Work

In Atomic Habits, Clear outlines the four stages of habits to explain why we often find ourselves repeating the same behaviors over and over, whether they’re beneficial or harmful for us. These stages are:

1. Cue: The trigger that initiates your behavior. Continuing the above example, if your workday ends at 5:00, then seeing that time displayed on the clock is the cue for your end-of-day habits.

2. Craving: What the cue prompts you to do. In this case, it makes you want to turn off your computer and be with your family.

3. Response: The actual action or actions you perform (turning off your computer and starting your commute back home).

4. Reward: The benefit you gain from performing the habit. Following Hyatt’s reasoning, the reward here is that you now get to enjoy spending time with your loved ones at home.

This framework also helps to explain why habits stick, and why trying to create new habits often fails. Clear says that, for a habit to form successfully, it needs to be obvious (cue), attractive (craving), easy (response), and satisfying (reward). Noticing that it’s 5:00, turning off your computer, and enjoying the reward of fulfilling time with your family certainly meets all of those criteria—therefore, it’s an effective habit that will help get you in the right mindset for the rest of the day.

Automating Your Communication

Hyatt’s second automation method is what he calls template automation. This involves creating standardized responses and outlines for common situations, allowing you to communicate quickly and efficiently. For example, you might develop email templates for frequent types of requests rather than having to write every email from scratch, or create standard presentation formats for regular meetings—then you’d only need to worry about what information you’re presenting, not how to present it.

Investing time upfront to create high-quality templates not only saves time in the long run, but often results in clearer, more professional communications. This is because you can carefully craft and refine your templates over time, then simply fill them out as needed for each individual situation. Such templates also minimize the risk that you’ll make mistakes like leaving out important information or accidentally saying something rude.

(Shortform note: Automating your communications like Hyatt suggests may not work for some entrepreneurs, as it risks you losing your customers’ sense of personal connection and therefore their trust. In Permission Marketing, marketing expert Seth Godin recommends bypassing the templates and scripts, and reaching out personally when selling expensive items. He acknowledges that a personal touch isn’t feasible when you’re communicating with a lot of people—but, when it comes to individual customers making high-value purchases, building a personal relationship is often the difference between making the sale and losing that customer to one of your competitors.)

Automating Your Workflow

Finally, you can streamline your workflow using what Hyatt terms technical automation: leveraging apps and digital tools to handle repetitive tasks for you, thereby minimizing the time and energy you spend on them. For example, in a typical office setting you might encounter automation tools like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software, which handles data entry and transfer between systems, as well as email automation tools that sort, filter, and send pre-written responses to common inquiries.

The author urges you to focus on figuring out what types of tools will help you simplify your work, rather than which specific tools you want to use. Identifying the core functions that you want to automate will help you to stay flexible enough to adapt as technology evolves. This is important because individual tools could be replaced with newer versions, old apps might be incompatible with newer hardware or operating systems, or a developer might simply decide to stop supporting a specific tool you rely on.

Tip: Don’t Try to Use Too Many Tools

Another reason to limit yourself to identifying core functions to automate, rather than trying to incorporate a lot of specific tools into your workflow, is that using too many apps can hinder productivity instead of boosting it.

Research indicates that excessive app use can actually decrease productivity by up to 40%, according to studies in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. This is because each app you introduce has its own learning curve and because you must constantly shift your attention from one piece of software to another. When you’re constantly switching between numerous different tools, this adds up to a massive drain on your time, mental energy, and productivity.

Finding the right balance of tools to maximize productivity will most likely take time and experimentation. However, following Hyatt’s advice by choosing the important tasks you want automated will put you on the right track.

Strategy #4: Take Care of Yourself

So far, we’ve discussed various ways to simplify your life and work. In this section, we’ll be discussing some important things to add to your routine in order to keep yourself healthy and productive.

Hyatt begins by challenging a common misconception about productivity: the idea that time is flexible while energy is fixed. In other words, people commonly think that they can work as few or as many hours as they need to, while always maintaining the same level of productivity.

However, it’s really the other way around. Time is fixed—there are only so many hours in a day—while your energy levels rise and fall based on how well you take care of yourself. In other words, in order to stay productive, you must take time to rest and attend to your needs.

Beware of Overwork

Hyatt says that staying productive in the long run requires you to take enough time for rest and other self-care needs, but how much time is that, exactly?

It may be helpful to approach that question from the opposite side and ask instead how much time you should try to work each week. There’s no universally correct answer, but research has provided a couple of benchmarks.

First of all, regularly working more than 45 hours per week is harmful to physical and mental health in numerous ways. Such a schedule doesn’t leave you with enough time to fully recover before going back to work, so the harmful effects of work stress build up over time. That can eventually lead to exhaustion, anxiety or depression, and even heart disease. Therefore, it’s usually best to limit yourself to working 45 hours in a week, and fewer hours whenever possible.

Second, researchers estimate that the maximum number of productive hours for the average person is around 55 per week. Working more hours beyond that doesn’t result in any significant amount of extra work getting done—you’re simply too tired to be productive. Naturally, working so many hours will also worsen the health impacts we discussed in the previous paragraph. So, if 45 hours is your “soft limit” for each week, 55 hours should be your hard limit.

A Self-Care Checklist for Productivity

While you can't create more time in your day, Hyatt says you can make the most of the time you have by taking good care of yourself. Tending to your physical, mental, and emotional well-being will maximize your energy, and consequently your productivity.

Some specific self-care habits that Hyatt urges you to practice include:

• Sleep: To maximize your energy and productivity, try to get at least seven hours of sleep every night. For more restful sleep, keep your bedroom at a cool temperature and as dark as possible, and avoid looking at screens (TV, phone, computer, and so on) before bed.
• Eat: Your eating habits have a major impact on your energy levels throughout the day. Try to eat mostly natural, unprocessed foods for sustainable long-term energy. Also be mindful of what you drink—juices and sodas tend to be loaded with sugar, which will give you a quick burst of energy followed by a crash shortly afterward.
• Exercise: Regular exercise not only improves your physical health, it also enhances cognitive function and creativity. Just 20-25 minutes of moderate activity per day—such as a brisk walk or a set of yoga exercises—can produce a noticeable difference in your energy and productivity.
• Socialize: Taking time to nurture positive relationships with family, friends, and colleagues pays dividends in terms of both personal well-being and professional success. Not only will spending time with people you like make you happier, it will also give you valuable opportunities to network, ask for advice, and exchange favors. Hyatt recommends evaluating your social circle to determine which people give you the most energy and which leave you feeling drained.

Tip: One Healthy Habit Can Lead to Many Others

Hyatt offers numerous suggestions for healthy self-care habits, but doesn’t go into detail about how to make these lifestyle changes effectively and sustainably.

In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg explains that trying to change numerous habits at the same time runs the risk of overwhelming you. Doing too much at once will cause you to become frustrated and discouraged, and it’s likely that you’ll eventually give up on changing your habits. That’s why Duhigg suggests choosing just one new habit to work on and seeing how that one change ripples through your life to prompt other changes.

For example, suppose you decide to take Hyatt’s suggestion of exercising 20-25 minutes every day. However, you find that you tend to get stomach pains while exercising—to avoid that discomfort, you might start eating smaller and healthier meals. You also find that the exercise makes you tired, so you start going to bed earlier. Because you went to sleep earlier, you then wake up earlier, so your mornings before work or school are now much less stressful than before.

This demonstrates how changing just one core habit (in this case, exercising more regularly) can naturally prompt you to adopt numerous other healthy habits as well. In this way, you can make significant changes to your lifestyle without getting overwhelmed from consciously working on many different habits at once.