Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less Hardcover – Illustrated, March 5, 2019

The media could not be loaded. Before I was exposed to Free to Focus, I was a hot mess. My family and I just moved to a new city and state, I had just started a new business, and the tasks on my to-do list were reaching the 20s and 30s almost every day. To say I was overwhelmed, overworked, and frustrated on a daily basis is an understatement. I had reached the place I said I’d never go again: burnout. I felt like crap physically, mentally, and emotionally.All I wanted was to spend more quality time with my family, while building a successful business. And, yes, I wanted to feel great, too. It all seemed like a pipe dream...that it would take some kind of miracle to change my situation (like winning the lottery...LOL).Time was against me - I never seemed to have enough of it. I felt like I was on my own island...no help in my business (it was just me), meanwhile, I had four other people staring me in my eyes every day, counting on me to be a husband, father, and person who put food on the table.I was scared to death. Every day, MULTIPLE times a day, I would ask myself, “How am I going to pull this off?” “I’m destined to screw this up if I keep going like this.” I knew deep down inside I had no control of my life and schedule...everything and everyone around me controlled it.Until one day, I had reached my breaking point. I had THREE major things I had to get done. But I remember sitting at my desk at 5PM and NONE (yes, NONE) of those three things were done. The sad reality is I needed those three tasks done to be able to collect a check and cover business and personal bills in two weeks.What the heck just happened? I started my workday at 8AM. What did I do for 9 hours? I’ll tell you what I did. Answered texts. Responded to emails. Picked up the phone when anyone would call. Stopped and did laundry (ugh!). I could keep going, but, bottom line, I was doing everything BUT what I needed to do.Something needed to change, AND FAST. Too much was at stake - my business, my marriage, my LIVELIHOOD.A few days after my breakdown, I was scrolling through Facebook and noticed a post about Michael Hyatt’s “Free to Focus” productivity system. At first, I snickered because I was like, “I need productivity surgery, not a new system.” I was that cynical. But, then I remembered taking Michael’s Best Year Ever course - and how he had a way of making the goal-setting process simple for me. And how after applying those principles, I had one of the most successful years of my life.So, naturally, I wondered if Free to Focus could do the same thing. I said, what the heck. I have nothing to lose. Buy Free to Focus, go all in and see if this works just as well as Best Year Ever. I was beyond desperate. NOTHING was working for me.My plan was to do what I do with most books - read the whole thing, then go back through and implement things I liked.Well, one chapter into Free to Focus I realized my plan wasn’t going to work. This book is written in a way that each chapter builds off one another. The thing Michael Hyatt does masterfully in this book is that he breaks you in with baby steps, many of which have to do with your mindset towards productivity and success. That’s why I continue to consume, read, and apply Hyatt’s works...he knows his audience and how to get us results.He knows we’re busy, overwhelmed, and desperately need help. So, the way he breaks things down and then gives us bite-sized chunks of how to apply them speaks directly to us and prevents the overwhelm. The best part about this book and system - you can implement at your own pace. That’s what carried me to the finish line...I realized I MUST apply these strategies and use the resources if I wanted to see change in my life and business, and the fact that Michael empowered me to do it at my own pace was exactly what I needed in this season of my life. I already had too much on my plate (and the thought of change sucks!).Fast forward three months after applying every resource found in Free to Focus. I found myself less-rushed throughout the day. I actually felt proud of myself that I had control of my own calendar. I’ll be honest, it was tough saying “no” to a lot of things in order to truly apply the Free to Focus resources, but the short-term pain has led to my long-term gain - in EVERY area of my life. I’m sleeping better...I’m more focused during my workday...I’m less irritable (because, again, I feel as though I have more control of my calendar AND emotions), the quality of my work has gone through the roof, AND (and this is my BIGGEST “and”) my time with my family is now QUALITY time. Although I still have bad days, they’re less frequent - I’m more intentional and present during my time with my family, and not thinking about work and other things that would pull my attention away from them. As a result, my marriage has deepened and my relationship with my kids has seen a significant uptick. I’m also now able to coach my kids' sports teams, and volunteer in the community when I want.Little did I know that a “productivity” book would transform my life and the way I do business. The biggest shift that happened to me after applying Free to Focus in my life was this - I realized I COULD have success WHILE being the person I wanted to be...the person I MUST be for my family and clients - the people counting on me. Bottom line, if you’re reading this and sound like me, my encouragement to you is this: just open this book with an open mind and commitment to at least try out its tools. If you do, your life and business will change. The simplicity and practicality of this book was a breath of fresh air. And, BTW, everyone that I’ve shared these strategies with has seen results...some as quickly as 24 hours.If you’re ready to get out of the rat race and ditch overwhelm and distraction for good, then read the book, do EVERYTHING Michael encourages you to do, and then sit back and watch the results. It’s amazing what happens!

In Free To Focus, Michael Hyatt bridges from goal setting, the subject of Your Best Year Ever (Hyatt, 2018), to goal achievement by helping one focus on what is important, avoid what is not, and truly be productive. He addresses head-on the increasingly difficult problem of staying on task, caused by what he and others call the Distraction Economy. I only have to look at myself and our teenagers using social media and news sites to observe attention deficits strongly in action. (For a comprehensive discussion and solution that focuses primarily on this specific problem, see Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, 2019).In this well-rounded work, Michael Hyatt addresses not only distraction but also task reduction, prioritization strategies, and practical methods that can be put into use immediately. He has honed these ideas using practical experience and feedback gathered from his online course, Free to Focus, to help a person retain focus and be more effective on working on what is truly important. The book surprisingly starts by having the reader stop everything, re-evaluate their skills and tasks, and then cut out all the things that are consuming time that should be better used elsewhere. This is much easier said than done, so Michael Hyatt lays out a methodical approach on how to achieve this.One of Michael’s greatest skills is taking good research and distilling it into step by step practices and methods, providing enough information for a person to apply it to their own situations. One must not simply read what Michael has written, as an armchair philosopher might do. The benefits of this book are realized by doing the work of the exercises and filling out the worksheets which he provides on the book’s website. Some of this self-evaluation work is not easy, in that it requires hard decisions and honest evaluation of one’s true strengths, distractions, and tasks a person may feel forced to do. This is where creativity and judgment are required to realize benefit. Thankfully the book gives examples and anecdotes of situations most people will relate to, which helps the readers to do this foundational work.Michael’s “Freedom Compass” approach is an excellent method to define what to focus on and what to eliminate or delegate. After completing that matrix, I have a personal description of what I most value and am good at, along with lists what I should not be doing. And I also appreciate the inclusion of a development zone that helps one document areas for personal improvement. I have seen much more comprehensive lists of candidate activities for delegation, but this book provides a good start for one to develop their own list.I recently had a request from someone to help them do a task that would take most of a morning, right when I am typically most productive. I have a hard time saying no, as many others also do, so I turned to the book for guidance. Michael recommends becoming skilled at saying no in a way that affirms the worth of the other person. Using the method in the book, I evaluated the request in terms of my “Freedom Compass” desire zone, and then I responded that I appreciated that they came to me with the request, said that I couldn’t do it because I would have to give up something quite important (related to primary income), but then I offered suggestions for how they might proceed. This is a perfect example of how Michael distilled content from William Ury’s book, The Power of a Positive No, into a form that could be quickly adapted to address a particular situation. The requestor subsequently had a good dialogue with me after my response, which served to strengthen our relationship because we better understood the other’s needs. Afterwards I felt like I exercised an important muscle to safeguard my time, energy, and values. I look forward to continuing to develop and refine the skill of tactfully saying no.Another related forward thinking practice is how to develop a template email response to quickly respond to similar situations, which will save time in the future. Michael gives personal examples and specific implementations he uses for this type of automation, all of which are relevant to common situations encountered by many people.I have been using Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner for about a year now, and find that the Free To Focus book and the planner dovetail quite nicely. The planner contains valuable forms and is periodically improved with feedback from users. How this has helped me is that in the book Michael recommends four habitual practices that he calls daily rituals be defined and performed. This is quite useful, as it has caused me to carefully develop morning and evening habits to reliably take care of the basics needed for my household and personal welfare, and that frees me to reserve activities requiring my sharpest brainpower and energies for creative tasks during the day. This is a very practical approach to allocate and preserve time and energy for the most important activities scheduled during the week, and then to actually be sharply focused on accomplishing those activities when the time comes to do so.I am very appreciative of the templates provided on the book’s website, which are substantially the same as contained in his course. But I have two criticisms of the supplemental materials. The first is that they are in pdf format, which is difficult to work with for capturing one’s ideas in digital form. Second, there are distracting trademark symbols on various phrases in the templates, which thankfully through good editing do not appear in the book. For example, a “not-to-do list” has been described in literature and articles by others for years, so I cannot fathom it being a trademark as it is presented in the form. But these are minor criticisms that can easily be overcome through copy and paste from the pdf forms into an editor to adapt the forms for one’s own use as editable documents. I hope in the future that improved resources are made available, but that should not stop anyone from applying the book now and using what is available on the website.This is a book that was refined via feedback and experience of many of Michael’s students of his course, so it has been in development for some time, and the ideas presented have now been tested, are current, mature, and proven to work. It is also much less expensive than the course was, so the book makes available valuable and practical content to everyone. I appreciate that the book provides useful references as end notes and also an excellent index for quick reference on my phone and computers as a Kindle book. The practical ideas within Free To Focus continue to help me to improve my career path, spend guilt-free time with my family, and help me have the freedom to focus on what is truly important. For that, I am grateful and highly recommend the book.

I follow Michael’s work for a couple of years. Free to focus is an excellent starting point based on the experience he has from his Full Focus Planner. He created a compelling productivity system, which changes your life if you commit. The reasoning behind it is founded on several other works. Therefore, you find here an excellent productivity system, however, in 10 years, I’m not sure whether the apps and tools he mentions will be around, making this book more timing than timeless, more local, than universal.