What do you want the highlight of your day to be?

Mar 29, 2019

I built a tool that asks you a simple question: what do you want the highlight of your day to be? This may look like a small, simple tool that you’ll check out once. But in reality, it’s a question that has had a tremendous impact on the way I think about a day.

When I was younger, there were less distractions–no phones, no notifications. Just me and my Legos after school everyday. Days felt longer. I always got so many things done.

But my days more recently felt so short. Nothing got done. Phones buzzing. Notifications ringing. Sound like your day?

⚡ Introducing Highlight One Thing ⚡

But things changed quite drastically when I started reading the Time Dorks blog. I found little hacks and tools to bring back that feeling of long days. One concept in particular helped a lot – writing down one big thing you wanted to do that day.

Starting with post-it notes, and then using Nick Burka's 1BigThing app, I became more productive and satisfied. Fast forward to today. My 2nd gen iPad was crashing nearly every time I was using the app.

I decided to remix his app with John Zeratsky's and Jake Knapp’s Highlight concept from their book, Make Time. Thanks to the push from the Product Hunt Maker Festival, I made this tool using Coda and hosted it on Glitch.

You’re asking – what’s a Highlight? And how do you pick a Highlight?

What will be the highlight of your day?

We want you to begin each day by thinking about what you hope will be the bright spot. If, at the end of the day, someone asks you, “What was the highlight of your day?” what do you want your answer to be? When you look back on your day, what activity or accomplishment or moment do you want to savor? That’s your Highlight.

– Choose a Highlight To Make Time Every Day

Three ways to pick your Highlight

Choosing your daily Highlight starts with asking yourself a question:

What do I want to be the Highlight of my day?

Answering this question isn’t always easy, especially when you’re just beginning to use our Make Time method. Sometimes you have many important tasks. Maybe there’s one you’re super excited about (“Bake birthday cake”), one with a looming deadline (“Finish slide deck”), or even a nasty job hanging over your head (“Put rat traps in garage”).

So, how should you decide? We use three different criteria to choose our Highlight.

– Choose a Highlight To Make Time Every Day

A highlight can be:
🧡 Urgent
💙 Satisfying
💜 Something that brings joy

As you complete Highlights, you can look back at your history and remember the best moments of your month.

Want to learn more about choosing Highlights? Read John and Jake’s article, Choose a Highlight To Make Time Every Day.

What’s your Highlight going to be for today?

Answer it at coda.io/@kunalslab/highlight-one-thing.

Many thanks to Nick Burka, Daniel Burka, Jake Knapp, and John Zeratsky for their feedback.