A Minute to Think: Reclaim Creativity, Conquer Busyness, and Do Your Best Work

by Juliet Funt

Overview

“You’re going to want to share copies of this book with your overbooked friends and colleagues, but before you do, take some time to read it yourself. Funt’s wisdom around making space is priceless.” —Seth Godin, author of The Practice

Do you wish you could stop the mayhem of work and life and just take a minute? Do you sense you could contribute more if there were a little more room in the day? Does busyness deprive you and your burnt-out team of the oxygen your talents need to catch fire?

Many have felt that way, yet taking a pause has seemed impossible—until now.

In A Minute to Think, Juliet Funt, a globally recognized warrior in the battle against busyness, provides a powerful guide that will give you the permission, framework, and specific direction you need to do the following:

• Regain control of your overloaded, caffeinated, inbox-worshiping workday
• Liberate yourself and your teams from burnout and busywork
• Reclaim creativity and focus despite the chaos around you
• Bring thoughtfulness into designing your next work norms
• Tame the beast of email and escape the mire of meetings
• Find your precious minute to think

You’re not alone in your yearning for freedom from constant reactivity. The global workforce today is so fried that it belongs in the food court of a county fair. We’re relentlessly behind the curve, dousing fires everywhere, and our 3 a.m. insomnia provides the only unscheduled thinking time of the day.

What we need reinserted in our lives is the missing element of white space—short periods of open, unscheduled time that, when recaptured, change the very nature of work. White space is the stepping back, the strategic pause, the oxygen that allows the sparks of our efforts to catch fire. White space has the power to radically—and simply—reinvent the way we approach work in this maxed-out, post-COVID 21st-century world.

With Juliet’s memorable stories, easy-to-use tools, and razor-sharp instruction, she carves for us an escape route from the overwhelming amount of low-value tasks and the daily avalanche of e-mails, meetings, decks, and reports. Using research, client stories, and a relatable voice, Juliet shows all of us how to reclaim time for thinking and make room for what truly matters. Whether you are an individual trying to build a more sane and humane flow of daily work, a team that wants new levels of efficiency and effectiveness, or an entire organization changing your culture toward thoughtfulness, this book will lead you there.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062970251
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	08/03/2021
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	99,531
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Featured in both Forbes and Fast Company, Juliet Funt is a renowned keynote speaker, tough-love adviser to the Fortune 500, and founder and CEO of the training firm Juliet Funt Group. She is an evangelist for freeing the potential of companies by unburdening their talent from busywork. Her warm, relatable manner and actionable content earned her one of the highest ratings at the largest leadership event in the world, and she has worked with organizations such as Spotify, National Geographic, Anthem, Vans, Abbott, Costco, Nike, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo, Sephora, Sysco, and ESPN.

Table of Contents

Prologue Racing to Nowhere 1

Part I The Culture of Insatiability

1 The Missing Element: Our Hidden Yearning for Space 7

2 The False God of Busyness: Why Work is so Much Work 31

Part II The White Space Way

3 The Strategic Pause: Making Space a Daily Reality 53

4 The Thieves of Time: Identifying the Forces Against Us 81

5 The Simplification Questions: Reclaiming the Best by Removing the Rest 101

6 Hallucinated Urgency: Unhooking from the Culture of Now 121

Part III Applying the Principles

7 The Tool that Turned on Us: Defeating the Email Beast 147

8 How the Best Teams Talk: Elevating Our Communication 169

9 Meetings Done Better Experiencing the Gains of Getting Together 193

10 The White Space Team: Creating New Norms Together 215

11 Life Beyond Work: Don't Miss the Ride 239

Epilogue Under the Limestone Mountain 261

Acknowledgments 265

Notes 269

Editorial Reviews

05/31/2021

Consulting firm CEO Funt offers solutions for burnout in her encouraging debut. A prevalent “culture of insatiability,” she suggests, creates hectic days and leads to stress and underproductivity, for which the cure is a “strategic pause”: putting space on one’s calendar for thinking, rest, and creativity. These pauses offer an opportunity for professional enrichment and can improve productivity by reducing busywork, identifying what’s most urgent, and making use of team members’ strengths, she writes. Funt suggests “training wheel” exercises to get readers to incorporate pauses into their own lives; using one’s commute time to let one’s mind wander, for example, is a good place to start. As for the office, Funt advises “clarity, brevity, and punch” when writing emails, choosing the correct medium for communications with colleagues, and changing a company’s culture to incorporate patience and openness. Examples from Funt’s work with corporate leaders and personal anecdotes pepper the pages and keep things fresh: “To this day, I remember how good it felt to just give up and sit for a while.” Burned-out readers will find this a much-needed, easy to implement call for calm. Agent: David Doerrer, Abrams Artists Agency. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

This book is more than a first-rate guide to getting more and better work done. It is a powerful meditation on the false lure of busyness and the sustaining power of the pause. A Minute to Think is essential reading for maddening times.” — Daniel H. Pink, author of When, Drive, and To Sell Is Human

“I absolutely loved A Minute to Think. It’s one of the most captivating and relevant approaches to solving busyness that I’ve read. Juliet’s energetic style and practical insights play a pivotal role as we long to pause yet be more productive and creative in this next decade of hybrid working.” — Angela Ahrendts, DBE, former SVP of Apple Retail and CEO of Burberry

“Juliet Funt makes a compelling case for a tactic that’s both critically important and distressingly overlooked: the strategic pause. If you regularly feel overwhelmed by your work, read this book!” — Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author of A World Without Email and Deep Work

“This smart, funny business book is brimming with actionable tools. It’s certain to make any team stronger.” — Patrick Lencioni, president, The Table Group; New York Times bestselling author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

“My decades of experience in the productivity arena have taught me you don’t need more time—you need more room. Room to be creative, to be strategic, and simply to be present in whatever you’re doing. Juliet provides an elegant and easily followed manual of how to get us there. Bravo.” — David Allen, international bestselling author of Getting Things Done

"Rarely has an author produced something so immediately relevant and profoundly important to balancing my life and to my daily practices at work. Reading A Minute to Think is an investment in getting the most out of our most precious commodity–time. Bravo." — Nicholas Drake, Vice President Global Marketing at Google

“Like many, I spent most of my life convinced that busy was the same as productive. That’s how I fed my self-esteem for years. But reading A Minute to Think, I have finally and fully understood what Aristotle said: “The quality of life is determined by its activities.” — Bradley J. Preber, CEO, Grant Thornton LLP

"So many of us are consumed, buried, busy and overwhelmed. A Minute to Think will set us free, delivering an immediately shift towards doing better work every day. This book is a necessary and profound advancement tool for the modern day workplace culture."
— Rory Vaden, New York Times bestselling author of Take the Stairs and creator of the viral TEDx talk “How to Multiply Time”

"Juliet Funt is a master of time management and she recognizes the need to attack busyness with a vengeance. I’m excited for you to explore her book on this topic so you can reevaluate how you think, work, and behave to focus on the most important things that only you can do." — Craig Groeschel, New York Times bestselling author and Pastor of Life.Church

“I wish I wrote this book.” — John Cleese, comedy legend

From the Publisher

I absolutely loved A Minute to Think. It’s one of the most captivating and relevant approaches to solving busyness that I’ve read. Juliet’s energetic style and practical insights play a pivotal role as we long to pause yet be more productive and creative in this next decade of hybrid working.

Angela Ahrendts

My decades of experience in the productivity arena have taught me you don’t need more time—you need more room. Room to be creative, to be strategic, and simply to be present in whatever you’re doing. Juliet provides an elegant and easily followed manual of how to get us there. Bravo.

David Allen

I wish I wrote this book.

John Cleese

Juliet Funt makes a compelling case for a tactic that’s both critically important and distressingly overlooked: the strategic pause. If you regularly feel overwhelmed by your work, read this book!

Cal Newport

This book is more than a first-rate guide to getting more and better work done. It is a powerful meditation on the false lure of busyness and the sustaining power of the pause. A Minute to Think is essential reading for maddening times.

Daniel H. Pink

"Juliet Funt is a master of time management and she recognizes the need to attack busyness with a vengeance. I’m excited for you to explore her book on this topic so you can reevaluate how you think, work, and behave to focus on the most important things that only you can do."

Craig Groeschel

Like many, I spent most of my life convinced that busy was the same as productive. That’s how I fed my self-esteem for years. But reading A Minute to Think, I have finally and fully understood what Aristotle said: “The quality of life is determined by its activities.

Bradley J. Preber

This smart, funny business book is brimming with actionable tools. It’s certain to make any team stronger.

Patrick Lencioni

"So many of us are consumed, buried, busy and overwhelmed. A Minute to Think will set us free, delivering an immediately shift towards doing better work every day. This book is a necessary and profound advancement tool for the modern day workplace culture."

Rory Vaden

"Rarely has an author produced something so immediately relevant and profoundly important to balancing my life and to my daily practices at work. Reading A Minute to Think is an investment in getting the most out of our most precious commodity–time. Bravo."

Nicholas Drake

"You're going to want to share copies of this book with your over-booked friends and colleagues, but before you do, take some time to read it yourself. Funt's wisdom around making space is priceless."

Seth Godin