Powerful ideas from top nonfiction
Try Blinkist to get the key ideas from 5,500+ bestselling nonfiction titles and podcasts. Listen or read in just 15 minutes.
Start your free trial
Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
Listen to the Intro
A Minute to Think summary
Juliet Funt
Reclaim Creativity, Conquer Busyness, and Do Your Best Work
20 mins
Table of Contents
A Minute to Think
summarized in 7 key ideas
Audio & text in the Blinkist app
Key idea 1 of 7
We don’t have the space to just think.
Everyone, and everything, needs breathing space. The author realized this when she tried to build a fire during a family vacation. She piled up paper, fire starters, and logs of wood – but no matter how many matches she threw at the fire, it just wouldn’t start properly.
Eventually, it dawned on her. She had packed everything so tightly that oxygen simply couldn’t circulate. In short, the fire had no space to breathe.
Our daily lives are often a lot like the author’s damp squib of a fire. We’re so busy packing our schedules with endless tasks and to-do lists that we can’t fan the flames of our own potential.
The key message here is: We don’t have the space to just think.
Instead of thinking, we’re constantly doing. From the moment our morning alarm wakes us, our day goes by in a blur of commuting, emails, meetings, and, often, family responsibilities. By the time we climb back into bed, exhausted, we wonder Did I really achieve anything today?
If all this sounds familiar, then you’ve hit on an uncomfortable but valuable truth: being busy and being productive are not the same thing. What’s more, being too busy can actually kill your productivity.
Not convinced? Consider Linda, a high-flying sales professional in the healthcare industry. Linda was excited when she got promoted at work, but her promotion came with a crushing workload attached.
To cope with her bursting schedule, she canceled her daily lunch break. Instead, she kept a jar of peanut butter on her desk at all times, so that she could eat while working. There were other sacrifices, too – but even so, she wasn’t making headway.
Her excellent results and attention to detail – things that had gotten her the promotion in the first place – suddenly dropped off. Without that little bit of breathing space she had enjoyed in her previous role, she couldn’t thrive, and her potential was stifled.
When we hear Linda’s story, it’s easy to appreciate that she was simply too busy. But when it comes to our own lives, many of us struggle to identify that we’re doing too much. Instead of seeking out and enjoying some breathing space, we fall into a very modern trap: we begin to feel guilty when we’re not busy.
Economists call this phenomenon performative busyness. We have internalized the mantra that busier is better. Instead, what we need to do is push back against the tyranny of the packed agenda. We’ll see why in the following blinks.
Want to see all full key ideas from A Minute to Think?
Key ideas in A Minute to Think
More knowledge in less time
Read or listen
Get the key ideas from nonfiction bestsellers in minutes, not hours.
Find your next read
Get book lists curated by experts and personalized recommendations.
Shortcasts New
We’ve teamed up with podcast creators to bring you key insights from podcasts.
What is A Minute to Think about?
A Minute to Think (2021) explores how busyness is harming our productivity – and why it's so important to take regular pauses. It reveals the mental and economic costs associated with our hectic modern working environments and explains how we can reclaim our time.
Who should read A Minute to Think?
- Busy professionals hoping to claw back some me-time
- Leaders seeking to build a more creative working environment
- Managers wanting to improve their team’s well-being
Categories with A Minute to Think
Books like A Minute to Think
People ❤️ Blinkist
Sven O.
It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.
Thi Viet Quynh N.
Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.
Jonathan A.
Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.
Renee D.
Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.
People also liked
Start growing with Blinkist now
26 Million
Downloads on all platforms
4.7 Stars
Average ratings on iOS and Google Play
91%
Of Blinkist members create a better reading habit*
*Based on survey data from Blinkist customers