18 Minutes to a Focused Life

Leadership coach Peter Bregman delivers a time-management manifesto built around a deceptively simple ritual: spend 18 minutes a day guiding your year, your day, and each moment. The book unfolds in four parts—Pause, Year, Day, Moment—each packed with stories (Captain “Sully” Sullenberger’s lifelong glider practice), research (Iyengar’s 6-versus-24 jam study on choice overload), and crisp tools. Bregman urges readers to align tasks with four elements—strengths, weaknesses, differences, passions—then narrow the year to five focus areas. The signature practice: 5 minutes each morning to plan, 8 hourly 1-minute check-ins, and 5 minutes at day’s end to review. By integrating achievement, affiliation, and influence motives into daily choices, Bregman promises not just productivity but a meaningful life.