If I ask a key question to myself as: “What was the best
book of 2024 so far?” Probably I would choose Greg McKeown’s “Essentialism:
The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” which was easy to understand, applicable and
eye-opening for me. I found it while I was searching Amazon’s best seller list
and it is a real must-read if you deal with so many to-do’s within your
ordinary day. I hope my quotes from the book will help you.
THE WISDOM OF LIFE CONSISTS IN THE ELIMINATION OF NON-ESSENTIALS.
—Lin Yutang
Sam Elliot is a capable executive in Silicon Valley who found himself stretched too thin after his company was acquired by a larger, bureaucratic business. He was in earnest about being a good citizen in his new role so he said yes to many requests without really thinking about it. But as a result he would spend the whole day rushing from one meeting and conference call to another trying to please everyone and get it all done. His stress went up as the quality of his work went down. It was like he was majoring in minor activities and as a result, his work became unsatisfying for him and frustrating for the people he was trying so hard to please.
In the midst of his frustration the company came to him
and offered him an early retirement package. But he was in his early 50s and
had no interest in completely retiring.
He went to speak with a mentor who gave him surprising advice:
“Stay, but do what you would as a consultant and nothing else. And don’t tell
anyone.” In other words, his mentor was advising him to do only those things
that he deemed essential—and ignore everything else that was asked of him.
The executive followed the advice! He made a daily
commitment towards cutting out the red tape. He began saying no.
Now when a request would come in he would pause and
evaluate the request against a tougher criteria: “Is this the very most
important thing I should be doing with my time and resources right now?”
He stopped attending meetings on his calendar if he
didn’t have a direct contribution to make. He explained to me, “Just because I
was invited didn’t seem a good enough reason to attend.”
He could concentrate his efforts on one project at a
time. He could plan thoroughly. He could anticipate roadblocks and start to
remove obstacles. Instead of spinning his wheels trying to get everything done,
he could get the right things done. His newfound commitment to doing only the
things that were truly important—and eliminating everything else—restored the
quality of his work. Instead of making just a millimeter of progress in a
million directions he began to generate tremendous momentum towards
accomplishing the things that were truly vital.
To his great surprise, there were no negative
repercussions to his experiment. His manager didn’t chastise him. His
colleagues didn’t resent him. Quite the opposite; because he was left only with
projects that were meaningful to him and actually valuable to the company, they
began to respect and value his work more than ever. His work became fulfilling
again. His performance ratings went up. He ended up with one of the largest
bonuses of his career!
In this example is the basic value proposition of Essentialism: only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.
Essentialism is not about how to get more things done;
it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less
for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment
of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of
contribution by doing only what is essential.
Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for
determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution
of those things almost effortless.
If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.
The pursuit of success can be a catalyst for failure.
Put another way, success can distract us from focusing on the essential things
that produce success in the first place.
We have lost our ability to filter what is important and
what isn’t. Psychologists call this “decision fatigue”: the more choices we are
forced to make, the more the quality of our decisions deteriorates.
In the same way that our closets get cluttered as
clothes we never wear accumulate, so do our lives get cluttered as
well-intended commitments and activities we’ve said yes to pile up. Most of
these efforts didn’t come with an expiration date. Unless we have a system for
purging them, once adopted, they live on in perpetuity.
In your personal or professional life, the equivalent of
asking yourself which clothes you love is asking yourself, “Will this activity
or effort make the highest possible contribution toward my goal?” Part One of
this book will help you figure out what those activities are.
Ask the killer question: “If I didn’t already own this,
how much would I spend to buy it?” This usually does the trick.
It’s about learning how to do less but better so you can
achieve the highest possible return on every precious moment of your life.
We are looking for our highest level of contribution:
the right thing the right way at the right time.
Essentialists spend as much time as possible exploring, listening, debating, questioning, and thinking. But their exploration is not an end in itself. The purpose of the exploration is to discern the vital few from the trivial many.
Many of us say yes to things because we are eager to please and make a difference. Yet the key to making our highest contribution may well be saying no. As Peter Drucker said, “People are effective because they say ‘no,’ because they say, ‘this isn’t for me.’"
As a quote attributed to Victor Hugo, the French
dramatist and novelist, puts it, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose
time has come.” “Less but better” is a principle whose time has come.
What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a
measurement of importance? What if instead we celebrated how much time we had
spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most
important people in our lives?
As poet Mary Oliver wrote: “Tell me, what is it you plan
to do / with your one wild and precious life?”
I challenge you to pause more to ask yourself that
question.
I challenge you here and now to make a commitment to
make room to enjoy the essential. Do you think for one second you will regret
such a decision? Is it at all likely you will wake up one day and say, “I wish
I had been less true to myself and had done all the nonessential things others
expected of me”?
There are three deeply entrenched assumptions we must
conquer to live the way of the Essentialist: “I have to,” “It’s all important,”
and “I can do both.”
To embrace the essence of Essentialism requires we
replace these false assumptions with three core truths: “I choose to,” “Only a
few things really matter,” and “I can do anything but not everything.” These simple
truths awaken us from our nonessential stupor. They free us to pursue what
really matters. They enable us to live at our highest level of contribution.
We often think of choice as a thing. But a choice is not
a thing. Our options may be things, but a choice—a choice is an action. It is
not just something we have but something we do. This experience brought me to
the liberating realization that while we may not always have control over our
options, we always have control over how we choose among them.
The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given
away—it can only be forgotten.
William James once wrote, “My first act of free will
shall be to believe in free will.” That is why the first and most crucial
skill you will learn on this journey is to develop your ability to choose
choice, in every area of your life.
Working hard is important. But more effort does not
necessarily yield more results. “Less but better” does.
Ferran Adrià, arguably the world’s greatest chef, who has led El Bulli to become the world’s most famous restaurant, epitomizes the principle of “less but better” in at least two ways. First, his specialty is reducing traditional dishes to their absolute essence and then re-imagining them in ways people have never thought of before. Second, while El Bulli has somewhere in the range of 2 million requests for dinner reservations each year, it serves only fifty people per night and closes for six months of the year. In fact, serving food altogether and had instead turned El Bulli into a full-time food laboratory of sorts where he was continuing to pursue nothing but the essence of his craft.
Think of Warren Buffett, who has famously said, “Our
investment philosophy borders on lethargy.” What he means is that he and his
firm make relatively few investments and keep them for a long time. In The Tao
of Warren Buffett, Mary Buffett and David Clark explain: “Warren decided early
in his career it would be impossible for him to make hundreds of right
investment decisions, so he decided that he would invest only in the businesses
that he was absolutely sure of, and then bet heavily on them. He owes 90% of
his wealth to just ten investments. Sometimes what you don’t do is just as
important as what you do.” In short, he makes big bets on the essential few
investment opportunities and says no to the many merely good ones.
An Essentialist takes the time to explore all his
options. The extra investment is justified because some things are so much more
important that they repay the effort invested in finding those things tenfold.
An Essentialist, in other words, discerns more so he can do less.
STRATEGY IS ABOUT MAKING CHOICES, TRADE-OFFS. IT’S ABOUT
DELIBERATELY CHOOSING TO BE DIFFERENT.
—Michael Porter
Ignoring the reality of trade-offs is a terrible
strategy for organizations. It turns out to be a terrible strategy for people
as well.
In an insightful op-ed for the New York Times, Erin
Callan, the former CFO of Lehman Brothers, shared what she had sacrificed in
making trade-offs by default. She wrote: “I didn’t start out with the goal of
devoting all of myself to my job. It crept in over time. Each year that went
by, slight modifications became the new normal. First I spent a half-hour on
Sunday organizing my e-mail, to-do list, and calendar to make Monday morning
easier. Then I was working a few hours on Sunday, then all day. My boundaries
slipped away until work was all that was left.” Her story demonstrates a
critical truth: we can either make the hard choices for ourselves or allow
others—whether our colleagues, our boss, or our customers—to decide for us.
Essentialists see trade-offs as an inherent part of
life, not as an inherently negative part of life. Instead of asking, “What do I
have to give up?” they ask, “What do I want to go big on?” The cumulative
impact of this small change in thinking can be profound.
Trade-offs are not something to be ignored or decried.
They are something to be embraced and made deliberately, strategically, and
thoughtfully.
Because Essentialists will commit and “go big” on only
the vital few ideas or activities, they explore more options at first to ensure
they pick the right one later.
Essentialists spend as much time as possible exploring,
listening, debating, questioning, and thinking. But their exploration is not an
end in itself. The purpose of the exploration is to discern the vital few from
the trivial many.
WITHOUT GREAT SOLITUDE NO SERIOUS WORK IS POSSIBLE.
—Pablo Picasso
While Nonessentialists automatically react to the latest
idea, jump on the latest opportunity, or respond to the latest e-mail,
Essentialists choose to create the space to explore and ponder.
In order to have focus we need to escape to focus.
Of course, nobody likes to be bored. But by abolishing
any chance of being bored we have also lost the time we used to have to think
and process.
Here’s another paradox for you: the faster and busier
things get, the more we need to build thinking time into our schedule. And the
noisier things get, the more we need to build quiet reflection spaces in which
we can truly focus.
Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn, for example, schedules
up to two hours of blank space on his calendar every day. He divides them into
thirty-minute increments, yet he schedules nothing. It is a simple practice he
developed when back-to-back meetings left him with little time to process what
was going on around him. At first it felt like an indulgence, a waste of time.
But eventually he found it to be his single most valuable productivity tool. He
sees it as the primary way he can ensure he is in charge of his own day,
instead of being at the mercy of it.
If setting aside a full week seems overwhelming or
impossible, there are ways of putting a little “Think Week” into every day. One
practice I’ve found useful is simply to read something from classic literature
(not a blog, or the newspaper, or the latest beach novel) for the first twenty
minutes of the day. Not only does this squash my previous tendency to check my
e-mail as soon as I wake up, it centers my day. It broadens my perspective and
reminds me of themes and ideas that are essential enough to have withstood the
test of time.
Just make sure to select something that was written before our hyperconnected era and yet seems timeless. Such writings can challenge our assumptions about what really matters.
In the chaos of the modern workplace, with so many loud
voices all around us pulling us in many directions, it is more important now
than ever that we learn to resist the siren song of distraction and keep our
eyes and ears peeled for the headlines.
One of the most obvious and yet powerful ways to become
a journalist of our own lives is simply to keep a journal.
Think of a journal as like a storage device for backing up
our brain’s faulty hard drive. As someone once said to me, the faintest pencil
is better than the strongest memory.
Typically, when people start to keep a journal they
write pages the first day. Then by the second day the prospect of writing so
much is daunting, and they procrastinate or abandon the exercise. So apply the
principle of “less but better” to your journal. Restrain yourself from writing
more until daily journaling has become a habit.
I also suggest that once every ninety days or so you
take an hour to read your journal entries from that period. But don’t be overly
focused on the details, like the budget meeting three weeks ago or last
Thursday’s pasta dinner. Instead, focus on the broader patterns or trends.
Capture the headline. Look for the lead in your day, your week, your life.
Small, incremental changes are hard to see in the moment but over time can have
a huge cumulative effect.
LITTLE NONSENSE NOW AND THEN, IS CHERISHED BY THE WISEST
MEN.
—Roald Dahl
EACH NIGHT, WHEN
I GO TO SLEEP, I DIE. AND THE NEXT MORNING, WHEN I WAKE UP, I AM REBORN.
—Mahatma Gandhi
We need to pace ourselves, nurture ourselves, and give
ourselves fuel to explore, thrive, and perform.
Pushing oneself to the limit is easy! The real challenge
for the person who thrives on challenges is not to work hard.
“If you think you are so tough you can do anything I
have a challenge for you. If you really want to do something hard: say no to an
opportunity so you can take a nap.”
I also remember Bill Clinton was quoted as saying that
every major mistake he had made in his life had happened as a result of sleep
deprivation.
The way of the Nonessentialist is to see sleep as yet
another burden on one’s already overextended, overcommitted, busy-but-not-always-productive
life. Essentialists instead see sleep as necessary for operating at high levels
of contribution more of the time. This is why they systematically and
deliberately build sleep into their schedules so they can do more, achieve more,
and explore more.
Sleep is what allows us to operate at our highest level
of contribution so that we can achieve more, in less time. While there
continues to be a culture of machismo when it comes to going without sleep,
luckily the stigma is fading, thanks in part to a few super–high performers.
In a piece called “No More Yes. It’s Either HELL YEAH!
Or No,” the popular TED speaker Derek Sivers describes a simple technique for
becoming more selective in the choices we make. The key is to put the decision
to an extreme test: if we feel total and utter conviction to do something, then
we say yes, Derek-style. Anything less gets a thumbs down. Or as a leader at
Twitter once put it to me, “If the answer isn’t a definite yes then it should
be a no.” It is a succinct summary of a core Essentialist principle, and one
that is critical to the process of exploration.
Similar criterion for hiring. He simply asks if the ask
the killer question: “If I didn’t already own this, how much would I spend to
buy it?” Likewise, in your life, the killer question when deciding what
activities to eliminate is: “If I didn’t have this opportunity, what would I be
willing to do to acquire it?”
“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
The more we think about what we are giving up when we
say yes to someone, the easier it is to say no. If we have no clear sense of
the opportunity cost—in other words, the value of what we are giving up—then it
is especially easy to fall into the nonessential trap of telling ourselves we can
get it all done.
HALF OF THE TROUBLES OF THIS LIFE CAN BE TRACED TO
SAYING YES TOO QUICKLY AND NOT SAYING NO SOON ENOUGH.
—Josh Billings
Sunk-cost bias is the tendency to continue to invest
time, money, or energy into something we know is a losing proposition simply
because we have already incurred, or sunk, a cost that cannot be recouped. But
of course this can easily become a vicious cycle: the more we invest, the more
determined we become to see it through and see our investment pay off. The more
we invest in something, the harder it is to let go.
A sense of ownership is a powerful thing. As the saying
goes, nobody in the history of the world has washed their rental car! This is
because of something called “the endowment effect,” our tendency to undervalue
things that aren’t ours and to overvalue things because we already own them.
Don’t ask, “How will I feel if I miss out on this
opportunity?” but rather, “If I did not have this opportunity, how much would I
be willing to sacrifice in order to obtain it?”
I SAW THE ANGEL IN THE MARBLE AND CARVED UNTIL I SET HIM
FREE.
—Michelangelo
Every year at the Academy Awards the most notable prize
is for “Best Picture.” The media speculate on it for weeks prior to the
broadcast, and most viewers stay up well past their bedtimes to see it awarded.
There is a far less hyped award on the night: the one for film editing. Let’s
face it: most viewers flip the channel or go into the kitchen to refill their
popcorn bowl when the winner of “Best Film Editing” is announced. Yet what most
people don’t know is that the two awards are highly correlated: since 1981 not
a single film has won Best Picture without at least being nominated for Film
Editing. In fact, in about two-thirds of the cases the movie nominated for Film
Editing has gone on to win Best Picture.
Likewise, in life, disciplined editing can help add to
your level of contribution. It increases your ability to focus on and give
energy to the things that really matter. It lends the most meaningful
relationships and activities more space to blossom.
Editing aids the effortless execution of the
Essentialist by removing anything distracting or unnecessary or awkward. Or, as
one book editor put it: “My job is to make life as effortless as possible for
the reader. The goal is to help the reader have the clearest possible
understanding of the most important message or takeaway.”
The Latin root of the word decision—cis or cid—literally
means “to cut” or “to kill.”
You can see this in words like scissors, homicide, or
fratricide. Since ultimately, having fewer options actually makes a decision
“easier on the eye and the brain,” we must summon the discipline to get rid of
options or activities that may be good, or even really good, but that get in
the way. Yes, making the choice to eliminate something good can be painful. But
eventually, every cut produces joy—maybe not in the moment but afterwards, when
we realize that every additional moment we have gained can be spent on
something better. That may be one reason why Stephen King has written, “To
write is human, to edit is divine.”
NO IS A COMPLETE SENTENCE.
—Anne Lamott
TO ATTAIN KNOWLEDGE ADD THINGS EVERY DAY. TO ATTAIN
WISDOM SUBTRACT THINGS EVERY DAY.
—Lao-tzu
What is the “slowest hiker” in your job or your life?
What is the obstacle that is keeping you back from achieving what really
matters to you? By systematically identifying and removing this “constraint”
you’ll be able to significantly reduce the friction keeping you from executing
what is essential.
An Essentialist produces more—brings forth more—by
removing more instead of doing more.
Instead of focusing on the efforts and resources we need
to add, the Essentialist focuses on the constraints or obstacles we need to
remove.
So to remove the obstacle you need to replace the idea
“This has to be perfect or else” with “Done is better than perfect.”
EVERY DAY DO SOMETHING THAT WILL INCH YOU CLOSER TO A
BETTER TOMORROW.
—Doug Firebaugh
Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation,
and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress
in meaningful work,
A popular idea in Silicon Valley is “Done is better than
perfect.” The sentiment is not that we should produce rubbish. The idea, as I
read it, is not to waste time on nonessentials and just to get the thing done.
In entrepreneurial circles the idea is expressed as creating a “minimal viable
product.”11 The idea is, “What is the simplest possible product that will be
useful and valuable to the intended customer?”
It is the process Pixar uses on their movies. Instead of
starting with a script, they start with storyboards—or what have been described
as the comic book version of a movie. They try ideas out and see what works.
They do this in small cycles hundreds of times. Then they put out a movie to
small groups of people to give them advance feedback. This allows them to learn
as quickly as possible with as little effort as possible. As John Lasseter, the
chief creative officer at Pixar and now
ROUTINE, IN AN INTELLIGENT MAN, IS A SIGN OF AMBITION.
—W. H. Auden
Learning essential new skills is never easy. But once we
master them and make them automatic we have won an enormous victory, because
the skill remains with us for the rest of our lives. The same is true with
routines. Once they are in place they are gifts that keep on giving.
LIFE IS AVAILABLE ONLY IN THE PRESENT MOMENT. IF YOU
ABANDON THE PRESENT MOMENT YOU CANNOT LIVE THE MOMENTS OF YOUR DAILY LIFE
DEEPLY.
—Thich Nhat Hanh
Lao Tzu: “In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be
completely present.”
BEWARE THE BARRENNESS OF A BUSY LIFE.
—Socrates
Focusing on the essentials is a choice. It is your
choice. That in itself is incredibly liberating.
As the Dalai Lama, another true Essentialist, has said:
“If one’s life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely
important for happiness.”
If you take one thing away from this book, I hope you
will remember this: whatever decision or challenge or crossroads you face in
your life, simply ask yourself, “What is essential?” Eliminate everything else.
As one senior vice president succinctly summarized it when she looked at the results gathered from her extended team: “Clarity equals success."
When character is beautiful, you are beautiful. That is
the beauty of simplicity.
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