Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

A good quality and interesting book

Single most memorable passage: "Charlie O. Simms taught a Journalism 101 class at Beverly Hills High School. He started... by explaining the concept of a "lead". He explained that a lead contains the why, what , when, and who of the piece. It covers the ESSENTIAL(my emphasis) information. Then he gave them their first assignment: write a lead to a story. Simms began by presenting the facts of the story: "Kenneth L. Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California governor Edmund 'Pa' Brown" The students hammered away on their manual typewriters trying to keep up with the teacher's peace. Then they handed in their rapidly written leads. Each attempted to summarise the who, what where, and why as succinctly as possible: "Margaret Mead, Maynard Hutchins, and Governor Brown will address the faculty on ..."; "Next Thursday, the high school faculty will ..." Simms reviewed the students' leads and put them aside. He then informed them that they were all wrong. The lead to the story, he said, was "There will be no school on Thursday." "In that instant," Nora Ephron(of [Sleepless in Seattle] and [When Harry met Sally]) recalled, "I realised that journalism was not just about regurgitating the facts but about figuring out the POINT. It wasn't enough to know the who, what, when, and where; you had to understand what it MEANT. And why it MATTERED." Ephron added, "He taught me something that works just as well in life as it does in journalism." " p73-74 Disclaimer - I have not read a whole lot of management/self-improvement books, so I cannot say that I am a very good judge of the genre. There is a danger that this book is actually littered with tired old cliches that I hadn't noticed, in which case I shouldn't have bothered you with this. That said - Self-improvement books are a strange breed - myself included, you so often see people who read one and then complain that the book only wrote about the really obvious things. In the same sense, however, homo sapiens are a strange breed who never quite do what they know to be the obviously good things for themselves. grin emoticon Enter, then, the study of management - the study on "coordination of the efforts of people to accomplish goals and objectives by using available resources efficiently and effectively". Sounds like self-improvement on a larger scale, but with the added benefit of providing results from well-designed research. The author is a management consultant with an MBA degree from Stanford. Perhaps naturally, the book often reads like a business strategy book with plenty of case studies from the corporate world, but as Ephron says, those methods can easily be used for life in general. The book's message can be neatly summed up in one sentence - "Figure out what is really important and essential in your life, and eliminate everything else to focus your efforts and achieve maximum output/contribution to society". The rest of the book is just filled up by how to achieve that goal. While 'the rest of the book' is coherently structured with a logical, well-suited flow and sensible, well-researched suggestions backed up by sociology/psychology research findings(these days it seems impossible to read something that doesn't quote [Flow] by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and [Thinking Fast and Slow] by Daniel Kahneman, although probably due to my reading interests. Perhaps I should just give up and add them to the reading list), some solutions that the author suggests will just sound implausible. One example is the importance of being able to say no to your boss so that you can concentrate on something more essential. Obviously, I cannot imagine myself doing so to my bosses, consultant surgeons. For some other solutions, I thought they can only be done when one is reasonably financially secure, so that he/she can take the risk/hit by cutting out/declining all the non-essential activities that regularly plague our lives. However, (as my stock-phrase goes) if we are to look at the moon instead of the finger pointing at the moon... The part that really inspires me in this book is its single-minded pursuit and the determination for what constitutes the most important thing in our lives; what makes our lives meaningful for us(as illustrated in the above anecdote), and what will ultimately enable us to be useful to the rest of the humanity. Sure, it may not always be obvious to all of us, and the method of elimination the book suggests may not guarantee to lead us to an answer. In fact, our lives may quite possibly be meaningless! :-D Nevertheless, for me it is certainly worth a try. The other aspects that left a strong impression for me was the authors repeated emphasis on how pursuing Essentialism is a choice, and the importance of EMOTIONAL(not intellectual) acceptance of the book's ideas for them to work - which is to say, as discussed at the beginning, it is not because we don't know what to do why we don't do them. There is always a choice, and we simply choose not to.

Our world seems to be moving faster and faster. We are bombarded by endless information and rapidly multiplying demands on our time and attention. Many people struggle to cope with their bottomless to-do lists and their ever-expanding to-read piles. As a consequence, many people feel scattered or even burned out. In “Essentialism”, Grey McKeown provides an antidote by arguing that we should focus on the essential. Thereby, we can concentrate our efforts on the things that truly matter and ignore all of the noise. He goes into practical advice and illustrates the approach of the essentialist to many of life’s quandaries. The book is highly readable because of the many case examples that will resonate with many readers. The chapters are also kept short and to the point. That makes it easy to absorb the main message. However, I thought that book boiled down to a few central points that can be summarised in a page or two. However, this might be because I read quite a few books on similar topics and was, therefore, familiar with the content of some of the chapters. For instance, Deep Work by Cal Newport and Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky cover similar ground. Altogether, I think the book is an excellent choice for anyone who feels on the edge of burn-out and wants to take some time to reflect on a better approach to work and life.

Good read. Very interesting and opened my mind to some things.

Just to be clear, I read a lot of this kind of book and I'm a tough audience, so three stars means it's pretty good. Only the very best (eg, David Allen) get 5 stars. I enjoyed this book. While it lacked the truly profound, game-changing ideas of, say, Deep Work (Cal Newport) or Peak (Ericsson) (and was way below the GTD benchmark), the basic message of the book is condensed well, clearly articulated and practically applicable, which I find three important tests for this kind of book. McKeown uses good examples, without them being clichéd (no tedious stuff about Abraham Lincoln, unlike a lot of this sort of book). He uses personal experience without being a droney, self-promoting charlatan (again, common in the genre). He writes clearly and effectively, so you can dip in and out and don't drift off while reading. And the basic message is essentially a good one: be selective about what you do and do it better. That said, while I enjoyed it, I wouldn't call it essential reading. (Perhaps the author would approve that I've just written that!) It does identify a definite problem - the target audience for this kind of book is a bit frazzled with trying to do too much - but it falls short of a real game-changing way of looking at the world. Which is a high bar to set, admittedly. You could do better than read this book (I've mentioned ones I found better) but you could do a LOT worse.

I have re read this book already twice and it’s so direct and well written it’s one on my favourites on the subject

Really loved this book. Got lots of insights! I can keep rereading it.

Uma das perguntas mais poderosas que já me fizeram foi “Quais foram os 3 momentos/coisas que mais te fizeram ter sucesso no projeto X?”. Foi um exercício sensacional olhar para trás e identificar as 3 coisas essenciais que naquele projeto me fizeram ter sucesso. E foi quando percebi que muitas vezes, menos é melhor. Esse livro veio para emoldurar, colocar nome em pensamentos e rituais que eu já vinha implementando na minha vida: o essencialismo. Em resumo: focar no que realmente é essencial ao invés dos “muitos triviais” (diferentes contextos). As 2 coisas que mais me chamaram a atenção: #1 Foco a laser: vivemos numa sociedade (do cansaço - leia!), que prega que tudo é possível. Vivemos ansiosos, sempre achando que estamos devendo fazer algo. Mas quem disse que é possível ser multifoco? Não dá. Quando tudo é prioridade, fazemos muitas coisas diferentes mas evoluímos milímetro em cada direção. Quando reduzimos para o que é essencial e colocamos foco naquilo, o resultado sai em velocidade de cruzeiro. Quando vi a segunda foto meu cérebro expandiu. Todo o racional me fez muito sentido e consegui pensar em coisas (poucas!) que coloquei foco no último ano e como me levaram para frente. #2 A rotina te leva a tomar melhores decisões: tomar decisão suga as suas energias. Quanto menos decisão você tiver que tomar, melhor. Quando você é uma pessoa que segue rotinas, as decisões corriqueiras rodam no automático. Você deixa de ter que tomar decisões bestas do tipo que horas vou encaixar exercício, que horas vou jantar, o que vou comer hoje, eu vou ler agora ou ver netflix. Te sobra então mais energia (e clareza!) para decisões que efetivamente são essenciais. Eu que já fui vida louca, nos últimos 5 anos tô virando a velha da rotina. Me faz super bem! Se você está se sentindo cansada(o), que sempre está devendo fazer algo para alguém ou vive caçando um método para ser mais produtivo, indico ler esse livro para rever se a sua lista (enorme?) de prioridades de 2021 faz realmente sentido.

This book has helped me so much. Puts the art of doing into a peaceful perspective.

Life is complicated. Life is full of responsibilities and opportunities, planned duties and serendipitous possibilities. There is so much we could do, but so little we can do. Many of us battle our whole lives to focus on those few, significant items that we should do must do, and yet so few of us ever feel like we are even nearly succeeding. Help is here in the form of Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism. While it is not a perfect book, and while it benefits tremendously from adding a good dose of Christian thinking, it is one of the most helpful I’ve read on that constant battle to focus my time and energy on the right things. McKeown believes in what he calls Essentialism and describes the basic value proposition in this way: “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.” The Essentialist pursues fewer but better opportunities and is rigidly disciplined in rejecting the many to devote himself to the few. It is “not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done.” The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless. Now that sounds good! That sounds like what we all want—a clear design to our lives that simplifies decision-making and amplifies each of the opportunities we pursue. McKeown leads the reader to Essentialism in four parts: Essence. He begins by looking to the essence of Essentialism and the realities that make Essentialism a necessary but difficult practice today. Explore. Here he describes the way an Essentialist needs to think so he can pursue the highest possible contribution toward the best goals. Eliminate. Having determined the best goals, the Essentialist now needs to begin eliminating anything that will compete with the pursuit of those goals. “It’s not enough to simply determine which activities and efforts don’t make the highest possible contribution; you still have to actively eliminate those that do not.” Execute. And then comes the heart of it all—living in such a way that you now execute on those few goals, and continuing to follow the discipline of it. McKeown promises his book “will teach you a method for being more efficient, productive, and effective in both personal and professional realms. It will teach you a systematic way to discern what is important, eliminate what is not, and make doing the essential as effortless as possible. In short, it will teach you how to apply the disciplined pursuit of less to every area of your life.” And I think it can do that. It is chock-full of excellent insights and quoteable phrases. It is the kind of book you can use to implement systems in your life, or the kind of book you can plunder for its big and important ideas. Yet the Christian reader will want to read it with some discernment. This is a book that benefits from an infusion of the biblical ethos. As the book reaches its end, McKeown expands Essentialism to all of life and here he stops quoting business gurus and begins quoting religious gurus; the last chapter is easily the weakest and one that can be skipped without any great loss. Reading the book through a Christian lens improves it significantly. McKeown writes about people who always say “yes” and are afraid to say “no.” That sounds like a classic diagnosis of fear of man, a person so motivated by the praise of man that he takes on too much and says no to too little so he can win the praise of other people. Not only that, but God has a way of diverting us from what we believe are our most important tasks. He diverts us to tasks he determines are even more important, and a too-rigid adherence to Essentialism may keep a Christian from allowing and embracing those divine interruptions. Read the gospels and the book of Acts and you will see how Jesus and the Apostles were extremely focused, but also very willing to depart from their plans. Implementing Essentialism too rigidly may just lead to a self-centered life rather than a life of service to others. Reading through that Christian lens also allows us to see that Essentialism can be a means through which we honor and glorify God. It propels us to consider where God has specially gifted and equipped us to serve him and his people. Again, “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.” The principles of Essentialism, read and applied through the Bible, will help us understand how we are uniquely created and burdened by God to meet specific needs. And, equally helpfully, it will steer us away from those areas where we cannot contribute nearly as well. I heartily recommend the book, provided you read with Essentialism in one hand, and the Bible in the other. Let me close with a few of my favorite quotes: In many cases we can learn to make one-time decisions that make a thousand future decisions so we don’t exhaust ourselves asking the same questions again and again. If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will. We can either make our choices deliberately or allow other people’s agendas to control our lives. 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.” If … people are too busy to think, then they’re too busy, period. Making our criteria both selective and explicit affords us a systematic tool for discerning what is essential and filtering out the things that are not. Motivation and cooperation deteriorate when there is a lack of purpose. Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough. “We need to learn the slow ‘yes’ and the quick ‘no.’ ”