Book Notes: Essentialism

TL;DR: Read this Book, when…

• you feel you’re busy, but not productive
• you’re stretched thin between many different commitments
• you need arguments to say “no” to the next person asking you to do something

Book Facts

• Title: Essentialism
• Authors: Greg McKeown
• Word Count: ~ 90.000 (6 hours at 250 words / minute)
• Reading Ease: easy
• Writing Style: conversational, bite-sized chapters, easy to follow

Overview

{% include book-link.html book=“essentialism” %} shows the way of what the author calls an “Essentialist”. Essentialists don’t spend time and energy on the non-essentials in their lives, freeing them up to focus on the essentials.

The book is written in an easy-to-read manner, with short chapters that one can read in a lunch break. The chapters are each titled with a single succinct verb, in essentialist manner.

Notes

Here are my notes, as usual with some comments in italics.

Trade-Off

• “Saying yes to any opportunity by definition requires saying no to several others.”
• an essentialist strategy is based on principled decisions / trade-offs
• act or be acted upon

Escape

• take time to think through options before committing to the best option
• create a regular space and time free of distractions to do deep work (like thinking about your options and deciding which to take)
• “The faster and busier things get, the more we need to build thinking time into our schedule.”

Look

• filter out the noise in everything, look for signal
• maintain a journal and revisit it from time to time to check that you’re still doing your essentials
• ask questions (or the same question again and again) to gain clarity on your direction

Play

• play fosters creativity and exploration
• relax every once in a while

Sleep

• “The best asset we have for making a contribution to the world is ourselves.”
• protect your best asset
• enough sleep supports creativity and allows us to make better decisions

Select

• having very selective criteria to make decisions makes the decisions easier (either “Hell yeah”, or “No!” - also see the book with this title by Derek Sivers)
• give options a rating between 0 and 100 - everything below 90 is out
• make your criteria explicit to make decisions almost automatic - write the criteria down
• ask yourself:
  • “what am I passionate about?”
  • “what taps my talent?”
  • “what meets a significant need in the world?”

Clarify

• when deciding, ask yourself “If I didn’t have this opportunity, what would I be willing to do to acquire it?” (we often value what we already have more than what we don’t have, so this question might reduce this bias)
• people thrive when they have a high level of clarity on goals and roles
• find your essential intents to guide your decisions
• essential intents are inspirational, concrete, meaningful, and measurable

Dare

• when you feel tension between what you feel is right and what someone expects of you, say “no”
• “Courage is the key to the process of elimination.”
• separate saying “no” to someone from the relationship to that person
• think about what you’re giving up when you say “yes”
• a “no” gains respect in the long run
• be slow with a “yes” and be quick with a “no”

Uncommit

• uncommit from unfruitful projects - don’t fall for the sunk-cost bias
• the endowment effect makes it hard for us to let go of things - pretend you don’t know the things you’re attached to
• admit to failure to let go of projects
• pause before answering a request
• do a “reverse pilot” to get rid of commitments - try some time without doing it and see what happens (most of the times nothing bad happens and we can let go of the commitment)

Edit

• editing is the process of removing things to make something better
• edit the non-essential things out of your work and life, even if you’ve put considerable effort into them
• make editing a habit to regularly correct your path (a great way of doing this is having a weekly distraction-free “rendezvous with yourself” and reviewing all the areas of your life for non-essential commitments)

Limit

• clear boundaries empower us to concentrate on our goals instead of other people’s goals
• articulate your boundaries to make them clear to yourself
• write down each time you feel a boundary has been crossed to make boundary violations visible
• clarify your boundaries with colleagues before starting a project together

Buffer

• things inevitably take longer than expected - build in a buffer
• start working on something at the earliest possible moment, not the latest, even if it’s just a few minutes of thinking
• add 50% to all estimations (we should make this a hard rule in software estimations!)

Subtract

• invest time in removing obstacles just as you’re investing time in essential tasks
• remove the “slowest hiker” first (i.e. help the slowest person in a hiking group to make the whole group faster) - what’s the obstacle that slows you down most?

Progress

• create small goals to make execution almost effortless
• celebrate small wins
• “Of all forms of human motivation, the most effective is progress.”
• start small and build momentum (this is also good advice for starting a bootstrapped business)
• follow the “minimum viable progress” - what’s the minimum step towards a goal?
• start “early and small” instead of “late and big”
• “Just a few seconds of preparation pay a valuable dividend.”
• visually reward progress (the easiest way is to check off a todo list, but you can be more creative about it)

Flow

• don’t “push through” - instead, design a routine that makes execution almost effortless
• “Routine is one of the most powerful tools for removing obstacles.”
• connect existing cues to new routines (also see my book notes for “The Power of Habit”)
• do the hardest thing first
• if you’re working on multiple projects, have a theme for each day so your focus for the day is clear

Focus

• don’t let your mind wander to past failures and successes or future challenges and opportunities - stay in the “now” to focus
• write down ideas to “get the future out of your head”
• take note of moments when you are fully present in the moment and try to re-create them

Be

• clear out the “wardrobe of your life” to gain clarity (wardrobes are notoriously full of things we no longer need)
• pause, push back, stop rushing, take control
• live the moment
• whenever faced with a decision, ask yourself “what is essential?”

Conclusion

The book is definitely worth a read, giving inspiration to re-think your decisions and plan your future decisions. I’ll be asking myself more often what really is essential in my life and what isn’t.