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.
