Essentialism

BY: Greg McKeown

In one line: A simple roadmap for anyone seeking the ‘disciplined pursuit of less’.

In one more line: “If one’s life is simple. contentment has to come.” – Dalai Lama

In one last line: If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will do it for you, without you in mind.

1. Chapter 1 – The Essentialist:
2. Chapter 2 – Choose – Invincible power of choice:
3. Chapter 3 – Discern – The Unimportance of Practically Everything:
4. Chapter 4 – Trade-Off – Which Problem Do I Want?:
5. Chapter 5 – Escape -The Perks of Being Unavailable:
6. PART II – Explore:
7. Chapter 6 – Look – See What Really Matters:
8. Chapter 7 – Play – Embrace your inner child:
9. Chapter 8 – Sleep – Protect the Asset:
10. Chapter 9 – Select – The Power of Extreme Criteria:
11. PART III: Eliminate:
12. CH10 – Clarify – One Decision That Makes 1,000:
13. Chapter 11 – Dare – The Power of a Graceful “No”:
14. Chapter 12 – Uncommit – Win Big by Cutting Your Losses:
15. Chapter 13 – Invisible Art:
16. Chapter 14 – Limit – The Freedom of Setting Boundaries:
17. Part IV – EXECUTE:
18. Chapter 15 – Buffer – The Unfair Advantage:
19. Chapter 16 – Subtract:
20. Chapter 17 – Progress – The Power of Small Wins:
21. Chapter 18 – Flow – The Genius of Routine:
22. Chapter 19 – Focus:
23. Chapter 20 – Be – The Essentialist Life:
24. Appendix

Chapter 1 – The Essentialist:

• Relentless pursuit of less but better…pause and ask “am I investing in the right activities?”
• Vital Few > Trivial Many
• What is the one thing I would be doing if I were focused on making the biggest contribution?
• the more decisions we make the lesser the quality becomes
• The undisciplined pursuit of more is one of the greatest catalysts for failure for all companies

Four Phases of Success:

1. Clarity of purpose leads to success of endeavor
2. When we have success, gain reputation as go to person (“Good ol Matt” always there when we need him), leads to increased opportunities
3. This is code for demands in our time/energy, which leads to diffused efforts, being spread thinner & thinner over time
4. We get distracted from what would be our highest level of contribution; the effect of our success undermines the clarity that led to our success in the first place

• If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will
• Why do we have so much more ability than we often choose to utilize?
• Almost everything is complete noise
• “Over-worked & under-utilized”
• Only when we give ourselves permission to stop trying to do it all and say no, can we actually make contributions to that which is vital
• He used to be the first to jump in on emails but now just let others take the lead, stopped attending meetings about info he didn’t need, calls he had no contribution to make, just being invited isn’t a good enough reason to attend — this creates the space to do the projects that actually matter
• Is this the very most important thing I can be doing right now? If not, say no
• The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials
• Are you majoring in minor activities?

Chapter 2 – Choose – Invincible power of choice:

• Change “I have to,” to “I choose to”
• “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.” – William James
• Everything is designed to make it hard for us to say no
• Martin Seligman–“Learned Helplessness” study with German Shepherds
• We may not always have control over our options but we have control how choose among them
• When we surrender our ability to choose, something/someone chooses for us

Chapter 3 – Discern – The Unimportance of Practically Everything:

• “Almost everything in the universe has little value and yields little results.” – Richard Koch
• Joseph Moses Durant — “the law of the vital few.” You can massively improve a product by resolving a tiny fraction of the problems
• Pareto Principle — 20% of our efforts produce 80% of results
• “Our investment process borders on lethargy.” – Buffett; realized it’s impossible to make 100s of correct investments so instead only invest in the businesses he was absolutely sure of and then bet on them heavily (90% of his wealth is a result of 10 investments…what you don’t do is more important than what you do)
• Power Law Theory–certain decisions produce exponentially better results than others

Chapter 4 – Trade-Off – Which Problem Do I Want?:

• Best investment from 1972-2002 in SP500 — Southwest Airlines
• A sustainable strategy is not possible unless there are trade offs made in other areas
• A company mission statement should very clearly state what the company values most and how people should act when decisions are at odds and what to prioritize
• There are no solutions, only trade-offs
• Make a consistent set of choices that’s oriented in a clear value/priority with awareness of the trade offs
• Instead of thinking, “what do i have to give up, think, what do I want to go big on?”

Chapter 5 – Escape -The Perks of Being Unavailable:

• “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.” – Pablo Picasso
• First Monday of every month–gathers entire team together–no phones, no email, clients know the team is unavailable, bring people together to think & reflect–creates clarity to innovate & grow
• Are you so busy in your company you don’t have the time to decide that you actually want to be at the company?
• We have to intentionally create space to design, think, reflect, explore
• PARENTING – create no screen time periods for your kids with questions & prompts to distinguish essential vs. trivial
• Isaac Newton spent 2 years in solitude when he came up with the laws of Universal Gravitation Theory & Prinicipia Mathematica
• Greg Mckeown wrote Essentialism from 5a-1p 5 days a week–no phone, no computer, no tech
• By abolishing any chance we have at being bored (with technology) we have lost the time we used to have to think & process
• Jeff Wiener, CEO linkedin, maintains 2 hours blank space in calendar every day spaced in 30m increments
• Bill Gates has had 2 “think weeks” every year since 1980
• Books: Zen-The Reason of Unreason, The Torah, The Bible, The Dao, The Meaning of the Glorious Quran, The Essential Gandhi, Walden-life in the woods, As a Man Thinketh, Meditations o Marcus Aurelius

PART II – Explore:

• Non essentialists get excited by and react to everything
• We should have highly selective criteria for the commitments we make

Chapter 6 – Look – See What Really Matters:

• Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?:
• Listen for whats not being said
• The faintest pencil is better than the strongest memory
• PRACTICE TO ADOPT – Review your journal once every 90 days and look for the trends & signal in the noise

Chapter 7 – Play – Embrace your inner child:

• When we play, we are engaged in the truest expression of who we are, the times we feel most alive
• Play is an antidote to stress
• Columbus was at play when it dawned on him the Earth was round, Newton was at play in his mind when he saw the apple tree and suddenly conceived gravity, Watson & Crick were playing with shapes of DNA molecule when they discovered the double helix, Shakespeare played with Iambic Pentameter his whole life
• Play leads to brain plasticity, creativity, and adaptability (Stuart Brown)
• “A little nonsense is cherished by the wisest men.” – Roald Dahl
• “Have you gone off your crumpet? Lets go fly a kite.” — story from Mary Poppins where Father loses his job and is extremely delighted
• The word school is derived from the Greek word “shul” meaning leisure
• Ken Robinson — instead of fueling creativity thru play, schools actually killed it—we’ve created a fast food model of education
• PARENTING — when your kids get stressed out or upset, have them draw or do some form of play
• Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement

Chapter 8 – Sleep – Protect the Asset:

• Sleep Deficit = The Performance Killer; an all-nighter is equivalent to a BAC 0.10
• Lack of sleep deprives our decision making abilities
• “The vision of being superhuman and only sleeping a couple hours a night was intoxicating.”
• One of the most common ways people damage themselves is thru lack of quality sleep
• Most people who think they can thrive on little sleep have just gotten so used to being tired they have forgotten what it feels like to be rested
• Sleep = high performance, creativity, highest levels of mental contribution
• 1 more hour of sleep = a few more hours of productive work the next day
• “When I go to sleep, I die. I wake up in the morning I am reborn.” – Gandhi
• Can we integrate more play into our work environment?

Chapter 9 – Select – The Power of Extreme Criteria:

• If its not a hell yes, its a no
• If you don’t absolutely love your things, get rid of them and create open space or space for something better
• The 90% Rule – score the decisions you’re making in your life and if they’re below 90, automatically go to 0
• Our criteria for clients must be selective AND explicit, so it can become a tool for filtering out the non-essential
• HIRING — When hiring, if they make it thru multiple rounds of interviews, invite them for a day or a week of work with team and then ask, would they LOVE working here and would we LOVE working w them?
• HIRING — will this person be a natural fit?

PART III: Eliminate:

• We value things we already own more than they’re worth, which makes them harder to get rid of…”if I didn’t already own this, how much would I spend to buy this? Would I buy it at all?

CH10 – Clarify – One Decision That Makes 1,000:

• Mission statement should inspire your team about what your purpose is
• If a team does not have clarity of goals & roles, problems will fester & multiply
• “Essential Intent” (8min) — inspirational & concrete, 1 decision that makes 1,000, meaningful & memorable; substance > style; if we could be truly excellent at only one thing, what would it be?; it answers the question, “how will we know when we’ve succeeded?”
• Nelson Mandela in jail from 1962-1989

Chapter 11 – Dare – The Power of a Graceful “No”:

• Without courage, the disciplined pursuit of less is lip service
• “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” – Steven Covey (essentialist)
• “Courage is grace under pressure.” – Ernest Hemingway
• Separate the decision from the relationship & focus on the trade off on what were giving up when we say yes to something when we really want to say no
• Saying no means choosing respect over popularity
• A clear no is better than a vague or non-committal yes
• SAMPLE NO LANGUAGE: “I am grateful & honored for your_______. I’m afraid I have to disappoint you. Productivity consists of not doing anything that is outside the scope of work that is Essential to me right now.” – Peter Drucker (people are successful bc they say NO); “enormous burdens on my time.” “Unable to respond/participate in the manner in which I would like, for this I apologize.” “Yes, but what should I deprioritize?” USE HUMOR; “I can’t do it but here’s an alternative/x person may be interested.”
• What would your life look like if you were putting 100% of your energy into things that mattered to you?
• Learn the slow yes, and the quick no
• It’s a lot harder to honor our nos when were not crystal clear on what is essential
• “Normative Conformity” — doing what societies & groups expect us to do
• Mihai Chinsekmihai — the Hungarian professor on FLOW
• We worry about saying no because it may stir things up, burn bridges, miss opportunities, disappoint others but failing to say no can lead us to miss out on critical things—these are usually exaggerated & people typically respect us more
• “I felt determination cover my body like a quilt in the night.” – Rosa Parks, when she refused to give up her seat on the bus
• Ever feel tension between what was right v what someone telling you to do? Say yes when you mean no to avoid conflict? Fear turning down people in fear of disappointing them?

Chapter 12 – Uncommit – Win Big by Cutting Your Losses:

• “Half the troubles in life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.” – Josh Billings
• “Sunk Cost Bias” – invest time, money, energy into things we know are a losing proposition because we’ve already incurred a cost we cant recoup
• “The Endowment Effect” – tendency to undervalue things that aren’t ours and overvalue things we already own. Ask yourself, if I didn’t own this, how much would I pay to obtain it?
• “Status Quo Bias” – continue doing something simply because we’ve always done it.
• “Reverse Pilot” – test whether removing a process/project would have any impact (ie: stop publishing a report and see if anyone notices/asks for it?)
• Seek opinions from people who are not emotionally involved
• Stop making casual commitments
• If I weren’t already invested in this company/this project/this____, how much would I invest in it now? What could I do with this time/money if I cut my losses now?

Chapter 13 – Invisible Art:

• Resist the temptation to reply all on emails, to add our two cents in a meeting—observe and wait
• The best editors dont change everything, only what is unnecessary
• Check this out! Life Edited
• Condensing – means doing more with less
• We need to shift the ratio of activities to meaning; eliminate meaningless activities and replace them with one meaningful activity
• Need to know your main objective to make decisions on how what you’re doing contributes to goal

Chapter 14 – Limit – The Freedom of Setting Boundaries:

• “No, is a complete sentence.” – Anne Lamott

• CREATING BOUNDARIES – use your intuition & resentments as hints to the areas where you would benefit from boundaries & craft social contracts
• If you cant articulate your boundaries clearly & simply, how will anyone else respect them?
• Boundaries are a source of liberation and they benefit you and others—people learn how to figure things out on their own
• In work, people try to use our sprinklers to water their lawn all the time
• Setting boundaries in advance eliminates the need for the direct NO
• If you don’t set your boundaries, someone will set them for you
• Boundaries are like the walls of a sand castle, the second we let one fall over, the rest of them come crashing down
• The boundary of work has edged insidiously into family territory

Part IV – EXECUTE:

• Design a system to make execution effortless

Chapter 15 – Buffer – The Unfair Advantage:

• “Give me 16 hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first 4 sharpening the axe.” – Lincoln

• “The Planning Fallacy” – Daniel Kahneman – tendency to underestimate how long something will take even when you’ve done it before
• Add 50% to whatever your time estimate is
• Always build a buffer to prepare for unexpected events
• Joseph saved Egypt from a 7y famine by interpreting a dream from the pharaoh; Joseph had been in jail at the time

Chapter 16 – Subtract:

• “To obtain knowledge, obtain things every day. To obtain wisdom, subtract things every day.” – Lao Tzu

• Done is better than perfect
• What is the obstacle, that if removed, would remove the majority of all the other obstacles?
• You wont know what obstacles to remove until you’re clear on the desired outcome; when we don’t know what were trying to achieve, all change is arbitrary
• When you are in reactive mode, you are forced to use short term fixes
• Remove more to produce more

Chapter 17 – Progress – The Power of Small Wins:

• Focus on minimal viable progress—“done is better than perfect”; just do something to get started
• Visually reward progress
• PARENTING — “Token System” for screen time management — gave kids 10 tokens at beg of week which could be traded at end of week for 30min of screen time or $1; if they read a book for 30mins, earned additional token
• Look for small changes we can make in things we do often
• The 2 biggest motivators for people are achievement and recognition for achievement
• out of all forms of human motivation, the most effective one is progress; Small concrete wins creates momentum and affirms our faith in our success
• Case Study – Richmond’s (the city) Positive Ticket system to keep kids off the street reduced recidivism from 60% to 8% over a decade; positive tickets redeemable for movie tickets, and other things

Chapter 18 – Flow – The Genius of Routine:

• Routine in an ordinary man is a sign of an intelligent man
• Design a routine that makes enshrining the essentials effortless
• Routine enables difficult things to become easy
• The right routines can enhance creativity & innovation by giving us an energy rebate
• Nearly 40% of our decisions are unconscious
• Every habit is made up of a queue (trigger), a routine, and a reward; to change the habit, you need to change the triggers/queues
• Focus on the hardest thing first
• Mix up your routines by day

Chapter 19 – Focus:

• If you abandon the present moment, you cannot live your life deeply – Thich Naht Hanh
• Whats important NOW? The point being overly focused on mistakes of the past or plans of the future distracts us from the present moment
• “In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.” – Lao Tzu
• “Pause & Refresh” – close eyes, one slow deep breath in and out to leave the days activities behind and be present with your family
• “Cairos” – Term for being in the present – Thich Nhat Hanh

Chapter 20 – Be – The Essentialist Life:

• “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” – Socrates
• “I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing and sad, how many trivial things even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day.” – David Thoreau
• Gandhi owned fewer than 10 items when he died and spent 1day/week not speaking
• Life as a non-essentialist = stress & chaos
• Life as an essentialist = impact, meaning & simplicity
• The disciplined pursuit of less
• “If ones life is simple, contentment has to come.” – Dalai Lama

Appendix

• Be ridiculously selective with every person you hire
• Don’t hesitate to remove people who are holding the team back; you will be left w a team of All Start performers whose collective is greater than their parts
• Debate until you have established a perfectly ridiculously clear essential intent. Without clarity of purpose, non essentialist leaders straddle their strategy. They try to pursue too many objectives and do too many things, as a result, their teams get spread in a many directions but make little progress as a whole. They waste time on the non essentials & neglect the things that really matter
• Clear intent leads to alignment. Vague direction produces misalignment
• Go for extreme empowerment
• The non essentialist leader is not accountable