Mukul J. · 09 May 2024
In Essentialism, Greg McKeown draws on experience and insight from working with the leaders of the most innovative companies in the world to show how to achieve the disciplined pursuit of less.
TO ATTAIN KNOWLEDGE ADD THINGS EVERY DAY. TO ATTAIN WISDOM SUBTRACT THINGS EVERY DAY - Lao-tzu
Always Choose - Essentialist. To become an Essentialist requires a heightened awareness of our ability to choose. We need to recognize it as an invincible power within us.
Less But Better - Think of Warren Buffett, who has famously said, “Our investment philosophy borders on lethargy.” What he means is that he and his rm make relatively few investments and keep them for a long time. “Warren decided early in his career it would be impossible for him to make hundreds of right investment decisions.
Write Less But Better - For the last ten years now I have kept a journal, using a counterintuitive yet efective method. It is simply this: I write less than I feel like writing.
Sacrifice for success - “One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work. In order to be successful you have to cut o one of your burners.
Think about the single most important criterion for that decision, and then simply give the option a score between 0 and 100. If you rate it any lower than 90 percent, then automatically change the rating to 0 and simply reject it. Simply ask yourself, “What is essential?” Eliminate everything else. It removes fear of choosing the wrong thing. It infuses courage into my bones. It challenges me to be even more unreasonably selective
Which Problems do i want? Essentialists ask the tougher but ultimately more liberating question,“Which problem do I want?” Jim Collins, the author of the business classic Good to Great, was once told by Peter Drucker that he could either build a great company or build great ideas but not both.
A true Essentialist, Peter Drucker believed that“people are e ective because they say no.” Any time we walk into a store or a restaurant or anywhere selling something, everything is designed to make it hard for us to say no. I am simply saying everyone is selling something—an idea, a viewpoint, an opinion—in exchange for your time. Simply being aware of what is being sold allows us to be more deliberate in deciding whether we want to buy it.
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: For instance, we’ll continue to sit through a terrible movie because we’ve already paid the price of a ticket. Instead, he said no to really good opportunities in order to pursue only the very best ones. “If You Don’t Prioritize Your Life, Someone Else Will,”
Essentialist focuses on the constraints or obstacles we need to remove. But how? Ask yourself,“What are all the obstacles standing between me and getting this done?” A popular idea in Silicon Valley is“Done is better than perfect.” Let’s say your goal is to get a draft of a fteen-page, written report attached to an e-mail and sent to the client by 2: 00 P.M. on Thursday. You need to indentify the slower element which will make your work full time consuming.
Make a list of these obstacles. They might include: not having the information you need, your energy level, your desire for perfection. Prioritize the list using the question,“What is the obstacle that, if removed, would make the majority of other obstacles disappear?” Doing research, or e-mailing people for information, or rewriting the report in order to get it perfect the rst time around—can be obstacles. Remember, the desired goal is to get a draft of the report nished.
To take our example, if getting words on the page is your primary obstacle, you could hire someone to do research for you. So to remove the obstacle you need to replace the idea“This has to be perfect or else” with“Done is better than perfect.”
What if, instead of just focusing on catching criminals—and serving up ever harsher punishments—after they committed the crime, the police devoted signifcant resources and effort to eliminating criminal behavior before it happens? Rather than on the ground, wearing a helmet while riding their bike, skateboarding in the designated area, or getting to school on time—
Essentialist starts small and celebrates progress. Instead of going for the big, ashy wins that don’t really matter, the Essentialist pursues small and simple wins in areas that are essential. Instead of starting big and then aring out with nothing to show for it other than time and energy wasted, to really get essential things done we need to start small and build momentum. Then we can use that momentum to work toward the next win, and the next one and so on until we have a signi cant breakthrough.
We can ask ourselves,“What is the smallest amount of progress that will be useful and valuable to the essential task we are trying to get done?” “Early and small” means starting at the earliest possible moment with the minimal possible time investment. If you have a big presentation coming up over the next few weeks or months, open a le right now and spend four minutes starting to put down any ideas. Then close the le. No more than four minutes. Just start it.
My wife Anna and I have tried to apply these ideas to our system of parenting. we had become concerned with how much screen time had crept into our family. Between television, computers, tablets, and smart phones it had become just too easy for the children to waste time on nonessential entertainment. So we introduced a token system.
The children were given ten tokens at the beginning of the week. These could each be traded in for either thirty minutes of screen time or fty cents at the end of the week, adding up to $ 5 or ve hours of screen time a week. If a child read a book for thirty minutes, he or she would earn an additional token, which could also be traded in for screen time or for money. The results were incredible: overnight, screen time went down 90 percent, reading went up by the same amount, and the overall e ort we had to put into policing the system went way, way down.
We can all create systems like this both at home and at work. The key is to start small, encourage progress, and celebrate small wins. How exciting and motivating it was to watch the level of the thermometer go up each day? Or perhaps your parents had a star chart for you. Above applying the same technique to your own essential goals, at home or at work.
Routine is one of the most powerful tools for removing obstacles. For years before the Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps won the gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he followed the same routine at every race. He arrived two hours early. 1 He stretched and loosened up, At forty-ve minutes before the race he would put on his race suit. At thirty minutes he would get into the warm-up pool.
Danger of routine - The danger is that we may develop routines that are counterproductive. Without being fully aware, we can get caught in nonessential habits—like checking our e-mail the second we get out of bed every morning, or picking up a doughnut on the way home from work each day, or spending our lunch hour trolling the Internet instead of using the time to think, re ect, recharge, or connect with friends and colleagues.
How they can be changed, scientists have explained that every habit is made up of a cue, a routine, and a reward. The cue is a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine—the behavior itself—which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain gure out if this particular habit is worth remembering for the future.
So, for example, if the bakery you pass on the way home from work triggers you to pick up a doughnut, next time you pass by that bakery, use that cue to remind you to pick up a salad from the deli across the street. Or if your alarm clock going o in the morning triggers you to check your e-mail, use it as a cue to get up and read instead. But each time you execute the new behavior—each time you pick up the salad—strengthens the link in your brain between the cue and the new behavior, and soon, you’ll be subconsciously and automatically performing the new routine.
I heard someone say he had developed a routine of writing a few lines at the exact same time each day. I would need some cue reminding me to write at the special time each day. So I started putting my journal in my bag right next to my phone. That way, when I pull my phone out of my bag to charge it each evening(already a well-established habit) I see the journal, and this cues me to write in it. It has been ten years now and I have almost never missed a day.
Lao Tzu:“In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.”
It’s true that doing the same things at the same time, day after day, can get boring. Jack Dorsey, the cofounder of Twitter and founder of Square, has an interesting approach to his weekly routine. He has divided up his week into themes. Monday is for management meetings and“running the company” work. Tuesday is for product development. Wednesday is for marketing, communications, and The question “What’s important now?” and what’s the ideal week?
Being beaten means they are better than you. They are faster, stronger, and more talented.” To Larry, losing means something else. It means you lost focus. It means you didn’t concentrate on what was essential. Priortise your tasks - After this I prioritized each list. Then I worked on each item on the“what is essential now” list one at a time. I just calmly worked through the list and erased each item when it was complete.
More present in the moment has been making joyful memories that would otherwise not exist. I smile more. I value simplicity. I am more joyful. 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.” A guy captured a footage of his daughter herself. He had been so busy recording the surroundings he had failed to record what was essential.
The way of the Essentialist, Explore more and more options, Choose one or very few and go with full efforts. Essentialists spend as much time as possible exploring, listening, debating, questioning, and thinking.
Schedule Deep Work Block - Newton created space for intense concentration, and this uninterrupted space enabled him to explore the essential elements of the universe. Inspired by Newton, I took a similar, if perhaps less extreme, approach to writing this book. I blocked o eight hours a day to write: from 5: 00 A.M. to 1: 00 P.M., ve days a week. The basic rule was no e-mail, no calls, no appointments, and no interruptions until after 1: 00 P.M. I didn’t always achieve it, but the discipline made a big di erence.
Connecting dots to deep knowledge - Then he tried to connect the dots by asking lots of questions only about what had just piqued his interest.
Listen What others do not hear - The best journalists, as Friedman shared later with me, listen for what others do not hear. At the lunch, he had been listening for what was being said only at the periphery. He was listening more for what was not being said. “My goal,” she said,“was to understand the ‘spiderweb’ of the story because that is what allowed me to spot any ‘abnormal’ or ‘unusual’ detail or behavior that didn’t quite t into the natural course of the story.” One trick she uses is role play: she puts herself in the shoes of all the main players in a story in order to better understand their motives, reasoning, and points of view.