Essentialism : The Disciplined Pursuit Of Happiness - Greg McKeown

Essentialism : The Disciplined Pursuit Of Happiness

What is Essentialism and what it is for?

In essence, Essentialism is a set of principles that helps you determine and concentrate on what is really important. As one example, the author tells the story of a tech executive, who suffered from poor performance, was overworked and frustrated because of how little he could accomplish. Everything changed when he started evaluating the requests and saying no. Some of the important questions he asked: “Can I actually fulfill this request, given the time and resources I have?” Followed by a question: “Is this the very most important thing I should be doing with my time and resources right now?”

After he was able to reject nonessential activities, his productivity increased as he could concentrate on truly vital things. He said no to everything that was unimportant. Surprisingly, his colleague started to respect him more because of his negative decisions. He got more free time to spend in the evenings with his family. As a result, he got to enjoy his work and was rewarded with a large bonus.

The perfect definition of Essentialism would be less but better. It means concentrating on what is really important and constantly asking yourself whether you are concentrated on the right activities. With an enormous variety of things the world has to offer, we need to learn how to filter what is truly essential. It’s about deciding where to invest your energy to achieve the best performance.

“Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done.”

In Nonessentialism, a person spreads the same amount of energy among different activities. An essentialist prefers to invest in fewer activities but makes significant progress with what really matters. The task is to choose where you invest your energy. An essentialist is able to distinguish “the vital few from the trivial many,” remove the obstacles and invest in vital things exclusively.

Essentialism is a disciplined approach, where a person is in control of one's own choices. It’s a method to make trade-offs between many things and very few things. An essentialist says “I choose to” and “Only a few things really matter” instead of “I have to” and “It’s all important.” They feel in control of own their decisions and live a more fulfilled life.

Through his experience with tech entrepreneurs, business leaders, and young enthusiasts, McKeown learned how intelligent people often struggle to find the thing that would make the highest contribution.

“If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.”

It often happens with successful people that they got overwhelmed with opportunities and say yes to everything. More opportunities diffuse their efforts; they become distracted. It’s called the paradox of success. The goal is to return to the clarity that initially brought a person to success.

Nonessentialism, an opposite approach, is common because of several reasons. People have too many options, and they are increasing on a daily basis. Because we are overwhelmed, we lose the ability to prioritize. With more choices, the quality of our decisions deteriorates. It’s called “decision fatigue.” Social pressure on us is also growing. We were told that we can have it all, but it turned out — we can’t.

The word priority in English was singular for 500 years until 1900. Then, it became priorities. Many people now have the first, second and many other priorities, but we cannot change reality — there should be only one priority. If we don’t choose deliberately where to invest our energy, someone else, like our boss or colleagues, will do it instead.

Essentialism teaches us to clean up our internal closet and not to accumulate clutter. It’s somewhat similar to Mari Kondo tidying up method. You divide your closet into three piles: Something you must get rid off, probably keep, and must keep.

The book provides a detailed description of the Essentialism method:
• Explore and evaluate your opportunities. Decide whether an activity will provide a maximum contribution toward your goal. You will learn how to apply criteria to filter your choices. Ask yourself, “Do I love this?”
• Eliminate activities that do not make the highest contribution. Learn to say no to be effective. It requires emotional discipline.
• Develop a system to execute activities that suit you the best. Remove the obstacles and hold on to that system, making the execution effortless.

The core of Essentialism

To master Essentialism, you should conquer three popular assumptions — you have to, everything is important, you can do both. You replace them with the core phrases: “I choose to,” “Only a few things really matter,” and “I can do anything but not everything.”

Make a choice. The author went to study law because he wanted to have more options in life. During one trip to the United States, he realized that studying law was done by default and not something he actively wanted to pursue in life. He quit the law school after that. We may have a limited number of options, but we should always be in control to choose among them.

“The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given away — it can only be forgotten.”

Choices are hard to make and sometimes we forget that we have the ability to choose. It’s crucial for the Essentialism method to learn and exercise your power of choice. Once we forget about our ability, we become helpless.

Discern. In George Orwell’s book “Animal Farm” there is a character Boxer the horse, who tend to increase his efforts and work harder. Instead of progress, his efforts only aggravated the problems. People sometimes behave like Boxer because they are taught to work hard. But how about doing less and getting better results? Through various experiences in life, McKeown learned that particular types of efforts bring better results than others. It supports the idea of Essentialism that less is better.

The Pareto Principle, known as the 80/20 rule, says that 20% of our efforts produce 80% of results. Joseph Moses Jura expanded this idea and called it the law of the vital few. The idea is that by fixing a tiny fraction of the problems you have a chance to improve the quality of a product dramatically. Another example comes from American business investor Warren Buffett — 90% of his wealth comes from only 10 investments.

An essentialist spends time exploring all the options to determine which one is better. He thinks that almost all things are nonessential, and find those vital few out of many insignificant ones. Step by step, he makes a large shift in thinking away from the fact that everything is important.

Trade-offs. To achieve the success you have to make strategic compromises both in personal and professional life. You may try to avoid trade-offs, but you can’t run away from them. The reality is that you can’t do it all, so you have to choose, and do it thoughtfully and deliberately. An essentialist asks “What is the trade-off I want to make?” and “What can I go big on?”

Explore your options: Think

Paradoxically, Essentialism gives a chance to explore more options than Nonessentialism. Before going big, it provides an opportunity to explore and evaluate more choices. An essentialist spends a lot of time thinking, exploring, listening and questioning, compared to counterparts that are always busy and overworked.

One of the most effective tactics to use when exploring your options is to free up time and create a space to think. Some universities, like Stanford, have classrooms designed specifically to encourage students to walk around and think differently, compared to regular sitting. Other companies build a soundproof, windowless room to provide space for thinking.

“In order to have focus we need to escape to focus.”

Thinking also requires a space to concentrate. It’s effective to create a distraction-free environment and block time on your calendar without phone calls, pop-ups, and emails. Deliberately setting aside time to think is also helpful.

For example, Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn, blocks off two hours on his schedule every day simply for thinking and reflecting. He wants to be sure he is in control of his own day, so he uses this time to reflect on the company’s future and growth. He first thought it was a waste of time, but then found it to be very effective.

Bill Gates, for instance, takes a week off just to think and read. He was doing it even during the busiest time for Microsoft. While not everyone is able to get the pleasure of seven days off to read, the author recommends reading a classic literature book 20 minutes every day in the morning.

Explore your options: Observe like a journalist

Good journalists know that simply conveying a message isn’t enough. They need to connect the dots, discover what really matters and what is the point of it for people. But how to see the bigger picture in life and decide what to focus on? You need to learn how to filter what worth your attention. Instead of trying to listen to everything, an essentialist listens to what wasn’t being said. You should pay attention to the signals in the noise, instead of listening to the loudest voice.

The following tips will help you develop your inner journalist:
• Start writing in a journal. Make notes to remember important things and develop a routine to write a little on a daily basis. Read it through once every three months.
• Get out into the field and start exploring to understand a problem better and make the best contribution to fix it.
• Pay attention to details to give a different perspective of the same story.
• Remember what question you are trying to answer.

Explore your options: Play

Besides thinking and reflecting, it’s important to find time to play. Play is defined as “anything we do simply for the joy of doing rather than as a means to an end.” According to studies, play improves everything from creativity and ability to innovate to personal health and relationships.

It helps us to see more options, makes us more open to new ideas. Besides, play reduces stress, improves our brain cognitive activity, such as planning, prioritizing, scheduling, anticipating, delegating, deciding, and analyzing.

Explore your options: Sleep

Sleep deprivation may not only influence your productivity but threaten your health and well-being. The author provides an example of a young entrepreneur and athlete, who slept for 4-6 hours a day and drove himself to the condition when his organs started shutting down. To recover, he needed to take a year or two off from his work and his ambitious schedule. Eventually, he resigned and spent the next years recovering. He learned how to protect the most important asset — ourselves.

It’s very easy to push yourself to the limit, but you need to learn how to say no to opportunities and give your body and mind some rest. To make the brain function properly, the majority would need around 8 hours of sleep every day. Sleep improves productivity, increases performance, sparks creativity, and, hence, should be a priority.

There is a false belief that sleeping less helps achieve more. But studies confirm that actually sleeping more improves productivity. One study from a German university in Luebeck showed that an 8-hour night sleep boosts our brain power and improves our problem-solving skills. But even a short sleep break would improve creativity, according to research.

Many top executives, like Jeff Bezos and Mark Andreessen, are now following the view that eight-hour sleep is the key to bright and clear thinking. Some large companies provide perks for those who had to work late or take a red-eye flight.

Sleep deprivation compromises our highest priority — ability to prioritize.

Explore your options: Select

“If the answer isn’t a definite yes then it should be a no,” the author quotes a leader at Twitter. Derek Sivers, a popular TED speaker, puts it this way: “No More Yes. It’s Either HELL YEAH! Or No.” If it’s not absolutely yes, saying no would eliminate the clutter and free up space to what really matters. It’s the core principle of Essentialism.

Use the 90-10 model for making decisions. As you evaluate your decision, think about the most important criterion and give it a score between 0 and 100. If a score is lower than 90, reject it. Applying tough and highly selective criteria is the reality of trade-offs. You would end up with saying yes to only 10% of opportunities. Some companies, like Vitsoe furniture manufacturer, apply this system to the hiring process. They evaluate candidates and send offers only to those who qualify as the perfect fit for the job.

Explore your options: Saying no to opportunities

It’s difficult to say no to opportunities that come to us. Often it happens because of the fear of missing out effect.

Try this extreme test to filter your options. Write down your opportunity. Then write down three minimum and three extreme criteria this opportunity needs to pass. If it doesn’t pass the minimum, it’s no, but if it doesn’t pass at least two extreme criteria — it’s also no.

To find your life’s calling, ask yourself these tough questions: “What am I deeply passionate about?” and “What taps my talent?” and “What meets a significant need in the world?”

Eliminate unimportant things

The studies have found that we are inclined to evaluate the things we already own highly than they are worth. Ask the killer question: “If I didn’t already own this, how much would I spend to buy it?”

After you have explored your options, decide between competing priorities you’d like to say yes. Instead of thinking about what you want to reject, think about what you want to choose.

Achieve clarity. Companies that are vague about what they want to achieve have a serious lack of clarity. They waste their time and energy. The author noticed two patterns when teams lack clarity. In the first case, teams try to attract a manager’s attention, make up their own game, look better than their colleagues. In the second situation, teams work without purpose, concentrating on tasks that might be important at some level, but do not add up to the meaningful whole.

How to achieve the clarity of purpose? The author calls his method an essential intent. It’s a mix of “inspirational and concrete, both meaningful and measurable.” It’s one strategic choice that helps eliminate a 1,000 of other decisions. When thinking about your statement of purpose, avoid using cliches and buzzwords. The statement should be very concrete, like in Brad Pitt’s organization — to build 150 homes for families, who suffered from the hurricane. Having essential intent helps overcome obstacles in life on the way to your life purpose.

Have courage. One of the most important and the hardest thing to master to become an essentialist is to differentiate your intention from social pressure with courage and grace. Courage is the key to elimination. It’s hard to choose between essential and nonessential because we are uncertain about what is essential. Once we have it, it gives us the strength to reject the nonessentials.

To say no without guilt, social awkwardness, or fear to let someone down, you should do it firmly, reasonably, yet gracefully. Separate this decision from the relationship as you do not reject a person, you reject a request. You can form a rejection without saying a word no. Concentrate on your trade-off to make this process easier for you. Annoyance and disappointment from your rejection will change to respect.

“When we push back effectively, it shows people that our time is highly valuable. It distinguishes the professional from the amateur.”

Uncommit. The British-French Concorde jet was able to fly more than twice faster than regular planes, and yet the project failed. Still, the governments were investing in this project, knowing it’s a losing proposition. One reason is because of sunk-cost bias, a tendency to continue to invest because we’ve already incurred and cannot return the cost. People are also vulnerable to this bias. We continue to invest when we see it’s not turning out well instead of walking away. Ask the question: “If I weren’t already invested in this project, how much would I invest in it now?”

The endowment effect is the finding that people tend to overvalue an object they own and undervalue the same thing they don’t have. This bias applies to nonessential activities and personal belongings. As an antidote, pretend you don’t own this item yet. Don’t be afraid to waste a thing or opportunity if it’s a bad choice. Admit your failures and get a second opinion from a person who is not attached emotionally to your project. Stop trying to be a perfect fit. Remember about status quo bias, a tendency when people prefer everything to remain the same. Use zero as a baseline for budgeting and your own endeavors. Assume that your commitments don’t exist and start from scratch adding new activities.

“Every use of time, energy, or resources has to justify itself anew. If it no longer fits, eliminate it altogether.”

Practice pausing before you speak to get those extra 5 seconds to think before you commit.

Try an approach that Daniel Shapero, a director at LinkedIn, calls “a reverse pilot.” Eliminate your activity for some time to assess whether it makes a difference or nobody cares.

Edit. Besides being a journalist, you need to master the craft of editing to remove unnecessary things. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says that his job is about being a chief editor at the company. He decides what the company should do out of thousands of things. A good editor uses subtraction to make things better. Apply editing approach to your life.

“The Latin root of the word decision — cis or cid — literally means ‘to cut’ or ‘to kill’.”

Another principle is condensing or saying everything in a clear and concise manner. In life, it means to eliminate many meaningless activities and replace it with a meaningful one.

Build boundaries. One way to have enough time on your core activities is to set up boundaries. The author compares boundaries to the walls of a sandcastle. If we allow one wall to collapse, the rest of them fall down. Boundaries are not limiting, they are empowering and liberating. They help protect your precious time, eliminate demands and distractions. If you have limits, it makes you limitless.

Remember, someone’s problem isn’t always your problem. Put boundaries in advance, so you could force people to solve their own problems.

Explore the freedom you get with boundaries. In a school located next to a busy road, children played on a small playground away from cars. But when someone put a fence, they got much bigger space that kept them safe. Eventually, their freedom has doubled because of boundaries.

“When we have clear boundaries, we are free to select from the whole area — or the whole range of options — that we have deliberately chosen to explore.”

Make a list of the moments you felt your boundaries were violated to define your deal breakers.

How to develop and maintain the effortless system to execution?

Buffer. An essentialist creates a buffer for a bad time in advance, for those moments when something unexpected comes up as it always does. Making a cushion means thinking beforehand, planning in advance, and preparing better to reduce friction. Britain and Norway both discovered oil in the North Sea, but only the second one invested a fortune in an endowment and made a profit.

The studies show that we underestimate the amount of time we need to accomplish a task. Therefore, it’s useful to add an extra 50% of the time to your estimates.

Remove the constraint. To make things work more productively, you need to identify the main obstacle and remove it. That will help improve your productivity. But this should be done in a systematic and organized way. In Eliyahu Goldratt’s business parable “The Goal”, a fictional character Alex improves the least efficient machine one by one. By doing that, he improves the productivity of the whole plant.

“By systematically identifying and removing this ‘constraint’ you’ll be able to significantly reduce the friction keeping you from executing what is essential.”

Here is the plan the author recommends — concentrate on removing constraints instead of focusing on the efforts.

• Know your desired outcome.
• Take time to think about the obstacles. Identify the main one that would make the majority of other obstacles disappear.
• Remove the main obstacle. If it’s a person, ask this question “What obstacles or bottlenecks are holding you back from achieving X, and how can I help remove these?”

Progress. In Richmond, Canada, a police officer came up with the novel idea of positive tickets. Apart from regular tickets, the police introduced the system of the tickets for doing something good, such as wearing a helmet. After a decade this method had reduced recidivism from 60% to 8%. An essentialist starts small to get big results.

McKeown says that progress is the most effective form of motivation, according to research. Achievement, recognition for achievement, even small wins significantly improve how people perform. To get the important thing done, we need to start small and move to the next small thing until we reach success.

The author suggests adopting the method of “minimal viable progress.” Put a little bit of effort into something small to see the progress and evaluate it. Another thing is to start early preparation, so you won't be stressed out when the project is due. Plus, use visuals to see your progress.

“There is something powerful about visibly seeing progress toward a goal.”

Develop routine. Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps has his own routine he follows at every race. Besides physical preparation, his coach taught him to visualize every moment of his perfect race before he went to sleep. He called it a videotape. When the race starts, he is prepared to do everything as he watched on a videotape.

Routine works as a powerful tool against obstacles. It makes difficult things easy. One explanation is that with repetition our brain builds connections between neurons through synapses. As these connections get stronger, it simplifies for the brain to activate them. After some time, we can perform routine without consciously thinking about it. You can’t concentrate on two things at the same time, but you can autopilot the execution of one while channeling your attention to another activity. We can perform multitasking but we can’t be multi-focused.

The researchers at Duke University showed that 40% of our decisions are unconscious. The goal is to set a correct routine, so you won’t get into a trap of a bad habit, like checking your emails first thing in the morning. What to do to break the vicious circle of unhealthy routine? Charles Duhigg in his well-known book “The Power of Habit” said that a habit is built from a cue, a routine, and a reward. You need to find your cue and connect it with behavior that is essential. You can also build a new routine — just connect a cue of a brand-new routine to an established habit. To make the best of it, do the hardest thing first thing in the morning.

Focus. Ask a question: “What is important now?” This question redirects you to be focused on the present moment. You have no control over future success nor over past failures, thus, the only time you are able to control is now.

How to approach your life if you are overwhelmed with a lot of tasks and a list of things to finish on your schedule? Stop, and take a deep breath. Ask yourself what is important right now, at this very moment. Write it down, if you are struggling to decide.

Throughout your day, pay attention to meaningful moments. Live them through, write them down in your journal. That will help you achieve a higher level of contribution and make you happier.

Be present. You may live the life of essentialist in two ways — one is to do it occasionally, another — to embrace it as your lifestyle. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Gautama Buddha, Prophet Muhammad, Dalai Lama, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, Mother Teresa, and many others have deliberately chosen less but better philosophy of the Essentialism.

Majority of us have a little from essentialist and nonessentialist at the same time, but the question is what is predominant. If you start embracing Essentialism way, one by one these ideas become natural and instinctive to you. In the end, Essentialism gives you more clarity, more control over your life and actions, and more joy in your life journey. You will get your life that really matters.

“Once the essence of Essentialism enters our hearts, the way of the Essentialist becomes who we are. We become a different, better version of ourselves.”

Conclusion

The Essentialism approach teaches you to live a full and happy life with a clear purpose and without trivial distractions. Though it takes discipline and courage to accomplish, it’s rewarding and worth your efforts.

The way of the essentialist starts by exploring and evaluating your options. To find your life’s calling, ask yourself this tough question: “What am I deeply passionate about?” Take time to look around and gain inspiration, observe like a journalist, have a good sleep, apply tough and highly selective criteria to your options, and find time to play. Free up time to think and generate ideas when your mind isn't actively involved in anything else.

The next step is to eliminate activities that do not contribute to your life’s calling. To be productive and effective, learn to say no. Use the 90-10 model to make difficult decisions. Evaluate your decision on the most important criteria from 0 to 100 — if the score is lower than 90, say no to it.

Try this:
Develop a system to execute activities that suit you the best. Establish a routine and follow it to make the execution effortless. Remember Pareto Principle — 20% of your efforts account for 80% of your results.

If you decide to live your life as essentialist, you’ll get more control over your own life and decisions, get more clarity, more joy, and happiness, and remove stress. You will have a meaningful life and achieve your desired goals