Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

 

I just finished reading the book, Essentialism by Greg Mckeown and it was a great book. It is about pursuing less but better, focusing on what actually matters and discarding the rest. Below are the insights I got while reading the book.

Core Message

Only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter. - G. Mckeown

Choose - The Invincible power of choice

Yet choice is at the very core of what it means to be an 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, existing separate and distinct from any other thing, person, or force.- G. Mckeown, pg 42

We do not always have control of the options that we are presented to us but we have the power choose among the options presented to us. We should have a disciplined approach to choosing few but better options than accepting everything that comes our way.

If we don't place ourselves first, other people will make the choices for us. We have to sit down and ask the hard question why should do this and this and will it benefit me? By saying no to the opportunities that do not help us, we gain power to decide what opportunities to embark on that yield the most benefits to us.

Discern -The unimportance of everything

Certain actions that we do will yield higher rewards than others. Recall the 80/20 principle or the Pareto Principle, 20% of our efforts yield 80% of the results. But the question is, which efforts are those? To know them, you have to sit back and discern what actions are actually bringing the most results and what aren't. Once you figure it out, you double down on the actions that bring the best results and discard the rest.

Trade-Off - What problem do I want?

What are you ready to let go of and what are you ready to accept? You can't solve every problem so you must as well choose which ones to do and which ones to ignore. There will always be trade offs in every decision you make.

Essentialists spend more time exploring a lot of options as compared to their non essentialists colleagues.

Escape- The perks of being unavailable

You must find time to be by yourself in order to think about things that actually matter. It is actually a good thing to get bored which is rare these days with the constant urge to fill our time with "stuff" in order to not get bored.

When we isolate ourselves, we have time to think and work on what really matters and get things done. We have to eliminate distractions like social media, Netflix etc to do work. Personally, I am not using social media like Instagram as I found it was a waste of time and I just used them to escape the boredom. I know only use LinkedIn and WhatsApp as they bring actually bring value to my life as I am interacting with people I want to interact with.

Limit- The Freedom of setting boundaries

We have to set boundaries when it comes to work so that it doesn't interfere with what matters most. If you have for example, decided to spend weekends with family, even if you get an urgent project, you have to stick to your commitments. If you start accepting "urgent" projects when you have already other commitments, your boundaries will simply cease to exist and people will take advantage of that as they know you're always available

When we have clear boundaries, we are free to pursue what we want and we are not imprisoned by other people's agendas

Buffer- The Unfair Advantage

We must create buffer zones which will gives us enough time to adapt to unforeseen changes. The buffer gives us room for error and may even in circumstances, be a cushion. For example, if you have an emergency fund which you have been saving, should you lose your job or get into an accident, the emergency fund will take care of you and you don't have to start harambee or borrowing people money.

It's even better if the emergency fund is in a interest generating account therefore it grows over time. This also helps to overcome inflation which most people do not account for.

 Flow - The Genius of Routine

Essentialism is about creating a system for handling the closet of our lives. It’s about learning how to do less but better so you can achieve the highest possible return on every precious moment of your life. - G. Mckeown, pg 25

Routine consisting of the essentials make life easy and you do not have to worry about the non essentials. We will begin to do the essentials on autopilot without thinking about it. So the task is to create a good routine you can stick to that has all the things that are important to you. You can only do so much through will power.

Thank you for reading all the way to the end. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please let me know in the comment section. See you next time.