About the book
This book delves into the concept of living a life with “Essentialism” as your motto.
Essentialism is a disciplined systematic approach for determining where your highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless. The author propagates that the wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials. The idea is to be selective in the things that we do so as to enable ourselves to have space to find creative freedom. This freedom helps to concentrate on one project at a time, anticipate roadblocks and start to remove obstacles with a laser focus.
Instead of trying to get everything done, we get the right things done. This will restore the quality of work.
The basic value proposition of essentialism – 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.
Who is it for
Anyone who wishes to transform the course of their lives by being more productive
People who are struggling to achieve goals that truly make them tick
People who are used to doing it all
People who do not know how to say “No”
Key takeaways
What is essentialism: Essentialism is not a way to do one more thing in a different way but it is a different way of doing everything. It is a way of thinking. It is a discipline you apply each and every time you are faced with a decision about whether to say yes or whether to politely decline. It’s a method for making the tough trade-offs between lots of good things and a few really great things.
Who is an essentialist: People who believe in the pursuit of less but better. It means pursuing it in a disciplined way.
How does an Essentialist live: The way of an essentialist means living by design, not by default.
How does an Essentialist makes choices: Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates non-essentials and then removes the obstacles so that the essential things have a clear, smooth passage. It is a path to being in control of your own choices.
The preponderance of choice has overwhelmed our ability to manage it. It’s also known as decision fatigue. The more choices we are forced to make the more quality of our decisions deteriorates.
We often think of choice as a thing. But a choice is not a thing. Our options maybe things but a choice is an action. It is something we have but also something we do.
The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given away – it can only be forgotten. This is also known as “learned helplessness”.
If we look at everyday life through this lens it is hardly surprising we forget our ability to choose. Yet choices are at the very core of what it means to be an Essentialist. It 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. When we surrender a right to choose, we give others not just the power but also the explicit permission to choose for us.
Prioritising YOUR life: If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.
The word “priority” in the English language came about in 1400. It was singular. It meant the very first of prior thing. It stayed “singular” for the next 500 years. Only in the 1900, did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities. Unfortunately, as a result thereof, people are now trying to constantly juggle with multiple priorities, which takes away from the essence of the word altogether.
Paradox of success: The pursuit of success can be a catalyst for failure. Success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce success in the first place.
Working hard intelligently: Certain types of efforts yield higher rewards than others. Working hard is important but more effort does not necessarily yield more results. Less but better is the mantra.
Trade-offs: A trade-off involves two things we want. For example, do you want more pay or more holiday time. The preferred answer is yes to both but as much as we’d like to, we simply cannot have it all. Thomas Sowell said “there aren’t new solutions. There are only trade-offs”.
Trade-offs represent significant opportunity. By forcing us to weigh both options and strategically select the best one for us, we significantly increase the chance of achieving the outcome we want.
How an Essentialist tackle issues:
A. Explore and evaluate - Will this activity or effort make the highest possible contribution towards my goal.
The faster and busier things get the more we need to build thinking time into our schedule. And the noisier things get, the more we need to build quiet reflection spaces in which we can truly focus. It is important to make space to escape in your busy life.
Tools to enable exploring and evaluating:
Escape - We don’t get space by default – only by design. In order to have focus we need to escape to focus. In other words, we need to create the space to explore questions and possibilities.
Adapting - Do not fixate on something but constantly adjust and adapt to the field of vision.
Look - Being a journalist of your own life will force you to stop hyper focusing on all the minor details and see the bigger picture. The first step for that is to start keeping a journal. Keep your eyes peeled for abnormal or unusual details. Finding the lead and spotting the essential information. These are skills that can be acquired. Understand the spider web of your story to enable you to detect the unusual detail or behaviour that doesn’t quite fit into the natural course of your story.
Play - Play is an antidote to stress and has a positive effect on the executive function of the brain. Play broadens the range of options available to us. It helps us challenge old assumptions and makes us more receptive to untested ideas. It stimulates the parts of the brain involved in both careful, logical reasoning. Play is a vital driver of creativity and exploration. Albert Einstein said “when I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gifts of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent of observing positive knowledge”.
Sleep - The best asset we have for making a contribution to the world is ourselves. If we under invest in ourselves, our minds, our bodies and our spirits, we damage the very tool we need to make a highest contribution.
Sleep deficit is akin to drinking too much alcohol. It is akin to inducing an impairment equivalent to a blood alcohol level of .1%.
Select - a simple technique for becoming more selective in the choices we make. The key is to put the decision to an extreme test.
90% rule: It is one you can apply to any decision or dilemma. As you evaluate an option, think about the single most important criterion for that decision and then simply give the option a score between 0 to 100. If you rated any lower than 90%, then automatically change the rating to 0 and simply reject it.
B. Eliminate – it’s not enough to simply determine which activities and efforts don’t make the highest possible contribution, you still have to actively eliminate those that do not.
Tools to enable elimination:
The game changing question to ask yourself - Studies have found that we tend to value things we already own more highly than they are worth, and thus find them more difficult to get rid of. The question that can deliver the rare and precious clarity necessary to achieve game changing breakthroughs in career and in life is “if I didn’t already own this, how much would I spend to buy it or if I didn’t have this opportunity, what would I be willing to do to acquire it”
Clarify - When we do not have a clear sense of our goals, our aspirations and values, we end up wasting time and energies on trying to look good in comparison to other people. We overvalue non-essentials like cars or houses or even intangibles like the number of followers on Twitter or Instagram and neglect true essentials like spending time with loved ones, nurturing a spirit, taking care of our health.
Creating an essential intent - it takes courage, insight and foresight to see which activities and efforts will add up to your single highest point of contribution. Takes asking tough questions, making real trade-offs and exercising serious discipline to cut out the competing priorities that distract us from a true intention.
Power of a graceful No - The right NO spoken at the right time can change the course of your life. Saying no means pushing against social expectations it isn’t just a mental discipline it’s about an emotional discipline. Make peace with the fact that saying no often requires trading popularity for respect. Saying no respectfully, reasonably and gracefully can come at a short-term social cost.
Without courage, the disciplined pursuit of less is just lip service. It is just the stuff of one more dinner party conversation.
Let go of the innate fear of social awkwardness.
Separate the decision from the relationship. When people ask us to do something, we can confuse the request with our relationship with them. Sometimes they seem so interconnected, we forget that denying the request is not the same as denying the person.
Focus on the trade off - think about what we are giving up when we say yes to someone. Graceful No grows out of a clear but unstated calculation of the trade-off.
Simply be aware of what is being sold - Everyone is selling something. An idea, viewpoint and opinion in exchange of your time. This awareness allows us to be more deliberate in deciding whether we want to buy it or not. Remind yourself that everyone is selling something.
Uncommit
Always remember uncommitting can be harder than simply not committing in the first place.
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. This can easily become a vicious cycle. The most common example would be to sit through a terrible movie because we have already paid the price of the ticket. Similarly, we invest in toxic relationships even when our efforts only make it worse. Become aware of this bias and actively eliminate basis this.
Endowment effect: our tendency to undervalue things that are not ours and to overvalue things because we already own them. Be cognizant of the general endowment effect in your lives and use it to your advantage.
Apply zero-based budgeting to your own endeavors: Instead of trying to budget your time on the basis of existing commitments, assume that all bets are off. All previous commitments are gone, then begin from scratch, asking what you would add today.
Reverse pilot: This can be carried out in our social lives. Think of the commitments you routinely make to customers, colleagues, even family members that you have always assumed made a big difference to them but that in fact they might barely notice? Quietly eliminate or scale back such activities for a few days and see whether it makes a difference.
Edit: It involves strict elimination of the unimportant or irrelevant. It is an essential craft. To cut, condense and correct as part of our daily routine-making editing a natural cadence in our lives. It increases your ability to focus on and give energy to the things that really matter.
Limits: Boundaries are a little like the walls of a sand castle. The second we let one fall over, and the rest of them come crashing down. However, boundaries are empowering. Clear boundaries allows to proactively eliminate the demands and encumbrances from others that distract you from the true essentials.
Do not rob people of their problems: once we take the problem from them, all we are doing is taking away their ability to solve it. Forcing people to solve their own problems is equally beneficial for you and for them.
C. Execute - You need a system to make executing your intentions as effortless as possible. Our ability to execute the essential improves with practice, just like any other ability.
Tools to enable execution:
Buffer - The only thing we can expect with great certainty is the unexpected. Therefore, we can either wait for the moment and react to it or we can prepare. We can create a buffer.
Subtract - Identify the obstacles that are standing between you and getting the task done and then tackle it one by one. Removing obstacles does not have to be hard or take a superhuman effort. We can start small. It’s kind of like dislodging a boulder at the top of a hill. All it takes is a small step, then the momentum will naturally kick in.
Progress - pursue small and simple wins in areas that are essential to you. Tap into the power of celebrating progress. The act of positively reinforcing a success allows us to reap more enjoyment and satisfaction out of the process.
Flow - with the right routine in place each effort yields exponentially greater results. A cognitive advantage of routine is that the mental space is freed up to concentrate on something new. This allows us to autopilot the execution of one essential activity while simultaneously actively engaging in another, without sacrificing a little focus or contribution.
Focus - The ancient Greeks had two words for “time”. The first was CHRONOS. The second one was KAIROS. The Greek God CHRONOS was imagined as an elderly grey haired man and his name connotes the literal ticking clock, the chronological time, the kind we measure. KAIROS is different. It refers to time that is opportune, right, different. Former is quantitative and the the latter is qualitative. The latter is experienced only when we are fully in the moment when we exist in the now. FOCUS in the NOW.
Another important aspect is to beware of the fact that multitasking itself is not the enemy of Essentialism, pretending we can multi focus is !