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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Greg McKeown
Read between
August 19 - August 27, 2023
Instead of making just a millimeter of progress in a million directions he began to generate tremendous momentum towards accomplishing the things that were truly vital.
What happened
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.
Saying no
Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.
What is essentialism?
“What do I feel deeply inspired by?” and “What am I particularly talented at?” and “What meets a significant need in the world?”
Questions
What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance? What if instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?
Time well spent
It is about applying the principles of “less but better” to how we live our lives now and in the future. That is innovation.
Less but better
To embrace the essence of Essentialism requires we replace these false assumptions with three core truths: “I choose to,” “Only a few things really matter,” and “I can do anything but not everything.” These simple truths awaken us from our nonessential stupor. They free us to pursue what really matters. They enable us to live at our highest level of contribution.
Pursue what really matters
Think of Warren Buffett, who has famously said, “Our investment philosophy borders on lethargy.”5 What he means is that he and his firm make relatively few investments and keep them for a long time. In The Tao of Warren Buffett, Mary Buffett and David Clark explain: “Warren decided early in his career it would be impossible for him to make hundreds of right investment decisions, so he decided that he would invest only in the businesses that he was absolutely sure of, and then bet heavily on them. He owes 90% of his wealth to just ten investments. Sometimes what you don’t do is just as
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What you do its just as important as what you not do.
Many capable people are kept from getting to the next level of contribution because they can’t let go of the belief that everything is important.
Auch
Their logic, which ignores the reality of trade-offs, is I can do both. The rather important problem is that this logic is false. Inevitably, they are late to the meeting, they miss one or both of their deadlines (or do a shoddy job on both projects), and they either don’t make it to their cousin’s celebration or miss the show. The reality is, saying yes to any opportunity by definition requires saying no to several others.
I can do both. False.
A Nonessentialist approaches every trade-off by asking, “How can I do both?” Essentialists ask the tougher but ultimately more liberating question, “Which problem do I want?” An Essentialist makes trade-offs deliberately. She acts for herself rather than waiting to be acted upon. As economist Thomas Sowell wrote: “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”7
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. Jim chose ideas. As a result of this trade-off there are still only three full-time employees in his company, yet his ideas have reached tens of millions of people through his writing.8
You want to build ideas or companies
Instead of asking, “What do I have to give up?” they ask, “What do I want to go big on?” The cumulative impact of this small change in thinking can be profound.
What do I want to go big on?
Thinks, “I can do both.” Asks, “How can I do it all?” Asks, “What is the trade-off I want to make?” Asks, “What can I go big on?”
Ask the right questions
What I am suggesting is that when faced with a decision where one option prioritizes family and another prioritizes friends, health, or work, we need to be prepared to ask, “Which problem do you want?”
Because Essentialists will commit and “go big” on only the vital few ideas or activities, they explore more options at first to ensure they pick the right one later.
Go big
By creating space to explore, think, and write, I not only got my book done faster but gained control over how I spent the rest of my time.
Monk approach
Think week
In other words, twice a year, during the busiest and most frenetic time in the company’s history, he still created time and space to seclude himself for a week and do nothing but read articles (his record is 112) and books, study technology, and think about the bigger picture. Today he still takes the time away from the daily distractions of running his foundation to simply think.
Think week
My preference is for inspirational literature, though such a choice is a personal one. But for the interested, here are some to consider: Zen, the Reason of Unreason; The Wisdom of Confucius; the Torah; the Holy Bible; Tao, to Know and Not Be Knowing; The Meaning of the Glorious Koran: An Explanatory Translation; As a Man Thinketh; The Essential Gandhi; Walden, or, Life in the Woods; the Book of Mormon; The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius; and the Upanishads. There are a myriad of options. Just make sure to select something that was written before our hyperconnected era and yet seems timeless.
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Books to make space
Being a journalist of your own life will force you to stop hyperfocusing on all the minor details and see the bigger picture. You can apply the skills of a journalist no matter what field you are in—you can even apply them to your personal life. By training yourself to look for “the lead,” you will suddenly find yourself able to see what you have missed.
Look from the lead
Therefore, one of the most obvious and yet powerful ways to become a journalist of our own lives is simply to keep a journal.
Become a journalist of your own life
But don’t be overly focused on the details, like the budget meeting three weeks ago or last Thursday’s pasta dinner. Instead, focus on the broader patterns or trends. Capture the headline. Look for the lead in your day, your week, your life. Small, incremental changes are hard to see in the moment but over time can have a huge cumulative effect.
Journal methodology
Or as Albert Einstein once said: “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”
Fantasy
Second, play is an antidote to stress, and this is key because stress, in addition to being an enemy of productivity, can actually shut down the creative, inquisitive, exploratory parts of our brain. You know how it feels: you’re stressed about work and suddenly everything starts going wrong.
Play and stress
The best asset we have for making a contribution to the world is ourselves. If we underinvest in ourselves, and by that I mean our minds, our bodies, and our spirits, we damage the very tool we need to make our highest contribution.
Ourselves
In a piece called “No More Yes. It’s Either HELL YEAH! Or No,” the popular TED speaker Derek Sivers describes a simple technique for becoming more selective in the choices we make.
Hell yeah!
You can think of this as the 90 Percent Rule, and it’s one you can apply to just about every 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 and 100. If you rate it any lower than 90 percent, then automatically change the rating to 0 and simply reject it.
90% Rule
Make decisions by design, not be default.
Says yes to almost every request or opportunity Uses broad, implicit criteria like “If someone I know is doing it, I should do it.” Says yes to only the top 10 percent of opportunities Uses narrow, explicit criteria like “Is this exactly what I am looking for?”
Is this really what I am looking for?
What may seem like a capricious decision is really the result of a disciplined and continuous approach to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
What works
The price of his dream job was saying no to the many good, even very good, parallel opportunities he encountered and waiting for the one he could enthusiastically say yes to. And the wait was worth it.
The price of a dream job
The first type of nonessential you’re going to learn how to eliminate is simply any activity that is misaligned with what you are intending to achieve. It sounds straightforward enough, but to be able to do that you need to be really clear about what your purpose is in the first place—which is where this chapter comes in.
Misaligen activities
In the first pattern, the team becomes overly focused on winning the attention of the manager. The problem is, when people don’t know what the end game is, they are unclear about how to win, and as a result they make up their own game and their own rules as they vie for the manager’s favor. Instead of focusing their time and energies on making a high level of contribution, they put all their effort into games like attempting to look better than their peers, demonstrating their self-importance, and echoing their manager’s every idea or sentiment. These kinds of activities are not only
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Following the wrong goals. Lack of clarity.
In the first pattern, the team becomes overly focused on winning the attention of the manager. The problem is, when people don’t know what the end game is, they are unclear about how to win, and as a result they make up their own game and their own rules as they vie for the manager’s favor. Instead of focusing their time and energies on making a high level of contribution, they put all their effort into games like attempting to look better than their peers, demonstrating their self-importance, and echoing their manager’s every idea or sentiment. These kinds of activities are not only
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Lack of clarity leads to the wrong goals. Leadership and teambuilding.
In the second pattern, teams without purpose become leaderless. With no clear direction, people pursue the things that advance their own short-term interests, with little awareness of how their activities contribute to (or in some cases, derail) the long-term mission of the team as a whole.
Tracking team's focus vs a clear goal.
Without clarity and purpose, pursuing something because it is good is not good enough to make a high level of contribution.
Clarity and purpose
An essential intent doesn’t have to be elegantly crafted; it’s the substance, not the style that counts. Instead, ask the more essential question that will inform every future decision you will ever make: “If we could be truly excellent at only one thing, what would it be?”
Building an essential intent
But while rhetoric can certainly inspire, we need to remember that concrete objectives have the power to elevate and inspire as well. A powerful essential intent inspires people partially because it is concrete enough to answer the question, “How will we know when we have succeeded?”
Concrete Objectives inspire
But while rhetoric can certainly inspire, we need to remember that concrete objectives have the power to elevate and inspire as well. A powerful essential intent inspires people partially because it is concrete enough to answer the question, “How will we know when we have succeeded?”
Concrete objectives. How will we know when we succeed?
Creating an essential intent is hard. It takes courage, insight, and foresight to see which activities and efforts will add up to your single highest point of contribution. It takes asking tough questions, making real trade-offs, and exercising serious discipline to cut out the competing priorities that distract us from our true intention. Yet it is worth the effort because only with real clarity of purpose can people, teams, and organizations fully mobilize and achieve something truly excellent. *
Essential intent
So why is it so hard in the moment to dare to choose what is essential over what is nonessential? One simple answer is we are unclear about what is essential.
Unclear of what is essential
A true Essentialist, Peter Drucker believed that “people are effective because they say no.”
Saying no.
The more we think about what we are giving up when we say yes to someone, the easier it is to say no. If we have no clear sense of the opportunity cost—in other words, the value of what we are giving up—then it is especially easy to fall into the nonessential trap of telling ourselves we can get it all done.
Saying no. Focus okn the trade offs
Remember, Essentialists don’t say no just occasionally. It is a part of their regular repertoire. To consistently say no with grace, then, it helps to have a variety of responses to call upon. Below are eight responses you can put in your “no” repertoire.
Saying no as part of life
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: the more we invest, the more determined we become to see it through and see our investment pay off. The more we invest in something, the harder it is to let go.
The sunk cost bias
Tom Stafford describes a simple antidote to the endowment effect.6 Instead of asking, “How much do I value this item?” we should ask, “If I did not own this item, how much would I pay to obtain it?” We can do the same for opportunities and commitment. Don’t ask, “How will I feel if I miss out on this opportunity?” but rather, “If I did not have this opportunity, how much would I be willing to sacrifice in order to obtain it?” Similarly, we can ask, “If I wasn’t already involved in this project, how hard would I work to get on it?”7
Antidote to the endowment effect
In other words, every item in the proposed budget must be justified from scratch. While this takes more effort it has many advantages: it efficiently allocates resources on the basis of needs rather than history, it detects exaggerated budget requests, it draws attention to obsolete operations, and it encourages people to be clearer in their purpose and how their expenses align to that project.
Zero based budgeting
