Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

by Greg McKeown

One of the ideas that has grown popular in business circles in recent years is “prototyping.” Building a prototype, or large-scale model, allows companies to test-run an idea or product without making a huge investment up front. Exactly the same idea can be used in reverse to eliminate nonessentials in a relatively low-risk way, by running what Daniel Shapero, a director at LinkedIn, calls a “reverse pilot.”10

Reverse pilot

Jack Dorsey is best known as the creator of Twitter and as the founder and CEO of Square, a mobile payments company. His Essentialist approach to management is a relatively rare one. At a dinner I attended recently where he spoke, he said he thinks of the role of CEO as being the chief editor of the company. At another event at Stanford he explained further: “By editorial I mean there are a thousand things we could be doing. But there [are] only one or two that are important. And all of these ideas…and inputs from engineers, support people, designers are going to constantly flood what we should be doing….As an editor I am constantly taking these inputs and deciding the one, or intersection of a few, that make sense for what we are doing.”3 An

CEO / Editor of a company

Or, as one book editor put it: “My job is to make life as effortless as possible for the reader. The goal is to help the reader have the clearest possible understanding of the most important message or takeaway.”

The editors role

Yes, making the choice to eliminate something good can be painful. But eventually, every cut produces joy—maybe not in the moment but afterwards, when we realize that every additional moment we have gained can be spent on something better.

The joy of cut

Similarly, in our own professional or private lives we can make course corrections by coming back to our core purpose. Having a clear overarching intent, as discussed in chapter 10, enables us to check ourselves—to regularly compare our activities or behaviors to our real intent. If they are incorrect, we can edit them.

Editing our intent

After all, if you don’t set boundaries—there won’t be any. Or even worse, there will be boundaries, but they’ll be set by default—or by another person—instead of by design.

Setting boundries

A “buffer” can be defined literally as something that prevents two things from coming into contact and harming each other. For example, a “buffer zone” at the periphery of a protected environmental area is an area of land that is used to create extra space between that area and any potential threats that might infiltrate it.

Buffer

Just think of how often this happens in presentations, meetings, and workshops you have attended. How many times have you seen someone try to fit too many slides into too little time? How many times have you been to a conference where you felt that the presenter cut off a meaningful conversation because of feeling obliged to get through all the content he or she had planned? I have seen this so often, it has started to seem the default position. So when I worked with a facilitator who had a different philosophy it was truly liberating.

No buffer

The way of the Essentialist is different. The Essentialist looks ahead. She plans. She prepares for different contingencies. She expects the unexpected. She creates a buffer to prepare for the unforeseen, thus giving herself some wiggle room when things come up, as they inevitably do.

The way of essentialists and buffers

The importance of extreme preparedness holds true for us in business. In fact, this example is used by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen to demonstrate why some companies have thrived under extreme and difficult circumstances while others have not. In filtering out 7 companies from 20,400, the authors found that the ones that executed most successfully did not have any better ability to predict the future than their less successful counterparts. Instead, they were the ones who acknowledged they could not predict the unexpected and therefore prepared better.5

Be prepared as a business

Of the variety of explanations for why we underestimate the amount of time something will take, I believe social pressure is the most interesting. One study found that if people estimated anonymously how long it would take to complete a task they were no longer guilty of the planning fallacy.9 This implies that often we actually know we can’t do things in a given time frame, but we don’t want to admit it to someone.

Social preassure and time estimates

We can apply these five questions to our own attempts at building buffers. Think of the most important project you are trying to get done at work or at home. Then ask the following five questions: (1) What risks do you face on this project? (2) What is the worst-case scenario? (3) What would the social effects of this be? (4) What would the financial impact of this be? and (5) How can you invest to reduce risks or strengthen financial or social resilience? Your answer to that fifth and crucial question will point you to buffers—perhaps adding another 20 percent to the project’s budget, or getting a PR person on board to handle any potential negative press, or calling a board meeting to manage shareholder expectations—that you can create to safeguard you against unknowable events.

Steps to creating buffers

Essentialists accept the reality that we can never fully anticipate or prepare for every scenario or eventuality; the future is simply too unpredictable. Instead, they build in buffers to reduce the friction caused by the unexpected.

We never know what could happen

TO ATTAIN KNOWLEDGE ADD THINGS EVERY DAY. TO ATTAIN WISDOM SUBTRACT THINGS EVERY DAY. —Lao-tzu

Subtract

he needs to identify the “Herbie”: the part of the process that is slower relative to every other part of the plant. He does this by finding which machine has the biggest queue of materials waiting behind it and finds a way to increase its efficiency. This in turn improves the next “slowest hiker’s” efficiency, and so on, until the productivity of the whole plant begins to improve. The question is this: What is the “slowest hiker” in your job or your life? What is the obstacle that is keeping you back from achieving what really matters to you? By systematically identifying and removing this “constraint” you’ll be able to significantly reduce the friction keeping you from executing what is essential.

The teams goes as fast as its slowest asset. "Herbie" Identify the slowest hiker.

Essentialists don’t default to Band-Aid solutions. Instead of looking for the most obvious or immediate obstacles, they look for the ones slowing down progress. They ask, “What is getting in the way of achieving what is essential?” While the Nonessentialist is busy applying more and more pressure and piling on more and more solutions, the Essentialist simply makes a one-time investment in removing obstacles. This approach goes beyond just solving problems; it’s a method of reducing your efforts to maximize your results.

Whats getting in the way of achjeving whats essential?

Instead of focusing on the efforts and resources we need to add, the Essentialist focuses on the constraints or obstacles we need to remove. But how?

What can we substract?

Remember, the desired goal is to get a draft of the report finished. Anything slowing down the execution of that goal should be questioned.

Identify the desired goal and remove anything that slows down that process

So to remove the obstacle you need to replace the idea “This has to be perfect or else” with “Done is better than perfect.” Give yourself permission to not have it polished in the first draft. By removing the primary obstacle you have made every other aspect of the job easier.

Remove the obstacle

To reduce the friction with another person, apply the “catch more flies with honey” approach. Send him an e-mail, but instead of asking if he has done the work for you (which obviously he hasn’t), go and see him. Ask him, “What obstacles or bottlenecks are holding you back from achieving X, and how can I help remove these?” Instead of pestering him, offer sincerely to support him.

Offering support. Leadership.

The way of the Essentialist is different. Instead of trying to accomplish it all—and all at once—and flaring out, the Essentialist starts small and celebrates progress. Instead of going for the big, flashy wins that don’t really matter, the Essentialist pursues small and simple wins in areas that are essential.

Small wins. Focus.

Research has shown that of all forms of human motivation the most effective one is progress. Why? Because a small, concrete win creates momentum and affirms our faith in our further success.

Progress

As former Stanford professor and educator Henry B. Eyring has written, “My experience has taught me this about how people and organizations improve: the best place to look is for small changes we could make in the things we do often. There is power in steadiness and repetition.”6

Steadiness And repetition

The results were incredible: overnight, screen time went down 90 percent, reading went up by the same amount, and the overall effort we had to put into policing the system went way, way down. In other words, nonessential activity dramatically decreased and essential activity dramatically increased. Once a small amount of initial effort was invested to set up the system, it worked without friction. 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. Here are a few techniques.

The token System

If you have a big presentation coming up over the next few weeks or months, open a file right now and spend four minutes starting to put down any ideas. Then close the file. No more than four minutes. Just start it.

Just start

He also gave Phelps a routine for what to think about as he went to sleep and first thing when he awoke. He called it “Watching the Videotape.”2 There was no actual tape, of course. The “tape” was a visualization of the perfect race. In exquisite detail and slow motion Phelps would visualize every moment from his starting position on top of the blocks, through each stroke, until he emerged from the pool, victorious, with water dripping off his face.

The video tape

The way of the Nonessentialist is to think the essentials only get done when they are forced. That execution is a matter of raw effort alone. You labor to make it happen. You push through. The way of the Essentialist is different. The Essentialist designs a routine that makes achieving what you have identified as essential the default position. Yes, in some instances an Essentialist still has to work hard, but with the right routine in place each effort yields exponentially greater results.

Creating routines

To some, routine can sound like where creativity and innovation go to die—the ultimate exercise in boredom. We even use the word as a synonym for pallid and bland, as in “It has just become routine for me.” And routines can indeed become this—the wrong routines. But the right routines can actually enhance innovation and creativity by giving us the equivalent of an energy rebate. Instead of spending our limited supply of discipline on making the same decisions again and again, embedding our decisions into our routine allows us to channel that discipline toward some other essential activity.

Routines and innovation

The Power of the Right Routine According to researchers at Duke University, nearly 40 percent of our choices are deeply unconscious.7 We don’t think about them in the usual sense. There is both danger and opportunity in this. The opportunity is that we can develop new abilities that eventually become instinctive. 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, reflect, recharge, or connect with friends and colleagues. So how can we discard the routines that keep us locked in nonessential habits and replace them with routines that make executing essentials almost effortless?

Good and bad habits

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 growth. Thursday is for developers and partnerships. Friday is for the company and its culture.9 This routine helps to provide calmness amid the chaos of a high-growth start-up. It enables him to focus his energy on a single theme each day instead of feeling pulled into everything.

A focus for everyday of the week

Learning essential new skills is never easy. But once we master them and make them automatic we have won an enormous victory, because the skill remains with us for the rest of our lives. The same is true with routines. Once they are in place they are gifts that keep on giving.

Routines that keep on giving

It is all based on a simple but powerful idea: to operate at your highest level of contribution requires that you deliberately tune in to what is important in the here and now.

Deliver at your hiigbest level of contribution.

Yet every second spent worrying about a past or future moment distracts us from what is important in the here and now.

Distractions from now

Kairos is different. While it is difficult to translate precisely, it refers to time that is opportune, right, different. Chronos is quantitative; kairos is qualitative. The latter is experienced only when we are fully in the moment—when we exist in the now.

Kairos

I closed my eyes and asked, “What’s important now?” After a moment of reflection I realized that until I knew what was important right now, what was important right now was to figure out what was important right now!

Define whats important right now

It is easy to get caught up in the “paradox of success” we discussed in chapter 1. We have clarity of purpose, which leads us to success. But with our success we get new options and opportunities. This sounds like a good thing, but remember, these options unintentionally distract us, tempt us, lure us away. Our clarity becomes clouded, and soon we find ourselves spread too thin. Now, instead of being utilized at our highest level of contribution, we make only a millimeter of progress in a million directions. Ultimately, our success becomes a catalyst for our failure. The only way out of this cycle is the way of the Essentialist.

Paradox of success

While other people are living a life of stress and chaos, you will be living a life of impact and fulfillment. In many ways, to live as an Essentialist in our too-many-things-all-the-time society is an act of quiet revolution.

When presented with opportunities—especially good opportunities—I still fall into thinking, “I can do both” when I really can’t. I still fight the urge to impulsively check my phone; on my worst days I have wondered if my tombstone will read, “He checked e-mail.” I’ll be the first to admit, the transition doesn’t happen overnight.

At first it was a few deliberate choices, then it grew into a lifestyle, and then it changed me, at my very core. I continue to discover almost daily that I can do less and less—in order to contribute more.

Do less in order to contribute more

Remember the metaphorical closet we discussed in chapter 1? As you continue to clear out the closet of your life, you will experience a reordering of what really matters. Life will become less about efficiently crossing off what was on your to-do list or rushing through everything on your schedule and more about changing what you put on there in the first place.

Reorganizing the closet

The results of this research were startling: when there was a high level of clarity of purpose, the teams and the people on it overwhelmingly thrived. When there was a serious lack of clarity about what the team stood for and what their goals and roles were, people experienced confusion, stress, frustration, and ultimately failure. As one senior vice president succinctly summarized it when she looked at the results gathered from her extended team: “Clarity equals success.”

Clarity of purpose

Defines an essential intent by answering the question, “If we could only do one thing, what would it be?” Eliminates the nonessential distractions.

Team essentisalism

But what is actually created is a counterfeit agility. When people don’t know what they are really responsible for and how they will be judged on their performance, when decisions either are or appear to be capricious, and when roles are ill-defined, it isn’t long before people either give up or, worse, become obsessed with trying to look busy and therefore important instead of actually getting any real work done.

Unclear roles. Getting busy vs getting things done.

CHECK IN OFTEN TO ENSURE MEANINGFUL PROGRESS The Nonessentialist leader is not great on accountability. A primary and somewhat obvious reason is that the more items one pursues, the harder it is to follow up on all of them. In fact, a Nonessentialist leader may unintentionally train his people to expect no follow-up at all. In turn, the members of the team soon learn that there are no repercussions for failing, cutting corners, or prioritizing what is easy over what is important. They learn that each objective pronounced by the leader will be emphasized only for a moment before giving way to something else of momentary interest.

Bad leaders / Accountability