Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

by Greg McKeown

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.

Weniger aber besser.

Less but better.

The way of the Essentialist is the relentless pursuit of less but better. It doesn’t mean occasionally giving a nod to the principle. It means pursuing it in a disciplined way.

is essential. The difference between the way of the Essentialist and the way of the Nonessentialist can be seen in the figure opposite. In both images the same amount of effort is exerted. In the image on the left, the energy is divided into many different activities. The result is that we have the unfulfilling experience of making a millimeter of progress in a million directions. In the image on the right, the energy is given to fewer activities. The result is that by investing in fewer things we have the satisfying experience of making significant progress in the things that matter most. The way of the Essentialist rejects the idea that we

The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless.

LIVES A LIFE THAT DOES NOT SATISFY Takes on too much, and work suffers Feels out of control Is unsure of whether the right things got done Feels overwhelmed and exhausted LIVES A LIFE THAT REALLY MATTERS Chooses carefully in order to do great work Feels in control Gets the right things done Experiences joy in the journey

The non-essentialist. Sound familiar.

LIVES A LIFE THAT DOES NOT SATISFY Takes on too much, and work suffers Feels out of control Is unsure of whether the right things got done Feels overwhelmed and exhausted LIVES A LIFE THAT REALLY MATTERS Chooses carefully in order to do great work Feels in control Gets the right things done Experiences joy in the journey

What I want to have.

It leads to what I call “the paradox of success,”2 which can be summed up in four predictable phases: PHASE 1: When we really have clarity of purpose, it enables us to succeed at our endeavor. PHASE 2: When we have success, we gain a reputation as a “go to” person. We become “good old [insert name],” who is always there when you need him, and we are presented with increased options and opportunities. PHASE 3: When we have increased options and opportunities, which is actually code for demands upon our time and energies, it leads to diffused efforts. We get spread thinner and thinner. PHASE 4: We become distracted from what would otherwise be our highest level of contribution. The effect of our success has been to undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place.

The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities. Illogically, we reasoned that by changing the word we could bend reality.

Think about what happens to your closet when you never organize it. Does it stay neat and tidy with just those few outfits you love to wear hanging on the rack? Of course not. When you make no conscious effort to keep it organized, the closet becomes cluttered and stuffed with clothes you rarely wear. Every so often it gets so out of control you try and purge the closet. But unless you have a disciplined system you’ll either end up with as many clothes as you started with because you can’t decide which to give away; end up with regrets because you accidentally gave away clothes you do wear and did want to keep; or end up with a pile of clothes you don’t want to keep but never actually get rid of because you’re not quite sure where to take them or what to do with them.

Yep. Cathy would be happy to read this.

Imagine if every time you opened the doors to your closet you found that people had been shoving their clothes in there—if every day you cleaned it out in the morning and then by afternoon found it already stuffed to the brim.

It’s a method for making the tough trade-off between lots of good things and a few really great things.

1. Individual choice: We can choose how to spend our energy and time.

2. The prevalence of noise: Almost everything is noise, and a very few things are exceptionally valuable.

3. The reality of trade-offs: We can’t have it all or do it all.

One paradox of Essentialism is that Essentialists actually explore more options than their Nonessentialist counterparts. Whereas Nonessentialists commit to everything or virtually everything without actually exploring, Essentialists systematically explore and evaluate a broad set of options before committing to any.

“What do I feel deeply inspired by?” and “What am I particularly talented at?” and “What meets a significant need in the world?”

The purpose of the exploration is to discern the vital few from the trivial many.

Essentialists invest the time they have saved into creating a system for removing obstacles and making execution as easy as possible.

As poet Mary Oliver wrote: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”

This book is not about going back to some simpler time. It’s not about eschewing e-mail or disconnecting from the Web or living like a hermit. That would be backwards movement. It is about applying the principles of “less but better” to how we live our lives now and in the future. That is innovation.

It's about dealing with choice in a world where the question of choice seems to be obsolete.

“I choose to,” “Only a few things really matter,” and “I can do anything but not everything.”

We often think of choice as a thing. But a choice is not a thing. Our options may be things, but a choice—a choice is an action.

For too long, we have overemphasized the external aspect of choices (our options) and underemphasized our internal ability to choose (our actions). This is more than semantics. Think about it this way. Options (things) can be taken away, while our core ability to choose (free will) cannot be.

Is there a point at which doing less (but thinking more) will actually produce better outcomes?

what really counted was the relationship between time and results.

in his Quality-Control Handbook, Joseph Moses Juran, one of the fathers of the quality movement, expanded on this idea and called it “the Law of the Vital Few.”2 His observation was that you could massively improve the quality of a product by resolving a tiny fraction of the problems.

STRATEGY IS ABOUT MAKING CHOICES, TRADE-OFFS. IT’S ABOUT DELIBERATELY CHOOSING TO BE DIFFERENT. —Michael Porter

The absence of strategy is the ignorance of tradeoffs, and the ignorance of tradeoffs is the absence of strategy.

straddling means keeping your existing strategy intact while simultaneously also trying to adopt the strategy of a competitor.

ignoring the reality of trade-offs is a terrible strategy for organizations. It turns out to be a terrible strategy for people as well.

We can try to avoid the reality of trade-offs, but we can’t escape them.

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.

Essentialists see trade-offs as an inherent part of life, not as an inherently negative part of life. Instead of asking, “What do I have to give up?” they ask, “What do I want to go big on?”

Nonessentialists get excited by virtually everything and thus react to everything.

To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make.

For some reason there is a false association with the word focus. As with choice, people tend to think of focus as a thing. Yes, focus is something we have. But focus is also something we do.

Inspired by Newton, I took a similar, if perhaps less extreme, approach to writing this book. I blocked off eight hours a day to write: from 5:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M., five days a week.

In every set of facts, something essential is hidden.

Nonessentialists listen too. But they listen while preparing to say something. They get distracted by extraneous noise. They hyperfocus on inconsequential details. They hear the loudest voice but they get the wrong message. In their eagerness to react they miss the point.

the faintest pencil is better than the strongest memory.

I write less than I feel like writing.

Small, incremental changes are hard to see in the moment but over time can have a huge cumulative effect.

One trick she uses is role play: she puts herself in the shoes of all the main players in a story in order to better understand their motives, reasoning, and points of view.

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.

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.

Bill Clinton was quoted as saying that every major mistake he had made in his life had happened as a result of sleep deprivation.

In a piece called “No More Yes. It’s Either HELL YEAH! Or No,” the popular TED speaker Derek Sivers

“If the answer isn’t a definite yes then it should be a no.”

Making our criteria both selective and explicit affords us a systematic tool for discerning what is essential and filtering out the things that are not.

First, they interview someone by phone. This is deliberate because they want to strip away all visual cues while forming their first impression. Equally, they want to hear how the prospective employee performs on the phone and whether the employee is organized enough to find a quiet place at an allotted time.