Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

by Greg McKeown

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.

Less but better.

It is about pausing constantly to ask, “Am I investing in the right activities?”

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 your highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.

Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the non-essentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage.

Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless.

We have lost our ability to filter what is important and what isn’t. Psychologists call this “decision fatigue”: the more choices we are forced to make, the more the quality of our decisions deteriorates.

Today, technology has lowered the barrier for others to share their opinion about what we should be focusing on. It is not just information overload; it is opinion overload.

The idea that we can have it all and do it all is not new.

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 pluralise the term and start talking about priorities.

once you’ve figured out which activities and efforts to keep – the ones that make your highest level of contribution – you need a system to make executing your intentions as effortless as possible.

The prevalence of noise: Almost everything is noise, and a very few things are exceptionally valuable. This is the justification for taking time to figure out

One paradox of Essentialism is that Essentialists actually explore more options than their non-Essentialist counterparts. Whereas non-Essentialists commit to everything or virtually everything without actually exploring,

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

“People are effective because they say ‘no,’ because they say, ‘this isn’t for me.’”9

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

Everything changes when we give ourselves permission to be more selective in what we choose to do. At once, we hold the

What if society stopped telling us to buy more stuff and instead allowed us to create more space to breathe and think? What if society encouraged us to reject what has been accurately described as doing things we detest, to buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like?11

Essentialism is not a way to do one more thing; it is a different way of doing everything. It is a way of thinking.

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

I had applied to study law because of repeated advice to “keep your options open.” Once I got out, I could practise law. I could write about law. I could teach law. Or I could consult on the law. The world would be my oyster, or so the argument went.

“If you could do only one thing with your life right now, what would you do?”

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.

while we may not always have control over our options, we always have control over how we choose among them.

They didn’t know they had any choice other than to take the shocks. They had learned helplessness.

When we listen to a political advertisement or pundit, the objective is to make it unthinkable for us to vote for the other side.

When we forget our ability to choose, we learn to be helpless. Drip by drip we allow our power to be taken away until we end up becoming a function of other people’s choices – or even a function of our own past choices.

Is there a point at which doing more does not produce more? Is there a point at which doing less (but thinking more) will actually produce better outcomes?

I had just learned a crucial lesson: certain types of effort yield higher rewards than others.

Working hard is important. But more effort does not necessarily yield more results. “Less but better” does.

Sometimes what you don’t do is just as important as what you do.”

Essentialist has learned to tell the difference between what is truly important and everything else.

understood that that success required making strategic trade-offs.

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?”

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.

Essentialists spend as much time as possible exploring, listening, debating, questioning, and thinking. But their exploration is not an end in itself. The purpose of the exploration is to discern the vital few from the trivial many.

Without great solitude no serious work is possible.

Essentialists choose to create the space to explore and ponder.

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.

I set my e-mail automatic replies to explain that I was in “monk mode” until after the book was complete.

One leader at Twitter once asked me: “Can you remember what it was like to be bored? It doesn’t happen anymore.” He’s right; just a few years ago if you were stuck in an airport waiting for a delayed flight, or in the waiting room of a doctor’s surgery, you probably just sat there, staring into space, feeling bored. Today, everyone waiting around in an airport or a waiting room is glued to their technology tools of choice. Of course, nobody likes to be bored.

eventually he found it to be his single most valuable productivity tool. He sees it as the primary way he can ensure he is in charge of his own day, instead of being at the mercy of it.

Being a journalist of your own life will force you to stop hyper-focusing on all the minor details and see the bigger picture.

Essentialists are powerful observers and listeners. Knowing that the reality of trade-offs means they can’t possibly pay attention to everything, they listen deliberately for what is not being explicitly stated. They read between the lines.

I’m highly logical, which allows me to look past extraneous detail and perceive clearly that which others overlook.”

In their eagerness to react they miss the point.

the faintest pencil is better than the strongest memory.

Keep your eyes peeled for abnormal or unusual details

“My goal,” she said, “was to understand the ‘spiderweb’ of the story because that is what allowed me to spot any ‘abnormal’ or ‘unusual’ detail or behaviour that didn’t quite fit into the natural course of the story.”

But then as we get older something happens. We are introduced to the idea that play is trivial. Play is a waste of time. Play is unnecessary. Play is childish.