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“Stay, but do what you would as a consultant and nothing else. And don’t tell anyone.”
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 o...
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“Am I investing in the right activities?”
There are far more activities and opportunities in the world than we have time and resources to invest in. And although many
of them may be good, or even very good, the fact is that most are trivial and few are vital. The way of the Essentialist involves learning to tell the difference – learning to filter through all those opt...
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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...
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The way of the Essentialist rejects the idea that we can fit it all in.
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 non-essentials, 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.
overwhelmed and exhausted Experiences joy in the journey The way of the Essentialist is the path to being in control of our own choices. It is a path to new levels of success and meaning. It is the path on which we enjoy the journey, not just the destination.
As it turned out, exactly nothing came of the client meeting. But even if it had, surely I would have made a fool’s bargain. In trying to keep everyone happy I had sacrificed what mattered most.
If you don’t prioritise your life, someone else will.
“What would happen if we could figure out the one thing you could do that would make the highest contribution?” I asked him. He responded sincerely: “That is the question.”
Curiously, and overstating the point in order to make it, the pursuit of success can be a catalyst for failure. Put another way, success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce success in the first place.
undisciplined pursuit of more” was a key reason for failure. This is true for companies and it is true for the people who work in them. But why?
“In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time – literally – substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.”4
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.5
