4 Ideas of the book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less from Greg McKeown

Some books you never read to the end, others you finish but never read twice and others you come back. Essentialism from Greg McKoewn is for me one of those books I love to come back. I got inspired to make changes which resulted in more well-being and success in my life. In this blog article, I share 4 ideas which resonated most with me and how it made a difference.

#1 Get aware on what you spend your life energy on

In our modern world, we have the freedom of choice. We can decide in each aspect of life what we do, eat, buy and how to spend our time. This choice can be overwhelming or create pressure of doing, having or being everything. Especially with the latter we split up our energy on too many things, what usually ends up with getting nothing completely right. Here are 2 tips on avoiding scattering:

• Mortality: admit that your life has an end

• Trade off: be aware that for every yes you give, you say no to something else

At the beginning it might feel sadden to think about your own end of life, but combining it with the second thought, that everything you do comes from a decision you make feels quite empowering. You have the control over your life by making conscious decisions on where you spend your limited time and energy. For example, if you work to earn money, this time is not available to spend with your family. How many hours of our life do we spend on social media without getting anything out? This is lifetime, which is gone forever. This leads into the question for what we should decide. This is not an easy one. According to McKoewn an Essentialist reduces the number of choices by asking the question:

What is important and makes a difference?

This question was for me however, at the beginning also challenging. To answer it, I unpacked it step by step. First, imagen how you would feel in a state of happiness. For me, I’m the happiest if my family and myself are healthy and I feel free. Suddenly I knew, what is important for me long-term, and half of the question is already answered. Second, think about what really makes a difference to make you happy? Listening to my body, I figured out that I’m the healthiest when exercising regularly, eating vegan and having less stress at work. Every New Year, I set myself goals. In the past this ended up in a long list without priorities. After some time in the year, I would not look back on the list, as I knew I will not be reaching the goals I set. After considering the ideas of McKoewn on Essentialism my list became significant shorter and I stopped having this feeling of failure, as it became just easier to work on the few. This ease of pursuing my goals and the outlook for achievement rewards me in feeling great.

#2 Making the right decision

An Essentialist makes right decisions. You would argue that everyone wants to make the right decision so what is different for an Essentialist? Concentrating on what really makes a difference, an Essentialist will spend more time in gathering information and create consciously more options. This sounds at the beginning paradox, as you would think limiting the choice would help in the decision-making process. However, if you think about what happens after you decide the effort you spend on evaluation gets a quite different importance. You spend a lot of time and energy in the execution which is lost if you made the wrong decision. An example would be how you invest your savings. If you make your decision on limited information considering to little your own life situation, you may end up losing all your savings. In the book, there are 5 tips on how to make the right decision:

• Disappear: Take quality time to think about your problem

• Look at it closely: Don’t just listen to opinions of others but research

• Play: Playing supports your creativity to create more options

• Sleep: During sleep you process information and with a good rest, you are more energized for making decisions

• Make a clear decision: Go all in with your decision. Like the famous quote from Warren Buffet illustrate: “If it is not a hell yes, it is a no”

All five tips are very valuable for my day-to-day decisions. For me, especially good sleep helped me to be more productive even I spend one hour a day more on sleep rather on work. A nice side effect next to the increased productivity is, that I’m also healthier and happier when being recovered with a good amount of sleep.

#3 Get aware what distracts you

The next idea really changed a lot in my thought process. In the past, when somebody told me to focus on something, I basically just worked harder on that topic on top of everything else. This frustrated me as the additional effort made me tired and I could not always achieve my desired outcome. McKeown opened my eyes by defining focus as elimination. This means if I focus on one thing, I say no to all other options. As with the first idea, an Essentialist does not split the time and energy on too many things at once but focuses on the one which is important. The book provides 5 tips on staying focused:

• Understand the problem: only then you can eliminate efficiently

• Dare to say No: you will gain even more respect if you do it in a friendly manner

• Detach: admit if a path is the wrong way, no matter how much time and energy you already spend on it

• Set boundaries: Make yourself and others aware what is acceptable and what not

• Less is more: Reduce as much as possible to get the essence and easiness

I started to eliminate several distractions in my life. Starting small with visual clutter. Read here about how I reduced visual clutter in my work environment. Furthermore, my workday does not start anymore with emails, which is the agenda of other people, but with the topics on my focus list. I scheduled dedicated time in my calendar for this. Setting these boundaries for myself and others leads into a feeling of achievement as I’m able to reduce my ToDo list significantly. I’m also much more selective in what gets on my ToDo list. I also incorporated the philosophy of less is more in my housework. I love having a clean and organized house. It makes me calm and I do not waste time searching for things as every thing has its own “home”. As I do not like the act of cleaning and organizing, reducing my overall belongings helps me getting the desired outcome without spending too much time on the process.

#4 Don’t set goals, create systems

I came across this idea already in the book Atomic Habits from James Clear and it took me a while to execute on it. The difference between goals and systems is that goals are the desired outcome, whereas systems create the path to an outcome. When your goal is to make the right decisions, taking the time to think, research and play will bring you there. A lot of time, a goal is set so high, so you think you will never reach it and slowly you get demotivated as you do not progress. To avoid this, create a system of habits, which allow progress in little steps. This is also known as the marginal gains approach in which you make incremental improvements on a regular basis. For instance, you like to become healthier and therefore set yourself the goal to run a half marathon. You may be motivated in the first couple of days, setup a plan and follow it diligently. But then life happens, and other things come and interfere with your plans, for example you need to stay longer at work, or your friends ask you to join their gathering, or your partner ask you to support with some jobs. Suddenly you see your plan disrupted by things which you think you do not have control off. Here are 5 tips on making the important things easy:

• Buffer: Don’t schedule everything back-to-back. It gives you time for unforeseeable things but also allow yourself to stay in the flow

• Pareto Principle: Don’t think everything needs to be perfect, most things work great in the state of good enough

• Journaling: Write your thoughts down and read them after some time to find your real purpose and what is important

• Don’t force: Make even uncomfortable things a routine

• Break it down: Create as small steps as possible

By incorporating these tips in my training plan, I moved my run in the morning as I’m less likely to be interrupted by unforeseeable happenings. Even though I’m not a morning person, I managed to get my steps on the watch by running shorter units but more frequently. The stage for my run is already set the evening before when I get my running cloth ready. With that routine, the morning run becomes less uncomfortable. Already in the first hour of the day, I have an achievement and this feeling will carry me for the whole day.

If you would like to learn more about how I incorporate the ideas of Essentialism in my life, leave me a comment below. I’m happy to share my experience.

Sources mentioned in this blog post:

• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less from Greg McKeown https://gregmckeown.com/books/essentialism/

• Atomic Habits from James Clear https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits