Essentialism by Greg Mckeown
This blog is based on book essentialism by Greg McKeown (2014), this book teaches you to do more by doing less, performing efficiently. Offers practical solutions to get your priorities straight, it eliminates all junk activities in your routines resulting in a truly productive you.
This Blog is for anyone who is
• Finds them self-being busy but not productive.
• Feels they need to work on time management.
• Having a hard time trying to find priorities.
About author
Greg McKeown is a renowned Management consultant and author of best seller book Multipliers. He holds an MBA from Stanford University, Co-creator of course called designing life. His clients include big names like Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter and LinkedIn.
1. Why less is more?
In this world of abundance, we have this constant urge expand their horizons to improve our lives, we have this constant need to do it all, we ignore the fact that we can’t do it all, at least all by our self. We can’t be expert in every field. In fact by doing everything we necessarily won’t necessarily be happy. We should be focusing on what we can do instead of thinking what is necessary for our happiness.
For example, one of most successful air lines Southwest Airlines, which showed a remarkable success by only doing vital few, Instead of flying people in different classes and offering them food, drinks etc. they focused on flying people from point A to point b and made a huge success.
2. To survive in clutter, Adopt principle of essentialism.
We have jammed our lives to such an extent we often end up struggling trying to figure out our priorities. Even if we dig out all the clutter and hand pick task which can be our priorities, we still end up with too much on our hands.
But by adopting the principle of Essentialism we can avoid the mess. Essentialism focus on 4 pillars.
A. Do less, but do it better.
This is the corner stone of essentialism, to cut of the less important task from the list and prioritize what’s important. Instead of quantity focus on the quality of tasks completed.
B. Reject the notion of accomplishing everything.
Find the direction in which you can excel the most, don’t take small steps in many directions instead take a big leap in one direction.
C. Constantly review and update plans.
This is the process of sorting on basis of what’s worth doing Always choose carefully what you do is it worth doing? Is it worth the time and energy? What useful things can be done instead? Always try to eat the Frog first, don’t go for easy task first, and go for important first.
**D. Follow the rule of vital few trivial many. **
Always follow Pareto’s 80-20 rule, i.e. twenty percent of vital tasks can do more than 80 percent of tasks combined.
3. Keep yourself above the tasks.
“When we forget or ability to choose, we learn to be helpless”
Do you find yourself saying “I have to” more than “I choose to”? If yes, you are most likely to be following the Non-essential path.
“When we give up our power to choose, we essentially give permission to others to choose for us,” Most of the people think their efforts are futile, they simply choose every opportunity presented to them instead of choosing what’s best for them.
4. Embrace idea of tradeoffs being an essential part of life
From example of South west airlines we can conclude you must be willing to give up trivial many and make profit from vital few, they traded of small margin of making money from charging people extra for flying them in business class or making a little margin from food, they focused on just transporting people instead and made better profit from being cheaper airline.
5. Focus on the bigger picture
By focusing on one major life goal, one bigger picture, it becomes much easier to choose vital few, In this era of the internet age, nobody has time to be bored, However by being the board you can actually benefit. It gives you an opportunity to focus and think clearly about your life goal. It gives you time to escape, to think. In fact, some of sciences biggest names like Newton and Einstein have admitted being allowed them self to be confined to solitude to think and focus on their ground breaking theories.
6. Get your creative juices flowing by playing.
We, adults, tend to make a sharp distinction between work and play, considering play as something trivial and unproductive. Or something purely for entertainment. However playing is an essential tool for imagination. It act as an antidote for stress, it lets you form a connection between vital elements in a way which we would never have thought of. Help us analyze tasks. Most of the big companies like Google, Pixar, and Twitter. Have played as a part of their work culture, because they know a play full employee is more productive.
7. Ruthlessly cut thing s which are not essential by 90 percent rule.
We mostly fall into a trap by thinking all activities are vital in a way or so. To avoid this situation best is to adopt 90 percent rule. For example, if you are cleaning your closet just start rating from 0 to 100 thing on basis of how likely you are to wear that shirt again anything less than 90 is to be discarded. Another way of this by thinking is it's not a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.
8. Say no to nonessential tasks.
Once you have prepared the list of nonessential things tough part is letting go, we tend to avoid saying no especially when other people get involved, that’s because we tend to avoid saying so to people. In order to be able to say blunt no, we need to separate decision from the relationship. The pain of saying is temporary but the damage of not saying no is quite a long term. By saying yes to trivial things we may be missing on opportunities that truly are vital.
9. Withdraw from failures and set boundaries.
Have you ever ended up doing something which you know is a waste, but because you have committed to it you do it. A lot of people fail into sunk cost bias. Which is a tendency to continue investing money and time and effort into something which you already know is most likely to fail. But our little unfortunate investment forces us to keep sticking to it.
You can avoid this trap by developing the courage to admit your mistake and dump that little mistake in first place. And by setting clear boundaries you can avoid this whole scenario. Boundaries make your life easier instead of trying to bind you.
10. What’s important stays on top.
Once you have grapes principle of essentialism now is time to go for execution. Once you have figured out what is non-essential you simply cut it off the list instead of working around it. Rule of thumb is to allow a time buffer of fifty percent, this way you can identify and eliminate the thing which slows you down.
11. Proceed step by step.
Like old wisdom says, always go on ladder step by step. In fact, small wins create more momentum which gives you the confidence to further succeed. Moreover, it's an opportunity to stay on track and gives the higher chance of measuring success and keep the track of path you are on. In beginning, it will be hard to take first steps, but always keep in mind the consequences of small steps always accumulate to greater rewards.