Essentialism by Greg McKeown Full Review + Summary and Quotes

Name: Essentialism by Greg McKeown
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Book Summary

In "Essentialism" Greg McKeown shows all the aspiring individuals who have chosen it for reading how they can achieve better results with less but smarter work. Working less does not mean neglecting tasks or being lazy, but rather focusing on the most essential tasks that are crucial to achieving the most important results. Essentialism means focusing on the main tasks instead of doing multiple tasks simultaneously, which leads to a decrease in the individual's focus.

McKeown teaches in his work the vital point that humans are not supposed to say yes to everyone and every action, but rather they should say no in many times and places because of the few valuable matters that exist. Essentialism and being essential are two emphasized concepts in this book that relate to a mindset that needs to be formed initially, and then activities should be based on this mindset.

People in different positions in personal and professional life are faced with a large volume of extra work that should not be their responsibility. Instead, in order to prevent wasting energy and time, they should only accomplish tasks that lead them to desired and desirable results by using practical solutions provided by McKeown. Another turning point of essentialism can be its unique and innovative content, which distances itself from clichés in self-help works and speaks to the audience's heart with its examples and is truly meaningful and practical.

Its publication in 2014 and the reception it has received from the largest employers worldwide testify to the greatness of this book.

About the Author

Greg McKeown is an English author, leadership and business strategist, and public speaker who was born in London in 1977. He joined the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders community in 2012 and has since focused on writing bestselling books. Some of his most important works include "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less," "Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most," and "Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter Furthermore", McKeown holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from Stanford University and has given numerous speeches in countries such as Australia, Canada, Italy, Ireland, India, England, and Japan. He has also conducted various interviews with reputable magazines like Fortune and Fast Company.

Who Should Read the Book?

If you are among those people who are seeking to maximize their time and energy usage and want to have significant growth in their performance, be sure to use essentialism.

Essentialism is divided into 4 parts and 20 chapters, offering lessons to readers.

Book Quotes

If you want to achieve success definitively, you must move forward on a specific path without any interruptions.
Negotiation is one of the most important skills we need to learn in our lives. We must know what we truly want and be willing to work hard to achieve our goals. Always remember that choices and difficult options are in front of us. We must take responsibility for all these choices and take control of our own destiny. If we don't do this for ourselves, rest assured that others will step in and take control of our lives.

You need to create an excellent company or come up with excellent ideas, but both of these things are not achievable.

A true essentialist must allocate a suitable and specific time for sleep and rest in their schedule for 24 hours. Scientific studies show that even daydreaming has an impact on increasing creativity and productivity. If you truly want to succeed, you must prioritize your sleep. When we have enough deep and restful sleep, we can work with greater efficiency throughout the day and be more positive and effective in our activities.

Deep sleep gives us the highest possible productivity and makes us stronger during the day.

We need a suitable space in our lives to escape to and determine whether an issue is truly important or not. Unfortunately, we live in a time when our schedules are completely filled, and by default, we cannot have a suitable time and place to escape. It is necessary for us to create this space for ourselves.

Having such a space greatly increases our productivity and allows us to work on our creativity more than ever. In fact, creative freedom is achieved by having such a space. There is an important point about Bill Gates' life that is worth knowing and can help us. He spent one week each month thinking and reading while he was at Microsoft.

We can also use the "minimum viable progress" approach. We can ask ourselves, "What is the smallest amount of progress that is valuable and practical for accomplishing the important task at hand?" I used this approach myself when writing this book. For example, when I was still in the exploration and research phase of writing the book, before I put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), I would share a short idea (my minimum viable product) on Twitter. If I received responses there, I would write an article on the Harvard Business Review blog. With this iterative process that required some effort, I could understand where the intersection lies between what I think and what matters most to others.

This is a process that Pixar uses in their movies. Instead of starting their work with a script, they start with a visual storyboard or what they call a "comic book version" of a film. They try out various ideas and see which ones work. They do this hundreds of times in small cycles. Then they show the film to small groups of people to get initial feedback. This allows them to learn as quickly as possible with the least amount of effort. As John Lasseter, the chief creative officer at Pixar (now at Disney), said: "We don't finish films, we release them."

I just finished a wonderful book called Essentialism by Greg McKeown. He talks about the disciplined pursuit of less. A wonderful mantra for business and for our personal lives. I dont say this often, but this is a book I wish I wrote but am so grateful to have it to share with friends and family. Ripe with the wisdom of the role of simplicity, focus and being present, it has a clarity of thought that is rare in most books.

Have you ever said one of these phrases....

“I’m stretched too thin”

“My plate is too full”

“Someone else is controlling my day”

"I cant say no"

"I dont know what to do first"

The book has a clear and simple premise that resonates with my own world view. We all need to do less stuff and be more focused on things that truly matter. Greg preaches not doing essential things, but adopting an essentialist way of being in the world. It is an important distinction.

To help illustrate the theme, Greg uses a wonderfully accessible metaphor of our bedroom clothes closet.

How many things do you own in your closet that you never wear? If you were truly honest, you probably wear 20% of the clothes hanging up or in your wardrobe. The other 80% are things that you say, “well if I lose a few pounds” or “maybe that disco style will come back” or “I can’t get rid of that shirt that I never wear for sentimental reasons.”
Can you prune out your work like you should clean out your closet?

So much of our day and time is spent on the non-essential. We stuff our work days filled without time to think or get deep into a few critically important activities. Instead we sit in endless meetings that repeat the same information over and over again.

Greg suggests saying no if you cant say, Hell Ya! If you are on the fence, say no.

I’m one of those guys who keep a NOT to do list of things that waste my time. I believe in the power of focus especially for marketing professionals. When asked to do something, I like to take a deep breath before responding and ask a few questions to understand why it is important. If its another tactical idea, I like to say, “I’ll put it on our list of things to consider” when we are thinking about executing at a tactical level.

But more often than not, with all due props to Nancy Reagan, I like to just say no. No. I can’t be distracted by your lack of planning. No I cant be distracted by an idea that just popped into your head and distracts me from what I deem essential. And especially no I won’t work on something you haven’t thought through clearly enough that it warrants time on a calendar.

No. I’m not going to waste time on something that we don’t have funds for and, if we did would require me removing another project from the list.

Becoming an Essentialist
When you know where you are going and your vision is clear, you have crisp criteria to measure activities. Will this help me achieve my goals that I have carefully evaluated for our business? If no, then I shouldnt be doing it. It would be nice to do but I don’t want to interfere with my core efforts.

Often people feel obsessed about doing whatever is asked of them. They can’t say no just like they can’t streamline the clothes in their closet. When everything has equal weight, nothing is of real value.

Are you focused on the disciplined pursuit of the essential?

There are many great practical ideas in this book which sets a clear course to help you find the essential activities that are right for you and your life. You need space to think. The problem is that we dont take the time to discern among choices. We need to have habits that allow us to think.

W.I.N.
There is an example of a coach who has an extraordinary winning record in high school rugby. Greg tells the story of WIN - the coach insist that the team is always winning. But in this case WIN stands for WHATS IMPORTANT NOW. He gets the team focus on this moment, this play not the error they just made.

The coach, Larry Gelwix, figured out how to keep his team in the present moment. He doesnt want them worrying about next weeks game or the error they just committed. He wants them focused on what is important now. Powerful. Essential. Wise.

Do you turn things off?

Do you schedule thinking time on your calendar? Are you so over scheduled that your day is 100% filled without room for the unexpected? Do you plan time to think or are you just so busy with so much nonessential work that you use it as an excuse to only react?

Reading this book is essential if you want to clear away the clutter of work that waste your time and provides virtually nothing of real value to help you achieve your life goals. There are precise examples of what a non-essentialist does versus an essentialist. And they are instructive and valuable guideposts throughout this book.

Now, excuse me while I drop some old clothes off at Goodwill.

Life is complicated. Life is full of responsibilities and opportunities, planned duties and serendipitous possibilities. There is so much we could do, but so little we can do. Many of us battle our whole lives to focus on those few, significant items that we should do must do, and yet so few of us ever feel like we are even nearly succeeding.

Help is here in the form of Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism. While it is not a perfect book, and while it benefits tremendously from adding a good dose of Christian thinking, it is one of the most helpful I’ve read on that constant battle to focus my time and energy on the right things.

McKeown believes in what he calls Essentialism and describes the basic value proposition in this way: “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.” The Essentialist pursues fewer but better opportunities and is rigidly disciplined in rejecting the many to devote himself to the few. It is “not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done.”

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.

Now that sounds good! That sounds like what we all want—a clear design to our lives that simplifies decision-making and amplifies each of the opportunities we pursue.

McKeown leads the reader to Essentialism in four parts:

Essence. He begins by looking to the essence of Essentialism and the realities that make Essentialism a necessary but difficult practice today.

Explore. Here he describes the way an Essentialist needs to think so he can pursue the highest possible contribution toward the best goals.

Eliminate. Having determined the best goals, the Essentialist now needs to begin eliminating anything that will compete with the pursuit of those goals. “It’s not enough to simply determine which activities and efforts don’t make the highest possible contribution; you still have to actively eliminate those that do not.”

Execute. And then comes the heart of it all—living in such a way that you now execute on those few goals, and continuing to follow the discipline of it.

McKeown promises his book “will teach you a method for being more efficient, productive, and effective in both personal and professional realms. It will teach you a systematic way to discern what is important, eliminate what is not, and make doing the essential as effortless as possible. In short, it will teach you how to apply the disciplined pursuit of less to every area of your life.”

And I think it can do that. It is chock-full of excellent insights and quoteable phrases. It is the kind of book you can use to implement systems in your life, or the kind of book you can plunder for its big and important ideas.

Yet the Christian reader will want to read it with some discernment. This is a book that benefits from an infusion of the biblical ethos. As the book reaches its end, McKeown expands Essentialism to all of life and here he stops quoting business gurus and begins quoting religious gurus; the last chapter is easily the weakest and one that can be skipped without any great loss.

Reading the book through a Christian lens improves it significantly. McKeown writes about people who always say “yes” and are afraid to say “no.” That sounds like a classic diagnosis of fear of man, a person so motivated by the praise of man that he takes on too much and says no to too little so he can win the praise of other people.

Not only that, but God has a way of diverting us from what we believe are our most important tasks. He diverts us to tasks he determines are even more important, and a too-rigid adherence to Essentialism may keep a Christian from allowing and embracing those divine interruptions. Read the gospels and the book of Acts and you will see how Jesus and the Apostles were extremely focused, but also very willing to depart from their plans. Implementing Essentialism too rigidly may just lead to a self-centered life rather than a life of service to others.

Reading through that Christian lens also allows us to see that Essentialism can be a means through which we honor and glorify God. It propels us to consider where God has specially gifted and equipped us to serve him and his people. Again, “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 our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.” The principles of Essentialism, read and applied through the Bible, will help us understand how we are uniquely created and burdened by God to meet specific needs. And, equally helpfully, it will steer us away from those areas where we cannot contribute nearly as well.

I heartily recommend the book, provided you read with Essentialism in one hand, and the Bible in the other.

Let me close with a few of my favorite quotes:

In many cases we can learn to make one-time decisions that make a thousand future decisions so we don’t exhaust ourselves asking the same questions again and again.

If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.

We can either make our choices deliberately or allow other people’s agendas to control our lives.

There are three deeply entrenched assumptions we must conquer to live the way of the Essentialist: “I have to,” “It’s all important,” and “I can do both.”

If … people are too busy to think, then they’re too busy, period.

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.

Motivation and cooperation deteriorate when there is a lack of purpose.

Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.

“We need to learn the slow ‘yes’ and the quick ‘no.’ ”

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown offers encouragement and guidance to approach life from a direction that focuses on what is essential instead of trying to do/be everything. I had been looking forward to reading this book so much I almost started it when it arrived even though I was reading 4 or 5 other books at the time... Yes, I needed a lesson in essentialism. McKeown writes in an easy to understand format and presents some ideas that are quite relatable, yet I couldnt help but feel like this book is written from a place of privilege and therefore isnt as universal as it seems. When McKeown offers the example of a CEO whose doctor suggested he take a year off to address his health issues, I guffawed. Seriously? Who can actually do that? I cant even imagine a doctor making that suggestion. This is only one example of the privilege bleeding off the pages in the anecdotes he shares to make his points. I kept wondering who picks up the slack for the person who decides something isnt essential but that thing still has to get done. Maybe this is because thats my experience in life. I have often been the one left to clean up the messes of people who have decided something isnt important enough for them to do even though it has to get done. The idea presented in the book seemed to be that if it isnt essential to your goals, it isnt essential, but thats just not always reality. Whats essential to one person might not be to another, and what isnt essential to one person might be absolutely essential to another. Granted he also often talks about the benefits of determining whats essential to a teams goal(s) in a job setting. Essentialism also offered some insights into the pitfalls of looking busy, feeling busy, and creating busy-ness because of an inability to focus on what is essential. He presents the idea of questioning doing things that dont contribute to ones overall goals in life in way that makes it feel like common sense. As a general concept, I like the idea of essentialism and I even like this book for the most part, but I think much of it is more aspirational than realistic. So, to be honest, my reaction to Essentialism is really mixed. I really wanted to love Essentialism, but I didnt quite make it there. I definitely didnt hate it either. I like Essentialism enough that I would recommend it but with the caveat that it doesnt apply to everyone equally. All that said, I am excited about applying some of concepts to scheduling my work and my life, and I recognize that my ability to do that means I have a certain amount of privilege in my life that some people dont have.

In a world where multi tasking is adored, this book gives a different perspective on how to de-clutter and simplify our lives.

The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of the non-essentials. The way of the essentialist is the relentless pursuit of less but better. It is about constantly to ask “Am I investing in the right activities?”

There are far more activities, opportunities in the world than we have time and resources to invest in. The way of the Essentialist involves learning to tell the difference – learning to filter through all the options and selection only those that are truly essential.

Essentialism is not about how to get more things done, but it is about how to get the right things done. It is about making the wisest possible investment of our time and energy in order to operate at your highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.

Essentialist – Core mind-set of an Essentialist
An Essentialist has to be operate with a different mind-set. The core mind-set of essentialist are:

Individual Choice – We can choose how to spend our energy and time. Without choice there is no point in talking about trade-offs. The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given away – it can only be forgotten.
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 what is most important. A non-Essentialist things almost everything is essential. An Essentialist thinks almost everything is non-essential.
Reality of trade-offs – We can’t have it all or do it all. If we could, there would be no reason to evaluate or eliminate the options.
The way of essentialist is the path to being in control of your choices.

In todays world of competing priorities the mindset is that “You can have it all”. The Essentialist approach would be:

Explore and Evaluate – Will the activity that I am investing make the highest possible contribution toward my goal?
Exploring meant the ability to discern the vital few from the trivial many. Evaluate what really matters.
ESCAPE – The Perks of being unavailable
LOOK – See what really matters
PLAY – Embrace the wisdom of your inner child
SLEEP – Protect the Asset
SELECT – The Power of Extreme Criteria
Eliminate – It is simply not enough to determine which activities and efforts don’t make the highest possible contribution; you would have to actively eliminate those that do not.
How can we cut out the trivial many ?
CLARIFY – One Decision that makes a Thousand
DARE – Power of a Graceful “No”
UNCOMMIT – Win Big by Cutting Your Losses
EDIT – The Invisible Art
LIMIT – The freedom of setting boundaries
Execute – Once you have figured out the activities and efforts to keep, we need a system to make the executing as effortless as possible.
How can we make doing the vital few things almost effortless?
BUFFER – The unfair advantage
SUBTRACT – Bring forth more by removing obstacles
PROGRESS – Power of Small Wins
FLOW – Genius of Routine
FOCUS – What’s important now ?
BE – The Essentialist Life
The most important message from this book is –
“If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.”

The disciplined pursuit of less each and every time you are faced with a decision about whether to say yes or whether to politely decline. It is a method for making the tough trade-off between lots of good things and a few really great things.

Essentialism is about learning how to do less but better so you can achieve the highest possible return on every precious moment of your life.

This book will show you how to live a life true to yourself, not the life others expect from you, by disciplined pursuit of less to every area of your life.

Summary:

In summary the disciplined pursuit of less can change your life for the better in the following ways:

More Clarity – Life will become less about efficiently crossing off what was on your to-do list or rushing through everything on your schedule and more about changing what you put on there in the first place.
More Control – Gain in confidence in your ability to pause, push back and not rush in. Remember that if you do not prioritize your life, someone else will. But if you are determined to prioritize your own life you can. The power is within you.
More Joy in the Journey – With the focus on what is truly important right now comes the ability to live life more fully, in the moment.
The life of an Essentialist is a life of meaning. It is a life that really matters. The life of an Essentialist is a life lived without regret. If you have correctly identified what really matters, if you invest time and energy in it, then it is difficult to regret the choices you make. You become proud of the life you have chosen to live.

If there is one think you take away from the book, whatever decision or challenge or crossroads you face in your life, simply ask yourself, “What is Essential?” Eliminate everything else.

Sometimes you just need to hear the simple truths — some of which you already know — from someone else to fill them with meaning and make them stick in your head.

Less, but better.
Reality of trade-offs.
Planning for effortless execution.
Start small, achieve big.
The magic of essential routines.

I found this book actually helpful. I read more than 50 psychology books on different topics, all with the same concept of helping yourself get better, organized, etc. For me, thats the only book that actually told me something new and helped me with problems I experienced instead of giving vague advice.

If I took a shot every time this guy mentions that he went to Stanford, Id have been lit by the second chapter. Cheers.

One of my favorites…I buy this for my clients.

This book came out in April this year. It is already a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Why? It deals with the most serious problem business people face. These 24-hour days just do not work!

Technology was supposed to make our working lives easier, and our workdays shorter. Two decades later, we are still waiting for promised spare time.

Author Greg McKeown describes a seminal experience that led him to a profound conclusion. He was in the maternity ward with his wife and newborn child. A colleague called and asked whether he planned to attend the meeting scheduled at that time, and he said yes. “To my shame, while my wife lay in hospital with our hours-old baby, I went to the meeting.” His colleague mention that the client would respect him for making the decision to be there, but the look on the client’s face showed little respect. “I had hurt my family, my integrity, and even the client relationship.”

(What is your story? Pause and recall one. It will make the solution this book offers so much more meaningful.)

The important lesson McKeown discovered from this experience was that if you do not prioritise your life, someone else will.

Many forces make this prioritization no easy matter for even intelligent, thoughtful, and capable people. The result is the remaining in the “death grip of the non-essentials.” One of the reasons for this is that our society punishes the good behaviour (saying no,) and rewards the bad behaviour (saying yes.)

At a more subtle level, there are two reason mentioned in the book that stood out for me. The first is that the success often distracts us from focusing on the essentials that were the reason for the success in the first place. The second is that we have so much choice that it overwhelms our ability to manage it. Psychologist point out that a glut of choices causes “decision fatigue” which reduces the quality of the decision we do make.

When the word “priority, ” first entered the English language in 1400s it was in the singular. Today, it has a plural form allowing people to talk of their top ten priorities! This is part of the reason we entertain the myth that you can have it all, you can have ten top priorities. With ten priorities, it is not surprising that we lose sight of everything that is meaningful and important, in business and our private lives.

We need to separate the essential from the non-essential only because we cannot meet all our commitments to work, friends, family, social causes, and the rest. The time required simply is unavailable. There are only 24 hours each day. That is it.

The basic proposition of Essentialism is that “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.” Essentialism is not simply a matter of saying “no” more often, or honing your time management skills. Rather, it is asking, “What is the most important thing I should be doing now?” It is all about how to get the right things done.

Mckeown captures the method he presents for becoming an Essentialist in the “wardrobe” metaphor.

Your wardrobe is cluttered and disorganized. You have difficulty finding clothes, and have no place for new ones. The Essentialist would address this problem in three parts.

The first is to “Explore and Evaluate." Rather than considering whether you might ever wear garment again in the future, ask more focused and stronger question: “Do I love this?” and “Do I look great in it?” and “Do I wear this often?” If the answer to this question is negative, put the garment into the black bag for delivery to a charity.

In your personal or professional life this question would be “Will this activity or effort make the highest possible contribution towards my goal?” As you work through this book, you will clarify what your goal is in the various aspects of your life.

The next step in wardrobe management is the “Eliminate” step. This is the step that prevents you having 10 top priorities or in term of the metaphor having a “probably should get rid of” pile. If you are not ready to put this pile into the black bag, you could ask this question: “If I didn’t already own this, how much would I spend to buy it?” The business equivalent is “If I didn’t have this opportunity, what would I be willing to do to acquire it?”

The Eliminate step is a critical part of the value of this book, with the most value coming from the methods. McKeown describes how to rid yourself of the non-essentials in a way that earns you respect from colleagues, management, and clients.

The third step in wardrobe management is to “Execute.” To do this, you need to decide on a charity that will be the recipient of the clothing, what time they are open, and to schedule that into your diary. Without the plan to see this through, they will return to your wardrobe, sooner or later.

There is a discipline required to be an essentialist, and some courage. Your work-life is not like a wardrobe. In your work-life, the clothes get out the black bag and back into your wardrobe without you doing anything. A schedule you set can be scuttled within 20 minutes of your arriving at the office. Even being able to say “no” well, requires courage.

Learning how to do less is the only way to get the maximum return on every irreplaceable moment of your life. Stephen Covey, clearly an Essentialist, put it this way: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”

Readability Light -+--- Serious
Insights High +---- Low
Practical High +---- Low

*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works.

A great book which makes you think about the choices you make or are not even aware of making and how much we are influenced by popular media and society.
Originally written for the business class, but adopted by the population at large. Contrarians will love this book! Working-harder-and-not-smarters, nose-to-the-grindstones will either hate this book, or learn a new, perhaps healthier perspective on living their lives...