Essentialism by Greg McKeown

An approach to healthily thrive in the age of unlimited options and find the highest point of contribution towards the things that really matter.

Abstract: This book teaches the beauty of focusing on fewer, but essential things: the things that really matter. Our highest contribution towards things we value most can be achieved by doing less instead of more, but better. Identifying these essential actions and separating them from the trivial many needs discipline, courage, and clarity. Once we established a core mindset towards essentialism, we can discern the trivial many from the vital few, exploring options and eliminating what is unimportant. For continuous execution of essential activities, a system in place helps doing this almost effortless and helps us becoming an essentialist at our core.

The book “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown beautifully outlines the various situations we face in our day-to-day lives and shows an approach to understand what’s important, explore our essentials, eliminate distractions, and execute a lifestyle focussed on what is truly important. It provides inspiration and strategies to make the right decisions and get the essential things done.

This post summarises the key take-aways and outlines what I understand McKeown saying in his book.

On the significance of the topic

The quality of our life really is the summary of choices we make over an extended period of time. Quality is determined by our choices. But what do we do when making the right decision, focussing on important things is continuously hampered by our modern culture and technology?

Thanks to modern technology accelerating and simplifying our lives, we are presented with virtually unlimited options. Too many opinions are highly available.

This supports the idea of “you can have it all”. But while we can have virtually anything we want; you can’t have everything you want. We need to effectively fight this form of priority inflation to protect ourselves from majoring in minor activities. In stepping back and taking another perspective on our lives, we can put things into perspective. We see that most things we worry about do not really contribute to what is most important to us: the essential things in life.

Consequently, focussing on the few essential things in life in a disciplined way, the pursuit for less but better is extraordinary powerful. Essentialism focuses on how to get the right things done in pausing regularly to ask “Am I investing in the right activities?

Doing what is essential is about the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in favour of return on investment. As a result, we can operate at our highest point of contribution.

Why doing less but better is more productive.

As shown the way of the Essentialists doing less but better is ultimately more productive regarding specific objectives. Instead of the energy being divided into small fractions, significant progress can be made by investing in fewer things and go hard on them. The things that matter most. This rejects the idea that everything can be fit in a task, daily-schedule, or our lives. While this might sound obvious, discipline and clarity are required in grappling with trade-offs, making though decisions and cut out the unnecessary.

The result is a living by design not by default.

Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution and our impact on the world lies, then making execution of those things with ease.

The book is structured in four parts:

Part I: Essence: What is the core mind-set of an Essentialist?

Part II: Explore: How can we discern the trivial many from the vital few?

Part III: Eliminate: How can we cut out the trivial many?

Part IV: Execute: How can we make doing the vital few things almost effortlessly?

Part I: What is the core mindset of an essentialist?

This leads to the core notion of essentialism and the mindset of an essentialist. Essentialism is a way of thinking. Internalising this new approach is not a neutral challenge because the logic of non-Essentialism is ubiquitous. We have too many choices, social pressure and the suggestive believe that we can have it all. It is easy to get pulled towards nonessentials.

To embrace the essence of essentialism and to figure out how to get the right things done instead of getting more things done one must establish the right mindset. The Essentialist moves away from the idea of “I have to”, “It is all important” and “I can do both Here the fundamentals lie in

· Choose: The invisible power of choice

· Discern: The unimportance of practically everything

· Trade-offs: Which Problem Do I want?

Part I of the book comprises these three chapters being covered in the following.

Choose: The invisible power of choice

Core Idea: Victor Frankl shows impressively that no matter how disastrous the situation, how little control we have over the situation one cannot be stripped away from the ability to choose among options and how to react to a given situation.

But however powerful this ability might be, if we surrender our choices somebody will step in and choose for us. As life gets overwhelming in situations can be paralysed by decision fatigue, or we sense being pushed to certain actions. This is referred to as learned helplessness.

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.” — Peter Drucker

If we don’t choose for ourselves; we give others permission to choose for us. Our ability to choose can’t be taken or given away. It can only be forgotten.

Discern: The unimportance of practically everything

Core Idea: Not all effort is rewarded equally. There is a point at which working harder does not necessarily produce better results.

The unnormal distribution of efforts is outlined by the principle of pareto. Accordingly, 20% of our efforts produce 80% of results. This work has later been expanded to the “law of the vital few”.

In viewing opportunities as equal everything becomes important. Learning to tell the difference what is truly important – to distinguish the vital view from the trivial many – holds exponential rewards.

Trade-offs: Which Problem Do I want?

Core Idea: While you can virtually have anything you cannot have everything. As resources are limited, there are trade-offs.

Choosing a goal or problem often means rejecting some things you want in order to get other things you want even more. Consequently, saying yes to any opportunity requires saying no to several others. Straddling strategies are inefficient, we must dismiss the idea that we can do both and realise the reality of trade-offs.

An essentialist asks: “what is the trade-off I want to make, what problem do I want?” And goes big on one thing. This approach can make the difference from good to great. Don’t let yourself be paralysed by all the possibilities. Make your choice and get on with it.

Part II: How can we identify the essential few in the ocean of unimportance?

In order to discern the vital few from the trivial many we need to curiously explore a broad set of options available before committing to any. The part of identifying what is essential is all about stepping back, shifting perspectives and triangulate with options. Doing so gives us space to go deep and reflect on what we really find purposefully.

There are five chapters for exploring what is essential:

• 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

Escape: The perks of being unavailable

Core Idea: Before we can consider various types of options and need space. Space to explore and ponder, to regain perspective and to be curious.

The world is full of distractions pulling for our attention. In this environment it has become increasingly hard to find quiet space to explore options and focusing. Therefore, space only can be created by design. Escaping and thereby gaining another perspective is crucial to refocus and considering various options.

When was the last time you felt bored, went around aimlessly, and noticed small things?

Technology has nearly banned boredom from our lives. Without time and space to deeply think and consciously process, we lose perspective and hold back our brain forming unconventional and creative connections.

In order to focus on what’s essential, we need to escape. When our lives get faster and busier, it becomes more important to build thinking and reflecting time into our daily or weekly schedule.

Look: see what really matters

Core idea: There is difference between facts and figuring out the point. We must not be distracted from the bigger picture by details.

This is all about cutting through the unnecessary right to the core. Every set of facts holds something essential, but we don’t have the capacity to hyperfocus on all the minor details. Instead, focus on the bigger picture. Discerning what is essential and worth exploring, requires us to be disciplined in how we scan and filter all the competing and conflicting facts, options, and opinions that are constantly vying for our attention.

Just like a journalist focuses on the lead of a story, the why, what, when and who of a piece, we can filter for that information in set of facts and figure out the point. By training yourself to identify the lead you will encounter what you have missed.

To figure out the point, cut through to the very core and identify the lead keeping a journal can help connecting the dots to reveal the bigger picture. To filter for the point, it also helps to keep the eyes peeled for abnormal or unusual details by gaining various perspectives on a topic. Lastly clarifying the question that you are trying to answer helps to think through about the initial goal.

Play: Embrace the wisdom of your inner child

Core Idea: Play broadens our minds in ways that allow us to explore, to germinate new ideas or see old ideas in new light. “Nothing fires up the brain like play”.

Creativity is fuelled through play, which has also been acknowledged in the corporate world. “Lego serious play” is an approach to introduce playful culture within a company to stimulate creative ideas of employees to eventually come up with new solutions for various problems.

Play can be seen as anything that we do simply for the joy of doing it rather than as a means to an end. While play might seem like a non-essential activity at first glance, it is essential in many ways. Play can significantly improve personal health, relationships, education, and ability to innovate.

When we play, we engage in the purest expression of our humanity and the truest expression of our individuality. As play includes all our senses, it makes us more inquisitive, more attuned to novelty, more engaged.

Play is fundamental to living the way of the essentialist because it fuels exploration in many ways:

1. play broadens the range of options available to us. ( Visulisation etc)

2. Play is an antidote to stress. This is important because stress narrows down the creative, inquisitive and exploratory parts of our brains. Stress hinders our ability to think clearly.

3. Play has positive effect on the executive functions of the brain, Edward M. Hallowelld

To enjoy the benefits of play we can try to gamify your work and life here and there and establish a playful attitude towards it.

Sleep: protect the asset

Core Idea: Sleep enables the highest point of contribution and drives peak performance.

While prioritising sleep might sound like an obvious recommendation, it really is a driver for peak performance. Malcom Gladwell’s famously known 10,000-hour rule is based on a study of violinists, which found following:

• The best violinists spent more time practicing than merely good students
• Mastering a skill takes focused and deliberate effort
• The second most important factor that differentiated the best violinists from the good violinists was sleep
• The best violinists slept 8.6 hours per night on average
• The best violinists also napped for 0.4 hours per day on average
• Sleep allowed top performers to regenerate so that they could practice with greater concentration

Sleep often falls victim to our belief the time, that one extra hour can be spent productive, but there are good reasons to fight this delusion. Being neglected, it turns into a limiting factor to our brain power and problem-solving ability. Sleep is the restorative companion to the discerning essentialist mind.

In summary, prioritising sleep will enhance your ability to explore, to be present and make connections and to do less but better throughout your waking hours.

Select: The Power of Extreme Criteria

Core idea: Acknowledging trade-offs, simplify and standardise good decision making by extreme decision criteria.

Good decisions separate good options from great options. But making decisions can be exhaustive. Therefore, applying though criteria help selecting. If the answer is not a definite yes - if we do not fell total conviction- then it is a no. This selective approach succinctly summarizes a core essentialist principle that’s critical to the process of exploration.

In practice this skill acknowledges the reality of trade-offs. The number of considerable choices depends on the decision-making criteria we apply as though criteria will drastically limit options.

The very act of applying selective criteria forces you to choose which perfect option to wait for rather than letting other people, or the universe, choose for you. Applying selective criteria forces you to make decisions by design rather than by default.

Making our criteria selective and explicit gives a systematic tool for discerning what’s essential and filtering out what’s not. If a commitment isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a no.

If we say yes to opportunities because they provide an easy reward, we risk having to later say no to more meaningful opportunities.

The 90% rule perfectly summarizes the represents the rigor to use when limiting options: Any option below 90% is considered zero. Appling this criterion avoids getting caught up in indecision and stuck with unpleasant 60% or 70% yes.

Another systematic selective process in this spirit can be stated as follows:

a. Write down the opportunity

b. Define three minimum criteria the opportunity needs to meet to be considered furtherly.

c. Define three extreme criteria the opportunity needs to pass in order to be considered. If the opportunity cannot pass two of them, it can be forgotten.

Good decision making can be achieved by selective and explicit criteria. Thereby we can discern what’s essential and filtering out what’s not.

PART III: How can we cut out the trivial many?

Here rigour comes into play. It is not enough to simply determine activities that and efforts that do not make the best possible contribution, you have to actively eliminate those that do not.

Part III includes the following chapters:

-Clarify: set course

· Dare: powerful yet graceful no

· Uncommit: cutting

· Edit:

· Limit: freedom by boundaries

Clarify: one decision that makes a thousand

Core Idea: clarity about values and goals sets the course and can make decision for further by the notion of “One decision can make a thousand”.

Lack of clarity has been identified as a main driver for procrastination and loss of motivation during a project. Without sufficient clarity about a task, there is uncertainty and risk for procrastination is high. On the other hand, people thrive when there’s a high level of clarity about what a team stands for and what their roles and goals are.

When we’re unclear about our personal purpose in life and don’t have a clear sense of our goals, aspirations, and values, we make up social games, trying to impress others. We waste time and energy trying to look good in comparison to others and overvalue non-essentials. This has drawbacks on our level if contribution.

The general idea here is to set course by the notion of “One decision can make a thousand” in form of an essential intent.

Deciding on an essential intent is the starting point of a top-down approach to get clarity.

Once the big decision has is made, all subsequent decisions come into better focus. An essential intent is one decision that settles one thousand later decisions. It is both an inspirational and concrete strategy. It is also both meaningful and measurable.

DARE: The Power of a Graceful “No”

Core Idea: People are effective because they say no to the non-essentials and say yes to the things that really matter. A clear no is more graceful than an uncommitted or vague yes.

Saying no can be challenging especially in in socially pressuring situations. But the downside of failing to withstand the tension between what you feel is right and what somebody is pressing you to comes with consequences:

“Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.” — Josh Billings. There is the choice to say yes and regret it for weeks and months or say no and regret it for minutes.

On the other hand, a right “no” spoken at the right time can change the course of history. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat through a resolute “no”. This was derived from deep conviction about what choice she wanted to make at that moment. This famously illustrates the point of daring to say no.

The strength to say no comes with clarity about the own values and principles. This is essential to cut the unimportant. As a result, people are effective because they say no. A firmly and resolutely, but gracefully “no” earns respect and there are perspectives that might facilitate the decision:

§ Separate the decision form the relationship

§ Saying no gracefully does not mean using the word no

§ Focus on the trade off

§ Everybody is selling something in exchange for your time (opinion, idea)

§ Saying no often trades popularity for respect

§ A clear no is more graceful than an uncommitted or vague yes

A resolute “no” demands courage and is the key to process elimination. The strengths to do so is derived from clarity about one’s values. And while it might not contribute to popularity a resolute and firmly “no”, expressed in graceful manner earns respect.

Uncommit: Win Big by Cutting Your Losses

Core idea: find the courage and confidence to admit mistakes and uncommit no matter what the sunk costs are to stop continuing a pointless cycle.

Decisions are often influenced by the sunk cost bias. This describes the tendency to hold on to invest time, money, and energy into something we know is losing proposition. An imminent vicious, gambling like cycle can be prevented by the courage and confidence to admit own mistakes and uncommit regardless of expenses.

In our lives we oftentimes try to be something we’re not, forcing something that is a mismatch. We trap into the status quo bias as to blindly accept and not bother to question commitments because they’re already established, and we might have always done it.

An essentialist looks at the project with clear neutral perspective and is comfortable with cutting losses. Uncommitting can be facilitated with the following.

§ Awareness of psychological effects such as the endowment. The effect describes the tendency to undervalue belongings or activities outside our possession or practice and overvalue things that we do and own. Only with honest awareness of mistakes committed, we can save ourselves continuing the circle pointlessly.

§ Pretending to not own a thing yet: If I weren’t already invested in this project, how much would I invest in it now ?

§ Get a neutral second opinion

§ Pause before you speak, consider second order consequences

§ Run a reverse pilot: test whether removing an initiative or activity will have and negative consequences.

Uncommitting is harder than not committing in the first place. Yet learning how to do so in ways that will garner you respect for your courage, focus, and discipline is crucial to becoming an essentialist.

Edit: the invisible art

Core idea: Editing involves the strict elimination of the trivial, unimportant, or irrelevant. Things are good when nothing can be subtracted anymore without losing the point.

Good editors use deliberate subtraction to add life to the ideas, setting, plot, and characters. The job of an editor is to make life as effortless as possible for the reader. The goal here is to help the reader have the clearest possible understanding if the most important message.

Similarly in life, disciplined editing can help add to your level of contribution, as it increases your ability to focus energetically on the few things that really matter. Disciplined editing lends the most meaningful relationships and activities more space to blossom. It also involves making trade-offs.

To edit life as to cut out the non-essentials there are four principles:

Cut out options : Having fewer options facilitates decision making. Therefore, get rid of good or even really good options or activities. Every cut produce joy and takes off mental weight.

Condense: This means expressing something as clearly and society as possible. In lowering the ratio of words to ideas, square feet to usefulness or effort to results just like the 80/20 principle.

Correct: Understanding the overarching intent, the bigger picture allows to make corrections. Our overarching intent is our core purpose which serves as an anchor and reference point to allow for course corrections when comparing activities or behaviours to the intent.

Edit less: In Doing less, waiting and observing we can see how things develop. This is a not just a powerful essentialist strategy it is a editorial one as well. d

Becoming an essentialist means integrating cutting, condensing, and correcting into our daily routine. In doing so, we make editing a natural part of our lives.

Limit: the freedom of setting boundaries

Core idea: Setting boundaries may come with a price but it ultimately helps to prevent exception making, undergoing principles and will earn you respect.

Boundaries are like a fixe and implicite no to a range of tasks or commitments in a certain period of time, in an area of life or a principle.

The disappearance of boundaries is typical for our modern non-Essential era. Technology has blurred the lines between work and private life. Today we face expectations to be available to work 24/7. When we don’t set clear boundaries, we can end up imprisoned by the limits that others set for us.

Boundaries protect time form being hijacked and allow to proactively eliminate demands the demands and encumbrances form others that distract from the true essentials. Setting boundaries may come with a price especially in the work context. However, it helps to prevent exception making, undergoing principles and will ultimately earn you respect. It protects one’s ability to choose what is essential in life.

For setting boundaries with right intend there are some best practices:

· Their problem is not your problem: when people making their problem your problem, you are not helping them but enabling them.

· Boundaries are a source of liberation: knowing exact boundaries, we are free to select form the whole range of options.

· Define your dealbreakers: write down when you feel violated or put upon by somesone’s request for finding your dealbreakers.

· Social contract: create understanding up front about what matters to one another along with their boundaries in the respective relationship.

With clear boundaries, we’re free to select from the options that we’ve deliberately chosen to explore. If you can’t identify your boundaries to yourself or others, it may be unrealistic to expect others to respect them or figure them out.

Part IV: How can we do the essential things almost effortlessly ?

The previous paragraphs examined and clarified which efforts and activities to keep as an essentialist. Once these are clear, the effortless execution requires having a system in place. Therefore, the execution of essential efforts becomes routine.

The final part of Essentialism comprises of the chapters:

• Buffer: The Unfair Advantage
• Subtract: Bring Forth More by Removing Obstacles
• Progress: The Power of Small Wins
• Flow: The Genius of Routine
• Focus: What’s Important Now?
• Be: The Essentialist Life

Buffer: The unfair advantage

Core idea: buffering events prevents potential conflict and leaves scope for unexpected events.

The world around us is hardly predictable. A buffer can be defined as something that prevents two things form coming into contact and harming each other. Similar to traffic additional space allows for options i.e., time to respond and adapt to any sudden or unexpected moves by other cars.

Friction of executing the essential in our work and lives can be reduced by creating a buffer. The essentialist looks ahead, practices extreme and early preparation and builds in a buffer for unexpected events.

The planning fallacy is a common phenomenon: We tend underestimate how long a task will take even when we’ve done the task before. We often know we can’t do things in an specific time frame, but don’t want to admit it to anyone.

There are a few tips to keep your work and sanity in check by creating a buffer:

Extreme preparationprepares rigorously for the unexpected. This may be outlining a whole semesterds, packing extra clothes for vacation, or simply building slack and buffer into a plan.

Add 50% to your estimated time : Estimating the duration of a task can be challenging and we generally tend to underestimate the required time for a task. In fact, there is a term for it called the “planning fallacy” coined by Daniel Kahnemann. This term refers to people’s tendency to underestimate how long a task will take, even when they have done the task before. We often know we can’t do things in a given time frame, but we don’t want to admit it to anyone. Thus, execution becomes frustrating when it could have been frictionless. One way to protect against this is to add a 50% buffer to the amount of time a task or project will take.

Scenario Planning: This comprises of five leading questions to be applied at building buffers:

1. What risks do you face on this project?

2. What is the worst-case scenario?

3. What would the social effects of this be ?

4. What would the financial impact be ?

5. How can you invest to reduce risks or strengthen social resilience?

Essentialists accept the reality that we can never fully anticipate or prepare for every scenario or eventuality, as the future is unpredictable. They build in buffers to reduce the friction caused by the unexpected.

Subtract: Bring Forth More by Removing Obstacles

Core Idea: Produce more output by removing limiting factors rather than doing more.

Limiting factors are keeping us back from achieving what really matters. Analogous to hiking, the “slowest hiker” constraining the group must be identified, addressed and the obstacle removed in order to execute what’s essential.

Band Aid-solutions won’t be sufficient for an essentialist. Lead by asking “what is getting in the way of achieving what’s essential?” obstacles must be removed to progress. This requires identifying the root problem and remove limiting factors.

Following three steps can be used:

1. Be clear about the essential intent or outcome: concrete, meaningful and measurable

2. Identify limiting factors: anything slowing down the execution of a goal should be questioned

3. Remove obstacles: done is better than perfect, perfection comes with iteration

Instead of focusing of efforts to add, the focus here lies upon constraints and obstacles to be removed.

Progress: The power of small wins

Core idea: Start out small, create momentum and celebrate the progress. This establishes lasting motivation through small achievements, steady progress and more satisfaction.

Big goals can be overwhelming. The more we reach for the stars, the harder it can be to get ourselves off the ground. The key is to start small, encourage progress and celebrate small wins.

Among all forms of human motivation, the most effective one is progress. Small, concrete wins create momentum and affirm faith in further success. Achievement and recognition for achievement are the two primary internal motivators for people. Little progress, even a small win has impact on how people feel and perform. Making progress in meaningful work is the desirable state.

As momentum works in both directions, we have a choice. We can either use our energy to set up a system that makes execution of things that matter easy, or we can resign ourselves to a system that makes it harder to do what’s good.

There are a few techniques:

· Focus on minimal viable progress:“What is the smallest amount of progress that will be useful and valuable to the essential task we are trying to get done?

· Do the minimum viable preparation: “What is the minimal amount you could do right now to prepare?”

· Visually reward progress:visibly seeing progress (e.g., on a chart) towards a goal has empowering impact.

By starting small and rewarding progress, we end up achieving more than when we set lofty and often impossible goals. The act of positively reinforcing our successes allows us to reap more enjoyment and satisfaction out of the process.

FLOW: The genius of routine

Core Idea: Small wins and routines make execution effortless. Once established, we do not have to think about it. This frees resources and allows to tap into flow state.

Routines make achieving what has been identified essential the default position. First you create your habits then they create you.

Especially in sports you can witness a variety of routines, designed to put an athlete with small consecutive wins over the course of the habits into a flow state. Here, wining is a natural extension. Similarly, achieving what has been defined as essential to the default position for an essentialist. With the right routine in place each effort yields exponentially greater results.

Routine is one of the most powerful tools for removing obstacles. Without it the pull of non-essential distractions will overpower us. Doing a certain task repeatedly strengthens synaptic connection and the communication between neurons in the brain. With repetition the routine is mastered, and the activity becomes second nature. Switching on the autopilot, mental space is freed up to concentrate on new things. The unleashed energy allows for more creativity to concentrate on problem solving.

Habits are comprised of a cue, a routine, and a reward.

• Cue: trigger that tells the brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use
• Routine: the behaviour itself, which can be mental, physical, or emotional
• Reward: helps the brain figure out if the habit is worth remembering for the future

To reprogram the subconscious with the right routines there some techniques:

Overhaul your triggers: each time the new behaviour is executed strengthens the kink in the brain between new cue and the new behaviour

Create new triggers: Focus on low entry barriers

Do the most difficult thing first: Eat that frog, create momentum

Mix up your routines: different routines for different days in the week to prevent routine fatigue

Tackle routines one by one: start with one change in your daily or weekly routine and build form there.

Once routines are in place, they are gifts that keep on giving.

FOCUS: What’s important now?

Core idea: Only by being fully present, full energy can be applied to the job at hand. Asking “what is important now?” helps to shift focus on how you are doing things.

Every second spend worrying about a past or future moment distracts us from what’s important in the here and now.

The ancient Greek have two words for time. Time quantity referred to as ‘Chronos’ and kairos as qualitative measure. The latter is experienced when we are fully present in the moment, when we exist in the now. In experiencing life in Kairos, not only Chronos, but also Kairos essentialists enjoy the moment and focus on the things that are truly important - right now.

We cannot concentrate on two things at the same time. While multitasking can be achieved (e.g. by routines that have become second nature) multi-focus is not possible.

How to be in the now:

· Figure out what’s most important right now: Refocus by cleaning, zooming out and centre attention

· Get the future out of the head (and on paper)

· Prioritise according to what’s essential now

Training yourself to tune into Kairos will enable you to achieve a higher level of contribution and make you happier.

BE: The essentialist life

Core Idea: essentialism is a lifestyle. Fully embraced and practiced it in everything you do at home or at work, it can become a part of the way you see and understand the world.

We are all capable of purging our lives of the non-essential and embracing the way of the essentialists in our own ways, in our own time, and on our own scale. We can all live a life not just of simplicity but of high contribution and meaning.

There are two ways about living essentially:

• Something you do occasionally: essentialism becomes one more thing you add to your overstuffed life
• Something you are: essentialism is a different, simpler way of doing everything and becomes a lifestyle and all-encompassing approach to living and leading

The “less but better” philosophy appears throught history and is reflected in the lives of notable and diverse figures both religious and secular like the Dalai Lama, Jesus, Mother Teresa, Steve Jobs Warren buffet. The common denominator of these lives is the living of meaning and purpose.

An Essentialist is something that one is steadily becoming by making few deliberate choices that grow into a lifestyle which transforms the very core. In many ways, to live as an essentialist in our society is an act of quiet revolution. It’s not always easy and the transition doesn’t happen overnight. Over time, it gets easier and easier.

Focusing on the essentials is your choice. Becoming an essentialist is a long process, but the benefits are endless. To view a few:

· More clarity

· More control: confidence in your ability to pause, push back

· More joy in the journey: Simplicity is extremely important for happiness.

The disciplined pursuit of less can change your life for the better by giving you more clarity, control, and joy in the journey. The life of the essentialist is a life of meaning, a life that really matters and a life without regret.

If you have identified what really matters to you, if you invest your time and energy in it, then is difficult to regret the choices you make. Whenever you’re faced with a decision or challenge in your life, ask yourself “What is essential?” and eliminate everything else.