Essentialism. The path to simplicity (G. McKeon)

Abstract

This book is for everyone who is mired in everyday worries and who does not have enough time for the most important things. The author of the book, writer and psychologist Greg McKeon, reminds: your time and energy are priceless, they should not be spent on those things and those people that are not really important to you. You and you alone must determine what is worth your limited resources. Essentialism is a new approach that will allow you to do less, but better — in all areas of your life. He explains very clearly how to focus on the most important and get rid of all that unnecessary that surrounds you and prevents you from focusing on priorities.

Chapter 1. The Essentialist

Wisdom is to remove everything unimportant from your life.

Ling Yutan

Graphic designer Trisha Morse had a simple rule in her work: do what you were asked to do. When people came to her with requests, she agreed without hesitation. She was pleased to listen to the gratitude of customers: “Thank you so much! You helped me so much!”

The trouble is that Trisha agreed to so many things at once that she soon began to get tired. Everything was getting out of control. Trisha worked around the clock to please every client, but her work only got worse and more errors arose. After some time, her drawings ceased to please both the customers and herself.

Desperate to protect herself, Trisha began to say no. At first she lacked determination. When she received the next order, she asked herself: “Will I be able to complete it in the specified time and with the available resources?” And if the answer was «no», the offer had to be rejected. Trisha’s clients were not happy about this, but respected her for her honesty.

Each small victory added confidence to Trisha. Now she judged orders by a more rigorous criterion: “Can I spend my time and resources on something better?”

And if the answer was «yes», Trisha refused the task. At first it seemed to her that it was impossible to indulge her own desires like that, but gradually she created for herself a free space in which she was engaged in creativity. She was no longer scattered between dozens of projects, but carefully planned each one, taking into account potential obstacles. The quality of her work has returned to its previous level.

Trisha began to follow this principle in everyday life. Instead of immediately responding to any request, she gave herself time to reflect and decide whether she should agree. Trisha began to reject almost all offers and requests, leaving only those that were really important. And then she properly planned the chosen cases, prepared for them and removed all obstacles on the way to their implementation.

Surprisingly, after some time, clients began to believe Trisha even more. She became calmer in communication, and people understood that her words could be trusted. If she took on something, she really brought it to the end and put all her strength into it. In the end, Trisha’s new approach benefited both parties. Work became more pleasant for her, and clients received better quality results.

Now let’s talk about you. How often have you answered «yes» to someone’s request, personal or work, without even thinking about what you were actually asked for? How often have you hated what you are doing and thought: “Why did I just sign up for this?” How often have you agreed with someone just to please them or avoid problems? Or “yes” has become for you a universal answer to any question?

Think about it, have you ever suffered from overwork? Did you feel like you were working too much and not being efficient enough at the same time? What do you pay too much attention to the little things? Have you been constantly, but to no avail, busy? Did you feel like you were running as fast as you could, but you weren’t moving?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then your only option is to become an Essentialist.

The path of the essentialist

Dieter Rams worked for many years as a senior designer at Braun. All his activities were based on the principle that there are only a few truly important things in the world, and everything else is noise. His task was to cut through this noise to the very essence of things. For example, at the age of 24 he was given the task of designing a gramophone. It was customary at the time to cover gramophones with heavy wooden lids or even build them into furniture. Instead, Dieter and his team created a turntable with a transparent plastic cover, meaning they removed everything they thought was noise from the design. This decision was so revolutionary that the company’s managers began to fear bankruptcy. It seemed to them that they simply would not buy such gramophones. It takes a lot of courage to let go of the unnecessary. But in the 60s, the minimalist style began to gain popularity, and soon all the turntable manufacturers were copying Braun’s design.

Dieter’s main design principle can be summed up in a short German phrase: weniger aber besser («less but better»). And this is the most successful of all possible definitions of essentialism.

The path of the Essentialist is a constant search for less but better. Discipline plays a decisive role. It is important not only to remember this principle sometimes, but to adhere to it in everything.

The path of the Essentialist is not to promise yourself, “From the first of January, I will say no more often,” and not to finally clean out the inbox in the mail, and not even to find yourself a new time management strategy. The Essentialist constantly asks himself the question: “Is this what I do?” There are so many opportunities and things to do in the world that we don’t have enough time or resources to do everything. And although many of them seem interesting to us, only a few are really necessary. The path of the essentialist teaches us to see what is really important, that is, to consider all existing options and choose only the most valuable ones.

Essentialism doesn’t help you do more things, it teaches you how to choose the right activities. But at the same time, you don’t do less just for the sake of doing less. Essentialism is the ability to wisely invest your time and energy in exceptionally important things in order to achieve maximum efficiency.

The difference between an Essentialist and a Non-Essentialist is shown in the table on the next page. Both people put in the same amount of effort. But on the left side of the table, these efforts are distributed among dozens of different tasks. This person is likely to progress very slowly in each of his affairs and does not feel any satisfaction from success. The person on the right side of the table spends energy on just a few tasks. As a result, he sees his progress in areas that are important to him, and this brings him joy. The path of the Essentialist means giving up the belief that we can do everything. Instead, it requires us to be realistic and make tough decisions. But in many cases, one such decision will save you from a thousand choices in the future, which means that you will not have to ask yourself the same question again and again.

The Essentialist does not learn from his own mistakes, but carefully plans his life to avoid them. He does not make decisions instinctively, but consciously chooses several of the most important tasks from dozens of tasks and strives to complete them. The path of the Essentialist is always straight and bright. In other words, essentialism is a disciplined and systematic approach that allows you to determine the most effective points of application of efforts. If you learn how to do it right, then the very execution of tasks will not be difficult at all.

Model

An essentialist who walks his own path is in control of his actions. Therefore, this principle leads to new levels of success and significance. It allows us not only to enjoy the result, but also to enjoy the movement towards it. But there are a huge number of obstacles that push us off this path and prevent us from becoming true essentialists.

The Way of the Non-Essentialist

One clear winter day, I was visiting my wife Anna in a California hospital. Anna was literally beaming, but I knew she was very tired. After all, yesterday she gave birth to our daughter — a glorious healthy girl weighing 3 kilograms 100 grams.

I wanted to fill this day with peace and happiness, but in fact I felt tense to the limit. My newborn daughter lay in my tired wife’s arms while I was on the phone with my office, checking my mail and worrying about being late for a client meeting. One of my colleagues wrote to me: “It would be better if she didn’t give birth on Friday afternoon, I need you at a meeting with X.” As you can imagine, it was Friday. I knew (or at least hoped) that this was a joke, but I still felt that I needed to be present at work.

At the same time, I knew exactly what I needed to do. I wanted to spend these hours with my wife and child. So, when they asked me once again whether I would appear at the meeting, I gathered all my will into a fist and confidently answered … «yes.»

To my shame, while my wife and newborn daughter were in the hospital, I went to work. When the meeting ended, a colleague said to me: «Our client really appreciates that you were able to come.» But to be honest, the expression on the client’s face was nothing like respect. His eyes read: “What are you even doing here?!” I said yes, just to please my colleagues, and as a result, my family, my reputation, and even my relationship with the client suffered.

Subsequently, it turned out that nothing important was decided at that meeting at all. But even if it mattered, I would still make a fool of myself. In an attempt to please everyone and everyone, I did not bring any benefit, and even gave up what is really valuable.

From this situation, I learned one useful lesson for myself:

Learn to prioritize your life. Or someone else will do it for you.

After this story, I re-interested (read — became obsessed) with the question of how and why people make certain decisions in their personal and professional lives. Why do we not want to use all the opportunities available to us? And how can we learn to make such decisions that would fully reveal the potential both in ourselves and in the people around us?

These questions have already driven me to quit law, leave England, get to California and get my degree from Stanford. In an attempt to answer them, my colleagues and I spent two years writing Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. For answers, I opened my own training company in Silicon Valley. Now I work here with a lot of talented and smart representatives of interesting global companies and try to set them on the path of essentialism.

My company is approached by a variety of people. Some of them live under a constant burden of problems. Some are considered successful, but they are haunted by a desperate desire to do everything perfectly. Others have become so dominated by their managers that they no longer understand that they are not obliged to complete all the tasks offered. Working with them, I tried to understand why such brilliant, smart, talented people are trapped in meaningless little things.

And what I realized really surprised me.

I once worked with a very dedicated manager. He fell in love with technology as a child, and very soon his knowledge and passion for technology began to pay off. He was ready to build on his success and continued his studies in this field with great enthusiasm. When we met, he literally radiated energy. He wanted to try and experience everything. New interests arose in him every day, if not every hour. But at the same time, he lost the ability to see among the many possibilities that were really important. Everything mattered to him. As a result, he only spread himself more and took a tiny step forward in dozens of chosen directions. He worked too hard and too inefficiently. I also depicted it in the left column of the table located above.

He looked at my sketch for a long time in silence, and then exclaimed: “This is the story of my whole life!” Then I drew the right side of the table and asked: “How can we choose one direction in which you can bring the greatest benefit?” He answered absolutely sincerely: «That’s the whole point!»

It turns out that many smart and ambitious people are not able to answer this question, and there are a number of reasons for this. For example, our society is arranged in such a way that the wrong behavior (consent) is encouraged in it, and the right one (disagreement) is condemned. We are often embarrassed to say «no», and for the answer «yes» we are usually praised. As a result, the so-called paradox of success arises, which consists of four phases:

PHASE 1.Having a well-defined goal helps you succeed.

PHASE 2.-Success makes you an expert in your field, «good old [name]», which you can always turn to. So you have more tasks and opportunities.

PHASE 3.-The more tasks and opportunities require your attention, the more effort and time you have to distribute between them. You start to spray.

PHASE 4.You are distracted from what you should have been giving your full attention to. As a result, you no longer have a clearly defined goal that led you to success the first time.

Surprisingly, it is the desire for success that can cause failure. In other words, your own successes divert your attention from the more important things that led you to them. The paradox of success can be observed everywhere. In his book How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins talks about companies that were once Wall Street favorites but failed. He concludes that the constant desire for more and lack of discipline pushed them to death. This happens to businesses and to those who work for them. But why?

Why do people turn away from essentialism?

There are several reasons for this.

Too many choices

Over the past ten years, the number of options available to us in various areas has increased several times. With too many choices, we can’t decide what’s really important.

Management theorist Peter Drucker said: “In a few centuries, when our time will be history, scientists will most likely be interested not in new technologies, not in the Internet and not in e-commerce, but in abrupt changes in life. This is the first time that such a huge number of people have the opportunity to choose and self-government. And our society was not ready for this.”

The reason for this unpreparedness was the fact that for the first time in the history of mankind, the number of choices available to us exceeded our ability to manage them. It became difficult for us to separate the important and the secondary. Psychologists call this “decision fatigue.” The more often we are forced to make choices, the worse the quality of our decisions becomes.

Great social pressure

Not only has the number of choices available to us increased, but so has the force with which we are pressed by external circumstances and other people. How closely we are connected with each other in the modern world and what a huge amount of information we have to process has been said more than once. But such a connection also increases the strength of social pressure. Thanks to modern technology, anyone can speak out about what seems important to him. We are overloaded not only with facts, but also with private opinions.

«You can get whatever you want» mindset

In itself, this idea is not new. It has been present in human consciousness for so long that I am sure that almost everyone on Earth is infected with it. It is promoted in advertising, it is supported by large corporations, it is included in job descriptions (in the form of long lists of knowledge and skills) and university admission requirements.

But today, when expectations are high and choices are endless, this mindset does more harm than good. People are trying to cram extra activities into their already crowded schedules. Companies verbally talk about the balance of work and leisure, but in reality they require employees to be in touch 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and so all year round. At work meetings, 10 priority tasks are discussed, and not a single person sees irony in these words.

The word priority became established in English in the XNUMXth century, and at that time it did not have a plural. It meant the single most important or first thing. For another five hundred years, it was used only in the singular, and only in the XNUMXth century did people start talking about «priorities.» For some reason, it seems to us that by changing one word, we can change reality. Today, people and companies are trying to do just that. My clients have told me that their companies sometimes have first, second, third, fourth, and fifth priorities. In theory, this should illustrate that the company has many important goals. In practice, this shows that the company simply cannot figure out which task is the most important.

But when we try to do everything we can and get everything we want, in the end we very often find ourselves in places where we would never have ended up of our own free will. If we ourselves cannot choose where to direct our time and energy, others do it for us: bosses, colleagues, clients, or even family members. After a while, we stop understanding what really makes sense to us. So, we either make our own decisions or let other people control our lives.

Australian nurse Bronnie Ware cared for terminally ill people during their last weeks and listened to the regrets of the lives they had lived. Almost every one of her patients told her: “It’s a pity that I never found the strength in myself to live life in my own way, and not in the way that others expected me to”6.

I am not suggesting that you constantly refuse any offers. It’s about acting on a strategy and rejecting what you don’t need. These can be not only things that you waste time on, but also quite promising proposals. You will stop blindly responding to the pressure of society, pushing you to work with dozens of different areas at the same time, and learn to choose from them only what you really need.

This book will do to your life and career what an experienced cleaning lady does to your closet. Imagine what a closet would look like if it was never cleaned. Do you think it would be clean and every suit would have a place on a hanger? No matter how. If you do not make a conscious effort to organize the space in the closet, very soon it will be clogged with old and unnecessary clothes. Of course, from time to time, when the clutter gets out of hand, you try to do a spring cleaning. But if you don’t have a strict system, then things end up being the same as they were, because you can’t decide which ones to throw away. Or you get frustrated because you accidentally threw away the clothes you were going to wear. Or you have a stack of clothes left that you don’t plan to wear, but are afraid to throw away.

In the same way that our closets become cluttered with unnecessary things, our lives are overflowing with tasks and responsibilities that we agree to take on. Most of these cases do not have an expiration date, and if you do not learn how to get rid of them, they can stay with you for life.

This is how a true Essentialist would clean his closet.

The first rule is to evaluate and investigate

Instead of asking yourself, “Is there a chance I will wear this in the future?” – show discipline and ask yourself: “does this suit me?” or “Do I often wear this?” If you answer no, then you have a candidate for outlier.

When making decisions in your personal or professional life, you can change this question as follows: “Will what I do help me achieve my goals?” In the first part of this book, we will talk about such activities.

The second rule is to refuse unnecessary

Suppose you have sorted all the clothes from the closet into two piles: “definitely leave” and “maybe throw away”. But are you really ready to put the clothes from the second pile in a bag and throw them away? After all, you spent money on it! Research shows that we value the things we own more than they are worth, which is why we find it so difficult to get rid of them. If you’re not completely sure, ask yourself a security question: «If I saw this item in a store, how much would I be willing to spend on it?» This usually works.

In other words, it is important not only to determine which activities do not benefit you, but also to be able to refuse them. In the second part of this book, I will talk about how to get rid of excess, and in such a way as to win the respect of colleagues, bosses, clients and friends.

The third rule is to act

If you want your closet to always be in order, you need to clean it regularly. In this case, you will have to throw away a lot, and leave very little. You will have to find out the schedule of the local second-hand or charity center and set yourself the exact time to go there with things. Once you have decided which activities to keep in your life (that is, which ones are the most effective), you will need to develop a system for implementing them. In this book, you’ll learn how to accomplish the most important tasks with the least amount of effort.

Of course, life is not as static as a closet. Your clothes always stay where you put them (unless, of course, you have children growing up in your house). But in life, new clothes (that is, demands and offers) appear constantly. Imagine how you would feel if every time you opened a closet, you saw a mountain of someone’s things there. In the morning it was still in order, and by lunchtime it was already littered with junk! Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens in most of our lives. How often do you start your day on schedule, and by ten in the morning you are already completely off track? Or how many times have you written yourself a to-do list for the day in the morning only to find that it got even longer in the evening? How many times have you dreamed of a quiet weekend at home with your family, and ended up waking up early on a Saturday to solve another problem or go on a sudden business trip? So, I have good news for you. There is an exit!

Essentialism is a system that teaches you how to put things in order in your life. And this is not spring cleaning once a year or once a week, but a disciplined approach that you apply every time you receive another offer. This is a way that helps you make the difficult choice between dozens of pleasant and interesting things in life and a couple of really necessary ones. Essentialism forces you to do less, but better, so that every moment of your life brings you valuable results.

This book will tell you how to be honest with yourself and ignore the expectations of others. You will learn how to increase productivity in your personal and professional life, how to systematically prioritize, discard the unnecessary and complete the necessary tasks with a minimum of effort. In other words, we will teach you to do less but better in all areas of your life. And here’s how we’ll do it.

Traffic plan

This book is divided into four sections. The first describes the key characteristics of an Essentialist. The next three develop these characteristics into a systematic process that you can apply in any circumstance and at any time. Let me briefly describe each section.

Essence of essentialism

This part of the book talks about three characteristics without which a person is not able to think like an essentialist. Each of them is devoted to a separate chapter.

1. Personal choice. The first characteristic is the ability of any individual to decide for himself how to spend his time and energy. If a person has no choice, there is no point in talking about compromises.

2. The presence of noise. The second characteristic is the realization that almost everything around us is noise and only a few things really matter. That’s why we take the time to identify them. Some are so much more important than others that the effort we spend looking for them pays off.

3. The importance of compromises. It is not given to anyone to have time for everything that he aspires to and to get everything that he wants. If this were not the case, we would not need to evaluate the available choices and discard some of them. By recognizing the importance of compromises, we stop asking, “How can I do this?” – and ask ourselves: “What exactly do I want to do?”

Once you recognize and accept all of these characteristics, you will begin to think like an essentialist. Of course, after fully understanding the above factors, the methodology described in this book seems natural and intuitive. It consists of three simple steps.

Step one. explore: how to separate the most important from the useless

The paradox of essentialism is that essentialists essentially consider more options than other people. An ordinary person is ready to agree to anything without hesitation. The Essentialist, on the other hand, takes a systematic approach and explores a huge number of options before choosing the right ones. And if a person is ready to invest all his time and effort in one or two projects, then it is logical to spend more effort on their choice and consider all options.

By using more stringent selection criteria, we turn our brain into a sophisticated search engine. By typing “profitable opportunity” into the search bar, we get several dozen pages with answers and options. But we can apply an advanced search by asking ourselves three questions: “What do I like best about this?” “What do I do best?” and “What is in greatest demand?” Of course, now the search engine will give us far fewer results, but this is the point of the exercise. We don’t look for many things to do, we want the best: the right things at the right time.

Essentialists spend a lot of time thinking, listening, discussing, and asking questions. But the study of the situation is not an end in itself. It is carried out in order to separate the necessary from the unnecessary.

Step two. give up unnecessary: ​​how to discard what bothers you

Many of us agree to any proposals because we like to please people and be useful. However, sometimes our best contribution to the common cause can be the word “no”. As Peter Drucker wrote, «People are effective when they say, ‘No, this doesn’t suit me.’»

To get rid of useless things in your life, you will have to say «no» to other people. And do it often. That is to go against social norms. This requires courage and the ability to empathize. The ability to refuse people their requests includes not only mental, but also emotional discipline that helps us deal with social pressure. In this section of the book, we will talk about this serious factor.

Compromises exist because we cannot do everything in the world. The question is not how we get what we want, but who tells us how to act. As soon as we refuse to decide what to do, someone else chooses for us. Either we make a conscious choice, or others are pushing us in a direction we don’t want to go.

In this section, we will talk about how to remove unnecessary things from your life and free up time for what is really important. Only after that we are able to make sure that the completion of any task requires a minimum of effort from us. The third step tells how to achieve this.

Step three. take action: how to remove obstacles and put less effort into completing tasks

Whether your goal is to complete a work project, take the next step in your career, or host your wife’s birthday party. In any case, the process of completing tasks seems difficult and stressful to us. The Essentialist sees it in a completely different way. Instead of forcing himself to do something, he invests his free time in creating a system that will allow him to overcome obstacles and complete his task as easily as possible.

All three stages—exploration, rejection, and action—are not separate from each other. The process is carried out cyclically, and only through the consistent application of all these elements, we achieve successful results.

I know a manager from Silicon Valley who, after the merger of his company with another company, ended up in a large technology corporation. He never managed to adjust to his new environment. After a few years, he realized that many of his duties were unpleasant to him and that his potential was not being realized to the fullest.

The company offered him a favorable retirement, but my friend was barely fifty and was not at all interested in leaving his job. He decided to open a consulting firm and continue what he had been doing for quite some time. He even considered offering his services to a former employer. However, when he turned to the consultant for advice, he recommended: «Play your part.» It basically meant, “Stay with the company, but act like you’re an independent consultant. And don’t tell anyone about it.»

My friend followed this advice and completely changed his habits. He tried to do as little as possible and with a minimum of effort. When asked at the last minute to make a presentation or to complete an urgent task, he found opportunities to refuse. Previously, he was one of the first to enter into discussions by e-mail, but now he began to stay away from them. He stopped attending conference calls if he wasn’t interested in the information, and stopped attending weekly meetings because he didn’t need them. He was no longer seen at meetings and meetings, unless they required his direct participation. As he himself explained to me, «the fact that I was invited is not yet a reason to go there.»

This went on for several months. By not attending meetings and meetings alone, he increased his free time by 25%. He began to spend more evenings at home. According to him, he re-learned what family life is when he began to come to dinner on time. Instead of constantly checking his smartphone, he turned it off and went to the gym or took his wife to a restaurant.

To his surprise, there was no negative reaction to such actions. He was not selected for projects that were interesting to him and valuable to the company. His work began to make sense again, and his productivity began to improve. As a result, he even received the biggest increase in his entire career! Here is a prime example of practical essentialism that benefits both employees and employers.

Idea whose time has come

The French writer Victor Hugo once said that nothing in the world is more powerful than «an idea whose time has come.» Today it sounds like less but better.

When we allow ourselves to be more selective in our actions and decisions, our lives change dramatically. We seem to be rising to a new level. The ability to discard everything unnecessary gives us incredible freedom. We are no longer subject to the views of other people and make the necessary decisions ourselves. A person with such power becomes as effective as possible not only in his personal life or at work, but also on a global scale.

What if schools replaced boring classes with important life-changing projects? What if each student could decide how best to apply their talents, and after school there was no race for places in universities?

What if companies canceled pointless meetings and gave their employees the freedom to work on meaningful projects? What if employees didn’t waste time on piles of emails, useless assignments and meetings, and put all their talents to work for companies?

What if society stopped imposing new products and allowed us to breathe and think freely? What if we stopped doing what we hate, buying things we don’t need with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t care about?

What if we realized that sometimes bigger isn’t better?

What if we stopped considering being busy as a measure of importance? What if, instead, we began to appreciate the ability to take time to reflect, meditate, and connect with the most important people in our lives?

What if the whole world stopped chasing big and went on an organized quest for less?

I envision a planet where people have the courage to live in harmony with themselves and not live up to the expectations of others.

I envision a world in which all people—children, students, mothers and fathers, workers and managers, CEOs and world leaders—learn to make the best use of their intelligence, talents, resourcefulness and initiative to live more meaningful lives. I imagine how all these people are ready to fulfill their mission. I imagine how a whole social movement is born from one conversation.

In order to gain courage and set foot on the right path, you need to think about how short a human life is and how much we want to do in the time allotted to us. As the poet Mary Oliver wrote, «Tell me, what do you plan to do with your one tempestuous and precious life?»

Try asking this question more often.

Promise yourself right now that you will make time for the important things. Do you think you’ll regret it even for a second? Do you think that one morning you will wake up and say: “Damn, why am I living in peace with myself for so long, although I could live up to the expectations of others?”

Let me help you, and together we will learn to highlight the grains of the most important of the dozens and hundreds of unnecessary things that surround you every day.

Try to become a real essentialist. This book is not asking you to go back in time, delete all email, unplug your internet cable, and live like a hermit. This would be a backward movement. This book tells how to apply the principle of less but better in our lives, today and in the future. This book is about innovation.

I encourage you to be wiser than I was on my daughter’s birthday. I am sure that such a decision will only benefit. Imagine what the world would be like if every person on the planet gave up at least one unnecessary thing for something really worthwhile?

When you come to the end of your life (and I hope it will be many years from now), you will most certainly experience regrets. But it is unlikely that you will regret that you have chosen the path of an essentialist. Will you dream of going back in time and living this life again the way you want? What decision do you need to make today to not be ashamed of him that day?

If you are willing to look within yourself and answer these questions, then your path is the path of the Essentialist. Let’s take the first step on it together.

Essence of essentialism

Key Characteristics of an Essentialist

Essentialism is not a way to do one more thing, it’s a way to do things differently. Way of thinking. But internally accepting this way of thinking is not an easy task. Because there are ideas and people who profess them that constantly push us towards the logic of non-essentialism. There are three chapters in this part of the book. In each of them, the false argument of non-essentialism is replaced by the true argument of essentialism.

There are three deep-seated postulates that we must overcome in order to live like an essentialist: “I have to,” “it matters,” and “I can do both.” These assumptions are as seductive and dangerous as mythical sirens. They lure us in and choke us in shallow water.

To accept the essence of essentialism, one must replace this false logic with three truths: “I choose,” “only a few things matter,” and “I can do anything, but not everything.” These simple truths will awaken us from our non-essential stupor. They will give us the freedom to do only what is really important. They will allow you to invest in life to the maximum.

Once we get rid of the nonsense of non-essentialism and replace it with the essence of essentialism, the path of the essentialist becomes natural and instinctive.

Chapter 2. Choose

The irresistible power of choice

It is the ability to choose that makes us human.

Madeleine Lengle

I sat in the foyer of a tall office building and stared wide-eyed at the sheet of paper in my hands. It was getting dark, and the last few employees left their jobs. The sheet of paper, covered with inscriptions and arrows, was the result of a twenty-minute brainstorm about what I want to do with my life. The longer I looked at it, the more I realized what it didn’t have: Law school wasn’t on the list. This caught my attention because I had been in law school in England for half a year.

I decided to study law because I often heard advice to keep all paths open. After graduation, I could become a lawyer, I could write about jurisprudence, teach it or consult it. The whole world would be available to me, at least it was thought so. Therefore, from the very beginning of my studies, instead of choosing one path, I tried to do everything at once. All day long I studied law textbooks, in the evenings I studied the works of great managers. In my free time, I tried to write. It was a classic dual strategy: I tried to invest in everything at the same time. As a result, I have not achieved complete success or failure in anything. Soon I began to wonder what was good about these open paths.

While I was in such existential bewilderment, a friend from the USA called me and invited me to the wedding. He even bought and sent tickets! I gratefully accepted the invitation and left England for adventure.

In the USA, I tried to get acquainted with teachers and writers at the first opportunity. I once met with the head of a nonprofit educational group. When I left the office, he said: «If you decide to stay in America, you can work on our advisory committee.»

His remark affected me in a curious way. He believed that I had a choice: «If you decide to stay …» It seemed to him quite real. I thought.

I left the office and went down the hall. Taking a piece of paper from someone’s desk, I sat down and tried to answer the question, «If you could do one thing with your life right now, what would you do?»

As a result, on this sheet, as I noticed, there was no mention of law school at all. Up to this point, I always understood intellectually that I might not study law. But I never felt it was possible. Then I realized that by sacrificing the possibility of choice, I made a choice — and a bad one. After refusing to pick anything from the non-law school category, I chose law school. Not because I really wanted to be there, but by default. I think that’s when I first realized that when we refuse to make a choice, someone or something is making that choice for us.

A few weeks later, I officially quit law school. I moved from England to America and began my journey to become a writer or teacher. That is why you are reading this book now. But for all the impact that particular choice had on my life path, what I appreciate most is how it changed my perspective on choice itself. We often think of choice as a thing. But choice is not a thing. Things can be alternatives, and choice is action. It’s not what we have, it’s what we have to do. This experience gave me a liberating insight that even though we may not always control the alternatives available, we always control the choice between them.

Have you ever reached a dead end because you thought you had no choice? Have you ever felt stressed because you were thinking “I can’t do this” and “I have to do this” at the same time? Have you had to gradually give up the possibility of choice until you began to blindly follow someone else’s instructions?

If yes, then you are not alone.

We can be deprived of alternatives, but not free will. You can not deprive someone of the opportunity to choose forcibly or voluntarily. You can only forget about her.

The unbreakable power of choice for the sake of choice

For too long, we have overemphasized the external aspects of choice (the alternatives available) and downplayed our internal ability to choose (our actions). This is not just a matter of terminology. Think about this.

How do we forget about the possibility of choice?

An important insight into how and why we forget choice can be drawn from the classic work of Martin Seligman and Steve Meyer describing the phenomenon of learned helplessness they encountered while experimenting with German Shepherds.

Seligman and Mayer divided the dogs into three groups. The first group was put on a leash through which they received an electric shock, but they were also given a lever, pressing which stopped the current. The dogs of the second group were put on the same leash, and they were given almost the same lever, except that it did not work, leaving the dog with no way to turn off the current. The third group was put on an ordinary leash without any current exposure.

The dogs were then placed in cages separated at the center by a low barrier. Electric current was supplied to one half of the cell, and not to the other. Dogs that could turn off the current, and those that weren’t exposed to electricity at all in the first stage of the experiment, quickly learned to get over the barrier to the safe side. But those dogs that couldn’t turn off the current didn’t. These dogs did not adapt and did not get used. Why didn’t they try to avoid being electrocuted? They didn’t know they had any choice other than those punches. They have learned helplessness.

There is evidence that people learn helplessness in this way. The example often given is of a child trying to learn math at an early age. He tries, but he fails, and in the end he gives up. He believes that all his efforts will lead to nothing.

I have seen cases of learned helplessness in many of the organizations I have worked with. When people felt that their efforts at work didn’t matter, they reacted in two ways. Sometimes they just stopped trying to do anything, like that kid who couldn’t do math. The other way seems not so obvious. It is the opposite of the first. They became overactive. Seized every opportunity. Get involved in any business. We tried to do everything. This behavior didn’t seem like learned helplessness at first glance. After all, doesn’t someone’s hard work speak volumes about that person’s importance and value? But upon closer examination, it becomes clear that such impulsiveness serves as nothing more than a smoke screen. These people do not believe that they have a choice of business or task. They think, «I have to do it all.»

I can’t help but admit that it’s hard to make a choice. It by definition implies giving up something that might seem like a loss. Outside the workplace, the choice is even harder. In any store or restaurant, everything is done in such a way that it is difficult for us to say “no”. When we listen to political ads or pundits, their purpose is to prevent us from even thinking about voting for the other side. When the mother-in-law calls us and asks us to do something, it is extremely difficult to think that we have any choice. Looking closely at everyday life, it is hard to be surprised that we forget about having a choice.

But choice is at the very core of what it means to be an essentialist. To become one, we must constantly remember the choice we have. It is necessary to consider this possibility as an irresistible force within us, existing separately from all other things, people and forces. Philosopher and psychologist William James once said, “My first act of free will should be to believe in the existence of free will.”14 This is the first step you should take to develop the ability to make choices in all areas of life.

When we forget to choose, we learn to be powerless. Drop by drop, we lose power until we simply become the instrument of other people’s choices or our past choices. This is the path of the non-essentialist.

The Essentialist not only recognizes the power of choice, he enjoys it. The Essentialist knows that by giving up the right to choose, we give others not just power, but explicit permission to make choices for us.

Chapter 3. Distinguish

Almost everything doesn’t matter

Most of what exists in the universe — our actions, efforts, ideas — is of little value and leads to almost nothing. On the other hand, some things work great and have a big impact.

Richard Koch

In George Orwell’s allegorical novel «Animal Farm» there is a character — a horse named Fighter. He is loyal and strong. Faced with any setback and any challenge, he says he will work even harder. He lives according to his philosophy until, exhausted and broken, he is sent to the knacker’s yard. He is a tragic character, and despite his best intentions, his actions only exacerbate the inequalities and problems on the farm.

Aren’t we similar in some way to the Fighter? Do failures make us work longer and harder? Don’t we sometimes answer every challenge with, «Yes, I can do that too»? After all, aren’t we taught from an early age that hard work is the key to success and that many of us have been rewarded for our productivity and ability to deal with all the challenges life throws at us? Is there a limit to the value of diligence? Is there such a view that more work does not lead to more results? Could it be that by working less (but thinking more) we get a better result?

I remember when I was little, I wanted to earn some pocket money. One of the few opportunities for a twelve-year-old in England was to work as a postman. I was paid about a pound a day, and the work itself took about an hour. So for a while I carried a bag that seemed heavier than me from door to door for an hour before school. (It should be noted here that we couldn’t just throw the newspaper on the porch, as is done in the USA. We had to slip it into the narrow slot of the mailbox so that it fell on the other side). Of course, earning pocket money in this way was hard.

The effort I made to earn one pound a day changed my view of the value of things forever. Since then, when I looked at something I wanted to buy, I converted the cost into the number of days I needed to deliver newspapers. I realized, for example, that with the current pay, I would have to work for a long time to buy a radio-controlled car, which I really wanted.

Then I began to think about how to speed up this process, and I decided that I would start washing the neighbor’s cars on Saturday mornings instead of delivering mail. I’ll make two pounds a car and I can wash three cars an hour. Suddenly the ratio of hours to pounds changed from 1:1 to 1:6. I learned an important lesson: some jobs pay more than others.

At university, I worked for a training company in the customer acquisition department. I was making nine dollars an hour. It would seem that I could think of work as a relationship between time and money. But I knew that only the ratio between time and result matters.

I asked myself what the most valuable results I could achieve here. And I realized that this is the preservation of customers who want to part with the company. I worked hard to convince them to stay, and soon got to the point where no one was leaving. Since I was paid for each client, I earned more and contributed more to the common cause.

It’s important to work hard. But greater efforts do not necessarily lead to better results. Less but better.

Ferran Adria, arguably the best chef in the world, who made elBulli the world’s most famous restaurant, embodied the principle of less but better in at least two ways. First, he reduced traditional dishes to their very essence, and then changed them in a way that no one before him. Second, although elBulli received 50 million reservations a year, it only served 50 people per night and was closed for six months of the year. Inventing dishes, Ferrand turned the restaurant into a round-the-clock laboratory, which served only to hone the very essence of his skill.

Understandably, the idea of ​​doing less to achieve a better result is not easy to get used to, given that in the past we have been encouraged to do more… and more and more. But still, from a certain point of view, great efforts slow down our growth or even stop it. It is true that the idea of ​​a direct relationship between effort and result seems attractive. This is true. But studies in different fields of activity show a different picture.

Many have heard of the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule, an idea expressed at the beginning of the 20th century by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who argued that 80% of efforts provide XNUMX% of the result. Half a century later, Joseph Juran, one of the fathers of the quality revolution, developed this idea in The Quality Control Handbook, calling it the law of the vital few. Observations led him to the conclusion that the quality of a product can be significantly improved by solving a very small part of the problems. He found appreciative followers of his idea in Japan, which at the time had a reputation for making cheap, low-quality goods. By redesigning production processes so that most of them are preserved, and only a small but vital part has been significantly improved, manufacturers have achieved that the phrase «Made in Japan» has acquired a new meaning. And gradually, the quality revolution led Japan to become a world economic power.

ESSENTIALIST THINK ALMOST EVERYTHING IS NOT IMPORTANT

NON-ESSENTIALIST THINK ALMOST EVERYTHING IS IMPORTANT

The difference between the trivial many and the vital few can be seen in every area of ​​human existence, as demonstrated by the British businessman and writer Richard Koch, who has written several books on the 80/20 principle in everyday life. In fact, examples can be found everywhere.

Think of Warren Buffett, who said that his investment style is based on inaction that borders on laziness. He meant that his company makes small investments, but for the long term. In The Tao of Warren Buffet7, Mary Buffett and David Clarke explain: “Early in his career, Warren realized that it was impossible to make hundreds of correct investment decisions, so he decided to invest only in the business he was confident in, but to bet a lot on it. . 90% of his fortune is invested in just 10 enterprises. Sometimes what you don’t do is just as important as what you do.» In short, he’s betting big on a few possibilities and turning down many good alternatives.

Others think that the relationship between effort and result is even more non-linear and obeys what scientists call a power law. According to him, some efforts yield more results than others. For example, Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft CTO, said (including me personally) that the best programmers are not 10, and not 100, or even 1000, but 10 thousand times more productive than the average. Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but there is no doubt that some efforts bring much more results than others.

The reality is that we live in a world where almost everything is unimportant and only a very few things are extremely important. As John Maxwell, an expert on leadership, wrote, “It is impossible to overestimate the degree of insignificance of anything.”

By abandoning the logic of 1:1, we begin to understand the value of the Essentialist path. We are discovering that many good opportunities are often far less than a few truly great ones. Once we understand this, we begin to look for these vital opportunities and reject the ordinary ones. Only in this way can we reject good opportunities and seize on great ones.

That is why the essentialist needs time to consider all the alternatives. The extra investment in this is justified by the fact that some things are so much more important than others that they are worth ten times the effort it took to find them. In other words, the Essentialist thinks more in order to do less.

Many capable people don’t advance to the next level because they can’t get rid of the belief that everything matters. But the essentialist distinguishes the truly meaningful from the rest. The way to train this essentialist skill is to start simple and then, as it becomes second nature to our day-to-day activities, apply it to broader and more important areas of our personal and professional lives. To learn this, you need to change your thoughts a lot. But it is possible.

Chapter 4

What problem do you want to solve?

The essence of strategy is choice and concessions. It’s about deliberately choosing to change.

Michael Porter

Imagine that you are in 1972 and you can invest one dollar in any company on the S&P 5009 list. Which company will bring you the most profit by 2002? General Electric? IBM? Intel? None of them, according to Money magazine and analysis by Ned Davis Research.

The correct answer is Southwest Airlines. This is surprising, because it is believed that airlines do not bring in very large profits. But Southwest Airlines, long run by Herb Kelleher, has delivered amazing financial results year after year. The main reason is Kelleher’s essentialist way of doing business.

I once attended an event where Kelleher was talking about his business strategy. It was interesting for many reasons, but when it came to the concessions and compromises that characterize the company, I was all ears. Instead of flying from a central airport in all directions, they decided to fly directly between destinations. Instead of raising prices to offset the cost of meals, they stopped eating on board altogether. Instead of allocating seats in advance, they offered passengers to take any seat on the plane. Instead of selling expensive first class seats, they only used economy class. Each of these choices was not made by chance, but was part of a strategy to reduce the cost of transportation. Was there a risk of dissatisfaction with customers who wanted to see a large list of routes, pay for expensive food, and so on? Yes, but Kelleher was very clear about what his business was and wasn’t. And all his concessions were the result of understanding that this is a budget airline.

A perfect example of his essentialist approach to work are these words: “… you need to consider all the possibilities and say: “Well, no. Sorry. We don’t want to do a thousand different things that bring us little closer to the final desired result.”

At first, the company was severely disapproved by critics, skeptics, and other non-essentialists who could not believe that such a method could lead to success. Who in their right mind would choose to fly with a company that only flies to a few cities and doesn’t serve food, no matter how cheap their tickets are? But after a few years, it became clear that Southwest was right about something. Competitors noticed her growing profits and tried to replicate her approach. But instead of fully adopting Kelleher’s Essentialist method, they did what Professor Michael Porter of the Harvard School of Economics calls a straddle strategy.

A dual strategy means that you continue to stick to your current strategy while trying to adapt your competitors’ strategy. One of the best illustrations of this phenomenon was Continental Airlines’ subsidiary, Continental Lite.

Continental Lite used some of Southwest’s methods. They lowered the prices. They refused to eat. They have increased the number of flights. The problem was that they were still tied to their business model (Continental Lite served only a small fraction of the parent company’s flights) and could not achieve the operational efficiency that would allow them to compete on price. Therefore, they had to save on the quality of service. Unlike Southwest, which made sensible, deliberate concessions in key strategic areas, Continental was forced to sacrifice profits without any regard for the overall plan. According to Porter, «A strategy is dynamically stable only if it is consistent.» By trying to use two incompatible strategies, they began to lose competitiveness.

The dual strategy cost Continental very dearly. They lost hundreds of millions of dollars in flight delays and, according to Porter, flight delays and cancellations resulted in thousands of complaints every day. The head of the company was eventually fired. The moral of the story is that ignoring the nature of concessions is a terrible strategy for a company. In fact, this is a terrible strategy for individuals as well.

Have you met someone who is always trying to do more than they can? They know that they have ten minutes before the meeting, which is ten minutes away, but they still sit still to answer a couple more letters before leaving. Or they start preparing the report by Friday, knowing that another important deadline falls on the same date. Or they agree to come to a birthday party on Saturday, knowing that they already have tickets to the theater for the same time. Their logic, ignoring the reality of concessions, is: «I can do both.» The problem is that this logic is wrong. Of course, they are late for the meeting, miss one or both deadlines (or do both projects haphazardly), and don’t go to either the party or the performance. The reality is that accepting one possibility implies rejecting several others.

Concessions are real in both private and professional life, and if we do not realize this, we will be doomed, like Continental, to use a dual strategy that will force us to sacrifice those advantages that we would not like to lose.

In her column for the New York Times, Erin Callan, former chief financial officer of Lehman Brothers, described the concessions she had to unconsciously make. She writes: “I myself did not understand how it happened that my whole life became devoted to work. This happened gradually. Every year new changes became the norm. At first, I spent half an hour on Sunday sorting through my mail, to-do list, and calendar to ease my Monday mornings. Then I worked a few hours on Sunday, then the whole day. My boundaries shifted until there was nothing left but work.” Her story makes it clear that we can make difficult choices ourselves or let others make them, but then our colleagues, boss, and clients will decide for us.

Over the years, I have noticed that top managers are the worst accepting of the reality of concessions. I recently spent some time with the CEO of a $40 billion Silicon Valley company. He shared with me a business value statement he had just developed and wanted to announce to the entire company: “We value passion, innovation, performance and leadership.” But in response, I just grimaced.

The first problem: everyone appreciates it. The second problem: this list does not tell the employee anything about what the company values ​​the most. It says nothing about what choices an employee should make when these values ​​conflict. This is also true when a company claims its mission is to serve everyone equally: customers, employees, shareholders. Saying that all the people with whom they interact is equally important leaves leadership without clear guidance on when to trade the interests of one group of people for the interests of another.

A very different approach was taken by Johnson & Johnson during the 1982 potassium cyanide murder scandal. At the time, it held 37% of the market and Tylenol was their top-grossing product. Then there were reports of seven deaths after taking it. Later it turned out that the medicine bottles were forged. How should Johnson & Johnson respond?

It’s a difficult question. Wasn’t it their primary responsibility to ensure the safety of their customers and to recall all Tylenol from drugstore shelves? Or was the priority given to reducing damage to the company’s image and persuading shareholders not to sell shares? Or was it their duty to pay compensation to the families of the victims in the first place?

Fortunately, they had a creed: a text written in 1943 by the head of the company, Robert Wood Johnson, and literally carved into the granite at the company’s headquarters. Unlike most mission statements of various companies, this creed actually prioritized values. Customers come first, shareholders last.

As a result, Johnson & Johnson immediately decided to recall all Tylenol, despite huge losses that reached $100 million. Buyer safety or $XNUMX million? Not an easy decision. But the creed made it clear what was more important. And allowed me to make this difficult choice.

We may try to deny the reality of concessions, but we cannot avoid them.

I once worked with a management team to help them prioritize. They had to identify five priority projects for the IT department to complete in the next fiscal year, and I had a problem with one of the managers. She insisted that there were 18 projects «with the highest priority.» I insisted that she should choose five of them. She took her list back to work on with her team and came back a week later with one line cut. (I’ve always wondered what happened to the project that didn’t make it.) Refusing to make concessions, she divided the time and resources needed to complete five projects into seventeen. It is not surprising that she failed to achieve the desired result. Her logic was that «we can do it all.» Not really.

It is easy to see why it is so seductive to refuse to acknowledge the need for concessions. In the end, the concession clashes our two desires. Do you want more money or free time? Do you want to finish a letter or make it to a meeting? Do you want to do it faster or better? Obviously, when we have to choose between two desirable things, it is preferable to say «yes» to both. But we can’t do that, no matter how much we want to.

The non-essentialist approaches every concession with the question «how can I get it all?». The essentialist asks a more difficult but more useful question: «What problem do I want to solve?» The Essentialist makes concessions consciously. He acts on his own, and does not wait until something is done to him. Economist Thomas Sowell wrote: “There are no solutions. There are only concessions.»

Peter Drucker once told Jim Collins, author of the classic Good to Great, that he can build a great company or create great ideas, but not both. Jim chose ideas. Due to this concession, he has only three full-time assistants, but his ideas have reached tens of millions of people.

As painful as it is, concessions provide us with a great opportunity. Being forced to weigh both alternatives and choose one of them, we significantly increase the likelihood of achieving the desired result. As Southwest Airlines, we can enjoy success with the right choices.

I saw a similar example on a recent flight to Boston when I spoke to parents who were flying to visit their son at Harvard. They were proud of him, and I asked what strategy they and their son used to get in. “We got our son to try a lot of activities, but when it became clear what his “big thing” was, we supported him in this.” The point is not that all parents should want their son to go to Harvard. The point is that these Essentialist parents consciously decided that their son’s goal was to get into Harvard, and realized that success requires making concessions.

This logic is also true for personal life. Immediately after our wedding, Anna and I met a man who had a wonderful family. We wanted to learn from him and asked what his secret was. He replied that he and his wife had agreed not to join any clubs. He did not become a member of the local Masonic lodge. She didn’t join the book club. Not that they weren’t interested. They just got more time to spend with their kids at the cost of it. Over the years, the children have become their best friends — a good compensation for the sacrificed opportunities of friendship made on the golf course or during the discussion of Anna Karenina.

Essentialists understand that giving in is an essential part of life, and not necessarily a negative part. Instead of asking “what should I give up?” they ask “what do I want to achieve?”. The cumulative effect of this small change in thought can be enormous.

In the New Yorker short story Laugh, Kookaburra, David Sedaris writes about his journey through the Australian bush. During a hike, his girlfriend and guide tells him, “Think of a stove with four burners. One represents family, the second represents friends, the third represents health, and the fourth represents work. To be successful, you need to turn off one burner. And to achieve real success, you need to turn off two.

It was, of course, a joke. I am not saying that the Essentialist path involves choosing between family, work, and health. What I’m saying is that when faced with a decision that will affect your priorities (family, health, or work), you should be prepared to ask yourself, «What problem do I want to solve?» Concessions are not something that you can give up on. They need to be handled consciously, strategically and intelligently.