Book Notes: Essentialism

Instead of making just a millimeter of progress in a million directions, begin to generate tremendous momentum towards accomplishing the things that are truly vital.

Only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.

How many times have you reacted to a request by saying yes without really thinking about it?

It is the ability to choose which makes us human.

The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given away - it can only be forgotten.

Is there a point at which doing more does not produce more? Is there apoint at which doing less (but thinking more) will actually produce better outcomes?

Certain types of effort yield higher rewards than others. Working hard is important. But more effort does not necessarily yield more results. "Less but better" does.

World's greatest chef, Ferran Adria has led El Bulli to become the world's most famous restaurant using the principle of "less but better". His specialty is reducing traditional dishes to their absolute essence and then re-imagining them in ways people have never thought of before. El Bulli has somewhere in the range of 2 million requests for dinner reservations each year, it serves only fifty people per night and closes for six months of the year.

"Less but better" is harder than it sounds especially when you are rewarded in the past for "more and more".

"Warren decided early in his career it would be impossible for him to make hundreds of right investment decisions, so he decided that he woul dinvest only in the business that he was absolutely sure of, and then bet heavily on them. He owes 90% of his wealth to just ten investments."

According to "power law theory", certain efforts actually produce exponentially more results than others.

The overwhelming reality is: we live in a world where almost everything is worthless and a very few things are exceptionally valuable.

"You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything" — John Maxwell

A nonessentialist things almost everything is essential.

A essentialist things almost everything is nonessential.

You have to look at every opportunity and say, "Well, no… I'm sorry. We're not going to do a thousand different things that really won't contribute much to the end result we are trying to achieve."

Look at the approach taken by Southwest airlines in their relentless pursuit of being a low-cost airline by making trade-offs of meals, firstclass service etc.

Trade-offs are real, straddling strageies that force us to make sacrifices on the margins by default that we might not have made by desgin. The reality is, saying yes to any opportunity by definition requires saying no to several others.

“I didn’t start out with the goal of devoting all of myself to my job. It crept in over time. Each year that went by, slight modifications became the new normal. First I spent a half-hour on Sunday organizing my e-mail, to-do list, and calendar to make Monday morning easier. Then I was working a few hours on Sunday, then all day. My boundaries slipped away until work was all that was left.” — Erin Callan

We can either make the hard choices for ourselves or allow others to decide for us.

We can try to avoid the reality of trade-offs, but we can't escape them.

“I once worked with an executive team that needed help with their prioritization. They were struggling to identify the top five projects they wanted their IT department to complete over the next fiscal year, and one of the managers was having a particularly hard time with it. She insisted on naming eighteen “top priority” projects. I insisted that she choose five. She took her list back to her team, and two weeks later they returned with a list she had managed to shorten—by one single project! (I always wondered what it was about that one lone project that didn’t make the cut.) By refusing to make trade-offs, she ended up spreading five projects’ worth of time and effort across seventeen projects. Unsurprisingly, she did not get the results she wanted. Her logic had been: We can do it all. Obviously not.”

A Nonessentialist approaches every trade-off by asking, "How can I do both?" Essentialists ask the thougher but ultimately more liberating question, "What problem do I want?"

"There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs" — Thomas Sowell

Like the Southwest, we can enjoy the success that results from making a consistent set of choices.

Essentialists see trade-offs as a inherent part of life, not as an inherently negative part of life. Instead of asking, "What do I have to give up?" they ask, "What do I want to go big on?"

nonessentialist is too busy doing to think about life.

essentialist creates space to escape and explore life.

In order to have focus we need to escape to focus.

See What Really Matters

Being a journalist of your own life will force you to stop hyper-focusing on all the minor details and see the bigger picture. You can apply the skills of a journalist no matter what field you are in—you can even apply them to your personal life. By training yourself to look for “the lead,” you will suddenly find yourself able to see what you have missed. You’ll be able to do more than simply see the dots of each day: you’ll also connect them to see the trends. Instead of just reacting to the facts, you’ll be able to focus on the larger issues that really matter.

Essentialists are powerful observers and listeners. Knowing that the reality of trade-offs means they can't possibly pay attention to everything, they listen deliberately for what is not being explicitly stated. They read between the lines.

Keep a Journal: You already know why.

“Play, which I would define as anything we do simply for the joy of doing rather than as a means to an end—whether it’s flying a kite or listening to music or throwing around a baseball—might seem like a nonessential activity. Often it is treated that way. But in fact play is essential in many ways. Stuart Brown, the founder of the National Institute for Play, has studied what are called the play histories of some six thousand individuals and has concluded that play has the power to significantly improve everything from personal health to relationships to education to organizations’ ability to innovate. “Play,” he says, “leads to brain plasticity, adaptability, and creativity.” As he succinctly puts it, “Nothing fires up the brain like play.”

• Play broadens the range of options available to us.

• It helps us to see the possibilities we otherwise wouldn't have made.

• It opens our minds and broadens our perspectives.

• It helps us challenge old assumptions and makes us more receptive to untested ideas.

• It is an antidote to stress.

• Play has a positive effect on the executive function of the brain.

Play doesn't just help us to explore what is essential. It is essential in and of itself.

Each night, when I got to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.

If the answer isn't a definite yes then it should be no.

• What opportunity is being offered to you?

• What are your minimum criteria for this option to be considered?

• What are the ideal criteria for this option to be approved?

Write down a list of three "minimum criteria" and a list of three "ideal criteria". If the opportunity doesn't pass the first set of criteria, the answer is obviously no. But if it also doesn't pass two of your three extreme/ideal criteria, the answer is still no.

• When there is a lack of clarity, people waste time and energy on the trivial many. When they have sufficient levels of clarity, they are capable of greater breakthroughs and innovations.

The right "no" spoken at the right time can change the course of history"

• Have you ever felt the conflict between your internal conviction and an external action?

• Have you ever said yes when you meant no simply to avoid conflit or friction?

• Have you ever felt too scared or timid to turn down an invitation or request from a boss, colleague, friend, neighbor, or family member for fear of disappointing them?

  You are not alone.

  Anyone can talk about focusing only on essentials, but only a few dare to do so. There are good reasons against saying no. There is FOMO, social awkwardness, the human want to get along with others.

  The only way out of this trap is to learn to say no firmly, resolutely, and yet gracefully. Once we do so, we find that our fears are greatly exaggerated and people actually respect us more.

  The point is to say to no the nonessentials so we can say yes to the things that really matter.

Sunk-cost bias is the tendancey to continue to invest time, money, or energy into something we know is a losing proposition simply because we have already incurred, or sunk, a cost that cannot be recouped.

Sunk cost explains why we would sit through a terrible movie because we paid for the tickets. It explains why we invest in a toxic relationship even when our efforts only make things worse.

A nonessentialist has the courage and confidence to admit his or her mistakes and uncommit, no matter the sunk costs.

“An editor is not merely someone who says no to things. A three-year-old can do that. Nor does an editor simply eliminate; in fact, in a way, an editor actually adds. What I mean is that a good editor is someone who uses deliberate subtraction to actually add life to the ideas, setting, plot, and characters.”

No is a complete sentence. Boundaries are important.

Boundaries are a little like walls of a sandcastle. The second we let one fall over, the rest of them come crashing down. If you make a exception once, then you might have made it several times.

Remember, their problem is not your problem. We sure should help other people, but when they make their problem our problem, we aren't helping them; we are enabling them.

When we have clear boundaries, we are free to select from the whole area - or the whole range of options - that we have deliberately chosen to explore.

Invest time you have saved by eliminating the nonessentials into designing a system to make execution almost effortless. Here we explore how to make executing the right things as easy and frictionless as possible.

We live in a unpredictable world. The only thing that is pridictable is the unexpected. We can either wait for the moment and react or we can prepare. We can create a buffer.

A buffer is anything that prevents two things from coming into contact and harming each other.

We all know those people who chronically underestimate how long something will really take, yet inevitably these things end up taking longer. When this happens they are reacting to the problem and hence results suffer.

As an essentialist you have to look ahead and prepare for contingencies, expect the unexpected. You have to use the good times to create a buffer for the bad.

• Use extreme preparation.

• Add 50 percent to your time estimate.

The question is, "What is the obstacle that is keeping you back from achieving what really matters to you?". By indentifying adn removing this "constraint" you'll be able to significantly reduce the friction keeping you from executing what is essential. Instead of quickfix solutions focus on making one-time investment in removing obstacles.

• make the end goal clear (essential intent)

• indentify the sloweset hiker (a parallel execution is only as fast as the slowest thread)

• remove the obstacle

The nonessentialist operates under the false logic that the more he strives, the more he will achieve, but the reality is, the more we reach for the stars, the harder it is to get ourselves off the ground. The essentialist pursues small and simple wins in areas that are essential.

Research has shown that of all forms of human motivation teh most effective one is progress. A small, concrete win creates momentum and affirms our faith in our further success.

Instead of starting big and then flaring out with nothing to show for it other than time and energy wasted, to really get essential things done we need to start small and build momentum. Then we can use that momentum to work toward the next win, and the next one and so on until we have a significant breakthrough - and when we do, our progress will have become so frictionless and effortless that the breakthrough will seem like overnight success.

• focus on minimal viable progress (done is better than perfect).

• do the minimal viable preparation (start early and small or start late and big).

• visually reward the progress (don't underestimate effects of visalization).

• Check out Michael Phelps's race routine.

The essentialist designs a routine that makes achieving what you have identified as essential the default position. Execution is not a matter of raw effort alone.

Life is available only in the present moment. If you abandon the present moment you cannot life the moments of your daily life deeply.

Essentialism can be something you do occasionally, or something you are.

Less but better.

There is a big difference between a nonessentialist who happens to apply essentialism and a essentialist who occasionally slips back to some nonessentialist practices.

People with essentialism at their core get far more from their investment than those who absorb it only at the surface level. When we look back on our careers and our lives, would we rather see a long laundry list of "accomplishments" that don't really matter or just a few major accomplishments that have real meaning and significance?

Once you become a essentialist, you will find that you aren't like everybody else. When we look back on our careers and our lives, would we rather see a long laundry list of "accomplishments" that don't really matter or just a few major accomplishments that have real meaning and significance?

Once you become a essentialist, you will find that you aren't like everybody else. When other people are saying yes, you will find yourself saying no.

Focusing on essentials is a choice. It is your choice. That in itself is liberating.

Some benefits of essentialism

• more clarity

• more control

• more joy in the journey

Finally quoting the last section of the book:

The life of an Essentialist is a life of meaning. It is a life that really matters. When I need a reminder of this I think of a story. It is about a man whose three-year-old daughter died. In his grief he put together a video of her short little life. But as he went through all of his home videos he realized something was missing. He had taken video of every outing they had gone on and every trip they had taken. He had lots of footage—that wasn’t the problem. But then he realized that while he had plenty of footage of the places they had gone—the sights they had seen, the views they had enjoyed, the meals they had eaten, and the landmarks they had visited—he had almost no close-up footage of his daughter herself. He had been so busy recording the surroundings he had failed to record what was essential. This story captures the two most personal learnings that have come to me on the long journey of writing this book. The first is the exquisitely important role of my family in my life. At the very, very end, everything everything else will fade into insignificance by comparison. The second is the pathetically tiny amount of time we have left of our lives. For me this is not a depressing thought but a thrilling one. It removes fear of choosing the wrong thing. It infuses courage into my bones. It challenges me to be even more unreasonably selective about how to use this precious—and precious is perhaps too insipid of a word—time. I know of someone who visits cemeteries around the world when he travels. I thought this was odd at first, but now I realize that this habit keeps his own mortality front and center.

The life of an Essentialist is a life lived without regret. If you have correctly identified what really matters, if you invest your time and energy in it, then it is difficult to regret the choices you make. You become proud of the life you have chosen to live. Will you choose to live a life of purpose and meaning, or will you look back on your one single life with twinges of regret? If you take one thing away from this book, I hope you will remember this: whatever decision or challenge or crossroads you face in your life, simply ask yourself, “What is essential?” Eliminate everything else. If you are ready to look inside yourself for the answer to this question, then you are ready to commit to the way of the Essentialist.