Essentialism The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less Pdf Free 295
Agathe Thies
By applying a more selective criteria for what is essential, the pursuit of less allows us to regain control of our own choices so we can channel our time, energy and effort into making the highest possible contribution toward the goals and activities that matter.
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This book steers you in the direction of doing only what is most essential. 'Is this the very most thing I should be doing with my time and resources right now?' sums up the essence. But, of course, that is not all there is in the 260-page guide to living right.
Greg McKeown suggests that most of us are 'non-essentialists', dabbling with a great deal and mostly leaving out the vital. Dealing with a bit of everything leads to decision fatigue. 'The more choices we are forced to make, the more the quality of our decisions deteriorates', he argues. We are self-made victims of over-choice. We are not only plagued by information overload, but we are also mostly buried under opinion-overload. That is hardly the position for agility.
How do we reach a point - fairly early in life - that we have the gnawing feeling that we no longer have the flexibility to lead a life true to ourselves? McKeown draws an analogy with cluttered wardrobes where clothes that rarely get to be worn accumulate. Soon, bringing order to that pile becomes a looming mountain to climb. Perhaps steeped in good-intentions, we have allowed activities and commitments to clutter our lives. The author offers an approach to tidying the wardrobe, mainly by discarding based on tough criteria that have shades of The Life-changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo. A similar criterion can be applied to all the activities that we perpetually take on.
The book argues that to become an Essentialist requires a heightened awareness of our ability to choose. We must master the art of saying 'no' to ourselves and, of course, others. And learn how to choose trade-offs that build our core interests and pare off the less important. 'If the answer isn't a definite yes then it should be a no' is described as 'a succinct summary of a core Essentialist principle'.
The book offers a number of practical ideas to foster the 'disciplined pursuit of Less'. It has a chapter for leaders who want to be Essentialists. It isn't against multi-tasking either and suggests ways to juggle few balls at the same time.
I recommend reading this to anyone who wants to get off the maddening roller coaster - or at least to slow it down to enjoy the view. It is not an approach to add another 'to do' to your life, but to adopt a stance that will automatically apply to everything you do.
At the beginning of the last chapter, Socrates has been quoted: beware the barrenness of a busy life. This scorched-earth that is caused by a thousand slow fires need an answer. This book offers you one.
In this article, I will be going over the book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less from Greg McKeown that I read in March 2020. I will discuss what the book is about, what is my take away from it, and the specific action items I implemented in 2020 from it.
I picked up this best-seller after it was recommended by a couple we met while taking a cooking class in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I mentioned to them that we were into minimalism and slow living and they thought this book would be a good complement.
This book is structured in 4 major sections: Essence, Explore, Eliminate, and Execute. The first outlines the core mind-set of an Essentialist. The next 3 is a process for the pursuit of less. Each section compares the Essentialist (E) mindset to the Non-Essentialist (NE) mindset.
In this section, you learn how to explore options. These principles actually are similar to the ones described in the book Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life (by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans).
I also found this book was a great addition to the book Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life (by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans) that explains how to use design thinking to create a meaningful, joyful, and fulfilling life.
Thanks Abbas! Totally agree with your perspective. Not only we have too many competing choices, we also feel the societal pressure to work 24/7 which tend to make us miserable at the end, especially when trying to please everyone. Please come back to share your experience about this book once you get to it!
One of my favorite books on paring to the essential is The One Thing by Gary Keller. What is one thing that you could do that would make everything else easier or unnecessary? He asks a brilliant question!
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If you follow me here regularly, you know I'm a bit of a junkie for a good productivity read. So when I saw Greg McKeown speak with Michael Hyatt in the recent online productivity summit, I knew I had to get his book - Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.
This book has a lot of fantastic information and guidelines for how to go about your "disciplined pursuit of less." But I think the way the concept resonated for me was that it's about editing. When I write a book, I look at every word, every scene, every character and ask--is this necessary for the story? Does this add something valuable to the book? Essentialism is doing that with your life and job, with all those tasks and activities and demands that take up our time. But instead of asking, "Does this add to the story?" we're asking, "Does this add to my life?" or "Does it add to what I'm trying to accomplish in my life/job/etc?" It's the idea of doing Less But Better.
Though this book is geared toward the business people of the world, I think it's applicable to more people than that. I'm a writer, which is what I do, but I'm also running my own business of being an author and all the things involved with that--marketing, promotion, working with my publishers, organizing things, going to events, soon indie publishing (which is another stack of tasks). Plus, I'm a mom so have those home duties layered in.
So, often I find myself working, working, working and being constantly busy, but not actually, you know, WRITING. It's been driving me a little bit crazy. That's what originally led me to read Deep Work by Cal Newport (which I talked about more here), and I think these two books pair well together. Pare down your life to the essentials and make room for deep work (or whatever it is that's most important/fulfilling to you.)
This is a huge one for me. I think women, in general, tend to have more trouble with the no because we're taught to be people pleasers, to be nice. We want to be nice and helpful--and there's nothing wrong with that. But if we say yes to every request, we're actually saying no to something else. We only have a set amount of time and energy in a day. Everything is a trade off. So a yes is always a no as well.
It's important to understand what you're saying no to by throwing out that mindless, "Sure I'll bake 100 cupcakes for the school fair." or "Sure, I'll critique your manuscript." or "Sure, I'll take on that extra project." Because it might be simultaneously saying, "Sure, I'll give up family time on my weekend." or "Sure, I'll miss my kid's soccer game." or "Sure, I won't get my own important work done this week." McKeown makes the point in this book that if you don't choose how to spend your time, someone else will choose for you.
I also like the method of "No, but instead..." I use this a lot. You switch out the request that would take a lot of time for something for something that is less of a time suck but still provides something helpful to the person. "I can't bake the cupcakes, but I can order some from the local bakery." "I can't make it to your Facebook party, but I can donate a prize."
This goes along with the "saying no" thing. Especially in business, we're afraid of turning down opportunities. But often we make the mistake of seeing every opportunity as having equal weight. They don't. In writer land, this translates for me that if anyone offers an opportunity at promo, I should take it. But if a guest blog post takes me an hour to write (which it generally does) and it's posted on a blog that gets no traffic, I've just taken an hour of time I could've been using to write my books--the thing that is my essential--and used it to maybe get a post in front of a handful of people.
This also applies to social media. We are all trained to be SO afraid that we're going to miss something, so we're connected all the time. We also can justify it because it's often part of our jobs to be connected. But social media and the internet are the greediest of time stealers. And it's fluff for the most part. Fun and social and nice for the occasional break. But when I look back on my life, I'm not going to say, "Wow, I wrote some great tweets and saw some fantastic cat pictures." I'm hopefully going to be able to say, "Wow, I wrote some great books and had an amazing time with family and friends." So I'm not saying social media/the internet doesn't have its place, but we often give it a way bigger place at the table then it deserves. And it will eat all your food if you don't keep it in check.
This, I think, is probably one of the hardest ones because we're so used to being busy and connected. We don't leave room for quiet and boredom anymore. I'm in a creative job. That space is vital to me (which is often why I end up getting ideas in the shower or before I fall asleep at night--because it's the only time I let myself be bored now.) Instead of all those pockets of time we used to have nothing to do--waiting in lines, sitting in the doctor's office, walking somewhere--we have our phones to fill the void. But there are good, ripe things in the void--ideas, solutions to problems, time to breathe and refresh. That's what had made me read Deep Work. I knew my ability to lose myself in thought was waning. Essentialism also speaks to this--making space for focus. Blocking time off in your schedule where you are unapologetically unavailable and not connected. This is probably what I'm taking home the most from the book. I'm ready to cut out a lot of the noise. Because, wow, life is noisy these days.
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