Anyone here read this book "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less" ? (by Greg McKeown)
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John Smith
Mar 11, 2015, 7:12:00 AM3/11/15
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Hello
I am extremely intrigued by this book I am reading: "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less" by Greg McKeown.
Whereas methodologies like GTD and tools like MLO seem to be a way of juggling shifting priorities and being efficient about what you take on and getting through it better. Greg McKeown has a radically different take on efficiency. He asks us to actually take on LESS.
McKeown asks us to take on less, MUCH less in a very deliberate, disciplined way. And that by doing so we will regain control of our health, well-being and happiness.
The core idea behind this is that most of what we are asked to do is BS and that we can actually achieve a lot more by taking on a lot less. McKeown says that it's extremely easy for our efforts to become spread way, way too thin, leading to stress, burn-out because we feel that we all need to "do everything". He claims that clarity of focus and the ability to say 'no' are both critical and undervalued in business and life in general today.
Fwiw, Michael Hyatt - (productivity guru - he of 250K twitt followers) said "it is the best book he's read in the last 5 years"
http://michaelhyatt.com/essentialism.html
Have any of you good people here read it? If so what do you make of it?
J
I am extremely intrigued by this book I am reading: "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less" by Greg McKeown.
Whereas methodologies like GTD and tools like MLO seem to be a way of juggling shifting priorities and being efficient about what you take on and getting through it better. Greg McKeown has a radically different take on efficiency. He asks us to actually take on LESS.
McKeown asks us to take on less, MUCH less in a very deliberate, disciplined way. And that by doing so we will regain control of our health, well-being and happiness.
The core idea behind this is that most of what we are asked to do is BS and that we can actually achieve a lot more by taking on a lot less. McKeown says that it's extremely easy for our efforts to become spread way, way too thin, leading to stress, burn-out because we feel that we all need to "do everything". He claims that clarity of focus and the ability to say 'no' are both critical and undervalued in business and life in general today.
Fwiw, Michael Hyatt - (productivity guru - he of 250K twitt followers) said "it is the best book he's read in the last 5 years"
http://michaelhyatt.com/essentialism.html
Have any of you good people here read it? If so what do you make of it?
J
SRhyse
Mar 11, 2015, 7:09:16 PM3/11/15
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I actually just got done reading this one today!
You'd be hard pressed to find many who would disagree that most of the things we do aren't massively impactful, but the author massively underplays the actual difficulty of know which things are going to be better to do than others in the moments we decide between them, and the degree to which we can ever really know which things are going to be better choices than others. Like in his example of the hiring practices of some esoteric sounding companies, he goes through their hiring criteria as 'would this person be a perfect fit to work here?', which is pretty vague, and comes after a section where the author just went into how we all need to be less vague with our criteria for things.
Overall I enjoyed it, and if you've never read a 'do less' book, it isn't a bad one. But I didn't feel like the author contributed much to fleshing out his ideas beyond the nice sound-bites scattered throughout the books and quotes on doing less that at times were just there to take up space.
It seemed like he was reaching pretty hard for real world examples that supported his ideas too, at times resorting to made up ones like Isaac Newton having been at play when he say the apple falling from the tree that inspired his theory of gravity -- that's a myth -- or talking about the Erikson study Malcolm Gladwell popularized into the 10k hour rule -- which is another load of bull, there was a massive, thousands of hour range in the time it took the violinists to excel, and that was after they had already been preselected for being among the most talented violinists in the world by virtue of having been admitted into various programs like the one the study examined (Erikson himself is very against Gladwell having made something of his work that it actively disproves). Honestly at this point, a good shortcut to test an author's credibility is whether or not they seriously quote anything Malcom Gladwell wrote, mentioning it here again mostly to name drop and say those violinists seemed to sleep a little more on average than others -- which itself is a stretch, as I recall there were like 10 or so in the study. Throughout the book he mostly name drops people and corporations he's quoting or has talked to in an effort to persuade you on the basis of seeing him as an authority as well, which is historically considered the weakest basis for argument there is.
True to the book's message, it's one that could have worked better with a lot less in it. Most of the backing he provides for it doesn't hold up, but it is full of nice sayings and maxims on either side of his message that give good perspective on why it's not a good idea to do too much and why it can be a better idea to, as he puts it continually throughout the book as its message, embark on the "disciplined pursuit of less but better."
Most of the value of the book is in reading its table of contents, and his scattered 'an essentialist does this, a nonessentialist does that' lines throughout the work. The rest of it in my opinion is better off skipped, true to form with the message of the book, as that's the vital few of it.
You'd be hard pressed to find many who would disagree that most of the things we do aren't massively impactful, but the author massively underplays the actual difficulty of know which things are going to be better to do than others in the moments we decide between them, and the degree to which we can ever really know which things are going to be better choices than others. Like in his example of the hiring practices of some esoteric sounding companies, he goes through their hiring criteria as 'would this person be a perfect fit to work here?', which is pretty vague, and comes after a section where the author just went into how we all need to be less vague with our criteria for things.
Overall I enjoyed it, and if you've never read a 'do less' book, it isn't a bad one. But I didn't feel like the author contributed much to fleshing out his ideas beyond the nice sound-bites scattered throughout the books and quotes on doing less that at times were just there to take up space.
It seemed like he was reaching pretty hard for real world examples that supported his ideas too, at times resorting to made up ones like Isaac Newton having been at play when he say the apple falling from the tree that inspired his theory of gravity -- that's a myth -- or talking about the Erikson study Malcolm Gladwell popularized into the 10k hour rule -- which is another load of bull, there was a massive, thousands of hour range in the time it took the violinists to excel, and that was after they had already been preselected for being among the most talented violinists in the world by virtue of having been admitted into various programs like the one the study examined (Erikson himself is very against Gladwell having made something of his work that it actively disproves). Honestly at this point, a good shortcut to test an author's credibility is whether or not they seriously quote anything Malcom Gladwell wrote, mentioning it here again mostly to name drop and say those violinists seemed to sleep a little more on average than others -- which itself is a stretch, as I recall there were like 10 or so in the study. Throughout the book he mostly name drops people and corporations he's quoting or has talked to in an effort to persuade you on the basis of seeing him as an authority as well, which is historically considered the weakest basis for argument there is.
True to the book's message, it's one that could have worked better with a lot less in it. Most of the backing he provides for it doesn't hold up, but it is full of nice sayings and maxims on either side of his message that give good perspective on why it's not a good idea to do too much and why it can be a better idea to, as he puts it continually throughout the book as its message, embark on the "disciplined pursuit of less but better."
Most of the value of the book is in reading its table of contents, and his scattered 'an essentialist does this, a nonessentialist does that' lines throughout the work. The rest of it in my opinion is better off skipped, true to form with the message of the book, as that's the vital few of it.
Stephen Jones
Mar 11, 2015, 8:55:04 PM3/11/15
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John,
I read it a while ago and it makes a lot of sense to me. I do agree that the ideas could be fleshed out a bit more. However, I have taken on the mantra and been simplifying my life. To me the message is that if you focus on one thing at a time you will be so much more efficient, and that if you focus on things that are important to you, you will be more effective. This is not really a new message but I thought the book expressed the sentiment that made sense to me. In particular, the diagram of the result of your effort. For those who have not seen it, picture a circle with ten one inch arrows coming out in different directions showing your achievements in ten different fields. If there is only one arrow, the achievement will be ten inches long.
If you look at people who are successful in particular fields, it is usually the case that they have focused their energy into the ONE field.
Andrei Bacean
Mar 16, 2015, 4:44:58 PM3/16/15
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hi John
Thank you for the book. I find it interesting.
Best regards
Andrew
среда, 11 марта 2015 г., 13:12:00 UTC+2 пользователь John Smith написал:
Thank you for the book. I find it interesting.
Best regards
Andrew
среда, 11 марта 2015 г., 13:12:00 UTC+2 пользователь John Smith написал:
James D
Mar 28, 2015, 5:31:00 PM3/28/15
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Thank you for this review. You are certain true to form in being an essentialist in your suggested approach for others to take with regard to the book. I tend to agree with you in being skeptical of works that quote Gladwell as if he were an "authority". I've always felt he is somehow is a little too slick, a little too packaged, and if this account of the 10K hours and violinists is accurate, it's not just Gladwell misusing this research; several other authors are as well.
SRhyse
Mar 28, 2015, 6:58:48 PM3/28/15
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Yeah, pretty much all the self-help and pop-psych authors drop Gladwell because it's easy, and if enough people do it, it seems authoritative. Bloggers do it a lot too, then it's just kind of everywhere. With a lot of his work, it certainly would be great if it were true, wouldn't it? So you just kind of go with it, has a nice ring to it. Maybe even inspirational. Everybody can be Supermen. Bill Gates just started early. But it's also BS, and misleading quite a few otherwise well-meaning people that buy into it that are really just wasting their time.
You can look into the Ericsson violinist study to see it as crap, or you can find a more condensed account of why the 10k rule is nonsense in plenty of works, a nice one called The Sports Gene being a more accessible one, even talking to Ericsson himself in the work, whose opinion is openly along the lines of "That's not what I said and that doesn't make any sense. I appreciate the fame but please stop citing me for this". Good book to read in general, but only took a second to find at least some excerpts on it here: ['Sports Gene' Author Destroys Gladwell's 10,000-Hour Rule - Business Insider](http://www.businessinsider.com/sports-gene-author-gladwell-10000-hour-rule-2013-8). That author is by no means the only one, but then again you only really need to look at the actual studies to see for yourself.
Gladwell does that with damn near everything. In his David vs Goliath book he tried to use the concept of a U curve as some kind of proof when it was really just an unsubstantiated illustration. I think it was Outliers too where he talked about there being a 'threshold' to how much your height helps in the NBA when that's also crap, and even the relatively short players have 8' tall arm spans like a human bat. You can pretty much tell who will win any high-end physical sporting event by their measurements and natural stats. People know who's going to win before they even compete.
I only mention things like that because I teach a class on Bullshit and Gladwell comes up a lot as an easy target since so many people have read him and he's easy to see through. And if an author so easily cites him and it's not to criticize, that's a red flag that they're not either bothering to substantiate any of their claims, or they have no idea how. And it's causing problems in academia and the public marketplace of ideas.
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