It may not always be obvious by looking at me, but I am in temperament if not always in practice an essentialist. I would much rather focus on a few things and do them well than try to do everything. I don’t believe being so busy that you can’t get enough sleep is an accomplishment I think it’s a failure. And yet reading “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown I became aware of the many things I spend time and effort doing that aren’t essential. I saw that by focusing on the few things that get the best results I can improve my results and I intend to look more carefully at the things I do and deciding how to do them better.

What is Essentialism?

The key to understanding Essentialism is in the name. I also wrote about it in another review without using the name. That was “The Subtle Art of not giving a F#!%”. The idea is actually very simple. We have all been told by the world that we can do everything, that we can be everything and that we can have everything. This is both true and not true. It’s true in that you have nearly limitless options, but Essentialism speaks to the other side of that coin. That everything you get, do or are is at the expensive of all the other things.

It is perhaps easiest to understand with money. If you have 100 dollars, you have practically limitless options. You could buy video games or go to the movies, you could eat out or you could buy a new appliance for your kitchen. You could give the money to charity or pay a bill. What you can’t do is all of those things. You have to pick the most important, or essential. When you do that you no longer have the money so you can’t spend it on anything else. This is also true of most other things but most importantly time. You have a set amount of time each day. If you spend that on things that don’t matter, it means you can’t spend that time on things that do.

Of course the practice of that is easier than explaining it. One of the most important and difficult parts is the act of saying no and the understanding it really will make things better if you do.

What is in the book “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown about?

The book starts with a similar but longer and more complex explanation of Essentialism. This includes a story about the author missing the birth of his child to go to a meeting that in the end turned out to be a completely unimportant. And while this is more dramatic than average, it isn’t as different from them as many of us might believe. The act of missing out on things that are important for things that aren’t is important is common. Yet, he also points out that this isn’t a book that tells you to give up your cell phone, stop watching TV or any of the other things that often make their way into books about simplifying your life. It is a book about deciding to focus on the things that are important.

Once he gets past that he begins to focus on implementation. As I pointed out, saying no is one key to Essentialism and one of the most difficult parts. Greg McKeown devotes a considerable amount of pages to why it’s important to say no but to explaining ways to graciously say no. This is especially important at work, where it may feel like a person has no choice. If your boss tells you to waste time, you waste time. Greg gives several ideas but one of the best options he gives is to say, “OK, which of my other projects do you want me to pay less attention to in order to do that.”

A subset of saying no he focuses on is refusing to work on your days off. He tells a story of a man who had just got a new job. His boss asked him to come in on a Saturday and he explained he couldn’t because he had a commitment to spend Saturday with his children. His boss was frustrated but left and after a few minutes he came back and explained that he had talked to the rest of the team and they had all agreed to come in on Sunday instead. The man replied that he he had committed to spending his Sundays with God. There is a bit more to the story, but the takeaway is that by making it clear what his priorities were as soon as he started his job he could use those days for what was important and that was far more important than that one time and while it upset some people. People who respected him more for it, and who -I suspect- wished they had the courage to do the same.

A surprisingly large amount of the book is dedicated to pointing out things that are essential that we don’t prioritize enough. One of the major one of those is sleep. There are a myriad of studies showing the value of getting enough sleep. People drive safer, get more work done, solve problems faster and generally improve their life by getting enough sleep. But beyond that, the mind isn’t idle while you are sleeping.

In one study scientists gave two groups of subjects a difficult problem they needed to solve the next day. One group was kept up all night the others slept. Presumably most of the people who were awake trying to solve the problem, but the people who slept still got it done faster. That’s because the mind isn’t idle while you sleep. Dreams aren’t just random synapses firing, they are your mind considering the events of the day to find solutions.

There is a lot more in this book than I have explained, and all of it is useful.

Conclusion

So many of us are focused on trying to do more that it’s immensely valuable to understand the concept of less but better. And this book does a good job of following its own ethos by keeping the book focused and short so you really can get the essence of Essentialism by reading this book and stopping to consider for a few minutes what the most important things are and what are the things that are holding you back. So pick up “Essentialism” because if all it does is help you get rid of one unimportant thing that would make it well worth the time it took to read the book.