Key Takeaways from "essentialism" by Greg McKeown
Essentialism means living by design, not by default.
- You need to react less and focus more on what is important.
- If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.
- Priority is singular and refers to the most important task. There cannot be multiple priorities.
- Focusing on one thing at a time makes you faster than focusing on many things.
- Always focusing on your top priority helps you make faster progress towards that goal before moving to the next highest priority.
- If you don't know your top priority, finding it becomes your top priority.
Saying NO and declining projects earns respect and improves relationships.
- You must manage others' expectations; a half-done job is not well done.
- People appreciate it when you communicate your inability to take on more tasks and explain your top priority.
Essentialism compounds: More focus on essentials leads to more time working on essentials, reducing noise and excess work. By working only on the highest priority, everything else fades away.
Extreme Preparation
- The most successful businesses are those that prepare well, acknowledging their inability to predict the future.
Add 50% to your time estimates to allow for a buffer in achieving goals. Despite a tendency to underestimate, people remain confident in their estimates.
About Priority and Project Selection
- Selection should be strict: An unclear yes is a clear NO. Be very selective: anything less than a 90% fit is not good enough and should be declined or rejected.
- Multitasking is possible (like listening to a podcast while running), but focusing on more than one task is not.
- In zero-based budgeting, every budget item must be justified from scratch.
To overcome the endowment effect (valuing what you own more), pretend you don’t own it yet.
Powerful Anecdotes
- Instead of quitting a company, work as if you were a consultant. Step outside the company's internal noise and toil. Focus only on what is essential to your mission and ignore the rest.