Essentialism

By Greg McKeown.

A little bit of context

How I found this book

I'm a big fan of simplicity, which got me into following Pinho's YouTube channel. I first heard about this book in one of his videos, so I was curious to read it.

What is this book about?

The whole idea of the book is doing less, but better. By focusing on few things that really matter, you can make more progress.

The modern mess

These days, we’re flooded with information, surrounded by endless options of things we’d like to do, and feel pressure to say yes to all of them.

All of this makes us believe we can do everything—but the truth is, we just can’t.

We have a choice

Might seem obvious, but we forget that we have the power to choose what we want to do. We can't do everything, nor we need to, so we are left with the question: what does it makes sense to do?

If you don't answer this question yourself, others will answer it for you. Other people will decide what you should do, and you will end up doing things that don't matter to you.

Selectiveness brings freedom. You must think, consider, analyze, and then decide where to spend your time and energy. The path to essentialism is to have this systematic approach for making choices.

Sacrifice to gain

In order to make progress in few fronts, you must be willing to abandon multiple other ones. It will always be a trade-off. So pick your battles wisely, and ask yourself: where do I want to invest everything?

You must know your purpose, your goal. Once you know that, you will realize that most things are just noise, and won't help you achieve your objectives, while a few things will make a big difference.

But how do we find these few things? How do we know what to focus on?

Self-awareness

If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable. — Seneca

Self-awareness is the key to finding what matters to you. You must know yourself, what you value, what you want to achieve, and what makes you happy.

Deciding on what you are aiming for is a single decision that will eliminate a number of other decisions after it.

For this to be possible, make sure your objective is clear. It should be meaningful, inspiring, and measurable. You should be able to explain in a single sentence what you are trying to achieve.

• Bad Example: "I want to become a senior software engineer in the next 2 years." This is meaningful, inspiring, and measurable. But also, too broad and vague.
• Good Example: "I want to master Rust and software design in the next 2 years so I can get promoted to senior engineer at my current company." This one focuses on the essential actions, is clear and well defined.

This makes it easier to say no to things that don't align with your objective. In this example, you can skip learning Go or diving into database optimization, and focus only on Rust and software design. You'll filter out the noise and focus on what really matters.

Now let's dive a bit deeper into saying no.

"No" is a complete sentence

As mentioned before, every choice is a trade-off. You must be willing to say no to things that don't align with your goals, even if they seem appealing at first.

The rule of thumb is: if it's not a strong yes, it's a no. If it doesn't align with your goals, don't do it.

Forget about the social pressure and the FOMO, we can't be popular with everyone all the time. It's okay to say no, specially when done gracefully. In fact, showing how our time is valuable is a sign of self-respect, and it will make others respect you more. Respect always comes first before popularity.

It gets easier with time, specially when you have a clear purpose. The goal is to practice saying yes slowly, and no quickly.

Cleaning up

Is also important to reject things you accepted in the past, but no longer serve you. This is a hard thing to do, but it will free up your time and energy for the things that really matter.

This might include dropping things you are already commited to, like projects, hobbies, or even relationships. If they don't align with your current goals, it's okay to let them go.

You can't get back the time and effort you spent on them, but you can still guard your future time and energy. Reducing losses is more than enough in this case, so the sooner you do it, the better.

Is also OK to "edit" things out instead of completely dropping them. Corrections are fine, as long as every single thing adds up to your goal, nothing should be there just for the sake of it.

At work

You can often catch yourself working on things that don't deliver real value, either for your team, the company, or even yourself. A good example is having multiple unnecessary meetings or discussions, working on things that no one asked for it, or even just saying yes to every request that comes your way.

I truly believe that if you're trying to boil the ocean at work—spending time and effort on multiple tasks that don’t contribute to a clear, meaningful, and measurable goal—you’re not being productive; you’re just staying busy.

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