The Power of Less summary

If you want to concentrate on the essential, you have to figure out exactly what things are essential to you. As soon as you know what you find indispensable, you can begin to get rid of all the things in your life that are superfluous.

How can you tell what’s essential? By judging how things change your life and whether they match up with your long-term goals. When doing so, it’s helpful to ask yourself the right questions, for example:

Living without restrictions is like shopping without a credit limit. Because the only way we end up focusing on what’s truly important is by being forced to budget. 

Limiting ourselves allows us to focus our energy on the important things in life. In other words, we can stop wasting time and energy on things that aren’t actually worth it. 

If you want to make a lasting change in yourself, you have to learn to form and develop new habits.

That works best when you limit yourself to working on one habit at a time. If you manage to do one new habit each day, they’ll become second nature.

Instead of starting small, most of us usually want to transform everything from one day to the next. As a result, we fail and then give up in frustration. That’s why our plans to make any sort of lasting change are so frequently unsuccessful.

But it doesn’t need to be that way. Consistency is the key to creating habits. And you’re most likely to achieve consistency by starting small and slowly working towards your goals.

Setting goals is easy; achieving them is exponentially harder. We need energy, focus and motivation – all of which we only have in limited supply.

That’s why we’re most likely to achieve something when we focus exclusively on that one specific goal. If you have a goal that can be achieved in, say, six to 12 months, it would make sense to put all your energy into achieving that one goal.

Focus is your most important tool.

When doing your tasks, stay focused on the important, the essential. The most effective way to start your day is to take care of the most important task, then the second-most important one, etcetera.

We don’t do projects – we do tasks. And doing so effectively requires us to concentrate fully on one task at a time. Multitasking doesn’t work.

In order to avoid procrastinating and multitasking, make your tasks so small that you can take care of them quickly, e.g., in a half an hour. It’s always the big tasks that end up not getting done because the obstacle of getting started on them is too enormous.

As with many people, you probably spend too much time reading and writing emails. But usually it doesn’t help you achieve your goals or even have anything to do with them.

That said, try to minimize the amount of time you spend on emails.