Essentialism Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus Essentialism

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Zusammenfassung von Essentialism

Name: Essentialism
Rating: 4.5 (881 reviews)
Author: Greg McKeown

Greg McKeown

Improve your life by only focusing on the essentials

4.5 (881 Bewertungen)

20 Min.

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Effectiveness Routines & Habits Focus Mindful Work Happiness

Inhaltsübersicht

Essentialism
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What’s in it for me? Discover why less is sometimes actually more.

People today feel like they should pack their schedules to the brim, doing everything they possibly can to expand their horizons and improve their lives. In this age of abundance, we feel like we need to have and do it all. However, this attitude runs headlong with an unfortunate fact: we can’t do it all.

We can’t be an expert in every field, we can’t have every toy, nor can we have every possible experience. Not only that, but having and doing everything won’t necessarily make us more happy. In fact, we’ll find our closets cluttered with junk we never use and our schedules filled with tasks we can’t complete, at least not well.

Instead, we should be focusing on what we should do, thinking instead about what is essential to our happiness and well-being.

In these blinks you’ll learn all about how to identify the essential things in your life and what you can do to cut out everything else, thus giving you the mental and emotional fortitude to perform those most vital tasks to the highest standards possible.

You’ll learn:

why you should probably go ahead and throw away that stupid, howling-wolf shirt in your closet;
what happens when airlines try to have it all; and
what sleep-deprived overachievers and drunks have in common.

In order to avoid drowning in unnecessary work, you need to adopt the principle of essentialism.

Our lives are so jam-packed with tasks and responsibilities that we struggle to identify which of them are the most important to us, that is, our priorities. Even if we make a concerted effort to go through all our tasks and pick out the ones we should prioritize, we still end up with too much on our hands.

This overload of stuff massively hinders our productivity. Luckily, however, we can get our priorities straight by adopting essentialism.

Essentialism focuses on four main points:

Do less, but do it better. The cornerstone of essentialism is the never-ending task of identifying the less important things in your life to cut out, and doing what’s left over to a higher standard.

Reject the notion that we should accomplish everything, and choose instead specific directions in which you can excel. Essentialism isn’t about making tiny progress in many directions. Instead, choose a direction and make great strides in the things that matter most to you.

Constantly question yourself and update your plans accordingly. The process of deciding what’s worth doing and what should be let go is ongoing. The essentialist is always deciding whether what she is doing is actually worth her time or if she should invest her time and energy in a more productive area.

Finally, once those few vital tasks have been distilled from the trivial many, the essentialist wastes no time in ensuring that the changes are put in place.

While all that might seem easy, most of us are actually far from the mark. In the next few blinks you’ll discover how far away most of us are from the essentialist approach.

If we become overwhelmed by our tasks, then we lose our ability to make choices for ourselves.

Do you tend to say ‘’I have to” rather than “I choose to”? If so, then you are following the non-essential path.

So many of us lose control of our ability to choose through learned helplessness, that is, becoming so used to the feeling of being overwhelmed that we approach our lives with passivity.

Embrace the idea of “less but better” and accept trade-offs as an inherent part of life.

If you had the power to travel back in time and build a fortune by investing in a company, which would you choose? IBM? Microsoft? Apple?

While the success of those companies might make them an obvious pick for some, the biggest return on your investment would actually come from Southwest Airlines.

Giving yourself space to escape and seeing the bigger picture will help you pick out the vital from the trivial.

Nowadays, hardly anyone has time to be bored. Modern technologies like our smartphones mean that we have access to a wealth of communication and entertainment. Since no one actually likes being bored, this sounds like a great thing.

However, boredom can actually be good for you. A period of time in which you have nothing to do can give you an opportunity to think clearly about what needs to be done.

Get your creative juices flowing by playing – just don’t forget to give yourself time to rest.

Unfortunately, we adults tend to make a sharp distinction between work and play, having decided that play is something that is trivial and unproductive. It is there purely for entertainment, and doesn’t help us to advance our goals. In other words, it’s a waste of time.

The essentialist, however, recognizes that play is a vital tool for inspiration. If you want to discover what’s vital in your life, you can use play to free your mind so that you can approach this subject creatively.

Be ruthless in cutting away things that aren’t essential.

Often, we fall into the trap of thinking that all of our tasks and responsibilities are vital in one way or another.

Surely you’ve experienced something similar when you’re going through your closet during spring cleaning: you start with the mindset that “if I never wear it, it’s got to go,” yet, you soon find yourself making exceptions, and telling yourself things like: “I know I never wear this howling-wolf shirt, but I might want to one day!” So, you keep it and your closet remains as crammed as ever.

Say “no” to nonessential tasks and plan the essential ones carefully.

So what do you do once you’ve made a list of everything that needs to go, that is, everything that is not essential to achieve your goals? It’s relatively easy to part with a shirt you never wear, but these decisions become more complicated when other people are involved.

We tend to fear saying no, feeling both socially awkward as well as pressured not to disappoint the people around us, and are concerned that saying no might damage our relationships.

Stop doing unnecessary things by withdrawing from failures and setting boundaries.

Have you ever ended up doing something that you knew was a waste of effort simply because you committed to it? A lot of people fall into this sunk-cost bias.

The sunk-cost bias is the tendency to continue investing money, time, effort and/or energy into something we already know is unlikely to succeed. Unfortunately, every little investment makes it harder for us to let go, while simultaneously increasing the amount we are sure to lose.

Keeping on top of what’s important requires that you eliminate what slows you down and that you prepare carefully.

Once you’ve committed to the principles of essentialism, it’s time to grapple with the last step: execution.

Becoming an essentialist requires you to identify what’s slowing you down and then eliminate it, rather than simply finding ways to work around it.

An essentialist life centers around yourself, a routine and proceeding step-by-step.

If you’ve ever achieved something in one fell swoop, then you experienced luck first hand. Most of the time, it won’t work out that way. In reality, creating success is all about building upon your previous progress with small, incremental steps.

Small wins create momentum, which gives you the confidence to further succeed. Moreover, they allow you to stay on track by giving you the opportunity to check whether you are heading in the right direction.

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Worum geht es in Essentialism?

Essentialism (2014) teaches you how to do better by doing less. By offering practical solutions for how to get your priorities straight, Essentialism helps you to eliminate all of the junk in your routine that’s keeping you from being truly productive and fulfilled.

Bestes Zitat aus Essentialism

Fact:
The word priority first appeared in the English language in the 1400s but only in the 1900s was it pluralized.

—Greg McKeown

Wer Essentialism lesen sollte

Anyone who thinks that they are far too busy without being productive
Anyone who feels like there is never enough time
Anyone having a hard time identifying his or her priorities in life

Über den Autor

Greg McKeown is an author and management consultant who has coached at companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter and LinkedIn. He holds an MBA from Stanford University, where he co-created the course Designing Life, and is also the author of the best-selling book Multipliers.

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