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Book Notes: “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown Summary If you don’t prioritize your life someone else will Hello, friends welcome to my channel Abridged. In today’s video, we are going to discuss Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown which is a modern classic self-help book with a very simple message about doing less to achieve more. The core message of this book is to identify the important things in our life, the things that really matter, and then put all our time and energy to make them happen. So let’s begin The essentialist Essentialism is not about how to get more things done it’s actually about how to get the right things done. It is about utilizing our time and effort in the right direction. It’s a disciplined systematic approach from being a nonessentialist to essentialist that helps us to find our strengths and execute important tasks effortlessly. The Essentialist's philosophy is to live by choice, not by chance. To prioritize vital few tasks over trivial many, to eliminate all unimportant tasks, and to make the execution processes simple and frictionless. The core mindset of an essentialist depends on • 1. Choice – We all have the ability to choose our opportunities but sometimes instead of going with our free will we surrender ourselves to others and let them choose for us. We should learn to choose how to spend our energy and time. • The second is to discern– It is not necessary that all the tasks that you feel are important should provide excellent output. According to the Pareto principle, our 20% task yields 80% output. All opportunities we will find attractive but only a few of them serve a real purpose. • And the last is to Trade-offs – Trade-off is a strategy of making deliberate choices about a few important things over many unimportant things. It's a shift in mindset from "what should I give up?" to "how large should I aim for?". Trade-off is a strategical approach to find the best for us to achieve the outcome that we want. Now let’s discuss the three strategies to live an essentialist lifestyle The first is to Explore its to learn to discern the Trivial Many from the Vital Few? • To find what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make.” • We should learn to explore all the options before committing to a few opportunities. • To explore our opportunities we should 1. Escape it is important to buy extra time for ourselves free from all the (keios) chaos of life which can be utilized to find the essential things that can create an actual impact. 2. Look: explore every opportunity before categorizing them as important or unimportant. Try to keep a journal which helps us to remember everything when required. 3. Play: Play helps us to find inner joy and explore the creativity within us. Play widens the options available. It counters the stress and stimulates the brain function towards planning, prioritizing, scheduling, delegating, deciding etc. 4. Sleep: Never consider sleep as a waste of time, it helps to boost our performance and is very important for creativity, and alertness and increases our productivity. Sleep helps us to control our body mind and soul. 5. Select: Instead of saying yes to all the opportunities try to be selective if there is one thing you are good at instead of running after many tasks try to do that just one task that you can excel at. Part III: Eliminate: way to cut out the trivial many • It’s very important to prioritize your activities by subtracting the trivial task and carefully choosing the vital ones. We should consider all the options before saying yes or no to any task. • To eliminate the trival task we should have: 1. Clarity: We tend to waste more time and effort when we don’t have clarity about our vital tasks and start considering trivial tasks as important. Before starting the task make sure it is the most important thing at that particular moment and has significant output. 2. Dare: by saying no gracefully we can overcome guilt and social pressure. We should never say yes just to please others. A clear no creates less damage than a noncommittal yes. 3. Uncommit: According to Josh billing “50 % of our lives trouble happens when we quickly say YES to all the commitments and delay in saying NO. We should always have the confidence and courage to admit our mistakes and reverse or eliminate the activities that have a negative impact. 4. Edit: We should constantly review our activities and if we feel any task to be unimportant we should immediately modify or delete them. 5. Limit: Always set boundaries to protect your priorities and block unnecessary interference. If you don’t set priorities for yourself then someone else will do. Part IV: Execute: How Can We Make Doing the Vital Few Things Almost Effortless? • Having a system is key to ensuring that the completion of your crucial activities is automatic and routine. • To carry out the necessary actions, we should: 1. Buffer: This useful tactic enables us to take influence over events outside our direct control. Before any harm is done, buffers can stop two dissimilar conditions from coming into touch. 2. Subtract: Adopt the mentality that "done is better than perfect." This does not imply that you cannot do quality work. It does imply that you may, for instance, publish the first draft and THEN return to it and make several revisions. 3. Progress: Get going as soon as you can with little steps, and then progressively add more time and effort as you go along to see significant benefits over time. 4. Flow: One of the most effective methods for reducing barriers is to establish a routine. Once we get a handle on our routine, we can perform it automatically since we won't have to keep thinking about it. 5. Focus: "You must consciously tune in to what is vital in the here and now if you are to perform at your best level of contribution." 6. Live the Essentialist Life "Today, essentialism goes beyond what I do. I am progressively evolving into an essentialist. It started off as a few conscious decisions, developed into a lifestyle, and eventually altered me fundamentally. I keep learning virtually every day that there is less and less I can accomplish in order to make a bigger contribution. A life without regrets is the life of an essentialist. It is difficult to regret your decisions if you have accurately determined what truly important and if you devote your time and effort to it. You start to feel good about the life you've chosen.