Book Byte #129 "Essentialism" by Greg Mckeown

The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

?? Curious Quotes from the Author

“To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make.”

“I choose to,” “Only a few things really matter,” and “I can do anything but not everything.”

“If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.”

“Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”

“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”

“What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance? What if instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?”

“Essentialists see trade-offs as an inherent part of life, not as an inherently negative part of life. Instead of asking, “What do I have to give up?” they ask, “What do I want to go big on?”

Club 255 is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

“If it isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.”

“The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years.”

“There should be no shame in admitting to a mistake; after all, we really are only admitting that we are now wiser than we once were.”

“Sometimes what you don’t do is just as important as what you do.”

“Today, technology has lowered the barrier for others to share their opinion about what we should be focusing on. It is not just information overload; it is opinion overload.”

“We overvalue nonessentials like a nicer car or house, or even intangibles like the number of our followers on Twitter or the way we look in our Facebook photos. As a result, we neglect activities that are truly essential, like spending time with our loved ones, or nurturing our spirit, or taking care of our health.”

“The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless.”

?? Cognition of the Book’s Big Idea:

Regardless of how it appears, just a few things are critical to our goals and well-being, while everything else is irrelevant. By focusing on these few essentials and learning to do more with less, we can create a more productive and satisfying existence. Become an editor. Rather than continuously adding new duties and material goods to your life, strive to discover ways to reduce them. The more frivolous things you can remove from your mind and routine, the better you'll be at what's left: the things that genuinely count.

???Fixing the Tech Industry

The more I live life, the more I find that they are infinite paths you can take, but there is only one road you end up taking. You can’t look back and say “I wish I would of taken that road instead”. It’s irrelevant, once you started down one path, all other paths became insignificant to you. This works now in reverse as you go forward life. Editing things out of your life, the things you say no to are just as important as the things you say yes to, sometimes even more so.

??Collaborate with others with this Social Media Prompt:

What can you get rid of in your life to make it better?

My Software Stack: I use Skool for my Online Community Platform and ClickFunnels for my Landing Pages, Payments, and Email Sequencing. I use Substack for my Newsletter and Taskade for AI Note Taking/Second Brain/Project Management. I use my Personal Amazon Store for Tech and Book Recommendations.