Book summary- Essentialism: The disciplined pursuit of Less (by Greg McKeown)

The outline of the book Essentialism: The disciplined pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown?hovers around the question of What is essential in my life? and how to cut out the trivial and many other non-essential options.?

In this short book summary, I have highlighted some of the take-home messages, quotes, and bullet points:

In our ever-lasting search to find our purpose in life, McKeown explains “An essential intent is inspirational and concrete, meaningful and measurable. It is a decision that settles one thousand later decisions. Like deciding you’re going to be a doctor instead of a lawyer. One strategic choice eliminates a universe of other options and maps out a course for the next five, ten, or even twenty years of your life. Once the big decision is made, all subsequent decisions come into better focus”. In the era where we are bombarded by massive amounts of trivial messages on social media, finding our ‘main thing’ or purpose in life can be easily overlooked. We live in an era where finding clarity on what we intend to do with our pathetically short time on earth can be highly perplexing: “When we are unclear about our real purpose in life -our goals, aspirations, and values- we make up our own social games. We waste time and energies on trying to look good in comparison to other people. We overvalue non-essential items 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 the activities that are truly essential”.?

To find our main purpose:?

We need to be highly selective. As John Maxwell puts it, “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything”.??Eliminating the nonessentials in life requires mental and emotional discipline to say no to social pressure. "Creating an essential intent takes courage, insight, and foresight to see which activities and efforts will add up to your single highest point of contribution. It takes asking tough questions, making real trade-offs, and exercising serious discipline to eliminate the competing priorities that distract us from our true intention. To discern what is 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 our choices". "While we may not always have control over our options, we always have control over how we choose among them".

How about after finding your main purpose??

-???????Follow without halt: As Anna Pavlova puts it “to follow without halt, one aim: there is the secret to success”.

-???????Protect the asset: The best asset we have for making a contribution to the world is ourselves. We need to be as strategic with ourselves as we are with our careers and businesses. We need to pace ourselves, nurture ourselves, and give ourselves fuel to explore, thrive and perform. The real challenge for the person who thrives on challenges is not to work hard.?

-???????Edit your time and activities continuously: this allows you to make more minor but deliberate adjustments along the way.

-???????Expected the unexpected and be extremely prepared.?

-???????Start small and celebrate progress: Instead of trying to accomplish it all and all at once, start small and celebrate progress. Of all forms of human motivation, the most effective one is progress. There is something powerful about visibly seeing progress toward a goal.??

-???????Design a routine: A right routine that makes achieving what you have identified as essential the default position. Routine is one of the most powerful tools for removing obstacles. The right routine can enhance innovation and creativity by giving you the equivalent of an energy rebate.?

-???????Focus: to operate at your highest level of contribution requires that you deliberately tune in to what is important here and now.?

-???????Know when to cut your losses: Sunk-cost bias, is the tendency to continue to invest time, money, or energy into something we know is a losing proposition simply because we have already incurred, or sunk, a cost that cannot be recouped. Get over the fear of waste and instead, admit failure to begin success.?

And lastly, a few points to beware of:?

-???????The pursuit of success, can be a catalyst for failure. Success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce success in the first place.?

-???????The more choices you are forced to make, the more the quality of your decisions deteriorates. This is known as decision fatigue.?

-???????Working hard is important. But more effort does not necessarily yield more results (“Less but better” does).?

-???????Keep a journal: the faintest pencil is better than the strongest memory.