Essentialism – The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

“Life is fast and full of opportunity”. In order to do something “truly great” Greg Mckeown argues we should eliminate the nonessentials. Essentialism is one book that I am glad I read and has been highly praised by Matt Mullenweg who is the founding developer of WordPress and CEO of Automatic. If you have ever seen Yes Man staring Jim Carrey this book is perhaps at the opposite end of the spectrum. The premise is around 1) how we choose to spend our energy and time 2) Taking time to figure out what is most important 3) What problem do I want to solve. We have reached a point in time where many people are using the current economic climate to think through what is important.

The early success you may have experienced in your career was perhaps supported by your willingness to do everything to please those around you. This may mean you have lost sight of the essential things that produce success in the first place. Have you fallen into the trap of being busy but not productive? As most people are now home working there has been a drop off in the number of face to face meetings, and video technology has helped improve our effectiveness. We may have lost sight of our ability to choose what we should be doing. It is time to realise that we have a choice within every situation. We often say yes as it is a short-term reward which might feel good at the time but has bad long-term outcomes. Sometimes people’s careers stall, because they stay put for the salary instead of looking for learning opportunities and new challenges, where perhaps they have to step backwards instead of forward.

We are not able to have it all, so we need to make a trade-off. This is about sticking to our key areas of competencies and stopping drifting into other areas just because we see others making this move. You can not have it all in your career so it is worth making a few decisions that will get where you want to be in the long term. If you think about the baseball analogy, you only swing for the balls where you know you are going to hit it out of the park. This is about thinking through decisions and building your expertise in the chosen area.

Sometimes what you are doing is as important in what you do not do. A great salesperson will know how to qualify prospects so they focus their efforts on customers that they can help the most, and who will be a fit for what is being sold. There is often a strategic trade off and if you are able to be selected about what you say yes to, this should in fact give you more of the right type of opportunities as your time has been freed up. Developing good habits will give you a framework to steer away from the things we should be saying no to and qualify the things that are a resounding yes! There is a skill in saying no in the right way to ensure we keep people on our side and allow them to understand our priorities. If you have a leadership position you will gain more credibility if you are able to filter through the noise to keep the team on side whilst following the right long-term strategy.

 If we can stick to the essentials, we are setting ourselves up for success both in our career and personal lives.