Book Review: ESSENTIALISM: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

A Useful Framework That Feels Familiar

This book has been recommended to me by a few different people.

Overall the book was kind of meh. It was originally written in 2014. I could see how this book would sound more profound in 2014 to me (and others), when today it feels like it lacks substance.

Having said that the book does provide a valuable message to the reader about priorities and mindset.

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Book Notes

• Essentialism is about getting the right things done, not about getting more things done. It also doesn’t mean doing less for the sake of it either. It’s about being intentional about where you focus your time and energy.

• If you don’t intentionally prioritize your life, someone else will.

The book pushes the reader to accept 3 realities:

1. Individual choice: We can choose how we spend our time and energy.

2. Prevalence of Noise: Almost everything is noise. Very few things are exceptionally valuable.

3. The Reality of Trade-Offs: Life is full of trade-offs. We can’t have or do everything.

The “roadmap” of the book is broken out into 3 parts:

1. Explore – Discerning the trivial many from the vital few

2. Eliminate – Cutting out the trivial many

3. Execute – Removing obstacles and making execution effortless

These can only be pursued once you adopt the essence of essentialism.

ESSENCE – the core logic of essentialism you should adopt:

• I choose to

• Only a few things really matter

• I can do anything but not everything

• Get used to the idea of “less but better”

• Almost everything is nonessential

• Very few things are essential and worth your time + energy

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EXPLORE – Discern the Vital Few from the Trivial Many

• Essentialism explores more than nonessentialism

• Exploring is different than committing

• You need time to look, listen, think, play, sleep, and have the discipline to apply highly selective criteria

ELIMINATE – How Can We Cut Out the Trivial Many

• It’s not enough to identify, you must actively eliminate things that are nonessential

• Reframe and ask: If I wasn’t already doing this, would I do it today?

• Say “no” gracefully

• Setting boundaries (saying no) to someone is important:

  • Their problems are not yours, and they need to deal with their problems

  • Boundaries can be liberating

EXECUTE – How to Make Execution Effortless

• Nonessentials try to force execution

• We need to have a system and mindset to focus on the right things

• Removal of obstacles for essential things

• Removing nonessentials allows you to lead a more meaningful life with purpose

• When we look back at our careers or lives, do you want to see a long list of somewhat meaningless “accomplishments” or a shorter list of very meaningful accomplishments?

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CLOSING THOUGHTS

The book has good principles on how to hone your focus.

It is valuable in a sense that it will give you the language to adopt a mindset to prioritize on what matters. It falls short on a couple of fronts.

1. It over-simplifies essential vs nonessential in life and business. All the examples in the business world seem convenient. The example of Southwest Airlines is glossed over and lacks depth. It frames many (if not all) failures as lack of focus or nonessential. The funny thing is there are lots of examples in the business world to draw from, including more detail on Southwest.

2. It has essentially zero real life examples of someone going through the exercise in their life. I find it frustrating when books with abstract definitions of success don’t include real life examples. The author said he has met with hundreds of teams, surely one or two would have been willing to be documented.

The book can add value if you are early in your personal development journey. If you have been doing the self-improvement thing for awhile, this book should be a 5–10 page handout (at most). The image is helpful.

6/10

I found the concepts similar to the book Subtract.

Let me know what you thought of the book.

Thanks for reading my work.

Dean