Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less - The Two-Million-Copy Bestseller

Our world seems to be moving faster and faster. We are bombarded by endless information and rapidly multiplying demands on our time and attention. Many people struggle to cope with their bottomless to-do lists and their ever-expanding to-read piles. As a consequence, many people feel scattered or even burned out. In “Essentialism”, Grey McKeown provides an antidote by arguing that we should focus on the essential. Thereby, we can concentrate our efforts on the things that truly matter and ignore all of the noise. He goes into practical advice and illustrates the approach of the essentialist to many of life’s quandaries. The book is highly readable because of the many case examples that will resonate with many readers. The chapters are also kept short and to the point. That makes it easy to absorb the main message. However, I thought that book boiled down to a few central points that can be summarised in a page or two. However, this might be because I read quite a few books on similar topics and was, therefore, familiar with the content of some of the chapters. For instance, Deep Work by Cal Newport and Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky cover similar ground. Altogether, I think the book is an excellent choice for anyone who feels on the edge of burn-out and wants to take some time to reflect on a better approach to work and life.

Single most memorable passage: "Charlie O. Simms taught a Journalism 101 class at Beverly Hills High School. He started... by explaining the concept of a "lead". He explained that a lead contains the why, what , when, and who of the piece. It covers the ESSENTIAL(my emphasis) information. Then he gave them their first assignment: write a lead to a story. Simms began by presenting the facts of the story: "Kenneth L. Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California governor Edmund 'Pa' Brown" The students hammered away on their manual typewriters trying to keep up with the teacher's peace. Then they handed in their rapidly written leads. Each attempted to summarise the who, what where, and why as succinctly as possible: "Margaret Mead, Maynard Hutchins, and Governor Brown will address the faculty on ..."; "Next Thursday, the high school faculty will ..." Simms reviewed the students' leads and put them aside. He then informed them that they were all wrong. The lead to the story, he said, was "There will be no school on Thursday." "In that instant," Nora Ephron(of [Sleepless in Seattle] and [When Harry met Sally]) recalled, "I realised that journalism was not just about regurgitating the facts but about figuring out the POINT. It wasn't enough to know the who, what, when, and where; you had to understand what it MEANT. And why it MATTERED." Ephron added, "He taught me something that works just as well in life as it does in journalism." " p73-74 Disclaimer - I have not read a whole lot of management/self-improvement books, so I cannot say that I am a very good judge of the genre. There is a danger that this book is actually littered with tired old cliches that I hadn't noticed, in which case I shouldn't have bothered you with this. That said - Self-improvement books are a strange breed - myself included, you so often see people who read one and then complain that the book only wrote about the really obvious things. In the same sense, however, homo sapiens are a strange breed who never quite do what they know to be the obviously good things for themselves. grin emoticon Enter, then, the study of management - the study on "coordination of the efforts of people to accomplish goals and objectives by using available resources efficiently and effectively". Sounds like self-improvement on a larger scale, but with the added benefit of providing results from well-designed research. The author is a management consultant with an MBA degree from Stanford. Perhaps naturally, the book often reads like a business strategy book with plenty of case studies from the corporate world, but as Ephron says, those methods can easily be used for life in general. The book's message can be neatly summed up in one sentence - "Figure out what is really important and essential in your life, and eliminate everything else to focus your efforts and achieve maximum output/contribution to society". The rest of the book is just filled up by how to achieve that goal. While 'the rest of the book' is coherently structured with a logical, well-suited flow and sensible, well-researched suggestions backed up by sociology/psychology research findings(these days it seems impossible to read something that doesn't quote [Flow] by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and [Thinking Fast and Slow] by Daniel Kahneman, although probably due to my reading interests. Perhaps I should just give up and add them to the reading list), some solutions that the author suggests will just sound implausible. One example is the importance of being able to say no to your boss so that you can concentrate on something more essential. Obviously, I cannot imagine myself doing so to my bosses, consultant surgeons. For some other solutions, I thought they can only be done when one is reasonably financially secure, so that he/she can take the risk/hit by cutting out/declining all the non-essential activities that regularly plague our lives. However, (as my stock-phrase goes) if we are to look at the moon instead of the finger pointing at the moon... The part that really inspires me in this book is its single-minded pursuit and the determination for what constitutes the most important thing in our lives; what makes our lives meaningful for us(as illustrated in the above anecdote), and what will ultimately enable us to be useful to the rest of the humanity. Sure, it may not always be obvious to all of us, and the method of elimination the book suggests may not guarantee to lead us to an answer. In fact, our lives may quite possibly be meaningless! :-D Nevertheless, for me it is certainly worth a try. The other aspects that left a strong impression for me was the authors repeated emphasis on how pursuing Essentialism is a choice, and the importance of EMOTIONAL(not intellectual) acceptance of the book's ideas for them to work - which is to say, as discussed at the beginning, it is not because we don't know what to do why we don't do them. There is always a choice, and we simply choose not to.

Fantastic book. Full of good post reading references. I originally bought the kindle version but I decided to buy a paper copy too to keep it in front of me for constant reference.

Let's face it, they know how to produce this kind of books (HowToMakeFriendsMarsVenusFixYourLifeEtc), but I'd say this one is above this standard. I was a bit put off with the end of intro finishing in nearly glorious-revolutionary tone, but I went on and it was good. Book builds up on many references like Jim Collins and Peter Drucker and puts them into focused perspective. Many of the advices are well known, the question is how much we hold on to them, how much we put them forward (like enough of sleep, anyone?). Saying NO reminded me Rework book, but I'm sure this advice is much older. Book might have been shorter, but I don't mind the bit of repetitions. I read it shortly after Drucker's "Managing Oneself" which can be read in an hour and is definitely more essentialistic, but it doesn't talk about Essentialism that much like this one. For me this was suitable next read and I wasn't disappointed. But - you still have to work it out yourself considering your circumstances. It takes time to do even first couple of changes (changing ourselves is always hard) and you'll meet mostly non-essentialists in your life. While this may give you some advantage (if that's what you're after), but also misunderstanding from them. That's what a book can't help you with. :-)

I was recommended “The essentialism - the discipline pursuit of less” in summary it’s a book how to do as little as possible. Not how to be lazy, but to do just what is essential. We have all been in a two meeting, where we have thought “this could have been an email”. While sitting there we realise that a colleague isn’t there. Next day, they call up and say “so what happened in that meeting I missed?” and you distill that 2 hours into 2 minutes. That person is an essentialist. Greg McKeown takes you through a journey, that will allow you to differentiate between the noise and signal of the time in your life. How you can eliminate wasted time and processes you can put in place so you can focus your time so that you start using it wisely. One such example, is the use of routine so that your mind is used for the important things, rather than using brain power on the mundane.

Just to be clear, I read a lot of this kind of book and I'm a tough audience, so three stars means it's pretty good. Only the very best (eg, David Allen) get 5 stars. I enjoyed this book. While it lacked the truly profound, game-changing ideas of, say, Deep Work (Cal Newport) or Peak (Ericsson) (and was way below the GTD benchmark), the basic message of the book is condensed well, clearly articulated and practically applicable, which I find three important tests for this kind of book. McKeown uses good examples, without them being clichéd (no tedious stuff about Abraham Lincoln, unlike a lot of this sort of book). He uses personal experience without being a droney, self-promoting charlatan (again, common in the genre). He writes clearly and effectively, so you can dip in and out and don't drift off while reading. And the basic message is essentially a good one: be selective about what you do and do it better. That said, while I enjoyed it, I wouldn't call it essential reading. (Perhaps the author would approve that I've just written that!) It does identify a definite problem - the target audience for this kind of book is a bit frazzled with trying to do too much - but it falls short of a real game-changing way of looking at the world. Which is a high bar to set, admittedly. You could do better than read this book (I've mentioned ones I found better) but you could do a LOT worse.

This was a relatively useful read, but basically confirming things that any sensible person knows already. That is that simplicity, clarity of focus and effort, is much more effective at bringing about successful results, whether that be in business or life in general. I don't think this is a book that will linger long in my memory or be used as any particular reference in the future, but the advice is good advice, and so four stars is reasonable in my view.

Looking forward to reading this book and acquiring ways of plucking out the ‘essentials’ to life rather than being continually bogged down by irrelevancies. As a quotation states at the start of the book: “If you don’t prioritise your own life, then someone else will.” Must admit, Greg McKeown’s story at the beginning, when he finds himself with a client, rather than with his wife and newly born child, is a real eye-opener for people who find it hard to say no. It seems, from my brief reading of text so far, that it was such experiences that lead McKeown to research the topic of why people make the choices they do, and the reason why he wrote this book. The reviews I’ve read so far are a bit of a mixed bag, though mainly on the positive side. Some view the book as wonderful and insightful. Others see it as no more than commonsense, with what is stated being reminiscent of nothing other than an overly long blog post. Anyhow, the catchy phrase of Essentialism has got me hooked. Can’t wait to see what I make of it myself. I will update my review when I’ve completed the book.

Nice quality. Really excited to read this book. Thanks to Amazon for quick delivery.

Akıcı, bir kitap ve faydalı buldum.

Don’t sleep on this book. Each chapter is so meaningful and hits all the author’s points succinctly. I’ve found myself slowing down the read for fear of finishing it too fast

Really loved this book. Got lots of insights! I can keep rereading it.

I should have read this book earlier rather than listen to the negative reviews. Yes, the concept is simple - but it's not easy. It takes practice. Yes, it could have been a blog post - but how often do people change their life after reading a blog post? While I knew the concepts in the book, reading it and making lots of notes helps to cement new and better habits. The examples and stories given also help to remind us during our day to day life of what is really important for us to reach our specific goals. A must read for all.