Week 32nd 2020
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Customer Reviews:
4.5 out of 5 stars
Have you ever:
found yourself stretched too thin?
simultaneously felt overworked and underutilized?
felt busy but not productive?
felt like your time is constantly being hijacked by other people’s agendas?
If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is the Way of the Essentialist.
“A timely, essential read for anyone who feels overcommitted, overloaded, or overworked.”—Adam Grant
Essentialism is more than a time-management strategy or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter.
By forcing us to apply more selective criteria for what is Essential, the disciplined pursuit of less empowers us to reclaim control of our own choices about where to spend our precious time and energy—instead of giving others the implicit permission to choose for us.
Essentialism is not one more thing—it’s a whole new way of doing everything. It’s about doing less, but better, in every area of our lives. Essentialism is a movement whose time has come.
“NO IS A COMPLETE SENTENCE. —Anne Lamott” ― Greg Mckeown
“A popular idea in Silicon Valley is “Done is better than perfect.” ― Greg McKeown
“Remember that if you don’t prioritize your life someone else will.” ― Greg Mckeown
“Sometimes what you don’t do is just as important as what you do.” ― Greg McKeown
“of all forms of human motivation, the most effective one is progress.”― Greg McKeown
“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” ― Greg McKeown
“When you say yes to something nonessential, you are saying no to something essential” ― Greg McKeown
“Instead of asking, “What do I have to give up?” they ask, “What do I want to go big on?” The cumulative impact of this small change in thinking can be profound.” ― Greg McKeown
“Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless.” ― Greg McKeow
“The pursuit of success can be a catalyst for failure. Put another way, success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce success in the first place.” ― Greg McKeown
“...the faster and busier things get, the more we need to build thinking time into our schedule. And the noisier things get, the more we need to build quiet reflection spaces in which we can truly focus.” ― Greg McKeown
“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?” ― Greg McKeown
“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.” ― Greg McKeown
“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.” ― Greg Mckeown
Straight from the horse’s mouth, watch the Greg McKeown talks about discerning what is essential.
This 48 minutes lecture speaks to anyone who has ever felt overworked but underutilized, or always busy but never productive. Greg McKeown offers a framework for discerning what is essential and eliminating what is not.
About Greg McKeown?
Greg McKeown has dedicated his career to discovering why some people and teams break through to the next level—and others don’t.
The definitive treatment of this issue is addressed in McKeown’s New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.
As well as frequently being the #1 Time Management book on Amazon, this book challenges core assumptions about achievement to get to the essence of what really drives success.
Greg McKeown is the CEO of McKeown Inc. Clients include Adobe, Apple, Google, Facebook, Pixar, Salesforce.com, Symantec, Twitter, VMware and Yahoo!. His writing has appeared or been covered by The New York Times, Fast Company, Fortune, HuffPost, Politico, and Inc. Magazine. He is among the most popular bloggers for the Harvard Business Review and LinkedIn’s Influencers group: averaging a million views a month.
McKeown has been interviewed on numerous television and radio shows including NPR, NBC, FOX, and as a regular guest on The Steve Harvey Show. Entrepreneur voted his interview at Stanford University the #1 Must-See Video on Business, Creativity and Success. McKeown is an active Social Innovator. Serving as a Board Member for Washington D.C. policy group Resolve and as a mentor with 2 Seeds, a non-profit incubator for agricultural projects in Africa. He has also been a speaker at non-profit groups including The Kauffman Fellows, Net Impact and Stanford University: he recently gave back to Stanford University by co-creating a popular class called, Designing Life, Essentially.
He serves as a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum. He recently moderated a session at the “Summer Davos” in China called, “Unpacking Social Innovation Models for Maximum Impact”, served as a panelist at the “Sharpening Your Creative Edge” working session at the Forum. Prior to this, McKeown collaborated in the research and writing of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter and worked for Heidrick & Struggles’ Global Leadership Practice assessing senior executives. Originally from London, England, McKeown now lives in Calabasas, California with his wife, Anna, and their four children. He did his graduate work at Stanford University.