Anyone here read this book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less ?

S

Ship69

0
Hello

I am extremely intrigued by this book I am reading: "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less" by Greg McKeown.

Whereas GTD seems to be a way of juggling shifting priorities and being efficient about what you take on and getting through it better. Greg McKeown has a radically different take on efficiency. He asks us to actually take on LESS.

McKeown asks us to take on less, MUCH less in a very deliberate, disciplined way. And that by doing so we will regain control of our health, well-being and happiness.

The core idea behind this is that most of what we are asked to do is BS and that we can actually achieve a lot more by taking on a lot less. McKeown says that it's extremely easy for our efforts to become spread way, way too thin, leading to stress, burn-out because we feel that we all need to "do everything". He claims that clarity of focus and the ability to say 'no' are both critical and undervalued in business and life in general today.

Fwiw, Michael Hyatt - (productivity guru - he of 250K twitt followers) said "it is the best book he's read in the last 5 years"
http://michaelhyatt.com/essentialism.html

Have any of you good people here read it? If so what do you make of it?

J
 
I have not read it (thanks for the recommendation) but I have noticed something that related to this:

The core idea behind this is that most of what we are asked to do is BS and that we can actually achieve a lot more by taking on a lot less.
Click to expand...

A while ago, I had reason to move everything relating to one of my areas of focus to someday/maybe. The crisis that caused this was narrowly averted and that AoF is once again an important part of my life. However, not one of those actions or projects has made its way back to my active lists. It turns out that I was happy to do those things while they were on my lists but I didn't really care enough about them to bother resurrecting them.

I'm still trying to work out what to do about this observation. The best I've come up with so far is to ask myself some questions in my weekly review:

Does anyone else care about this project or action?
If no, do I REALLY care about it?
 
Ship69 said:
I am extremely intrigued by this book I am reading: "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less" by Greg McKeown.

Whereas GTD seems to be a way of juggling shifting priorities and being efficient about what you take on and getting through it better. Greg McKeown has a radically different take on efficiency. He asks us to actually take on LESS.

McKeown asks us to take on less, MUCH less in a very deliberate, disciplined way. And that by doing so we will regain control of our health, well-being and happiness.

The core idea behind this is that most of what we are asked to do is BS and that we can actually achieve a lot more by taking on a lot less.
Click to expand...
I haven't read it but have now added the sample to my possible books list. It sounds interesting, especially as I am in the middle of a major de-clutter and clean up of physical stuff, digital files and time commitments.

That said I don't see GTD as primarily a way of juggling priorities or being efficient but more of a way to curate what you will take on and then place it in the large scheme of things in a way that will allow you to get it done to a level of quality and completion you feel is appropriate.

If you follow the workflow path for processing your inputs one of the first things is to decide what it is and then whether it is actionable. That is the stage at which you get to choose how much you will allow onto your plate or lists. The best way to reduce your tasks is to say no to many of the items that come into one of your inboxes.

Without having read the book yet, your comment that McKeown asks us to take on less in a disciplined way seems to me to be just another way of saying the same things GTD is saying. Which way resonates with you will depend on you but the core idea is the same.
 
I have read the book. My takeaway was we take on far more work and responsibilities than we should. The primary reason is the fear of saying no to someone or something. The concept is good but it is hard to put into practice. His idea of sorting out the essential and non-essential fits with GTD in the sense of doing what you can with resources available in the place you have them. It also fits in the workflow of delegating or deferring it. All of those GTD practices force us to focus on what really needs to be done right now. (I know I have done weekly reviews and just dropped projects because they were not essential.).

I would suggest reading the book since it really kicks overwhelmed people in the seat of the pants and gets them to think.
 
Is it necessary to read a whole book to understand that we should prune the unimportant stuff to focus on the most important things?

We all know it. Easier said than done.
 
I recommend the book. As productive people, I think we all have a tendency to try to take on too much....even things that are not essential. I mostly enjoyed the stories and anecdotes. There are elements of the author's philosophy that dovetails with what we know about solid GTD practices.
 
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