by Greg McKeown
I had a long chat with our AI team’s lead on leadership. One leadership principle we discussed is Focus — fewer things done better, a mantra from Jeff Weiner. She recommended this book to me as a principled way to pursue it. Unsurprisingly, I found many of her talk points in All Hands or meetings referred to this book..
I feel the core of leadership is to navigate unknowns and bring order to a chaotic environment. There are tons of distractions and context switches in a leader’s daily life, compared with being an individual contributor, you experience a much harder time focusing on fewer things. Nonetheless, I have enjoyed being a manager more and more is that — many learnings are transferable to my personal life — personal life is also multi-facet that you have to make choices. “Pursuit of Less” is not just a principle for being a good manager, it also appears as an essential sauce to have a satisfying life. The book is also a good example, “less but better” is not only for a destined path to have a good career, it is also a key principle for a contented life.
This book has 4 parts:
- Essence — what is the core mind-set of an Essentialist. This part defines essentialism and why essentialism matters.
- Explore — how can we discern the vital view from the trivial many. This part describes a way to discern the vital view from a chaotic world with many options.
- Eliminate — how can we cut out the trivial many? Cut is always hard, this part talk about how to say bye to the trivial many.
- Execute — how can we make doing the vital few things almost effortless? This part talks about how to integrate essentialism into daily life so it becomes a routine.
Another thing I learned last year was — mechanism is as important as the principle itself. For example — we all know culture and value matter, however, culture & value are non existing if you don’t have a proper mechanism to practice it with the team everyday. With the correct mechanism to run the team, you get an automated team.
Similar for the structure of this book, the first half of the book talks more about why Essentialism matters as a life style, the second half focuses a bit more on the execution/mechanism bit.
Excerpts
Part I: Essence
Chapter 1 The Essentialist
He stopped attending meetings on his calendar if he didn’t have a direct contribution to make. He explained to me, “Just because I was invited didn’t seem a good enough reason to attend.”
This reminded me of Warren Buffet’s calendar, it is absurdly empty. In comparison, even my calendar on average has at least a dozen meetings every single day. Often I went to meetings or 1:1s completely unprepared, it can be a waste of time for everyone. On a reflection, from next year, I also need to fix my calendar to ensure I’m prepared for every meeting I accepted. RSVP Yes is easy, No is hard..
Basic value proposition of Essentialism: only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the thing that really matter.
Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done.
Strategic — find the right thing to do.. tactical — do more things folks need now. In the end, everyone needs to balance between these two. Empirically speaking, the more senior you are, the more strategical you need to be and do the few right things that really matter.
The way of Essentialist means living by Design, not by default.
In other words, being mindful living a life.
If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will!
This line is probably the most powerful and succinct line for this book. We had been prioritized by our parents for most of the childhood (for good reasons), later being prioritized by your managers. Living a mindful means to find a way of living that your prioritization aligns with the prioritization of your career and life.
Paradox of success: (1) When we really have clarity of purpose, it enables us to succeed at our endeavor; (2) when we have success, we gain a reputation as a go-to person. We become the good old X that is always there when people need you; (3) when we have increased options and opportunities, we get spread thinner and thinner; (4) we become distracted from thwart would otherwise be our highest level of contribution.
When we don’t purposefully and deliberately choose where to focus our energies and time, other people — our bosses, our colleagues, our clients, and even our families — will choose for us, and before long we will have lost sight of everything that is meaningful and important.
We are looking for our highest level of contribution: the right thing the right way at the right time.
At work, we often talk about: “It’s all about prioritization.” We need to have ruthless prioritization for the limited resources in the team. The same actually also applies to our time everyday, you need to own your time along the day, and prioritize your time among different tasks you are dealing with and figure out which tasks can have the highest level of contribution for you.
Chapter 2 Choose
The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given away — it can only be forgotten.
Nonessentialist: I have to. Everything is ESSENTIAL!
Essentialist: I choose to. Almost everything is NONESSENTIAL!
We often say: “I have no choice but…” it can be true for a few rare situations that we have to make mindful tough decisions, but for many cases (a majority of time), it is just we haven’t explored the available options and followed what others tell us to do. Like “I have to go to this meeting because I am invited”, “I have to take this class because others have taken this”, on a reflection, you don’t have to, you have to because you don’t spend time thinking about what is essential and what is not for your time.
Chapter 3 Discern
Working hard is important. But more effort does not necessarily yield more results. LESS BUT BETTER does!
His observation was that you could massively improve the quality of a product by resolving a tiny fraction of the problems.
Similar as the “Competition Basis”, we need to figure out what are the culprit of a low quality product. The superficial issues and complaints by the customers are normally the root causes. The challenge is to navigate across a ton of issues and figure out the root cause.
Chapter 4 Trade Off
Ignoring the reality of trade-offs is a terrible strategy for organizations. The reality is, saying yes to any opportunity by definition requires aying no to several others.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions. There are only trade offs.
In No Rules Rules or Working Backwards, there was a mention about company value is all about making choices. I can’t agree more with that. If a company value is just a line of virtue without controversies like: we build good product. It is practically useless… nobody is gonna remember that. However, if you make it clear — we build product that prioritize quality over schedule. That makes a huge difference, because whenever people are in a dilemma to choose between missing deadline vs building a solid product, they have decision making framework to look at. Yes, it is all about trade offs, if you want both, normally you get nothing.
Part II: Explore
Chapter 5 Escape — the perks of being unavailable
In order to have focus we need to escape to focus.
Chapter 6 Look — see what really matters
Being a journalist of your own life will force you to stop hyper focusing on all the minor details and see the bigger picture.
Nonessentialists listen too. but they listen while preparing to say something. They get distracted by extraneous noise.
We often got trapped into a sunk cost fallacy due to missing the bigger picture. Our horizon is filled with a ton of issues with the current investment that we have to deal with, if we can step back and reevaluate from a bigger picture, it is much easier to avoid sunk cost fallacy.
Chapter 7 Play — embrace the wisdom of your inner child.
Play doesn’t just help us to explore what is essential. It is essential in and of itself.
Non addictive plays..
Chapter 8 Sleep — protect the asset
The best asset we have for making a contribution to the world is ourselves… a good night’s sleep actually makes us more productive, not less.
Chapter 9 Select — the power of extreme criteria
If the answer isn’t a definite yes then it should be a No.
When our selection criteria are too broad, we will find ourselves committing to too many options.
The team also use an explicit set of criteria in making their evaluation. Their primary criterion is, “Will this person be an absolutely natural fit?”
This is also similar to the “Keeper’s test” from Netflix. Less but better is not only for the tasks, but also for people. Reed Hastings let go 30% of his employees in his prior company and found the team became more productive, and established a core principle in Netflix to focus on Talent Density. We need to apply a super high bar in talent acquisition as well.
Part III: Eliminate
Chapter 10 Clarify — One Decision That makes a Thousand
When there is a serious lack of clarity about what the team stands for and what their goals and roles are, people experience confusion, stress, and frustration. When there is a high level of clarity, on the other hand, people thrive.
One strategic choice eliminates a universe of other options and maps a course for the next five, ten, or even twenty years of your life.
A team without an identity or a purpose only creates confusion. It is far better to disband the team than giving this team more tasks to make them feel existence.
Chapter 11 Dare — The Power of a Graceful “No”
We are unclear about what is essential. When this happens we become defenseless. On the other hand, when we have strong internal clarity it is almost as if we have a force field protecting us from the nonessentials coming at us from all directions.
I have found it almost universally true that people respect and admire those with the courage of conviction to say No.
- Separate the decision from the relationship. Only once we separate the decision from the relationship can we make a clear decision and then separately find the courage and compassion to communicate it.
- Saying No gracefully doesn’t have to mean using the word no.
- Focus on the trade-off.
- Remind yourself that everyone is selling something.
- Make your peace with the fact that saying No often requires trading popularity for respect.
- Remember that a clear No can be more graceful than a vague or noncommittal Yes.
The No repertoire:
- the awkward pause;
- the soft no (no, but);
- let me check my calendar and get back to you;
- use email bounce backs;
- say Yes, what should I deprioritize;
- say it with humor
- You are welcome to X, I am willing to Y.
- I can’t do it, but X might be interested.
Chapter 12 Uncommit — Win Big by Cutting Your Losses
Nonessentialist
- Why stop now when I’ve already invested so much in this project?
- If I jus keep trying, I can make this work.
- Hates admitting to mistakes.
Essentialist: - If I weren’t already invested in this project, how much would I invest in it now?
- What else could Ido with this time or money if I pulled the plug now?
- Comfortable with cutting losses.
Avoiding Commitment Traps
- Beware of the Endowment Effect
- Pretend you don’t own it yet.
- Get over the fear of waste.
- Admit failure to being success
- Stop trying to force a fit. The point is that we often act like Dustin Hoffman’s character by trying too hard to be something we’re not.
- Get a neutral second opinion.
- Be aware of the status quo bias.
- Apply zero based budgeting.
- Stop making casual commitments.
- From now on, pause before you speak.
- Get over the fear of missing out.
- To fight this fear, run a reverse pilot.
Chapter 13 Edit — The Invisible Art
The Latin root of the word decision — cis or cid — literally means TO CUT or TO KILL.
Chapter 14 Limit — The Freedom of Setting Boundaries
When we don’t set clear boundaries in our lives we can end up imprisoned by the limits others have set for us.
Part IV: Execute
Chapter 15 Buffer — The Unfair Advantage
Add 50% to your time estimate
Chapter 16 Subtract — Bring Forth More by Removing Obstacles.
An essentialist produces more — brings forth more — by removing more instead of doing more.
Chapter 17 Progress — The Power of Small Wins
Minimal viable preparation. What is the minimal amount I could do right now to prepare?
Chapter 18 Flow — The Genius of Routine
It’s more than just a natural extension of their training. It’s a testament to the genius of the right routine.
Every habit is made up of a cue, a routine, and a reward. Create new triggers and do the most difficult thing first.
Chapter 19 Focus — What’s Important Now?
Essentialist: mind is focused on the present; tunes in to what is important right now; enjoys the moment.
What we can’t do is concentrate on two things at the same time.
Chapter 20 Be — The Essentialist Life
When we look back on our careers and our lives, would we rather see a long laundry list of accomplishments that don’t really matter or just a few major accomplishments that have real meaning and significance?
As these ideas become emotionally true, they take on the power to change you.
Communicate the right thing to the right people at the right time.