We live in an era of abundance.
You now have access to a very large amount of information, entertainment, opportunities…
and that gives us a huge desire to want to be everything, have everything and do everything.
The problem is that this possibility in doing a bunch of things also reveals a big truth:
we can’t do everything.
No matter how many productivity techniques you master, it’s humanly impossible for
you to have everything you desire, live all of the experiences that you would like to
live, watch all the movies and tv shows, read all of the books, have an athletic body, a
millionaire career... and even if you managed to do all of that, you probably still wouldn't
have the happiness that you think these achievements would all bring.
Whoever tries to be everything, have everything and do everything ends up with a busy schedule
with unimportant commitments, a house cluttered with unnecessary things and mainly a mind
filled with concerns that consumes all of your energy.
Instead, you should have clarity on what you really want in life.
You should focus only on what’s essential and use all your energy to develop more and
more these few things that bring you happiness and well being.
In the book “Essentialism: the disciplined pursuit of less” [source: https://arata.se/source-5tnq],
Greg Mckeown explains exactly how you can concentrate on what’s essential to put your
energy in the right things.
In today’s Arata Academy Summary, we are going to see, in detail, what is essentialism
and mainly how you can apply these ideas in practice, in your life, to reduce the amount
of junk in your home, on your agenda and in your mind.
The essentialist’s basic mentality is to know how to choose the right things and realizing
the unimportance of almost everything.
The fact that you live in an era of abundance where you can do basically everything doesn’t
mean that you SHOULD do everything.
On the contrary, to avoid losing yourself in an ocean of tasks and unnecessary things,
you need to learn how to choose what is really essential.
Essentialism is a philosophy of life whose principle is to make you choose the right
things and give up everything else that is unimportant.
To summarize Essentialism in three words: less, but better.
That doesn’t mean doing less only for the sake of doing less.
It actually means investing time and energy in the wisest way possible to give your maximum
contribution doing only the essential.
Only when you allow yourself to stop trying to do everything and stop saying yes to everyone
is when you can do your best in what is really important.
In other words, you should do LESS, but do BETTER.
The essentialist is the one that knows how to choose the right tasks to put in energy,
giving up all the other unimportant tasks.
The best way to do this is realizing that almost everything in your life isn’t very
important.
Instead of wanting to do a little bit of everything, advancing very little in each direction, focus
on choosing only one objective and put all of your energy in to advance on a large scale
in that goal.
This is a process of continuous improvement.
At all times you need to be asking yourself what is in fact essential in your life right
now, knowing how to say no to everything else.
If you say “I have to…”, then you're still far from Essentialism.
When you make your to-do list, for the majority of the items you say “I have to..” or
“I choose…”?
I have to go to a meeting.
I have to go on a diet.
I have to pay the bills.
I have to binge watch that tv show.
Lots of times we are so overloaded with to-do lists that we end up losing our ability to
choose what we really want to do.
Instead of choosing with clarity, we spend a good amount of our life reacting to events,
doing what we “need to do”.
It’s as if we were trained puppies that respond in a certain way when we receive a
specific command.
When you lose the capacity to choose what’s important, you’re letting other people choose
for you.
And these other people are going to prioritize in your life what is actually important for
them.
Therefore those that don’t have clarity about the essential ends up occupying their
own life with tasks that are priorities for others.
Things that are important for your boss, for advertisers, for influencers, for family or
coworkers....
But not necessarily things that are important to you.
Accept that you have to lose to win.
Choosing what is important means giving up everything else.
If you go back to 1972 and choose a company to invest your money in, which company would
you choose?
General Electric?
IBM?
Intel?
As a matter of fact, the company that would most profit would be Southwest Airlines.
Airlines are not usually very profitable, but Southwest stood out from the rest by adopting
essentialism as a business philosophy.
In this case, Southwest identified that the essential for an airline company was to take
the passenger to point A to point B. They chose to do only that with excellence, giving
up all the extra services that an airline company tries to offer.
Choosing to do only one thing and accept losing all the rest can seem a bit boring.
But this boredom can be good for you.
Instead of filling all of your minutes in your schedule with an endless list of things
to do, leave space for boredom, for leisure, for reflection.
These moments will help you to think, to be clear about what is really essential in your
life.
Great minds in history, like Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein, understood the power of
time and space to think.
The two scientists used to set aside time to be alone, thinking, clarifying which problems
they should concentrate to solve.
Today, many presidents of successful companies do the same.
They purposely reserve time in their schedule to have time to reflect about what they are
doing.
These CEOs understand the benefits of being unavailable.
That way they can escape from the endless stream of tasks to move away from the operacional
and have an overview of the problems they face.
You can do the same.
If you’re always dealing with small tasks, you can end up losing the notion of why you’re
doing all of this.
Therefore, from time to time, set aside some space to stop and reflect on what you’re
doing.
And mainly to clarify why you’re doing all of this.
Adopt your inner child's wisdom.
Playing can awaken your most creative ideas.
When you are going to identify what is essential in your life, there is a tendency for you
to cut out anything related to games, amusement, relaxation.
Don’t commit this error: playing is essential to awaken your creativity and renovate your
mind for the most challenging tasks.
Playing helps your brain to establish new connections between ideas in a way that would
never be considered before.
The games can also help to fight stress, an evil aspect that can ruin your productivity.
It’s not by chance that big companies such as Google, Pixar or Twitter reserve physical
spaces and time so that their employees can play.
These companies know that when employees have fun, then they feel more inspired and are
more productive compared to employees that only work.
Besides playing, you should also reserve time to rest.
Sleeping the necessary hours to recover isn’t luxurious, but yes something essential to
protect you physical and intellectual patrimony.
Sleeping well can increase your ability to think, connect ideas, to produce better in
less time.
An extra hour of sleep can mean various hours of productivity the day after.
Be ruthless to cut out everything that isn’t essential in your life.
Now that you understood the importance of focusing on what is actually essential, maybe
you have certain difficulties in giving up what’s not essential.
Maybe when you start looking at your to-do list, goals or even your possessions, start
to think that everything is important.
Thinking that all of our tasks and responsibilities are equally important is a common trap.
And the only way to escape this trap is to have well-defined criteria to identify what
is essential and what is not.
A good criterion to be adopted is the ninety percent rule.
For example, imagine that you are cleaning your wardrobe.
When in doubt if you should or shouldn’t discard a piece of clothing, ask yourself:
from zero to one hundred, what’s the chance that I'll want to use this again?
If your answer is any number from zero to eighty nine, discard the piece.
But don’t make exceptions.
The secret here is to define a criteria and be very harsh regarding the defined criteria.
Another criteria is the Yes Obviously.
By that criteria, everything that isn’t a yes obviously is a no obviously.
For example, imagine that you’re practicing jogging because one day you thought that would
be good for your life.
When reviewing that commitment, you probably ask yourself: is jogging really something
essential for my life right now?
If the answer isn’t a “yes, obviously”, then it’s a no.
And the commitment with jogging should be discarded.
Speaking like this might seem ruthless, but that is the most effective way for you to
stick to what is essential.
It was precisely because you were too flexible, for wanting everything at the same time, that
you ended up assuming more commitments, more tasks or even more possessions than you can
handle.
Now it’s time to step back and focus on what’s essential.
Learn how to say no to unimportant tasks.
After, plan carefully the essential tasks.
To be an essentialist, you need to learn how to say no.
An elegant No, but still a No.
Discarding clothing or an individual commitment like jogging is relatively easy because it
doesn’t involve other people.
The challenge is way bigger when you need to discard commitments confirmed with friends,
family or coworkers.
We are afraid of saying no.
That’s why Arata Academy has a training called How To Say No, that you can experience
in http://arata.se/howtosayno.
We’re afraid of what others are going to think about us or we simply don’t want to
disappoint others.
Even so, saying no is necessary.
If you don’t learn how to say no, you will continue forever to assume responsibilities
and priorities that aren’t yours, but of others.
Even if saying no will make you suffer for a few days, it is still better than saying
yes to something you don't want and that will consume your time and energy for much longer.
When you say yes to something you don’t want, you’re wasting an opportunity to do
other things that could really be important in your life.
The most elegant way to say no is to separate your decision from the relationship you have
with the person.
Instead of saying no in a dry manner and with no explanations, call the person to talk.
Explain why you’re saying no, show that you have other priorities, clarify that your
time and your energy are limited and that you can’t assume one more commitment.
Earn time and energy by giving up commitments.
Establishing limits gives you freedom.
Beyond saying no to new opportunities, you should also give up from commitments that
were established before and that don’t make sense nowadays.
You can win a lot if you learn to reduce loss and simply give up what has already passed.
For example, let's say you paid an annual fee at the gym in advance.
You feel stuck with that commitment, even though doing gymnastics at the gym isn’t
pleasurable for you at all.
This is called sunk cost bias.
The sunk cost bias is the tendency to continue investing time, money and energy in activities
that you know won’t take you anywhere.
It may seem that giving up some commitment in which you have invested so much is unwise,
but the truth is that giving up what isn’t essential is liberating.
So, back to our example, instead of wasting time and energy with this, why not accept
that you lost this money and give up the gym?
Why not invest your time and your energy in a physical activity that really gives you
pleasure and well being for you?
Giving up commitments means admitting your own mistakes and moving forward.
If it’s already clear for you that the commitment isn’t going to work, don’t be afraid to
shut down that commitment and stop losses.
But remember to at least learn from your mistakes.
Trace limits to new commitments.
Don’t look at the limits as restrictions, but see them as a tool to make your life simpler
and focused on what’s essential.
Execute your tasks like an essentialist.
Produce better by removing obstacles.
Finding what’s essential and eliminating the rest is only the first part of your journey
in essentialism.
After you clarified everything that is really important for your life, it’s necessary
that you execute your tasks that are considered essential.
To produce better, you need to remove all of the obstacles between you and your essential
tasks.
Pay attention to what you identified as really important and see what is preventing you today
of doing, being or having these essential items.
After removing the present obstacles, make a plan to prevent those new obstacles appear.
Don’t fall into thinking that you’re going to make a better plan only one time and it’s
going to work forever.
Every week, you should take a look at your plan, at the execution and identify what is
working and what isn’t.
This is a process of continuous improvement that will always keep you focused on what’s
essential.
As soon as the essential works, transforme everything you can into routines.
Giving up objectives, commitments and even material assets is a process.
Don’t think that everything will go well, that you will get everything right the first
time.
It is very likely that you will make several mistakes and that you will learn from these
mistakes along your journey.
But once you find something that works, do your best to transform these small victories
into a routine.
Into something that can be repeated to exhaustion.
For example, let’s say that you always suffered to eat well and to have a balanced weight.
You already tried various diets, but they never worked out.
Until you decided to focus on the essential: eating organic food, minimally processed and
practicing physical exercise that is pleasurable for you.
Once you find what works for you in your specific case, transform that into a routine.
Automate as much as you can.
Reduce obstacles, detours, temptations.
Avoid even trying to find things on the internet or reading books about other options.
When you transform a solution into a routine, you free up time, mental space and energy
to dedicate to other challenges.
These small victories create momentum, that gives confidence for you to reach other small
victories.
With time, these small victories are going to accumulate and change gradually throughout
time.
Waiting for your life to change from night to day with only one decision is having too
much hope in something very unlikely.
Instead, understand the changes of a person that wants to be everything, have everything
and do everything all at the same time, for an essentialist, it’s a process, with highs
and lows, but is sustainable in the long term.
With essentialism, you can have a simpler life.
You can get out of debt, can reduce the amount of unnecessary stuff in your house and worries
in your head.
With a much lighter life and focused on a small amount of smaller tasks, you will be
able to focus on less activities to really give your best.
Essentialism is a philosophy of life that can be translated into three: less, but better.
The book from Greg Mckeown shows how you can choose what you want to do, understand the
unimportance of almost everything and give up on what’s not important to focus only
on what’s essential.
For that, you need to escape the unimportant task flow, look at the big picture of what
really matters and select in a very limited way in what you will invest your time, money
and energy.
This is a journey that will demand that you say No to commitments assumed with other people,
to new opportunities and even to some of your old desires.
For those of you that want to discover how to say no in an elegant and assertive way,
I recorded a special class from the course How To Say No with three tips for you to learn
and finally communicate in an assertive, firm and educated way.
You can see this class right now by accessing http://arata.se/howtosayno