Hey guys today we're going to talk about some of the key concepts in the book Essentialism. I
first read this book when it first came out and I've read it several times since then.
It's a super easy read, it's just over 200 pages, and the concepts in this book are really helpful
and can apply to pretty much anything. So whether you want to apply them to business,
to your side hustles, to your person life, or to your investments, I think that there is something
that everyone can get out of this book, and I know that I've gotten something different out
of it each time I've read it. The overarching theme of this book is less but better. And this
is a concept that isn't new, we've heard a lot of successful people bring up this concept in
similar ways. So for example Jeff Bezos in several interviews and different talks that he has given
has talked about making fewer, but higher quality decisions. And that really is what is at the core
of this book is figuring out what you can say no to in your life in order to make better decisions
and to make higher quality ones. The first major concept in the book is
learning how to say no and how to cut out the nonessential things and tasks in your life
and this is something that a lot of people do have trouble with is saying no to things. So the book
challenges you to ask yourself am I investing in the right activities? And again this doesn't apply
just to actual investments, but you can apply this question across any area of life. The first
chapter of the book gives you several diagrams that you can reference as you read on later into
the book, but one of these first diagrams shows the non-essentialist vs the essentialist. So the
non-essentialist is someone that spreads themself too thin, tries to go in every different direction
that they're pulled, and really doesn't get very far in any of these directions because they're
trying to go so many places at once. Whereas the essentialist is someone who really cuts out the
outside distractions, focuses in on one thing, and does that thing really well. The book also
gives you two diagrams showing where you can find the highest point of frustration in your life, and
the highest point of contribution. So that highest point of frustration really encompasses the whole
Gary Vee hustle culture of doing everything that's popular, doing it all, and doing it all
now. Whereas where you can reach your highest point of contribution is actually when you cut out
a lot of these distractions and do the right thing at the right time for the right reason. It then
gives you another diagram of how you can actually start cutting things out in your life and start
saying no to things. And so that cycle is just to explore the ideas that you want to explore,
eliminate the ones that aren't working or that aren't serving you, or that you just don't like,
and then just to actually execute on the ones that are the most important or the ones that
you actually want to pursue. And again that can really apply to any area of life. The
second key concept in the book is the concept of learned helplessness. The book talks about an
experiment two psychologists did with dogs and electric shocks, and basically what they found
is that a dog would not try to escape an electric shock if it had been conditioned to believe that
there was no escape. Bringing that more into a real world people scenario, they talk about a guy
who has spent years and years at his job thinking that he hates his work, but really he was just
at the wrong company the whole time but he never really saw it as an option to leave. And so this
second point is really just to emphasize that you can always exercise your power of choice and you
don't necessarily have to do something a certain way just because that is the way that we have been
conditioned to believe that it should be done. The third key point is that some types of effort
yield higher rewards than other types of effort. So the example that they give in the chapter where
they're talking about this is actually of Warren Buffet. So they say that for a very long time
90% of his wealth actually only came from 10% of his investments. Basically what they talk about is
that early on Warren Buffet knew that he wouldn't be able to make the right investment decisions
hundreds of times, so what he did was he selected companies that he was absolutely sure what he knew
what was going on with them, and he decided to invest heavily in those. And those are the
companies that he ended up doing the best in. The fourth takeaway is to take breaks and to actually
get sleep. Again this is a concept that goes very much against the whole Gary Vee hustle culture
work all the time mentality. The book does talk about this and how it's kind of celebrated in
Silicon Valley and in startups and in the whole entrepreneur space that less sleep somehow equals
more productivity. When actually if you look at the science behind it, when you get better sleep,
you're able to be more productive and your thought processes are clearer. And so the book also talks
about Bill Gates and how he famously takes his think week. And this is just a week where he
takes off from all responsibilities at Microsoft, basically just goes out on his own - reads,
thinks, does whatever he wants for a week and does not work. So the book really encourages you to set
aside some distraction free time in a distraction free place and really allow yourself to think and
to rest. The fifth takeaway from the book is to build in buffers. So whether that is with projects
that you're working on, with your finances, or just with your time, we know that things
don't always go as planned, and so the book really encourages you to always build in that buffer to
your timeline or whatever you're planning so that you aren't really disappointed or really surprised
when extra things come up. The sixth lesson from Essentialism is to keep a journal. And the book
encourages you just to journal whenever you can for whatever amount you can whether that's a
sentence or two every week, every couple of days, or even just a couple time a month. And it really
emphasizes that going back and looking at the journal is a lot easier and a lot more accurate
than us just trying to remember things on our own. We forget things really easily, and so having our
goals and what we're thinking about just written down somewhere, even if it's just a couple of
sentences or bullet points, can really help you reflect on what you're trying to do and maybe
how you can make better decisions going forward. The seventh lesson from Essentialism is to start
celebrating small wins to get to bigger goals instead of just trying to set one giant goal and
accomplishing it all at once. If you break down that bigger goal into those smaller milestones,
you're going to see a lot more progress in those, and that will motivate you to keep going. Whereas
if you just set one big goal and you see very little progress on it, a lot of times that is when
we experience burnout. The eighth lesson is to start setting routines that help you eliminate the
non-essential decisions and things in your life and that really help you focus on those essential
things. So not only could this just be your daily routine, but they also talk about a CEO that has
different tasks assigned to different days of the week. So Mondays he does marketing, maybe
Tuesdays he gets through all of his meetings, and he organizes his weekly routine that way.
It also talks about having routines for how you handle particular situations and situations where
you are going to say no. So maybe if you work with clients, it's having a routine that you go through
of determining whether or not to actually onboard that client, and whether or not they
are worth your time and you kind of go through that checklist of your routine and you assess it
that way. If you don't have time to actually read the book, Matt D'Avella did an interview with the
author of the book, and they hit a lot of the important key points in there, so if you have
30 minutes to listen to that instead of reading the entire book, that's always an option as
well. If you want to see any of the other reviews we've done on books regarding business, finance,
and entrepreneurship, I'll put that playlist up on the screen and I will see you over there.