greg mckeown
Essentialism – The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
when people really get a chance to think and have the space….
it’s not that we don’t have the ability to discern.. it’s that we don’t have the time/space to take the time to think
time to turn everything off and see the bigger picture
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book links to amazon
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notes/highlights:
He made a daily commitment towards cutting out the red tape. He began saying no.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 2). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
red tape
German words: Weniger aber besser. The English translation is: Less but better.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 6). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
…a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 7). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
2 needs – deep enough to matter to everyone… then making execution of those things almost effortless.. short
success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce success in the first place.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 14). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Once an Australian nurse named Bronnie Ware, who cared for people in the last twelve weeks of their lives, recorded their most often discussed regrets. At the top of the list: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 16). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
purging closet.. rather than – will i ever wear this..“Do I love this?” and “Do I look great in it?” and “Do I wear this often?”… “If I didn’t already own this, how much would I spend to buy it?”
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 17-18). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
This book will show you how to live a life true to yourself, not the life others expect from you.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 19). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Everything changes when we give ourselves permission to be more selective in what we choose to do.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 25). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
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?
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 26). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
As poet Mary Oliver wrote: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 28). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Just imagine what would happen to our world if every person on the planet eliminated one good but nonessential activity and replaced it with something truly essential.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 28). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Essentialism is not a way to do one more thing; it is a different way of doing everything.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 32). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
IT IS THE ABILITY TO CHOOSE WHICH MAKES US HUMAN. —Madeleine L’Engle
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 33). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
John Maxwell has written, “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” 9
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 45). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 60). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
WITHOUT GREAT SOLITUDE NO SERIOUS WORK IS POSSIBLE. —Pablo Picasso
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 63). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
echo chamber ness
In every set of facts, something essential is hidden.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 74). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
quiet enough. notice the unlikely.
..listening more for what was not being said.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 76). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
By getting out there and fully exploring the problem, they were able to better clarify the question and in turn to focus on the essential details that ultimately allowed them to make the highest contribution to the problem.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 79). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
problem wasn’t so much making a cheap incubator for newborns.. but one that didn’t run on electricity – sleeping bag pod
Getting to the essence of a story takes a deep understanding of the topic, its context, its fit into the bigger picture, and its relationship to different fields.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 80). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The word school is derived from the Greek word schole, meaning “leisure.”
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 84). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Play, which I would define as anything we do simply for the joy of doing rather than as a means to an end—
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 85). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
play..
..play .. helps us to see possibilities we otherwise wouldn’t have seen and make connections we would otherwise not have made. .. It helps us challenge old assumptions and makes us more receptive to untested ideas. It gives us permission to expand our own stream of consciousness and come up with new stories. Or as Albert Einstein once said: “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.” .. play is an antidote to stress, and this is key because stress, in addition to being an enemy of productivity, can actually shut down the creative, inquisitive, exploratory parts of our brain. ..Recent findings suggest this is because stress increases the activity in the part of the brain that monitors emotions (the amygdala), while reducing the activity in the part responsible for cognitive function (the hippocampus) 7 —the result being, simply, that we really can’t think clearly.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 86-87). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The best asset we have for making a contribution to the world is ourselves.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 94). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
while we sleep our brains are hard at work encoding and restructuring information. Therefore, when we wake up, our brains may have made new neural connections, thereby opening up a broader range of solutions to problems, literally overnight. Some good news for the early birds and night owls among us: science shows that even a nap can increase creativity .
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 98). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
owls among us: science shows that even a nap can increase creativity .
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 98). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Sunk-cost bias is the tendency to continue to invest time, money, or energy into something we know is a losing proposition simply because we have already incurred, or sunk, a cost that cannot be recouped.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 146). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Ed. also – the asking – if you weren’t already immersed in this.. would you choose it.
NO IS A COMPLETE SENTENCE. —Anne Lamott
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 163). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
This power of a routine grows out of our brain’s ability to take over entirely until the process becomes fully unconscious. There is another cognitive advantage to routine as well. Once the mental work shifts to the basal ganglia, mental space is freed up to concentrate on something new. This allows us to autopilot the execution of one essential activity while simultaneously actively engaging in another, without sacrificing our level of focus or contribution. “In fact, the brain starts working less and less,” says Charles Duhigg, author of the book The Power of Habit. “The brain can almost completely shut down.… And this is a real advantage, because it means you have all of this mental activity you can devote to something else.”
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 207). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
the right routines can actually enhance innovation and creativity by giving us the equivalent of an energy rebate.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (pp. 207-208). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The work Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has done on creativity demonstrates how highly creative people use strict routines to free up their minds. “Most creative individuals find out early what their best rhythms are for sleeping, eating, and working , and abide by them even when it is tempting to do otherwise,” Mihaly says. “They wear clothes that are comfortable, they interact only with people they find congenial, they do only things they think are important. Of course, such idiosyncrasies are not endearing to those they have to deal with.… But personalizing patterns of action helps to free the mind from the expectations that make demands on attention and allows intense concentration on matters that count.” 6
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 208). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
According to researchers at Duke University , nearly 40 percent of our choices are deeply unconscious . 7 We don’t think about them in the usual sense. There is both danger and opportunity in this.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 209). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
how can we discard the routines that keep us locked in nonessential habits and replace them with routines that make executing essentials almost effortless?
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 209). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The ancient Greeks had two words for time. The first was chronos. The second was kairos. The Greek god Chronos was imagined as an elderly, gray-haired man, and his name connotes the literal ticking clock, the chronological time, the kind we measure (and race about trying to use efficiently). Kairos is different. While it is difficult to translate precisely, it refers to time that is opportune, right, different. Chronos is quantitative; kairos is qualitative. The latter is experienced only when we are fully in the moment— when we exist in the now.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 217). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Multitasking itself is not the enemy of Essentialism; pretending we can “multi focus” is.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 220). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
until I knew what was important right now, what was important right now was to figure out what was important right now!
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 221). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The Greeks had a word, metanoia, that refers to a transformation of the heart. We tend to think of transformations as happening only in the mind. But as the proverb goes, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” (italics added).
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 231). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
In many ways, to live as an Essentialist in our too-many-things-all-the-time society is an act of quiet revolution.
Mckeown, Greg (2014-04-15). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (p. 232). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
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find/follow Greg:
Greg McKeown (born in London, England, in 1977) is the author of the New York times Best SellerEssentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, (Crown Business, April 2014). He is a business writer, consultant, and researcher specializing in leadership, strategy design, collective intelligence and human systems. He has authored or co-authored books, including the Wall Street Journal Bestseller, Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (Harper Business, June 2010), and journal articles.
Originally from England, he is now an American citizen, living in Menlo Park, California. Greg holds a B.A. in Communications (with an emphasis in journalism) from Brigham Young University and an MBA fromStanford University.
The World Economic Forum inducted Greg into the Forum of Young Global Leaders. (See List of Young Global Leaders 2012)
Greg is currently CEO of THIS Inc., a leadership and strategy design agency headquartered in Silicon Valley. He has taught at companies that include Apple, Google, Facebook, Salesforce.com, Symantec,Twitter, and VMware. P
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What if you used every day as an experiment in what matters most? #DreamRoutine #EssentialExperiments pic.twitter.com/uN078I80Er
be you. 