A guide to a purposeful life devoid of superficiality. McKeown's observations seem very familiar, but they carry significant truth.

I started out thinking that the content was quite basic, but it turned out that it's much deeper than I expected. We often overvalue things that don't deserve it, while undervaluing what truly matters.

My Notes

The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials. — Liu Yutang

The way of the Essentialist is the relentless pursuit of less but better. It’s about being capable of saying “no” to things that don’t matter.

There are far more activities and opportunities in the world than we have time and resources to pursue. Although many of them may be good, even very good, the truth is that most are trivial, and only a few are truly vital.

• As an Essentialist, your purpose in life is to discern the difference and choose only what is truly essential.

• Essentialist vs NonEssentialist: Both exerts the same amount of energy, but the energy is divided for the NonEssentialist while it is redirected and focused on one thing for the Essentialist.

• Being an Essentialist is an approach to determine our highest point of contribution, not our highest point of frustration.

• If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.

• The Paradox of Success happens when you become successful but overwhelmed.

  • Phase 1 — When we have clarity of purpose, it allows us to succeed at our endeavor.
  • Phase 2 — When we have success, we gain reputation and seek to please people, getting more and more opportunities.
  • Phase 3 — With more opportunities demanding our time and energy, our efforts become increasingly diffused, spreading us thinner and thinner.
  • Phase 4 — We become distracted from what would otherwise be our highest level of contribution. The effect of our success has been to undermine the very clarity that led to success in the first place.

• The word priority came into English language in the 1400s and existed only in singular form.

• It wasn't until the 1900s that the word was pluralized, and people began talking about priorities. We mistakenly believed that by changing the word, we could bend reality, which is a significant error.

• Like a closet that becomes cluttered without organization, our lives and careers become burdened by too many options without proper management.

• The approach of the Essentialist is as follow:

  1. Explore & Evaluate— Instead of asking “Is there a chance I’ll wear this someday in the future?” you ask “Do I love this?”. Just as in professional life, ask “Will this activity or effort make the highest possible contribution toward my goal?”
  2. Eliminate — Everything that doesn’t make the highest possible contribution needs to be eliminated.
  3. Execute — Once you’ve figured out what activities and effort need to be kept, you need a system to make executing your intentions as effortless as possible.

• Essentialist is not a way to do one more thing, it’s a different way of doing everything.

• To embrace the philosophy of Essentialism, you must replace false assumptions with the mindset of “I choose to” and “Only a few things really matter.”

• We tend to overemphasize the external aspects of choices (our options) and underemphasize our internal ability to choose (our actions). The truth is, our options can be taken away, but our core ability to choose remains intact.

• Ask yourself, “If you could do only one thing with your life right now, what would you do?”

• The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even giving away—it can only be forgotten.

• When we don't realize we have better choices than the ones in front of us, we become accustomed to our current state, feeling limited and unable to change our situation—this is known as learned helplessness.

• Learned helplessness is a state that occurs after a person has experienced a stressful situation repeatedly. They come to believe that they are unable to control or change the situation, so they do not try—even when opportunities for change become available.

• We need space to escape in order to discern the essential few from the trivial many.

• With the rise of tech apps, we don’t have time left to be bored. It wasn’t the case back a few years ago, where you could only do nothing at the airport or in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. You need to get that time back, by planning it rigorously, if you want to take the control of your life. If you don’t, others will do it for you.

• Keeping a journal to record your thoughts and ideas is valuable not only because it helps you remember them but also because it clears mental space, allowing you to focus on what is essential.

• As we grow up, we often lose interest in the leisure activities that once brought us joy. The truth is, play sparks exploration and inspiration.

• Essentialists know that play is vital, while NonEssentialists think that only work is useful and any other things is a waste of time and trivial.

• When we play, we are engaged in the purest expression of our humanity, the truest expression of our individuality.

• Play broadens the range of options available to us. It helps us to see possibilities we otherwise wouldn’t have seen and make connections we would otherwise not have made.

• You know how it feels: you’re stressed about work and suddenly everything starts going wrong. 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)—the result being, simply, that we really can’t think clearly.

• The ability to select only, and truly what you want to do is an important skill of Essentialists.

• 90 Percent Rule: When you evaluate an option, think about the single most important criterion for that decision, and then simply give it a score between 0 and 10 or 0 and 100. If the score is below 9/0 or 90/100, then it is not what you truly want, therefore it is a clear no.

• When you know what your priority in life is and what you really want to do of your time, it’s easier to say “No” than to say “Yes”.

• Normative conformity (the desire to conform to our social group) is deeply ingrained in us. Therefore we feel guilty or afraid of disappointing those who make us requests.