On and because of Essentialism.

I have listened to the audiobook version of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown twice now. The concepts in this book seem to be the antidote to the twenty first century toxic urge to "do it all". This pressure that most of us feel to do more than we already do, and to be more than we already are, is one imposed on us by society, but at the heart of it, it is self-inflicted through the illusion that we have no other choice.

We experience this kind of pressure because we are unconsciously agreeing with the expectations of "the world" of us. The world in this case could be your boss or your parents. Most commonly the world is what goes on in your mind as you scroll through your social media feed, looking at everyone's selected "moments of achievement". It seems like you should be more of everything, do more work, but also have more fun.

Taking a moment to pause and reflect on all this, it is pure insanity. We have absolutely no filter, no information hygiene as François Chollet puts it. We are always on auto-pilot. It is a recipe for disaster. We end up feeling overwhelmed, overworked, depressed and frustrated. While we are host to the afore-mentioned feelings, we feel ashamed of having them. Almost like there is no reason for them all, almost like the only reason is that we are actually unqualified. But we are not unqualified. We are not taking advantage of our power of choice, that's all.

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown puts into focus the phenomena of going through life with no clear vision for who you are, who you want to be and the things that you value most. With no clear vision of your own for what is essential, your vision becomes the world's vision, and the world's vision is, more often than not, unaligned with your own. If you never take moment to examine your most authentic vision, however, you can not detect this discrepancy.

Through out the book, Greg makes the distinction between the "essentialist" and the "non-essentialist". To summarize, the essentialist is someone who takes his time to figure out where to put their effort so that they offer their highest contribution. The essentialist doesn't want to do it all, they want to do a few things and do them really well. The essentialist is not very distracted because they took their time in figuring out what to focus on. They are also more experimentalist, because in the process of figuring out what matters most, they systematically ask themselves different questions, and could pursue different possibilities with the goal of settling on a few. The essentialist direction comes from within, not from the external noise.

On the other hand one way to describe the non-essentialist would be that they are who most people are most of the time. That is to say, people who want to do it all, feel always uneasy and distracted by the load of things to get done, say yes more often than they mean to. Socialize when they don't want to and feel obligated to take on more tasks and always feel behind in an unidentified race. Always expecting more from themselves because of the feeling that they are not doing "enough". The non-essentialist is your most common, your average, twenty first century person living on auto-pilot.

The book discusses ways to systematically implement essentialist strategies which I have found very useful. It did a one-eighty one how I make my decisions. When confronted with a choice, social or professional, I really try and take my time to make it. When I start the day I ask myself the question "what is the most important thing that I would like to make progress on today?", when asked to join a social setting I ask myself "Am I ready to enjoy socializing tonight? Will I be wishing I was home while I am around people? Would I rather hang out with x on my own so I have more chance of spending quality time with her?".

I think this way of thinking, the fact that I realize that everything I do and where I put my attention is a choice rather than something that happens to me, is truly precious. It is a huge change in perspective.

In one of my favorite podcasts, The Tim Ferris Show, Tim Ferris asks his interviewees about their most gifted or recommended book. At this particular moment, I feel very confident that Essentialism would be my non fiction book of choice.

PS: This is written during a writing group session that includes a few writing enthusiasts and myself. If you are a writing enthusiast as well and would like to join on muted writing sessions, let me know.  Oh and if you're reached this far, I must say it is absolutely flattering.