Essentialism is not abotu how to get more things done; it's about how to get the right things done. It doesn't mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible...
When making decisions, deciding to cut options can be terrifying – but the truth is, it is the very essence of decision making.
What if schools eliminated busywork and replaced it with important projects that made a difference to the whole community? What if all students had time to think about their highest contribution to th...
The overwhelming reality is: we live in a world where almost everything is worthless and a very few things are exceptionally valuable. As John Maxwell has written, You cannot overestimate the unimport...
In the first pattern, the team becomes overly focused on winning the attention of the manager. The problem is, when people don’t know what the end game is, they are unclear about how to win, and as a...
Anytime you fail to say no to a nonessential, you are really saying yes by default.
The point is to say no to the nonessentials so we can say yes to the things that really matter. It is to say no—frequently and gracefully—to everything but what is truly vital.
Obviamente, a nadie le gusta sentirse aburrido. Pero, al abolir cualquier oportunidad de sentirnos aburridos, también hemos perdido el tiempo que solíamos tener para pensar y procesar.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, The crime which bankrupts men and states is that of job-work; – declining from your main design to serve a turn here or there.
The endowment effect, our tendency to undervalue things that aren’t ours and to overvalue things because we already own them.
Ask three questions: What am I deeply passionate about? and What taps my talent? and What meets a significant need in the world? Naturally
O’Brien explica: Creo que es vital disponer tiempo para tomar un respiro, mirar alrededor y pensar. Necesitas ese nivel de claridad para innovar y crecer. Además,
I took a single sheet of paper from someone’s desk and sat in the lobby and attempted to answer the question: If you could do only one thing with your life right now, what would you do?
As Peter Drucker said, In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technolo...
We can either make the hard choices for ourselves or allow others – whether our colleagues, our boss, or our customers – to decide for us.
When I need a reminder of this I think of a story. It is about a man whose three-year-old daughter died. In his grief he put together a video of her short little life. But as he went through all of hi...
What if society stopped telling us to buy more stuff and instead allowed us to create more space to breathe and think? What if society encouraged us to reject what has been accurately described as doi...
The children were given ten tokens at the beginning of the week. These could each be traded in for either thirty minutes of screen time or fifty cents at the end of the week, adding up to $5 or five h...
Put another way, success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce success in the first place.
The way of the Essentialist isn't about setting New Year's resolutions to say no more, or about pruning your in-box, or about mastering some new strategy in time management. It is about pausing consta...