Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work, they said. 5
Nothing fires up the brain like play.
Nonessentialists listen too. But they listen while preparing to say something. They get distracted by extraneous noise. They hyperfocus on inconsequential details. They hear the loudest voice but they...
Jack Dorsey, the cofounder of Twitter and founder of Square, has an interesting approach to his weekly routine. He has divided up his week into themes. Monday is for management meetings and running th...
Is there a point at which doing less (but thinking more) will actually produce better outcomes?
In a moment of insight, Alex sees how this approach could also be applied to turning around his production plant. Instead of trying to improve every aspect of the facility he needs to identify the Her...
In George Orwell’s classic allegorical novel Animal Farm we are introduced to the fictional character Boxer the horse. He is described as faithful and strong. His answer to every setback and every pro...
If I had made an exception then I might have made it many times.2 Boundaries are a little like the walls of a sandcastle. The second we let one fall over, the rest of them come crashing down.
However, not pushing back costs more: our ability to choose what is most essential in life. For Jin-Yung and Clay, respect in the workplace and time for God and family were most important, so these we...
For one, there is a heavy price just in terms of human dynamics. The fact is, motivation and cooperation deteriorate when there is a lack of purpose. You can train leaders in communication and teamwor...
For example, Nelson Mandela spent twenty-seven years in jail becoming an Essentialist. When he was thrown in jail in 1962 he had almost everything taken from him: his home, his reputation, his pride,...
Essentialists see trade-offs as an inherent part of life, not as an inherently negative part of life. Instead of asking, What do I have to give up? they ask, What do I want to go big on? The cumulativ...
Editing our time and activities continuously allows us to make more minor but deliberate adjustments along the way. Becoming an Essentialist means making cutting, condensing, and correcting a natural...
The planning fallacy.6 This term, coined by Daniel Kahneman in 1979, refers to people’s tendency to underestimate how long a task will take, even when they have actually done the task before
The pause that refreshes. This technique is easy. He stops for just a moment. He closes his eyes. He breathes in and out once: deeply and slowly. As he exhales, he lets the work issues fall away. This...
The faster and busier things get, the more we need to build thinking time into our schedule. And the noisier things get, the more we need to build quiet reflection spaces in which we can truly focus.
Not just haphazardly saying no, but purposefully, deliberately, and strategically eliminating the non-essentials, and not just getting rid of the obvious time wasters, but cutting out some really good...
Es un editor?, hay dos preguntas básicas que el editor debería plantearle al autor: ¿Estás diciendo lo que quieres decir?, y ¿lo estás diciendo de la manera más clara y concisa posible?[7]
Choice is an action. It is not just something we have but something we do. This experience brought me to the liberating realisation that while we may not always have control over our options, we alway...
But Kelleher was totally clear about what the company was—a low-cost airline—and what they were not. And his trade-offs reflected as much.