I friend of mine told me the other day that he’s interested in improving his focus and reigning in his inclination to spread himself too thin. I recommended that he read Greg McKeown’s book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, which I first read in 2017. He finished the book last week and told me he found it energizing but that it also made him angry.
He was energized because the book persuaded him that it really is possible to improve the quality of one’s life by spending less time on things that just aren’t all that important and doing a much better job with those few things that are essential. Where the anger came from was recognizing how difficult that would be in the company he works for, which virtually conspires to spread its employees too thin. Pushing back against those corporate sociological pressures may be the most intractable challenge for anyone attempting to apply the principle of essentialism. How do you “do less, do better,” as the book advises, when your career success seems to require that you do more and more regardless of the personal cost.
McKeown isn’t dismissive of this problem, but he asserts that you’ll ultimately be more successful if you narrow the range of what you do enough to ensure that you do those fewer things really well. And he suggests strategies for saying “no” in a way that doesn’t engender resentment on the part of your colleagues.
As I’ve noted, I’m almost fully retired. I no longer face the problem of how to keep all my professional balls in the air. But after hearing my friend’s reactions to Essentialism, I went back through the book and was once again impressed. I know so many people who feel swamped at work and in life in general. Part of the solution is having a robust system for keeping track of everything they need to do, which is what I help people with, but another part may be to just do less. McKeown’s book is a worthy guide for anyone wishing to explore that latter option.