After completing Greg McKeown’s “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” last week, I wanted to review the book and take notes on what I had taken away from it.

Initial Review & Rating 6-8 /10
If I were to sum up much of the book’s message in a single sentence, it would be: “Less is more, less is better."

Let me set out some context. I read this book right after Richard Koch’s 80/20 Principle, which could be summarized as “Achieve more with less. Lessons in asymmetric payoffs.” Additionally, having read books on stoicism, Taleb, Keller’s One Thing and all kinds Tim Ferriss books…. Much of what is written in Essentialism doesn’t seem new.

Rather, it’s another perspective on the same old (and important) idea. This was what I had hoped for going in and this is what I was met with. I found the book rather wordy and there were plenty of moments my marginalia notes said: this writing doesn’t seem essential.

However, it was an easy book to read as messages were simple. Sometimes it felt too oversimplified without actually addressing specific research or empirical examples in depth. Nevertheless, it achieved my intended purpose for reinforcing ideas I wanted to be reinforced by another voice.

That’s why I’d rate this in a range because in some ways it served a purpose but as a standalone book I found it lacking in measures as I found myself going back and forth on my relationship with this book and author.

Naturally, the book references many of the great perennial bestsellers like Drucker and Koch, which signals future readers would be better off reading about them first. Or even read Tim Ferriss Tools of Titans to get into the mindset.

I personally found the author’s lack of experience bringing forth elements of doubt as I read segments of the book. Though the McKeown had decided to quit law school and pursue consulting leadership teams after a MBA at Stanford….I found it hard pressed to fully appreciate his perspectives (or lack thereof). I’m being rather critical and I standby the fact that I could not help but write in notes of envy towards his career and it did give me hope to do similar work of my own in the future. So keep in mind I may just be jealous of him.

The key things I took away from this book was a reinforcement of the essentialist mindset. To that end, I think McKeown achieved his objective in reinforcing this view. I found the introspective exercises quite helpful as well. It’s not explicit at times but if one sits down with some of the questions and journals through it, I find it to be quite effective.

Overall, I was reminded to repeatedly ask oneself “What is essential?” daily. It’s similar to the ‘one thing’ question from Gary Keller’s book. I also came away with interesting case studies of creators and leaders building simple companies or living life to simple directives to further inspire my own life. I came away with more notes and ideas and that means the book added value to my life.


Book Notes:

Only a few things matter, figure what those are.

Make a decision. Choose to make the tradeoff based on what is truly essential.

Design over default.

Less is more. Take out processes. Take out obstacles. Make things as simple as possible but no simpler.

Be aware of feelings of overwhelm and exhaustion. If things seem to everywhere and out of control and if you don’t feel clear on what you are doing, take a step back. Re-assess and eliminate all non-essentials.

Have one priority. How can there be 5 priorities? Just have one.

“If I didn’t already own this, how much would I spend to buy it?”

Exploration first. Taste it all so you can decide on one later. One of the few books that clearly portrayed the decision-making process in my life and made me feel okay about it. The process of exploring and taking my time to deliberate before going hard on a decision. Making fast decisions isn’t always the way.

Triangulate between what you are inspired by, what you are talented at, and what people need.

Ask yourself, if you could only do one thing with your life right now what would you do?

What’s not important is having lots of options but the ability to choose an option in-line with intrinsic motivations.

I find the pursuit of optionality can be a slippery slope that creates more harm than good for most. Becoming the paradoxical donkey that couldn’t decide between food and water, eventually starving to death.

Optionality can transfer to companies. Some may have all kinds of optionality for upside when one invests but I imagine there is still correlation with these options and the company’s mission. This would be reasonable compared to companies that seem to want to pursue thousands of directions.

“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” - John Maxwell; most things don’t matter.

Most mission statements and company values don’t ‘say anything’. They regurgitate the obvious. Instead, look for ones that seem weird/unusual and simple. That might signal thought.

What do you want to go big on? Make the necessary tradeoffs.

Thoughtful leader to look into: Frank O’Brien of Conversations

Make space, play, sleep.

Remember Derek Sivers’ "Hell Yes or No". The entire book could also be summarized with this statement.

The 90% rule. If anything ranks below 9/10 then toss it out. Never settle for good enough. Applicable for investing in businesses and time. Merciless, ruthless criteria.

Page 111 exercise on criteria setting where you have a tier of minimum and extreme criteria an opportunity must meet. This reminds me of the ’shelves of priorities’ model in Tim Urban’s essay on selecting a career.

Enric Sala’s fascinating career journey to become the explorer-in-residence at National Geographic is inspiring.

Like Keller’s One Thing, strive to make decisions that will eliminate the need for 1000 other decisions.

If we could be truly excellent at only one thing, what would it be?

Just as importantly, figure out what to say no to. The Munger ‘inverse’ model.

Paul Rand told Steve Jobs he would make one logo for NeXT and Jobs could take it or leave it. Jobs wanted options. Rand said no and if Jobs wanted options he should go to someone else. Jobs stuck with Rand.

The “Endowment Effect” says we overvalue what we have and undervalue what we don’t. This is dangerous to generalize in absence of context. Experiment cited through Kahneman is how people will sell mugs then own for $5+ while buyers are only willing to buy for $2. This completely misses the context of how the people in experiments are most likely frugal students to whom small things like mugs actually hold value. This would fail if the sample group was millionaires. One cannot generalize “humans behave xyz” based on unrepeatable experiments.

Kill your best ideas. Stephen King says this. So does Munger. Don’t get attached. Take a step back. The best ideas may need to be killed to make room for better ones.

Book merely says kill your best ideas but doesn’t elaborate further. An unpolished chapter.

Entire chapter on ‘buffers’ is practically the idea of margin of safety.

Case study of the Richmond Police Department experimenting with Positive Tickets to reward citizens for positive behaviour. Worth exploring, saw no empirical evidence of this in 8 years I lived there.

Frederick Herzberg says internal motivation is driven by achievement and recognition.

The Stanford prison experiment is an example of how when people are given “roles”, they will act out and eventually become these roles. An example of how the environment nurtures us. I think this is an example of companies with policies that treat employees like children will nurture adult-children in their companies.

I need to make an effort to celebrate small wins. A system for recognition and achievement to drive progress.

Start your day doing the hardest one thing.

What do you need to do to be able to go to sleep peacefully? Make a list, then narrow in on one.

Listen to your gut on what really matters. This takes practice too. Hell Yeah or No. You know when it doesn’t feel right.