June 2, 2020

Essentialism Explained: How To Focus On What Matters | Greg McKeown on Modern Wisdom Podcast

Check out the Modern Wisdom Episode Page & Show Notes

Key Takeaways

• Just because someone is busier than you doesn’t mean they’re more important  
  • Being busy isn’t an achievement 
• Ask yourself: “What is my mission? What is the thing I came here to do?” – Greg McKeown
  • Once you’ve identified your mission and your important tasks, you can focus on them without having FOMO
    • “Instead of the fear of missing out or FOMO, you start to have the joy of missing out or JOMO”
• “When you’re sleep deprived, the executive function of your brain goes down so you can’t discern properly between what’s important and what’s not important” – Greg McKeown
  • Top performers tend to sleep 8.4 hours per night
• You don’t become successful and then become disciplined, you become disciplined and then you become successful
• Every day you should be writing out your to-do list and then prioritizing it
  • Create a new list every day, what was important yesterday isn’t always important today
• Two questions you need to ask yourself: 
  • Who am I?
  • Why am I here?
    • If you never ask yourself those questions, the stuff on your to-do list could be completely wrong

Intro

• Greg McKeown (@GregoryMcKeown) is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
• Host – Chris Williamson (@Chriswillx)

Books Mentioned

• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
• Scott Kaufman’s new book Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization talks about the importance of helping others 

Being Busy ≠ Success

• When you become successful, you get a lot more opportunities which can pull you in too many directions and end up hurting you
  • “Almost universally people will feel stretched too thin at work or at home, busy but not productive” – Greg McKeown
• Just because someone is busier than you doesn’t mean they’re more important  
  • Being busy isn’t an achievement 
    • It often means you’re being reactive instead of proactive

Having A Clear Mission = Success

• Ask yourself: “What is my mission? What is the thing I came here to do?” – Greg McKeown
  • Once you’ve identified your mission and your important tasks, you can focus on them without having FOMO
    • “Instead of the fear of missing out or FOMO, you start to have the joy of missing out or JOMO”
      • Do what’s essential, ignore what is not
• Find out what you’re really good at, then focus your energy in that direction
  • “Take the time to explore, figure out what you really can make a great contribution in and then go big in it”  – Greg McKeown
    • If you don’t know what you want to do:
      • Use inversion: List all the things you don’t like to do so you know to avoid them
      • Ask yourself what you’re passionate about or what you’d be interested in learning how to do
• If your mission is to be a writer, your first article doesn’t have to be the best thing ever written
  • You just have to start by publishing your first article and not letting perfectionism stop you
    • “It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be published and then the feedback will come and then you’ll learn something” – Greg McKeown
      • You can always go back and edit that article to make it better

Finding What’s Essential

• How do you find out what you should be doing?
  • List all of your tasks on importance from a 0-100 scale
    • Anything that’s under a 90, question and maybe even eliminate
      • “Every time you do something that’s below 90%, you’re taking it away from something that is 90% or above, you’re making a trade-off” – Greg McKeown
        • Anything that’s on the bottom 10%, just eliminate it
• We have to protect our ability to prioritize
  • You have to ignore both the internal and external nonessential voices
    • Really listen to your conscious about what you should be doing
      • “If you do that today in small ways, you don’t wake up 20 years from now and go, oh my goodness I’ve just given myself 20 years to the wrong goal” – Greg McKeown
• Just because you have a goal, it isn’t necessarily a worthwhile goal
  • Someone else’s goal isn’t your goal
• Serving others is a great essential task
  • “As soon as we step out to serve somebody else, I think a lot of that non-essential stuff starts to fall apart” – Greg McKeown
    • Scott Kaufman’s new book Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization talks about the importance of helping others 

Life Advice

• It can be hard to admit to yourself that you were wrong about something, but it’s important to be humble and admit mistakes
• You don’t become successful and then become disciplined, you become disciplined and then you become successful
• Don’t keep your phone in your bedroom at night
• Try to take a 10-minute nap every day, a vast majority of people are sleep deprived
  • “When you’re sleep-deprived, the executive function of your brain goes down so you can’t discern properly between what’s important and what’s not important” – Greg McKeown
    • Top performers tend to sleep 8.4 hours per night
• Every day you should be writing out your to-do list and then prioritizing it
  • Create a new list every day, what was important yesterday isn’t always important today
    • Two questions you need to ask yourself: 
      • Who am I?
      • Why am I here?
        • If you never ask yourself those questions, the stuff on your to-do list could be completely wrong
          • First, you need to find out the right things, then go spend time doing those things

Additional Notes

• If you play stupid games, you’ll win stupid prizes
• Often times there’s something we could be good at but we don’t know it since we’ve never tried it

Modern Wisdom : essentialism, life advice, priority, productivity, success, work
Notes By Alex Wiec