The key ideas

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Greg McKeown, 2014

Why is it that the harder we try to get everything done, the less we get done of what really matters? Greg McKeown shows how to pick out the vital few, calmly turn down the rest, and set up your days so that the important things get done almost effortlessly. You'll learn to tell a clear yes from a polite maybe, and you'll take back the right to choose.

Who it is for

For anyone who is busy from morning to night and still feels that what matters most isn't moving. And for anyone tired of agreeing to everything who wants to decide again what their life is spent on.

Remember that if you don't prioritize your life, someone else will.

The meeting he left the maternity ward for

On a Friday morning Greg McKeown and his wife Anna had a daughter. Only a few hours later he was already answering work emails and calls. A colleague wrote that between one and two o'clock was a very bad time to have a baby, because that was exactly when he needed to be at a meeting with a client. McKeown knew where he belonged. And yet he left his wife and newborn daughter and went to the meeting. Absolutely nothing came of that meeting.

Later he understood the main thing: he had given up what mattered most in order to please other people. That lesson grew into the book Essentialism, which came out in 2014. McKeown, a British leadership consultant and a graduate of Stanford Graduate School of Business, had spent years watching smart, capable people drown in other people's requests.

His idea is simple and uncomfortable. You can't do everything, and you shouldn't try. An Essentialist is someone who does less, but chooses that less themselves and puts all their energy into it. The book moves in three steps: first work out what really matters, then remove what doesn't, and then set up your life so that the important things get done almost effortlessly.

Ahead there are violinists who sleep more than everyone else, an airline with no meals on board, dogs in a strange experiment and a boy with a heavy backpack. Each story is about taking back the right to decide what your life goes on. And this book, opened in the middle of everything you're doing, is already a small step in that direction.

The motto of a Braun designer

The German designer Dieter Rams led design at Braun for many years. His radios and shavers are still recognised today: there isn't a single unnecessary button on them. Rams fitted his approach into three words: "Weniger, aber besser". In English: less, but better.

McKeown takes this motto as the definition of his whole book. Rams saw almost everything around him as noise and saw his work as cutting through the noise to the essence. An Essentialist does the same with their life: filters out many good things in order to keep the few that matter most.

It's important to understand what Essentialism is not. It isn't a way to get more done in the same time, and it isn't yet another task management system. The point is a different question, asked before every task: not "how do I get all this done?" but "which of these things is really worth doing?"

McKeown contrasts the Essentialist with a person who tries to please everyone. That person says yes to almost any request, spreads themselves across a hundred directions and moves a millimetre forward in each. They're very busy, but their effort leaks out in every direction at once, like water from a leaky hose.

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About the author

Greg McKeown is a British writer and leadership consultant and a graduate of Stanford Graduate School of Business. He lives in California and hosts a podcast about focusing on what matters most.

All books by this author: Greg McKeown

Terms from the book

  • Stanford
  • Kahneman
  • Seligman
  • Buffett
  • Ericsson
  • Drucker
  • LinkedIn
  • Braun
  • Richmond
  • Joseph
  • Csikszentmihalyi
  • Covey
  • Goldratt
  • Southwest
  • Tversky
  • Learned helplessness
  • Juran
  • Essentialism: An approach from McKeown's book, not a scientific term: doing less but better, by consciously choosing the few things that really matter. From the English word essential.
  • Essentialist: McKeown's word for a person who lives by the principle of less but better and decides for themselves what to spend their time and energy on.
  • Rams: Dieter Rams (born 1932), a German industrial designer who led design at Braun for many years. Author of the motto "Weniger, aber besser" (less, but better).
  • Clarity paradox: A concept from McKeown's book, not a scientific term: success brings too many opportunities, and spreading yourself across them destroys the clarity that led to that success.
  • Maier: Steven Maier, an American psychologist and neuroscientist who, together with Seligman, ran the experiments that uncovered learned helplessness.
  • Kelleher: Herb Kelleher (1931 to 2019), one of the founders and the long-time head of Southwest Airlines.
  • Continental: Continental Airlines, a major American airline. In 2010 it announced a merger with United Airlines.
  • Porter: Michael Porter (born 1947), a professor at Harvard Business School and one of the best-known researchers of competitive strategy.
  • Trade-offs: Here: choices in which getting one thing means unavoidably giving up another.
  • Weiner: Jeff Weiner (born 1970), an American executive, chief executive of the social network LinkedIn from 2009 to 2020.
  • Concorde: A supersonic passenger aircraft built by Britain and France. It flew from 1976 to 2003.
  • Sunk cost: The sunk cost trap: the tendency to keep going with something only because a lot has already been put into it, even when it doesn't pay off.
  • Buffer: Here: a reserve of time or energy for the unexpected. An image from McKeown's book.
  • Planning fallacy: The tendency to underestimate how long a task will take, even when past experience says otherwise. Described by Kahneman and Tversky.
  • Herbie: A character in Goldratt's novel The Goal, the slowest boy in a scout troop, who carries the lesson about constraints.
  • Clapham: Ward Clapham, a Canadian police officer who led the Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment in Richmond and introduced positive tickets in 2002.
  • Royal Canadian Mounted Police: Canada's federal police force, which in a number of cities and provinces also does ordinary police work.

All terms

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