We can’t have it all or do it all. If we could, there would be no reason to evaluate or eliminate options. Once we accept the reality of trade-offs we stop asking, “How can I make it all work?” and start asking the more honest question “Which problem do I want to solve?
Zen, the Reason of Unreason; The Wisdom of Confucius; the Torah; the Holy Bible; Tao, to Know and Not Be Knowing; The Meaning of the Glorious Koran: An Explanatory Translation; As a Man Thinketh; The Essential Gandhi; Walden, or, Life in the Woods; the Book of Mormon; The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius; and the Upanishads. There.
Instead of forcing execution, Essentialists invest the time they have saved into creating a system for removing obstacles and making execution as easy as possible.
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.
Instead of making just a millimeter of progress in a million directions he began to generate tremendous momentum towards accomplishing the things that were truly vital.
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 were the things they deliberately and strategically chose to prioritise. After all, if you don’t set boundaries – there won’t be any. Or even worse, there will be boundaries, but they’ll be set by default – or by another person – instead of by design.
When faced with so many tasks and obligations that you can’t figure out which to tackle first, stop. Take a deep breath. Get present in the moment and ask yourself what is most important this very second – not what’s most important tomorrow or even an hour from now. If.
In order to have focus we need to escape to focus.
The way of the Essentialist is to tune into the present. To experience life in kairos, not just chronos. To focus on the things that are truly important – not yesterday or tomorrow, but right now.
A non-Essentialist approaches every trade-off by asking, “How can I do both?” Essentialists ask the tougher but ultimately more liberating question, “Which problem do I want?” An Essentialist makes trade-offs deliberately. She acts for herself rather than waiting to be acted upon. As economist Thomas Sowell wrote: “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.
The best surgeon is not the one who makes the most incisions;.
Up to that point I had always known logically that I could choose not to study law. But emotionally it had never been an option. That’s when I realized that in sacrificing my power to choose I had made a choice – a bad one. By refusing to choose “not law school,” I had chosen law school – not because I actually or actively wanted to be there, but by default. I think that’s when I first realized that when we surrender our ability to choose, something or someone else will step in to choose for us.
When we start small and reward progress, we end up achieving more than when we set big, lofty, and often impossible goals. And as a bonus, the act of positively reinforcing our successes allows us to reap more enjoyment and satisfaction out of the process.
The key is to start small, encourage progress, and celebrate small wins. Here.
As a quote attributed to Victor Hugo, the French dramatist and novelist, puts it, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
So if the stigma of sleep still exists in your workplace, consider developing an initiative at work to explicitly encourage sleep. If that sounds radical, consider how the many benefits of sleep – greater creativity, enhanced productivity, even lower health care costs – have the potential to directly affect the bottom line. With.
Perfectionism makes essential projects hard to start, self-doubt makes them hard to finish, and trying to do too much, too fast, makes it hard to sustain momentum.
Do not do more today than you can completely recover from today. Do not do more this week than you can completely recover from this week.
Past a certain point, more effort doesn’t produce better performance. It sabotages our performance. Economists call this the law of diminishing returns:.
Strangely, some of us respond to feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by vowing to work even harder and longer. It doesn’t help that our culture glorifies burnout as a measure of success and self-worth. The implicit message is that if we aren’t perpetually exhausted, we must not be doing enough. That great things are reserved for those who bleed, for those who almost break. Crushing volume is somehow now the goal. Burnout is not a badge of honor.