What obstacles or bottlenecks are holding you back from achieving X, and how can I help remove these?” Instead of pestering him, offer sincerely to support him. You will get a warmer reply than you would by just e- mailing him another demand.
In that instant,” Ephron recalls, “I realized that journalism was not just about regurgitating the facts but about figuring out the point. It wasn’t enough to know the who, what, when, and where; you had to understand what it meant. And why it mattered.” Ephron added, “He taught me something that works just as well in life as it does in journalism.
When he says, “win,” he’s also referring to a single question, with its apt acronym, that guides what he expects from his players: “What’s important now?
In the same way, when individuals are involved in too many disparate activities – even good activities – they can fail to achieve their essential mission. One.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The crime which bankrupts men and states is that of job-work; – declining from your main design to serve a turn here or there.
Instead, ask the more essential question that will inform every future decision you will ever make: “If we could be truly excellent at only one thing, what would it be?
There is a difference between losing and being beaten. Being beaten means they are better than you. They are faster, stronger, and more talented.” To Larry, losing means something else. It means you lost focus. It means you didn’t concentrate on what was essential. It is all based on a simple but powerful idea: to operate at your highest level of contribution requires that you deliberately tune in to what is important in the here and now.
To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make.
To eliminate non-essentials means saying no to someone. Often. It means pushing against social expectations. To do it well takes courage and compassion. So eliminating the non-essentials isn’t just about mental discipline. It’s about the emotional discipline necessary to say no to social pressure.
One simple answer is we are unclear about what is essential. When this happens we become defenceless. On the other hand, when we have strong internal clarity it is almost as if we have a force field protecting us from the non-essentials coming at us from all directions.
There are three deeply entrenched assumptions we must conquer to live the way of the Essentialist: “I have to,” “It’s all important,” and “I can do both.” Like mythological sirens, these assumptions are as dangerous as they are seductive. They draw us in and drown us in shallow waters.
Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter.
I challenge you here and now to make a commitment to make room to enjoy the essential. Do you think for one second you will regret such a decision?
As often happens to driven, ambitious people, his earlier success had distracted him from his clarity of purpose.
The way of the Essentialist is the relentless pursuit of less but better.
We discover how even the many good opportunities we pursue are often far less valuable than the few truly great ones. Once we understand this, we start scanning our environment for those vital few and eagerly eliminate the trivial many. Only then can we say no to good opportunities and say yes to truly great ones.
A strategic position is not sustainable unless there are trade-offs with other positions.
Essentialists, on the other hand, see boundaries as empowering. They recognise that boundaries protect their time from being hijacked and often free them from the burden of having to say no to things that further others’ objectives instead of their own. They know that clear boundaries allow them to proactively eliminate the demands and encumbrances from others that distract them from.
Getting to the essence of a story takes a deep understanding of the topic, its context, its fit into the bigger picture, and its relationship to different fields.
There is a huge body of scientific research to explain the mechanism by which routine enables difficult things to become easy. One simplified explanation is that as we repeatedly do a certain task the neurons, or nerve cells, make new connections through communication gateways called “synapses.” With repetition, the connections strengthen and it becomes easier for the brain to activate them.