Don’t ask, “How will I feel if I miss out on this opportunity?” but rather, “If I did not have this opportunity, how much would I be willing to sacrifice in order to obtain it?
Remember that if you don’t prioritise your life someone else will. But if you are determined to prioritise your own life you can. The power is yours. It is within you.
When you say yes to something nonessential, you are saying no to something essential.
Instead of trying to accomplish it all – and all at once – and flaring out, the Essentialist starts small and celebrates progress. Instead of going for the big, flashy wins that don’t really matter, the Essentialist pursues small and simple wins in areas that are essential.
Edward M. Hallowell, a psychiatrist who specializes in brain science, explains, play has a positive effect on the executive function of the brain. “The brain’s executive functions,” he writes, “include planning, prioritizing, scheduling, anticipating, delegating, deciding, analyzing – in short, most of the skills any executive must master in order to excel in business.
Saying no is its own leadership capability. It is not just a peripheral skill. As.
We need to learn the slow ‘yes’ and the quick ’no.
The life of an Essentialist is a life lived without regret. If you have correctly identified what really matters, if you invest your time and energy in it, then it is difficult to regret the choices you make. You become proud of the life you have chosen to live.
Essentialists systematically explore and evaluate a broad set of options before committing to any.
In every set of facts, something essential is hidden.
Life will become less about efficiently crossing off what was on your to-do list or rushing through everything on your schedule and more about changing what you put on there in the first place.
Becoming an Essentialist means making cutting, condensing, and correcting a natural part of our daily routine – making editing a natural cadence in our lives.
How will we know when we have succeeded?
Working hard is important. But more effort does not necessarily yield more results. “Less but better” does.
When I ask executives to identify their boundaries they can rarely do it. They know they have some, but they cannot put them into words. The simple reality is, if you can’t articulate these to yourself and others, it may be unrealistic to expect other people to respect them or even figure them out.
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 we play, we are engaged in the purest expression of our humanity, the truest expression of our individuality.
Psychologists call this “decision fatigue”: the more choices we are forced to make, the more the quality of our decisions deteriorates.
An Essentialist has the courage and confidence to admit his or her mistakes and uncommit, no matter the sunk costs.
He finds that for many, falling into “the undisciplined pursuit of more” was a key reason for failure.