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.
To see others more clearly, set aside your opinions, advice, and judgment, and put their truth above your own.
As Parker Palmer, an expert in the Clearness Committee process, has written, “Each of us has an inner teacher, a voice of truth, that offers the guidance and power we need to deal with our problems.” The intent of the exercise is to help people amplify this inner voice and gain clarity on how to move forward.
As someone once said to me, the faintest pencil is better than the strongest memory.
Looking at that first step or action through the lens of 2.5 seconds is the change that makes every other change possible. It is the habit of habits.
We are conditioned over the course of our lifetimes to believe that in order to overachieve we must also overdo. As a result, we make things harder for ourselves than they need to be.
Overachievers tend to struggle with the notion of starting with rubbish; they hold themselves to a high standard of perfection at every stage in the process. But the standard to which they hold themselves is neither realistic nor productive.
When we get so emotionally hung up on trying to force something that is not the right fit, we can often benefit from a sounding board. Someone who is not emotionally involved in the situation and unaffected by the choice we make can give us the permission to stop forcing something that is clearly not working out.
He teaches his language students to imagine they have a bag full of one thousand beads. Every time they make a mistake talking to someone else in the language they take out one bead. When the bag is empty they will have achieved level 1 mastery. The faster they make those mistakes, the faster they will progress.
Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, “A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
Holding back when you still have steam in you might seem like a counterintuitive approach to getting important things done, but in fact, this kind of restraint is key to breakthrough productivity.
One study found that by training our attentional muscles we can improve our processing of complex information moving at great speed.
Essentialist leaders speak succinctly, opting for restraint in their communication to keep the team focused.
People who sleep less than seven hours a night are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke, asthma, arthritis, depression, and diabetes and are almost eight times more likely to be overweight.
Wise took some simple steps. He went to bed at the same time every night, turned off digital devices an hour before bed, and before turning in, took a hot shower. He then tracked his sleep on his smartwatch for a month. He noted his heart rate, time in bed, time asleep, quality of sleep, and percentage of deep sleep.
After four weeks Wise’s deep sleep shot up to almost two hours a night, an 800 percent increase. His uninterrupted sleep went up 20 percent. He felt sharper, more creative, and more present.
You don’t have to be overwhelmed by essential projects. Often, when you name the first obvious step, you avoid spending too much mental energy thinking about the fifth, seventh, or twenty-third steps. It doesn’t matter if your project involves ten steps or a thousand. When you adopt this strategy, all you have to focus on is the very first step.
Simplicity – the art of maximizing the steps not taken – is essential.
If you try to teach people everything about everything, you run the risk of teaching them nothing. You will achieve residual results faster if you clearly identify – then simplify – the most important messages you want to teach others to teach.
What job have I hired this grudge to do?
Each of us has an inner teacher, a voice of truth, that offers the guidance and power we need to deal with our problems.