Before we launch into the core of what Greg McKeown recommends in his book Essentialism, I thought it might be useful to show a brief application that I made in my own life.
As you may have gathered from some of my recent updates, I have effectively been on the road (whether for Iaijutsu training or business) for 3.5 weeks. One of the challenges this presented (just beyond the complete disruption of my sleep schedule) was the fact that I wanted to keep up on my posting on this blog.
Why? Well, one could state it is just "a goal" that I set for myself (it is), but there is another potential outcome: The application of Essentialism.
Using the three buckets that McKeown suggests:
1) Am I passionate about it? Yes, I am passionate about writing and words (and languages and reading, which are extensions of words.
2) Am I good at it? I would say "the jury is still out on that", but I will choose to believe that people commenting and people reading my posts indicate some level of talent.
3) Does it meet a pressing need? Again, I could argue "To Be Determined". But at least for me, it meets a pressing need to work through my issues and communicate, if nothing else.
If it meets those three, then how do I get to the Essentialism portion?
The first was easy enough: I simply made writing a priority in the weeks leading up to my original departure.
The second - making performance of the Essentials as easy as possible - was something I had started on, but made better.
As I referenced at the beginning of the year, I have developed a writing "schedule" that guides me as to what I will write on any given day. That was the first part. The second part was developing a writing blog.
For each type of writing, I created a sheet within a larger spreadsheet - Open Postings, Travel, The Collapse, Essentialism, A Year of Humility, and an Administrative tab for those postings that I know I will do ever year (holidays and so on). Within each sheet I entered the days that that writing would have to be published along with "Title" and "Complete" columns Then, I started plugging in titles and color coding posts for my departure: Green for completed (along with an x in the "Complete" column), yellow for have to write before I go, and Orange that I have to plan upon my return.
As I started to focus my writing on these particular periods of time, other things made themselves apparent for "automating" the process. For example, uploading pictures for travel writing takes a long time; if I can upload multiple posts of photos focusing my next period on writing is easier. Also, writing multiple entries in a similar type of posting can go more quickly than going and coming back: the bulk of The Collapse Trial was written in a single 1.5 hour period.
As a result, by the Wednesday before my departure everything was complete; I only had to recheck things for spelling and editing (ever my downfall), but I could "go away" with the sense that I had met a commitment to my readers and myself to post something every day.
(If you are wondering, this is the last of those posts. Tomorrow will be a post-trip one.)
Is this precisely the application of Essentialism? I am truly not sure - after all, that "Meets a real need" portion makes me wonder. But deciding it was important, eliminating what was less important, and then finding ways to reduce barriers as much as possible certainly left me with one less thing to worry about on my travels.
Now, if I could only find a way to translate this into longer prose...
I, for one, am glad that you see your blog writing as essential. As a reader of it, I very much appreciate having interesting things to learn and think about.
ReplyDeleteDetermining needs can be a tricky one. There are so many ways to approach identifying and defining them. I've analyzed it in my own writing from the need-versus-want angle, as Dan and I have tried to decide how to spend our time and money in the pursuit of our lifestyle. Can't say I've figured it out, but the topic always catches my interest.
Anyway, good job on analyzing and structuring a plan.
Leigh, I enjoy writing, which helps. And I think the writing is part of a larger "essential", that of communication between people in general (this is something which is coming out of this entire exercise).
DeleteI wonder if we are trained by society to think of "needs" in the largest possible sense, not realizing that there are scores of smaller "pressing" needs that matter just as much, if to smaller groups of people.
This exercise, I am discovering, is becoming quite a work in progress in examining the state of my own life and starting to map out where I want to put the effort into the last part of it.
"3) Does it meet a pressing need?" To this old fart it appears your interest and determination fulfills that point TB. Thanks for what you share....... :)
ReplyDeleteNylon12, as another "old fart" I think the "pressing need" is highly subjective - which is okay. There are all kinds of needs. To think that somehow every pressing need is some great crusade or action plan disregards the fact that there are lots of small things that need doing as well.
DeleteI should probably have taken notes on this post. I know it would do me well. Instead, I just post willy nilly, rarely reread for punctuation or spelling errors until the morning it posts and I read it to refresh my memory before responding to comments. Almost all my writing is done for my benefit to think things through better and help me process information on a daily basis. I suppose that is why I struggle a bit when it comes to writing towards a goal like I did recently with my Laura Jane Harvey Murder series. I haven't trained my brain to focus towards a goal like I should.
ReplyDeleteEd, to be honest this is the first year I have made a sincere effort to do this - I tried last year, but it did not really work out as I had hoped. I will say that having categories and filling them in is helpful - in some cases it serves as an "idea drawer" to drop titles in as they come to mind for writing later.
Delete