At the time of the publishing of the book Essentialism (2014), author Greg McKeown asks a question: If you were able to travel back in time to 1972 and invest $1 in every company in the S&P 500, which company would have gotten you the biggest return? It is a trick question; the answer is none. The correct answer is Southwest Airlines.
How did they do it? By acknowledging the reality of trade-offs.
McKeown creates a phrase later in the chapter which I list here as a guide: "We can do anything, but we cannot do everything".
In the case of Southwest, it meant choosing to fly to set destinations (not every one), not having assigned seating, no first class seating, and no meals. The trade-off was that they were a low cost airline which could offer stellar service. Said Herb Kelleher, the founder, at a talk "You have to look at every opportunity and say 'Well, no...I'm sorry. We are not going to do a thousand different things that won't contribute much to the end result we are trying to achieve."
The other option is straddling, trying to keep all the current options while introducing new ones. This is not a sustainable position for two reasons. The first is simply that there are not enough time/resources to do everything. The second is that by doing all things (or trying to), one cannot truly have select a strategic vision - worst case, one has two incompatible strategies one is trying to execute.
Have you ever, asked McKeown, spent time with someone who is always trying to fit one more thing in? Their logic is that of "I can fit one more thing in". The reality, posits McKeown, is that this is a false logic: by saying "yes" to one thing, we are saying "no" to other things. Trade-offs are the reality of life: it is only we who fool ourselves about this.
The nature of tradeoffs is complicated (perhaps in our own minds) by the fact that both (or multiple) options are things that we want; scarcely do we struggle about doing something pleasing versus something we have no interest in. More vacation or more pay? More time with family or more time with activities? Faster or better?
A Non-essentialist asks the question "How can I do both?" The Essentialist asks "Which problem do I want?" The Essentialist consciously and knowingly makes choices; as Thomas Sowell has said "There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs."
But trade-offs, says McKeown, represent a significant opportunity.
By forcing us to actually think, weigh options, and select (hopefully strategically) what is the best choice for us, we "significantly increase our chance of achieving the outcome we want. Like Southwest (above), we can enjoy the success that comes from making a consistent set of choices." By switching the question from "What do I have to give up?" to "What do I want to go big on?", we change our thinking from that of scarcity ("What am I losing?") to potential ("What can I do that has the biggest impact?")
In closing, McKeown says "Trade-offs are not something to be ignored or decried. They are something to be embraced and made deliberately, strategically, and thoughtfully."
Application:
Of the three areas (Choose, Discern, Trade-offs) of the core of the Essentialist, I feel like this is by far my weakest link.
I am painfully aware of the nature of trade-offs. In a great many ways, that has lead to the fact that I am one of the worst decision makers I know, because I never want to close options down. It is also not helpful that I have a broad range of interests; the idea that somehow I have to have some level of choices is not one I come to willingly.
Yet the results are clear enough in my life. I spend time running from activity to activity or interest to interest without increasing my ability in any of them. I will try to map out every moment of my day to somehow be a constructive activity, thus depriving myself of both sleep and any down time.
And this is point - right at this moment - that God seems to be hammering me over the head. Have too many things going and interests going on, to the point of now openings anywhere? Fine. Let us completely remake your life and pull you away from all of that. Let Me, God seems to be saying, give you an empty slate to consider everything that is in your life.
You can indeed do anything, but you cannot do everything. Choose wisely.
What is most important to me? Learn it early and prosper TB.
ReplyDeleteOh, that I could have actually learned things earlier Nylon12, Instead of insisting on doing the my own way.
DeleteI think a lot about this point when it comes to restaurants out here in rural America where I live. It seems like four to five times a year, a new restaurant opens up. However, almost always their menu is nearly identical to all those before it in that they offer up pages of things that can be summed up by one sentence. They come from a food truck that delivers frozen and packaged foods for restaurants. It isn't unique. Somewhere along the line, they realize this, as the customers go back to going to the cheapest one that serves this sort of food, and start trying to add more and more options to their menu, ensuring that none of their food is known for quality, just quantity. Four or five times a year, another restaurant closes.
ReplyDeleteOnce in a blue moon, someone comes along and offers something unique with a limited menu and focuses on doing a few things really well. Unfortunately, people grow tired of the same thing and though they survive a lot longer than the previously mentioned restaurants, they too eventually close their doors.
The only ones that can seem to stay in business are those that never try to make quality food. They only focus on cheap food from fairly limited menus served quickly, mostly through drive thru windows.
I guess personally I don't struggle much with this part of essentialism. Most of how I spend my time is for pleasure and not so much trying to improve myself or those around me. That is not to say that I don't try to do things better that bring pleasure to me. Like restaurants, what brings me pleasure has changed over the years and I'm okay with that. I change with it and don't lose a lot of sleep about how good I could have been had I kept up with something. If it no longer brings me pleasure, it is time to retire it.
Ed, the restaurant example is a great one. It has happened in every place we have lived as well. The ones that seem to make it are either based on price (as you indicate) or the reliability of their quality, even if their menus do not change frequently.
DeleteUnlike you, I have struggled greatly with this in the past, probably because of the fact that I have been unwilling to make the tradeoff and have a great many interests. It all comes down to time and how I am spending it, something which keeps coming up over and over again recently.
I'm curious, TB... is that empty slate scary for you at all? Or maybe a bit disconcerting? When I find myself with an "empty slate", I am often torn between sadness over a thing (an activity) I think I will miss, and excitement over what may be ahead, mixed with nervousness about whether I'll have the courage, or even the discernment to say yes to the right thing(s).
ReplyDeleteBecki, yes and no. Yes in the sense that it really is "open" and things can rapidly fill it in. But I am working to be a lot more careful as we make this next turn - who knows, maybe the last significant one. I am doing a fair amount of thinking on what to put my time into, thanks to this book and some supporting texts which are dwelling on the nature of things that matter and the nature of activities that we do and what matters.
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