If in fact the core mindset of the Essentialist per Greg McKeown is to discern, choose, and make trade-offs on the things that we will "go big" on in our lives, that carries with it the first question: What do discern, choose and trade off for? In other words, how do we discern what McKeown calls the Vital Few from the Trivial Many?
It is here, he says, that a paradox becomes operational: the Essentialist actually explores more options than the Non-Essentialist. How is this possible?
The Non-essentialist gets excited by everything that they touch and tries to pursue everything they touch thus creating the situation where, as we have seen, they simply get overwhelmed by the number of things they are pursuing. The Essentialist, on the other hand, explores options but evaluates them before committing to any one of them: "Because Essentialists will commit and "go big" on only the vital few ideas or activities they explore more options at first to make sure they pick the right one later."
How do they do this? McKeown lists five areas (which we will, of course, take one by one):
- Space to think
- Time to look and listen
- Permission to play
- Wisdom to sleep
- Discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choice we make
One big difference is that Non-essentialists can see these activities as distractions to "getting on with the work". At best, they are good ideas; at worst, they show indecisiveness and wastefulness. "We have to do" is the mantra, "not be lackadaisical in our activities".
But if you are busy and overwhelmed in our modern "go-go-go" society, posits McKeown, these are the antidotes that are needed to fight the plague of busyness that infests our entire lives (A point, I might add, that other authors I am now reading like Cal Newport and Matthew Crawford would agree with).
"Essentialists spend as much time as possible exploring, listening, debating, questioning, and thinking. But their exploration is not an end in itself. The purpose of the exploration is to discern the vital few from the trivial many."
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If there was ever a person to not slow down, it is me.
I have thrown myself headlong into almost every thing and interest that comes my way. What is worse, once I throw myself headlong into them, there seem to be one of two outcomes: I either cannot let go of the thing even though I am making no progress and have no time, or I find myself completely done with it without understanding why I am. Seldom if ever have I calculatedly thought about the options and possibilities, explored them, and then made planned decisions.
If ever anyone needed to have a structure for exploring options, it is me.
It's been nearly five years since my head injury. What started as a search for "what got hurt" turned into "why am I like I am?" I found out some very interesting things about my personality. Things I hadn't taken the time to see before. Too much to do, dontcha know. I discovered I'm on the ADHD spectrum. That came about because a medication I took turned down the constant "squirrel!!" thoughts and allowed me to focus on one thing until it was done. It was so foreign to me, I thought, "what was THAT?"
ReplyDeleteThe spectrum idea really helped me understand my own mind better. I am not full blown one way or another, but simply show a bit of this or a more of that. I love the Essentialism subject. I'm on that spectrum, too. A little further on some things, not even started on others, but interested to work in that direction. Imperative, Needful, Important, Useful, Wasteful, Useless, and worst of all: MAJOR TIME SINK.... all of those run through my mind now when I see a new project or bauble. Thank you for posting this "series". Living intentionally is so much better than just "squirrel!!!-ing" your way through life.
STxAR, I have been fortunate enough to have been with you through your journey (How time flies!). Like you, I really believe that under current methodology I, too, would have been recorded as ADHD, and pretty high as well.
DeleteYou are so welcome and thank you for the kind words - that said, I am somewhat selfishly posting this for myself.
Living intentionally, as awful as I am at this, is so much better.
Chalk up another item for me in the essentialist column... I think. I have contemplated many many many things that seem interesting to me but I have never pursued, mostly because I know I don't have the time or desire to spend the funds necessary to pursue them. But saying that, I still have more interests than I will ever become good at to call myself knowledgeable at. I have been labeled more than once as a "jack of all trades" to which I add "master of none."
ReplyDeleteEd, I feel like this book may be a biography of your life!
DeleteIt is interesting that McKeown does not not specifically discuss "specialization", but it is intuited from the discussion. That said, I prefer a bit of Jack of All Trades as well. TB the Elder was one as well.
What's coming to mind for me is that the essentialist knows how to control impulsiveness. Not an easy thing to learn. but a very useful skill.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, your observation about having difficulty letting go sometimes. I'm sure that's a whole 'nother area for self-analysis.
Leigh, that is a great insight and something that McKeown does not discuss either, but is implied by everything else that he says in the book. The Essentialist has to exercise a great deal of impulse control (something I am pretty awful at).
DeleteIt is, Leigh. And it is something that is coming to the fore, especially due to the fact I need to get about unpacking things for an apartment that I have now lived in for 11 months and the fact we do not know if and when will have a house. In other words, I have more things than I really have room for.
And that does not touch on the intangibles of the self that I also have difficulty letting go of...