Essentialism

As I have promised, here are my thoughts after reading a great book - "Essentialism" by Greg McKeown.

Life, at least for me, is uncertain. I don't know what I'm going to do in the future, I'm not even sure what I'm doing right now, I don't know who I am. But the idea of essentialism resonated with me so much, that I know for a fact that essentialism is a part of me. It finally feels like a solid ground, on which I can base my life mindset.

In my case, reading "Essentialism" was like a long awaited moment of understanding. When after a long long time you manage to piece all of the puzzles together.

You can clearly see it in my first blog post, which is about voluntarily limiting yourself. At that time I was in the middle of reading the book, but it is still visible how I connected the dots out of nowhere. That was my personal beauty of Essentialism - it just hit me right where it's supposed to.

Now, when you understand my bias, it's time to introduce you to the whole idea.

Essentialism is all about the "disciplined pursue of less". Less items that you own, less activities that you engage in, less possibilities at your disposal, less close friends, less, less, less. Grammatical mistakes were made consciously for artistic purposes. That's also a good excuse to tell your teachers.

First thing that probably crossed your mind is: "That sounds BOOOOORIIIING". The interesting thing is that essentialism is not at all about trying less things and leading a boring, stable, repetitive life.

One paradox of Essentialism is that Essentialist actually explore more options than their non-Essentialist counterparts. Non-Essentialists get excited by virtually everything and thus react to everything. But because they are so busy pursuing every opportunity and idea they actually explore less. The way of the Essentialist, on the other hand, is to explore and evaluate a broad set of options before committing to any. Because Essentialists will commit and "go big" on only the vital few ideas or activities, they explore more options at first to ensure they pick the right one later.

That's how we get to the essence of essentialism, so to speak. The core. It's all about doing a profound research and then prioritizing your options. It works wonders for me. It makes everything in life more lightweight. It frees a lot of your space. It makes hard decisions easy with no regrets.

Especially for an over-thinker like me, the idea is truly liberating because it forces you to make your own, simple to follow rules of making choices. I am also highly conscientious and I strive for order, which is exactly what is provided with all of the principles of an essentialist. One of them is:

When something isn't a definite yes, it's a definite no. (Nothing is black and white, everything is grey! - people say. That's right. But such dualism makes your life way easier and we can consciously apply it for our own advantage. Don't apply polarization politically.)

Few weeks ago my sister invited me on a trip on a polish part of the Baltic Sea. I actually could use the trip, but I was really hesitant after having a few lazy days and I had some work that was expected of me to do at my student's club. Hesitating = No. Just like that. No regrets.

This month my friend from a study group wanted to meet for a few days. It was a more suitable time for me, I enjoy spending time with the person and I just don't get to see them very often, as opposed to my sister that I live with. That makes it a quick and decisive yes. Not much thinking, no hesitation. Just let's do it.

Isn't that wonderful? I don't need to sleep on some choices, I don't think about it for hours. I just know the answer.

You can personalize the decision-making frames however you want. Different people have different priorities. Base your frames on what you value. It's not something groundbreaking, as we intuitively know that it's true, but It's hard to appropriately voice the usefulness of such frames.

Let's go further with the idea of knowing what is essential. I'll just give another example from my life, so you can adapt it based on your life and your values.

I would like to know, which relationships to engage in and spend my time and resources on.

Again, it sounds really inhuman to categorize people based on some indicators and calculations instead of feelings and emotions, but these feelings are exactly what makes us make bad decisions. We have to do better then that, even if we pay this price.

Back to the problem in question. I have to ask myself what friends would I like to have? The answer is straightforward - the ones that:

1. Genuinely want the best for me. That are happy because I am happy. That I'm comfortable with sharing my happiness with, since that is not always true. (This particular rule I got from Jordan Peterson's book "12 rules for life". 3rd rule exactly goes like this: "Make friends with people who want the best for you")

2. That simply pull (or push) me up.

These rules are based on what I care about. As you see, I don't ask myself: does this person makes me happy? Things that make us happy, paradoxically, are not always good for us. I care about what is good for me. I prioritize meaning and good over happiness. Maybe your way is different.

So when I think of someone, I just ask myself 2 questions. Do they want to best for me? Do they pull me up or down?

And then I know what to do.

These are prerequisites for spending time with someone, then I have different frames for someone around whom I can be more vulnerable and close.

Hopefully, now you understand how to know what is essential. The next step is elimination.

If there is a slight hesitation as a response to the question then you know what to do. "Hmm, this person overall wishes me all the best, but in some specific cases they might be jealous and bitter about it." This is just no. I move on. There is plenty of other people to be friends with.

I have to move on from the things that are not working. I want to move forward. Fail faster, cut the losses. These are another great rules, but I will not write about them here as it's already getting too chaotic. I got to come up with some great templates for these posts that will make writing easier and more concise. Hmm.

I wrote about the friendships, but you see how it applies everywhere. I can go on and on with the examples.

Explore. Commit to essential activities. Meet mostly your essential friends. Buy only essential items. Focus on essentials when there is plenty of options to choose from.

Seems like an ideal life to me.

If you'd like to explore the topic even more, I highly recommend reading "Essentialism" by Greg McKeown. Greg gives a lot of tips for managing completely everything. From what clothes to keep, to how to run your business. It really gets into your head after reading that many reasonable and applicable examples of essentialism in practice.

I bet the greatest artworks were mostly made with the help of elimination. Want to write a 3 minute song-masterpiece? Then write a 2 hour song and keep the absolute best lines.