How to focus on what really matters: 16 core elements of essentialism

Table of Contents

1. Why this is important
2. What is the main point of essentialism?
3. #1 Celebrate your power of choice
4. #2 Most tasks are unimportant
5. #3 Distinguish between the trivial many and the vital few tasks
6. #4 Embrace tradeoffs
7. #5 Enjoy the perks of being unavailable
8. #6 Use exploration as a method of tuning into what matters
9. Clarify the question
10. Play
11. Journaling to connect with what matters
12. #7 Look for what matters
13. #8 The 90% rule
14. #9 Living with intent
15. Create a statement of intent
16. Clarify your purpose
17. #10 Say No!
18. Limit your availability
19. Set your rules in advance, eliminating the need for a direct "no.”
20. Edit your life
21. #11 Make it simple to choose what's essential
22. #12 Remove the obstacles
23. #13 Celebrate small wins
24. #14 Design your routines around what's essential
25. #15 Focus
26. #16 Be

Why this is important

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Calling all entrepreneurs, HSPs, and those craving a life of purpose and ease! Are you tired of the endless hustle, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and unfulfilled? You’ll love this review of "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less" by Greg McKeown. This book is packed with ways to break free from the cycle of busyness and embrace a life of focused intentionality.

Grab some tea, and prepare to discover the power of choosing less and achieving more every day 🐈 🫖 📖.

16 Big Ideas From the Book Essentialism:

The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

What is the main point of essentialism?

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Essentialism is not about getting more things done; it's about getting the right things done. By investing in fewer things, we progress in the things that matter most to us. There are essentialists and non-essentialists. Aim to be an essentialist.

#1 Celebrate your power of choice

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"When we forget our ability to choose, we learn to be helpless". Instead, celebrate your power of choice. When you surrender it, you allow others to decide for you!

#2 Most missions are unimportant

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Choose the few things that work exceptionally well and have a tremendous impact. Do less. Think more. I swear, I can't tell you how often I don't take breaks and spend hours on something only to arrive at an impasse. On the other hand, if I go outside and take a walk, I always complete it faster.

#3 Distinguish between the trivial many and the vital few tasks

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Not all opportunities are equal. To discern the vital few tasks, you must explore many options. The non-essentialists are so busy pursuing all their ideas that they explore less! The only way to know what is vital is with exploration. Take your choices seriously. Think about them. Explore them. This big idea hit me. Love it.

#4 Embrace tradeoffs

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When you choose, choose deliberately and celebrate your choice. When you don't choose, others will choose for you. So make your choices thoughtfully, strategically and intentionally; this way, you can understand the tradeoffs and embrace your choice thoroughly.

#5 Enjoy the perks of being unavailable

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Focus is not something we have; it's something we do. So, create space to think and focus. Make space to escape your busy life. We need space to design our lives, deliberately analyze what's essential and separate that from the many nonessential distractions in our lives.

#6 Use exploration as a method of tuning into what matters

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Remember how important it is to continue to explore in life. It might be the only way to tune in to what matters.

"It's in the doing and being where we connect with our truth."

Clarify the question

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What problem are you trying to solve? Once you are clear on that, you know where your focus lies. Stay curious. Ask yourself often: what problem am I solving right now?

Play

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The author defines play as anything we do simply for the enjoyment of it and not as a means to an end. Studies have shown that play improves health and relationships and leads to brain plasticity, adaptability and creativity.

"Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement."

Play is essential and not trivial or an unproductive waste of time. It's an anecdote to stress, helps us see possibilities, makes connections and opens our minds. Play is expansive and comes in many forms.

"A journal is a storage device for backing up our brain's faulty hard drive [where] the faintest pencil is better than the strongest memory."

Journaling to connect with what matters

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Journaling is one of my essentials. Here are some of my tips:

• Write less than you feel like writing—the task is always manageable, and you will keep the habit. If you fall off, restrain yourself from writing more until you have this habit down.

• Start small -less is more until you have the habit.

• Read your journal every three months and look for your themes!

• Take Action. Get out and take action for the things you feel compelled to do. Life's answers lie in the doing.

• Look for patterns. Keep your eyes peeled for how you are doing—what do you love, hate, and want to do more of? What are your observations, and how do you feel? All these patterns, details, and observations are clues to what matters to you for your happy, productive life.

#7 Look for what matters

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Look for what matters each hour, each day, and in your life; this is a practice. The more you do it, the better you will know what's most important for you. Patterns and trends will reveal themselves in your life, and you will start to see the more significant issues that matter.

#8 The 90% rule

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I love this. If your highest priority is to protect our ability to prioritize, this makes everything easier. You can remove indecision if you only accept choices that meet 90% of your criteria or higher. Forget the almost good enough thoughts. Don't purposely choose 70 or 80 out of 100. If you have an essential choice to make in life, go for 90 and up! 

"Our highest priority is to protect our ability to prioritize."

To say YES to the top 10 percent, we need to make decisions consciously and rationally rather than impulsively or emotionally. 

If it isn't a clear yes, then it's no!

#9 Living with intent

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Create a statement of intent.

When you create a statement of intent for anything, the author says it needs to be "meaningful, memorable, inspiring and eliminate a thousand later decisions." 

Here are some examples for my own business:

"Empower new entrepreneurs to claim their business potential by simplifying complexities. We streamline workflows, optimize offerings, and elevate website effectiveness, eliminating 25% of inefficiencies, boosting profit margins by 15%, and increasing website engagement by 40%."

"Guide clients in attracting abundance by crystallizing their niche identity, honing offerings, and deploying targeted marketing strategies. With 95% clarity, we define their audience, elevate core offerings' revenue by 30%, and orchestrate a surge of 50% in qualified leads, ensuring their path is clear and their success inevitable."

Doing this for your business can keep you focused on what's important (essential), help you make decisions quickly and efficiently, and eliminate second-guessing, worry, stress and many trips down the rabbit hole of indecision. 

Clarify your purpose

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Clarity of purpose will help you achieve your dreams. I love this and know that clarity does make everything easier. How many times do you sit at your computer without a clear purpose? 👋

You can create declarations of intent for your day, week, month, quarterly, and year. You can do this for your business and your life. Consider using a vision board for each month or each quarter. It doesn't have to be complicated. 

Could you do this your way? I've used "focus words." 

Be purposeful. Act with intent. If you don't choose, life will choose for you; others will choose for you! So be intentional with your life, and you will have more ease and joy. 

Please don't think about it.

#10 Say No!

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Understand the tradeoff of saying yes vs no. Set your boundaries with a graceful "no," and you will gain respect by demonstrating that time is valuable. It takes the strength of conviction to say no, and if we don't have that, we can't get what we say we want in life. Other people make choices for us unless we take action and choose. Say no to the nonessentials.

Limit your availability

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Technology can make setting boundaries more complex. People expect us to be more available, blurring the line between work and personal time. Understand your limits. Once you understand what's essential, you will know when to say yes and when to say no. 

If you have limits, you will become limitless.

Set your rules in advance, eliminating the need for a direct "no."

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Know the difference between your problems and the problems of others. You can have empathy, but when you choose to take on the problems of others, you are not choosing what's essential to you.

Edit your life

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Start getting comfortable saying no to good things that get in the way of what's essential. With writing and living, editing is an art. What confuses your life, distracts a reader, or produces endless potential decisions can take you away from your focus, purpose, and what's essential.

#11 Make it simple to choose what's essential

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Success is essential when managing large technical online projects with budgets in the millions. I am very good at forecasting and evaluating risk and developing a plan for success. We can control our lives, so the essentials are easy choices by using traditional project management skills.

Know the value of buffer time and the ability to evaluate scenarios.

When something is essential, you do need a plan. Planning gives you space to allow choices, and without the ability to choose your life, life is not yours to choose.

As a project manager, I can tell you this is the truth!

Many teams I work with will estimate their time to complete a task at least 50% below the time it will take. Fortunately, after many years of experience, my estimation skills are more accurate. 

For example, if you plan to arrive at 6 pm to meet friends for dinner and you know it takes 30 minutes to drive, do you plan to leave 30 minutes before you want to arrive, or do you build in time to find parking and pay for it? What do you think about traffic? If your life depended on getting to this movie on time, you might make a plan that accommodates road closures and extended detours.

Life is easier when you have a plan for the unexpected.

Tasks break down into details that take time, like clearing the snow and ice off your car, digging yourself out if you get stuck, road closures, traffic accidents and finding parking. Understanding the details, even broadly, will increase your odds of success and decrease your stress. No matter how good you are at estimating time, you can only account for some possibilities, so please make it easy to choose what's essential.

#12 Remove the obstacles

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I'm partial to this tip. I firmly believe in removing obstacles, and it's the first thing I do when working with clients as a business coach. Identifying and eliminating barriers is often one of the simplest tasks we can do that can provide the most potent results. Removing harm is one of my core values, and it applies to everything in my life, from healthcare to the care of our planet and business strategy. 

Could you start with what's not working?

#13 Celebrate small wins

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Start small and celebrate often. If you aren't able to celebrate regular small wins, ask yourself the following:

• What's useful and valuable for the essential task I am doing? What is the minimum I can do right now to prepare?

Done is better than perfect! Please put this on a sticky note where you can see it in your office ;-)

Celebrate progress visually so you consistently see your progress. Find a way to track your progress visually to keep up the momentum. Starting small can help us achieve more, and when we consistently reward our progress, the process becomes more enjoyable.

#14 Design your routines around what's essential

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Without a way, the nonessentials can overwhelm us and distract us. 

Construct your routines around your essentials.

These will become your habits, and then you can function on autopilot. Meeting the needs of your non-negotiables in life will become easy and second nature when you build them into your daily routines. Exercise, sleep, business tasks and anything else you know is essential can be part of a routine. 

Remove obstacles.

Could you remove obstacles and consider what unproductive habits you currently have? What can you stop doing? I can stop watching Netflix after 8 pm and read. Reading before bed makes it easier for me to sleep, and I am happier. But I have to make choices that reflect this in my life. Netflix binging late at night is an obstacle to my happiness.

Use triggers to change your nonessential routines.

For example, if you decide your health is essential but have a way of grabbing a chocolate bar at checkout when you get your groceries, grab a magazine instead. You can use that trigger to change your habits to align with your values and goals.

Start small and keep it simple.

If you want to start a morning journaling habit, stop before you need to. 

Start small so that you have time to form the habit. Write only a few sentences, for example, and then close your journal and don't pick it up until the following day. Then, do the same and continue until you've developed a habit of morning journaling for a month.

Start with the most challenging task first.

Use this tip with the concept of triggers. First, pick something you already do every day, like drinking coffee. Next, tackle your most challenging daily task every morning when drinking coffee.

Could you mix it up? Routines don't have to be the same each day!

Routines can be tedious. Why not have one practice for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and another for Tuesday and Thursday? Mix it up. As an entrepreneur, you could have a morning routine for fitness and meal prep and a day for client calls and marketing. Could you create space for your essentials and build in buffer time?

Keep your changes bite-sized.

Introduce one thing at a time and make it easy to do. Consider only one change to your daily routine at a time. Remember that any change is a win; give yourself good odds for success. Then celebrate your victories!

#15 Focus

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Focus on the present, enjoy the moment and tune in to what's essential. There is only now, so get the future and the past out of your head.

• Ask yourself what you might want to do someday due to your efforts today

• Make a list of what's vying for your attention and cross off anything that's not important right now

• Prioritize your list

#16 Be

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The more you can fully embrace and embody the idea of Essentialism, the easier it is to live and become it. Essentialism can become a way of life. So, it should be no surprise that focusing on what's essential takes practice. Consider the cost of not prioritizing what's important to you. 

An essentialist lifestyle can give us more clarity, control, and joy.

The essential life is living a life that matters to us and has meaning. 

What do you think about the big ideas in this post? Have you tried any of these ideas? Do you have examples of how you choose what's essential to you? I'd love to hear from you; let me know below.

Here's to health, happiness and work you love 🍏😀👩🏻‍💻❤️.