Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

The English translation is: Less but better. A more fitting definition of Essentialism would be hard to come by.

“What meets a significant need in the world?”

The only thing we can expect (with any great certainty) is the unexpected. Therefore, we can either wait for the moment and react to it or we can prepare. We can create a buffer.

What we can’t do is concentrate on two things at the

we can conduct an advanced search and ask three questions: “What do I feel deeply inspired by?” and “What am I particularly talented at?” and “What meets a significant need in the world?”

In every set of facts, something essential is hidden. And a good journalist knows that finding it involves exploring those pieces of information and figuring out the relationships between them (and my undergraduate degree was in journalism, so I take this seriously). It means making those relationships and connections explicit. It means constructin

To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make.

If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.

Making our criteria both selective and explicit affords us a systematic tool for discerning what is essential and filtering out the things that are not.