essentialism

What if the whole world shifted from the undisciplined pursuit of more to the disciplined pursuit of less … only better?

In trying to keep everyone happy I had sacrificed what mattered most.

The Essentialist doesn’t just recognise the power of choice, he celebrates it. The Essentialist knows that when we surrender our right to choose, we give others not just the power but also the explicit permission to choose for us.

Today, technology has lowered the barrier for others to share their opinion about what we should be focusing on. It is not just information overload; it is opinion overload.

So eliminating the non-essentials isn’t just about mental discipline. It’s about the emotional discipline necessary to say no to social pressure.

To understand what an essential intent is, we may be best served by first establishing what it is not.

The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralise the term and start talking about priorities. Illogically, we reasoned that by changing the word we could bend reality. Somehow we would now be

Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs. It’s about deliberately choosing to be different. —Michael Porter

Without clarity and purpose, pursuing something because it is good is not good enough to make a high level of contribution.