essentialism

His observation was that you could massively improve the quality of a product by resolving a tiny fraction of the problems.

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.

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

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

Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless.

Is there a point at which doing more does not produce more? Is there a point at which doing less (but thinking more) will actually produce better outcomes?

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

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