Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less is an excellent book by Greg McKeown and I read it a few years ago. My husband read it and suggested I read it too because he knows I’m always interested in simplifying my life.
I loved this book and all of McKeown’s points. It truly caused me to stop and think about the activities I spend time on.
I would highly suggest reading it. You won’t regret and you’ll gain some great tips and tricks to help you focus on only what you see as essential in your life.
Every year when I start a new daily planner, I write down the basics that I learned from this book. I re-write them every year and that is a great way to work towards memorizing (and utilizing) them.
Once you read the book these will all make a lot more sense, but here are those basics below:
- Think of your life like a closet – do not keep adding to it – make decisions – trade-off’s, etc. When you do add something, you must let go of something else.
- Incorporate play often. In other words, do fun things you enjoy as much as you can.
- Get 8 hours of sleep. I will be writing a post just on sleep soon – it’s SO important.
- Always think of the trade-off before saying yes to something new. What will you be saying no to – to say yes? What will you sacrifice?
- Build in buffers – for meetings, projects, appointments, etc. Block off more time than you might need to accommodate traveling to the meeting or appointment, the appointment taking longer than expected, etc.
- Focus on one subject / area per day. *This is another topic that I could expand on in another blog all by itself.
- Set aside time in your planner or on your calendar for each recurring task you need to work on daily / weekly / monthly.
- Create routines that become habits – making execution effortless. You will also spend much less time thinking and planning for these activities.
- Ask yourself – “What is the one thing I want to accomplish today? This week? This year? What is important now?
- It’s all choices.