About The Book

Essentialism is a book that focuses on the importance of living intentionally and cutting out unnecessary commitments in life to focus on what is important. Through this practice, we can achieve great results in our lives by focusing on fewer things

Personal Rating: 4/5

My Rating: 4/5

Short Notes

• Learn to say “no” and only commit when you can give 100% effort.
• Make trade-offs by prioritising important things and eliminating less important ones. Limit yourself to a few choices.
• Develop a systematic process for analysing opportunities and making decisions before committing to them.
• If you make a mistake, accept it and move forward to solve it. Don’t try to force a solution onto a problem.
• Avoid giving anything more weight than necessary. Beware of the endowment effect bias to make proper decisions.
• Understand the sunk cost fallacy and focus your energy on what is important now, rather than what may be important in the future or what was important in the past.

Long Notes

• It’s important in life to focus on the few things that will lead to great results, rather than trying to do everything but not succeeding anywhere. For example, if you have 100 units of time, it’s better to use it for one good activity instead of spreading it thinly across multiple activities.
• One important lesson is the ability to say “No” and the ability to choose what we want. If we don’t choose, someone else will make the choice, making us useless. So we have to choose to enable us to make our own decisions.
• It’s important to understand where to put our efforts. Not all things need our attention, only a few require our focus. We can use the Pareto principle to assess our work. In other words, always question everything and consider what is not necessary. Doing this will help us figure out what needs our real focus since the power law applies (only a few events lead to exponential growth while focusing on many will usually lead to linear growth).
• Understand trade-offs. Ask if action helps reach the goal. Have a plan to decide what to trade-off. Don’t try to do all. Focus on one important problem. No perfect solutions, just trade-offs. Choose the most important and go with it.
• It’s important to spend lots of time considering all the possibilities and then narrowing them down. It’s important to spend more time thinking and planning before taking action. It’s important to do this because you will put a lot of effort into a few ideas.
• Take time to process your surroundings. Schedule regular timeouts for activities like reading or thinking. During this time, avoid technology. Stimulate your mind with classic literature and make a list of questions to reflect on.
• Make time for play: it engages the creative part of the brain and releases stress, resulting in a more flexible approach to life’s complexities. Do something you enjoy regularly to keep your brain engaged.
• Get at least 8 hours of sleep each night and a bit more on weekends. Sleeping helps you be more productive when you’re awake. There’s no way around it - you need to make sleep a priority.
• It’s important to be selective. Do one thing well instead of many at an average level. Score each option on a scale of 100. Reject if it doesn’t score above 90. Scrutinise to think carefully and avoid acting on impulse.
• Systematically evaluate opportunities by writing down 3 min. and 3 extreme criteria. Take up an opportunity. that meets all min. criteria plus 2 out of 3 extreme criteria, discard all others.
• Once you have reviewed all options, simply ask yourself the following question: “What will I say no to?” Answering this will help you uncover your true priorities. You can also ask yourself, “If I didn’t have this, how much would I be willing to spend to get it?”
• Have a clear intent for what you want to do by following this logic.

We should clearly define our objectives, how we will measure success, and the timeline for completion. For example, the goal of having 90% of Indians have access to the internet by 2020 is a clear statement that sets the direction. Without clarity on what is needed, a lot of time is wasted on political games and short-term goals that prioritise personal interests over company goals.

• It’s important to have clarity and make a good decision, as this allows the team to focus on what they want to do and avoid wasting time on unproductive areas.
• Be direct and say “no” when not interested in something. Be polite but assertive. Remember each project requires a sacrifice; be sure of your decision. If certain you’ll be rejected, say so upfront. Short-term loss results in long-term respect; people will value your efforts.
• Always be aware of the sunk cost bias that we tend to have. Despite our best efforts, if it is clear that the effort will not be worth it, stop investing time into it and walk away. Cut your losses and move on. Apply entrepreneurial thinking rather than managerial thinking.
• Be aware of the endowment effect, where we value something more than its worth due to ownership or being the team lead. Ask yourself, “If I did not own it or if I was not involved, how much would I be willing to pay or spend time to learn the skill or buy the product?”
• We tend to fear waste. When faced with a situation of having to give up one of two things, most of us give away the cheaper option by saying that if we are wasting money, let’s waste the cheaper one. This is not a good habit, but focus on what matters more than looking at it from an economic value.
• Admit you’re wrong when faced with a problem. Don’t force a fit if it’s not working. To spend time wisely, use zero-based budgeting, where all commitments are off and start from scratch to ensure you’re doing the right thing. If something doesn’t fit, throw it away.
• Don’t make casual commitments; you are either fully in or fully out. If you feel something useless is running, then do a reverse pilot. Stop doing that activity and see if anyone misses it. If none notices the change, then simply stop doing it. Don’t get too worried on fear of missing out. Despite best efforts, you will have to miss a lot of things.
• It’s important to keep editing out useless stuff whenever possible. Focus on always condensing everything into the lowest possible form. If an email is two pages long, see if it can be made one page and then half a page and on, till you realise that it can’t be shortened any further.
• Have clearly defined boundaries and stick to them. If you don’t want to work on a Saturday, then don’t work. In the end, limits will result in the other person respecting you better than before. There may be short-term losses, but having these in place sets the right expectation.
• Always maintain a buffer to ensure that you don’t fault at the last moment. Prepare for the worst, as it’s the case in today’s uncertain times. Extreme preparedness can be great, as it allows you the luxury when things go bad or something unexpected happens.
• When you make a time estimate, add an extra 50% so that you are better off. This avoids all stress. Make scenario planning a part and parcel of your approach. Assess your risks beforehand. Ask yourself these five questions: - What risks do we face in this project? - What’s the worst-case scenario? - What would the social effects be when things go bad? - What’s the financial impact of the worst case? - What investment should be made now to reduce risk and be better off when the worst case happens?
• Don’t keep looking for a quick-fix solution; rather, try to find the constraints and fix them, as it will lead to better results in overall improvement. Identifying the constraints will require you to have clarity on what you want, and once that is clear, you can remove the obstacles.
• Celebrate small wins to stay motivated and get momentum for the big win. Focus on the minimum work needed and start ahead of deadline for continual progress and a stress-free end.
• Design a daily routine for effortless execution. Schedule clear time for focused work, resulting in execution on auto-pilot. There’s no need to worry about daily planning.
• Focus on getting the usual day all sorted and focus on getting the hardest things solved at the start. Also, make sure that you design a routine that allows you to function well. Have a separate day for specific focus and this way, in the entire week, you will touch base with all issues. Start with small cues to form habits and then make a routine, rather than trying to make big changes.
• To get things done quickly, it’s important to focus on what matters right now, rather than worrying about the past or future. When feeling overwhelmed, take a deep breath and make a list of what needs to be done. Prioritise the list based on what’s most important now, and what will help you get a good night’s sleep. Taking a deep breath can help you pause and gain clarity on the situation.