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2. The soft "no" (or the "no but"). I recently received an e-mail inviting me to coffee. I replied: "I am consumed with writing my book right now :) But I would love to get together once the book is finished. Let me know if we can get together towards the end of the summer." E-mail"
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Greg McKeown |
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The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. In
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Greg McKeown |
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Our highest priority is to protect our ability to prioritize.
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Greg McKeown |
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Simms began by presenting the facts of the story: "Kenneth L. Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California governor Edmund 'Pat' Brown." The students hammered away on their manual type..
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Greg McKeown |
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FOCUS ON THE TRADE-OFF
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Greg McKeown |
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Yes. What should I deprioritise?
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Greg McKeown |
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As it happens, Cynthia's father was the management thinker Stephen R. Covey (author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) who had
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Greg McKeown |
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finds that for many, falling into "the undisciplined pursuit of more" was a key reason for failure. This is true for companies and it is true for the people who work in them. But why?"
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Greg McKeown |
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This would matter less if it were not for the fact that clarity of purpose so consistently predicts how people do their jobs. In
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Greg McKeown |
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Ray credits this success to their highly disciplined focus on profitability. He has led the company as CEO for thirty-five years, and throughout that period Ray has followed an extraordinarily consistent routine. He wakes up at 5:30 A.M. every single morning, including Saturday and Sunday (as he's done for more than fifty years). He then exercises for an hour. He eats breakfast at 7:30 A.M. and arrives at work at 8:15 A.M. Dinner is at 6:30..
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Greg McKeown |
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For one, there is a heavy price just in terms of human dynamics. The fact is, motivation and cooperation deteriorate when there is a lack of purpose. You can train leaders in communication and teamwork and conduct 360 feedback reports until you are blue in the face, but if a team does not have clarity of goals and roles, problems will fester and multiply.
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Greg McKeown |
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When there is a lack of clarity, people waste time and energy on the trivial many. When
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Greg McKeown |
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I have noticed two common patterns that typically emerge when teams lack clarity of purpose.
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Greg McKeown |
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In the first pattern, the team becomes overly focused on winning the attention of the manager. The problem is, when people don't know what the end game is, they are unclear about how to win, and as a result they make up their own game and their own rules as they vie for the manager's favour. Instead of focusing their time and energies on making a high level of contribution, they put all their effort into games like attempting to look better..
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Greg McKeown |
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WITHOUT GREAT SOLITUDE NO SERIOUS WORK IS POSSIBLE. --Pablo Picasso Frank
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Greg McKeown |
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As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "The crime which bankrupts men and states is that of job-work; - declining from your main design to serve a turn here or there."
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Greg McKeown |
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the faintest pencil is better than the strongest memory
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Greg McKeown |
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Jack Dorsey, the cofounder of Twitter and founder of Square, has an interesting approach to his weekly routine. He has divided up his week into themes. Monday is for management meetings and "running the company" work. Tuesday is for product development. Wednesday is for marketing, communications, and growth. Thursday is for developers and partnerships. Friday is for the company and its culture.9 This routine helps to provide calmness amid t..
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Greg McKeown |
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In a reverse pilot you test whether removing an initiative or activity will have any negative consequences. For
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Greg McKeown |
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he said he thinks of the role of CEO as being the chief editor of the company. At
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Greg McKeown |
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By editorial I mean there are a thousand things we could be doing. But there [are] only one or two that are important. And all of these ideas ... and inputs from engineers, support people, designers are going to constantly flood what we should be doing.... As an editor I am constantly taking these inputs and deciding the one, or intersection of a few, that make sense for what we are doing.
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Greg McKeown |
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The Latin root of the word decision - cis or cid - literally means "to cut" or "to kill."
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Greg McKeown |
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That may be one reason why Stephen King has written, "To write is human, to edit is divine."6"
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Greg McKeown |
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If the answer isn't a definite yes then it should be a no." It" --
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Greg McKeown |
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Only by going through the work of identifying extreme criteria were they able to get rid of the 70 and 80 per cents that were draining their time and resources and start focusing on the most interesting work that best distinguished them in the marketplace. Furthermore, this system empowered employees to choose the projects on which they could make their highest contribution; where they had once been at the mercy of what felt like capricious..
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Greg McKeown |
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George Orwell's classic allegorical novel Animal Farm we are introduced to the fictional character Boxer the horse. He is described as faithful and strong. His answer to every setback and every problem is, "I will work harder." He lives"
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Greg McKeown |
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Most people have heard of the "Pareto Principle," the idea, introduced as far back as the 1790s by Vilfredo Pareto, that 20 per cent of our efforts produce 80 per cent of results. Much later,"
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Greg McKeown |
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The unintended consequence is that non-Essentialist managers try to get their teams to pursue too many things - and try to do too many things themselves as well - and the team plateaus in its progress. An
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Greg McKeown |
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Yet every second spent worrying about a past or future moment distracts us from what is important in the here and now.
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Greg McKeown |
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Once an Australian nurse named Bronnie Ware, who cared for people in the last twelve weeks of their lives, recorded their most often discussed regrets. At the top of the list: "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."6 This requires, not just haphazardly saying no,"
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Greg McKeown |
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When faced with so many tasks and obligations that you can't figure out which to tackle first, stop. Take a deep breath. Get present in the moment and ask yourself what is most important this very second - not what's most important tomorrow or even an hour from now. If
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Greg McKeown |
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The moral of the story: ignoring the reality of trade-offs is a terrible strategy for organisations. It turns out to be a terrible strategy for people as well.
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Greg McKeown |
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Her story demonstrates a critical truth: we can either make the hard choices for ourselves or allow others - whether our colleagues, our boss, or our customers - to decide for us.
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Greg McKeown |
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remember that anytime you fail to say "no" to a non-essential, you are really saying yes by default. So once you have sufficiently explored your options, the question you should be asking yourself is not: "What, of my list of competing priorities, should I say yes to?" Instead, ask the essential question: "What will I say no to?" This"
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Greg McKeown |
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A non-Essentialist approaches every trade-off by asking, "How can I do both?" Essentialists ask the tougher but ultimately more liberating question, "Which problem do I want?" An Essentialist makes trade-offs deliberately. She acts for herself rather than waiting to be acted upon. As economist Thomas Sowell wrote: "There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs."
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Greg McKeown |
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Essentialists see trade-offs as an inherent part of life, not as an inherently negative part of life. Instead of asking, "What do I have to give up?" they ask, "What do I want to go big on?" The cumulative impact of this small change in thinking can be profound."
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Greg McKeown |
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Why would intelligent, capable British and French government officials continue to invest in what was clearly a losing proposition for so long? One reason is a very common psychological phenomenon called "sunk-cost bias." Sunk-cost bias is the tendency to continue to invest time, money, or energy into something we know is a losing proposition simply because we have already incurred, or sunk, a cost that cannot be recouped. But of course thi..
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Greg McKeown |
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There are three deeply entrenched assumptions we must conquer to live the way of the Essentialist: "I have to," "It's all important," and "I can do both."
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Greg McKeown |
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So if the stigma of sleep still exists in your workplace, consider developing an initiative at work to explicitly encourage sleep. If that sounds radical, consider how the many benefits of sleep--greater creativity, enhanced productivity, even lower health care costs--have the potential to directly affect the bottom line. With
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Greg McKeown |
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Have you ever felt stuck because you believed you did not really have a choice? Have you ever felt the stress that comes from simultaneously holding two contradictory beliefs: "I can't do this" and "I have to do this"? Have you ever given up your power to choose bit by bit until you allowed yourself to blindly follow a path prescribed by another person? If so, you are not alone. The Invincible Power of Choosing to Choose For too long, we ha..
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Greg McKeown |
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BEWARE THE BARRENNESS OF A BUSY LIFE. --Socrates
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Greg McKeown |
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The way of the Essentialist, on the other hand, is to use the good times to create a buffer for the bad. Norway
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Greg McKeown |
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Clayton Christensen, the Harvard business professor and author of The Innovator's Dilemma, was once asked to make just such a sacrifice. At the time, he was working for a management consulting firm, and one of the partners came to him and told him he needed to come in on Saturday to help work on a project. Clay simply responded: "Oh, I am so sorry. I have made the commitment that every Saturday is a day to be with my wife and children." The..
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Greg McKeown |
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Clay recalls: "That taught me an important lesson. If I had made an exception then I might have made it many times."
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Greg McKeown |