|
74b8f64
|
NO IS A COMPLETE SENTENCE. --Anne Lamott
|
|
|
Greg Mckeown |
|
9e2b648
|
A woman named Cynthia once told me a story about the time her father had made plans to take her on a night out in San Francisco. Twelve-year-old Cynthia and her father had been planning the "date" for months. They had a whole itinerary planned down to the minute: she would attend the last hour of his presentation, and then meet him at the back of the room at about four-thirty and leave quickly before everyone tried to talk to him. They woul..
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
12b5efa
|
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..
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
129d6e5
|
WITHOUT GREAT SOLITUDE NO SERIOUS WORK IS POSSIBLE. --Pablo Picasso
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
7004d12
|
In order to have focus we need to escape to focus.
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
7c5f0ec
|
chief creative officer at
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
799651d
|
There is something powerful about visibly seeing progress toward a goal. Don
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
1ea1dc6
|
IT'S ALL GOOD (WHICH IS BAD)
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
f4f71d6
|
It's a method for making the tough trade-off between lots of good things and a few really great things.
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
f7d9dc6
|
It is not just information overload; it is opinion overload.
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
07594f0
|
Put another way, success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce success in the first place.
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
9eac516
|
Thomas Sowell wrote: "There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs."
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
d619f4a
|
What if society stopped telling us to buy more stuff and instead allowed us to create more space to breathe and think? What if society encouraged us to reject what has been accurately described as doing things we detest, to buy things we don't need, with money we don't have, to impress people we don't like?
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
65cf4d8
|
The results of this research were startling: when there was a high level of clarity of purpose, the teams and the people on it overwhelmingly thrived. When there was a serious lack of clarity about what the team stood for and what their goals and roles were, people experienced confusion, stress, frustration, and ultimately failure. As
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
b11ae26
|
As John Maxwell has written, "You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything."9"
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
4172d9c
|
In the many hours Geoff spent resting he came to see an interesting paradox in his addiction to achievement: for a type A personality, it is not hard to push oneself hard. Pushing oneself to the limit is easy! The real challenge for the person who thrives on challenges is not to work hard.
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
535af7f
|
Saying no is its own leadership capability.
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
b8d9d1c
|
And the cost of hiring too many wrong people (and one wrong hire often leads to multiple wrong hires because the wrong person will tend to attract more wrong people) is what Guy Kawasaki called a "Bozo explosion"--a term he uses to describe what happens when a formerly great team or company descends into mediocrity.1"
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
70b48a0
|
choice is not a thing. Our options may be things, but a choice--a choice is an action. It is not just something we have but something we do.
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
699b3dc
|
Will this activity or effort make the highest possible contribution toward my goal?" Part One of this book will help you figure out what those activities are."
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
01deec4
|
Nonessentialists listen too. But they listen while preparing to say something. They get distracted by extraneous noise. They hyperfocus on inconsequential details. They hear the loudest voice but they get the wrong message. In their eagerness to react they miss the point.
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
f0a7497
|
When there is a serious lack of clarity about what the team stands for and what their goals and roles are, people experience confusion, stress, and frustration. When there is a high level of clarity, on the other hand, people thrive. When
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
6e675b4
|
GIVE ME SIX HOURS TO CHOP DOWN A TREE AND I WILL SPEND THE FIRST FOUR SHARPENING THE AXE. --Attributed to Abraham Lincoln
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
7d97dcd
|
A powerful essential intent inspires people partially because it is concrete enough to answer the question, "How will we know when we have succeeded?" This"
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
108126d
|
When we start small and reward progress, we end up achieving more than when we set big, lofty, and often impossible goals. And as a bonus, the act of positively reinforcing our successes allows us to reap more enjoyment and satisfaction out of the process.
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
21e3897
|
Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
6f8cfa7
|
I'm sorry. We're not going to do a thousand different things that really won't contribute much to the end result we are trying to achieve.'
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
2f53eb7
|
Charles Duhigg, author of the book The Power of Habit.
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
0cacf38
|
choice is an action. It is not just something we have but something we do.
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
c06cf1c
|
In The Tao of Warren Buffett, Mary Buffett and David Clark explain: "Warren decided early in his career it would be impossible for him to make hundreds of right investment decisions, so he decided that he would invest only in the businesses that he was absolutely sure of, and then bet heavily on them. He owes 90% of his wealth to just ten investments. Sometimes what you don't do is just as important as what you do."
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
3555071
|
only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter. What
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
b648a7a
|
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."
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
590c51f
|
The overwhelming reality is: we live in a world where almost everything is worthless and a very few things are exceptionally valuable. As John Maxwell has written, "You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything."
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
9680ee1
|
The Nonessentialist operates under the false logic that the more he strives, the more he will achieve, but the reality is, the more we reach for the stars, the harder it is to get ourselves off the ground.
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
544b7d3
|
the faster and busier things get, the more we need to build thinking time into our schedule. And the noisier things get, the more we need to build quiet reflection spaces in which we can truly focus.
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
021232c
|
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
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
48a120f
|
To embrace the essence of Essentialism requires we replace these false assumptions with three core truths: "I choose to," "Only a few things really matter," and "I can do anything but not everything." These simple truths awaken us from our nonessential stupor."
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
ed0d4e0
|
EVERY DAY DO SOMETHING THAT WILL INCH YOU CLOSER TO A BETTER TOMORROW. --Doug Firebaugh Think
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
68bdc84
|
I had just learned a crucial lesson: certain types of effort yield higher rewards than others.
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
dc292fe
|
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 other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making executi..
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
2fd349b
|
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 able to have multiple "first" things."
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
54623ba
|
Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn, for example, schedules up to two hours of blank space on his calendar every day. He divides them into thirty-minute increments, yet he schedules nothing. It is a simple practice he developed when back-to-back meetings left him with little time to process what was going on around him.4 At first it felt like an indulgence, a waste of time. But eventually he found it to be his single most valuable productivity..
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
8c6dca4
|
Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions,
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |
|
55b66e9
|
1. The awkward pause. Instead of being controlled by the threat of an awkward silence, own it. Use it as a tool. When a request comes to you (obviously this works only in person), just pause for a moment. Count to three before delivering your verdict. Or if you get a bit more bold, simply wait for the other person to fill the void. 2.
|
|
|
Greg McKeown |