McKeown Greg: Esencijalizam: disciplinarna potraga za esencijalnim

Greg McKeown: Essentialism: The Disciplinary Search for the Essential

How many times have you accepted a request without thinking it through? How many times have you regretted committing to something and asked yourself, "Why did I accept this?" How many times have you said yes just to please someone? Or to avoid the problem? Or because yes has become your automatic answer?

Let me ask you: Have you ever felt overwhelmed? Have you ever felt that you are both overwhelmed with work and underutilized? Have you ever found yourself becoming an expert in an unimportant activity? Do you ever feel busy but not productive? As if you are constantly on the move, but you can never reach your goal? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, the way out is essentialist mode.

Dieter Rams was the leading designer at Braun for many years. He is guided by the idea that almost everything is noise. He believes that very few things are truly "essential". His job is to filter the noise until he gets the essence. Dieter's design criteria can be summed up in a characteristically pithy principle, described with just three German words: Weniger aber besser. The translation of those words reads: Less, but better. A better definition of essentialism would be difficult to find. This does not mean choosing it occasionally, but following it in a disciplined manner.

The essentialist way does not mean making New Year's resolutions and saying "no" more often, or sorting out your inbox, or mastering some new time management strategy. This means constantly asking yourself the question: "Am I investing in the right activities?" There are far more activities and opportunities in the world than we have available time or resources. And while many of them may be good, or even very good, the fact is that most of them are trivial, and only a few are crucial. The essentialist way involves learning to distinguish between them, learning how to filter all these possibilities and choose only those that are truly essential.

Essentialism is not about getting more things done, but about getting the right things done. Essentialism also does not mean doing fewer things for the sake of reducing the quantity, but investing your time and energy in the wisest possible way to achieve your highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.

The essentialist way means living by choice, not by default. Instead of choosing reactively, the essentialist deliberately discerns between the crucial few and the unimportant multitude, eliminates the non-essential, and then removes obstacles so that the essential has a clear, unobstructed path. In other words, essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach to determining where our highest point of contribution lies, making these things happen almost effortlessly.

The essentialist way is a way of being in control of our own choices. It is the path to new levels of success and meaning. It is the road on which we enjoy the journey, not just the destination. But essentialism does not end with the individual. If you're leading at any scale, whether it's a team of two colleagues, a department of five hundred employees, or even a group in your school or community, the next step in your journey, if you're ready to take it, is to apply those same skills and mindset to your leadership.