Book review: 5 things about Essentialism

If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.

Greg McKeown

This book had reach me at the correct time to start doing things. One of the newsletters I read comes from Cristina Chipurici - her Friday’s emails (Romanian language) are a delightful gift. In one of those I learn about Essentialism of Greg McKeown - the perfect read for the FOMO Century.

I had no ideas that a few weeks after reading the book, Covid will hit me hard. With 3 shots of vaccines done and yet full agony for 4 days that required a lot from me just to take a shower or to stay in front of the computer. And the quote „if you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will” started to become bigger and bigger in my head. So Covid had chosen for me - no more facilitation (I struggled in the first days to produce a few sessions), no coaching sessions, no face to face facilitation, hard to read, hard to dance, hard to focus with a 39.5 permanent temperature, headaches and a continue need to sleep.

So I started to read again the book even though there are 3 more waiting for me on my desk. This is a review with less spoilers as possible (since you know that I try to share with you just what I take from reading in order to peak your curiosity rather than giving you a essay over the book).

There are 5 things about this book that made me start an article over it, but also made me start giving this book as a gift for the people I care about.

Picture from the book

1. References
   - Dieter Rams - the lead designer of Brown - a well known minimalist in his work and in his life. The German was the one that brought to the world the transparent plastic cover for the record players. You can learn more about his work in Helvetica Movie and in Ten Principles for Good Design By Dieter Rams. His mentioning in this book is related to his way of pursuing essentialism in a noisy world - Weniger aber besser (less, but better).
   - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Hungarian professor well know on his work on ”FLOW” and the conversation he had with Peter Drucker a big fan of simplification and the master of the art of the graceful no (also mentioned in the book).
   

2. The second thing that made me fell in love with this book are the visual representations of the things that the author is talking about. Super easy doodles that create a visual strong hook on the reader. And even if you just flip through the book - those sketches will catch your eyes and offer you pieces of information at a glance. See the example in the picture.
   

3. It will work your essentialism muscle, offer you pragmatic tools to fight „decision fatigue” and a systemic way to discern what is important for you in your professional and personal life.
   

4. Create awareness by changing the perspective of how you ask yourself questions when you are in front of a decision. This is the part I love the most - because the whole book is a process and from the phase one of the book you get examples of questions that will train your interrogative brain and make it work on your behalf in making faster choices that will serve your long life purpose and drive you to a life you will live to the fullest rather than thinking at old age - I wish I could have done that and that.
   

5. The list with behaviors from Non-essentialist / Essentialist point of view - a great way to gain clarity in why this type of approach would serve you to make your life easier. With some NLP in the mix the easiest example I can give you is:
   I have to (non-essentialist way that forfeits the right to choose) versus I choose to (essentialist way that exercise the power of choice). You have a lot of examples in the book, along the personal stories of the author in the search of essentialism.

On the back of the book you will find 4 questions that you can be fair with yourself and answer them before buying the book. Please note that this book is not about time-management, but about discipline and a system that supports you in living the life now. Here are the questions:

• Have you ever found yourself stretched too thin at home or at work?

• Have you ever felt both overworked and underutilized?

• Do you ever feel busy but not productive?

• Do you ever feel like you’re constantly in motion, but never getting anywhere?

If you have more than just one yes (it was 3 out of 4 yeses for me) here is an official invitation to add this book on your „want to read it” list. And if you read it let me know in the comments what did you think about it.

Other reviews by me can be read by clicking here: