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There is such a thing as a non-essentialist who is just driven, capable, successful, but has plateaued in their progress because they re trying to do everything.
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Welcome to the Art of Charm.
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I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
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Today we re talking with my friend Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism, the Disciplined Pursuit of Less.
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You should listen to this show if you want to learn how you can ensure you prioritize your life effectively so that other people don t do it for you.
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In other words, how to live by design, not by default.
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Also, how to say no effectively without getting into trouble at home or getting fired, setting hard boundaries between work and play or non-work, and why folks who are originally very good at essentialism can end up ruining their career and their sanity by letting these boundaries slip over time.
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Enjoy this one with Greg McKeown.
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And by the way, if you re new to the show, we d love to send you some top episodes and the Art of Charm Toolbox, where we discuss concepts like
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body language, nonverbal communication, persuasion, networking, negotiation, mentorship, and everything else we teach here at The Art of Charm.
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In the US, just text charmed to 33444, that s C-H-A-R-M-E-D, to 33444.
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Everywhere else, go to theartofcharm.com.
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Also at theartofcharm.com slash podcast, you can find the full show notes for this and all previous episodes.
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Alright, here s Greg McKeown.
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First of all, what is essentialism and how is it different from just being a minimalist?
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What it is, it s a book about the antidote to the problem.
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The problem.
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The problem is that we are full of the undisciplined pursuit of more.
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People everywhere can feel this, so it s a cultural phenomenon.
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It is feeling busy but not productive.
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It s feeling stretched too thin at work or at home.
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It s feeling like other people s agenda kind of hijack your own on a daily basis.
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That s the experience people are having and the reason that they re having it is probably a broader conversation sure, but that s like the challenge the undisciplined pursuit more Everybody s just being pulled up into this cultural norm Essentialism is the antidote to that
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The discipline pursuit of less, as the subtitle indicates.
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Exactly.
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The discipline pursuit of less, but better.
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It s about quantity versus quality.
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Instead of just trying to always more, more, more of everything, like the key to success, in fact, is doing more and fitting more in.
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Essentialism says, no, it s about doing less, but better.
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Fewer things done better.
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That this is really the way to break.
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And this is different from minimalism because minimalism sort of has a connotation that has to do with possessions, physical items, whereas essentialism is about your working life or about your day-to-day, your calendar, not intangibles.
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Yeah, so I mean, I use the metaphor of the closet to explain the process of essentialism.
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Your closet s overloaded, right?
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And eventually you say, I m going to tidy it out and you have to become more selective, thoughtful about what you really want and what you don t want.
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You have to get more extreme criteria of the things you love versus the things that you just like or you might use eventually.
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And then you eliminate, you get rid of the stuff that you don t, isn t as high on your criteria list.
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There s a question that s been put by Marie Kondo, which is, does it spark joy?
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I mean, you should ask of each item, does it spark joy if it doesn t pass it on?
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So that s a metaphor for essentialism, but the whole idea is essentialism is doing for your life what Marie Kondo s whole approach does for your closet.
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Right, so essentially instead of saying no pun intended I m sure that happens all the time now if you re taking things out of your closet or out of your house You re trying to do the minimalist thing and it s like okay.
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Is this something?
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I m really interested in is there something in me that loves this and just can t bear to part with it Or is it just the anxiety of like but I might need that serial case right some point
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No, the fear of missing out, FOMO, right, is really real.
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And both with minimalism and now with essentialism, we have to discover the joy of missing out, or JOMO.
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JOMO, all right.
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Exactly.
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I ll use another phrase.
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And there really is joy in it, right?
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There really is value in less.
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How do you make that transition though?
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Because it seems like FOMO I can do, right?
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Oh man, this person s got this other thing going on.
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Should I speak at this event here?
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Should I do that one?
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Which one s gonna be bigger?
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Which one am I gonna regret missing more?
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Oh, this person said this event is amazing.
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I have to go to it.
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It s really expensive.
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But if I don t go, I ll be the only one that wasn t there, right?
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That I can do.
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JOMO, joy of missing out.
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I can t really remember a time where I was like,
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Well, actually, that might not be true.
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But it s rare to have a time where I m laying on my couch with my cat, or binging on Netflix, or reading a book, even as much as I love reading, going, I m so glad I m not at that boat party that my friend s having, or I m so glad I m not going to this event.
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I mean, it s pretty rare.
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Usually, I think, I hope there s nothing there that I really needed to do.
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I still have that anxiety in the back of my head.
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Yeah, you re saying that you ve experienced one, but don t experience the other very often.
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Right.
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I don t, there s a lot of FOMO.
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I m low on JOMO.
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Yeah.
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So, so this would be consistent with the idea that s our normal culture.
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Like I m guessing that you didn t wake up one day and say, I am just going to really worry about all the other stuff that s going on.
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I m going to choose that as a strategy.
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No, no.
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That s my thing.
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I want to always worry about what I m not going to.
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Even when I m at something great, I want to be thinking, this isn t a deliberate, chosen, conscious strategy.
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No, but it does work.
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97% of the things I worry about never happen.
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So obviously, it has been effective so far.
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So this idea, the question I m putting to you really is why is it that you and so many people
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are so tilted so much towards this strategy.
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It s a default strategy.
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It s a default strategy.
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I m arguing something about this.
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I m saying that we have a culture that s so dominant towards this feeling that it s not just the normal default circumstance of all society forever.
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Right.
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We live in a particularly extreme version of society, right?
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So I think we re in a busyness bubble now.
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Like a FOMO bubble.
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Exactly.
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Whatever the name of it is, it s a bubble of more.
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And so what we have all sort of grown up in is this culture.
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I mean, even over the last 10 years, we ve gone from being connected to hyperconnected.
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Yeah, tell me about it.
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Smartphones.
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Smartphones, social media, these things have come together to create a kind of unholy alliance.
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And so people keep on getting dragged into this cultural norm.
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To find any antidote, we have to understand the environment we re in.
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Have you heard the phrase, fish discover water last?
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No, but it makes perfect sense.
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Just like it took you till you were 16 to get glasses, you were maybe one of the last ones to figure out what s going on.
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To figure it out.
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It s something that s so normal to you, you don t know that it s even happening.
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And that s what s going on.
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So when you talk about FOMO, you re not just talking about your own experience, you re talking about the norm of today.
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And I think that that s what makes essentialism have the power of relevancy.
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The idea is that in this environment, in an environment where not just you, but everybody just about that you know, and everybody that you re interviewing and talking to, and everyone who s watching this, their normal life, and all their friends, in that environment, you can t just go with the flow.
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unless you want all the consequences of this cultural norm.
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So the name for this is non-essentialism, right?
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It s just everyone believes that by doing everything, you will be more successful, you ll be happier, you ll have a more meaningful life.
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Now, if it s true, meaning if that works for people, great.
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It might have worked up until the 80s and 90s when you literally could no longer do everything that s coming your way.
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My dad did everything, you know, autoworker at Ford, worked his way up the ladder, worked 12 plus probably 14 hour days, six days a week, getting everything done, burned himself out.
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That was without email.
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That was without cell phones.
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That was without social media.
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That was without being able to be reachable.
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most hours of the day.
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And you proposed that at the beginning, that little anecdote, by saying it worked.
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Before the end of the anecdote, he burned himself out.
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It was physically possible.
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That s what I mean by it worked.
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It was physically possible.
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I love the distinction.
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So you re right, because as the internet continues to be the news, right, as it affects so much, and it has expanded our options so exponentially,
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It means it is not even close to being possible.
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I was talking to a really driven, even successful executive just recently on Sand Hill Road.
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Where all the venture capitalists are.
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Exactly.
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And he said, he was reading the book and he said he realized that this was important for him because he said, it s not like if I had two or three hours extra every day that I d be okay.
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He said, I need like 300 hours a day and I d still not have enough.
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You wouldn t even make it through your Twitter feed.
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So he just gets that the expectation has expanded so far, so much.
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And he s a smart guy.
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He s a thoughtful person.
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But still, he has adopted a set of expectations that are, by his own admission, more than 10 times more than he can possibly do on a daily basis.
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So there s been this sea change of expectations, sea change of choices and options, this cultural norm.
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And if we just apply the same basic approach 20 years ago, even,
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then I think we will reap a set of rewards that are different than what we ve been sold.
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I do agree, but it s so hard to beat it into yourself and it must be really hard to beat it into other people, especially if we don t necessarily know what you re talking about just yet.
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Yeah, I think that people, as they get the language for this, don t argue against the logic of it.
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So I think the primary
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value of writing the book Essentialism was giving language.
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There is such a thing as a non-essentialist who is just driven, capable, successful, but has plateaued in their progress because they re trying to do everything.
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You state in the book that if you don t prioritize your life, someone else will.
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That s probably been true forever, but now we see it happening when we re home eating dinner and we re on our phone and you see that email and don t pretend like you don t know what I m talking about.
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You see that email come in from your boss or your business partner and you go, because this happens.
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What is it?
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That never happened.
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This is a recent 10 years phenomenon.
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That s right.
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And that little moment of what is it can be so extreme under some circumstances.
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It is a form of addiction, right?
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When we check email 150 times a day, which is the average right now, at the highest levels, yeah, the highest levels is 900 times a day.
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So that means every minute on the hour, 16 hours a day.
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And of course, we have great data on this.
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Every minute, for 16 hours a day, someone is checking their phone at the highest levels.
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Absolutely.
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And here s why we have great data on it, is because all you have to do is you just measure how many times someone swipes on their phone.
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This Time magazine came out with this research.
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I mean, I don t know where they get their batteries from.
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I mean, all that s a different thing.
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But it means that when we used to talk about addiction, we would, technology and so on, we were saying it like a metaphor, but it s real.
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It s a real addiction.
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that people feel is to do with the idea that sometimes something amazing is going to happen, sometimes something terrible is going to happen, and you never know which.
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So people are caught in for both reasons.
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Is it something amazing?
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Is it something terrible?
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It literally is like a slot machine for people.
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So again, this is the norm.
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This is the problem.
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And it s the problem that successful people and organizations and societies face.
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Because, so I m working with Silicon Valley companies and trying to understand why is it that otherwise successful people and companies don t break through to the next level of success.
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They should, because if you and I would have a race, for example, and you won, which you would.
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I don t know, you ve got some good running shoes on today.
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That s just a con for making it look like I m a runner.
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And let s say you won by 50 yards.
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So then we race a second time, and you get to start with a 50-yard advantage right from the beginning.
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So you win again, by 950 yards.
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So now you re 100 yards ahead, and we race a third time.
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So just give me an average, approximate percentage chance you ll win the third race, beginning with 100 yards.
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Give me a number.
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99.9%.
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It s a little bit rude.
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Barring any injuries, 100%.
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You re going to win, right?
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Of course, that s what s going to happen.
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So here s the question that s kept me up at night all through these years of trying to understand, is why doesn t that happen?
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When you look at the data, as I have, of the successful people and organizations, they don t continue in their success, and they don t break through to the next level, which they also ought to do, because they have all the benefits of momentum, they have all the benefits of having won the first race and the second race, and they don t continue to do it.
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Why?
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Why?
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So here s what I learned.
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Again, it was sort of this fish discover water last.
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It was hidden in plain sight.
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The reason that successful people and organizations don t break through to the next level is success.
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So here s how it works.
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Go back to the Silicon Valley companies.
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You get a few people, small team focused on the right problem at the right time, and they generate success.
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This is natural to be expected.
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What comes with success?
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increase in options and opportunities.
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That sounds like the right problem to have.
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Except those opportunities look like email, Twitter, and Facebook.
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It might be email, it might be Twitter, it just might be more opportunities.
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The idea is that even though it s the right problem to have, it undermines the very focus that led to success in the first place.
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And so you find a situation where someone is doing the same things they were doing before,
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they are still driven, they re still smart, they re still capable, but all of a sudden, they are diffused in their efforts and they re trying to do way too many things.
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And so you can see this in organizations all over the place.
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I mean, I often ask people to think through what organizations they know themselves that were once successful and that somehow they became averagely successful, even failed entirely through it.
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Can you think of any?
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Yeah, actually, there s a couple of businesses that failed recently, like Zirtual, for example.
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Or was it Zirtual?
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I feel bad if that s the wrong one, but there was one that failed miserably that had a ton of clients.
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And there are some that have problems even now with scaling and like what they re doing culture-wise, Zenefits, companies like that that you hear about.
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Rumors on the Silicon Valley startup scene.
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And if you take some that are more established, if you take like a Yahoo, for example.
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that s very well established, you know, despite best efforts to turn this around, where are we at?
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So this is what five CEOs, one time it was like five CEOs over two years that they had this whole, everyone coming in smart, driven, trying to solve a problem.
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What s the problem?
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The problem was success.
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Early day success, Yahoo was the beginning of the consumer web.
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So they are the web for the consumer, right, in the early days.
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They could do it all, and so they kept on trying to do it all, and that s it.
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That s the era right there.
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So as soon as Google comes along, specializes, well now Google s gonna be better at search than Yahoo can be at that.
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They can t be great at everything.
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And so, you know, Yahoo has been trying to correct that problem, and it s a very, very tough problem for them to solve.
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because they ve got the problem of what we call like 5% problem, which means all of their consumers only use 5% of their services, but it s not the same 5%.
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So there s no easy solution for them now, because it s been built sort of almost generation on generation of leadership with this same challenge.
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So here s an example.
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It s true for companies, but it s also true for the individuals inside of these companies.
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That s what I found, was that you have also individuals who start off, they re very driven.
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In fact, I remember an executive I worked with, he was doing award-winning work,
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partially as a result of that got purchased by a larger, and as it turns out, more bureaucratic firm.
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He goes into the new regime, he wants to be a good citizen, which means, loosely speaking, he starts saying yes to everyone and everything without really thinking about it.
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So what happens to him?
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What happens to his stress?
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the roof.
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What happens to the quality of his work?
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Down the drain.
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So here is someone who is a high talent individual who all of a sudden is, I don t know, overworked and underutilized.
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They re not top talent anymore because of this strategy.
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Now, what happens in the end, he decides because of some counterintuitive advice that he should retire, enroll, which is different than stay, quit, and don t tell anyone.
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It s not that.
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But he realized, look, this isn t going to work.
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I ve got to act as if I m only going to be paid for the value I create, not how many emails I respond to, not how many meetings I go to.
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At the end of all of that experience, he said, I got my life back.
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He was able to eat dinner with his wife at night, go to the gym every night.
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So that was good on a personal level.
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But then on a professional basis, he said, I found space again on my schedule.
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And in that space, I found my creative freedom.
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And in his creative freedom, he found his ability to contribute better.
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So by the end of the year, he got one of the largest bonuses his whole career.
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Performance evaluation went up.
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And there s this success story.
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That s what s at play between non-essentialism and essentialism.
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Non-essentialism promises, if you can just fit it all in, do it all, say yes to everyone, you will succeed.
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Essentialism says, it doesn t say essentialism doesn t say no to everyone and everything.
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I didn t write a book called Noism.
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Essentialism says figure out what s really essential and put your energies into those less but better.
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Fewer things done better is a better strategy for breaking through to the next level.
1
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Go to Kajabi.com and join the creators and entrepreneurs who have made over $7 billion.
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Now, back to the show.
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And if we re on Fox News, this is where I would say thank you and we d wrap your little soundbite interview, right?
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Now we re going to go further.
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Now we can go further.
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See, as soon as we exhaust the stuff you ve said a hundred times, that s when it gets really, really good.
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Let s do it.
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But that was good and was interesting.
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And I think it is kind of epidemic level.
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I mean, people are doing this with jobs, careers, school, whatever it is.
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I see this in college.
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I remember for me, at least, I saw it in college where
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I had to do everything.
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I had to do a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
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And I remember even in law school asking a professor which classes we should be sure we take.
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And he listed out what would take about five and a half years of a three-year program if you had
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a really ambitious class schedule.
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You need to take all your core classes, but you know, tax law is a good one, then a corporate law, and then international law for sure, at least one or two of those, and then this one, and then some other extra, and it was just like, how are we going to possibly specialize in anything, and his advice was don t do that, which is terrible advice in my opinion, but.
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We see this at home, even in our careers, saying yes to everything, but even in our personal life at home and our family life, people overcommit themselves because of a little bit of FOMO, but also this sort of thought that if we don t say yes to everything, we re letting somebody else down.
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Do we have to just become okay with letting other people down, or are we actually not really letting them down long-term?
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What have you learned about this?
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Well, one of the things I ve learned is that there s a trade-off here, which is, do you want short-term popularity or longer-term respect?
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And if you just going for popularity all the time then you just end up being very reactive to every request every possible.
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I think that you could be doing anything anyone is doing that strategy is not the same as service it s not the same as loving people it s not the same as making a contribution it s just being pulled into the social pressure to do everything.
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On the basis that by doing everything, you will be successful with people and successful in your life and make your best contribution.
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If that s true, people should do it.
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If it s working for them, if it s getting them what they want, and if it s making a difference in the world, don t listen to me.
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Keep doing it.
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On the basis that it might not be,
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On the basis that it might be a bit of a con underneath, like malware, that it s pretending to be true but actually isn t true, then maybe we ought to look at something else, look at an alternative approach.
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And the alternative approach isn t being less helpful to people, it s being the most helpful you can be.
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But you get to be the most helpful by being more selective, by being more thoughtful, by saying yes with these constraints.
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Yes under these circumstances.
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And so you start to be able to utilize yourself, your own resources in a way that makes the best contribution in the world.
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I m really eager, it s one of the drivers for writing essentialism, that I could and others could live at their highest point of contribution.
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And you simply can t be utilized at your highest point of contribution if you say yes to everyone and everything that anybody is doing in this environment.
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That isn t what is produced.
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Have you seen Cal Newport s deep work?
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I have, yeah.
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So that s these kind of dovetail really nicely.
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And for those who ve heard the show,
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with me and him, it s all about getting rid of some of these extraneous things so you can focus on what really matters and move ahead because of that.
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It sounds like you learned this stuff the hard way.
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I mean, I went to law school in part because you have an opportunity, you have an option, you better take it.
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That was the wisdom when I was growing up.
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I do.
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Oh yeah.
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We re both culpable of making that decision.
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We made the same mistakes.
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I mean this conversation is about 17 years almost to the day when I was visiting a friend here in the United States.
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I was at law school in England and somebody said in passing to me, they said, if you do decide to stay in America, then you should come and help us on this project.
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And I never did help them with that, but the question gave me permission to rethink
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Permission to say, well, what if I didn t do what I m doing?
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What if I didn t stay committed to what I ve currently committed to?
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And so I made this 20 minute brainstorm.
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What would you do if you could do anything?
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And when I was finished, I was really struck by the idea, not by what was on it, but by what s not on the list.
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And law school wasn t on the list.
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Of course.
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So here I am at law school, suddenly with this awareness and also the geographical space to really wonder, well, why are you doing it?
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Maybe you don t have to.
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And really, from the moment that thought came, I never went back.
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Never psychologically, never even physically back to the law school.
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There s a different thing that s inside of me, a different burning yes.
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And it was right about that point I remembered I better call my parents.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Yeah.
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By the way, you re still going to help me out with these tuition loans, right?
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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It reminds me when I went to North Korea, actually, a few times on a vacation.
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Wow.
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Tourism.
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And I remember asking one of the guides who lives in North Korea, where would you go if you could go anywhere?
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And she said, oh, Mount Paektu up in the north of Korea.
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And I thought, is this just like hyper patriotism or what are we talking about?
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I said, no, no, no.
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Anywhere in the world.
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And she goes,
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I don t know, maybe somewhere to practice my English.
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And I was like, anywhere in the whole world, maybe like Africa or something.
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And she goes, whoa, Africa?
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Like it never had crossed her mind that you would ever be able to go there and see giraffes and things like that.
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And we were talking about animals and things like that.
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And she was just like, it was like saying, where do you want to go on vacation?
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And someone s like, let s go to Mars.
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And you re like, hold on a second.
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But we re thinking Disneyland or SeaWorld.
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I think that what you re saying is such a great example because the number of choices has expanded so fast, but our out-of-date way of dealing with it that maybe got us through in previous generations is discombobulating under the pressure of these options.
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And the irony is that in an era of so many options, of so many cool things that you could do, instead of being able to select that one thing that go to some different continent, instead of doing that, we re just consumed with a bunch of okay things.
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Things that aren t great to us, they don t spark joy for us, they aren t our highest point of contribution.
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In this environment, with all these options, we ought to be able to, with the right level of selectivity,
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Design a life that really matters, that really inspires us and blesses other people.
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That s what essentialism is about.
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So essentialism isn t really about essentialism.
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It s not about it as a subject.
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It s about trying to challenge and inspire people that they have permission to design a life that they really want to pursue.
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Yeah, I like this.
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You didn t always follow these rules, right?
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So I received an email from my boss at the time, and they said Friday would be a very bad time for your wife to have a baby.
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She was expecting at the time, of course.
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Otherwise, that would have been an even odder email.
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And the reason was because I need you to come to this client meeting and so on.
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And so Friday comes, we re in the hospital, that is when my daughter s born, and instead of being able to be focused on that priority event, that clearly important moment, I m feeling torn.
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And my question, I wasn t consciously asked at the time, is how can I do both?
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how can I somehow be here, support my wife, make that okay, be there for my daughter, and everything, you know, she s doing really well.
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And yeah, exactly, right?
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How can I also be there?
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And in the end, you know, to my shame, I go to the meeting.
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Oh, God, it s painful to hear.
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Isn t that painful?
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Yeah, when I read that, I was like, oh, man, this must burn even now.
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Burns, burns now.
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Yeah, right, it does.
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And, you know, so I go to the meeting.
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I remember afterwards, they said to me, the client will respect you for the choice you just made.
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That was their summary.
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And I don t know about that.
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I think they probably would have respected you more if you d gone to your daughter s birth instead.
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I think that s probably true, and the look on their faces did not evince that sort of confidence anyway.
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But even if they did, and even if some amazing thing had come from that meeting, clearly, you can see it.
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It s obvious in hindsight.
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I can see it, of course.
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I d made a fool s bargain.
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And so I was left with this question of why, and also the learning, if you don t prioritize your life, someone else will.
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That s really where I learned that single idea, and now I have to keep holding on to it.
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Now I have to keep coming back to it, anchoring back to that discovery.
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What s really most important now, and how can I construct my life in such a way that I m focused on that thing?
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one at a time.
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I agree.
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I mean, you write, don t major in minor things.
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However, how do we decide what s important?
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It s not always really obvious and sometimes everything looks important.
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Well, that s really what the non-essentialist believes.
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The non-essentialist believes that everything s essential, right?
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And the essentialist believes that almost nothing is essential.
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I think that the reality is more like the essential season.
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That s why it s powerful idea.
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It s not just a mind trick.
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It is the idea that most stuff is noise.
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Most stuff is just stuff.
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It doesn t matter one way or another.
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So the trick of life is to create enough space to figure that out.
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I think that when people create space, it becomes very clear to them.
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Because by CreateSpace, you mean get off the hamster wheel of busy crap for a second to realize that all the stuff you re doing is you on the hamster wheel.
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Yeah, that s right.
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I mean, practically, I think about it being every quarter someone should hold a personal quarterly offsite.
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Oh, I like this.
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You schedule somewhere between half a day and a day.
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I tend to take a full day.
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And you re asking all the big questions.
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So, what are my three to five most important life goals?
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Actually, I ve gone even further than that.
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Sometimes I m asking, what s my three to five hundred year vision goals?
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100 years later, like legacy, you re already gone type stuff?
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Yeah, definitely beyond oneself.
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What do I want my grandchildren s life to be like?
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What do I want their learning to have been?
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And when I can think in those very, very long term perspective, it helps to distinguish between the vital few and the trivial many that on a daily or even minute to minute basis can be very hard to discern between because it s all just coming at us.
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So 100-year vision really pushes one to think clearly.
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Can you believe your grandpa wore this crap on camera?
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Exactly, right?
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I want that.
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I want that moment for them to be and me to be thinking about my own role within a much longer intergenerational story.
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And so that s the first thing.
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The second thing is then you break that down as you can imagine, right?
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So like, okay, what are some of the three to five goals you want to achieve this year?
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What do you wanna do over the next 90 days?
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A chance to celebrate.
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I definitely always take the time to go through a list of gratitude, like what has happened, what have been the biggest wins over the last 90 days.
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So I m reviewing the last 90, planning for the next 90, and you come out of that session with a clear sense of here are just the few goals that are the ones I really want to achieve over this next 90 days.
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Do you then outline those goals, like how you re going to do that, or is it more of a broad overview?
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No, there s a whole set of different things I ve done on this.
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I don t do it the same every time, but I normally go through those goals and then say, what are the obstacles?
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And not how do I work around those obstacles, but how do you learn from every obstacle?
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Because an obstacle is really just your brain s best effort to articulate the problem that must be solved to achieve your goal.
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I think this is a really important thing to do.
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It s so easy to skip it thinking, I ve got this, right?
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It s like using a calendar.
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Now I can remember everything I have to do next week, but you really, you re not able to do that.
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And actually it s a great segue because I think the second thing people need to do to create space is a weekly design session.
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So every week, you re using each week as like perfect design period.
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I have a preference for a week over a day or over a month.
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If you re doing monthly planning, it s still quite long term.
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You know, you re not dealing with decisions you re about to really have to do.
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If you re doing it daily only, then I think your life will become reactive.
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I ve noticed that myself anyway.
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If I m just doing it day at a time, then it s just hitting me too randomly.
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Okay, what s on my calendar?
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Oh, that s on my calendar.
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So a weekly design session, you re really now translating the work you ve done on the course of the offsite into this week s essential plan, and you re trying to remove things that are no longer relevant, that are no longer the most valuable things.
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I think those combination, those two things, work quite well in starting to move a life from a non-essentialist reactive life to an essentialist proactive
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I think this is a really good idea.
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However, a lot of people are thinking right now, great, okay, tell my boss I m going to do an offsite where I m going to remove parts of my job and then not somehow get fired, right?
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Yeah.
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So it doesn t feel realistic.
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Right.
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It s easy for like two essentially self-employed guys to say, talk to everybody about how they should remove duties from their life that they feel are non-essential.
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Yeah.
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For a lot of people, it s not like
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Right.
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How do we even start to say no to things without just getting straight up fired?
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So we ve been talking about non-essentialism on the one hand and essentialism on the other.
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And you could walk all the way from being very undisciplined, very extreme on one side to very disciplined on the other.
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That s one continuum.
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There s a second continuum.
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And that is between things that we have no control of at the bottom and things that we have total control at the top.
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And so, what I always say to people is, yes, you want to be moving towards the essentialist side, but you ve got to start with the things you control.
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What often I hear people hear when they hear essentialism, they get that continuum, but they start with thinking about the things they have almost no control over.
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So they start by saying, a little bit like your question, how could I say no to my boss s boss?
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If they come to me and directly ask, you need to do this, and I say no, that s a career limiting move.
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That s a fireable offense almost.
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I am agreeing with that, right?
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This is the nature of hierarchical institutions.
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So don t start there, right?
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Don t start by saying no to your boss s boss.
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What is something you have complete control over?
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For example, what about the first three to 10 minutes of your day?
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Surely we have higher control over that than we have over our bosses  bosses  decisions.
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So start there.
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Start moving towards the essentialist and the things you do have control over.
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Build your essentialist muscles there.
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So slowly over time, as you start to understand better your own decision-making process, you can add to it skills of how to negotiate non-essentials and influence those things that you don t have control over but maybe can start to influence.
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Thank you for listening and supporting the Art of Charm.
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For a list of all the amazing sponsors and discount codes, visit theartofcharm.com slash advertisers.
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Now, back to the show.
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This is great because otherwise what happens, right, is instead you face this insurmountable wall and you re just thinking, how am I going to climb this mountain?
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All right, first step, go to my boss s boss and tell him no more TPS reports.
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It s just not going to work.
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It s not non-essential for me.
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But if it s kind of like, well, I can get up in the morning and just not check my social media and maybe look for urgent emails or even put an autoresponder that says I only check in the afternoon or whatever is acceptable in your office culture.
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You start small on the things you can control.
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Get the phone out of the bedroom.
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Get it out.
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Get one of these old Timex clocks.
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Little clock and get the phone out of there.
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Get your computer out of there.
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You have control over that space.
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If you don t create boundaries there, there won t be any.
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You know this.
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If you have your phone by your... I m not going to ask you.
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I m not going to put you on the spot.
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Most people have their phones right there by their bed.
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Hell yeah, I got my phone next to me.
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next to my bed.
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Airplane mode.
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Airplane mode, okay, good for you.
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This allows other people to always be in your space.
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It totally does.
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And the risk of that is that our whole life does become a function of other people s agenda for us.
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Add to that our own anxiety around checking our phone and being connected.
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That s not other people doing that to us sometimes.
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It s just our choice.
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Start where you have a bit of control.
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Put the phone away.
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Get rid of it in that morning.
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Those first 10 minutes.
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I recommend people when they wake up in the morning, it s the first few minutes,
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is what are you grateful for?
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What are the important things that you re grateful for?
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Number two is what are the two or three goals you ve identified as being really important to you over the next quarter or more, so that you re just kind of tuning yourself to that.
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So not the day, the longer term.
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No, longer term.
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So you re now moving into things that really matter to you.
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And then third is like, how can I make my best service today?
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How can I love the best?
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How can I serve the best?
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Because essentialism has nothing whatsoever to do with being more selfish.
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It just has to do with more essential things.
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To me, that practice is so much better than just first thing, okay, check my phone, now I m into that reactive mode already and it s the start of the day.
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I m priming myself for distraction if I spend the first 10 minutes on the phone.
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Going through the long-term goals keeps you away from the shorter-term stuff.
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It s hard to think about going through your inbox if you re trying to knock down a book proposal.
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It s interesting you mentioned a book proposal, because that s just the kind of thing that people aren t emailing us about.
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You have to act upon those things.
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And these goals, this is what helps us then move our weekly planning and our daily experience from this very reactive, non-essentialist norm.
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And what s the result of that?
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What s the reward of that?
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You can actually do something that matters.
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You can actually move forward on a goal that you feel like will make a big difference in the world.
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That s the right trade-off.
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You can do a bunch more email and just reactive constantly.
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And it s not just even email, is it?
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It s social media.
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It s just endless cycles.
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It s being a news junkie.
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It s whatever we get sucked in on the phone versus achieving something that we have identified as meaningful.
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Basically, we have to live by design and not by default, which I think is also written explicitly in the book.
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And that s kind of a novel concept.
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It sounds so simple, like, yeah, okay, whatever.
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It s really easy to brush it off.
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But when we look at our day and we ask how much of it we actually have designed, it s usually a pretty small percentage.
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Even for those of us that are self-employed, we think we ve designed our whole day and we really haven t.
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Again, about the idea of being self-employed, you have control of your schedule only if you choose to.
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You can still be as reactive in any environment.
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In fact, this is one of the funny things about essentialism is that sometimes people will say things like, well, this is okay for the CEO, but not for me.
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But that s only true until you talk to the CEO.
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And the CEO says to me, well, it s okay for everybody in the organization, but not for me.
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I ve got so many people expecting things from me.
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It s easy for them, but not for me.
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Everyone has a set of reasons that they have bought into non-essentialism.
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But what I think it all comes down to ultimately is that people don t know they have chosen non-essentialism.
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They just have adopted it.
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They got washed into the drain of non-essentialism.
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Because it s like such a monopoly view right now.
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Sure.
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Until we sort of wake up almost like a matrix moment to, oh wow, this is not the normal state of things.
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This is just the state of our culture at the time we happen to be here.
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And so when would people wake up to it?
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It s almost like what I want for people is to discover how revolting non-essentialism actually is.
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swimming in this cesspool.
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Yeah, it is this thing that is a lie.
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We re swimming in it and it s having such a cost.
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I mean, sometimes I joke about all of this, but sometimes it makes me furious to think of the cost in individual s lives as to what they wish their life could be, what it could be, in fact, if they made different trade-offs and what they ve been conned into believing.
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I mean, we ve been sold a bill of goods
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and the consequences are serious and significant.
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Do you see this as being primarily caused by technology, or is there a greater sort of work culture that has creeped in and now is being exacerbated by that?
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I don t think it s been created by technology.
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I mean, that sounds like a contradiction, but I don t think it is.
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The idea of non-essentialism has been with us for a long time, and I think we can trace it back with a little history lesson.
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If you go back to the 1500s, the word priority came into the English language.
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What does it mean?
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The prior thing, meaning the very first thing.
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It is by definition singular, the first thing.
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And for the next 500 years, it stayed singular, which is pretty amazing.
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That means that nobody in the English-speaking language, no one talking like we are today, for half a millennium,
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actually use the term priorities because there can only be one by its own definition.
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So why did it change?
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What happened?
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And I think it was in response to the industrial revolution where you were throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
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Lots of change for the better.
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Some changes not for the better.
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And so as we started talking about priorities, so now we re sort of 1900s, you can see there have been then phases of non-essentialism ever since then, so waves of it.
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So the Industrial Revolution was the first, the post-Second World War was the second phase, where we come back from this most discombobulating experience the world s known, the industrialized world has ever known,
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And what do we do?
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When was the mourning period?
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When did we take the year or the decade to adjust to this experience, to go through a sort of cathartic process?
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We didn t do a thing.
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We didn t take a year.
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We didn t take a month.
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We barely took a minute.
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So what did we do instead?
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of dealing with that.
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We followed what the Romans called a panem strategy, panem.
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It s Latin for bread and circus.
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Panem was a strategy that was deliberately used in Rome and as part of the Roman Empire to distract the masses from the problems that were starting to be unaddressable in their society, certainly they were so significant.
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And so instead you just distract people, right?
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You build the Coliseum, you have people distracted by bread and circus.
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That s what we did after the Second World War.
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So everything became about, and this is when we became consumers for a start.
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We weren t consumers.
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The founding fathers didn t build a constitution for consumers.
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They weren t thinking of themselves as consumers, they thought of themselves as citizens.
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So a fundamental change took place in the post-World War.
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So this is the second wave of non-essentialism.
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And the third is the one we ve all lived through the last 10 years.
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So what I m saying is that technology has exacerbated the challenge.
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It s been built on top of a non-essentialist assumption.
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But the assumption, that malware is still the problem.
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It s been with us growing, and now it s at a sort of fever pitch.
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But it s actually been with us all the time, slowly taking its toll on individuals.
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If we start to create different habits, we start to edit things out, we start to, as you outline in the book, make suggestions for our employer rather than telling them I m not doing this.
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First of all, how do we get our family maybe to do this with us?
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Because I feel like it could be one of those issues where if I solve it, but my wife and three kids and mother-in-law, they re still doing things the old way.
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I m just getting sucked into it.
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It s like Scarface.
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Every time I try to get out, they suck me right back in to their non-essentialism.
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Yeah.
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So what I ve learned is this.
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I ve learned that essentialism is either done collectively or not at all.
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Ah, interesting.
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Okay.
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I ve learned that you have to do it with other people.
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In fact, I recommend people that the most realistic step, the very first thing to become an essentialist is probably to read the book.
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And maybe that sounds self-serving, but that s what I ve learned, right?
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Just get the language.
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Get the language yourself so you can start seeing non-essentialism for what it is, because it starts to name it.
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And then you say, OK, who is somebody else who I want to take this journey with?
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And you read the book together.
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So now there s two people that have new language.
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And in the language, the language is such an important thing, because without language, you can t talk about a problem.
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With language, you can talk about this.
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You can actually start to address it.
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And so that s where I d start with next.
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And maybe your whole family does it.
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And it worked the same.
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Who s someone who s safe?
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Maybe your boss is safe and you share it with them.
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Maybe the whole team is safe.
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You all read it together.
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Don t even worry about changing a thing.
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Just read it together.
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The language itself is a change and allows you to slowly over time, as the journey is definitely a long journey, allows you to have different conversations.
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And if you can change your conversation, ultimately you can change decisions and the culture.
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But you can t change decisions or culture if you don t change the language.
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So don t read the book and then try to execute it on your own.
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Because everyone else is still swimming in a different logic.
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There are people that contact me all the time now about this.
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They ve done it.
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They ve read it.
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They ve got the people in their organization to read it.
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They ve got their family to read it.
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And then they re able to make tremendous cultural shifts in how they operate, how they work together, break through to the next level personally and professionally.
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Really amazing success stories that have come along.
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But you just got to do it together.
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What about boundary setting?
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I mean, you make kind of a big deal about this in the book.
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Personal life, work life, there needs to be a hard stop, a hard line between that.
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Why does that work?
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Why is that important, and how do we do it?
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Well, because boundaryless living, which is centered in non-essentialism, believes something that s not true.
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What it believes is that there are no trade-offs.
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If there were no trade-offs, just be a non-essentialist.
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In fact, if there s no trade-offs, we all ought to be.
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Because if there s no trade-offs, you can just do everything all the time and therefore will achieve everything you want.
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That s what non-essentialism keeps saying is true.
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If it s true, like I keep saying to you, if it s true, if it works, keep doing it.
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If it doesn t, then you have to start accepting, well, there are trade-offs I m making every time I make a choice to check my phone at home.
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Every time i do that i m not paying attention to one of my children.
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Every time i m talking to my wife and i suddenly get pulled into an email or a text i m suddenly disrupting the experience there so i ve got to start facing the trade-offs that non-essentialism lies about.
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Start seeing what the actual costs are to the decisions i m making and look you can multitask right that s really proven you can definitely multitask what you can t do is multifocus.
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And so if I care at work or at home about focusing, if I believe that my relationships are better when I focus on them and aren t distracted, then there will be a benefit to doing it and there ll be a trade-off to not doing it.
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Longest I think I ve been without my phone at all was like two and a half weeks on a family vacation.
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in Costa Rica, right?
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We get out there into the jungle.
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My children still talk about that trip.
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They still noticed what a difference it made to have their dad totally unplugged from this just constant tapping in our life.
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Yeah.
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Must make you feel a little bit bummed that you didn t do it earlier, that it s difficult to do even now.
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We re going to be off track 90% of the time.
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You re just like any flight that you re on you go from san francisco to new york your flight is off track nine percent of the time it gets to where it s supposed to get to when it s supposed to because it keeps coming back on track.
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And that s key for essential is to try and be an essential list like with a perfectionist mindset.
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is to be trying to be an essentialist with a non-essentialist approach.
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Does that make sense?
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It does.
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It s like trying to row a boat in two directions at the same time.
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I like that metaphor.
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It s trying to say, unless I can be a perfect essentialist, meaning unless I can do everything perfect now, then I shouldn t even bother.
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An essentialist doesn t see that or say that at all.
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They say there s a few things that matter.
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I m going to get off track.
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I m going to keep coming back on track.
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There s a lot of stuff I m going to get wrong.
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I m not going to get this perfect.
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I m going to keep coming back.
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And so I have all sorts of things built into the routine and structure of my life that keeps me coming back.
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So every Monday night is a family night.
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No matter what, no matter what, that night is already siphoned off.
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How old are your kids?
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So I ve got four children, not very essentialistic.
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Yeah.
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13, 12, 10, and 7.
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So right now you re in the point where you can still say Monday night is family night.
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Yeah, that s right.
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I did the same thing as well, right?
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So this was a church recommendation.
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This is years ago, 40 years ago.
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And so my family all growing up did this.
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We weren t perfect in our family by any means.
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We were off track 90% of the time, same.
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But every Monday, as sure as I was going to eat,
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On Monday, we were going to have a family.
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That s great.
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And so there are things that you can build, routines and structures that make execution of what s essential easier.
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And so while you re not going to get it right, well, I know I don t get it right.
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I m trying to build a system that supports the things that matter most.
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You mentioned in the book that essentialism has to be at the center of every decision that you make.
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So it sort of seems like I m trying to reconcile the off track 90% of the time with every decision you make has to have essentialism at the core.
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Why can t we just kind of weekend warrior this thing?
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Well, I think that the idea that I m trying to explain in the book is that it needs to
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a mindset shift.
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So sometimes when I m teaching about essentialism, someone will come up to me afterwards and say, look, this is so great.
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This is a great reminder of one more thing I need to do.
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As if essentialism is just one more thing, that becomes an irony.
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It s not one more thing.
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It s not another thing to add into the overstuffed closet of our lives.
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It s a different way of doing everything.
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So it s not that we re going to have our behaviors correct every time, all the time.
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But what we can keep coming back to is a mindset shift, where we start to think about the world differently.
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We start to think like an essentialist.
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Then over time, the behaviors come instinctive, spontaneous, and then we start to build new routines around that new insight.
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So the work itself, real work, is the mindset, to get the mindset of an essentialist.
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making it something that you are instead of something that you just do sometimes.
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That s right.
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Something you become, not something that you are adding on top of a non-essentialist mindset.
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Because that won t work.
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That s the problem.
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If you think like a non-essentialist and try to behave as an essentialist, you re still going to end up trying to efficiently do way too many things.
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And so you re still going to get the same results.
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The mindset has to shift.
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The tools, for example, we ve been talking about technology.
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I m not a Luddite.
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I m not anti-tools.
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I m not anti-technology.
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I work and spend my life in Silicon Valley.
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But it makes a very poor master, good servant, poor master.
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That s why the mindset shift is the one that has to happen first.
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Great stuff from Greg here.
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Yes, being an essentialist, not just doing essentialism, but actually being it, living by design, not by default, and setting up those boundaries and actually keeping them so that we don t end up driving ourselves crazy and getting fired or letting all of our hard work go to waste.
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Really good stuff from Greg.
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If you enjoyed this one, don t forget to thank him on Twitter.
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We ll have that linked in the show notes, as well as the book Essentialism, the Disciplined Pursuit of Less
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Other resources mentioned on the show will also be in there, and you can tap our album art in most mobile podcast players to see the cheat sheet, the notes, for this episode, and we ll link to the show notes right on your phone.
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I m also on Twitter, at The Art of Charm.
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You can engage with me there, ask me questions, or generally harass me from a distance.
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Boot camp and Art of Charm live program details at theartofcharm.com.
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Remember, we re sold out a few months in advance, so if you re thinking about it even a little bit, you should get in touch ASAP to get some info from us so you can plan ahead.
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Also, don t forget about the Social Capital Challenge at theartofcharm.com slash challenge, or in the states here, you can text charmed to 33444.
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That s C-H-A-R-M-E-D to 33444.
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The challenge is all about improving your networking and your connection skills, and inspiring those around you to develop a personal and professional relationship with you.
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We ll also email you our Fundamentals Toolbox that I mentioned earlier in the show,
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and I do regular videos with drills and exercises every week to help you move forward.
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It ll make you a better networker, a better connector, and a better thinker.
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That s theartofcharm.com slash challenge or text charmed in the US to 33444.
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For full show notes for this and all previous episodes, head over to theartofcharm.com slash podcast.
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This episode of The Art of Charm was produced by Jason DeFilippo.
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Jason Sanderson is our audio engineer and editor.
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Show notes on the website are by Robert Fogerty.
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I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
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Go ahead and tell your friends, because the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else, either in person or shared on the web.
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So stay charming and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
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Thanks for listening to the Art of Charm.
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Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more at theartofcharmpodcast.com.