Title: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Author: Greg McKeown
Price: $13.26 Hardcover, $7.65 Paperback on Amazon
We live in a world with too many choices. We have a dozen varieties of M&Ms, GPS apps and styles of jeans. Does Pizza Hut have to invent a new kind of pizza every month? What was wrong with pizza 1.0? The options and choices found in modern life create pressure and stress, and as we look at our lives, the accumulation of all of those decisions is a pile of too much stuff with too many bills.
Author Greg McKeown has a new solution. He wants to help you pare down the tasks and choices in your life, to find the things that matter to you, so you can focus on the things that make you happy. His philosophy isn’t minimalism. You won’t forsake your worldly possessions to live a solitary life on a mountaintop, unless that’s what you really want to do of course. His book also isn’t another productivity guide that promises to help you do more in less time. If anything, Essentialism wants you to spend the same amount of time getting less done.
It’s easy to see why Essentialism is such a powerful concept: The more attention you can pay to the things that matter, the better you will be at them. Essentially, this is the eternal question: Would you rather have a lot of mediocre food at the buffet or one well-prepared, adequately sized portion made just for you? While there might be times we want the buffet, it’s hard to imagine we’d eat lunch there every day.
The process described in the book is simple, but don’t let that fool you. Deciding what’s important and essential to you is an ongoing process, and McKeown does an excellent job of creating principles that can be applied every day, even after you put the book down. Whether you want to do a better job of living within your budget, do a better job at work, or just reclaim all those hours you’ve lost every day running the kids to soccer, judo, or whatever, this is the book for you.
That’s one of the greatest parts of Essentialism: The money you save on your budget can pay for time with the family at the movies, on vacation, or picking up dinner so you don’t have to spend all night making something. The time you save focusing on important things can be used to engage in your hobby, or rediscovering the fun you used to have with your spouse, maybe even going back to school. Essentialism is about as adaptable and powerful as any book you’ll pick up this month.