The Disciplined Pursuit of Less ｜ Greg McKeown
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Summary
In a world where everyone and everything is clamoring for your attention, it is becoming increasingly difficult to focus on the vital few as opposed to the trivial many. My guest today, Greg McKeown, the New York Times bestselling author of Essentialism, makes the case for why less can actually be more.
Transcript
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In a world where everyone and everything is clamoring for your attention, it is becoming
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increasingly difficult to focus on the vital few as opposed to the trivial many. My guest today,
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Greg McKeown, the New York Times bestselling author of Essentialism, makes the case for why
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less can actually be more. We talk about how to eliminate distractions, the criteria for measuring
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what tasks you should actually focus on, how to establish proper boundaries, and why every man
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should take on the disciplined pursuit of less. You're a man of action. You live life to the
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fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back
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up one more time. Every time. You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong.
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This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day,
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and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
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Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Mickler, and I am the host and founder of this
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podcast, The Order of Man. You know what this is all about. This podcast, this movement, the blog,
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everything that we're doing is an effort to restore masculinity. We're restoring it. We're reclaiming
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it in a society that I think seems to be more effeminate, that seems to be moving away from
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masculinity, that villainizes what it means to be a man. We are trying to be a pillar, a beacon of movement
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of thousands and thousands and millions of men across the planet, banding together, working
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together to become better fathers, better husbands, better business owners, community leaders,
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whatever the focus is that you have as a man. My goal is to give you the tools, the resources,
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the guidance, the direction, the focus, the accountability, everything that you might need
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So guys, what we're doing each and every week is we are interviewing some of the world's
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most successful men. I've got a great one lined up for you today. A man that I have respected
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for a very long time, Greg McEwen, the author of Essentialism. I know a lot of you guys have
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read this book. A lot of you guys have recommended this book over the years to me. I've got it sitting
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here in my library and I'm honored to have him on the show. Now, before I do get into that
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interview, just want to make a quick announcement. I've been talking about Origin, Maine over the past,
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community, in his family. And that's why we're working together. So guys, go check it out.
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so I'm just getting started with that. I've got a gi from origin, some rash guards as well from origin.
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check it out. Originmaine.com slash order of man. And of course I've worked at a discount with them.
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If you use the code order, all caps, O-R-D-E-R at checkout, you will get a discount when you use that
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code. So again, guys, go check it out. I know that you'll think as highly of them as I do. Now guys,
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let's just jump right into this today because I am excited to introduce you to this guest.
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Again, his name is Greg McKeown. He is a man who probably needs no introduction for many of you.
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If you're familiar with his work at all, you've likely read his New York Times bestselling book,
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Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. He makes the case for why each of us should strive
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to focus on the few things that actually matter as opposed to all of the nonsense and the trivial
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garbage and everything else that we can bog ourselves down with. He's spoken all over the
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world at industry conferences, huge companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, all reach
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out to him for consulting, even governments, including a personal invitation from the Prince
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of Norway to speak there. Pretty cool stuff. So needless to say, this is a man who knows what
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he's talking about when it comes to doing less, but ultimately producing more. And that's what all of
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us should be striving for. So guys, take some notes if you can hit replay if you can, or you have to
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later, if you're working out or doing something like that, but sit back, relax, enjoy the show.
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And let's see what we can implement in our own lives to help us be much more efficient.
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Greg, thanks for joining me on the show today. I'm so looking forward to having this conversation.
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It's been a long time in the works and you've been on my radar for a long time. So I'm honored to
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be talking with you finally. It's my pleasure, Ryan. Thank you for your patience,
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persistence, and I hope that we have a great conversation.
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Yeah. If there's one thing I am, it's persistent. Everything else is hit or miss,
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but persistence is one thing I feel like I'm fairly good at. And it's required for getting
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into contact with guys like yourself and just putting yourself out in the world and trying
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to get this message heard for sure. I appreciate that you've done it.
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Before we hit record, we were talking about this premise and this notion of essentialism,
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which is as a book that you've written. When was the book published? I should have looked at that.
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When was the book published? It was published in April of 2014.
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2014. Right. Okay. And so what we were talking about is how over the past three,
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four years, this idea of essentialism has not gone away. In fact, if anything,
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and what you had mentioned that it's more relevant four years later than it was when you wrote the
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book, can you explain the premise of essentialism? And then we'll talk about why this is so critical.
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essentialism is the antidote to a problem. And the problem is that when individuals or teams or
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organizations or in these societies become successful, there's this huge increase of
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options and opportunities that can distract them from the clarity that led to success in the first
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place. And so we experienced this in different ways, but some of the ways that we experienced it
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is in this extreme busyness that we see around us where people have so many options and so many
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opportunities. They might not think of them in those words. They might just think about them as
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demands and interruptions and disruptions. It's endless emails. It's endless tweets, news updates.
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It's people wanting things. It's comparison that we have in social media. But in the end,
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what it all amounts to is what Jim Collins has called the undisciplined pursuit of more.
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You know, as I said, that experience is in busyness, you know, where people feel busy,
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but not productive. It's also when people feel stretched too thin at work or at home and in
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any of the things they're trying to pursue. It's felt when they sometimes do have a sense of what
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they want their day to be, but it just is hijacked by other people's agenda of various kinds.
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This is the problem. So essentialism is a book that I wrote, a philosophy that I named,
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a practical philosophy for responding to that problem. It's the antidote to that disease. It's
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an attempt at being. So if the problem is the undisciplined pursuit of more, then the antidote is
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the disciplined pursuit of less. I really can appreciate and respect this. I know over the past three
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years as order of man has really grown, what I thought I wanted was not entirely what I wanted.
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When I, when I started, I want to be connected and I wanted to be influential and I wanted to have
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opportunities and I wanted to be able to grow what we're doing. And what I didn't realize at the time,
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as I was getting this thing launched is how taxing and demanding that can be with the things that
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aren't necessarily important. But like you said, they're just distractions versus me being
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hyper-focused on the mission of helping men become better men. How do you determine then
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what is going to be worth pursuing and what isn't in the face of so many opportunities we'll call them
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or distractions, however you want to term it? Well, there's really three things that
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somebody needs to learn to become an essentialist. We need to learn to explore. Yeah. That's creating
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space to explore so that we can discern between the vital few and the trivial many. We have to
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create that space in our environment. The environment has become so successful, really.
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Modern society has produced so many options, so much opportunity that it drowns out even our ability
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to discern those things. So that's the first thing. Explore what is essential. We can talk about how to do
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that in a moment. Number two is to learn how to eliminate the non-essentials, to do it as gracefully
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as possible, to do that in a wise and consistent way. And then third is to execute on the things we've
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identified as truly important, but not just to execute the way that sometimes people talk about
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execution, not this sort of very forced, last minute, very high stress experience, but actually
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in an almost effortless way so that you build a system that makes the essential activities as
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routine as possible, that builds momentum around those things that matter most. And so those are
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really sort of the three practices of essentialism to explore, eliminate, and to execute. That's the
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conceptual explanation of what we need to do. I know for me, one of the things that I've experienced,
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and I'm really looking forward to breaking each of these down. One of the things that I've
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experienced is I've tried to implement what you've taught into my work and my life.
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Sometimes it becomes maybe monotonous and boring. And we see some of these opportunities that present
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themselves or distractions. And we think, well, this is exciting. This is a thrill. This is something
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new. So from my perspective, a lot of the times, the reason people cling onto these distractions is
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because it is thrilling and it is exciting. Do you see that too? Or is there something in addition to this?
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There are things in addition, but we can start with that one. I mean, this distinction between
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whether something's exciting versus whether something is essential is non-trivial. There's
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almost not a day that goes by where I'm not doing one activity that I think is important. Maybe I'm
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researching something for something I'm writing or something I'm curious and understanding, and I'm
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pursuing that journey. But along the way, something exciting comes along. That doesn't mean it's inherently
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bad, of course. But to be aware, is this really the right direction? Am I really working on the
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things that matter most right now? Or is it just a shiny object? You know, an illustration of the
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problem was described by Winston Churchill. He said there are five stages in writing a book. And in the
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first phase, it's a play thing. And in the final stage, it's a tyrant.
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I can definitely see how that's the case. We just came out with my first book, and I would agree
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with that. Absolutely. I'm sure you do fully understand those stages. And the fact is,
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is that many things, not just writing a book, many things are like what he just described.
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They're play things at first. So they're just exciting. They may not be important. They may
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just have the excitement that goes along with something new. I think there's a place for
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exploration. In fact, I think that essentialists explore more than non-essentialists, ironically.
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And that's because they are exploring broadly. But then once they've identified what's important,
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then they're going deeply. What I think always is to say, am I pursuing this because it's exciting?
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Or am I pursuing this because it's essential? And often we do know, especially if we just say,
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okay, hold on, let me turn off the phone. Let me turn off the computer. Let me close this. Let me
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close my eyes. Let me pause even for just half a moment and say, what's important now? What really
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should I be doing? Now, sometimes when people ask themselves that question, it isn't clear.
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I think often it is actually. I think just the pause will often bring something clearly to mind.
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But if it's not, then we have to do more of an exploration, meaning we have to create more space
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than just that momentary pause. One of the things I think that is really helpful is to create a personal
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quarterly offsite where you really step away from your life in a more formal way and you look long-term.
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And by long-term, I mean, I mean, really, really long-term. I mean, most times when people think
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long-term, they think, well, even 90 days or a year or five years or 10 years, of course, 10 years is
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very long-term. But I think sometimes we ought to, as part of our quarterly process, we ought to think
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like beyond ourselves, meaning like a hundred years into the future and to say, okay, well, after I'm
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gone, what will matter? Suddenly, so many of the proximate things in our lives will fade away
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into nothingness. We just go, of course they won't matter. So much of this noise will not matter a
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hundred years from now. But some of them will. A few of them will. In my life, and this is just me,
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I'm not trying to dictate what other people value and what they see as important. But for my life,
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I can see that the way I treat my son, my daughters today, the time I spend with them,
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the investment I make in them and being present, being there for them, even just a small interaction
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with them. Over time, those small inputs can make an impact a hundred years from now. And that doesn't
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mean that a hundred years from now, my great-great-grandkids will remember me. That doesn't
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matter. But the impact will be there because my children will be healthier than they would
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otherwise have been. I can teach them, impact them. I can model for them what it is to be a
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father, to be a man to them. And they can do that. They can lead their own children and grandchildren
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well and so on. And so you can see that there are small things that we can do in the here and now that
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impact a very long time into the future. So I find one of the practices for doing that is this
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personal course, the offsite, step away, see the big picture, see what really matters over the very
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long run, and then start to come back to that in the moment. Suddenly, I have something, a point of
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clarity that I can use to compare whatever exciting thing has just come across my desk, whatever the
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news article is, whatever the interesting thing of the moment is. I can say, okay, that is interesting,
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but is it more important than the thing I've identified when I was calm and focused on the personal
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course on the offsite? Is it more important than that? And it's easy to see them. No, I know what
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things matter most. And I will then be able to get back on track, which I have to do multiple times a
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day, back on track with the things that matter most. Yeah, I actually had this exercise introduced
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to me from a friend. And what she had said is just ask yourself in any given moment, whether what you're
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doing or what you're stressing about or what you're thinking about is going to matter next week.
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And I think that simple, and this is a simplified version of what you're talking about, but I think
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that simple question will eliminate probably 80% of the things that are occupying your mind at any
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given moment throughout your day. Yeah, I think you're right about that. And I think it's an
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evidence. The fact that even taking the question to one week from now helps for better discernment
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illustrates how far from good discernment we have gone without really meaning to.
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I mean, the idea that one week has become a sort of long-term thinking, longer-term thinking than we
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often do, it evidences the challenge. And I think it's true. So even though as I've gone for this
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intentionally extreme example and still believe in, I think it shows how often people are working
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literally minute to minute, email to email, reaction to reaction. And so if that way of living,
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what we could call the way of the non-essentialist, if it's working for someone, if it's producing high
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quality relationships, if it's producing breakthrough results in things that really matter, if it's
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helping somebody to discover and identify and live by their highest points of contribution,
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if it's doing those things that I just described, keep doing it. You know, ignore me, ignore the research
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I've done, ignore it all. But on the basis that non-essentialism, this reactive, quite compulsive
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way of living, on the basis that it might not be living up to its promise, that it might not be
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producing the deep relationships with the people that matter most, the breakthroughs of contribution
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that we hope to make personally, professionally, in the world at large, on the basis that it isn't
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delivering what it promises to deliver, then maybe we question it. Maybe we say, well, maybe that way
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isn't the way. Maybe we've been sold a bill of goods. I can certainly see that's the case because
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I think there's a lot of people who are listening to this podcast who know that maybe something's off
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in their life and know that they're not producing the results when it comes to the relationships or
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their bank account or the businesses they're starting or the physique that they're trying to obtain.
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And I know for me that this has been a huge step in the right direction. I do want to go to something
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that you had said, which was, which was fascinating and a little counterintuitive for me, as you said
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that essentialists explore more broadly. So I guess my question to that is, does that mean then they
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know how to get to a, yes, let's continue to move forward or no, this is not essential. And they learn how
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to shut it off quicker. Like how can somebody who's an essentialist explore more broadly yet get deeper
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work done? Think about Warren Buffett. There's a few things that are curious about, you know,
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the most successful investor in history. How did he do it? How does he approach it? So he had an
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intention even before he was known, before he was successful, he understood something. He said,
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I cannot possibly be right like a thousand times. I can't be, I'm not going to be right that many
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times. So he said, therefore, I'm going to try to do my research broadly until I identify something
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that is a, such a clear yes meets all the criteria that I'm really looking for. Then I'm going to go
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big and I'm going to hold onto that investment for the long run. And that was his strategy. This is the
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phrase. He said, our investment strategy, this is, I, this like almost gives me chills when I hear it
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still, not because of the investment implications, just for the life implications. He says, our
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investment strategy borders on lethargy. That means that what he's doing is he recognizes I can only be
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right a few times. Therefore, those few times will matter so much. It's worth taking the time to do the
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full exploration so that I'm going to be in the process basically of saying no to almost everything.
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In fact, that's what he said. He's quoted as having said the difference between successful people and very
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successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything. And that's not because he or
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they are being jerks. It's because you go, let's look at this option. This is an interesting thing. Let's look at it.
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Let's hold it up. Let's admire it. Let's think about, no, that's not it. Let's move on to the next one. This
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could be it. And this is what Berkshire Hathaway is fundamentally doing. This is their, in a sense,
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is their core competency, is the constant exploration of possible investments, but with a
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very high and precise set of criteria for what will yield a yes. And when it's yes, it's a big yes,
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it's all in, and it's there for a very long time. They're not trying to do quick turnaround profit.
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They're not trying to just do, you know, we'll come in there, change all your management, make it
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all happen, throw it out and sell it again. They go, we're looking for people who are already great
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at managing. We don't want to mess with them. We're going to select really, really well.
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And so that's an illustration. I mean, it is now a matter of fact, right? Then it was a matter of
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philosophy for him. Now, in hindsight, it's a matter of fact that 90% of his fortune can be traced back to
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about 10 investment decisions. So now we see, well, that happened. That was true. That was based
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in correct assumption. And the assumption was that there are a few things that are exceptionally
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valuable, and almost everything else is noise. In this case, it's not worth investing in.
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And so therefore, if that is true, if the world is established not in approximately equal investments,
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but in fact, some are incredibly valuable, and most of them are not, then you are justified
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in the first of the essentialist practices. You're justified in creating an inordinate amount of time
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in exploration, in considering, in pondering, in reflecting, in asking questions, in doing some
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research, in thinking through things. All of that is justified because what you need to do is identify
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those few things, very, very few things that really matter. And then you go big on them,
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and you go on for the long run. And so that's kind of the, you know, an example, a case study for
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someone that applied this, you know, applied essentialist thinking and practices to tremendous
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breakthrough success. And you can see that he was exploring more, but committing to fewer things.
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This makes complete sense. Now, I was looking forward to talking with you about this, because I
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imagine that you get a significant amount of requests for your time and attention for podcast
00:21:33.160
appearances, for writing articles and doing video videos and all kinds of stuff. And the question
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I wanted to ask is, what were your criteria for choosing to come on this podcast? Because I think
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that would help us see where you're coming from and how you're making decisions based on what's going
00:21:49.760
to be best in your interest and your endeavors. Well, first of all, of course, the audience that
00:21:54.680
you're speaking to and what you're trying to accomplish is intent that aligns with intent that I have.
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So that matters. But I think to understand, you know, this decision, we have to look more broadly
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at sort of the portfolio of my professional work, and what things I am not doing broader,
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more broadly. So for example, the biggest strategic trade off I've made over the last few years,
00:22:15.120
since essentialism came out is not to write another book. Depending on your experience writing,
00:22:20.020
you may understand it or not understand it. But for me, that's been much harder than writing
00:22:24.280
another book would have been. I'm motivated to write another book, I want to write another book,
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I have many things I would like to say many things I think that are good, and worthwhile worthy. But
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there is a clearer sense that I should be trading that off in favor of something else. It's a long,
00:22:39.560
long journey is nothing helpful to announce about it other than what I feel I should be doing as an
00:22:44.760
essentialist television show. So that's the trade off. So for me, and the trade off is simple,
00:22:51.120
because in the sense that if I were to just jump into another book, then I'd be consumed with it.
00:22:57.100
You know, for me, it's a sort of a three-year journey minimum of researching it, writing it,
00:23:01.340
trying to find the right articulation of ideas, you know, the right language, positioning,
00:23:05.980
I mean, all this matters to me in doing it right. Then of course, there's the editing process,
00:23:10.920
there's the publishing process, there's the marketing process, there's the trying to help to actually
00:23:15.020
have an impact and people who understand it and implement it. I mean, this is an enormous
00:23:19.180
commitment. And if I were to do that right now, this other intent would just, I think it would
00:23:24.440
just fall off and disappear. And so I would have to pick it up again years from now, and begin again
00:23:30.040
where I am today. So there's an example of something I, and to get there, I have wrestled
00:23:34.900
with that. I mean, I've gone through many book ideas, I have ideas that I think are compelling
00:23:39.320
ideas, I think that they, you know, maybe will be written one day, maybe almost certainly will be
00:23:43.960
written one day, but not now. And not, not yet. For me, that's been a disciplined process. And so
00:23:50.260
in that story, right, maybe that sounds like a luxury story. Well, do you want to write another
00:23:53.880
book and do a TV show? Certainly it's a first world problem. But nevertheless, I hope in that story for
00:23:59.140
people listening, they can say, right, that this was something that was a want to do item.
00:24:05.100
This was something that was good and checked a lot of the boxes to write another book. And by the way,
00:24:09.960
essentialism has been more successful than I or the publisher expected it to be. So that means
00:24:15.080
that they're eager to do it, that they would, you know, I'm sure pay more than they would for the
00:24:19.940
first book. All of that incentivizes you to do something. But there's a clarity, a voice of
00:24:25.740
clarity I had to really spend time to get to and to be clear about that is taking me on a different
00:24:31.260
direction. That's the kind of decision making difference we're talking about here. Success can
00:24:36.660
produce its own trap. In fact, I have a friend who says that success traps are harder to get out of
00:24:42.620
than failure traps. And success traps incentivize you. That's my analysis of his statement is that
00:24:48.060
success traps incentivize you to continue going down a certain path. Failure traps at least
00:24:52.780
incentivize you to change. And so in this case, although it sounds innocent enough, but even a
00:24:59.340
positive thing, write another book, keep writing books, write a book every couple of years. There's a lot
00:25:03.480
of authors that do. And they're very happy with that journey. I feel the need to get to clarity
00:25:10.300
again. What is the right thing to do? Not what does the publisher want? Not what does my excellent
00:25:15.280
agent want? Not what do even the readers want? You know, I have a pretty good sense of a book or two
00:25:21.020
that I think, you know, readers that cared about essentialism would like me to write. That's not the
00:25:26.120
right criteria. The criteria is what's the right thing to do? Get back to clarity. Hear that internal
00:25:31.220
voice. Get to be sure. Get to be 10 out of 10 sure if you possibly can be, or at least 9 out of 10
00:25:37.200
sure. And then pursue it with obsession. As somebody said, wrote in a book recently, I really
00:25:43.240
enjoy this principle. It's from a book called Great at Work. And the principle is first less than
00:25:48.280
obsess. Go through the journey of exploration. Eliminate the non-essential so that you have
00:25:52.700
identified the less but better options you're going to pursue. And then obsess about them. You say,
00:25:57.360
this is it. For me, it's now TV show or bust. And I think there'll be a lot of bust. But that's okay.
00:26:04.580
If you know the direction is right, you can keep pursuing. And maybe the end result will be just
00:26:08.580
failure. And that's what you have. And that would be okay. Because the whole time, I would know that
00:26:14.980
I was pursuing what felt clear and right to do. And of course, you know, hopefully, you know, I've not
00:26:20.760
been set up to fail. The voice of conscience is speaking clearly and to be successful. And then I'll have
00:26:26.380
the satisfaction of having done what I felt was the right thing to do. When I mean the way of the
00:26:31.360
essentials, this is what I mean by that phrasing. The way is to get to that voice of clarity again
00:26:37.580
and again. I think what I'm extracting from this, in addition to everything that you just mentioned,
00:26:42.200
is also this level of intentionality. And that's what I'm taking away from the story is that you are
00:26:47.200
very clear. You are very deliberate. You are very intentional. Like that last line that you said about
00:26:51.680
bust, there'll probably be a lot of busts. And that's okay, you know, because you've got that focus
00:26:55.820
in your intentional about where you want to go. Now, for the sake of time, and we could talk about
00:27:00.040
this a very long time, I want to move on to this next component, which is eliminate. And I think
00:27:04.240
this is where people have a very, very difficult problem, probably because they don't want to be
00:27:09.820
viewed as mean or off-putting by saying no to something or turning somebody away. I know I have
00:27:16.880
certainly run across that. And I'm really curious how you do this. And I think the term you use,
00:27:22.320
maybe I'm wrong, was with grace or class, being able to turn some of these things away.
00:27:27.540
First of all, you have identified what I think people's primary concern is when they think about
00:27:32.340
eliminating things. They're concerned about the social impact that will have on their relationships
00:27:36.860
and so on. I think they're right to be concerned about that. Let's look at elimination a little more
00:27:41.280
broadly. First of all, let's not start with saying no to important things for important people in our
00:27:49.860
lives, including people maybe in a professional environment. Maybe your boss's boss has identified
00:27:55.260
something as being really important. Let's not start the journey by saying, no, I'm not doing
00:28:00.320
that, you know, in the back of our mind. I'm an essentialist now. So I say no to everything that's
00:28:03.920
not essential. Sure. Yeah, this can be taken to the extreme, I imagine.
00:28:08.960
And people seem to go to the extreme in their mind when they hear the word elimination.
00:28:12.520
I think it's because of the social anxiety around this sort of a problem. And I'm always keen to point
00:28:16.940
out that I didn't write a book called noism. I wrote a book called essentialism. So the first
00:28:21.380
thing really, really is to identify what's essential. You've got to go back to that.
00:28:24.900
Second thing is go for the low-hanging fruit. Don't go for the most strange thing, the toughest
00:28:30.280
no that you can think of. Start with the low-hanging fruit. People listening today can identify. I mean,
00:28:35.960
I ask groups when I'm doing keynotes, I'll ask groups and they can do it real time. They can tell me
00:28:40.760
things that are obvious non-essentials in their lives. You know, obvious non-essentials. I mean,
00:28:46.320
one of the first ones people will talk about is social media. Now, social media, in my experience,
00:28:51.000
and most of technology, makes a good servant but a poor master. And too often, these things
00:28:55.400
actually are being the master. You can go onto your phone, certainly an iPhone, you can go on
00:28:59.960
and look under settings and you can see how much time you've spent on different apps over the last
00:29:05.000
week. That's a wake-up call for a lot of people. You know, they find that, oh, I've spent two, three,
00:29:09.660
four hours on news. Why am I spending that? I can get the news update in two minutes a day if I just
00:29:14.860
am disciplined about that. You can get three, four hours back and ask for one app.
00:29:19.280
What about Facebook? What's it worth to you? Now, some people say, oh, I'm not spending as much time
00:29:23.720
on Facebook. Yeah, but if you're spending 20 minutes, 30 minutes, could there be a better use
00:29:27.720
of that? I once decided to give up Facebook. I've got lots of failure stories. This happens to be a
00:29:32.340
success story. I was spending about 20 minutes a week on Facebook. And I thought, is that the best
00:29:37.460
use of my time? And I gave it up. And instead, I called my grandfather once a week. I did that for,
00:29:42.160
I don't remember how long now, but it was more than a year. I think it was probably,
00:29:45.580
you know, a year and a half or a couple of years or maybe longer. Then he passed away.
00:29:49.800
What was the better use of the time? It's obvious, isn't it? I mean, really, 20 minutes a week on
00:29:54.320
Facebook or talking to my very good and very wise and impactful grandfather every week before he
00:30:00.660
passed away. I mean, so there's some obvious stuff. And I didn't have to get permission from
00:30:05.140
anybody. And I didn't have to hurt any relationships in order to make that trade off. Start with a low
00:30:10.000
hanging fruit. Look on the phone. Where are you spending time on the apps? Look at the ESPN time.
00:30:14.760
You like a good game? I like a good game. But is it really worth all the time that we're sometimes
00:30:19.760
spending on this stuff? So start with the obvious things. Steal back an hour, two hours. You might
00:30:25.660
find 10 hours a week of just really bloated time. I spent an experiment for a week just recently.
00:30:32.220
No television. I traveled. And I thought, I'm just not doing any television. No Netflix,
00:30:36.560
no TV, no anything. I'm on the plane. I mean, sometimes on the plane, it's easy to watch a movie.
00:30:41.720
You know, movies you wouldn't even watch. B-movies you wouldn't watch. But you take the time there.
00:30:45.200
No movies. So instead, I was listening to an audible book while I was eating lunch. And I was
00:30:50.480
listening to an audible book. I've been listening for some time to John Adams, the biography of John
00:30:54.960
Adams by David McCullough. And the section I read happened to be about the relationship between John
00:30:59.540
Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams, when they were living in Paris. John Quincy Adams was mentoring and
00:31:04.280
tutoring him hours and hours a day and into the evenings and about that relationship. Of course,
00:31:10.260
they both went on to be presidents of the United States. John Quincy Adams went on to serve not just
00:31:14.580
as president, but later, if I recall, 18 years as a congressman after he was president. That's a very
00:31:19.640
unusual step to take, but it was about his contribution that he wanted to make. Learning about
00:31:23.960
that was a better use of my time than watching that movie. I'm illustrating that start with the low
00:31:29.900
hanging fruit, the stuff you have control over, the stuff you know is non-essential, the stuff you
00:31:34.880
know is not worth the investment, and trade it off for a higher value relationship, for a higher value
00:31:40.420
activity. Start there. Build muscle. Now, let's just give a little more as to what you can do next.
00:31:46.880
Next, read Essentialism. Read the book, but not on your own. That is born out of experience,
00:31:54.420
personally, and also with many, many people now all over the world trying to become essentialists.
00:31:59.580
Don't do it on your own. Get everyone you can to read it with you. You'll act so counter-culturally.
00:32:06.420
It's on me. I didn't realize how counter-cultural essentialism was. I knew it was counter-cultural.
00:32:13.020
It was much, much more so than I realized when I wrote the book. That means if somebody reads it and
00:32:18.700
they start applying it, they're going to be misunderstood because people are working out
00:32:24.440
of a non-essentialist mindset. You've got to get your whole team on board. You've got to get your
00:32:29.460
customers on board. You've got to go broad with this. If possible, literally, I'm working with a
00:32:34.180
company right now, the 4,000-person company, and the president is there. He's having everybody read it.
00:32:39.820
That's smart. Maybe that all sounds self-serving. Okay, fine. Well, it's not my intent,
00:32:44.760
but I can live with that judgment because I've learned that you do need to get the culture
00:32:50.860
to change. So you need to have a conversation change.
00:32:55.680
Let's be honest. There are all kinds of programs and courses, conferences, masterminds that you
00:33:02.360
could be part of. But the question is, which one or ones do you attend? Do you be part of?
00:33:07.620
And in the spirit of our discussion today, you can consume yourself with the learning process and
00:33:13.280
never move into the application, the execution process as Greg would refer to it as. And that's
00:33:19.380
where the iron council comes in. Our goal is, and always has been to bridge the gap between what we
00:33:26.280
as men know and what we actually do. And that's why you're going to get weekly challenges, monthly
00:33:32.660
assignments, and the chance to operate in 15-man battle teams with men who will hold you accountable
00:33:38.880
to what you say you're going to do. Of course, there's so much more to it. But again, in the
00:33:44.000
spirit of essentialism, if you're going to choose to be part of something, I would suggest that you
00:33:48.720
be part of something that is designed to actually move the needle rather than just talking about
00:33:53.880
moving the needle. If you want to learn more about what we're up to and lock in your seat at the table,
00:33:58.980
head to orderofman.com slash iron council. Again, that's orderofman.com slash iron council.
00:34:04.620
You can do that after the show. In the meantime, let's head back to the conversation with Greg.
00:34:10.060
One of the things that people will ask me occasionally is about my sport teams. Like
00:34:14.960
who's your favorite football team or baseball team or whatever. And my response is, I don't have one.
00:34:19.860
I don't watch enough TV or sport outings to have a team. And the response usually is, you know,
00:34:27.360
it's okay to have fun every once in a while. It's okay to watch a game every once in a while,
00:34:31.540
to which I agree. I, I, I can't find fault in that except for I've decided that's unimportant
00:34:36.980
to me, but you're right. There is pushback even in that small example from culture that says,
00:34:42.460
oh, it's okay to take a load off. It's okay to do this. And while some people may think it's okay,
00:34:47.160
it's a decision I've decided that I'm not going to make.
00:34:50.520
It is interesting. We have to be careful because whenever we choose to be counter-cultural,
00:34:54.260
what is challenging for people is that they're going, well, I guess you think I'm doing something
00:34:58.280
wrong, but people are immediately defensive about something that's counter-cultural. See,
00:35:02.120
we have to do this with as much compassion and as least as little, uh, self-righteousness as
00:35:07.220
possible. I mean, I'm, I'm conscious of my need to improve in these things. I would add to it
00:35:11.920
something that I learned recently. I was speaking at an event and the person speaking after me,
00:35:16.060
who gave the research that shows that this language switch that I really like, they, they said that
00:35:21.620
if people use the language, look, I can't do X. That isn't quite what she said, of course,
00:35:26.040
but you know, sometimes we'll use that phrase, Oh, can you do this thing? I can't do that.
00:35:30.100
Produces one response in people. But if instead we say, Oh, I don't do that. It's a different
00:35:35.060
response. People respond more positively. They understand it better. You know, I recently gave
00:35:39.620
up sugar. It's a big thing for me. You know, ice cream was a definite one of my non-essential
00:35:43.860
low hanging fruit weaknesses. And so I'm about three months into it. I'd like to try and do it for
00:35:48.520
the year, but finishing up three months. Oh no, I don't do sugar. It's not, I can't, or I'm thinking
00:35:54.600
about it. I just don't take out the category. A mentor of mine from years ago used to describe
00:35:58.940
this to delete things by category. I thought that was wise and correct. Take whole sections
00:36:03.860
and just, I just don't do that anymore. The more you can get people to understand why you're
00:36:09.220
doing what you're doing, why, especially when you're changing something, why you're changing
00:36:13.660
it. Most people can cope with what people say, but the reason why they do it is what gets
00:36:18.640
us into trouble. People doubt our motives and intents. They think there are other reasons for
00:36:22.600
things. And so we have to be very clear about our intent. Look, I'm really trying to focus
00:36:26.520
on what really matters in my life right now. I'm trying to focus on what things really just
00:36:29.940
doesn't matter. This is why I'm trying to make these changes to do our best and being clear
00:36:34.500
about that. And that's a really good distinction. I imagine when you do that, you probably get
00:36:39.620
more buy-in from those people around you as well. And they may even support you to some degree
00:36:46.000
in that mission because you've decided, and that don't represents a level of decision-making
00:36:50.680
and intentionality like we were talking about earlier. And now that somebody knows why you're
00:36:56.020
doing what you're doing, they may look after you a little more or hold you a little more
00:37:02.780
I've seen that in my life. Years ago, I decided I wouldn't swear. And I found that I had friends
00:37:08.160
all growing up, I'm talking like high school years, swore all the time, but they would just
00:37:13.940
stop swearing around me. And then somebody else, they'd say, oh, no, no, great. I wasn't asking
00:37:18.040
them to do that. I wasn't trying to put my value choice on them. I think you're right. If you make
00:37:22.920
a decision, it's not judgy, it's not preachy, that's not trying to tell other people what to do,
00:37:27.200
but I don't do this thing. I think there is some respect from some people. I mean, of course,
00:37:32.040
you can't control who's impacted unintentionally by things. But I think that if we're focused again
00:37:37.480
on trying to use this language, we can start to find that it empowers us as well, empowers other
00:37:44.060
people to support it. But it empowers us to go, I can choose this stuff. Now, of course, over time,
00:37:49.420
we do need to develop these skills to be able to negotiate with other people as gracefully as
00:37:53.740
possible. We've hardly touched that. We haven't touched it. But I still think there's so much
00:37:58.360
to be had in our own sphere of control that starting there is a great place to begin.
00:38:05.000
So let's sort this out. Let's just turn the TV way down. Do you know in the United States today,
00:38:09.140
the average American is still watching four hours of television a day?
00:38:13.700
That is so much TV. It sounds to me, it just sounds like so much TV.
00:38:17.940
It is so much TV, right? The question isn't, is TV good or not? So the question is, is what portion
00:38:23.920
of my time should I be spending doing that? So here's an exercise people can do that I think
00:38:28.180
is very simple, concrete exercise to post this conversation is just draw two circles on a piece
00:38:34.140
of paper in front of them. And the first circle is a pie chart. And it's like, how am I spending
00:38:38.880
my time right now? And you just divide up that pie chart the way you're spending your time. You
00:38:44.240
can go to whatever level of detail you want to, right? You can do it by just work, family, sleep,
00:38:49.660
but then you could go a lot narrower. Okay. How much time am I on my phone? How much time am I
00:38:53.660
on email? How much time am I working on these different activities? And you can do that just
00:38:58.020
in two minutes, kind of just a litmus test. I think I'd recommend that. But if someone wants to
00:39:02.180
go deeper, they can take a whole week and they can keep a time log and actually really discover
00:39:06.660
how am I spending this precious resource? And then in the second circle is how would I dream
00:39:12.760
to spend it? If I had total control of my life, how would I spend it? What would my ideal look like?
00:39:18.100
And I think that in that second instance, we're not looking for realistic. We're looking for a total
00:39:23.440
dream, an ideal state. And I think that then you have a before state and after state right before you,
00:39:30.520
a visual representation of it so that you can start saying, where can I start these adjustments?
00:39:34.840
Where can I make these new trade-offs so that I can move somewhere from where I am towards where I
00:39:42.280
would really most ideally like to be? Let's move on to this third component, which is execute. And
00:39:49.480
the thing that intrigues me about this, and of course, in the book as well, is you talk about making these
00:39:55.520
important things effortless. You talk about adding and implementing systems. Can you speak to me on that?
00:40:00.560
I mean, effortless is probably a little exaggeration. I still used it intentionally,
00:40:05.760
which is most times when people have a non-essentialist mindset, the very word
00:40:09.820
execution seems to imply something forced. Let's execute this thing. Let's get this thing done.
00:40:15.500
It's like, okay, we're going to stay up all night, call an all-nighter. I have a friend who's called
00:40:20.060
three all-nighters, I think, in the last month in their company that has become normalized.
00:40:25.000
This is not what I'm describing when I'm writing the way of the essentialist. The essentialist is still
00:40:29.280
going to work hard, but it's all about how can I use my limited supply of discipline to build systems
00:40:38.240
that work, that continue to support and embrace the things that matter most. For example, you could
00:40:46.240
make a choice to change your geography. You could change your home. You could change where you spend
00:40:51.600
your time. That's the kind of choice that you make at once. It's like one decision that makes a
00:40:55.580
thousand. The sugar thing is just a topical thing right now because it's new for me, but make the
00:41:01.100
decision once and be done with it so that it becomes routine and normalized. If I had to make
00:41:06.340
that decision every day, I would be eating ice cream just like I used to. I'd be eating just the
00:41:12.280
way I did before because I'd be exhausted by the end of the day. The key is to make the decision
00:41:16.740
so that then it's done. Build in the new habit that disrupts this. When I want to eat sugar,
00:41:21.880
I drink water, but I drink sparkling water. That, for some reason, is enough of an alternative
00:41:26.460
habit. You build all of that in so that it isn't painful every day to execute on something you've
00:41:32.460
identified. It actually becomes effortless or close to effortless. Eventually, it becomes that way.
00:41:38.740
I don't have to think about it each time and force it. I think this is exhausting to people. It creates
00:41:44.340
what psychologists have called decision fatigue. We're deciding and re-deciding and we're just swimming
00:41:49.640
upstream. I'm suggesting people will do, you will do, I will do what is easiest.
00:41:56.700
Yeah, you'll take the path of least resistance, certainly.
00:41:59.420
Build the path of least resistance to support the thing that you've identified as what matters most.
00:42:06.500
If somebody's going to take up exercise, we'll build the system. I stayed with some friends years
00:42:10.980
ago. He'd got a black belt in judo. The way he'd done that, the so-called effortless element of that,
00:42:17.720
was that three of them did it together. What that meant, they had this positive peer pressure.
00:42:23.100
Every single week, one of us didn't want to do it, but the other two did. You went along because
00:42:28.200
you've built the system, you've built the relationship support here to continue on with
00:42:32.380
it. They've all got their black belts when they wouldn't have done otherwise. That's an example of
00:42:36.820
what I'm saying. You construct a system, a routine, a relationship, an understanding. You build
00:42:42.560
something in place so that afterwards, you don't have to force it each time. You just have to go
00:42:49.660
with the system that you have built in your previous life. You're building something for
00:42:53.340
your future self to help them do it. Those are all illustrations of what I'm describing. It's
00:42:57.940
design a routine that you follow every day, the same exact routine. When you wake up, you do the
00:43:03.160
same three things every single day, and it doesn't include checking your phone. Build the routine
00:43:07.780
so that eventually that routine acts on you, but it's a routine that is healthy and positive and
00:43:14.220
supports what's essential. That's what I mean when I'm talking about execution.
00:43:18.580
And it's funny, once you implement these routines, it almost becomes strange when you don't do them.
00:43:24.180
You have those three or four things you do in the morning, and for whatever reason, that gets off
00:43:27.620
course, and then you just feel a little weird. You feel a little strange because something's missing.
00:43:32.740
You know, something's missing from your day that you don't normally do, and I think it becomes the
00:43:37.240
default. You divert back to that because you've built these systems in place.
00:43:41.360
Totally, and it's all about building. I mean, there's a book I read years ago that I don't even
00:43:46.240
remember that much about it, but the title is clever, and the basic premise is clever, and it's
00:43:49.820
The Automatic Millionaire. What I liked especially was the idea, you know, do you want to make the
00:43:55.940
things that matter to you as automatic as possible? You don't want essential things to happen only when
00:44:01.160
you happen to be listening to this podcast, only when you happen to be reading essentialism.
00:44:05.360
You want it to happen by default, and it can be so. Another thing for me that's been essential has
00:44:11.400
been writing a journal. I started that probably 20 years ago. You know, I'd be on again, off again,
00:44:17.460
which I think most people are when they write journals, and I think that, you know, this is
00:44:21.100
another example of effortless execution. What I think people do wrong is they get inspired.
00:44:25.880
Okay, I'm going to write a journal, and the first day they write three pages.
00:44:29.260
They write just pour out their soil, that's good, but the day two, they don't have an
00:44:33.380
hour and a half, two hours that they spend the first day, and so that's not built into
00:44:37.200
their system yet. They haven't built a routine around it, and so it's overwhelming, so they
00:44:41.200
don't do it day two. Day three, they've got to make up for two days now. Where is my four
00:44:45.240
hours? I don't have four hours, and so that's it. The habit's over before it begins, so I
00:44:49.460
recommend to people tiny, tiny change, but keep it going. This is how you build something into
00:44:54.980
the routine, so I suggest people write one sentence a day and no more. You don't just
00:44:59.900
have a rule that I'll do it. You have an upper rule, which is I won't write more than a sentence,
00:45:03.980
and you say, okay, that's it. You feel like writing more day one. Even day two, you're
00:45:08.420
like, well, I can do more than one sentence, but don't, because what you want is the routine.
00:45:13.060
What you want is to be doing it 30 days from now, 100 days from now, five years from now,
00:45:17.480
50 years from now. I've not missed a day now in more than seven years. One of the things
00:45:25.260
that inspired me was when my grandfather, I mentioned earlier on, passed away. Before
00:45:29.680
he did, I had got a copy of a journal that he'd been writing, one sentence every two or
00:45:36.920
three days for 50 years in one book. When my other grandfather passed away, there's no
00:45:43.380
equivalent book. There's so much missing in that story, because so much of what we experience,
00:45:49.700
the relationship we have, and what we've done goes with us if we don't write things down.
00:45:53.540
There's an illustration, again, of focusing on something that matters, something that matters,
00:45:57.820
in this case, 100 years from now. It's really going to last at the test of time, and the execution
00:46:03.580
is effortless. You want small, tiny, repeatable, continual execution of something that lasts a very
00:46:11.540
long time. We're not doing this, each new exciting thing comes along, and we go get consumed with that
00:46:17.820
for two days, and then forget everything else, and then we jump back onto something else. I've done
00:46:22.280
that before in my life. I've done it even since writing essentialism, ideas that I get all big on,
00:46:27.220
and then I realize, no, the steadiness, this path, the steady path on those things that are important
00:46:33.160
is so powerful and very calm. You don't have to get all crazy about it. You just have to do it
00:46:39.260
day after day after day. Well, Greg, this has been a really fascinating discussion,
00:46:43.940
and obviously, we can go on and on and really get more into depth in this, but I encourage the guys
00:46:48.760
to go pick up a copy. It's been around for about four years, but man, it is a great book and even
00:46:53.140
more relevant than it's been over the years. So, I do want to ask you a couple of questions as we
00:46:57.660
wind down. The first question is, what does it mean to be a man? To be a man means to live by
00:47:05.160
sets of principles, and to keep coming back to them when we fail, as we will, of gentleness,
00:47:11.980
of meekness. I could list a set of principles and characteristics that I think mean being a man,
00:47:18.060
but I'm just going to stop on meekness because that's a principle that is almost unused now.
00:47:22.540
I would think that most people wouldn't even have anything like a definition of it. They might think
00:47:26.700
it means something like weakness or that kind of thing, but I don't think people would even know.
00:47:30.240
It's not like a term we use. We use other words much more, but meekness. I was just shared this
00:47:35.740
by a very good friend of mine. Jade Coyle shared it with me. He'd heard someone else share it too,
00:47:40.060
but this is how the story goes. There's somebody taking a tour of a factory, and in the factory,
00:47:45.840
they're being given this tour. This is this kind of machine. This is that kind of machine.
00:47:49.000
He's explaining everything, and they said, this is the meek machine. This is a true story. It's a real
00:47:53.560
machine, and they call it the meek machine. That's not its official name. It's what they call it,
00:47:56.620
and they say, let me show you how it works. Now, this machine has a knife on it, like a knife.
00:48:01.660
I was the word I'm looking for. A blade, a huge blade. This thing is used for cutting straight
00:48:06.420
through massive metal objects. This thing can cut through a car effortlessly, just cut right through
00:48:12.260
it. He said, okay, give me your phone. The guy's a little hesitant, but he gives him his phone,
00:48:17.400
and he puts his phone right underneath the blade, goes over the computer, enters into the program,
00:48:22.240
and then this blade comes down fully, strong enough to cut through a car, and stops micromillimeters
00:48:29.700
from the phone. He said, that is why we call it the meek machine. It has all the power,
00:48:37.280
but all the restraint. That's what I think it means to be a man. It means to be powerful. It means to be
00:48:43.720
strong. It means to be courageous. It means to be able to protect, to be able to metaphorically wield
00:48:49.580
this blade. But it also means to have control over it, and to not be controlled by any of those
00:48:56.780
things. To certainly not have lizard brain, where we just let our ego and weakest emotions control
00:49:03.040
what we say and what we do. It means that this voice of conscience, this clarity, controls us.
00:49:09.940
We are servant to it. I think meekness would be to me. And I failed in that, oh, so many times.
00:49:16.320
Because I am sorry for the times I have lost my temper or just let my emotions get the better
00:49:21.640
of me. I want to come back to that as the ideal, because that's what it means to be a man to me.
00:49:26.660
Man, I really, really like that. I had never heard anything like that. I've had 160 men
00:49:31.220
now on the show and have not heard anything like that. But I wholeheartedly agree. That's an amazing
00:49:37.120
insight to what it means to be a man. Well, Greg, how do we connect with you? How do we learn more about
00:49:42.260
your work, pick up a copy of the book, and really figure out what it is you're up to?
00:49:46.360
You already said it. I just think people should start with the book. I just think you start with
00:49:50.820
it. You should get the people around you to read it. That's the beginning. I don't want to even add
00:49:54.600
anything that confuses to that. See if it might add something clarifying to your life, to your pursuit.
00:50:01.560
See if it might help discern out and cut out some of these non-essentials that will keep you from your
00:50:07.340
highest contribution in life. If it does that, then it's achieved the intent, the why for why
00:50:12.260
I spent the time to write it. Well, I can tell you, we used the book several months ago in our
00:50:17.300
brotherhood, the Iron Council, and we read it together. And I can tell you that what you're
00:50:21.300
saying about reading it together, going through it, holding each other accountable, and really doing
00:50:26.620
the work that the book lays out, doing it together was very, very valuable. So I wholeheartedly agree.
00:50:32.080
We'll make sure we link it up in the show notes so the guys can get it. Greg, I got to tell you,
00:50:35.740
I appreciate your work. I appreciate the work that you're doing, the words that you've written.
00:50:39.540
I have personally implemented it in my life and it has been a huge help, especially as
00:50:44.400
I get busier and I get consumed and my family grows and my community obligations increase and
00:50:50.460
the business grows. It's so important that we keep things essential. And I appreciate you
00:50:55.400
joining us today. Brian, thank you. What a pleasure it's been. Thank you.
00:50:59.960
Gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Greg. I know I did. I had been looking forward to
00:51:04.480
that one for a very long time. I was glad and honored, of course, to make it finally work.
00:51:09.600
And I know I'm walking away with a ton of information to improve my life, my family life,
00:51:15.280
my business, what we're doing here with Order of Man. And I couldn't be more happy about having
00:51:18.660
this conversation with Greg. I hope that you feel the same way. If you do, if you've learned some
00:51:23.360
information or new strategies or tactics that you're going to implement in your life, please reach out
00:51:28.700
to me or Greg on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, wherever you're doing the social media thing.
00:51:32.680
Just let us know. We like hearing from you guys. We want to know what you took away from the show,
00:51:37.440
how you're going to improve, how you're going to change, how you're going to enhance your own life
00:51:41.200
from the lessons that are being learned here on the Order of Man podcast. So guys, I am as always
00:51:47.780
grateful that you're tuning in. Make sure you check out the Iron Council. If you haven't done that
00:51:52.620
already, orderofman.com slash Iron Council. We'd love to have more of you over there. I think we just
00:51:57.720
cracked 400 members now. And of course, we'd love to have you there. We've got the resources and the
00:52:03.220
guidance and the direction and the tools that you need to level up your life and to produce more in
00:52:08.880
meaningful and significant ways to you. So check it out again, orderofman.com slash uprising. Check
00:52:14.460
out our partners and sponsors, originmain.com slash orderofman. See what they're up to. I know
00:52:20.500
you're going to be blown away with their story as I have been over the past several months as well.
00:52:23.800
But guys, I will leave you with that. Make sure you subscribe and rate and review the show if you
00:52:29.320
would. Subscribe because we've got some great interviews lined up that you are not going to
00:52:33.220
want to miss. So subscribe, share the show, rate and review all of that wonderful stuff. I appreciate
00:52:38.140
the support, guys. It means a lot to me. Until next week, take action and become the man you are meant to
00:52:43.380
be. Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. If you're ready to take charge of your life
00:52:49.880
and be more of the man you were meant to be, we invite you to join the Order at orderofman.com.