The Art of Manliness - #331： The Difference Between Essentialists and Non-Essentialists

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast do you feel

00:00:18.680 overwhelmed do you feel like you're always busy but you're not productive or do you feel like

00:00:23.000 your time is constantly being hijacked by other people's agendas well if you can answer yes to

00:00:27.100 any of those questions i'm sure all of us can today's episode is for you i talked to business

00:00:31.020 consultant greg mckeown about his book essentialism the disciplined pursuit of less in it greg argues

00:00:35.680 that by doing less we can actually not only be more productive but more importantly get more of

00:00:39.980 the right things done in life we begin our conversation talking about the difference

00:00:42.540 between an essentialist and non-essentialist and why essentialists look at every decision with a

00:00:46.380 100 year view greg then shares how you can apply essentialist principles to your work so that you

00:00:51.300 can convince your boss that maybe some of that stuff you're working on that he thinks is important

00:00:55.180 but isn't actually important i can ditch that stuff and actually work on things that are important

00:00:58.540 we then discuss why taking time for play sleeping or doing absolutely nothing can sometimes be the

00:01:03.480 most productive thing you can do and then greg shares some tips on how to say no to people without

00:01:07.500 feeling like a jerk and why adding buffer to your life is an important part of being an essentialist

00:01:12.560 this podcast is filled with both brass tacks advice and deep insights about living a flourishing life

00:01:17.140 you're going to want to take notes after the show's over check out our show notes at

00:01:20.120 aom.is slash essentialist all right greg mckeown welcome to the show it's so nice to be with you

00:01:31.620 well uh you wrote a book it's provided a lot of food for thought and it has given me some focus in

00:01:36.040 my life it's called essentialism and it's all about figuring out what's the most important things

00:01:41.520 in life and focusing only on those things to be more effective in your work or in your life and we're

00:01:48.080 going to get into deeper what essentialism is i'm curious did you have a personal experience where

00:01:53.240 you were trying to do a whole bunch of different things all at the same time but you were doing

00:01:57.920 them all poorly that led you down this path of exploring essentialism i had an experience that

00:02:04.820 that left a mark on me where i was i received an email from my manager at the time that said friday

00:02:12.160 would be a very bad time for your wife to have a baby and friday was in fact the day that we were

00:02:18.560 in the hospital my daughter had been born middle of the night the night before but instead of being

00:02:25.500 focused on that clearly important essential moment i felt torn i could do both the right answer was to try

00:02:33.400 and do both could i be at the meeting that i've been asked to to attend or should i stay where i was

00:02:40.660 and stay focused and so i'm taught how both and you know to my shame i went to the meeting and

00:02:48.680 afterwards actually i remember being told oh the client will respect you for the choice you just made

00:02:54.980 you know i'm not sure that i'm not sure that they did respect the choice had made the faith the look

00:03:03.680 on their faces did not evince that sort of confidence and yet even if uh even if they had

00:03:10.840 surely i'd made a fool's bargain and it was from that that i learned a simple lesson which is if you

00:03:17.300 don't prioritize your life uh someone else will and and and so this coalesced many many years of

00:03:27.660 thinking in the in the strategy world working with silicon valley companies and i suddenly saw the

00:03:34.260 crescendo the connection to these two uh these two efforts a phenomenon i'd seen in in business and how

00:03:43.040 it might be applied uh to individuals okay yeah i think we've all had experiences like that where

00:03:48.840 you have to there's two choices you try to do both and you do both poorly and it doesn't work out great

00:03:54.920 so let's dig into deeper about what is an essentialist and what a non like the difference

00:04:00.660 between an essentialist and a non-essentialist is sort of a big picture overview of those two types of

00:04:05.900 approaches well um first uh let's start with a non-essentialist a non-essentialist is

00:04:13.020 someone who instead of just that one time like i'm describing okay let's do both has that basic

00:04:20.440 logic deep inside of them so deep that i think they don't even know it's there it's dominant

00:04:26.780 assumption it's just invisible to them because it's so ubiquitous and and the idea really is look i have to

00:04:35.800 do everything because it's all important it's all equally important so i just have to do it all and

00:04:41.520 and if i do it all somehow that will lead to breakthrough success and that's basically the

00:04:49.320 logic of a non-essentialist if i can if i can it's all important so i have to do it all and if i can do

00:04:57.640 it all then i'll get it all i'll get these results these breakthroughs and a lot of people today are

00:05:05.000 are involved and consumed in that and what it leads to is not what it promises what it leads to is

00:05:13.620 people who are stretched too thin at work or at home it leads to people feeling busy but not productive

00:05:20.500 and this this cultural norm where really everyone's life is being hijacked by other people's agenda all

00:05:28.720 the time that's the result of the non-essentialist mindset the essentialist is is radically different

00:05:36.200 to the culture of our times but really only in the scent most in in the simplest and most sensible ways

00:05:43.300 they're not really radical they're just facing some reality like some things are really really

00:05:51.020 important and most stuff isn't i therefore need to make trade-offs and figure out what is essential

00:05:59.540 and what isn't and just pursue the things that are essential eliminate what's not okay well so here's

00:06:04.720 a question i have this assumption that people have that they can do everything because everything's

00:06:10.420 equally important where does that assumption come from because like when you you look at it from a

00:06:15.540 you know big picture you take a step back you're like that that's crazy talk yet we still have

00:06:20.180 that assumption it's it's it's the right question where does it come from did it just did it just come

00:06:28.180 from you from me you know did we just did we choose it deliberately consciously um or is there something

00:06:37.260 more broadly to at play and it's the latter and it's very important because it explains the phenomenon

00:06:46.380 which is that it's not just one or two people it's not just you and me it's it's not just a few of the

00:06:51.140 people listening i mean it's just almost everybody everywhere so it doesn't matter what industry i mean

00:06:56.540 it doesn't matter what level of seniority it's just people everywhere are feeling this it's in the

00:07:01.720 zeitgeist and so tracing its history is helpful for context so that we can then address it because

00:07:09.400 we can't really consciously change what we have not correctly diagnosed and so let's really back up

00:07:19.820 like a long way let's go back to like 1400s and that's important because it's pre-industrial

00:07:27.960 revolution and it's it is clearly a very different era and this is when the word priority came into the

00:07:37.520 english language and it was singular priority what did it mean the very first thing the prior thing

00:07:45.620 and it stayed singular according to drucker for the next 500 years so for half a millennium people

00:07:53.640 weren't pluralizing this term and so it became pluralized in the 1900s as people are grappling with

00:08:03.120 the efficiency systems of factories and that that produced tremendous breakthroughs but it it there

00:08:09.720 were lessons that applied to machines that didn't apply to humans and one of them was the sense of

00:08:14.220 prioritization so so now people start talking about priorities but what does it even mean i mean

00:08:19.680 can you have very very many very first before all other things things uh it is truly a madness and it's

00:08:28.980 i think it's hard to define in any sensible way what the word priorities really means so that's phase one

00:08:36.440 phase two was in the post second world war where as people came back from this cataclysmic

00:08:43.920 discombobulating experience they didn't re-combobulate meaning we didn't as a as an international

00:08:50.420 cult you know community or culture mourn the loss create some space figure out what matters most figure

00:08:58.580 out how to rebuild things no we went for the fast the quick fix we went for instead of more more

00:09:06.580 community we went for for buying stuff and there's a very deliberate strategy this wasn't like just

00:09:14.980 happenstance there are there were you know people sitting in departments sitting in washington dc

00:09:23.860 trying to institute what i've called the panem strategy panem comes from the latin it's uh it's

00:09:31.140 circus and bread and it was all about almost literally turning consumerism into a religion

00:09:36.580 and and how can we keep people on this cadence of having to watch television where they're going to

00:09:42.560 learn what stuff they have to buy to be happy what everybody's going to do and then buying that stuff

00:09:47.500 work harder in order to get those new televisions to see that stuff and it was this immense cycle and

00:09:54.600 spiral it wasn't possible until you had the groundwork of the industrial revolution the mindset that came

00:10:00.440 with that but it built upon it and accelerated it and then phase three the the third era of

00:10:05.500 non-essentialism is in the last 10 years and we've all been witness to that and it's as we've gone from

00:10:11.100 being connected to hyperconnected so as social media and smartphones have come together in a sort of

00:10:18.160 unholy alliance it's it's we've gone from information overload to opinion overload so all of this is

00:10:26.120 cultural context for now and it's really important we understand that otherwise we can't do anything

00:10:31.580 about it and and i just want to pause on that because it's all a little bit little bit disheartening

00:10:37.620 the present to hear that how to develop this has been and how how consuming but but what i want to

00:10:43.700 say is that none of these things are of themselves inherently bad like some of some of the assumptions

00:10:51.640 are just false so those are bad but but the tools that we have can be utilized by non-essentialists or

00:10:58.520 essentialists but the thing is to change the mindset you know these new technologies the smartphones

00:11:04.460 and the social media these things make great servants just poor masters and and so that's where

00:11:13.000 we have to be we have to step into a new role where we become much more designful thoughtful create space

00:11:22.640 to reflect on what we want to do with the tools that we have or they will simply run us and it won't

00:11:28.780 just be you know me making this you know really bad choice sitting in the hospital but it will be all

00:11:36.140 of us making micro trade-offs we never really meant to because these things are acting on us rather than

00:11:42.800 us acting on them right and i mean you talk about this in the book all this bombardment of information

00:11:48.560 choices that we get um it does create a sense of learned helplessness you talk about learned helplessness

00:11:54.340 in the book and we've discussed it on the website in the podcast where people just they kind of give

00:11:59.820 up they don't they don't think they can control their lives and they just allow like as you said

00:12:04.100 earlier you they allow other people to set the agenda in their life well and and the the the twist

00:12:10.020 on learned helplessness in in the book that i stand by is that that normally learned helplessness

00:12:16.140 in fact it's sort of inherently described as as something that you um like you stop acting

00:12:23.600 it's you know it's the it's the dog that won't move because they think there's no point and so

00:12:30.840 it creates a sort of um yeah inaction in people but but i i found that there's another kind of

00:12:38.920 helplessness which is constantly moving it's constant activity it's there's nothing i have to do

00:12:46.200 everything there's nothing i can do there's no way out of this you know it might be okay for other

00:12:50.460 people but not for me i've got all these people out for me i've got all these i've got my boss i've

00:12:55.100 got my my managers i've got all the different people in the community uh yeah i've got people

00:12:59.840 and and and the sheer size of it just it just leads people to think they have to live as a

00:13:06.460 non-essentialist and there is no other choice and and so that is a kind of uh it's kind of a hyper

00:13:13.380 learned helplessness right and one of the insidious things about this non-essentialist approach

00:13:18.500 is like you said earlier people they try to do everything all at once because they think if they

00:13:22.820 do then success will come but then when that success comes it just opens up more choices more

00:13:32.100 opportunities quote-unquote um where you have to repeat the cycle all over again okay so let's talk

00:13:39.540 about about that a little bit because a process i found that people in the companies in silicon valley

00:13:49.600 followed was instructive both at the business strategy level but also on the self-leadership

00:13:54.120 strategy level uh and the the phenomenon is this that i noticed that silicon valley companies had

00:14:01.680 a few people at the beginning in their early days focused on just the right problem at just the right

00:14:07.020 time and this led to success and with success came options and opportunities and with options and

00:14:13.540 opportunities there was a risk i mean that sounded like the right problem to have but the risk was

00:14:20.120 that it would undermine the very things that led to success in the first place if all those new

00:14:25.360 options and opportunities led to what jim collins the researcher has called the undisciplined pursuit of

00:14:33.580 more and it's that undisciplined pursuit of more that we ought to be wary of uh this is you know in

00:14:43.360 companies this is where suddenly they have the resources so they go on a hiring spree and they're

00:14:47.860 hiring too fast and they're hiring too thoughtlessly they're throwing people at problems but suddenly

00:14:54.620 they're undermining the culture that led to their success and and everyone's got all these good ideas and

00:14:59.540 they're coming to the table but there's there's more ideas than there is discipline inside the

00:15:03.520 company and so you end up starting to spread the culture and the focus resources of the company

00:15:10.700 too thin and and what is the result of all of this does trying to do all of it actually help you break

00:15:17.960 through to the next level of success it does not what it does predictably and really rarely with rare

00:15:25.820 exceptions it leads to a plateauing of progress and even the slow death of the company and so so i just

00:15:36.900 wanted to to draw a distinction there which is that when you focus it leads to success that success

00:15:43.600 itself is another one of these poor masters if if we let success lead us if we take the natural

00:15:51.480 instinctive next steps that success and the options of success would guide us towards we're already off

00:15:58.260 the path and we'll get pulled way way off and this is the this is the theory that explain explains how

00:16:05.620 these juggernaut success companies these once unstoppable firms have become completely uh yeah you know just

00:16:13.760 just just these immensely difficult companies to run or think through uh because uh and it was success

00:16:21.640 that was the thing now the question is both at the organizational level or the personal level is how do we

00:16:27.180 become successful at success and that is where essentialism comes in so i would argue that

00:16:35.080 non-essentialism literally simply does not produce success it's just correlated with success because you see it

00:16:43.740 at the same time as success is present well but it never generates success right well well so i mean

00:16:51.080 this is a question maybe we can get to later but like there are some companies i'm thinking like google or

00:16:56.840 amazon who they start off with a core competency but they're they've somehow been able to expand into

00:17:02.900 other areas that are somewhat related and they've been able to do it deftly thinking google they start

00:17:08.000 off with search and they introduce gmail and they introduce maps what what is it that google's doing

00:17:14.400 for example that allows them to take to explore these new options yet still maintain their ability to be

00:17:21.960 successful in the one thing that they're good at so so where does google's primary profit margin margin

00:17:30.340 and center still lie search search search ads by like a by small small margin massive margin it's massive

00:17:37.580 i believe massive margin it's it's the thing that makes money for them still that's it still

00:17:44.600 so here we are 20 years on many moon shots later and still their primary income comes from a certain place

00:17:56.060 now i'm i'm not trying to hit google i suppose we'd all like to fail like google

00:18:01.080 but but it is staggering to me and should grab our attention that i mean you mentioned these add-ons

00:18:10.860 right which which have been well integrated but their their extensions are exactly the same product

00:18:16.520 their search maps it's search the purchase of youtube i talked to the ceo at the time when they

00:18:22.740 they they just purchased youtube and talking about that i mean he said look the youtube was lucky that

00:18:27.480 there's a half dozen or a dozen companies that we could have picked we ended up picking youtube we had

00:18:32.200 to pick somebody um that yeah they're picking things to put into their search engines so people don't go

00:18:38.160 anywhere else now i'll give them high marks for having kept and protected and developed that thing

00:18:45.680 there's just no doubt right every bing came searching after them excuse the pun uh you know yahoo's been

00:18:52.180 fighting also still for that that same space over the time and many others they they've done a great job in

00:18:57.800 doing that where they have largely failed is to produce a second big thing you see so they've had all this

00:19:09.040 money this tremendous economic machine they're very rarely rare in companies to have that much cash on hand

00:19:16.920 and and they have i believe desired to do something important and significant with it but what what does it all

00:19:23.960 amount to uh what happened to google glass what has happened still with the driverless cars and i'm not i'm not

00:19:31.000 saying the game that it is all done with driverless cars but but when you say we're going to do google glass and

00:19:37.200 we're going to do fiber and we're going to do uh driverless cars and and and right when you go that broadly and you keep

00:19:44.860 investing in them why do you keep investing them because you can if you've got your billions and

00:19:50.380 billions that you want to spend that you want to do these big things and you've got these great

00:19:53.600 desires i mean there's nothing wrong with the desire to make an impact in the world and there's nothing

00:19:58.060 wrong with having loads of money in the bank with which to do things these are these are the problems

00:20:02.020 people want to have but a an insufficiently selective criteria and approach will undermine the chance

00:20:11.860 to break through to the next level have they broken through to the next level have they got the

00:20:16.680 second the second search the massive you know revenue generating company world impacting service or

00:20:26.840 product no i will maintain the answer that is no now maybe they say we don't want that maybe we're

00:20:34.280 happy to use our research you know our idea you know energies just to help spark new ideas and so on

00:20:41.480 we'll be sort of the nasa of uh the business world we'll just keep on spending money that that isn't

00:20:47.800 for a single mission but is yeah i mean just think of the language that they're using even on these big

00:20:53.880 exciting on the face of the bombastic and bold and visionary efforts the moonshot just but how many

00:21:01.940 moonshots can you have i mean if nasa had had five different moonshots if they had a moonshot plus a

00:21:09.160 large shock plus a you know if they if they're trying to do all these massive things they won't

00:21:13.260 get there so it's no surprise at all to watch google uh glass go down i mean i was just waiting for that

00:21:22.100 of course that's going to happen no surprise to see google uh you know um the uh fiber google fiber

00:21:32.360 be be paused because you you can't go massive on everything it's not really that surprising now

00:21:39.820 the car is out we'll see right the car is a huge opportunity for any company that can crack the code

00:21:44.940 on it it's a massive massive driverless cars are clearly a huge opportunity right tesla's obviously

00:21:51.300 positioning themselves for it apple is putting resources into it google's putting resources into it

00:21:57.300 but what have we seen yet in terms of profitability coming out of google on that zero right it's a

00:22:03.680 completely unprofitable center still and and might of course there may be more time but what i'm trying

00:22:10.820 to illustrate here is that is that i think that this phenomenon you know do with all its money and

00:22:18.780 resources cannot escape the foundational principle which is that you you can either do a whole bunch of

00:22:26.740 things averagely well or you can do a few things superbly well given the same set of resources or

00:22:32.140 you can do a few things superbly well you are more likely to break through to the next level and and

00:22:37.020 and so and so i love the google example i love riffing on that because it helps to make the point even

00:22:44.120 if you have that many resources you can't do it all you can't break through in everything and so how much

00:22:50.960 more so for for you and i and for everyone who's listening in our own lives with with the finite

00:22:56.440 time resources energy resources financial resources that we have to be selective and thoughtful about

00:23:02.140 which things really will take us to the next level of contribution and we'll talk about that how you

00:23:07.660 figure that out but i'm curious so if the the underlying assumption of a non-essentialist is

00:23:11.800 i can do it all i don't have to make trade-offs what's the assumption that the essentialist takes

00:23:18.640 towards life is it just the opposite well it says this it begins with this idea that a few things

00:23:27.880 are incredibly valuable few things and most of is noise so

00:23:37.020 you know it's um it's um it's like to use a metaphor the you know it's like waking up having

00:23:47.580 believed that life was was analogous to uh to a coal mine in which my job is to get as much of this out

00:23:58.660 as possible right this is just a quantity game and to wake up and suddenly go oh i've never been in

00:24:07.000 a coal mine i the whole my whole life it's been a diamond mine so it's not a quantity game

00:24:15.660 in in the same sense it's all about finding thoughtfully carefully so finding those massively valuable

00:24:24.560 things that are in here hidden but i need to find them carefully and thoughtfully so now that's a

00:24:31.180 very different process you'd approach it really differently and so i think that this is this is the

00:24:36.180 the the beginning place of becoming an essentialist it's in fact once somebody really believes that

00:24:41.340 once they once they have unlearned non-essentialist mindset which is the harder part and then absorb it

00:24:49.960 and taken in the essentialist mindset a few things truly valuable a lot of the rest of it becomes spontaneous

00:24:57.880 intuitive uh because because you you suddenly just see the world differently it's like it's like taking

00:25:06.840 off a bad pair of glasses it's like we've been wearing a pair of glasses that that make it all seem like

00:25:13.460 it's about about equal value and suddenly going oh my goodness most of this stuff is just literally

00:25:21.540 rubbish most of this stuff is worth nothing i mean honest goodness how much time do we spend doing

00:25:31.120 things of almost zero value you know it might be fine to check espn you know follow team forward

00:25:38.440 there's a space for this for sure there is but is it worth the kind of time people put into it isn't

00:25:46.100 there a diminishing returns where somebody just keeps checking it and checking it the latest score from

00:25:51.080 the latest teams and all the different teams and all the teams in the playoffs are constantly

00:25:54.520 going back and forth between all of it and it's hours and hours and what does it all add up to

00:25:59.300 what does it all equal you know a hundred years from now will it matter no of course it won't matter

00:26:06.160 it won't matter a hundred days from now but it won't matter a hundred years from now and this is

00:26:10.760 sort of the test you can test it in this in this way but that's now onto another riff i'll pause

00:26:17.600 right well so i think you know figuring out what's essential and not essential that's like

00:26:23.380 the example you just gave espn surfing the web like people like that's yeah of course that's not

00:26:27.720 essential if i cut more of that and that's my life will be better but like the really hard things are

00:26:32.340 the things that you do in work or in life that seem important right like it seems like it's doing

00:26:38.020 something but it really isn't so how i mean how do you figure that out how do you figure out

00:26:42.120 these activities you take part in whether at work or in your personal life that you've done

00:26:47.000 forever because you feel like you've had to do it but they don't actually provide any value

00:26:51.980 well i think that i think that it's it's perspective isn't it that

00:26:58.020 that when you're saying well espn's sort of obvious this is so it's because you have a perspective

00:27:03.660 that makes that obvious it's to somebody there are some people it's not obvious to

00:27:09.200 that they it hasn't even occurred to them so why has it occurred to you you have a perspective

00:27:14.940 that says well i i just get that these things you know my family my service maybe church service

00:27:22.040 these things matter more than spinning and surfing on on the internet there's this perspective you've

00:27:28.360 got now what we can do where we can go is is to push that perspective out further so

00:27:35.360 so as one example i used to think that it was really pretty bold perspective to think about my

00:27:44.500 life from birth to death so i'd have people even work with them when i co-created a class at the d

00:27:49.120 school um at stanford that was what we had birth to death thinking and we would take them on this

00:27:55.400 huge journey this huge narrative of where were you when you were born and what did you do next and

00:28:00.340 where are you now over all these years where do you want to be but that's like a very broad

00:28:04.220 perspective of far longer term thinking then then really anybody in the class had really done

00:28:09.500 you know they might have paid a little lip service to it occasionally but i realized later and i didn't

00:28:16.560 realize it fast enough to change it there but my perspective was far too narrow even then far too

00:28:25.020 short term that it was i was i was guilty of uh of a very self-centered perspective

00:28:32.360 which is that you know my life basically can be judged within the period of my life

00:28:39.800 and why is that the case why would that be true i mean that's that just because that's the period i'm

00:28:46.680 here but i realized that that what i needed to do was push people's thinking back to let's say

00:28:55.820 their great-grandparents so parents grandparents great-grandparents the full spectrum back and start

00:29:01.980 to to get an intergenerational narrative i call it a hundred year vision because it's from today it's

00:29:08.460 a hundred years before us and a hundred years ahead of us and that is much more powerful lens what i

00:29:18.540 learned in the process was that most people you know really can't tell it tell me anything about who

00:29:27.580 their great-grandparents even were where they what they did how they thought what the choices they made

00:29:32.380 what trade-offs they made nothing and and and so there's this massive blind spot for each of us but

00:29:42.860 most of us are shaped by people we know nothing about whatsoever so most of us the language we speak the

00:29:51.500 country we live in yeah the attitudes we have that there's deep assumptions and and expectations of

00:29:59.900 all of this shaped by people fat ways of communicating all sorts and we don't even know about them and so

00:30:07.900 it makes us blind to the massive ways we've been impacting uh the world and how we're unintentionally

00:30:15.260 affecting all these things so you go way way back and you start to create the narrative the decisions

00:30:22.620 that they made and you start to discern which decisions great-grandparents made grandparents

00:30:28.060 made parents made which decisions still impact me now which things have lasted a hundred years

00:30:34.140 which things do i care about which things have had a big positive effect which things have had a big

00:30:38.380 negative effect so that we can start to discern what really matters not what matters temporarily what

00:30:46.620 mattered in a big way that lasted all these years then we go forward extrapolating from that a hundred

00:30:53.820 years in the future it's a very important number because none of us are going to be here a hundred years

00:30:58.060 from now so it's very important that we break that perspective of well on my deathbed what will people

00:31:03.660 say about me i mean who cares well we've got to go beyond that we've got to say what about your

00:31:08.940 great-grandchildren or if we have no children just other people that we've influenced generations ahead

00:31:14.940 what will they care about what will have impacted them what will make a difference and and and i put it to

00:31:20.460 you that that perspective will reveal the difference between the merely good things and a very few truly

00:31:30.540 essential ones and and that's that's the way i think to approach this i love that that perspective

00:31:37.100 adding that perspective but so here's the challenge let's say you do this and i think it's for people's

00:31:41.660 personal lives they can figure that out like okay family definitely important um there's these

00:31:46.540 obligations or responsibilities in church or my community or whatever obviously important but let's

00:31:51.420 say on your work level right if you're working for an employer and you do this analysis and you

00:31:57.980 you decide like well these meetings that i have to go to once a week like they're not important in

00:32:04.300 that grand scheme of things how do you how do you tell your boss like i don't think these meetings are

00:32:09.900 essential do you tell your boss that and if so like how do you do so in a way where you can get them on

00:32:14.380 board with that well i don't think that the way to think about negotiating with your boss is to simply

00:32:21.100 say well no you know i didn't write a book called noism but i do think it's often or maybe even always

00:32:29.820 reasonable to have a conversation i remember one time i was being given a new assignment from my direct leader

00:32:40.780 and he'd already given me probably four fairly major projects to work on and here was the next one and all of the

00:32:50.540 projects were interesting to me they were all good and he obviously thought they were all valuable

00:32:56.700 but when he brought in this additional one in the past i would have said well okay he wants it doing

00:33:03.100 and and and we do it there would have been no pause no consideration no no not even a thought of a

00:33:09.660 negotiation because we just want to move forward and and my desire to move forward wasn't any less

00:33:16.460 but i realized how you know this nonsense of non-essentialism you can't just do everything

00:33:22.380 you know all now and all equally well so what i said to him is look i'm very happy to do that

00:33:28.780 what you know do you want me to do you know five things averagely well or do you want me to do one or

00:33:36.460 maybe two of these things really superbly well and just you know go all out on it and it didn't take him

00:33:43.660 more than half a moment to respond to that he said oh we'll find somebody else to do this fifth project

00:33:51.500 in fact of all these projects there's one that is a clear winner for me he said what it was i agreed

00:33:57.820 with it completely i thought that was the priority project and and the other things ended up being

00:34:02.860 removed and i focus on that for the next year as a result of that made a serious impact on the thing

00:34:09.260 that he and i had identified as the most important thing that's more in range of what i think is

00:34:16.940 realistic and what is appropriate and of course it might not always work in that picture perfect way

00:34:23.260 i just described but what i'm inviting people to do is to bring the reality into the conversation

00:34:31.660 to not pretend that we simply can do everything perfectly well uh we all i think do know perfectly

00:34:39.260 well that that isn't true and so if you can bring that into the conversation you're not saying no

00:34:45.340 you're not being impertinent uh you're dealing with reality and i think there are appropriate ways to do

00:34:54.220 that right so don't be afraid to start the conversation at least well i think that's right

00:34:59.020 i think essentialism and non-essentialism are conversations i think that's the beginning of

00:35:03.500 any culture change uh is is to be able to have the language so i i think it can be very advantageous to

00:35:10.460 have not just you for example read essentialism and know about it but to have have your boss read

00:35:15.900 it have you have everybody on the team read it so that this language here doesn't mean you suddenly

00:35:20.460 say no to everything and everyone without thinking about it that that's that's a thoughtless approach

00:35:26.220 but you can start to have the conversation and we ought to do that because non-essentialism is

00:35:31.580 so unsustainable and so silly well this kind of leads nice to a next question so the book isn't

00:35:36.620 called noism but to live an essentialist life you have to say no to things but i think for a lot of

00:35:43.020 people they're afraid to say no so they don't want to let people down they're they're afraid that it might

00:35:48.380 you know cost them you know their job or they're standing in their job how do you overcome that fear

00:35:55.580 of saying no so you can focus on what's important is it is it the approach instead of thinking i had

00:36:00.540 to say no be have it rather let me have a conversation with you about this first the first stage to

00:36:09.740 developing the leadership competency of elimination of saying no the first stage is to learn to pause

00:36:19.100 and it can be the tiniest pause just somebody says oh hey can you do this and you just go oh um

00:36:27.820 let me think about that and that's it you might still say yes but you develop the ability to pause

00:36:32.540 and realize oh this is a new thing this is another thing maybe then you start to learn one question you

00:36:38.300 ask one question normally you just said yes without thinking about it without clarification you pause you ask a

00:36:44.140 question eventually in that space you find new skills can be layered in and i do think it's a

00:36:53.100 full leadership competency the ability to say no the ability to negotiate the ability to eliminate

00:36:59.020 non-essentials is its own competency it has to be developed and and and i've come to understand that

00:37:04.940 better since the book was published than i did before i used to think people have the skills

00:37:10.940 already developed and all they need is a new mindset and that can be true for people but it's

00:37:15.980 often not true it's often the case that people believe that they can only really have two options

00:37:22.780 and one is the polite yes and the second is the rude no and they think those are the only two choices

00:37:31.740 so as a result because they don't want to be that sort of person they end up saying the polite yes

00:37:36.700 all the time so the question is is how to discover the middle space and i think it's important people

00:37:46.140 don't jump all the way to the you know too close to the rude no at first you stay over at the polite

00:37:52.220 yes but a polite what about a polite pause uh what's about a polite hey can we talk about this a little

00:37:58.540 more what's about asking the question well look can we just talk about what we think is the you know

00:38:03.820 the the most important thing to be done you know what what are the two or three things that will

00:38:08.060 really move the needle this quarter this week this year and slowly as you develop the ability to

00:38:14.940 negotiate non-essentials you will find uh stronger muscles uh of being formed so that eventually i mean i

00:38:25.260 think there is a way that people can can evolve all the way to oh can you do this well actually no i don't

00:38:30.460 think i can do it but by that point there's a developed set of skills and trust and relationship

00:38:36.540 that's been formed so you don't want to go from being you know polite yes on the one hand and then

00:38:41.420 hugely shift because you've heard this idea or you read the book essentialism and now you go all

00:38:46.460 you know overkill on the other side you got to take it step by step think about this as a continuum

00:38:52.940 from the polite yes step by step over until you've learned uh what what works and what doesn't work

00:38:59.900 and and you develop this skill and and part of you know maneuver navigating that skill set um is you

00:39:07.580 have to know like what is important like what is truly essential so you talk about in your book this

00:39:12.780 idea of the essential intent and when i read it it sounded like a mission statement that people hear you

00:39:20.220 know and they roll their eyes but it's not like how is it different from how is essential intent

00:39:25.740 different from a say a corporate mission statement or even a personal mission statement well first of

00:39:30.300 all i mean that the idea of a vision and mission statement in their original idea was perfectly positive

00:39:40.620 good you know and i'm in favor of it but the the reason people roll their eyes is not because

00:39:45.980 vision and mission statements aren't good ideas it's because they've seen them almost universally

00:39:51.020 badly executed and what does that mean you know example i was i remember actually at business school

00:39:59.180 being given an assignment there's about 70 in the class or something and and each of us has been

00:40:03.500 given an assignment to to to find a vision or mission statement in a non-profit organization bring

00:40:10.860 it to class read it out each of us bring one or two of them we do that as we're going through

00:40:17.260 these statements the room just really starts laughing at these statements you know there's a six person

00:40:24.860 um organization and their mission statement is to you know to to to end world hunger which is a

00:40:31.020 perfectly inspiring idea other than it's so disconnected to the reality of the organization no one believes in

00:40:38.460 it so it sounds inspirational but actually it isn't it's you know it melts on contact it it's just it's

00:40:45.820 not real and people can feel that so it's it's not really inspirational in the end i remember as we

00:40:53.020 continued going through this somebody um somebody put their hand over they said well i've got brad pitt's

00:40:58.540 you know vision statement from his uh from his non-profit and by this point everyone's laughing

00:41:04.220 i thought brad pitt what's he going to have to say and uh and then they read it out and and this was

00:41:09.100 the vision statement this was the statement of the purpose statement was we're going to build 250 storm

00:41:17.500 resistant homes in the eighth circuit of new orleans that uh that there's also sustainable by this date

00:41:26.540 and when they read it it seemed to take the oxygen out of the room

00:41:31.420 and it was almost a reverent moment as people realized oh that is what a clear intent looks like

00:41:43.660 sounds like we you know they will know when they're done and they might well choose a new

00:41:51.900 intent that doesn't have to be the end you have to put yourself out of existence necessarily but you

00:41:57.420 know when it's done and it stood in such contrast to these other kinds of vision and mission statements

00:42:03.500 these these um um these incomprehensible general vision and mission statements that nobody just no one

00:42:13.980 knows what they really mean and so what people have experienced with these kinds of things is it lacks

00:42:20.700 clarity which is ironic because that's the whole point of them is to produce clarity to produce direction and

00:42:27.180 purpose but most of them and i really do mean most i mean certainly my experience is almost

00:42:33.100 universally that these kinds of statements are not fit for purpose they don't enable people to make

00:42:39.340 trade-offs in their day-to-day work so an essential intent i mean in some ways if i'm if i'm honest

00:42:47.500 they're just really good vision mission statements i mean they just work because you've gone all the way

00:42:53.100 from this generalized statement to something of clarity a lot of people say even ceos and executives

00:43:00.140 i work with when i talk to them about this at first i'll say well look i think we're pretty clear greg you

00:43:04.380 know about what we're trying to do and i always want to say well yeah there's you know as a person who

00:43:08.940 wears glasses the difference between pretty clear and really clear is really different and that's what

00:43:14.620 we're talking about here an essential intent is what you really are trying to do the the concrete

00:43:21.100 and inspirational but especially the concrete objective the priority the thing you're really

00:43:27.660 about and when people have them you know you have it because basically it's one decision that's made a

00:43:35.580 thousand decisions you can keep coming back to that again and again until it's achieved and you can say

00:43:43.100 look at 10 different options 20 different options and start to evaluate them which of these options is

00:43:48.460 most likely to bring us forward and accelerate us towards this intent you you can actually use it

00:43:55.100 in making decisions and making trade-offs that's how you know you've arrived that's how you know you've

00:43:59.820 achieved it yeah i like that idea that you you know when you're when you're forced to make a trade-off

00:44:04.940 that's like you know because like it's if i do this will this help me move forward on my that

00:44:09.180 intent no okay that's a trade-off exactly and and of course trade-offs are the essence of strategy

00:44:15.420 the essence of if you're not making trade-offs you you don't have a strategy if if you're not

00:44:22.220 consciously making it then you don't have a conscious strategy and and you know what we've

00:44:26.220 learned is that is that you do need two two kinds of strategy in in your life or in your business

00:44:33.660 one is emergent strategy and that's the one i think we tend to default to that's where you know

00:44:39.900 you you you see the response of your boss today you see what's going on you you and you you kind of

00:44:45.980 respond to it in hopefully an intelligent way in the moment that's emergent strategy you're learning

00:44:51.900 by doing by being aware and conscious of what's going on around you that's type one type two is

00:45:01.420 deliberate strategy that's where essential intent comes in you say look longer term what are we

00:45:06.060 really trying to do i mean of course we've talked already about this hundred year vision it doesn't

00:45:10.460 have to be as as as hugely long term as that to begin you but you say here's we've decided the thing

00:45:17.180 we want to really want to achieve by x date could be a year could be 10 years could of course be longer

00:45:23.740 and that starts to inform each day each moment so that you're not just doing emergent strategy now

00:45:33.740 you don't want just to be focused on essential intent and not to focus on what's going around

00:45:38.460 you because then you could be massively out of touch with the realities of the people you're trying to

00:45:43.500 serve and i've made that mistake before in my own leadership where i say okay this is the goal and then

00:45:49.660 you start to not pay attention to the things that would be educating you as to how to approach this

00:45:54.940 or or where it's not really working and where to adjust so you need both you need you need focus

00:46:02.940 as both the verb which is this adaptation we're talking about this emergent strategy and you need

00:46:08.860 focus as a noun this intent this single thing that you're really working towards and it's this this

00:46:15.180 there's balance between the two this dynamic equilibrium between those two that helps you

00:46:20.700 to be relevant now and also making trade-offs towards something that really matters down the road

00:46:26.780 so another idea you talk about that's and that you think is vital in order to live an essentialist

00:46:31.660 life is this idea of buffer what is buffer and why is that important to leading an essentialist life

00:46:38.460 i was trying to teach my children how to uh the idea of buffer and its importance and we ended up

00:46:46.060 creating a game where we were driving from point a to point b and to to drive in maybe the normal way

00:46:56.940 or maybe the way i normally drove meant that you sort of got a bit too close to the people in front of you

00:47:01.980 i mean you had to slow down you know suddenly and then you'd accelerate quickly and then you didn't

00:47:08.860 quite see the red light was coming so you had to slow down again and it's a very choppy experience

00:47:13.900 because there's always unexpected things to come to to drive with buffer meant okay can we go from point

00:47:20.780 a to point b never stopping the car at all how would you do that you know so it's a smoother journey

00:47:27.420 it's a smoother way of going from point a to point b and the way you do it is that you create more

00:47:33.900 space between you and the car in front of you so instead of being you know a few yards behind them

00:47:39.500 you might go back 20 or 30 yards and that means that you can you have the space to to adapt to the

00:47:49.420 unexpected thing in front of you so so that's a physical example of buffer uh why it matters so much

00:47:56.860 in our lives in our businesses in the work environments across the board is because

00:48:04.300 the one thing we can expect is the unexpected we might not know what the unexpected thing will be

00:48:12.300 i suppose by definition we don't we can be sure they will come so if you try and pack your day your

00:48:20.060 life your commitment level to the completely fullest degree on the basis that you know i can get these

00:48:29.420 things done if everything works perfectly then then we can be sure we can guarantee that isn't how it's

00:48:36.060 going to work something unexpected is going to come up somebody's going to drop the ball uh some some

00:48:42.220 technical glitch will will occur you know these things always come up and so by putting buffer in

00:48:49.420 our schedule there's a variety of ways of doing this i remember that the ceo of linkedin told me that he

00:48:57.660 puts in two hours of buffer in his schedule every day so he divides it into half an hour segments and so

00:49:06.620 so they're just nothing's planned so no meeting can be scheduled no appointments no anything because

00:49:12.700 he just knows that unexpected things will come up maybe he needs a bit of time he'll catch up on some

00:49:17.660 email because he's got the buffer to do it maybe someone will step into his office who uh you know has

00:49:24.300 has an urgent situation something that's vital or maybe he'll just sit and use that time to pause

00:49:29.340 breathe reflect that's buffer in action and it's key to executing on what really matters most

00:49:39.420 and uh yeah that's that's buffer that's why it matters i think that idea where we try to cram in

00:49:45.180 as much like that's that's the problem of over optimizing right we think we're being really efficient

00:49:50.700 but then we're thinking being really we're being clever but then it ends up biting us in the butt and

00:49:55.900 the better way to optimize is actually leave like it's under optimize right don't use all of your time

00:50:01.900 yeah that's it it's absolutely true and and what i've learned actually just in my own life and and

00:50:07.660 recently is that you might have to work very hard at this you might have to paradoxically in a sense get

00:50:17.020 busier than you even are right now for a while in order to achieve this and and that's okay because

00:50:23.180 that's you know it's like you you might have to let me give you an example so so i i look at my life

00:50:31.340 and i say okay look i'm i want to be an essentialist i feel like i'm halfway towards the revolution you

00:50:37.180 know i've i've made a significant number of changes and they're important but i want to go further and i

00:50:43.500 want to i want a certain kind of life in fact let me let me just share this with you this is i was i was

00:50:50.940 doing um an interview conversation not dissimilar to this a few months ago six months eight months

00:50:56.620 maybe and the person i was talking to started speaking about where they live and they live on

00:51:03.740 this live on land and it's land that their great-grandparents bought and and there's this

00:51:11.980 area on his uh on his property that's the that's the house that these ancestors used to live in

00:51:19.420 and he says i'll go there sometimes because there's no wi-fi there there's no there's nothing

00:51:23.100 in it he says uh i'll spend time there he said he said when i'm there i'm amazed to think to imagine

00:51:29.100 what the life was for the people who lived there he said they would work they get up when the dawn they

00:51:36.780 go and you know plow the fields work outside physical labor together as a family and then once

00:51:43.420 it was done for the day they would come home there's no of course there's no technology they

00:51:48.460 would have this hearth experience uh meaning literally by the hearth they would for the rest of

00:51:55.500 the remainder of the day and fully into the evening until they went to sleep they would sit sit by the fire

00:52:02.540 uh read uh talk to each other laugh and they'd eat together i mean everything was done by this hearth

00:52:11.420 everything was done in this very quiet and centered place let's just riff on this for a second something

00:52:17.900 i learned recently which amazed me is that the word focus it the root word of focus is half

00:52:25.820 half so the word focus when it was first being used meant not not just focus on a thing it meant

00:52:36.140 the focus that is only possible when you're with your family by the hearth where that that's where the

00:52:41.500 light is that's where the warmth is that's where the family is that is what focus meant i think that's

00:52:47.340 quite a profound insight but when i was having this conversation and he was sort of explaining some of

00:52:53.100 this to me i had this this deep connection of i'm only halfway there and i need to do something

00:52:59.740 about this i need to actually create a different environment i've probably gone as far as i think i

00:53:04.060 can go in the environment i'm in and so that began everything we do has interrelated purposes and so this

00:53:10.220 is not the only reason i was doing this but but i found myself pursuing a different life and saying where

00:53:18.380 can i have a different life and so you know in that process and for some other reasons as well

00:53:23.740 moved to a different environment where were we looking we're looking for a different kind of

00:53:29.740 location and the place we found is so quiet and so still it's still got this great community but it's high

00:53:36.300 on privacy high in community but it's compared to before it's so much space and and it took a lot of work

00:53:44.220 to go from point a to point b and really i felt sometimes a bit of a a charlatan essentialist because

00:53:51.100 it was just so much work and so but it was in pursuit of this single intent you know to to make this change

00:53:57.660 to choose this different life and we're in it now and it's just been so profound to to have set a goal like

00:54:05.580 that you know to to really set an intent to get to a place that's less less noise less disruption more

00:54:14.860 privacy ironically more community you know could these places exist it might take a lot of work to

00:54:20.700 get there but then you're there and and in today's environment you have to really work on that so so

00:54:28.780 anyway that's that's something that's very live for me very real for me and i think has relevance for

00:54:33.580 other people listening to this conversation yeah i love that but i thought was interesting it was a

00:54:39.020 counterintuitive idea you put out there in order to live an essentialist life you you might end up

00:54:44.140 doing things that seem unessential to most people like exploring or just playing or sleeping or not doing

00:54:53.020 anything i think when most people hear that they think well that's that that's a waste of time like you

00:54:58.060 could be using that time to doing those essential things why are activities like that so important to

00:55:03.580 living as an essentialist well so they're not important if you believe that going 24 7 i mean

00:55:11.660 not if you believe if it's working for you then it's not important don't worry about all of this you

00:55:16.060 know if it if that if that is creating joy if that's creating meaningful relationships if that's creating

00:55:21.340 uh mental wellness health uh and and thriving success personally and professionally i mean if

00:55:29.340 if if if non-essentialism is producing those things for you then you just forget everything we're talking

00:55:35.820 about here because it's all working but on the basis that actually non-essentialism doesn't work for

00:55:41.420 people that it creates so much stress that it creates so much busyness without productivity that

00:55:48.460 that it that it actually helps with a plateau in their progress so suddenly you think well maybe

00:55:53.420 that maybe the way i've been doing it isn't the right way to be doing it maybe maybe i need maybe

00:56:00.300 there's a different thing and suddenly some of those different things will feel like slow motion at first

00:56:08.620 i will feel so different like getting off a you know uh conveyor belt so the and and and all of a sudden

00:56:16.940 you you're like whoa it's so it's a little discombobulating and then you say well this is

00:56:22.300 real life playing playing with my children just playing with them um going going somewhere to to go

00:56:29.900 swim with the children go to go to the beach just be with them laugh with them so stop thinking that

00:56:36.780 that's that that is the distraction that's the real work of life that is life i i suggested to

00:56:43.820 somebody one time i said you know sometimes in life the best thing to do is nothing

00:56:48.540 and they could not comprehend that idea literally they just they just looked at me like i was crazy

00:56:57.740 and they started to explain like well you don't really mean nothing to you you don't you couldn't

00:57:02.540 really mean that it must be some other thing you mean and i kept on saying i know i don't mean

00:57:08.780 something else i mean that sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is to sit there

00:57:14.460 and to and the goal is just nothing for just a little while to to you know to be bored

00:57:22.780 to let yourself be in that space and and you'll find quickly that this in fact is a way for much better

00:57:35.100 personal health that this is a way to much higher levels of happiness and and strangely i think what

00:57:42.060 people will find especially if you go back to the hundred year vision they will find that these are

00:57:47.580 the things that actually last and this is the level of the non-essentialist con is that it literally is

00:57:53.980 conned us to believing that the stuff that doesn't matter at all is what matters and the stuff that

00:57:59.500 doesn't that really matters doesn't matter at all i don't know if i said that right maybe i just got

00:58:03.820 the wrong but but you get the idea that it's completely reversed what is important and what's

00:58:09.820 not important well i was reading my journal not so long ago and um and back back a few years

00:58:16.860 reviewing a few years back and i was looking at my entries and i was struck by how much of the many of

00:58:23.420 the items i've written didn't matter even this three five years later just didn't matter to me but

00:58:30.140 the entries about when i had played with my children when i had just had some space and relaxed

00:58:36.140 and been in the present when i wrote about those things those things mattered significantly

00:58:43.020 even this you know three to five years later and that that's what we're going for

00:58:49.100 it's a different way of living and it is revolutionary it is different

00:58:54.140 to what the people around us will be doing but what will be revealed in that difference is a

00:59:01.580 simply a you know less but better life and i guess that's that's the the core argument value

00:59:09.020 proposition of essentialism i love that well greg this has been a great conversation where can people

00:59:13.580 go to learn more about your book and your work well i'm i mean the the you know the website is a place

00:59:19.020 that uh that we do add things from time to time with the with you know the the new adventures that

00:59:25.340 were going on so that's just greg mckeon.com the latest adventure the the big thing that's been

00:59:30.860 happening that's interesting is is we've teamed up with steve harvey after he read essentialism and

00:59:37.820 found it life-changing and we've been working with people in his audience and going to their home

00:59:42.780 and evaluating their life and and making adjustments funny you mentioned buffer that

00:59:48.540 one of the people that worked with we specifically mentioned on that so they can go to the website

00:59:52.220 and watch some of those segments and episodes and and join in this uh this growing adventure and

00:59:58.220 growing movement fantastic well greg mckeon thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure

01:00:01.340 thank you so much my guest today was greg mckeon he's the author of the book essentialism

01:00:05.420 is available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you find out more information about his work at

01:00:09.420 greg mckeon.com mckeon spelled m-c-k-e-o-w-n.com also check out our show notes at aom.is

01:00:16.540 slash essentialist where you find links to resources we can delve deeper into this topic

01:00:31.100 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

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01:00:45.580 appreciate that as always thank you for your continued support and until next time this is

01:00:48.860 brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#331： The Difference Between Essentialists and Non-Essentialists

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