Essentialism

• Don't spread out energies, go farther in the truly vital areas.
• Requires a keen filter to go through options and select the essential
• Live by design, not default

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Diagram

Peter Drucker: "In a few hundred years....most important event...wont be technology, internet, e commerce....it will be substanital and rapid numbers of people having choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And Society is totally unprepared for it"

• Having it all is a myth, you must make choices
• Why are we not celebrating time we have with people we love, listening, pondering and meditating?
• What if students had time to think about highest contribution so when they left school they weren't just racing to nowhere?

Essence

• Choice is an action, not a set of options.
• When we forget ability to choose, we learn to be helpless
• Efforts and results may not be linear, may have a "power law". Almost everything you can do is worthless with view things of exceptional value
• WE either make choices, are they are made for us
• Which problem do I want?

Explore

Without great solitude no serious work is possible - Picasso

• Abolishing boredom —> pondering and deep thinking become casualties
• Not just the who, what when, where, need the WHY it matters
• Be journalist of your own life, write the story you want in the context of your meaning
• Discerning what is essential to explore is a skill
• Write a daily journal, less than you want each day. Review quarterly.
• What question are you trying to answer?
• Play broadens the range of options available, is an antidote to stress, +ve effect on our executive function of the brain
• Sleep is at top of list of protecting the asset of yourself
• New something must pass a 90% threshold "Hell YEAH!" or "No"
• Area to concentrate in: What am I deeply passionate about? What taps my talent? What meets a need in the world?

Eliminate

• People thrive on clarity. That's why you must eliminate objectives you have chose not to pursue. Be explicit and ruthless
• When you aren't clear in your own lives, you make up stupid social games to worry about
• Essential Intent = Concrete and Aspirational
• Creating Essential Intent is hard. It takes courage, insight and foresight to see which activities and efforts will add up to your highest point of contribution.
• Apply zero based budgeting to your time — start from scratch and use 90/10 rule
• Best editors use subtraction
• Don't make exceptions (slippery slope)
• Boundaries protect time from being hijacked
• Forcing others to solve own problems is equally beneficial to you and them

Execute

• Existentialists plan, look ahead, come up with contingencies
• Always look for and remove "slowest hiker" in your job or your life, keeping you back from what really matters to you
• Start out small and build from there. Progress is the strongest human motivator
• Pixar: We don't finish our films, we release them. Always iterating, improving, get feedback loop going.
• Cue then routine then reward = habit
• What would you like to do someday? not a commitment llist, but get it out of your head and prioritize.
• What you put on to do list is more important than how fast you check things off