Essentialism Explained: How To Focus On What Matters In Life - Greg McKeown - #175

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Oh yes, hello friends. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is none other than Greg McKeown, New York Times bestselling author of Essentialism. And today could be pretty life-changing. If you were in the right space to hear this, the message of Essentialism is one that has had quite a profound impact on the way that I see the world and operate within it. So if you ever feel busy but not productive, like you're overworked but underutilized, struggling with information overload and stretched too thin, this could be the antidote that you're looking for. Success breeds options and opportunities. The problem with that is those options and opportunities often undermine the things which led to success in the first place. So today, Greg teaches us the art of Essentialism, how not to fall into undisciplined pursuit of more, how to avoid the trivial many, and instead focus our attention on to the vital few. This is a real antidote to the always shiny, novel, new, chasing that next thing format that we all fall into, or at least I certainly have. Greg's phenomenal. I really appreciate him coming on. And he has a brand new podcast, which is coming out very soon. If you enjoy the things that we talk about today, then you will love his new show. And the link to that to subscribe is available in the show notes below. But for now, it's time to listen to me get red-pilled on my own show about a blog I haven't even started yet by the wise and wonderful, Greg McKeown.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Greg McKeown, how are you, my friend?

**Greg McKeown** (2:07)
I'm wonderful, nice to be with you.

**Chris Williamson** (2:09)
Nice to be with you as well. Could we have dressed any more polar opposite? You've got this beautiful suit on, lovely press suit with a white shirt, and I am in a vest because it's the first hot day of May in Newcastle.

**Greg McKeown** (2:22)
Listen, that's what it is, that's the difference, is that I'm in California, so I've got no reason to celebrate, well, I should celebrate, but this beautiful weather, that explains it.

**Chris Williamson** (2:34)
There's a rarity, you know? And all these people on the internet, I'm allowed to wear a vest if I want to wear a vest to Podcast with Greg McKeown. You know? If there was an essentialist outfit for today, this would be it. So essentialism is the word of the day, that's what we're going to be talking about today. And I fear that I might be the arch nemesis of an essentialist, or at least I was for quite a long time. So I've got...

**Greg McKeown** (3:03)
Yeah, okay. Why do you say that?

**Chris Williamson** (3:07)
So I have a very high desire for novelty. I love new things. One of my five core values is adventure, which also pulls me toward that. And another one is curiosity, which pulls me toward that. I tend to work more than I need to. I enjoy work. I enjoy being busy, enjoy doing things.
And over time that has led to me adding an awful lot on my plate and presuming that I will just be able to upregulate my productivity or downregulate my sleep to slot in these extra things. And to the audience at home, you will know this feeling, right? You will see from the front row seat, you will watch the slippage of your own terrible unproductive, unproductiveness, right? You'll see the inefficiencies in your system firsthand. And you think, well, I can add that project in and all that will happen is I'll just have to get rid of those inefficiencies. And you just presume that like a, I don't know, like a system that the oil will be greased sufficiently more to allow it to go in. And I learned the hard way over a career of 13 years of running club nights and being a DJ and being a model and being a podcaster and doing coaching and being a fitness and all this sort of stuff. I realized that you can't, you can't.

**Greg McKeown** (4:31)
You can't do it at all.

**Chris Williamson** (4:32)
No, who knew? Well, I mean, you knew actually, which is, which is the question. So why don't you give us a bit of a background, essentialism and sort of what you do in your approach to this?

**Greg McKeown** (4:43)
Look, I was working with high performing executives in Silicon Valley and noticed a predictable pattern, which is that in the early days, these companies, they were really focused, that led to success, that success breeded options and opportunities, which if you're not careful, can undermine the things that led to success in the first place. You fall into the undisciplined pursuit of more. So you're just doing too many things and they may all be good things, but just too many different things, you get pulled a million different directions. And so you start to plateau in your progress or fail altogether. And as it turns out, this is a pattern that a lot of people, we just said, just described it a little bit, feel the same thing. So as I've studied this, I find that almost universally people will feel stretched too thin at work or at home, busy, but not productive. I feel like their day is being hijacked by other people's agenda for them. So this is like the problem that essentialism is seeking to address or solve.