Essentialism

"Can I actually fulfill this request, given the time and resources I have?

 

Is this the very most important thing I should be doing with my time and resources right now?

 

Am I investing in the right activities? What would happen if we can figure out the one thing you could do that would make the highest contribution?

 

What if business is eliminated meaningless meetings and replace them with space for people to thank and work on their most important projects?

 

What if employees push back against I'm wasting email chains, purposeless projects, and unproductive meetings so they could be utilized at their highest level of contribution to their companies and in their careers?

 

What is societies that telling us to buy more stuff and instead allowed us to create more space to breathe and think?

 

What if Society encouraged us to reject what has been accurately described as doing things we detest, to buy things we don't need, with money we don't have, to impress people we don't like?

 

What if we stop being oversold the value of having more and being undersold the value of having less?

 

What if we stop celebrating being busy as a measurement of important? What If instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?

 

What if the whole world shifted from the undisciplined pursuit of more to the disciplined pursuit of less... only better?" pg. 26

 

"As poet Mary Oliver wrote: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" pg. 27

 

"Yet, for capable people who are already working hard, are there limits to the value of hard work? Is there a point at which doing more does not produce more? Is there a point at which doing less (but thinking more) will actually produce better outcomes?" pg. 42

 

"To discern why is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make." pg. 60

 

"Listen for what others don't hear." pg. 76

 

"the powerful effects of restoring play to our daily lives." pg 83

 

"Play, which I would define as anything we do simply for the joy of doing rather than as a means to an end - whether it's flying a kite or listening to music or throwing around a baseball- might seem like a non-essential activity. Often it is treated that way. But in fact play is essential in many ways. Stuart Brown, the founder of the National Institute for Play, has studied what are called the play histories of some 6,000 individuals and has concluded that play has the power to significantly improve everything from personal health to relationships to education to organization's ability to innovate. "Play," he says, "leads to brain plasticity, adaptability, and creativity." As he simply puts it, "Nothing fires up the brain like play." pg. 85

 

"Play has a positive effect on the executive function of the brain. The brain's executive functions, he writes, include planning, prioritizing, scheduling, anticipating, delegating, deciding, analyzing in short, most of the skills any executive must master in order to excel in business." pg. 87

 

"As former Stanford professor and educator Henry B. Eyring has written, 'My experience has taught me this about how people and organizations improve: the best place to look is for small changes we could make and the things we do often. There is power in steadiness and repetition.' " pg. 197

 

"The logic is to increase the odds of people operating with courage by teaching them the principles of heroism. By encouraging and rewarding heroic Acts, Zimbardo believes, we can consciously and deliberately create a system where heroic acts eventually become natural and effortless."

"We have a choice. We can use our energies to set up a system that makes execution of goodness easy, or we can resign ourselves to a system that actually makes it harder to do what is good." pg.197

 

Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition. -W. H. Aiden

 

"Designs a routine that enshrines what is essential, making execution almost effortless."  pg. 206

 

"So how can we discard the routines that keep us locked and nonessential habits and replace them with routines that make executing essentiels almost effortless?" of. 209

 

"So now, as he gets the door of his house, he applies when he calls "the pause that refreshes." This technique is easy. He stops for just a moment. He closes his eyes. He breathes in and out once: deeply and slowly. As he exhales, he lets the work issues fall away. This allows him to walk through the front door to his family with more singleness of purpose. It supports the sentiment attributed to Lao

Tzu: "In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present."

 

"Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes." pg. 223

 

"And when you are truly there, something else is also there- life, represented by the cup of tea. In that moment you are real, and the cup of tea is real. You are not lost in the past, in the future, in your projects, in your worries. You are free from all of these afflictions. And in that state of being free, you enjoy your tea. That is the moment of happiness, and of peace." pg. 223

 

Kairos- time that is opportune, right, different. Pay attention through the day for your own kairos moments. pp. 217 & 223

 

Without great solitude no serious work is possible. -Pablo Picasso