ESSENTIALISM by Greg McKeown - Excerpt

essentialism

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essentialism THE DISCIPLINED PURSUIT OF LESS GREG M c KEOWN

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Copyright © 2014 by Greg McKeown All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Business, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York. www.crownpublishing.com CROWN BUSINESS is a trademark and CROWN and the Rising Sun colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC. Crown Business books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions or corporate use. Special editions, including personalized covers, excerpts of existing books, or books with corporate logos, can be created in large quantities for special needs. For more information, contact Premium Sales at (212) 572-­2232 or e‑mail specialmarkets@ randomhouse.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data [CIP data]

ISBN 978‑0‑8041‑3738‑6 eBook ISBN 978‑0‑8041‑3739‑3 Printed in the United States of America Book art design, illustrations, and jacket design by Amy Hayes Stellhorn and her team at Big Monocle in collaboration with Maria Elias. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition

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Dedic at ed t o A n na Gr ace Ev e Jack a n d Est h e r

You pe r son i f y e v e ry t h ing t h at is essen ti a l t o m e.

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Ch a p t e r 3

DISCERN The Unimportance of Practically Everything Most of what exists in the universe—­our actions, and all other forces, resources, and ideas— ­h as little value and yields little result; on the other hand, a few things work fantastically well and have tremendous impact. —Richard Koch

In George Orwell’s classic allegorical novel Animal Farm we are introduced to the fictional character Boxer the horse. He is described as faithful and strong. His answer to every setback and every problem is, “I will work harder.” He lives true to his philosophy under the direst circumstances until, exhausted and broken, he is sent to the knackers’ yard. He is a tragic figure: despite his best intentions, his ever-­increasing efforts actually exacerbate the inequality and problems on the farm. Are there ways we can be a bit like Boxer? Do setbacks often only strengthen our resolve to work longer and harder? Do we sometimes respond to every challenge with “Yes, I can take this on as well”? After all, we have been taught from a young age that hard work is key to producing results, and many of us have been amply rewarded

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for our productivity and our ability to muscle through every task or challenge the world throws at us. 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? I remember when I was young I wanted to earn some pocket money. One of the few jobs available for twelve-­year-­olds in England was a paper route. It paid about a pound a day and took about an hour. So for a while I heaved a bag that seemed heavier than I was from door to door for an hour each morning before school (and just for the record, we couldn’t just throw the paper onto someone’s front porch, as is done in the United States. We had to take the paper up to the tiny letterbox on the door and then force the paper all the way through it). It was hard-­earned pocket money, to be sure. The considerable effort I had to put in just to earn that one pound a day forever changed the way I thought about the cost of the things I desired. From then on, when I looked at something I wanted to buy I would translate it into the number of days I would have to deliver the papers to get it. One pound of reward equaled one hour of effort. I realized that at this rate it would take quite a while to save up for that MicroMachine I wanted. Then, as I started to think about how I might speed up the process, I had the insight that I could wash the neighbors’ cars on Saturday mornings instead of delivering papers. I could charge two pounds per car and could clean three in an hour. Suddenly, the ratio of hours to pounds changed from 1:1 to 1:6. I had just learned a crucial lesson: certain types of effort yield higher rewards than others. Years later at the university I went to work at a coaching company. I worked in their customer service department for $9 an hour.

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It would have been easy to think of the jobs in terms of that ratio between time and reward. But I knew what really counted was the relationship between time and results. So I asked myself, “What is the most valuable result I could achieve in this job?” It turned out to be winning back customers who wanted to cancel. So I worked hard at convincing customers not to cancel, and soon I achieved a zero rate of cancellation. Since I was paid for each client I retained, I learned more, earned more, and contributed more. Working hard is important. But more effort does not necessarily yield more results. “Less but better” does. Ferran Adrià, arguably the world’s greatest chef, who has led El Bulli to become the world’s most famous restaurant, epitomizes the principle of “less but better” in at least two ways. First, his specialty is reducing traditional dishes to their absolute essence and then re­ imagining them in ways people have never thought of before. Second, while El Bulli has somewhere in the range of 2 million requests for dinner reservations each year, it serves only fifty people per night and closes for six months of the year. In fact, at the time of writing, Ferran had stopped serving food altogether and had instead turned El Bulli into a full-­time food laboratory of sorts where he was continuing to pursue nothing but the essence of his craft.1 Getting used to the idea of “less but better” may prove harder than it sounds, especially when we have been rewarded in the past for doing more . . . and more and more. Yet at a certain point, more effort causes our progress to plateau and even stall. It’s true that the idea of a direct correlation between results and effort is appealing. It seems fair. Yet research across many fields paints a very different picture. Most people have heard of the “Pareto Principle,” the idea,

DISCER N43

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introduced as far back as the 1790s by Vilfredo Pareto, that 20 percent of our efforts produce 80 percent of results. Much later, in 1951, in his Quality-­Control Handbook, Joseph Moses Juran, one of the fathers of the quality movement, expanded on this idea and called it “the Law of the Vital Few.”2 His observation was that you could massively improve the quality of a product by resolving a tiny fraction of the problems. He found a willing test audience for this idea in Japan, which at the time had developed a rather poor reputation for producing low-­cost, low-­quality goods. By adopting a process in which a high percentage of effort and attention was channeled toward improving just those few things that were truly vital, he made the phrase “made in Japan” take on a totally new meaning. And gradually, the quality revolution led to Japan’s rise as a global economic power.3 Distinguishing the “trivial many” from the “vital few” can be applied to every kind of human endeavor large or small and has been done so persuasively by Richard Koch, author of several books on how to apply the Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule) to everyday life.4 Indeed, the examples are everywhere. Think of Warren Buffett, who has famously said, “Our investment philosophy borders on lethargy.”5 What he means is that he and his firm make relatively few investments and keep them for a long time. In The Tao of Warren Buffett, Mary Buffett and David Clark explain: “Warren decided early in his career it would be impossible for him to make hundreds of right investment decisions, so he decided that he would invest only in the businesses that he was absolutely sure of, and then bet heavily on them. He owes 90% of his wealth to just ten investments. Sometimes what you don’t do is just as important as what you do.”6 In short, he makes big bets on the essential few investment opportunities and says no to the many merely good ones.7 Some believe the relationship between efforts and results is even

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less linear, following what scientists call a “power law.” According to the power law theory, certain efforts actually produce exponentially more results than others. For example, as Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer for Microsoft, has said (and then confirmed to me in person), “The top software developers are more productive than average software developers not by a factor of 10X or 100X or even 1,000X but by 10,000X.”8 It may be an exaggeration, but it still makes the point that certain efforts produce exponentially better results than others. The overwhelming reality is: we live in a world where almost everything is worthless and a very few things are exceptionally valuable. As John Maxwell has written, “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”9

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A Nonessentialist thinks almost everything is essential.

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An Essentialist thinks almost everything is nonessential.

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As we unlearn the 1:1 logic, we begin to see the value in pursuing the way of the Essentialist. We discover how even the many good opportunities we pursue are often far less valuable than the few truly great ones. Once we understand this, we start scanning our environment for those vital few and eagerly eliminate the trivial many. Only then can we say no to good opportunities and say yes to truly great ones. This is why an Essentialist takes the time to explore all his options. The extra investment is justified because some things are so much more important that they repay the effort invested in finding those things tenfold. An Essentialist, in other words, discerns more so he can do less.

Nonessentialist

Essentialist

Thinks almost everything is essential

Thinks almost everything is nonessential

Views opportunities as basically equal

Distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many

Many capable people are kept from getting to the next level of contribution because they can’t let go of the belief that everything is important. But an Essentialist has learned to tell the difference between what is truly important and everything else. To practice this Essentialist skill we can start at a simple level, and once it becomes second nature for everyday decisions we can begin to apply it to bigger and broader areas of our personal and professional lives. To master it fully will require a massive shift in thinking. But it can be done.

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