Extended Summary Of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less - By Greg McKeown (ePub)

INTRODUCTIONDo you usually say, "I have to do it / I should do it", instead of freely choosing if you want to do a certain activity? If you answered yes, then you are not following the path of essentialism. This book, written by Greg McKeown, studies essentialism, a systematic discipline that seeks to locate the most essential tasks of a particular activity. This approach allows for a more planned and easier execution of your routine, since it will eliminate everything that is unnecessary. The aim of the author is to help us discover what is fundamental, essential, a thought that will allow us to have a more useful and productive life.If we define essentialism in a few words, we would say that it is the art of doing less but with a better outcome. In other words, the idea is to do the essentials and make smarter use of your time, energy and resources. Essentialism seeks to achieve few but significant achievements, instead of having many of little relevance. But how do we distinguish between the relevant and the irrelevant, the necessary from the unnecessary? We must learn to simplify our lives.It may seem like an unrealistic postulate, but let's reflect a little on this. To work in current societies and achieve a good standard of living with better opportunities, peoples work schedules tend to be excessive. We are bombarded with this idea of abundance, resulting in our feeling that we must have everything, but can we? Evidently, not. We cannot know everything, and we cannot have all the tools and if we did, it doesnt mean that we would be happy. If we analyze this thought of abundance, you will see that there are many things or activities that become unnecessary, simply because you do not have the time to make use of them. For this reason, it is better that we focus on what we should do, on what is fundamental to our happiness and our success.These arguments are based on McKeown's background as a business coach and his own personal experiences. He proposes that if we focus on "less, but better" our progress will be huge, because we will be directing our efforts in one direction, instead of dividing it into thousands of directions. In this text you will learn to identify the essential things in your life and how you can eliminate unnecessary activities. This process seems very simple and trivial, but it will allow you to develop a greater mental and emotional strength, and an attitude that will greatly improve your performance. In addition, focusing only on the essentials allows us to be clearer in our objectives and our decision making is better. Although it seems hard to believe, our decision-making ability is undermined by the overwhelming feeling of having too much to do. And this path leads to one place: having a life full of passivity.ABOUT GREG MCKEOWN: AUTHOR OF THE ORIGINAL BOOKGreg McKeown (born in London, England, in 1977) is a public speaker, a leadership and business consultant, and also an author.He is the founder and CEO of THIS, Inc., a leadership and strategy design agency based in Silicon Valley.In 2012, the World Economic Forum introduced McKeown to the Young Global Leaders Forum.His project Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, is a business and self-help book that deals with how to lead a more meaningful and successful life.McKeown earned an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business after studying communications and journalism at Brigham Young University.Originally from England, he is now a US citizen and lives in Menlo Park, California. Prior to founding THIS, Inc., Greg worked for the Global Leadership Practice at Heidrick & Struggles.