Essentialism: Less, but Better

As discussed earlier, essentialism advocates doing only what most deserves doing, directing time and energy toward what matters most to maximize contribution and efficiency. In the author's words, make “less, but better” an inviolable rule for action. The concept is clear, but to understand it deeply, it helps to compare it with “nonessentialism.” Essentialism emphasizes “less, but better,” while nonessentialism tries to consider everyone and everything. Essentialism holds that only a few things in life truly matter; we must choose, and the key is making trade-offs. Nonessentialist thinking treats everything as important: nothing can be overlooked, and everything must be arranged. In other words, nonessentialism is the indiscriminate pursuit of more, while essentialism is the disciplined pursuit of less. Essentialists complete carefully selected, important work and remain in control. Nonessentialists take on too many tasks and often feel exhausted and at a loss. Essentialism's importance to life and work is like organizing a closet. If you never organize it, it becomes a mess, mostly filled with clothes you rarely wear, and finding anything takes effort. Clear it regularly and it stays orderly, holding only a few things you love to wear. It becomes easy to use, and you feel energized wearing them. Essentialism is therefore not an occasional trimming of the daily task list. It means purposefully and strategically eliminating unimportant things, not only obvious time-wasters but also some very good opportunities. The world offers so many opportunities that no individual's time and energy can cover them all. We can focus only on a few important things. Compared with each other, one approach disperses energy across many activities, making a little progress on each but achieving nothing satisfying. The other puts the same energy into a few activities, making substantial progress on what matters most and producing satisfying results. The benefits of essentialism are obvious and the reasoning clear. Why, then, do so many people remain troubled by nonessentialism? Just as everyone knows the benefits of organizing a closet, most closets still remain messy. In the book, the author identifies two sets of reasons. First is the paradox of success. Focused goals and priorities help us succeed. But success brings more opportunities, demands more time and energy, and introduces more distractions. We then drift from our original goals, lose our focus, and plant the seeds of failure. There are also social reasons: various trends give nonessentialism the upper hand. One is the exponential growth of available choices. Over recent decades, globalized trade has given people more opportunities than they can manage. The more choices there are, the harder it is to identify what matters. This is what psychologists call “decision fatigue”: the more decisions we must make, the poorer their quality becomes. Second are the difficulties created by technological progress. Mobile internet and widespread phones enable rapid information sharing but also create new problems. High-speed connectivity, information overload, and too many opinions scatter our attention, increase social pressure, and greatly interfere with thought and decision-making. Third is being misled by “you can have it all.” Advertising sells this idea, companies celebrate it, and job descriptions embed it. In an age of rapidly expanding choices and expectations, it adds fuel to already busy lives. Practicing essentialism in this environment is difficult. Only by deliberately emphasizing essentialist thinking can we resist nonessentialism. This thinking has three aspects. First, choice. Believe that choice is an important power. The ability to choose is part of what makes us human. Ignoring it means choosing helplessness, submitting to others' choices or external forces, and destroying our own free will. Second, discernment. For any individual, many things in the universe, including much human activity, have little value. Most of what we encounter is noise; only a few things are precious. More effort does not necessarily bring more reward. Pursuing less may instead produce better results. Third, trade-offs. As economist Thomas Sowell put it: “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.” We cannot have or do everything. We must understand what we truly want, make wise trade-offs in critical areas, and take charge of our own actions. Essentialist thinking therefore requires three shifts: from “I have to” to “I choose to,” from “These are all important” to “Most things are unimportant,” and from “How can I cover everything?” to “How can I persevere?” Once these ideas are established, practicing essentialism involves three steps, discussed in detail later. For now, the closet metaphor can briefly illustrate them. The first step is exploration. Facing a pile of clothes, do not ask, “Might I have another chance to wear this?” Ask, “Do I love it?” and “Do I look good in it?” If not, discard it. At work, similarly, do not ask, “Is this useful to me?” Ask, “Will this contribute the most to achieving my goal?” That helps produce sound judgments. The second step is elimination. Suppose you divide clothes into “must keep” and “clear out.” You find it hard to throw old clothes away because people value what they own above its actual worth. Change the question: “If I did not already own it, how much would I pay for it now?” This often resolves the issue. We would not pay again for most old clothes. In other words, their present value is zero, and they should be decisively removed. The third step is execution. Keeping a closet orderly requires regular clearing and discarding: bagging unwanted things, rearranging what you want to keep, finding out where to take discarded items and when the local secondhand store opens, and scheduling a visit. At work, likewise, once you know what to eliminate and what to retain, you need concrete ways to carry that out. This will be developed later. In short, essentialism is a required course in organizing life's “closet.” Unlike a real closet, it does not need attention only yearly, monthly, or weekly. It is an inviolable rule to apply at every decision, a method for choosing between the many meaningless details and the few things that truly matter. Mastering it helps you achieve more with less effort. What happens if we do not understand essentialism or regularly organize life's “closet”? Over time, it becomes increasingly cluttered with clothes we rarely wear, undermining our appearance. Likewise, as our roles in life and work become more complex and commitments multiply, work becomes muddled and life deteriorates. Without a systematic way to organize it, this situation continues indefinitely.