How to Be an Essentialist

Essentialism enables you to prioritize things that create most value. Goal setting translates these priorities into commitments. This edition looks at both.

Welcome!

In this edition, we look at how to use simple framework of Essentialism to prioritize things that create most value. We also look at reframing goal setting through three questions so that goals align with your purpose and values.

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The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

During my strategy facilitation exercise with executives, I often encounter the “problem of plenty” when it comes to prioritization. Well-intentioned executives commit to work on multiple critical priorities at a time.

But as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. They face the heat when they are unable to deliver on their commitments because of poor prioritization. To avoid this during strategy planning, I ask them to list their “Top Three” strategic priorities that they would address first (for maximum business impact) and three actions they intend to take in each of these priority areas. Everything else goes to the parking lot of things to be done.

“Priority” comes from Latin word “Priorita” which means “first in rank, order or dignity”. If your top priority list has 10 items, none of them is a priority. Committing to multiple critical priorities often leads to disappointment, burnout and poor organizational outcomes.

This is true for individuals as well. We now competing priorities in areas like work, family, health, relationships, learning etc. We have a lot to do and where we often falter is trying to do it all at the same time.

A couple of years ago, I read George McKeown’s book titled “Essentialism: A Disciplined Pursuit of Less” with great interest. Essentialism is about identifying where you can create most VALUE , make greatest contribution or create greatest impact. It is then about finding ways, building systems and having tools that help you execute on it effortlessly. It is about doing less but doing BETTER. This also means having courage to say NO to less important things.

Here is a related story about how Warren Buffet encouraged prioritization:

In a conversation about career growth, Warren Buffet once asked his personal pilot to write down his top 25 career goals. The pilot was then asked to circle five most important goals. When the pilot inquired about the remaining 20 goals, Buffet responded, “Everything you didn’t circle just became your Avoid-At-All-Cost list. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you’ve succeeded with your top 5”.

Time is our most precious, non-renewable resource. If we are not using it wisely to make our best contribution, we may be doing a disservice to our inherent potential. Choose wisely.

Sketchnote: Being an Essentialist

Three Questions to Ask Before Setting Your Goals

Before we even set goals, we make choices about what matters most. Prioritization is the real starting point. That’s how we decide what deserves our time, energy, and focus. Once we have clarified our priorities, the next step is turning them into meaningful goals.

But not all goals are created equal.

A few years ago, I saw a short video of conversation between Dr. Ramya Ranganathan and Dr. Shalini Lal (Founder of UNQBE) on goal setting. I revisited my notes recently and turned the insights into a visual one-pager.