This article is influenced by the book “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” by Greg McKeown. Click here to purchase this book from Amazon. Or, listen to the audiobook for free from audible.
Warren Buffett, the most successful business investor, states that he rejects 99 opportunities out of 100. According to him, this is the difference between a normal and a successful person. An average person says yes to almost every opportunity that comes towards him. The successful person rejects most offers and waits for the right opportunity to kick in.
If you feel you don’t get enough time in a day to complete your pending task and that keeps you confuse throughout the day, then you are at the right place as here today we will let you know some life-changing points that will help you to learn how to get more done in less time from the book Essentialism written by the famous writer Greg McKeown who also works as a consultant for the great companies like Adobe, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Apple.
Become An Editor Of Your Own Life
We all have heard at some point in our life that hard work is the only key to be successful, and according to today’s norms, we consider the people who are the busiest in their work lives are the most successful ones as it has become a status symbol and people have mixed busyness with hard work. And these types of people keep adding new opportunities and tasks to their already overflowing list of tasks.
This does not mean that hard work is not the right thing to do, but working hard in the wrong direction is wrong and a waste of energy and time.
Suppose two people are standing on a specific point; one person runs 1km from a point in four opposite directions. He would have run 4kms, but he would have gone 1km far from the starting point in reality. On the other hand, that other person runs 4 km in one direction he would be 4km away from his starting point now the effort input was the same by both the persons but the difference that you need to notice is the result that is why to remain busy throughout the day does not mean that you are working productively.
According to a principle popularly known as the Pareto principle, 20% effort helps you to show your 80% result.
But keeping yourself busy throughout the day will make the results opposite 80% work will generate only 20% result according to Pareto principle.
Following the second method will not make you generate the result you are wishing for no matter what you do.
If you want to generate the result, you wish and try for; you must carefully choose the task and opportunities. You should not select every opportunity that comes your way, but you should only focus on selecting the right opportunity. By following this rule, you can make yourself successful.
Now what you need to do is to identify that 20% effort that will help you generate 80% results. To identify that effort, you need to understand what essentialism is.
What Is Essentialism?
Essentialism is a type of discipline that helps you learn your true potential by making you understand the value of your time and energy and how you can use it to gain new heights of success.
The first thing you need to understand while knowing essentialism is that we trade our time and energy throughout the day; whenever you say yes to one thing, you are unknowingly ignoring or saying no to the other task that you can fulfill in that time.
For instance, when you say yes to your friend for a movie, then unknowingly, you are saying no and ignoring the important work you can do in that time, so after understanding essentialism, you can choose where it is more vital for you to invest your time and energy.
So what you need to learn from essentialism is to say no.
How To Say No
Paul Rand was a popular and successful logo designer; he had designed logos for different companies like IBM, ENRON, Westing house, and ABC.
He was once contacted by Steve jobs for a logo to be designed for his company next. Paul declined the offer because Steve was asking for different variants of the logo, whereas paul stated that he would create only one variant of the logo according to Steve’s demand. And if he wanted more variants of the logo, he should look for someone else.
Later on, Steve agreed to Paul’s demand, and paul created only one variant of the logo that Steve instantly approved as it was a fantastic logo. The real lesson you can learn from this story is that after listening No from Paul, Steve started to unlike paul for a short period of time. After seeing his work, Steve started to respect paul for his decision and later on created a think different poster by apple of Paul Rand.
If you want to be effective enough to be respected among different groups of people, then you should learn how to say no as you should know you are not saying no or rejecting the person, but by saying no, you are just saying no to his request.
So here we have stated three techniques to say “NO” to our readers.
Awkward Pause
If someone requests you to do a task which you are not interested in, you should take a slight pause before finally submitting your answer, as this pause will give you time to think about the offer so that you don’t regret it later.
Artificial Delay
If someone offers you a task or a job, but you are confused enough to answer it on the point, then you can use this technique by saying you are a little busy with your ongoing task and will let you know as soon as I am free this technique will give you enough time to think about the offer.
Suggesting someone else
It is the most straightforward way to say no to a request to use this technique. You just need to suggest someone else for the job who will be genuinely interested in taking on the job.
Now, you need to remember that you don’t need to say no to every opportunity that comes your way. You just need to say no to the task that is non-essential for you so that you can say yes to projects that matter to you the most.
As soon as you start making progress on the essential things, you will uplift your career step by step, and many people will join you to make your journey successful. But for this, you need to learn how to define what is essential and what is non-essential for you. As if you don’t understand this, your success can take a considerable dip and make you fail. So what you need to do is to learn to set boundaries.
How to Set Boundaries
To make you understand this point, I will state a concept known as the Sunk-Cost Fallacy.
Suppose you have an incurred a loss, but instead of accepting the mistake and move on, you take on steps that will make you lose more this concept is known as Sunk-Cost Fallacy.
For instance, you purchase a ticket to a movie. After a while, you got to know that this movie is a waste of time. Now, instead of rejecting the idea to watch the film, you make a decision to watch it as you have already invested your money. But what you don’t know is that you have already wasted your money and now watching the movie will also make you waste your time. To save yourself from one wrong decision to make another poor decision is a perfect example of Sunk-Cost Fallacy.
To save yourself from this Sunk-cost Fallacy, what you need to do is to accept your bad decision and stop yourself from making another wrong decision. That is why you need to set boundaries in your life; for example, you should not bring your office work to your home as if your family or children are not allowed in your office, so your office work should also be not allowed in your home.
So being an essentialist helps you learn to make boundaries to keep yourself away from different distractions that allow you to make the right decision when choosing what tasks to perform.
Final Verdict of How to Get More Done In Less Time
1)You need to learn from this book is that everything you face in your life does not have the same importance, so you need to own your decision by being an editor of your own life.
2)To make the right decision, you also need to learn how to say NO so that you can say yes when the right opportunity knocks on your door.
3) To make your life more principled, you need to set boundaries so that these boundaries keep you away from numerous distractions you can face throughout the day.
By making these efforts in your life, you will see your life-changing in front of your eyes.
All these points stated here are taken from the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown. Buy this book if you want to read more in detail.
