We can do everything and be everyone, all the opportunities are open for us, right?
How can we do this? In a world where more is expected of us, where we have more options and where if we don’t prioritise, someone else will do it for us.
Decide- we forgot we have an immense power to choose, that cannot be taken away.
We somehow forgot of this ability and it looks more like learned helplessness. The more we take on the better.
Choice is not only something we have is something we do. It appears as if we have unlimited opportunities. The first place to start is to be conscious if the power of choice.
Discern
In the novel Animal Farm, Boxer is the idealistic Stakhanovite section of the working class and the pesantry that really believes in Napoleon’s(Stalin) system and wants to toil and sacrifice in order to bring the system’s promises to fruition.
He ends up being worked to death and his body is sold out to the glue factory.
Don’t be like boxer the horse, and work harder.
When are we being like boxer?
We have been historically rewarded for it since young and it is socially seen as a good thing.
Could it be that doing less but thinking more could work for us??
There are actions that yield more results, same time. This is the 20% that creates the 80%- Pareto. The law of the vital few, made in Japan in high tech manufacturing.
Everything is almost non essential.
Take the time to find those opportunities
Trade offs – I can do both
What problem do you want?
Trade offs are stopping to do one thing and do another instead, making decisions by design and not design. Southwest look at 100 opportunities and say no, we are not going to do that. Don’t make changes around the margins.
Don’t try to fit it all since this ignores the reality of trade offs. We can’t scape the reality of trade offs.
What are we choosing not to do?
Do trade offs deliberately – what can I go big on?
Explore
We should be creating more space, eliminating the non essentials, to explore and think.
In order to have focus we should escape to focus
Escape to think, space to concentrate and do it by design. Creating space to strategise. A philosophy and make space to scape in the busy life
Look
What’s the lead? – the important is not to report facts but to figure out the point. Make sense of all the information that comes to you
The big picture- a plane can crush – hyper focusing on a minor details. Don’t react
How do we filter for important information quickly? Listen to what is not being said. Read between the lines.
- keep a journal
- Write less than you feel like writing
- Read back what you wrote the trends and themes
- How do you capture the big story, getting out there to know what problem to solve?
Play
Make space to play, restore play! Flow
Play is not trivial nor is a waste of time. The word school, comes from Shool leisure, schools can incorporate this.
Draw, dancing, reading.
Search in your childhood for memories of play
When we play we engage with the core of our human spirit.
Sleep
Protect the asset, lack of sleep can do more damage than good and not power through
Select – the power of extreme criteria
It’s either hell yes or hell no. Extreme test.
By definition applying a highly selective criteria is a trade off, you are leaving something out.
Wide criteria instead of explicit narrow criteria leads to bad decisions.
Given the selective criteria, how do you making decisions? Selective, explicit and right
Could this member would have been a founding member of the team?
Process:
- Write down the opportunity, then write down the criteria
- Minimum criteria in order to pass
- Extreme criteria in order to pass 2-3 criteria
What’s the price we are paying for the many useless decisions?
Eliminate
We have identity, discerned and selected. Now we need to eliminate
If I did not have this opportunity, what would I give to acquire it?
Saying yes by default, what would I say no to
Clarity of goals-> Pretty clear and or very clear
When individuals and when teams are divided between many good projects the results are marginal, specially since they might not be linked or push a project forward
Clarity of purpose- essential intent
An essential intent is both inspirational and concrete, both meanings and measurable, a decision that settles a hundred decisions
If we can truly excellent at what we could do, what could it be?
How would we know when we are done?
Only with clarity of purpose we can achieve the goals
Dare
Determination when we know our mind, feel when we are pressured externally socially. It is hard to do live by it
Say no gracefully to everything that is not truly vital
Separate the decision from the relation.
I don’t have the bandwidth – there are ways to say NO without saying no.
Everyone is selling something
Slow yes, quick no
Uncommit – cut your losses
Sunk costs bias – determine to see it through. If I were not invested in this, what would it take? Endowment effect – you value because it is yours
Pretend you don’t own it yet – we don’t want to admit we have wasted time, specially when we are adults
Status quo bias – the things they have always been
0 based budget – all bets are off. Everything must be justified. Stop doing and agreeing to casual commitments
Reverse pilot- MVP-
Testing whether removing something would have a terrible consequences. No one benefited so it must be eliminated
Casual commitments
Edit – the invisible art
Elimination of the unimportant. What not to see
Chief editor of the company- a thousand things we can do.
Removing or subtracting – removing adds value
Editing life- cut out options (cloud the meaning)- get rid of activities that get in the way
Condense – can you if it with less? Are you saying what you want to say as clearly and concisely as possible?
Editing time a natural candente deciding
limits would make an essentialist limitless
Don’t rob people of their problems
Execution- making it effortless
A system in place to make the right seems seamless
Buffer– Joseph’s history about a famine and a dream, meaning of a dream
We faced the unexpectedly constantly.
We can only expect the unexpected, we have to prepare. We must create a buffer, a buffer is something that prevents 2 things from getting into contact
We get busy and distracted and we react
Projects and commitment expand. We underestimate how long things will take.
Create an endowment liked Sweden from oil
Steps to create a buffer:
- Extreme preparation – race to get to the North Pole
- Add 50% to time investment – planning fallacy, how long a time will take
- Conduct scenario planning
What risks we face/expose and where
What assets and populations are exposed and to what degree
How vulnerable are they
What financial burden do these place in individuals and business
How we can invest to increase financial and social resilience – Buffer to safeguard, accept the reality, since the future is unpredictable
Subtract
To attain knowledge add new things every day, to attain wisdom remove things
The goal – constrains find then. Find the Herbie
What is the slowest kicker? Don’t find marginal things here and there, routine in your life or procedure. Don’t react!
Don’t default to easy fix solutions – one time thing to remove solutions
The essentialist produces more by bringing forth more. Adding more is not always necessarily better.
Find the specific outcome, essential intent
How would we know when we are done?
What is the activity that, if removed, would make things easier?
Don’t remove arbitrary obstacles, remove the main/principal obstacle
Remove obstacles to progress
Aristotle taught about 3 kinds of work
Theoretical work- End goal is truth
Practical work- Action
Poetical work – Bring forth more
Don’t think better in terms of addition but in terms of subtraction.
How can we remove obstacles/constrain
- be clear about the essential intent – How would we know when we are done?
- What is the slowest hicker? What are the obstacles standing between me and getting this done? What is keeping me from completing this? Consider, the information you need, energy levels, etc. Then, prioritise the lead by asking: what would be the obstacle if remove will remove all the obstacles. Other activities might be obstacles themselves, actually anything that does not advance the actual outcome. Removal of obstacles one by one
- Remove it – done is better than perfect, an obstacle could be another person
Progress
Tickets positive as a way to enforce behaviour
- Start small and reward
- Make realistic and achievable goals
- MV progress
Flow
- what’s the video tape and automate routine – visualise- habits have taken over – they make it look easy. Don’t push though or based on raw effort
Routine
- Repetition helps the brain to automate
- The brain can free space by perfecting the right routine
- How can we go effortless? Overhaul your triggers
- Create new triggers – cue
- Do the hardest thing first
Focus
What’s important now – the question about the play:
Kronos about time quantity
Kayros about quality
Multi tasking vs multi focusing – we can only focus on what’s important right now
Be present
