How to Focus on What’s Essential with Greg McKeown | B-Well Together | Salesforce

Well, hello, Hello. Welcome to another week, another Monday and another episode of Be well Together. I hope you had a great relaxing weekend that you were able to recharge. And now look at us. We're back at it again. And so what we're going to talk about this morning is just this like crazy feeling of we're all just a little overworked, we're overstretched, we are running on fumes. And so today what we've done is we have invited someone to come and talk to us about thinking differently about the way we work and being able to do more with less, which I'm pretty sure is something we can all get behind. So it is my pleasure to introduce you to leadership strategist and best selling author, Greg McKeown. So if you are not familiar with Greg's work, he is the author of New York Times and Wall Street Journal's best seller, Essentialism, the Disciplined Pursuit of Less. He's also the CEO of McEwen Incorporated and he's a really, really popular blogger. It's not too hard, you have to go too hard to find content by him, whether it's in the Harvard Business Review or in LinkedIn influential group. He's kind of out there. So today we are going to explore essentialism with Greg and he's going to give us some strategies to think about how we're channeling our time and our energy and our efforts so we are getting set up for success. So with that, Greg, welcome to be well together.

It's so great to be with you. Thank you, Jody.

So happy to have you. Did you have a good weekend?

I did. We've been trying to create a sort of Disneyland at home because you can't go there. And we have our in laws visiting for the first time. They're like the first people that we have physically touched in six months.

Wow. So you're literally like you're bringing in the cast of characters for your Disney experience in come the grandparents, the whole thing.

My children were absolutely focused on doing this and having Adventureland Day and fantasy.

Amazing things.

Yeah, it's been amazing.

That is great. Well, good for you. Good for you. So tell us what I mean, just the overwhelming sense of it just keeps going on and on and maybe you can try to help us redirect some of our focus around the things that matter. That's what I'm hoping you're going to talk to us about.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to doing that. Let me just jump into it for a little bit here.

That sounds Great.

So let me just start with a story. So Sam Elliot is a capable manager in Silicon Valley who found himself stretched too thin after his company was acquired by a larger, more bureaucratic business. He was in earnest as he gets the new company because he wants to be a good citizen in his new role. And he ends up saying yes to many requests without really thinking about it. But as a result, he would spend the whole day rushing from one meeting and conference call, now of course, zoom calls all over the place to another, trying to please everyone, trying to get it all done. And perhaps predictably, his stress goes up as the quality of his work is going down. It's like he's majoring in minor activities. And as a result, his work became unsatisfying for him and frustrating for the people he was trying so hard to please. So in the midst of the frustration, the company actually came to him and offered him an early retirement package, which is like a no brainer, maybe in that situation, but he's young enough that he just has no interest in completely retiring. He thinks briefly about starting his own consulting company and doing what he was already doing and sort of selling his services back to the company. But that just seemed, you know, none of that seemed like a really great option for him. And so then he went to go and speak to one of his mentors who gave him perhaps surprising advice. He said, look, stay, but do what you would do as a consultant and nothing else, and don't tell anybody. It's a pretty interesting piece of advice, I suppose, but. But he actually decides to do just that. You know, just focus on what he thinks is most valuable, most essential, and try to negotiate out of every other thing that would be distracting him. So the manager follows the advice and he makes a sort of daily commitment towards cutting out the red tape, saying no, at least negotiating a no. And he was tentative at first. He would evaluate options based on somewhat timid criteria of can I actually fulfill this request given the time and resources that I have? And if the answer was no, he would negotiate, refuse the request. And he was pleasantly surprised to find that while people might be a little disappointed at first, they respected the honesty that he was giving them. Encouraged by the small wins, he pushed back a bit more. Now, when a request would come in, he would pause and evaluate the request against tougher criteria. Look, is this the very most important thing I should be doing with my time and resources right now? And if he couldn't answer a definite yes, then he would at least pause. He'd evaluate that request he'd think about it. Once again, to his delight, while his colleagues initially seemed disappointed, they soon began to respect him for even the refusals. Emboldened, he began to apply this selective criteria to everything, not just direct requests. In his past life, he would have always volunteered for presentations, assignments that came up even at the last minute. But now he found a way not to sign up for them. He used to be one of the first to jump in on any email trail, but now he just stepped back and let others jump in. He stopped attending conference calls just because he was being invited to, especially if he only had a couple of minutes that he could really contribute. He stopped just being in on every weekly call. He really pushed the limit on something that might not seem realistic for all of us, but at least it's an experiment. He stopped attending meetings on his calendar if he didn't have a direct contribution. He explained to me, just because I was invited didn't seem enough reason to attend. He said it felt self indulgent at first. But by being selective, he bought himself space. And in that space, he found creative freedom. He could concentrate his efforts on one project at a time. He could plan thoroughly. He could anticipate roadblocks and start to remove obstacles. Instead of spinning his wheels trying to get everything done, he could get the right things done. His newfound commitment to doing only the things that were truly important and eliminating as much as possible of everything else, restored the quality of work. And instead of making just a millimeter progress in a million different directions, he began to generate tremendous momentum towards accomplishing things that were truly vital. He continued this for several months, and he immediately found that he did not only get more of his day back at work, but also in the evenings. He got more time back at home. He said, well, I thought it was interesting. He said, I got my life back. He said, I could go home at a decent time. I could. Instead of being a slave to his phone, he shut it down for a while. He negotiated that with his team. He. He was able to go to the gym every night. He was able to eat dinner with his wife uninterrupted. And to his great surprise, he didn't find the negative repercussions to his experiment that he had anticipated. His manager didn't chastise him. There was a support there. His colleagues didn't resent him. In fact, quite the opposite. What turned out is that because he was doing meaningful projects that made actual value to the company, they respected his value and his work. More than ever, his work became fulfilling again. His performance ratings went up and by the end of that year he had one of the largest bonuses of his whole career. Okay, it's one example, right? N equals one. But in that single example is the basic value proposition of essentialism. Only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone and everything without really thinking about it, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter. Essentialism is not about how to get more things done. It's about how to get the right things done. It's about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at your highest point of contribution by doing what is essential. The way of the essentialist is the path to being in at least a little better control of our own choices. It's a path to new levels of success and meaning. But I learned about it the hard way, through the misdirected way. The non essentialist it was on bright winter day in California that I visited my wife Anna in the hospital. Even in the hospital, Anna was radiant, but I also knew she was exhausted. It was the day after our precious daughter was born, healthy and happy at 7lbs 3oz. Yet what should have been one of the happiest, most serene days of my life was actually filled with tension. Even as my beautiful baby lay in my wife's tired arms, I was on the phone and on email with work. I was feeling pressured to go to a client meeting. My colleague at the time had written, Friday between 1 and 2 would be a very bad time for your wife to have a baby, because I need you to come and be at this meeting with whoever. And it was Friday and though I was pretty certain, or at least I hoped the email had been written in jest, I felt pressured to attend. Instinctively, I knew what to do. It was clearly a time to be there for my wife and newborn child. So when asked whether I planned to attend the meeting, I said, you know, with all the conviction I could muster, yes. And to my shame, while my wife lay in the hospital with our hours old baby, I went to the meeting. Afterward, my colleague said, look, the client will respect you for making the decision to be here. But honestly, the look on their clients faces did not evince that sort of respect. As it turned out, exactly nothing came of the client meeting. But even if it had, surely I'd made a fool's bargain. And on reflection, I discovered this important lesson. If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will. Now, maybe you haven't Done exactly what I did. You haven't pulled a McEwen. But in these uncertain times, there is a risk that we will get pulled into the thick and thin things that work consumes everything. Just ask yourself, have you found yourself stretched too thin in these times at work or at home or both, as they're integrated? Have you found yourself getting busy but not necessarily productive? Have you found your day being hijacked by other people's agenda if you said yes to any of those? The way out is to become an essentialist. And as it turns out, what I found is that many intelligent, ambitious, driven people have perfectly legitimate reasons for having trouble answering those questions. One reason is that our society punishes us for good behavior, saying no and negotiating no, and rewards us for bad behavior, saying yes, saying no. It can be awkward, it's only celebrated later. But this whole pattern leads to what I've called the paradox of success, which can be summarized in four predictable phases. One, when we really have clarity of purpose, it enables us to succeed at our endeavor. That's phase one. Two is when we have success, we gain a reputation as a go to person. We become good old so and so is always there when you need them. We are presented with increased options and opportunities. Phase three, when we have increased options and opportunities, which really has the unintended consequence of having more demands on our time and energies, it leads to diffused effort. We get spread thinner and thinner. Four, we become distracted from what would otherwise be our highest level of contribution. The effect of our success has been to undermine the very clarity that led to success in the first place. Curiously, the pursuit of success can be a catalyst for failure if it leads to what Jim Korns has called the undisciplined pursuit of more. And the antidote, just like our closets when they get overwhelmed, is the disciplined pursuit of less. Everything changes when we give ourselves permission to be more selective in what we choose to do at once. We hold the key to unlock the next level of contribution in our lives. Because getting to the next level is not about getting more things done. It's about getting, as I've said, the right things done. So here are five specific things we can just start to do right away. To apply essentialism first, every day, ask what's the most important thing I need to do today? The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s, and it was singular. It meant the very first or priorest thing, and it stayed singular for the next 500 years. It was only in the 1900s that we pluralized the term and started talking about priorities. And yet haven't each of us been to some meeting where someone said, you know, Here are my 37 priorities. You can have, of course, many important activities, goals, projects to work on. Of course you can. But you can't by definition have more than one first priority. So get clear about that at the beginning of each day. Number two Create space on your calendar to do concentrated essential work in the morning. Imagine just having a couple of four hour windows without meetings where you could do work that adds value rather than just maintains your current level of contribution. So value creation versus Maintenance. Number three Specific thing negotiate essentials rather than thinking your only options are to just give a polite yes or a rude no. I mean, even if you just pause for a few seconds before saying yes to ask a question, it can make a big difference. A fourth thing is to schedule a personal quarterly off site so that you can really stand back and prioritize your life. And the fifth way is really bold. But this is just an interesting story. I want to share it with you. It's based on a company based in Denver. It's called Uncharted. The company collectively read Essentialism and used it to help them achieve their full workload in 32 hours instead of 40. In other words, this, you know, the four day work week. They were inspired by case studies at companies like Microsoft, Japan and others. The goal was to maintain the quality and quantity of their work. But every person would get every Friday off 100% pay and benefits, 100% contribution, but only 80% of the work hours. So everyone's salary stays the same but 32 hours. And they started this last year. Towards the end of the year they hired an independent evaluator to help them design the experiment, record the data, report on the outcome. So, you know, it's, it's, it's, you know, it makes for pretty interesting reading if you get into the detail of it. Let me just share a few highlights. Their Their experiment worked as follows. Team members worked eight hours Monday through Thursday and Friday was off. Okay. Salaries would remain the same. If the experiment was successful, then this would become a norm four day work, which would be the norm policy across the board. If not, they go back to how it was before. As I mentioned, they read Essentialism, which I think is interesting because I think it helped prepare their minds and hearts for a different way of thinking, a different way of doing things. Everyone read the book. They came together and discussed it team wide about how to prioritize what really was essential and cutting out what was non essential. They created internal slack channels to post related articles, ask questions, share best practices, all this sort of thing. One month in, they found a few things were working exceptionally well. First, the team was actually taking the time off. People were really more focused and well rested. They took two four hour blocks of concentrated time, no internal meetings on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to just improve their productivity. Overall, it wasn't all super smooth sailing. The team expressed some concerns. They had less time to respond to unexpected tasks. They still were new and awkward at saying no. They also felt a little concerned about bothering their colleagues or asking for help. So it wasn't just completely easy. But as they proceeded, you know, once the experiment was concluded, they surveyed results again. And they evaluated their results in three categories, Workplace performance, team dynamics and non work life. So let's see what the results are in terms of workplace performance. They found that the perceptions of self performance and other people's performance increased. Their goals and autonomy remained the same. And clients reported no change in the quality or timeliness of their work. Pretty remarkable stuff I think. Regarding the team dynamics, their support from co workers increased by the end of this experiment. Work life balance increased, stress decreased, culture remained the same. There wasn't a hit as they had worried about outside of work. Satisfaction with physical and mental health increased. The team got more involved in the community, spent time with family, pursued passion projects. A few of the things they did with that time, people reported learning a new language, hiking through the mountains, volunteering with local organizations, taking cooking classes, reading new books, playing pickup basketball. I mean these were the kinds of activities they added. And so after analyzing the data, speaking with their partners, interviewing the team, they have made the four day work weeks permanent policy fncharted. All right, It's a very bold application of essentialism by any measure. And I'm not saying the salesforce should suddenly do this, but it's a proof point. It's an example of what teams and organizations can do if they reject the non essential norms of our times. So in summary, I would say life is uncertain, yes, but full of opportunities still. And the complication is that we can be conned into thinking we can do it all. We've got to shove everything in, even in these times. The implication of that is that we can plateau in our progress. And my position is that we can make a different choice, that we can become more essentialist starting right now. And if we do that, if we can do less but better, we can actually get better results and make a higher contribution overall. And that is a summary of essentialism. Today's conversation.

First of all, you need to know that I might be throwing my hat in the ring to be president of your fan club. I just need to throw that out there. I love your message. I love what you are saying. And I have definitely, through the course of my life, routinely kind of come back to what's most important. What is most important. And I definitely have tried to organize my life as such. What's most important to me is that I'm healthy so I can participate in my life. So exercise, as horrible as it is, is now in the morning. Right. So that it gets done first, because that is what is most important. But my question for you is, though, in my journey and in journeys of many, there are times when it is easier to say no than others. Okay. There's times when it's, we're going to launch a new product or we're going to start up a new team or we're going to take on a new job. And in those moments, personally I have experienced it is much, much, much more difficult. It's not even about negotiating where to say yes and where to say no. Because in early phases, projects, you don't know. You don't know what is most important and what is not. So I'm curious in your research and in your body of work, if you have found that there's kind of a cycle to things and if there's, you know, how, you know, you know, when it start to really negotiating your attendance.

Yes.

Versus, like, actually you kind of need to be everywhere to be able to even understand where you're going, to have the most value, add the most value.

Yes. First of all, I completely concur with that. I think all of us have experienced this challenge when more is required of us and we really are stretching, but the stretch is necessary and maybe we're even pushing beyond our real physical mental capacities of today. And so it's, I think the balance is, it's okay to be out of balance temporarily, to be in balance over the long run. Where the risk is, is when that stretch lifestyle, that constant hustle becomes the norm. And so then what's happening is that no matter what phase of a project you're on, no matter what's going on, you are in this experience of using up more of your internal reserves than you're getting back each day. And so you can't do that in a sustainable way. You know, the general rule of thumb is to, is to be careful to not use up more resources, energy capacity, than you can restore through sleep and good exercise today. That's it. You know, and this week that seems like a good litmus test. You may have exceptions, but don't make it the rule because eventually your decision making capacity will be reduced. And here's what the kicker is with this in terms of just your sleep deprivation, for example.

Yes, I was just gonna go there. Yeah.

When people are sleep deprived, they are awfully bad at knowing they're sleep deprived. So this really is not just nice idea. That's what the science, you know, shows what the research shows. And so we have to, we have to build systems that make the norms minimum, seven hours of sleep a night, minimum.

Right, right. Well, and I love what you're saying about refueling. Right. And that if you're going to push yourself and do a 12 hour day, then when are you recovering an extra four hour sleep on the weekend? Like how are you, you know, locking the children out or, you know, turning all the devices off and recapturing that? I do have one question that came in from our audience that I think is a really great question that I want to make sure we have time for here. The question is, if you had to refresh your book with the global pandemic in mind, which one of your principles would you refresh first in the spirit of prioritization and why?

That's a beautiful question. So the answer is this. It's one of the findings that I have had really since writing the book. And the pandemic draws particular attention to it. And it's this idea. It's like the world's simplest idea. Imagine three concentric circles. In the inner circle is protecting the asset, which is you, your mind, body, heart, spirit. It's the capacity you have to contribute, protecting that asset. In the second circle is your most important relationships. And in the third circle is everything else. Everything that's out there. And here's the world's simplest point is that non essentialists start from the outside in, whereas essentialists start from the inside out. So a non essentialist, they're trying to do everything out there first. And it's literally true. They're picking up the phone in the morning, the first thing is the email. And they're trying to just get everything done and zero inbox and get to every meeting and meet everyone's request and so on. So you start that way. It's like drinking the ocean by the evening. What is left of you for the people who matter most to you, how do you show up to them? Well, you're Exhausted, even if you're physically there, you're mentally not. And so those relationships wear thinner and thinner and they therefore become harder and harder. Then by the very end of the day, last thing at night, you think, oh, I need to protect the asset. I need to do something. It's not those words, but I need to do something for myself. And so someone told me in Covid times, they said, well, I'm spending, you know, two hours, starting at midnight scrolling through Zillow as an attempt, you know, to try and create some space for me. And that's the outside in approach, the inside out approach. That this simple switch, at least mentally, to understand the switch is to start with protecting the asset, which is one of the things you mentioned earlier on. Get the exercise done first. Prioritize sleep, create space to be able to think yourself and plan what matters so that you're not just reacting well, if you do that first, then how do you show up to the most important people in your life? When you're there, it's not just how much time you're with them, you're just, there's more energy, there's more light, more quality, there's more quality. And then of course, the final advantage is that how do you deal with everything out there? Because you're well rested, because things are in a good place with the people who matter most. You're in the best position to discern which projects to prioritize, which you know, what work to do. And so in this way, the essentialist actually does make a bigger contribution overall, even out there. And that's part of the paradox of being an essentialist and doing inside out prioritization.

Such a beautiful and important message. Greg, thank you so, so much for giving us some of your time. I want to remind everyone, if you haven't already, like, run over to Amazon and purchased this book. It's called the Disciplined Pursuit of Less. It's just great to meet you. Thank you so much for putting all your good work out there. It's really important.

It's really been my pleasure to be with you. Thank you, Jodi.

Great. Okay, so everyone, those are your words of wisdom for this week. Get out there and prioritize yourself. Then your family and relationships and the rest will all fall into place. Thank you, everyone. Be well. We'll see you back here next time.