Life-Changing Books Episode 10. Greg McKeown: Author of Essentialism

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 10 of our brand new podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview some of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can now use to achieve more and live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview author Greg McKeown. Greg writes, teaches, and lectures around the world about the importance of living and leading as an essentialist. to learn a little bit more about what that means in just a moment. Greg also serves as a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum and holds an MBA from Stanford. During our conversation, we talk about Essentialism, his book, as well as a variety of other topics from the importance of saying no to the importance of thinking 7 generations out in the future when you're making your decisions today. Please enjoy my conversation with Greg McKeown. Greg, thank you very much for joining the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books podcast today. How are you?

Nick, I'm great. It's great to be with you.

I can't wait to share my conversation with you with everybody. A couple of my friends, you are their favorite author. And so I'm very excited for our talk. And for those that don't know who you are, can you talk a little bit about how you came to write this book and what is essentialism?

Essentialism is the antidote to a problem. The problem is the undisciplined pursuit of more, where you start feeling stretched too thin at work or at home, busy but not productive. You feel like other people's agenda is hijacking your day, your life. And essentialism is the response to that, the disciplined pursuit of less, where you figure out what is essential out of the many options before you, you eliminate the non-essentials, and then you build a system to make execution as easy as possible around the things that matter most. That's essentialism.

And in the beginning of the book, you actually tell a story about what a non-essentialist looks like. And this is a fun story. I think the Book Thinkers family could, could identify with you a little bit when you tell this story. So you had just had a baby and you went and you took a meeting that you probably shouldn't have. And so could you tell everybody that story?

Well, yeah, I mean, I'd been— a few days before, I received an email from my manager at the time and said, look, Friday between 1 and 2 would be a very bad time for your wife to have a baby because I need you to be at this client meeting. And we, you know, my wife went into labor with our daughter in the middle of Thursday night. I'm there Friday morning and everyone's okay, but I'm feeling torn instead of being focused, instead of saying this is what matters and this is what doesn't matter. And so yes, as you mentioned, to my shame, I go to the meeting and I remember afterwards my manager said, look, the client will respect you for the choice you just made. And maybe they did, although the look on their faces didn't evince that sort of confidence. But even if they did, it was clear that I made a fool's bargain. And what I learned was if you don't prioritize your life, someone else will. And that's really the driving observation behind Essentialism and part of the driving force for me in researching and writing Essentialism and wanting to have conversations. What's essential? What's less essential? How can you make sure that you're making the trade-offs between what really matters and the things that matter less or don't matter at all.

I love the distinction between the two. And in so many ways, I've found myself— I'm not an essentialist sometimes. And that's such a harmful way to self-identify because I really do believe that I am— those 2 words are the most powerful words that we could possibly use. And so if I don't identify as an And as an essentialist, that's potentially pretty harmful. And I'm working my way there. And towards the end of the conversation, we'll talk a little bit more about what does that transition look like for people. Now, in the audience, there are a lot of people who would consider themselves very productive. And so for people who already have a baseline of productivity, it's counterintuitive, especially in the United States, to look at our effort and say, I can actually get more results from doing less. And I know that that's a point you talk about in the book a little bit, so I'd love to hear you expand on that for a minute or two.

Well, first of all, productivity has its place, but essentialism I do not think of as being primarily about productivity. I think productivity is about getting things from point A to point B. getting stuff done, but essentialism is about getting the right stuff done. And that isn't— that's not the same thing. And here's why: because a lot of the time, the most important activities aren't even on our to-do list. They're not in our inbox. So if we're living out of our inbox, if we're constantly writing down our to-do list and that list is getting longer by the end of the day than it was at the beginning, We could be doing that every day. We could be doing it 70 hours a week. We could be consumed with it. But still, the most important activities, relationships, projects are not getting done. And that's the gap that I think is the bigger concern. You can efficiently do things and that you're going to get a return on your investment by increasing efficiency. But You know, as Drucker said, we shouldn't be doing efficiently things that shouldn't be done at all. And essentialism is more on that second type of problem.

Well, I love that distinction. And I recently heard in a Tim Ferriss video something that was very similar to a theme that I heard in your book that's on this main subject. Tim said a lot of people are, are very good at doing useless things or something like that. And he looks at completing minor tasks all day long as a form of laziness. And so one of the things you talked about in the book that I love, you said that essentialists actually spend more time going through more options than non-essentialists do when they're planning their day. And by exploring more options, deeper options, more powerful options, you're able to do more with less. And that's so true, isn't it?

Uh, well, yes, this is the idea. Um, I just came across an article in which Warren Buffett was quoted. He's someone who's clearly an essentialist. I've written about him before. But in this article, he was talking about the idea of being assiduous and that he had an unusual definition for being assiduous. It meant basically doing nothing. And until— it's like a disciplined nothing— until the really great opportunity comes. And then you say, yes, we're going to go big on that and all in on that. So the nonessentialist is chasing every shiny object. Every time they see someone else being successful, they're saying, well, I should be doing that too. Why haven't I been doing that? Every time they— every good thing that comes their way, they're saying yes to it because, well, something great could come of it. We never know. Something might. And because they're jumping at everything, they actually don't get to explore as many options. Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, they're really doing one thing all the time. They're just reviewing options. They're just looking at them. They're just considering. And so as a result, and he's been quoted at least as saying that the difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything. So how do you connect this? How do you make sense of the most successful investor in history taking this kind of approach? What would you have to believe about the world, in his case of investing, but generally speaking, just in the world at large, what do you have to believe to believe to act as he does? Well, we do not have to just guess at this, because early on in his career, he identified that or at least believed that he could only be right a few times. He likened it to a punch card and said, okay, I'm going to get 20 bets, investments my whole life. So if you imagine that way, if you think you're only going to get 20 bets, then you don't just sign up for everything. You don't just go try to say yes to what everyone else is saying yes to. You're careful. You're thoughtful. You're looking. You're waiting. And when the big one comes, you go, okay, I am going all in, and I am going to hold it for a long time. That is exactly what he does. He likens Berkshire Hathaway's investment strategy, if you could come up with one word, just imagine if you had to guess what a really successful investor's description of their own strategy would be. His word for it was lethargy. Lethargy of all things, the most successful investor in history, lethargy. Now, that doesn't mean he's not doing anything, but it means he's exploring really broadly. He's not in a rush. He knows that eventually something will come. It will be so obvious. It will be a complete yes for him, and then he'll go big on that. So this is the, the duality, is that essentialists explore broadly, consider many, many things, but only commit in a big way on a few options that they know, have a high level of confidence, is the right place to be playing.

It's really powerful advice, especially to come from Warren Buffett. I think it was in the book you said most of his wealth in investing came from just 10 decisions or something. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, 90% of it. 90%. So his presumption around how the world works That is the punch card metaphor. That turned out to be exactly true for him, even more extreme actually, that 90% of his wealth can be traced back to 10 investment decisions. It is not even 20. That principle illustrates the core mindset of an essentialist. The essentialist believes that almost everything is nonessential, but a few things are exceptionally valuable. And therefore, because the world is not, um, it's not like effort and reward are linearly related, right? It's not like you, you just do more and you get more. Because only a few things are really important, it means that you can change your whole approach to life. Your whole life, career, business strategy can change to operate around finding those few disproportionately valuable things and then going deep in them. So really, once you get the mindset, you start to automatically, instinctively, naturally change the strategy. The mindset, to use just one more attempt at this, is like waking up and discovering that you're in a diamond mine. where everyone else thinks that they're in a coal mine. So everyone else is busy, productivity. How do I get as much of this stuff from point A to point B? And they're just shoveling stuff out. And you say, oh, you can all do that all day long. It's no problem. I mean, there's good things to that. You keep doing it. I'm looking for diamonds. I'm going to sit here. I'm going to pay attention. I'm going to learn about how you find diamonds. I'm going to try and be really smart about where I should even be looking for those. I'm going to keep going by. And every time I see a diamond, you'll be busy rushing off with the coal, but I'm going to take out the diamond. I'm going to look for that thing that is so valuable. That's the essentialist. So it's literally true that you can do less but accomplish far, far more. In fact, all you really have to do is look at anybody in any field of endeavor that has had extraordinary success and you will find In most instances, you will find an essentialist. You'll find someone who has been able to do those few things with a much greater output.

I know that as essentialists, we are all disciples of Wilfredo Pareto. Some simple math for people. I've worked as a professional salesperson. I did that for about 5 years. And as salespeople, when we recognize that only 20% of our effort produces 80% of the results, if you can strip away that 80% that only produces 20% and just get rid of it and spend the rest of the time cultivating that 20% and then improving your skills and improving your mindset and improving your relationship with those customers, you'll be a more successful salesperson. So you're actually cutting 80% of your phone calls. You're actually cutting 80% of your meetings potentially, or the activities that generate those. And so the math behind that is relaxing as an essentialist.

Well, the best, the best salespeople, like the best professionals in almost every endeavor, but certainly the best salespeople are the ones that on day 3 of the quarter have already hit their numbers. The worst salespeople are the ones that are cramming constantly. And towards the end of the quarter, they're going crazy trying to hit these numbers and they're behind and they're stressed. And every person they're talking to can feel that. The essentialist is a, you know, it's a great example. Almost all of us, if you've ever worked in sales, knows there's someone that operates this way. They're more relaxed. They're getting bigger sales earlier on. They're just able to then enjoy the rest of the quarter, they keep on meeting with people. Of course, they're not just doing nothing literally, but they just keep on doing what is natural, what makes sense. They're looking for, you know, the, the right client. They're looking for the biggest check from the right client, and they're not wasting their time. Uh, I mean, a classic trap for salespeople, I think, is, uh, is that you, you keep having meetings with really small potential, right, where the check is going to be small, but they're friendly with you. So it kind of gives you the nice feeling of, oh hey, somebody likes me, somebody wants to talk to me. But you know deep down this is— you're in what another author has called the dark playground. You know this is not— it's fun, but it isn't going to get you great results. The essentialist salesperson is over there working with a different person at a different strategy, and they're doing it because they believe It's disproportionate value.

And so for people who are listening and think, wow, I really need to reevaluate myself, they should read the book. But one of the biggest things they need to do is learn the power of no, like you had mentioned a little bit earlier in our conversation. And so for people who are now realizing after listening to you say that I should be saying no a little bit more often, what are some of the steps to progress in the right direction as far as that's concerned? Because you talk about how to gracefully say no.

Yeah. So I want to answer your question, but with context. I want to be clear that I did, you know, I'm not advocating people say no to everyone and everything without really thinking about it. That'd be a different book. It'd be a book called Noism. I wrote a book about essentialism, and the key idea is in the title. It's essential. You start saying yes to what is essential. You find what is essential. The top The 90% or above opportunities, the 90% or above projects of interest, the things that you're hungry to do, that you want to do, the things that you think could be most valuable to others. I mean, you're looking for those things, the most essential, most important activities. I'm starting with that because that's why you say no. That's why you'd negotiate something else. That's important to have from a motivational point of view that you know, well, these are my whys, these are my more important activities, but it's also important from a negotiation point of view, because the key is not to simply say to someone, well, let's imagine saying no to my boss, or even my own team. They come, they're excited about something, and I, oh no, we're not doing that. That's probably not great for morale to address it that way. But what you can do is say, well, look, let's look at what we've already identified as being really important. Is this new idea more important than what's on there? Because if we pursue this new idea, we will be making a trade-off from the already important, essential strategic list we've already made. Of course, it is true that you could come up with a better idea tomorrow. Of course, you could choose to change your prioritization based on new information. But in a practical way, I do this once a month. I make a list of the projects that I believe are the most important projects. I divide them into 3 categories. You can imagine these categories like concentric circles. The center is protect the asset. The second is the most essential relationships. For me, that's primarily family, but it could be other relationships that are important as well. So relationships are second. In the third concentric circle, what you're looking for is— that's everything else, the other, out there. What nonessentialists do is they go from the outside in. They try to do all the other stuff first. They're living in their inbox. They're constantly reacting to all the social media, everything everyone else is doing. They're reacting out there. Whatever's left over, they try to sort of top up their important relationships. They arrive late home. They're exhausted. They're irritated. There's not much left of them to give to their most important relationships. And then even less left to protect the asset which is them themselves, their own physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. There's nothing left. It's like somebody told me recently that that at the end of the day, instead of going to sleep at night, which would also help protect the asset, they're so desperate to try and protect the asset that they're scrolling through Zillow for 2 hours. So to me, it's a one-digit switch. You flip the bit inside out. You start with protecting the asset, then the relationships, then outside. I do that once a month. I choose a few projects. Very carefully selecting them, 1 or 2 within protect the asset, 1 or 2 within family and relationships, and then whatever I've got left. I sort of choose no more than 7 for a month. These are all things that need to be completed this month. Sometimes I'm a bit unrealistic. Even in that list, I can somehow get a little more. It's not— I'm not really going to get that done. But here's how it helps me is that every day when I come to plan my day, I can look at that project list and say, okay, what's the next small victory that I can achieve in each of those projects today? And the other way, and this is maybe even more important, this comes back to this elimination, is that every new opportunity I get to say, is this more important than the project I already have? Should I be doing that instead of these? And it's that awareness of trade-off that is critical, because otherwise you just say yes Because something happens to be good or happens to be interesting or it happens to have your attention at this moment. So the key to being able to say no gracefully is to have a clear, burning yes to what is essential.

I'm silent over here because although I've read the book twice now, I'm sitting here listening to this exercise thinking I've got a lot of work to do.

Me too. Me too. I'm in this with you. I mean, I'm not, I'm not on the top of the mountain. It's great up here as an essentialist, pure and complete. I mean, I'm in this. I'm in the wrestle. I, you know, I'm married to Anna. I have 4 children. I live in the real world and, and I have so many things I want to do. So I, I mean, I, I'm with you on this, but really selecting carefully.

Yeah.

Is the beginning of empowerment.

It's a beautiful way to put it. And I agree entirely. At Book Thinkers, I have one main business partner. And so the two of us have been talking a lot about this subject recently. And I've been asking a couple of guests about it prior to even scheduling this conversation with you, because it gets overwhelming. All of a sudden, you grow with some momentum professionally and everybody comes out of the woodworks with an opportunity for you to take advantage of.

Right.

It's tough. Yeah, it's tough. And everybody has suggestions. And he painted me this— I've done this a couple times on the podcast now, but he's painted me this funnel where he's like, you need to put a barrier because if you let everybody's idea into the funnel, it gets clogged. And it's the same kind of concept with the circles, starting with protecting the asset and then building out from there. And I'm going to do that once we get off the call. So I'm excited. I'll share it for everybody. You can check it out on Instagram after all. I'll make it public because I've been really transparent with my goals and stuff. So that's beautiful.

Let's, let's, let's build on that for a second. So, so do you have right now— are you game for this?

I'm game for it. I would love it.

So, so do you currently have a written projects list, goal list? I'm not going to ask you to put it on air, but I'm just saying, do you physically have it? Could you point me to it?

Yes.

Okay. Is it— what— describe it to me.

It is a list. So professionally, there is a list of 7 areas of the company. And then within each one of those areas of the company, there are items that we would like to accomplish by the end of the year. And that's it.

Okay. So it's— no, go on.

All right. And that's it. I also have my own goals that are completely separate. And so I have a series of, I think, 9 goals that I would like to accomplish personally. By the end of the year. Exactly, by the end of the year. Yep.

Okay, so, so you're describing, okay, 9 personal, 7, but it's not just 7, that's just 7 areas within the business. It's probably like 25. 25 on the business side or across them all?

Uh, 7 areas and then cumulatively with sub-areas, probably 25 tasks or areas that we're looking to work on.

Yeah, so I mean, this is, I think, probably what a lot of people, if they have written them down, this is what they look like. And I understand that each of those items is something that's exciting, something that's interesting. You want to do those things. So the thought of not doing any one of them is inherently jarring.

It is.

You think, really? Am I going to take that item off? That important thing, that thing that I'm excited about, that I'm interested in? But here's the counterpoint is that how often have we made these lists and by the end of the year or whatever the timeframe is for our goals, we haven't accomplished everything? And that we actually have made progress on some of them, maybe completed a few of them, but actually not completed the most important items on the list. Has this happened to you?

It has, certainly.

Yeah. It's happened to you because, you know, if you'd said no, you have lost credibility because we all know the answer. It's true for all of us. So the question is, do you want the output to be mostly influenced by being unrealistic in the list in the first place? Or do you want the decision to be made deliberately by you, by the people involved, making your most educated guesses as to what you think will really matter most. See, I would say take that list that you have and actually add to it, but call it something different. And that different is like, this is all the projects that I think would be useful and valuable to do. This is a big list. It's a long list. It could be For my sake, it could be 100 things long. It could be hundreds of things long. I don't think it even really matters. But that's not your working list. That's just a place. It's like an extension of your brain. You're going, hey, there's a storage unit. I'm going to put these possible ideas in. I'm not committed to any of them. They're just ideas. options. They're like Warren Buffett going, well, it's possible. I'm not betting on any of them yet, but they're to consider. Then each month, you are drawing from that really selectively because you can't do all those 25 this month. You can't even remember 25. You can't plan in a sensible way from 25. That's my experience myself. And working with executive teams and coaching people. They just, you can't consume that number. That's why I'm saying 7's like, that's it. Personally and professionally, that's it for a month? I mean, are you kidding me? So many unexpected things will come up. So I want you to put together one list, personally, professionally. It's 7 projects. These are really your genuine best guess of what should actually get accomplished Projects completed by the— within 4 weeks of whenever you do the exercise. When I say it to you, does it sound realistic? Does it sound plausible? Are you willing to give it a go?

Yes.

Yeah. And then I would, after you make this list, I would do it personally first. And I would then take the list into work, into your negotiation. If there's stuff that's private, fine. You've got to divide it up. But I would take the list with you. And Have a conversation. What do you think are the most important things we should be doing at work? What are the most important projects to get done this month? Have them do it separate from you. Bring them together. Maybe they're completely different. Well, that's its own news. Let's talk about it. Let's counsel together until we can find agreement or approximate agreement as to what is the priority project this month for me to complete. So that you have that kind of alignment. You have that kind of clarity. Clarity then becomes so powerful. I mean, it's a little trickier to get to it, but it's so much more valuable once you have it for every future negotiation.

Well, I appreciate that. So thank you. And I will do that. I sometimes, and oftentimes we do set a, my group, we set a little series of personal quarterly goals. And it's exciting when you get to set those new goals and stuff. And so to take that down from annually or quarterly down to monthly, I would love it for a lot of different reasons. And I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it for sure. And everybody listening can hold me accountable and I'll talk about it. I'm very transparent with what I have going on. And that's a— what a great example. So again, thank you. I don't want to ramble on anymore about it.

And don't overthink it either. I mean, even if people listening to this want to do it, even if they set a timer and they say like, it doesn't is a 10-minute burst. I'm going to— because I mean, I've done this sometimes with people where I'll give them a lot less than 10 minutes. I've asked people sometimes to identify the most important project for the next 5 years, and they have 10 seconds to tell me. And the reason I do it that way is because people already know. Maybe they don't perfectly, but they have a sense. And they're just looking for the perfect answer rather than—

Right.

The answer that's in front of them. And so I think if you say, even set a timer, 10 minutes, I'm going to— I mean, I always do it with a Sharpie. I'm always doing literally everything with a Sharpie, kind of bold thinking. And you go, okay, I got 7 things in the order we just described. I got 10 minutes. Go. That's what I'm going to work on. You can't negotiate if you don't have a point of view. You can't make sure— you can't protect anything. Unless you get clear yourself on what is worth protecting. Now, you don't get to just dictate that to everybody in your life, but you can use it to start those conversations.

It's brilliant. And how long have you been implementing tools like this into your life?

I'm experimenting with them all the time. So I've been experimenting with these kinds of things for many years now. And some ideas stay for me. They've lasted for a long time. I can talk about a couple of those practices. One practice for me, for example, is I write something I'm grateful for every day. There's nothing new about that, but I've been doing it for, I don't know, 9+ years. I don't think I've missed a day in 9 years. Certainly not many days. And the way that I got to that consistency was that I just said, look, no more than 5 sentences. There's an upper bound and no less than 1 sentence. And that's how it was for a long time. It's just a few sentences and that's it. So then when you feel overwhelmed, well, a few sentences you can do. You can do that certainly also in less than 10 minutes. One little burst, a microburst as a friend of mine calls it. And, and now you, uh, now you're good to go. Um, don't overdo it. Don't have a practice where it takes you 3 hours to write an essay day 1, and by day 2 it's just exhausting. You never do it again. And so people's, you know, journal habits are dead before they begin them.

I'll share a quick story with you. Good. I, I started journaling about what I was grateful for, 3 things every day.

Yeah.

In an online Evernote document. And I've— because I had heard all of the psychological benefits of framing your day this way, as well as what the cumulative benefits are when you compound that activity over time. And it had such a profound impact on my life that I actually have the numbers 1, 2, and 3 tattooed on my wrist. And so subconsciously, all day long, I'm looking down and thinking about what I visualized in the morning, because now I don't do it I don't write it down or I don't journal it. I do it in my mind, but I do it every single day. And now I see it subconsciously 100 times a day.

Yeah. Look at that. You, you, you've created like an inbuilt follow-up, inbuilt visual reminder.

That's how dedicated I am, everybody.

Priming, priming your day with gratitude and ending it with gratitude is, is important. I mean, the writing part for me, and I'm not I'm not saying that everybody has to do this, but it's meant that now, you know, these years on that I have more than 10,000 things I'm grateful for. It builds into you. And even more than the daily, although I do like the daily practice, it's weekly when I come to do my sort of review of the week. I do mine Sundays. I go through my gratitude list from the week and I make a summary of them. What are the main things out of that list? And that's a very, encouraging, energizing weekly practice for me. It's— that's even more substantively important for seeing progress, for feeling motivated about what I want to do next. And so these are 2, you know, related practices that for me have helped. You wouldn't necessarily think of gratitude as being key to being more of an essentialist, but I've absolutely found that it's true because it helps you identify what matters because you're writing what you're thankful for. Then over anything like a long-term period, you can go back and reread your journals and you can start to see and discern between all of these lists. You thought they all mattered. That's why you wrote about them. No, a few of them really matter. And you notice that when you reread them. I did it a while ago and I couldn't believe how many of the entries I couldn't care less about.

Wow.

On the day, I cared about them. That week, I cared about them. But come forward a few months or a couple of years and I didn't care at all. They just, just, okay, fine, fine, fine. And then every so often there would be an entry and it just filled me with meaning. And oh, that mattered.

That's beautiful.

One of them was I'd written down in some detail about a game I'd played with one of my daughters. And I had written enough detail, just a little paragraph, but enough detail that I was able to remember where I was and how that game had been played. And being able to recapture that moment years later was really substantively important. And it helped me again to clarify going forward what portion of my time should be invested To what activities?

I love that. I'll share with you one other personal thing before I ask another question or two to wrap up. I've— my accountability group, we meet weekly to discuss our weeks and what we have going on, and we talk about these things in a little bit of depth. And we've just implemented— a couple of us have just implemented a 1-minute recap video each week. And so the purpose of the video, sort of to talk about it in your style, We're highlighting— we're talking in front of the camera for 1 minute about the biggest thing that happened in the week and maybe something that we're excited about for the next week. And it's only 1 minute long. And the idea is that at the end of the year, you've collected 52 1-minute videos. You can watch that video back in less than 1 hour.

Wow.

And you can keep it forever. And so you're just in front of the camera, you know, and as we keep going on with this, we might introduce a little bit more structure. Hey, here are the 3 biggest things that I was grateful for, or here's the biggest thing I'm excited about next week, or following up on last week, something.

But sure, sure.

For the audience, yeah, 52 minutes at the end of the year, you can watch that back. You can show your kids, you can show your friends, you can show your family if it's not too vulnerable. But what a great tool, just like what you're talking about, because you'll be able to recognize in video form the excitement on your face and think, You know, either A, that lasted, or B, that didn't last. And so it's totally essentialist.

Yes, because, because what you're trying to do is discern the vital few from the trivial many. And gratitude is more than just— it's more than just sort of after the fact feeling good about something. I think it does help you to do that, but I think there's a way that gratitude becomes your guide. in life, in good times, in bad times. Actually, literally, it's the best tool for the best times and the worst times. It's the same tool. It's the same mechanism. If you're going through terrible times, if you can be grateful, that process of gratitude will guide you as to what to do next. I've said it this way. I'm writing a new book and one of the things I just wrote recently was, if you focus on what you lack, you're going to lose what you have. If you focus on what you have, you're going to gain what you lack. And to me, that's how gratitude becomes a guiding force. You focus on what you have and it will grow for you and your sense of direction will grow. And so yeah, gratitude is, is But then in the good times too, in the very best times when you could get destroyed by success, as happens so very often to people, it helps you to stay grounded, helps you to avoid the worst of the ego temptations and the tendencies to let success be a teacher. And as Bill Gates puts it, success turns out to be a very poor teacher.

Gratitude has impacted my life in that same way. Now that you're phrasing it and articulating it in that way, I, I stand for what you've said in a big way.

Hmm.

So I love that. And to wrap up our conversation, I think something that was really emotional for me was when I read The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware. And you mentioned that in the book. Can you share with everybody Why you mentioned it in the book and how that can help you become not only grateful and present for what's in front of you today, but how you can use it to prioritize as an essentialist.

Look, but we're talking about long-term thinking. We're saying, how do you make sure that you don't prioritize with a short timeframe in mind? Because if you do it in a short timeframe, things that seem important this moment or this or today, uh, that don't have— don't last. Urgent things, exciting things, just this moment. Oh, this is— this will give me some instant gratification. That even a year from now, even a week from now, don't matter. A year from now, they certainly don't matter. But what if we could extrapolate that all the way to the end of our lives and learn what matters from a long-term perspective. And Bronnie Ware, the Australian nurse that you mentioned, used to work in hospice care and would have conversations. She wasn't interviewing people for a book, but she would have conversations about their life. What matters to them? What doesn't? What have they learned? What has the totality of their life taught them about what matters and what doesn't? And she identified and collected the 5 things. And the top 2, I think, are worth mentioning here. One is That people regretted not having lived a life true to their own voice of conscience, that sense of what they were really supposed to do. So they did what other people either expected them to do or even just other people were doing. A second regret is just not enough time with family, that we spent too much time in the office, too much time pursuing professional goals, and not enough time building relationships with the people that matter. Now, my experience strongly informs this view that our family is the world's most important organization. I think that a lot of people do agree with that idea, that they find themselves, yes, if they're asked about it, But actually, their life is not in alignment with that idea. They agree to it, but when they actually look at where they spend their time, where they spend their resources, it is not quite in alignment with that belief. And so what can we do to make sure that at the end of our lives, we don't find ourselves like other people that get there and regret? How can we make sure we live today with that lens? That is the essentialist lens. What can I do in this moment that is going to matter 50 years from now? Actually, I go further. I think we have got to break past Bronnie Ware's experience, if we can. and really develop a 100-year vision. I was just interviewing— I'm just launching a podcast, Essentialism with Greg McKeown Podcast, and I was interviewing lots of people. This wasn't officially part of the podcast, but maybe it will be in the future, but it was John Covey, who's Stephen Covey's younger brother, 3 years younger. Stephen Covey passed away, unfortunately, few years ago. And so talking to John was really interesting. First of all, he just sounds just like his brother, but he's also got deep convictions and deep experiences that grew up from this. And so this is of course from Stephen Covey, who wrote 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. But John said to me, he described his vision statement, his family— rather, his family mission statement. And I won't go into all of it, but one of the things he said was that he wanted to help this— he had the mission statement. At the end of the mission statement, it said, to the 7th generation. So he's trying to achieve this thing with his children, his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren. But the perspective isn't just to the great-grandchildren that he can see. It's to 7 generations from him. He's generation 1, children 2, grandchildren 3. He's trying to make decisions now. for the— I don't know if I'm going to get this right— the great-great-grandchildren of his great-grandchildren. You see, he's really trying to make decisions and think about what would you do in the culture of your family? What would you do strategically? Get this, because this is one of the reasons I reached out to him, is that I happen to know that his grandfather had built a lodge, I think with the intent, but I don't think anyone really knows whether the intent was there or not, for his future generations. So instead of, I don't know, a lot of families, I've been involved in many of these conversations. A lot of families choose a different place to go every year. And the cost of talking about that, the cost of thinking about all the places they could go, and it's such a headache for people and it can become quite emotional for people. And so it means that often you don't even do it. It can go 2 years. Maybe it's 3 years. It just stops happening because it's just too much work. And so you spend as much work trying to plan and think about it and select and decide all the opinions and everything than you do actually going and being on vacation together. So he swept all of that complexity aside. They had one place that they went every summer. And that built and built. So eventually, it became quite a lodge. Later, the children and grandchildren built a second lodge. Many, they've built all sorts of extra lodges. Okay. So here's how it works now. We are talking 5 generations on from his grandfather because now he's, you know, there's 5 generations of people that go every summer to the same location. And so on any given day, you can go to this sort of little beachfront area. He says on average, there will be 30 to 40 people on any day through the summer. that come from that same— from his grandfather's line. On some days at the highest, you will have 80 or 90 people there. The culture between the family is strong. The relationships are strong. Everyone is happy and excited to see each other. All of that decision fatigue has been taken out of it. To me, the fact that that is his vision going forward, plus the fact that his family has already begun living that multigenerational thinking, beyond death is so clarifying when it comes to say, what should I be investing in today? That I wanted to share that example and that story with you.

Wow. I'm so happy that you did. And I'll be sharing it with, obviously, through the form of this podcast conversation, but also with my family because I think that's extremely valuable. I mean, growing up, my parents actually made the decision to do the same thing. They bought a small beach cottage. And instead of— they always say it to me too— instead of deciding to go somewhere every couple years and the headache, we went to the beach house. And not only did we go to the beach house, but it was driving distance. So we could go for longer periods of time. Maybe one parent could take off a certain period of time and one couldn't. And so it was feasible for the whole family to go. And then it built up to other families coming and stuff like that. So what a beautiful experience. And I love— and I know we're a little over on time here, but I love thinking about death. It is very clarifying. I've never gone 7 generations into the future when I'm thinking about it though, and that's so liberating. Like, I love the Stoic aphorism, memento mori, to remember your own mortality, to remember death. And I'm reminded of that on a daily basis in a lot of different ways, and it's just so important. And you're totally right, it is as essentialist as you could possibly get. to view yourself 7— or to view your family's lineage 7 generations from now and to make decisions today that'll have a big impact on that future. And so we could kind of wrap up there. Um, where is the best place that somebody can find you if they want to learn more about who you are and what you do?

Oh, I think just essentialism.com might be the place to go. Um, that's, um, Right now, of course, people can sign up for a newsletter, the podcast that's coming out that I am really genuinely excited about. The first time I've ever had a way that I was pleased with or proud of to be able to continue a conversation with people on a weekly basis, every Monday. I just re-listened to one of the first episodes myself, and I was supposed to be listening to it for sort of, I don't know, audio quality, I don't know, some things, just check it out. I just couldn't listen to it like that. I just started listening to it as someone who wants to be an essentialist in my life. I became so animated in realizing I need this every week. I knew intuitively that every other aspiring essentialist needs it too, that there really needs to be this check-in so that they can have this spark of essentialist thinking and feeling week in, week out, and what a tremendous difference I think this can make. So people can, you know, they can sign up for, for their— that anywhere now. I want them to, I invite them to, uh, and they can do that through essentialism.com. But also, it's not there yet, but I want to build a community there. That's a pretty recent decision, but I, I just think that there's such a need for people to be able to not be the lone essentialist in their life. It's not— it's too lonely, or it could be. And so you just get pulled back into the nonessentialist noise. But if you can spend time there with other people who are just strugglers like we are, but their aspiration has changed, that they do become accountability partners to each other, I think it's going to be a very important part of taking this conversation and turning it into a lifestyle for people.

And then you also mentioned you are writing a second book. Any idea?

I am writing an next book. My due date is, I think, August of this year. And so that should— should I hit that deadline, which I'm committed to doing, then it will be out in spring of 2021.

Protect the core. Make sure it's in there.

Yes, I want that to be in there too.

Well, thank you so much for the conversation today. I know everybody will appreciate it and I look forward to having you back on when the next book is out.

Nick, thank you so much for your time. Bye.

And that's a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Greg. That was a very powerful episode for me and it's going to change the way that I look at my weekly accountability spreadsheets. As well as the way that I set goals. And I hope that it helps change some things for you too. I really do believe that because we're the average of the 5 people that we spend the most time with, it could benefit you to share this episode with someone in your network that needs to be elevated and that could benefit from being an essentialist. It only takes 60 seconds and it could change their life. And so before I go, I want to remind everyone that BookThinkers is both an online community and an educational technology company. that enables readers to achieve more and live better. For more information on our mobile application, our shop where you can buy some cool swag, our social pages where you can learn some cool, interesting information, or our mission, please check out www.bookthinkers.com. As always, remember that real learning requires education and behavior change. And so with that, I'm signing off, and I can't wait for you to check out another episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books.