Essentialism, with Greg McKeown – Episode 141 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Greg McKeown, bestselling author of “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less”, challenges the modern belief that success comes from doing more and instead advocates for focusing on less but better. McKeown explains how “non-essentialism” leads to overwhelm, burnout, and diluted performance, while essentialism empowers leaders to identify their highest-value contributions and eliminate distractions that do not meaningfully move the needle. Through practical frameworks such as the 90% Rule, extreme prioritization, and strategic negotiation, he demonstrates how professionals can make better decisions, reclaim their time, improve productivity, and achieve greater impact by concentrating only on what is truly essential.

This episode is presented by Percy M. Williams and “The AEC Project Controls Playbook”. Learn more or get the book at PMJMFinancialServicesLLC.com.

About Greg:

Dr. Greg McKeown has written two New York Times bestsellers: “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less,” which has been voted by Goodreads as “The #1 Leadership and Success Book to Read in a Lifetime,” and “Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most.” Together, they have been published in 37 languages.

McKeown is one of the most sought-after public speakers globally and has spoken to over 500 companies while traveling to more than 40 countries. His clients include Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Nike.

He hosts The Greg McKeown Podcast, with guests including Harvard professor Arthur Brooks, Matthew McConaughey, Maria Shriver, John Hope Bryant, and Ariana Huffington.

His work has been covered in print media, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Time, Fast Company, Fortune, Politico, Inc., and Harvard Business Review. It has also been featured on NPR, NBC, FOX, and multiple times on The Steve Harvey Show.

McKeown is an active Social Innovator, serving as a Board Member for Washington D.C. policy group Resolve for 7 years and as a mentor with 2 Seeds, a non-profit incubator for agricultural projects in Africa. He has also spoken at non-profit groups like The Kauffman Fellows, Net Impact, and Stanford University, co-creating the popular class, Designing Life, Essentially.

He is a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum, and previously, McKeown collaborated in researching and writing “Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter” and worked for Heidrick & Struggles’ Global Leadership Practice, assessing senior executives.

McKeown earned his Masters of Business Administration from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, completed his Global Leadership and Public Policy certificate at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a doctorate from the University of Cambridge.

Learn more at GregMcKeown.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
The man that you are about to meet is one of, I think, the premier thinkers out there on the planet today. He is a very popular journalist and blogger and writer, and his book that’s called Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Just honored and excited to introduce you to Greg McKeown. Greg, thanks for being here.

Greg McKeown
It’s my pleasure to be with you.

Host
So, for those that don’t know, to just jump right in, can you give us the the core premise of essentialism and and what it’s all about?

Greg McKeown
I have to first talk about non essentialism. I’ve got to talk about what the problem is. The problem of our times is that we have been conned by an idea, and the idea is that we should be able to do it all. And if we can do it all, then we can have it all. And this is a very persuasive idea, and it’s really not delivered on its promise, instead of giving us it all as it’s supposed to do, it actually leaves us stretched too thin at work or at home, busy but not productive, saying yes and then resenting it afterwards, having our lives hijacked by other people’s agenda, being exhausted, overworked, and underutilized. So we’ve been sold a bill of goods. We don’t even have a name normally for what this problem is, but the name I give to it is non-essentialism. That’s it. It is an idea. It’s been promulgated and sold and sold in a million different ways in magazines, in conversation, and all of that. And it’s not true. It has the inconvenience of being a lie, and the antidote to this disease is essentialism, or the disciplined pursuit of less but better.

Host
So, why do you think we have this problem saying no, Greg? Why do you think that’s such a struggle?

Greg McKeown
Well, it’s a struggle because we’ve been conned into into believing that the way to success is to say yes to everyone and everything. In fact, there was somebody who was interviewed for the book, an executive who had done award-winning work, superbly became successful. He’s capable. He’s driven. He got focused on the right idea, and partially because of his success, that company was was purchased by a larger and, as it turns out, more bureaucratic firm. So they go into the new organization. He’s the same level of talent as he was before, of course, but now he’s keen to be a team player, a good citizen of the new regime, which means he starts saying yes to everyone and everything without really thinking about it. That’s not out of bad motives. He wants to be helpful. He wants to be useful. But what happens as he applies that strategy, that idea? What happens? What happens to his stress? It goes up. What happens to the quality of his work? Goes down. He’s so frustrated. He gets to the point. He thinks, “Look, maybe I should retire. Maybe I should quit. Maybe I should get out of this organization, and then somebody gives him some counterintuitive advice, which I think applies to a lot of people. He said, “He said what you should do is retire in role, which is interesting idea. What does it mean? Doesn’t mean quit, stay, and don’t tell anybody. So it’s not that. So what does it mean? It means imagine you were going to be paid for the value you create. Employers want people who are contributing to moving the needle that actually create value, not by how busy they are. And so this is his new mindset. So he approaches it. What happens? He says, “I got my life back. Personally, he was able to go to the gym every night, eat dinner with his wife. He he he was able to negotiate a world that that allowed him to be healthy and to recuperate and be energized. Which meant that when he came to work in the morning, he was able to discern better what was essential, what was not. He got space back at work, and he said, “In that space, I found my creative freedom, and in that creative freedom, I found my ability to contribute again. What happens to his stress goes down. What happens to the quality of his work goes up. What happens by the end of the year? His performance evaluation ratings have skyrocketed, and he ends that year with one of the largest bonuses of his whole career.

Host
How do you know what to negotiate? Because you got to negotiate something out of your life. Is there any sort of like process that you go through that you go, okay, these the this is what it counts as essential, and this is what does not count as essential.

Greg McKeown
Well, let me let me just address something there for a moment. I didn’t write a book called Noism. I wrote a book called Essentialism, and the difference makes all the difference. The key to living life as an essentialist is not just to begin saying no to everyone and everything without thinking about it. I’m not advocating that at all. I’m advocating figure out what is essential first and foremost. You must figure out what is important now, and then you have the right and the source of courage to negotiate the non-essentials because you have a valid reason to be able to say. So, for example, if I go through a process of figuring out what is the let’s say the most important contribution I can make over the next 90 days, I get really clear. This is my essential intent. This is the thing that will be most valuable to my most important customer and deliver something that is actually important that moves the needle. Okay, let’s say I’ve done that, and then even that same customer comes to me, internal customer. Maybe it’s my boss, or even my boss’s boss comes to me and says, “Look, I’d like you to take on this project. Now, of course, it seems unthinkable, just unthinkable to people, laughable that I should say no to that. That’s like a career-limiting move, and I’m not even really saying you say no either. But I am saying that if you have figured out something that’s even more valuable, it is a perfectly reasonable response to say yes. Look, I’m very willing to do that, and I think I could do a pretty good job at that. But let me just at least discuss with you that that means taking energy and resources away from this initiative that I think helps your agenda even more. And so suddenly, what you’ve done is you’ve brought the reality of trade-offs, which are always there and are ever present, but often ignored, to the fore. Now you can have a conversation about it. And and I’ve had people do that. I mean, I have somebody right now who’s working on a really important initiative for me, and every time I have one of these spontaneous moments of, “Hey, listen, will you? This is a good idea. Will you just do this? Because I have this event coming up, and I would love you just to. That would really help me. He always says yes, and he always adds the he always adds the trade off. Oh, I’m very happy to do that. But do you want me to push back the deadline for this big project that that I’m working on for you? And I always say no because I always want that real thing delivered. That’s way more valuable to me. And so I’m just saying there is a way, of course, to respectfully and in a savvy organizational savvy way to negotiate these things, and it’s really important for the organizational health that people can do this. It’s really important for helping your most important internal customer, even if that’s your boss’s boss, like I’m saying, that you help them achieve their most important and valuable agenda. That’s important to them as well. And so, learning how to figure out what their agenda is, to put in language that is relevant to them, meaning in terms of their agenda, what it is you think your highest contribution to them would be, is an essential skill if you want to be recognized as an important, valuable member of their extended team. If you want to go beyond being a an order taker and become a trusted advisor to them, you must learn how to do this. And you can also start to become really skilled at doing this. I mean, I’ll tell you a story that really grabs me. And everybody knows that Steve Jobs is sort of famous for saying no to 100 things or 1000 things, you ought to say yes to one great thing, and that I don’t mean to minimize that. I think that is totally true, and it’s it is it is evidently was true in the way that he approached things and was important. And it’s all very well him being the CEO and the founder, you know, you know that he was able to do that, but what I like even more is a story of someone who said no to Steve Jobs and lived to tell the tale. Now this is after Steve had left Apple and was starting Next, and he wanted a great logo because Apple obviously already had a great logo, and he wanted a great logo for his next initiative, and so he brought in the top logoist, arguably in the the whole country, Paul Rand and Paul Rand had designed ABC’s logo and Bloomingdale’s logo and a whole bunch of iconic logos that that we all recognize. So he comes in, they have their first meeting, and and Steve starts to explain how the relationship will work. He says, “You’re going to come up with a bunch of options for me, and and I’m going to tell you which ones I like and give you feedback and which you use my taste and so on. And Paul listens to all of this and finally he just says he says no. He says I will solve your problem for you completely and I will deliver you one logo and you will pay me. That’s how it works. And Steve listens to all this, and finally he goes, “Okay, done. We’re going to do it. We’ll try this. He trusted him, believed that he had the capability to do it. He said after of the experience, he said, he said Rand delivered to him a jewel of a logo, and added this, which is I think the most important part of this story. He said Paul Rand was the ultimate professional because he had thought through how to create value for me more deeply, more thoughtfully than I had. That is the key. That’s the difference between noism and essentialism. This he had thought through it. He knows how to do this. He actually has that capability. He realizes there’s a better way to do it. He’s able to push for it, advocate for it, and is able to deliver tremendous value because of pursuing the thing that he knows is actually most valuable for Steve Jobs. That that to me is the is the kind of negotiation. Maybe that’s even blunter that story than than we could get away with in the short term in our lives, but but it still illustrates the idea that I’m not advocating for being less helpful, being more selfish. I’m saying what is the very best way you can serve? What’s the highest contribution you can make? And making sure that your energy, time, resources, creativity, initiative, all of that, is being brought to bear on the most valuable things you can do, and not on a bunch of good things. And there’s a way to do that that’s very respectful, that’s not insubordinate, and and getting skilled at how to do that. I mean, there’s a there’s a whole chapter in the book about how to how to give a graceful no, and so there’s a lot of examples beyond what we’re saying now of how to do this in a way that’s as as wise and savvy as possible.

Host
So, is there any sort of scoring system or diagnostic tool or any process that you go through to determine what is the thing that matters? Like, what is the thing that is important. Do you have a process for determining what is the thing that is the thing you should do?

Greg McKeown
We have to start with a metaphor. I want you to think about your closet. Yeah, what happens to our closets if you don’t have some system in place, a way of doing it? If you if you if you live your if you manage your closet in a default way, what happens to it? Too many clothes, messy. There’s stuff in it. There’s just loads of stuff in it, right? And then people stand there. Oh, I got nothing to wear. The whole closet full of stuff. And sometimes they think, oh, I need a larger closet. And if I had a larger closet, that would solve the problem. And until they get a larger closet, and then they realize that was not the problem. They themselves were at both scenes of this crime. Them, there’s something going on inside of them. So, in fact, let’s go a little further with that metaphor. So, eventually, somebody says, “I’ve had enough. I’m going to tidy up my closet, and they take an item off the shelf and they look at it, and in that moment, something mysterious seems to happen as they’re looking at that item of clothing. Something, and you think, well, it might come back into fashion at some point. It might, it might fit me again at some point. I might have an event that calls forth for just this such a thing. I’ve not worn it in a year, but maybe there’ll be a moment, and then I’ll wish I had it. And so, what happens to that item? It goes back on the shelf. Let’s just pause and think about what criteria is being used in this scenario in order to decide whether we keep it or not. It’s the world’s broadest criteria, which is this: Could I ever possibly use this in the future? Maybe. Well, the answer to that question, no matter what the item of clothing is, almost certainly yes. Now, what if we shifted? What if we used extreme criteria? What if we said, like Marie Kondo suggests in her book, of each item, does it spark joy? And if it doesn’t spark joy, then we get rid of it. That is the short. I mean, we’re not talking about closets. We’re talking about the closet of our lives, and that is one key idea for how we figure out what’s essential in the first place. Is we have to, we’ve got to shift from broad criteria like, well, someone asked me to do it. I mean, we do stuff because somebody asked us to do it. That’s our criteria. Well, they ask us, so I do it. Or even like, hey, I just thought about it, so I do it. Or a, it’s a good thing, so I do it. Those are all the criteria of non-essentialism. How about this? Can I do it? Yeah, sure, I can do it. Is it possible that I could fit this in if I tried to wiggle it enough? Could I figure it? Yeah, you probably could. So then we say yes to way, way too many things, but let’s take an extreme criteria. Not does it spark joy? Although it’s not a bad question, but what if we ask this question? Is this the very best use of me? Is this my highest contribution? Is this the best thing that I could be doing with my time? Is this the most important thing? These are more extreme. Criteria questions, and the answer to these questions starts to immediately. We start to say, “Oh no, that is not. This is not the best use of me. What what’s important now? This is another question. So by changing these questions from very broad questions that will provide us with yes to almost everything, we start to get answers that will say no to almost everything. I mean, it’s no more yes. It’s either hell yeah or no, and that’s the idea. No more yes, no more. Well, sure. I call it in the book. I call it the 90% rule, which is often we’re saying yeah. Of course, if something’s like a terrible thing, right? It would only get a 5% Actually, sometimes people still saying yes, but but maybe that’s easier to say no to, or easier to realize we don’t want to be doing it. But when something becomes a 50% or 60% yes, then we we go, well, I suppose I should do it. It’s good. It’s good. 70% yes. What about an 80% yes? I mean that’s hard to say no to. An 80% yes might be something that we really wanted to do a year ago, but now we realize is not actually so valuable to us, or shouldn’t we shouldn’t commit to it anymore? So so that’s an 80% yes, and I’m suggesting we say no to everything, but 90% or above. If we can elect to, if it’s something within our control, we should be saying, “Look, I only have a very limited, little amount of time, energy, and resources available for me to select to use or not to use this day. Therefore, I want to use it on the things that I know really matter most. That’s what I want to achieve, and so that’s the 90% rule.

Host
I love it, Greg. I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you for this important message and for deciding to spend some of your time with us. We appreciate it so much.

Greg McKeown
It’s been my pleasure. Thank you so much.