(The following is an excerpt from the book, Hacking Normal by John Stevenot available on Amazon.com)
In the book Essentialism, by Greg McKeown, Greg presents the idea of figuring out what is most important in our individual lives.
To Greg, essentialism is giving yourself, “…permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone. Essentialism is making the highest contribution to the things that really matter.”
Essentialism, in other words, is a focus on the things that matter most in your life. Now, what matters most is going to vary. There is no objective truth about what should matter in everyone’s life.
For me, I need to know that my basic finances are covered, that I can spend time with family and close friends, that I can keep myself in shape, and that I can develop my understanding of the world through reading and experiencing new things.
These are the areas of my life that mean the most to me. In order to achieve those priorities in a healthy way, I need to make sure that I am pursuing the essential.
After you have taken some time to really understand what is most important in your life, it’s time to ask yourself, are you investing in the right activities to ensure that you get the most out of life?
Jim Rohn said, “Life is not measured by the seconds on the clock, but, instead, by our experiences – their frequency and intensity.”
And that’s important to understand.
Life is about experiences.
No one in their right mind wants to hear about how you answered 50 emails in one day, but they would love to hear about how you summited the fourth tallest mountain in the world.
One is an experience; one is busy work. One is essential; one is not.
And that’s the point I want to make about trade-offs. We can choose one of two paths in life: we can spend our days absorbed in busy work that has no real impact on our development, or we can spend our days doing the things that have meaning.
Do we live by design or do we live by default?
Understanding and evaluating these things is called deciding between trade-offs. Trade-offs will help you uncover a life that focuses on what matters most.
Many of us major in minor things.
We find ways to make mountains out of molehills and allow the trivial bullshit to overcome and devalue the things that matter most. What’s worse is that we build our schedules (our time) around giving more attention to the things that do not matter.
To quote Greg, “If you don’t prioritize your life, someone (or something) else will.” Unfortunately, that’s what work has done for most of us. Work has become that something that prioritizes our lives.
Don’t feel bad, though. Work, in its purest form, is good. It is only when work is no longer under your control that it turns into a cruel master.