Greg McKeown Quotes

I have worked tirelessly to understand why so many bright, smart, capable individuals remain snared in the death grip of the nonessential.

Instead, ask the more essential question that will inform every future decision you will ever make: “If we could be truly excellent at only one thing, what would it be?

You don’t have to be overwhelmed by essential projects. Often, when you name the first obvious step, you avoid spending too much mental energy thinking about the fifth, seventh, or twenty-third steps. It doesn’t matter if your project involves ten steps or a thousand. When you adopt this strategy, all you have to focus on is the very first step.

Achieving strategic clarity is hard. It takes asking tough questions about tradeoffs, deep concentration to get to the very essence of the issues and real courage to cut off competing priorities. It is worth the effort because with real clarity, people, teams and organizations can fully mobilize, break through to the next level and achieve something truly great.

only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that

Clarity about what is essential fuels us with the strength to say no to the nonessentials.

Past a certain point, more effort doesn’t produce better performance. It sabotages our performance. Economists call this the law of diminishing returns:

We can either make our choices deliberately or allow other people’s agendas to control our lives.

Say no to many good things so you can say yes to a few great things.

There is tremendous freedom in learning that we can eliminate the nonessentials, that we are no longer controlled by other people’s agendas,

In order to have focus we need to escape to focus.

The bottom line is this: if you want to engage your employees at a whole new level, if you want to become a person of greater influence, and if you want to discover a new kind of power — listen.

As John Maxwell has written, “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.

En cambio, por qué no llevar a cabo una búsqueda avanzada y hacer tres preguntas: “¿Qué me apasiona enormemente?”, “¿Qué hace aflorar mi talento?” y “¿Qué satisface una necesidad significativa en el mundo?” Obviamente,

Just because I was invited didn’t seem a good enough reason to attend.