Greg McKeown Quotes

If we underinvest in ourselves, and by that I mean our minds, our bodies, and our spirits, we damage the very tool we need to make our highest contribution.

If you want to make something hard, indeed truly impossible, to complete, all you have to do is make the end goal as vague as possible.

Effort and results do not share a linear relationship.

Jim Collins, the author of the business classic Good to Great, was once told by Peter Drucker that he could either build a great company or build great ideas but not both. Jim chose ideas. As a result of this trade-off there are still only three full-time employees in his company, yet his ideas have reached tens of millions of people through his writing.8

As the Dalai Lama, another true Essentialist, has said: “If one’s life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely important for happiness.

When we play, we are engaged in the purest expression of our humanity, the truest expression of our individuality.

As someone once said to me, the faintest pencil is better than the strongest memory.

Many capable people are kept from getting to the next level of contribution because they can’t let go of the belief that everything is important.

The point I wish to emphasize is not an economic one, but a human one: if you try to say too many things, you don’t say anything at all.

another way to think of improving results. Instead of focusing on the efforts and resources we need to add, the Essentialist focuses on the constraints or obstacles we need to remove.

* "...the pursuit of success can be a catalyst for failure. Put another way, success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce success in the first place."

Break down essential work into three sessions of no more than ninety minutes each.

The life of an Essentialist is a life lived without regret. If you have correctly identified what really matters, if you invest your time and energy in it, then it is difficult to regret the choices you make. You become proud of the life you have chosen to live.

It is about pausing constantly to ask, “Am I investing in the right activities?

If it isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.