The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 118: Greg McKeown – Essentialism: The Discipline Of Saying No

Episode Date: April 24, 2016

Episode 118: Greg McKeown – Essentialism: The Discipline Of Saying No I’ve been a big fan of Greg McKeown’s message and his writing since his best-selling book, “Essentialism” came out.  Greg has mastered the art and science behind optimizing his day, creating routines, and always asking the question, “Is this the absolute best use of my time?”  This is a very important and helpful conversation that we all can learn from.  How can we say no more often and eliminate everything that is not essential? Greg McKeown has dedicated his career to discovering why some people break through to the next level—and others don’t. The definitive treatment of this issue is addressed in McKeown’s latest project: the instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.  As well as frequently being the #1 Time Management book on Amazon, this book challenges core assumptions about achievement to get to the essence of what really drives success. Episode 118: Greg McKeown – Essentialism: The Discipline Of Saying No Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show “Very Successful People Say No To Almost Everything.” -  Greg McKeown In This Episode, You Will Learn: Saying “No” to almost everything leads to sustained excellence Essentialism is defined as “The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” What would you do if you could do anything? Success creates an increase in options and opportunities which can actually create failure Ronda Rousey – Her success led to an abundance of opportunities which may have caused her loss to Holly Holm Always think, “Is this the very best use for me?” The word priority initially meant “the one thing.”  For some reason it’s evolved to now priorities. There is no such thing as having 20 priorities Explore, Eliminate, Create a Routine Learn to say No gracefully Set up systems to optimize your work Learning Leader as a noun = Focus Learning Leader as a verb = Constantly adjusting to maintain clarity, reflecting, asking, “What’s the most important thing I can be doing right now?”  “What Would You Do If You Could Do Anything? Continue Learning: Go To: GregMcKeown.com Follow Greg on Twitter: @GregoryMcKeown Read: Essentialism To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 You may also like these episodes: Episode 001: How To Become A Master Connector W/ Jayson Gaignard From MasterMind Talks Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 082: Dan Pink – The Science of Motivation, Legendary Writer & Ted Talk Episode 086: Seth Godin – How To Become Indispensable & Build Your Tribe Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why Did you enjoy the podcast? If you enjoyed hearing Greg McKeown on the show, please don’t hesitate to send me a note on Twitter or email me. Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell Bio From GregMcKeown.com Greg McKeown has dedicated his career to discovering why some people break through to the next level—and others don’t. The definitive treatment of this issue is addressed in McKeown’s latest project: the instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.  As well as frequently being the #1 Time Management book on Amazon, this book challenges core assumptions about achievement to get to the essence of what really drives success. McKeown is the CEO of THIS Inc, a company whose mission is to assist people and companies to spend 80 percent of their time on the vital few rather than the trivial many. Clients include Adobe, Apple, Google, Facebook, Pixar, Salesforce.com, Symantec, Twitter, VMware and Yahoo!. His writing has appeared or been covered by Fast Company, Fortune, HuffPost, Politico, and Inc. Magazine. He is among the most popular bloggers for the Harvard Business Review and LinkedIn’s Influencers group: averaging a million views a month. McKeown has been interviewed on numerous television and radio shows including NPR’s All Things Considered and NBC’s Press: Here. Entrepreneur Magazine voted his interview at Stanford University the #1 Must-See Video on Business, Creativity and Success.

You can either do a few things superbly well, or you can do many things averagely well. And that's it. That's a universal trade-off that everybody is faced with. And I would advocate that this story is illustrative of this. That it's a universally applicable idea. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made. through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful

leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey guys, remember episode number 97 with Alejandro Cheneen. He is the CEO of Ma and Bao. We both promise to continue our dialogue as we both progressed on our journeys. And we certainly have, just as I have, with the great people at, Misen in Maine.

And Alejandro and his company have decided to sponsor the Learning Leader Show. This episode is brought to you by Motten Bow. I told the story on that episode of why I absolutely love their ridiculously comfortable, handcrafted premium jeans. Also, no ugly back pocket embroidery or weird stitching, just simple, elegant, great-looking jeans. And Motten Bao has a free try-on program. You get two sizes to try at home with every point.

purchase. Keep the one that fits and send the other one back for free. These jeans are already priced undermarket because they cut out all the retail markups. But the deal is even better when you go to Motenbow.com and use promo code Ryan Hawk for 20% off. That's M-O-T-T-A-N-D-B-O-W.com promo code Ryan Hawk. Hey and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Absolutely. thrilled with tonight's featured leader. It's with best-selling author Greg McEwen. Greg is also the CEO of This Inc., which is a company whose mission is to assist people and companies to spend 80% of their time on the vital few rather than the trivial many. He's also an accomplished public speaker

who's spoken to hundreds of audiences around the world. Greg is the best-selling author of essentialism, the disciplined pursuit of less. I highly recommend you pick up that book. A few of the things we got into during our conversation. Why you should say no to almost everything. We want much deeper here. And then the immense success of Ronda Rousey is what ultimately, potentially led to her first defeat. And it was interesting to have this conversation with Greg. And then practical tips for all of us to implement in order to be more productive as an essentialist. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it's Greg McEwen. Greg, so excited to have you here in a learning leader show. I'm a big fan of your work and what you champion. So I got a quick

question, and that's around sustained excellence, specifically leaders who have been able to sustain excellence over an extended period of time. You've studied these people, you've written about them, you are one. I'm curious, what in your opinion are some of the common characteristics those people all seem to share? Well, I was just reading about one of the examples of someone who has unquestionably achieved superior, sustainable performance in the investment world, Warren Buffett. And one of the things that he observes is that the difference between successful people and very successful people is the very successful people say no to almost everything.

And I think that really is an important element because we will choose the level of success we plateau. at the same time as we choose our selectivity in choosing what we will do and what we won't do. I mean, really, it goes to the heart of what I've been grappling with myself for the last 17 years, which is why is it that otherwise successful people don't break through to the next level? Why don't they continue? And so Warren Buffett's an example of somebody who has continued in his field, and the increased selectivity that he's applied over time means that he's been able to continue to invest his energy and resources in those few things that will keep enabling him to keep going to the

next level again and again. He's a great example. I actually just had a great conversation with another leader in a somewhat similar space to yours named Cal Newport, who wrote a book called Deep Work. And Cal talked to me a lot about Warren Buffett's, some of the exercises. is that he did. And one of them was an example with his pilot. And Warren told him to create a list of the 25 things that he really wanted to get done over a certain period of time. And once the pilot did that, he came back to Warren and Warren said, okay, now cross out the last 20 and just keep five.

And he said, now never look at those 20 again and just concentrate on those five to do and start with the very first one. And then those are what you're, you know, you're destined to focus on. even though you really want to do those other 20, you've got to focus on those five. And that's when you talk about, you know, the discipline pursuit of less of the very successful people say no. It's really telling. So, Greg, I want to get into your story. You know, I came across your work because of your incredibly successful New York Times, Wall Street Journal, bestselling book, Essentialism, the discipline pursuit of less. Talk me about how this became the topic that you wanted to study.

and write about. Well, the first, there's two stories. We need to discuss both of them. The first story is how I learned sort of what I wanted to spend my, you know, life doing. And it began when I was 17 years ago, very close to exactly 17 years ago, when I was staring at a piece of paper in my hands with all these scribbles and answers to this question, what would you do if you could do anything, but not everything? What's really the thing?

And what I noticed when I was finished brainstorming that was that law school was not on the list, which was a problem because I was at the time at law school. And so what do you do? I finally decided I'd better call my parents and I was visiting a friend here in the United States. And I was at law school in England. And I call the number home. My mother answers, fortunately. She says, I think you better talk to dad. He comes on the phone.

He says, you know, what would you say, actually? We just pause for a second. Ryan, what would you say? Your son, after all that time, all that money, all that effort, your son is calling you halfway around the world with this hairbrained idea. He's going to do something different. What are you going to say? And to tell my parents that I did not want to be in law school.

And what did you want to do instead at the time? Well, I had a vague sense I wanted to teach and write. Well, I think for me, I would focus on that. If I was going to tell my parents, I'm unfortunate to have pretty supportive parents. Yeah, but if you were the dad, no, but the question is if you're the dad, I'm the dad. If you're my dad, what are you going to say? Well, I like to, I am a dad.

So I'd like to think that I would be very supportive. Now, I could understand from parents, especially if they paid for it, about, you know, the thought of sunk cost of, and wanting to get a return on that investment and feeling like you being a teacher might not get that return. And the fact that you're already, you know, on your way to doing what we think is best for you. and what at one point maybe you thought was best for you, and all of a sudden, why, why do you want to, you know, why don't you want to continue doing that?

You listen to that. That's marvelous the way that you support, supporting me in this moment. So what he actually does is he listens, which is not entirely like him. And then he says, because all Englishmen quote Shakespeare, of tea and crumpets for breakfast in the morning. He says this. He says, you know what we've always told you?

By the way, what do you think he's always told me? Do what you love? That's what everybody says. No, he said, go to law school. Because that's what he said. Go to law school. Anyway, he says, you know what we always told you. He says, to thine own self be true, you know.

And he's quoting Shakespeare's, all Englishmen do, you know. And this was, this was. the right advice. This was the right idea. And so I knew from that time, look, I want to be, if I can say it this way, a messenger. I want to teach. I want to write. And the question that was burning in me at that time was why is it that otherwise successful people and companies don't break through to the next level? We've covered that momentarily before. That was the question. And the reason that it's so fascinating to me is because there's a very simple, logic that says if you win, you should keep winning. For example, if you were to, if you and I

would have a race and you won, which you would. And then you don't just win, I mean, you win by 50 yards. And then we have a second race and you get to start the second race 50 yards ahead of me. And then we have that second race and you win again by another 50 yards. So now you are 100 yards ahead of me. At the beginning of the race, what is the percentage chance you're going to win? Very high. Yeah, give me a percentage. 99. That's a little rude. Yeah, of course it is. Of course it's that high because you've just won and you have all the advantage of winning and you've all the experience of winning and you've got the psychological advantage of winning. Of course you could keep on winning. But when you look at the data,

We actually look at the examples. What you find is that isn't what happens. That's what's so fascinating. And so it was out of that experience, that understanding that I have like pursued all these years that question. And what I really found was the answer to the question was success. Success is what gets in the way. And I noticed this working with Silicon Valley companies.

And this is the order. In the first stage, you have a small group of people focused on the right things at the right time. You know, maybe for the right reasons even. I mean, they get really focused on what is essential and it enables success. They become successful. They've got the momentum. They've got the ability to get aligned and, you know, team moving forward in the right way. Okay.

Now you've become successful. The question is, and it's not often asked, is what comes with success? and the natural extension of success is that you gain an increase in options and opportunities. Options and opportunities increase. Okay, so that sounds like the right problem to have, but it does in fact turn out to be a problem. If it leads to what Jim Collins is called, the undisciplined pursuit of more, the undisciplined pursuit of more. And that becomes sort of the enemy of our story, because this can

so it can undermine the very things that led to success in the first place. It can lead to the idea. The idea is this, that success can become a catalyst for failure. I mean, just pause for a moment on this. I would your thoughts on this. Can you think of companies that have fallen into the undisciplined pursuit of more and have therefore started to struggle or fail entirely? Can you think of any?

You know, it's interesting, Greg, the first thing I think of, and maybe this isn't a good example, but I think of Rhonda Rousey, the MMA fighter, and I'll explain. Do you watch MMA by chance? I know the story, and I know who you're talking about. So she's very successful, undefeated, doing very well, and was starting to get a ton of opportunities outside of just fighting as a mixed martial artist fighter. You know, movies, Sports Illustrated, modeling, the whole deal. and what happened in the midst of all that, you know, she has a fight. And I'm not saying she didn't train. Obviously, she trained incredibly hard, but she got crushed in a fight. And I had to wonder, all of her success and her winning opened her up to a ton of opportunities outside of just fighting, which led to, you know, financial gain and reward, which she is, hey, I'm more power to them, you know, you're welcome to do it.

However, the person she was going against had one sole focused. that was on fighting at the time and that person came in and beat her. It's absolutely the case that this is, this is a good illustration of the point. I mean, she was seen before as unbeatable, impossible that this would happen. Of course, you know, we don't have all of the data of causation in any circumstance. It's hard to figure out exact cause and effect. But it is clearly the case that with success come a set of things that, that are underappreciated.

In fact, there's a marvelous essay that's called the catastrophe of success. And I recommend it to everybody to read it. It's a very short essay. And it was written at a time when the author had just come out with the glass menagerie, the play that they had written. And it became so successful, the glass menagerie, that everybody wanted a piece of him. Everybody was wanting to tell him how good the piece was and so on.

I mean, this is Tennessee Williams we're talking about. And it just outlines how he struggled with the success and how it kept him from writing. He needed to be doing the work that really was key. And yeah, go ahead. I just recently was reading a lot of work from a guy, by the name of Derek Sivers. I don't know if you've heard of Derek. Very impressive entrepreneur.

And he wrote this really simplistic yet, I thought, great post oncivors.org titled it. Every decision you make should either be a hell yes or no. Meaning every time he's going to do something, do you like, yes, I want to do this. I'm going to do this. Or if it's not that, you say no every time. So I want to dig into that aspect of what you write about.

and essentialism and what you preach and talk about when it comes to, and you have a great story at the beginning of the book. And I know you use the name Sam Elliott, which isn't his real name, about a guy who got, you know, he's at a big company and basically he's caught up and saying yes to every single meeting notice and conference call and going to every one of them. And basically his company comes to him and says that they want him to retire early and he doesn't want to do that. And he thought, well, maybe I can just be a consultant and come back and,

work for the company as a consultant. So he goes and speaks with a mentor and the mentor says, well, actually, why don't you just act like you're a consultant and only do the absolute things that you believe are necessary and the things that you want to do? But don't quit and don't be a consultant. Just do that within the company. And once he did, he had extraordinary success. Everyone started noticing it even if they were maybe upset when he started turning down projects

or saying no to meetings. I thought it was just a great illustration of what you talk about. at the very beginning of your book. I'd love to hear more about that. Well, I mean, exactly. So he decides that he's going to retire, enroll, and which doesn't mean quit, stay and don't tell anybody. It means asking himself, is this the very best and highest use of me? Is this really what I ought to be doing? And he told me that he said, I got my life back. He was able to go to the gym every night. He was able to eat dinner with his wife. What happened at work? He found him.

space back on his calendar and in that space he found his creative freedom. And so in that creative freedom, he was able to find his highest contribution. And so all of a sudden, the quality of his work is going up, the stress is going down, and the impact he's having is impressive. And so by the end of that year, his performance evaluations have gone up and he ends the year with one of the largest bonuses of his whole career. Well, what do you make of a story like that. Well, it could be that I'm using a researcher's trick. I could be, this is n equals one. I found one story that illustrates what I wish to illustrate, and I'm using it to advocate for something that's only applicable to him and nobody else. That's possible. You could interpret the date exactly that way.

or you could interpret the story as universally applicable as basic arithmetic. And that is this. You can either do a few things superbly well or you can do many things averagely well. And that's it. That's a universal trade-off that everybody is faced with. and I would advocate that that this story is illustrative of this. That it's a universally applicable idea. And I mean, everyone listening to this, you can do this.

It's all right for him. Okay, he learned that if he said yes to everyone and everything, he wouldn't be utilized at his highest point of contribution. That's what he learned. But what about the rest of us? And so we can test this, a litmus test right now by asking these questions. you know, have you ever found yourself stretched too thin at work or at home? Have you ever found your day hijacked by somebody else's agenda?

Have you ever felt busy but not productive? Have you ever felt like you were making a millimeter progress in a million directions? If the answer to any of those questions is yes, if there's something inside of say, yes, I recognize that. in myself. That is becoming something that happens to me regularly or often. Then we are being caught up in the undisciplined pursuit of more. We are not guilty of it. That's the wrong word. We are a part of that way of being, of that phenomenon. Because I think it's really cultural. I think it's not just individual behavior. Because when I ask those questions, I mean, I travel now all over the world and I work with organizations of every kind and at many levels of seniority.

And it doesn't matter where you go now and who you ask, everybody feels this. So that means it's not just an individual who happens to operate this way. I mean, obviously there's individual behavior, but it's also something that is cultural in nature. Everybody is part of this. And so we ought to wonder, why? It's not the normal state of things. It's not the way the world has always been.

So why in this era, in this period of time, is this becoming so universal? Why is it? Well, I'm glad you asked. So it's a little bit like this, which is we're all burning with an idea, but we didn't start the fire. So an idea has been, has. entered into our language, into our way of working, into our way of living, into the way of teams work, organizations work, how people talk. It's really infiltrated kind of everything, like malware on a computer. This idea has entered into our society. But it didn't start

like in the last few years. It started, I believe, with the Industrial Revolution. So just excuse the history lesson for a moment, or let's go there for a moment. So let's go all the way back to the 1400s for a moment. In the 1400s, a new word came into the English language, and the word was priority. What did it mean? It meant the prior thing. Right. That means the very first thing, the thing. Right, one thing. Good. What is interesting about that is that for the next 500 years, nobody in the English-speaking world thought to pluralize that term, meaning that nobody in half a millennium, half a millennium, that's unbelievable, isn't it,

used the word priorities. So why does, out of all of a sudden, there somebody pluralizes it? What is going on that they would change this word? The answer is the Industrial Revolution. But just think of what happened to that word. Just think of it. Priorities, what does it even mean?

can you have very, very many, very first before all other things, things? This is a nonsense. And yet have each of us been to a meeting where somebody said with no sense of irony at all, here are my 20 priorities? And when do they all have to be done? Everything perfect now. That's the mantra of this approach. Everything perfect now.

That's what we have to do. And in fact, then somebody had to up, one up, even that absurdity by saying, when does it have to be done? It has to be done yesterday. So now you just have it. When you think about it in this term, you go, there's madness in that. That isn't reality. That's not how things really work. That's not how things can work.

And so as we moved from the agrarian age into the industrial age, there was this shifting away from some natural principles. in pursuit instead of the factory system. The factory system was incredibly successful system. It increased productivity by 50 times. But just like all of the success, it comes with a set of unintended consequences. And among those unintended consequences was the idea that all you have to do,

if you want anything, is just to shove it in somehow, fit it in somehow, that the increase of efficiency will solve all of the human problems. And that's why I think priorities came into existence. And so people just came on to absorb a way of thinking. The way of thinking, I have a name for it. It is called non-essentialism, non-essentialism. And it's very persuasive.

And here's why it's persuasive is because you want it. You want it to be true. Non-essentialism is promising that there are no trade-offs. You can have it all. you just have it all whatever it is you want you just figure out a way you know shove it in somehow and you can have

everything you've ever wanted to have so that's persuasive we want that to be true and the only problem with non-essentialism is it turns out in fact to be a lie so we've in effect been sold a bill of goods we've been sold this idea the

glorification of the busy that what we have to be is Uber men Uber women who can do it all and that that will produce an outcome of happiness, satisfaction, achievement, breakthroughs the next level, keep going. And it just doesn't, it does not produce any of those things. It does not, it is sometimes it just irritates me to think about this.

And sometimes it just makes me furious because the cost of that idea on. on relationships, on ability to actually contribute in our life, to live a meaningful life that's full of things that actually matter to us. I mean, that is huge, that we've just wasted so much of that in pursuit of this idea that, as I'm saying, it turns out not to be true. So that's kind of the context. It's got worse recently because of the last 10 years, as we've gone from being connected, to hyperconnected.

So the environment has got even tougher. But the ideas that are now being, you know, now being applied at higher speeds in social media and smart technology didn't start with social media and smart technology. It was always there, as I say, like malware, that now is being extended at this hyper fast pace. I mean, what we've really done in the last 10 years has gone from information overload to opinion overload.

load. But you can see if you're thoughtful about it, you can see that the problem isn't technology. The problem isn't, isn't these advances in what we can do. The problem is a way of thinking underneath all of that. That means that when I suddenly have all these extra options, what does I suddenly have Facebook and Twitter and so on? Therefore, I should be on them all the time and I should be trying to do everything I see everybody else succeeding at. And if I, if I can see them doing it, I ought to be able to do all of it. And of course we can't, but that idea sticks with us deeply because we don't even see it. It's so universal that it's almost like a monopoly point of view. And so that's the enemy of our story. The enemy of our story is not any

individual. It's not just some sort of weakness in us. It's that there is this cultural journey that's gone a long time. And the antidote to that problem is what the entire book is about. If the problem is non-essentialism, the antidote is essentialism. If the problem is the undisciplined pursuit of more, the antidote is the disciplined pursuit of less but better. From a practical standpoint, let's think of the 32-year-old employee at a big company who has a boss and a boss's boss and a boss's boss.

and they have to, you know, they get a lot of meeting notices, both for conference calls and in-person meetings. And they have, you know, like I said, they have bosses to listen to and to report to. For that person listening, which, you know, I think is a lot of people because from the emails I get, it is. What are some of the first few things, like I'm literally talking practical things they could implement into their day as of right now? now when they get done listening to this podcast? There are three steps to applying essentialism. The first is to explore. That is to create space to figure out what is essential.

The second is to become as graceful and skilled as humanly possible at eliminating non-essentials. And the third is to figure out how to create a routine that makes execution of what is most important and meaningful as effortless as possible. become to the default position. Let me tell you how you can apply the first idea that. How do you explore what is essential? I recommend that every single day,

you make a list of the six most important things you want to get done today. Maybe I've recommended sometimes as a rule of thumb, three things that really matter to you personally and three things that really matter to you professionally. And you make this list, you know, write it out in pencil, whatever, write it out. And then you prioritize the list. and then you cross off the bottom five items. I don't really say that half jokingly, right?

Yeah, I mean, it is like the Warren Buffett thing, but you make the list of six, and then you focus on that first thing until it's done. Yeah. Or until you've done as much as you can do on it. And then you move on to the second item. And you just move through that list, and every day you do this,

and it's a simplest thing I just described, right? And there's nobody listening. It doesn't understand what I just said or how to do it even. but doing it is the kind of little micro adjustment that we need to make to start making sure that we take advantage of all of these advances you know for example to try to make technology you know technology makes a good servant but a poor master and so by making this list every day we have a place to come back to of course we still get all these invites. Of course we still have way more than we can do. All of us do. But it means that it's just, you know, like a flight, right? The metaphor is if I'm flying from San Francisco to New York,

the flight is the plane is off the flight path 90% of the time. Why does it arrive where it's supposed to, when it's supposed to, because it keeps coming back on track. And that's what this list of six does every day. We have to be very thoughtful about it, make sure that what the things are on that list really do matter to us. And all through the day, yes, of course people are going to check email. Of course they're going to get distracted. Of course they're going to get twisted. End up being pulled into social media in some way.

This is normal life for people. But the little secret weapon I'm suggesting is you just keep coming back. You just keep coming physically back to that list. That's why I think it's good to do it on paper. I do it on a journal. And I physically can come back to something that isn't distracting to me to look at that list and go, okay, where am I at on that? Am I coming back to the things that matter to me? So if there's only one thing someone's going to do, this is the thing.

I choose to write that in a five-minute journal. I've talked about that many times in this podcast because one of the questions that asked you, what are three things I would make today great? And I wrote those as my three goals of my things that must get done. And I do them in order at minimum. The first one's going to get done. But I review it every night then before I go to bed. And it really bothers me.

I mean, kind of in my head, if I don't get those things done, if I let something else get in the way. And so psychologically, it has that effect on me, even the littlest of goals. And it's had a big effect on my life, doing it just that very simple practice of taking five minutes in the morning and writing down what would make the day great, meaning what are my goals for the day. Well, and I love that because you're saying it's true. And this is an important next step is that once you get clear about it, we move on to the second step, which is how to eliminate the non-essentials as gracefully as possible. In the book, there's a whole chapter that goes through nine different ways to gracefully say no or to at least start to move towards that. Because I think most of us are just scared of it. Yeah.

And we're novices at it. And that's why we're scared. I mean, that's one of the reasons we're scared is because we're just. haven't done it before. And we don't think about eliminating non-essentials or saying no gracefully as its own leadership competency. We don't think about it like that. It's almost like people just say, oh, you've got to say no more.

Oh, yeah, right, okay. Because somebody says that, now I can do it. I mean, there's a big difference between talking about riding a bike and even showing somebody out of riding a bike and then somebody actually having to ride the bike. You have to develop this new skill. And I was surprised when I was interested. interviewing essentialists to find that they, that often they would report that at some point in their life, they learned that they needed to develop this skill and they actually started practicing it.

I mean, they would write down on three by five cards. There's a true story for one of the essentialists I interviewed and would write down how to say no and would come up with the right words and would practice it in front of a mirror and then would then start using it. They said they were terrible at first, but eventually they just became smoother and smoother at this, and they actually became, they felt like it became like something that was strong for them. I think we have to do that. You know, we have to learn how to do this. I mean, the best essentialists don't use the word no, for example, very often at all.

They're just better and better skilled at knowing which kinds of things are theirs or not. In fact, it's funny, I was just, when we started on Warren Buffett, we'd probably wrap on Warren Buffett, but I was just reading about someone who was. trying to get Warren Buffett to do an interview with them. And so, first of all, they saw them in person and said to where, I'm doing this new book and I'd like to interview you. And his response was this. He said, he said, oh, listen, he says, I have written and spoken more on that subject that anyone could ever read.

So Jesus, there's nothing left for me to say. Right? What were they doing? They're saying no. No. Then that was enough of that conversation. that was the end of that conversation. Then the person who was really persistent,

so they got two of his close friends and respected investors to email him and to follow up and to call and so on. And he kept on just putting them back and just going, I've just done, I said everything I can say on this subject and now I appreciate all the effort. He never says no,

but he definitely said no, if you know what I mean. He didn't do it. And he didn't feel any obligation to do it because he's already done everything he can do on that front. But do you see how, how someone who's skilled and how important

must it be for somebody like Warren Buffett to have learned this skill. I mean, how many people want a piece of him? How many people would be happy to have him interviewed for something they're doing for a book for whatever, right? Endless. Thousands, millions of things.

So you can see that he's literally, constantly learned how to do this, maybe with a sense of humor at times, with a, you know, with a smile, with a, He isn't, he's not being rude. He just has his boundaries and he's built the skill. And so as we learn how to navigate our lives in a way that we are starting to eliminate

the non-essentials increasingly, we then free up enough space to start to act on our life. You know, we get to think about our life. And when you do that, you can move into phase three because then you get to start to build a routine, a system that really works for you. I mean, you know, before we started the interview today, you mentioned that I hold, you know, this media day. And that's how I do it. I do it once a month. As soon as it's full, it just moves to the next month.

So I'm never, and what it means is that there's a little system involved there. It means that I'm not having interviewed on this day and an interview on that day and a conversation all over the place and being interrupted constantly with this, with this. Good thing. Bucketed together, here is a day. This is the focus. Get into that mode. And then you're not spending more. time than you want to all right a lot to it either so you start to create a system that makes it more

and more effortless to do the things that matter most that's the third idea and so so for me i i think that creating routine like a dream routine is that is key for me for example one of the things is i i go surfing with my children on a set day each week and we live in i live in california we're not far from the beach. But here's what we noticed is I wasn't doing it. So it wasn't a problem of willingness. It wasn't a problem of motive, motivation. It was I needed a method, a system. I needed a routine. And once we took the time, and it did take some time to build that system, that routine, that expectation, to take off things off the calendar that were always on that same day so that they're removed, it became effortless. Every single day on that set day,

if I'm in town, which isn't every week, but if I'm in town on that day, everybody knows. we're going surfing. There's something I don't have to question. I don't have to worry about. Am I doing it? Should I do it? Should I not do it? All that exhaustion that leads to decision fatigue.

That's the routine. That's the system. Everybody knows how it works. There's almost a checklist. Actually, there is a checklist. We follow what things need to be in the car, you know, where we're picking people up from, everything so that we just follow a step-by-step process so we don't have to use a limited finite set of energy resources to make it.

happen to force it. You need to make it as effortless as possible if you want the most important things to happen in your life. Really interesting. I love it. This is great, Greg. Last question. When you hear the phrase learning leader, what do you think of? Well, I think that as it applies to this subject, there are two ways of thinking about focus. You can think about focus as a noun, which is a thing that, you know, you take a picture of something. That's the goal. That's what I'm going to do. and that's good, that's important, but focus is also a verb. It's something you're constantly adjusting to. If our eyes focus like a noun, I mean, we would just be completely out of focus all day long.

It's because they keep focusing that you maintain the clarity at any time. And that's, I think, true. That's what to me a learning leader means as it applies to being an essentialist. it's constantly adjusting and reflecting. What's important now? What's the most important thing I should be doing now? And you just keep on having to adjust all the... That's why I like this list of six.

You do it every day so that you just keep on adjusting. You're going, well, this didn't get done. Yes, therefore, this needs to be my number one thing for tomorrow. Oh, the change happened. A new piece of work came in. Okay, so that changes what the priority should be right now. But that you constantly are in this adjusting, learning, mindset about what is actually essential. And that's what I think it means to be an essentialist.

Love it. Thank you so much, Greg. Where would you send everybody to find you online? Oh, I think you can just go to Greg McEwen.com. G-R-E-G-M-C-K-E-O-W-N. Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Greg, for investing your time with me. I really appreciate it. I'm excited to see what you do next. And I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Thank you so much, Ryan. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to Learning Leadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12.

Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show.