The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - How To Master Essentialism With Best Selling Author Greg McKeown - The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less

Episode Date: September 24, 2019

#217: Greg McKeown is a New York Times best selling author. His Book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less is one of our must read and must recommend books. Greg has a public speaker and has worked with millions around the globe to teach the art of essentialism. Some of his clients include Apple, Airbnb, Google, Facebook, Pixar, and Adobe to name a few. On this episode we dive into the art of essentialism and discuss practical tips to figure our what is the most essential in our own lives. To connect with Greg McKeown click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by THRIVE MARKET. We use Thrive for our online grocery delivery on a weekly basis and we also now get our wine at Thrive! They provide the highest quality products and ingredients delivered straight to our door with unbeatable prices.  Be sure to grab our deal by going to to https://thrivemarket.com/skinny to receive 25% off your first order (Max $20) + free shipping and a 30 day trial. This episode is brought to you by BETABRAND and their Betabrand dress pant yoga pants. To try these pants go to betabrand.com/skinny and receive 20% off your order. Millions of women agree these are the most comfortable pants you’ll ever wear to work.  This Episode is brought to you by Ulta Beauty. Ulta Beauty is dedicated to bringing its guests the most exciting new brands, which is why they’ve just launched an entire platform built to help beauty lovers discover more. Introducing SPARKED at Ulta Beauty™, the new destination for curated need-to-know brands—many exclusive to Ulta Beauty—which each have authentic stories and products. Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. for 25% off your first order and free shipping. Again, that's thrivemarket.com slash skinny for 25% off your first order and free shipping. When you do that, you'll also be taking Lauren's page so you see everything she just talked about. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential. Him and her.

Aha! Then it becomes a burnout. Once you're a burnout, everybody around you, including the most important essential people in your life, are just irritating to you. And it's not because you're weak, it's because you're spent. You've been using up the deepest resources that are in you. And you can do that for a while. If you do this perpetually, you can no longer contribute. All of those things will be lost. Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back. That clip was from our guest of the show today, Greg McKeown, author of one of my favorite books, one of our favorite books, Essentialism.

And on this episode, we're talking all essentialism, which we're going to dive into in a minute. For those of you that are new to the show, my name is Michael Bostic. I am a serial entrepreneur and brand builder. And sitting across from me is my baby mama, my baby carrier, my seed handler i whatever it's michael you gotta like get different words from the thethorus guys please can you help him comment some different words for him to use well that's what you are you know you're like a little vessel no lovely little vessel i'm not a little vessel well and i am excited for our audience to learn about greg mckeown and essentialism so i had this book sitting on my bookshelf for about a year and i don't know why I didn't pick up and read it. And then one day I was listening to Tim Ferris and I heard Greg come on the show and I said, Hmm, I better go revisit that book. And

you know, sorry, Tim, but when I saw that he was on the show, I actually didn't listen to the episode because I got this weird tick about me where if I have someone's book, I have to go read the book before I can go listen to them on a show. It's a weird thing that I do. I don't know why I do that. I learned something new about you every day. It's kind of like another thing where if I know that the movie is a sequel or it's a season one or I do. I don't know why I do that. I learn something new about you every day. It's kind of like another thing where if I know that the movie is a sequel or it's a season one or two, you're so weird about that. I have to go back to the beginning. I can't jump into something without figuring out first on myself. You literally rewatched Ray Donovan with me this weekend because you couldn't stand that I maybe missed a couple

episodes. You know what else is the Dark Crystal just came out on Netflix and I, and I never saw the Dark Crystal as a kid. And now we're getting in the weeds here. Jim Henson's Dark Crystal. I had to go back and watch the other version. By the way, The Dark Crystal. I got a lot of problems. The Dark Crystal at 10 p.m. at night is a no for me. So anyways, one day after we moved up to LA, I was sitting and I was organizing my bookshelf because I had to move everything up from San Diego. And this book, Essentialism, fell out by Greg McKeown. And I said, I'm going to dive into this. I devoured the book. I loved

it. I was earmarking it. I still have it. I marked a bunch of pages. And then after that, I went and got it on my Kindle because if I really like something, I have to have it on the Kindle and on hardcover. I learned something new about you every single day. Wow. And what did I do? I went to Lauren. I said, Hey, you got to get this guy on the show, bring him on. Team reached out and lo and behold, nice guy came on the show. We had a great conversation. This is what Michael does to manipulate me. He'll say, you know who I'd really love on the show, dot, dot, dot. And then basically like wink and nudge me to go reach out. Listen guys, you know what happens? Delegation.

I know with these guys, Mark Manson, Ryan Holiday, Robert Green, Greg McKeown, these prolific authors that I love their work. I know there's two. If I reach out, like, who is this guy reaching out? So what I do, I send my blonde-haired, blue-eyed, heavy-chested wife in. Can you not call me heavy-chested? And listen, I use you a little bit, Lauren. Use like it's perky-titted. Listen, I use you because I know, like, you get a DM from me or you get a DM from Lauren as a man and, you know, you're going to get the response, not me. Michael, I use you all the time, so that's fine. We're using each other. Okay. What's your number one priority? My number one priority is my wife. I had to think about it for a second and maybe my baby.

What about your dog? Who cares about me right now? Guys, Greg McKeown is on the show. Great book. If you're somebody that wants to learn how to be more productive, how to find success, how to define what's essential to get done in your life and develop concrete tools to be able to get them done, this is the book and the conversation for you. And just a side note, if you're about productivity like Michael and I are, you have to listen to my episode where we really dive into this subject. I get really, really micro about it. I think it's like three episodes back.

So definitely check that out. And with that, Greg, welcome to the show. Let's pause for a second. We're talking a lot about the essentials. Let me tell you about my essentials. I spent, Lauren, you're going to get mad at me. I spent about $251.13. Actually, I didn't about, it is exactly what I spent at thrivemarket.com because I cannot get enough of their snacks. Lauren just organized our whole pantry, got all my snacks organized, got my jerkies, got my chips, got my crackers, got my cookies, got my ice creams. And I get it all from Thrive Market, guys. And you should be too. All your snacks from Thrive are so organized now because

of Reorganize. She organized everything down from your munchies to your pretzels to your cookies. It's all streamlined. And you know what? I got it with a couple of clicks of a button because guys, we've been talking about Thrive Market for a long time. They are one of our favorite partners, longtime partners, and that's because they offer one of the best services online. 25 to 50% below retail on all items shipped straight to your door. It takes all the guesswork out because they source all the guesswork out because they source all the best ingredients. No longer am I wandering around aimlessly up and down the aisles of the grocery store wondering, huh, is this good for me? Is that good for me? I know

it's all good for me at Thrive Market. Michael, can you get specific and tell us exactly what your Thrive order is? Yes. I got my Siete chips. I got my Tate's cookies. I got, listen, Lauren's not a big pork rind fan, but I got some pork rinds. Pink Himalaya and sea salt pork rinds. I got my non-GMO grain-free tortilla chips. I got my kettle chips. I got, you know, I got Lauren's favorite flavor too. Salt and vinegar, as well as the sea salt.

Lily's chocolate bars, guys. If you want some chocolate, these are the ones to get. You get the caramel kind. Listen, this is just my snack order. It's not even including the household supplies, the meat, the drinks, all the supplements. Guys, like I said, Thrive Market has it all. And with babies on the way, we also have baby supplies. I'm excited to explore that avenue.

Guys, if you have a specific diet, gluten-free, paleo, vegetarian, vegan, they have specific diets that you can shop by. And it's all 25% to 50% below retail because they cut out the middlemen. If you're a longtime listener to this show and you still haven't signed up for Thrive Market, I don't know what to tell you. You come here every week. You listen to the show. You trust us.

God knows why. If you want to trust us on one thing, it's Thrive Market. Guys, to sign up, we have a special offer. Go to thrivemarket.com slash skinny and get 25% off your first order and free shipping. Again, that's thrivemarket.com slash skinny for 25% off your order and free shipping. Again, that's thrivemarket.com slash skinny for 25% off your order and free shipping. Enjoy and come back and let me know what snacks you're snacking on. This is the skinny confidential him and her. All right, Greg, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming in. Big fan of the work for a long time of your work for a long time.

The jacket of your book goes on to ask the reader, have you ever found yourself stretched too thin? Do you simultaneously feel overworked and underutilized? Are you often busy but not productive? Do you feel like your time is constantly being hijacked by other people's agendas? If you answered yes to any of these questions, which I'm sure many of our listeners did. The way out is the way of the essentialist. So Greg, our first question is, at its core, how do you define what essentialism is? It's an antidote to a problem. In different times, this might not be very useful, might not be very relevant. But in today's world, I think it has the power of relevancy. So the problems are,

as you stated them, people are busy, they're doing too much, they're being pulled in too many directions, they're not making enough progress in the things that really matter because they're trying to do everything for everyone without really thinking about it. Essentialism is an attempt at seeing life differently instead of thinking that the key to life is to do everything so you can have everything. That would be non-essentialism. Essentialism is arguing that if you pursue just the essential things, the right things, and eliminate as much of the non-essential as possible, that you're much more likely to achieve your highest point of contribution. So the main benefit, and this is where it's counterintuitive to some people, is that by doing less, you can actually achieve more. Is that at the core of it, or is it just

not doing less, or doing just the most essential things? Less but better. Less but better. I don't know what less is more means, but less but better has a clear meaning for me. You're doing fewer things, but you're doing them better. And if you do fewer things better, you're more likely to become distinctive, to do them well, to be superb, to be able to therefore rise to a higher point of contribution overall. Can you pinpoint someone that you've watched do this? Maybe they don't even know they do it. Like maybe it's a football player or a movie star that you've watched really do this and you've kind of sat back and been like, this is what it is. Or this is a good example of someone who's an essentialist. When I was first thinking about this and trying to put

words to all of this, I felt like there was hardly anybody that you could look at as an example. It was, I was trying to amplify people at the periphery. And so I just sort of look at examples like Gandhi, who was, you know, an embodiment of an essentialist. And he still is an example of this, but it's just so extreme. You know, most of us aren't maybe either aspiring to or don't find it realistic, the idea that one could be like he was. But now what I find is that you can look in almost any industry, in almost any company, in almost any place, and you just find the person who is getting the best results and isn't crazy all the time. And you'll find that they're living the principles of essentialism. You know, it's the salesperson who, it's not the one that's going crazy all month long.

The first two weeks of the quarter, they've got more done than other people three months into the quarter. They're just focused on the right things. They're just focused on the essential things and they're not even worried about the rest of it. So it's not someone who's sending the most emails. It's not someone who's said, I'll give you an example. So I was working with an executive who was doing award-winning work, doing superb work. And then because he became successful, he got more options and opportunities. And he started to say yes to lots of these new good opportunities. And that led him to plateau in his progress. And he started to, you know, he's saying yes to everything now. So his stress is going up. Quality of his work is going down. And he almost thinks,

the only solution I have is to quit the company. And then somebody a little wiser came along and said, no, what you need to do is retire, enroll. Which seemed odd to him. Quit, stay, and don't tell anybody. What does this mean? And they said, no, what I mean is, imagine you were only going to get paid for the value you create.

But it's not just about how many hours you put in. It's not just how many all-nighters you pull. It's not just about how many emails you respond to, how many meetings you attend. That isn't the primary target. Yes, it is. If you're being lazy, fine, you've got to do something to make something happen. But once you get to that point, it's not about how much more you do. It's about how much more wise you are about what you do.

So he does this. So he becomes really thoughtful. When people ask him to do things, he doesn't just say yes, and he doesn't just say no either. But he pauses. He thinks, is this the best use of me? This is the most valuable way that I can be utilized inside of this company. And as he does this, he summarized this when he talked to me. He said, Greg, what happened

to me is I got my life back. And what that looked like to him is that he was able to eat dinner with his wife every night, uninterrupted for an hour. He was able to go to the gym every night, consistently in a routine. At work, what happened to his surprise is that his bonus went up, his performance evaluation went up, his quality of work went up, his performance evaluation went up, his quality of work went up, and his stress went down. So this is the value proposition of essentialism. But what I found as I began that answer is that people like this exist in every industry and almost in every company if you're looking with the right mindset. So I know there's a ton of examples that you use

in the book, and each chapter has different examples between a non-essentialist and an essentialist. But at the core, at the top of your mind, can you give a couple examples? It's just like the common person, somebody in the workforce or somebody, a young entrepreneur, student that shows non-essentialist behaviors and someone who exemplifies essentialist behaviors. Can you just list a few to kind of maybe let the audience decide for themselves, hey, am I being a non-essentialist or am I essentialist right now? Okay. So, essentialists and non-essentialists believe, do, and get different things. So, a non-essentialist believes I have to do everything. An essentialist thinks, look,

if I just do the right few things, I'll get better results. So a non-essentialist believes that everything is essential. An essentialist believes that almost nothing is essential, only a few things, vital few things. A non-essentialist is saying, because they believe everything is essential, is saying yes to everyone and everything without really thinking about it. They're rushing constantly. They're always feeling busy, but not necessarily productive. They're always often feeling stretched too thin at work or at home and beyond. The essentialist, on the other hand, is being thoughtful, pausing to figure out what's essential. They are negotiating with people and having conversations with people about what's the most valuable thing that they could be doing. And what they're getting is also different. So an essentialist, what an essentialist gets is, excuse me, what a non-essentialist gets is constantly

rushing through life without enjoying it. They're getting average results, plateauing or even failing altogether. Whereas an essentialist is someone who's enjoying the journey, gets the right things done, and gets just to break through to the next level perpetually. I think a lot of troubled young people, I think actually all people have, is learning what to say no to, right? You don't want to disappoint people. One of my favorite passages in your books is you say, if you don't prioritize your life, someone else will. We know so many people in our life, and we're all probably guilty of it as well, where you're committing to everything. You don't want to let down that friend. You don't want to let down that family member. You don't want to let down a coworker. So what happens, you just end up saying yes to everything. And all of a sudden you look

around like, what the hell am I getting done? I have a friend who's literally every bachelor party, he's a groomsman at every wedding. I know he hates it. He tells me he hates it, but he just can't find it in him to say no. And he's also like that though, not just with weddings. He's like that with his to-do list. Like his to-do list, everything has to get done.

Just like you just said, it's all essential. When in actuality, like you said, nothing is really essential. This is, I mean, what you're describing in a way is FOMO, right? Is this fear of missing out that social media has amplified for people that they're constantly seeing what everyone else is doing.

And so our inherent tendency to be competitive and comparative means that now we are seeing not just what the Joneses are doing, what the next door neighbors are doing, but what everybody's doing. And of course, you know, basically people are close to lying on social media, right? They're just showing their very, very best, you know, version of today. And so this FOMO is like, you know, I mean, I think a lot of people listening to this be familiar with that sense of worrying that they, you know, they don't want to be the one not to there. And what I've learned is that you've got to discover the joy of missing out or JOMO. I have JOMO. Do you? Yeah, I got to be honest.

I have JOMO. When have you had JOMO recently? I have JOMO all the time. My husband gets mad at me, but I'm not a networker. I don't want to go to events. I'd rather spend time listening to podcasts or reading or being at home or learning or being with my dogs.

But she is kind of a walking contradiction because she is a Jomo, but she also struggles with saying no. I do struggle. We'll get into that. I struggle saying no. My wife and my best friend are both Gemini. So they're flipping the switch. One day it's this thing, the next day it's another.

I kind of got to look over each morning and say, which one am I waking up next to today? That's every woman. I want to know if women have a harder time than men with this theory. Because women, I feel like as women, we feel guilty. We feel like we have to do it all. If we have children or a mate, it's like, I feel there's a difference between a man and a woman. Greg, as a man, let me just tread lightly here. No, I want his honest opinion. Yeah, I think the answer is that in general,

women are so much more, well, I'll talk about my own family. How about that? So I have four children. Wow. You look so young. I like that. Thank you.

You have four children? Four children. Three of them girls. And what I notice is, especially as they've become teenagers, the change in them is so impressive to me in their ability to walk into a room and see in almost like psychedelic complexity what's going on. And all the different dimensions of what people might be feeling and how that comment might have affected all different people in the room. And so there's so much inherent complexity that really is there. They're not just making it up, but they're having to grapple with all of that. And so they're more aware of how challenging it is to simply say, well, no, I'm not going to do

that. Women are empaths more. Oh, empaths, is that what you said? Well, inherently more nurturing. And that doesn't mean, of course, that men can't be nurturing, but there does appear to be a sort of, I mean, the base is pretty strong that there is a more natural tendency towards this. So therefore, what does it mean for essentialism? I think that in some ways, I probably did write the book a little too unaware of what you're describing, but probably in a more black and white way than would be helpful,

you know, optimally helpful for women. I think that's actually a thing because I think I could have acknowledged this better and maybe provided more examples to help someone go, OK, I can see how I could realistically live this given all this that I see and all these responsibilities that I feel. Building on that, I tend to think that essentialism is in some ways more useful for women in this sense, because I'm writing it for people to feel empowered, to feel that they don't simply have to go through life endlessly putting one more responsibility after another, after another. I see a need, therefore I have to own it. I mean, for men, sometimes I want to say

the opposite. We have to take some responsibility. We might be not tending to do that. So we need to being an essentialist would mean seeing the service I need to do in the world and feeling a connection to it and not to live a selfish life. But I feel like in a sense, it's an almost opposite message. What's essential? I'll give you an example. So many of the women that I've worked with over the years with essentialism have struggled to protect the asset that that is them that they're so quick to be nurturing to other people to be aware of other people's needs that they that the last person who is getting spiritual physical mental emotional renewal is them and does that I'm assuming that ends up being a worse problem for them in the long run

than if they were to, in my case, sometimes I always a jerk. He's not committing, but I like, listen, if I don't take care of me, then I'm not going to be able to be helpful to anyone else. If I'm unhappy, if I'm not, if I'm not productive, if I'm not in a good head space and I can't be great for my wife, I can't be great for my friends. So I'd rather be very selective and really fully commit to the commitments that I am committing to as opposed to just kind of half-assing it. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense.

And I think it's right. We have to... Well, there's an example of a friend of mine who was doing really amazing works, an entrepreneur all over the world, doing great things, and he's just getting more and more worn out. And one time he gets home from one of his trips and he's asleep and then he wakes up like he said to me he said it's like a gun went off and i sat in bed looking around what's happened and nobody else is awake and he thinks well okay maybe it's something to do you know and then and then it happens again and then it happens in the middle of the day a few days later he's just

walking along the street and just suddenly this and he goes what is going on goes to the doctor they say well listen really you are just completely fatued. There's a lot more to the story than that, but that's the gist of it. And they say, look, you've just got to go home and you've got to rest for like six weeks. He said, as the classic overachiever says, I'll be back in two, watch this. Well, over the next two weeks, he tries to follow the counsel of the doctor and finds that he is sleeping 16 hours a day. He's just dragging along. So he goes back of the doctor and finds that he is sleeping 16 hours a day, just dragging along. So he goes back to the doctor and says, okay, I get it, right? This is clearly an issue that really is for real. So in the end, he had to step down from the company he was leading.

He spent two or three years in recovery. After all of this experience, and some of that's really painful for him to realize that he had got to that point. All for good motives, but nevertheless, that's where he's at. He said, look, the summary lesson, I already mentioned the phrase, but he says, protect the asset. You're the only vehicle through which you can contribute anything to anyone. And if you perpetually don't take care of the basic human needs, then you will be wearing out that asset to the point that it starts, you know, at first it's just decision fatigue. Then it becomes sort of burnout. Once you're at burnout, everybody around you, including the most important essential people in your life, are just irritating to you. And it's not because you're weak. It's because you're spent. You've been using up the deepest

resources that are in you. And you can do that for a while. You could pull an all-nighter once in a while. But if you do this perpetually, you can no longer contribute. You can no longer, and you already said this, but you can no longer be a great. You're not going to be great in any relationship. I don't care who you're with. I don't care if you're the greatest person ever. I married the greatest person ever. And if I don't sleep well, I'm not going to show up well in that relationship. I'm not going to be great with my children.

I'm not going to be great at work. I'm not going to have great insights when I'm writing. All of those things will be lost if you don't put the protection of the asset first. So I follow a process every week, and I could describe a little more about that, but I don't know how I'd be an essentialist without this process. A weekly design process. Well, this is what I have a series of questions I ask myself, and literally, right, I have a journal, my favorite technology is a journal, and right now the version.

So I'm constantly updating the process. Handwritten journal? Handwritten journal. Handwritten. Oh right now, the version. So I'm constantly updating. Handwritten journal? Handwritten journal. Handwritten. Oh, yes. For sure for me. I've done both. But I love the paper journal because you're not distracted in it. Every other form of technology, you can have the distractions.

Even if you really eliminate all the apps and all the notifications, and I've done all of that already on my phone, it's still connected to the internet. So you have the chance to be on any number of a thousand interruptions. You can't do that in a paper journal. That's exactly why I like it. It's almost meditative in comparison to being in technology. So an hour or two every Sunday for me is spent doing a weekly design session. A series of questions first, five questions. First, what essential things went right last week? It's just a gratitude list, but you're looking for the things that really mattered to you that you went right. You've got to start positively, otherwise you get worn out before you begin in your essentialist journey. So that's always enjoyable. You write as many things you can think of, that's fine. Number two is the question,

what is something essential that you're under-investing in? Actually, now I want to do this first, but I want to do it with you. Whose game? Which one are you going to do? I think, yeah, either of us are game. Do you want to do it or do you want me to do it? I'll do it. Okay, you do it. I'm going to interrupt this episode to talk about my ass. Specifically, my ass in Beta Brand's dress pant yoga pant. It's pretty good, huh, Michael? Talk about a sweet, sweet ass, ladies and gentlemen.

This is also especially helpful now that I've gained a few LBs from pregnancy. You know, it keeps you tight and toned and they're black and very slimming and flattering, which I really need right now. Anyway, so these are these pants that you can wear to work, but then you can also wear to happy hour, but you could also, I feel like, wear them to work out if you're like me and you're kind of lazy. They really don't disappoint. So they have fake zippers, fake pockets, front buttons, and belt loops. So there's not all this like extra stuff hanging off your pant but you get the benefit of having that ass tightened up in those sweet yoga pants i don't know why

women don't wear those yoga pants i'd be getting in trouble for that but listen i'm a fan big fan yeah we know you like these pants you can't stop talking about them everybody likes those pants on you so they have different shapes and sizes tastes i personally am a huge fan of the skinny but they also have a crop to bootleg a straight straight leg. So whatever floats your boat here, colors, black, Navy gray khaki. I've told you this before. I like black pants. I just like to keep it tight and right, you know? So you could do you there. Anyway, these pants are coming in handy because I've developed a big addiction right now to cereal, like nostalgic cereal with almond milk and oatmeal raisin cookies. And I need all the help I can get. So like I said, these pants are going to keep it tight

and toned or looking tight and toned at least. You know what I mean? The point is, is no one wants to be uncomfortable in work pants or happy hour pants. You know what I mean? Like you're driving and you have to unbutton your pants at a stoplight. No one wants to do that. And that's why I like Beta Brand's Dress Pant pant yoga pant. So if you want to check these out, just visit betabrand.com slash skinny and you get 20% off yours. Like I said, I would go with black and skinny, but they also have cropped and bootlegs. So do you. Millions of women agree that these are the most comfortable pants you'll ever wear to work. All you have to do is go to betabrand.com. That's B-E-T-A-B-R-A-N-D.com slash skinny to get 20% off your dress pant yoga pants.

All right. So here's the question. What is something essential for you that you are under-investing in? In my business? Anything. Business, life, anything. Something essential is concentrating on building my own brand as opposed to talking about other people's brands. So next question is, what is something that is non-essential that you're over-investing in? Being reactive.

So answering text messages that come through where people need something right away. Tim Ferriss talked a little bit about this, about someone wanting something in one day. They absolutely need it and making me feel guilty that I can't get it to them. Unreasonable requests. Yes, unreasonable requests. That you feel responsible because you're a responsible person. Exactly.

So you feel this natural inclination to care, to try and help, but actually it's just, actually what's happening is someone's being inconsiderate they're violating certain principles and you know what's wild about me is that when someone has an unreasonable request i'll i do it and then i get resentful to do it like it's like i get resentful towards the person that i did it which isn't fair but that's not fair to the person i'd almost rather rather say no, like Tim does, like Michael does. Michael's very good at this. And have the person be like, that sucks, as opposed to then end up feeling resentful. Yes. Yes, because what you're telling

me about this, let's riff on all of this for a little while, and then we'll get back to the planning process. What you're saying is that in the moment, in the moment, there is a reward for saying yes. And there's a little punishment for saying no in the moment when somebody requests something, because you don't want the social ramifications, the relationship ramifications saying, look, I can't do that right now. But you're saying that it isn't as simple as saying yes and everybody's happy. You say, yes, you do the thing, but you're not that it isn't as simple as saying yes and everybody's happy you say yes you do the thing but you're not happy yes and actually the relationship is now strained in a way it wasn't before yes and i'm annoyed right which is it's it doesn't even make sense why doesn't it make sense to you i mean it does make sense but it's it's it's wild that i

just up front just say this this doesn't work for me i don, but it's wild that I just up front just say this doesn't work for me. I don't think it's wild. I think it's really normal because in the moment you just want to please. We want to please with social animals. We want to have good relationships with people. And the problem is, is we believe that by simply saying yes without really thinking about it, we'll get great relationships. And that isn't actually what we get. If that's what we got, great, just keep doing it. But what you actually get is these little pinches in relationships and there's a violation and there's a sense of this isn't actually reasonable.

And so what we have to learn is by pushing back a little bit, by saying, for example, you don't just have to say, well, no, the end. But you can say, you know, I've looked just have to know the end, but you can say, you know, I've looked, let me check my calendar. I'll get back to you. Give a pause. Actually check your calendar. Actually look at what the impact will be if you drop everything and do this thing. What really is the cost? Sometimes you just can go back to someone and express that cost. You can say, well, you know, I can do this, but if I do this, I won't be able to do this other thing that I'm committed to. You don't have to get

into those details, but that would be one way of doing it. You could pause and go back to someone and ask them a few questions. Hey, can I just ask you a few questions about what you're asking me to do? You can say to someone, I mean, this is more towards the yes side, but you can say, well, yeah, okay, I'm willing to do this time. I'll do this favor for you. But next time going forward, I really need this to be the situation. Let's wrap up this idea is a lot of people think that there's only two choices in life when working with other people. And that is you can either give a polite yes or a rude no. And that black and white either or dichotomy, this false dichotomy, is a real problem, I think, because you're going to end up saying a lot more polite yeses.

You don't want to have the effect of saying rude no's to everybody. But there's a third option, and that's to negotiate. And to remember that life is a negotiation. That when that request comes, someone is negotiating. Someone is selling, and you have to decide whether you're buying. How does this all sound to you? When you hear it, you say, yes, but I can't do it. Or, yes, what's the reaction? No, it's helpful.

It's very helpful. I mean, I've been trying to practice stoicism, Brian Holiday's books. And I think that he's taught me a lot to, his new books, you know, it's called Stillness is the Key. Stillness is the Key, that's right. I think that I try to take more pauses and more than that, I try to schedule even thinking time. Yeah. And I think that's helped me have space in my day to be able to really think through if I should say yes or no. And I think that you're right that it doesn't have to be able to really think through if I should say yes or no.

And I think that you're right that it doesn't have to be a rude no. There is, you know, what I've observed in my own experience, the reason that I kind of came to this realization where I had to say no to a few more things, 2013, 14, I had a client services business, marketing business. And what happened was we had a lot of clients. Friends would come to me at one point and say, hey, you're doing this. Can you help my company? I knew I did not have the bandwidth to do it. I knew I shouldn't take it on, but I wanted to say yes to help them. So I took it on, ended up being a very bad one, me, and I'll take full accountability, bad performing for them because it wasn't my main focus. It wasn't a priority. It wasn't a big revenue earner. And two, for them, it became a worse experience because they're spending money, losing money, not getting the attention.

And from that experience, I realized like, hmm, by trying to be a nice guy and committing and saying, yes, I actually ended up doing everybody a disservice. I look bad, didn't help them strain the relationship. And so it was, it was one of those like aha moments, like, wait a minute, I should have politely either renegotiated, like you said, or said, Hey, I can't take this on right now. And what I've, what I see with some, with some close friends that have a difficult time saying it's like a, it's a deeper rooted thing where they just, there's this deep sense of like, they can't disappoint people. They don't, they feel they're going to be judged. They don't want to be disappointing to people. And so I think something that's really helpful in this conversation is educating and talking to people about not only

how to say no, but negotiating and talking them through like, hey, it's not always the right thing to say yes. You actually could, by saying yes in the short term, you actually could be doing a lot more damage in the long run. But I also would take it even further than that. I think that there was certain parts of my older childhood that were chaotic. And I think that I've learned to thrive in chaos. And I almost think sometimes we wear chaos and stress and all this as, and you've talked about this, as a badge of honor. Yeah. Can you kind of speak on that? I was speaking to somebody just recently.

I said, how are you? And she said, oh, I'm so busy, Greg. So busy. I've slept on average four hours a night for the last two weeks. And she's smiling. I mean, why is she smiling? I mean. Kind of creepy.

Yeah. I think what she was saying to me, I think why she was smiling. She didn't say it, but I think she was saying, Greg, I hate to break it to you. I'm just a little more important than you are. You know, you are in less demand than me. I'm under so much demand, I don't even have time to sleep. And so this idea, this business badge of honor is very real. I think we're living in a busyness bubble right now, in fact, where like every other bubble before it, whether it's the real estate bubble or whether it was before that Silicon Valley dot

com bust. In any of these bubbles, what happens is that you have an overvalued asset, something that everyone starts saying is valuable, and then everyone gets caught up in the hype of it. And the actual asset is not going up in value. Just the perception of it is for a while, temporarily, and it has to burst. That's what's happening with busyness. Busyness itself has a social value, but it has no inherent value. I know if somebody was telling me a story where the people in their offices would walk faster past their boss's door, but there's no value to that. That is literally just busyness. And yet we've got into this undisciplined pursuit of more in society. So the bubble is growing greater and greater. So the question is, is this, when you're in a bubble, do you have to wait till it bursts to change your behavior? I remember I was in Arizona,

we're living in Arizona in the middle, beginning of the boom there. And everybody's giving up their careers to become a realtor. You know, everyone's just, oh, this is no-brainer. Everyone can make money. It was like a gold rush. And I remember we were living in a very comfortable home, and still there was this absolutely gorgeous, huge home I was seeing. I said, Anna, my wife, we should do this.

She said, I don't see any reason at all to do that. Yeah, but if we buy this, it just makes money and it's bigger houses. She's like, I'm not interested. I mean, she's more of an essentialist than I am. And she certainly was in this instance. Because we, by following that sounder advice, missed all of the costs and problems and serious heartache. We had a neighbor, literally, close right buyers, who did the same idea, bought the next house up. Then the bubble burst. Then they lost the house. So in a similar way, if you're in a busyness bubble, you can be an essentialist before you have to be. It's almost thinking with logic and not emotion, too. I think it is part of this.

I think it's about discerning, you know, whatever the word we want to use it for, internal conscious, our spirit, you know, that light. It's being able to discern that. I'm not sure I think of that inherently as emotion versus logic. I think when you feel the right direction, when you feel that guidance, you both feel, you feel aligned in your mind and in your heart. This is the right thing. I think people need to also understand like there's a real, I mean, I always joke around on the show and say like being busy is for the bees, right? Like it's just like insects can do it. And if you watch those old Western movies and the horse gets run and run, run, and what

happens? It keels over and dies. Like animals can be busy and die. And I think what we have as human beings is the time to step back and think and process and reflect and be like, hmm, is this essential or is this not? I think a lot of times we forget that because like you said, we see people running around, we see them on social and we think, oh shit, like if they're busy, I need to be busier in order to compete. And it's just not true. Busyness becomes your competitive game. Oh, that's just a bad game. I mean, who wants to win that game? When you win that game, what happens? Oh, you're not sleeping at all. You're doing a hundred things in a hundred different directions. I mean, does this sound like happiness? Does this sound like success? It's insane. Success is supposed

to be better than this. People ask me because I spend, you know, each morning I try to go to the gym for an hour and then I try to read at least an hour or two a night, right? Do you? Yeah. There's two like kind of non-negotiables for me. People say, how do you have the time to do that? I'm like, you have the time. Everybody has the time to do it. You're just not making it a priority. You're not taking the time to say, this is absolutely essential to my day. I know if I didn't get that work done at least five days a week and if I didn't sit down and read at least five days a week for multiple hours, I wouldn't be a happy person. And I wouldn't be a healthy person. Well, that's exactly right. And you mentioned the word priority, and it's worth just,

you know, just riffing on that for a second. The word priority came into the English language 1400s. It's singular. What does it mean? It's the first thing, the priorest thing. And it is one thing, singular. And according to Drucker, it stayed singular for the next 500 years. So it's only... Peter Drucker? Yeah. It's only in the 1900s that the term became pluralized. And I just think that's an extraordinary thing that for half a millennium, no one in the English speaking language thought that the answer to our problems would be, well, we just have many, many very first before all other things, things. Oh, and they changed it to priorities.

Exactly. What does the word priorities even mean? Robert Greene does a really good job, I think, of doing this right. I once emailed him to come on the podcast and his assistant emailed me back and said, Robert is working on a book right now and this is all he's doing right now. When he's finished with his book, we'll let you know. That's right. And I was like, wow. When I first wrote a book, like I was doing a hundred things at once with my badge of

honor. And that was really, because obviously he's an insane writer. To watch that, he really does, like, master his craft by just doing one thing. Well, and that's one of the other books that he wrote was Mastery. And, of course, that, I'm sure, influences his own approach to writing. And that goes to the heart of the matter. Do you want to be average in many different things or just all over the place with no real strategy to it? Or do you want to have strategic purpose, essential intent around a few things that are highly important, highly valuable? Quick little plot twist to talk about beauty, Ulta Beauty specifically.

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Get excited. Okay, so let's take this really micro. Let's say Sally in Minnesota is good at a lot of different things, like you just said. Yeah. And she's doing a hundred things at once, and her calendar is full, and she's answering everyone's text messages. She's replying to all direct messages on Instagram. She's doing a million things.

Where would you tell her to start? Well, I would suggest one or two things. One, she should hold a personal quarterly offsite. What does that mean? It means that you take a day, it could be two days, a whole weekend, and you get out of your normal world. You don't bring your phone with you. I know someone that does this and they have two phones. And the phone they bring with them, only their assistant and their spouse has that telephone number. So they are completely out. And the goal of this, you know, when you're done with your offsite,

because you have clarity about the long-term goals of your life, which will adjust and change as you change. And from those long-term goals, you've identified, well, for the quarter, these are the two or three things that are absolutely vital, really essential. And I can invest in those things now. And so I did this recently and I came away with three goals for my life. And they're so clear. And therefore, every week when I go through the weekly process, which we should get back to, maybe now, is it taps directly into that long-term planning. So the first thing is the personal quarterly offsite, to create that space, to carve out that time. And the reason that's so vital now is because of the technology change that's happened over the last 10 years as we've gone from being connected to

hyper-connected. Before that time, somebody at Twitter said it to me. They said, do you remember what it was like to be bored? And I thought that was ironic because they were the ones that did it to us. But there was a time when you had to be bored. If somebody is late for you, you just got to think. And you might not want to think, but you have to think. You have to think about your life and what you want to do. And you can't really avoid it. Can't pick up a phone, get on YouTube, can't go on Instagram, can't scroll around, can't check an email. The second that we have a moment now, the second we would otherwise be bored, we just check our phones.

No matter what we did before, we check our phones next. And so we have to create space ourselves now to figure out what's essential. So a personal quarterly offsite is one way to do that. Every quarter, schedule it now. You can schedule it forever, on repeat, a couple of days, a day or two. And if that's too much, if that's overwhelming to somebody, right now you say, well, I'll do it for a morning, two or three hours, but I'm going to have it every quarter so that I keep having the long-term perspective so that I really know that I'm in alignment with those goals. Because so many people get to the very end and they just conclude, they just, I mean, this is, I'm not making this up, right?

I mean, Australian nurse Bronnie Ware was one of the people, and there's many other people that have done this kind of research, but studied people at the end of their life. What do you regret? Well, the number one regret is having lived a life based upon other people's expectations, not upon the conscience and voice within me. That's the number one regret of the dying. That's my biggest fear in life is waking up each day and living life on other people's terms. It honestly shrivels me up like a fly.

I can't do it. And I can't imagine going my whole life constantly basing how I want to live on what other people's expectations. Maybe that's selfish, but I just couldn't be a happy person. A person could interpret what you said as selfishness. There's a version of it that's selfish, but I just couldn't be a happy person. A person could interpret what you said as selfishness. There's a version of it that's selfish. Sure. And that is where you say, look, I just want to do what I want, when I want, how I want. But I think there's a different version, and I subscribe to you. I mean, I'm sure that's what you mean, which is I want to be utilized at my highest point of contribution.

I want to do what I came here to do. I want to fulfill my mission. Yes. Not just do whatever the people happen to be doing right now. I don't want to be in a box that everybody expects to be. I want to go and there is a selfish element to it. I can recognize that. There's probably people listening like, oh, I'm rolling their eyes.

But it's exactly what you're saying. I want to give my highest contribution that I can the way that I think I can without having to be put in a box and without having to worry about other people's opinions. mission that only we can fulfill. That's a higher obligation than just doing what other people are doing, keeping up with whatever we're reading on social media. So to me, this is a higher version of essentialism than just, I just want to do what I want and I don't care about anybody else. It's what is the mission that I have to discern and discover and then fulfill. I'll make my best contribution this way. I'll actually make my biggest difference this way. And I will find a happier path in life if I can discover this and then live this.

So, as I say, a personal quality offsite is one way to do that. Then you have to translate it. You don't have to, but I have found it immensely useful to then have this weekly process. So, I'm almost through the questions. You preview the week. That's question number four. You're just looking through the week. You're looking at your commitments. You're seeing, am I overcommitted? Should I be uncommitting now? Should I look at anything on this calendar and go, I've got two things at the same time. Let me let people know immediately so I don't have to feel stressed for

four days and then at the end still disappoint people. So there's a review of the week. That's a small glance, but pays great dividends. And then the fourth thing, the fifth thing, final thing of these main questions is what are the top three goals in priority order for the week? And that's where the personal quarterly offsite comes in. the clarity from that process informs the weekly goals. Because, I mean, for me, literally my three life goals are represented directly in my three goals each week. So, it's totally connected for me. And so, it means that I then want to build a system to make fulfilling those things each week as effortless as possible. So, there's a second part to the planning process. How, can you give one example of your goal? Like for instance, are you writing down,

I want to write a book? Are you writing down, I want to write a chapter? Are you writing down, I want to write three pages? For me under the writing a book, it's three hours a day. Okay. Every day. Five days a week. Wow. Is there a time that you do that? Nine till 12. And that's the time when you turn your phone off, everything, like you're just writing a book. Yeah, that's right. There's some flexibility in everybody's lives that's necessary. So there are exceptions to that. But that is, if I'm at home, nine till noon will be done.

That's what I'll be doing. And to do that, there has to be lots of collaboration work to routinize that. It's not just enough for me to put that on account that that's it, everyone else. No, you have to work quite hard to routinize something. But as soon as you've routinized it, then it supports you. Everybody knows. How do you do that? Well, so there's a difference between scheduling and routinizing. So scheduling is put something on your schedule, right? I'm going to write three hours today. And you look at your schedule, you put the three hours on there. But the problem with that approach is that you have to keep doing it every single day. And the cognitive cost of that is immense because you have to even ask, well, should I do it today?

Well, there's so many other things. I mean, I don't know. Is this really the day? Could I do it? I can do it today? Well, there's so many other things. I mean, I don't know. Is this really the day? Could I do it? I can do it tomorrow. So you pay a high price over time for the scheduling approach. Routinizing, you know, the things that are included in that for me is, okay, well, so Anna and I need to talk about our routines and we have to collaborate and work together. How do I support her and the goals that she has? How can she support me?

And is this really important? Yes, it is really important. We think the timing is right. Let's work on this. So that's one conversation. But then we have four children mentioned there before, so we need to coordinate their schedules. What are they doing? How are they working?

When we made the three of those four children now, we started our own school and leadership kind of academy for them. And that's its own interesting challenge. But they are responsible for their routines. But you have to work together to build that routine so it's supportive, so they really are self-governing through those hours. So I'm writing and they're working. So it's a collaborative effort. And as I say, it takes a little more effort up front.

But then afterwards, I mean, we have a, you know, you have a sound issue. So we have a noise canceler that helps to make this all possible. But once it's set up, it is, in fact, effortless. I mean, it really is. It's totally fun. Totally enjoy it. Never get interrupted now. Everyone's on board.

Everyone understands what the trade-offs are involved. It has worked so well on the book that I'm working on right now. Do you set an alarm for nine o'clock? Or do you just look at the clock? Well, that's not the beginning of the routine for me. The beginning of the routine starts at sort of 6.30. Can you walk us through that? I would love to know your morning routine. Well, I'll tell you what it was today. So, and this is sort of the new routine right now. So 6.30 up for half an hour,

I'm reading from, you know, the most, for me, whatever is the most centering, inspirational literature that I can find. What was today? Not news, literature. Not news. Oh, for heaven's sake, not news. Yeah. Lots of cortisol. Nothing even close to that. Yeah, I agree. For me, it's got to be of the less time you have, the more timeless

your wisdom sources should be. And so for me, it's definitely got to be literature, you know, 100 years plus old. Wow. So yeah, for sure. Because the literature that lasts the longest is more likely to last longer. What are your favorites? So much. I mean, beyond scripture, I mean, I love reading works by the original founding fathers. I found that very fascinating after I've come to America and learned about that. So John Adams' writings and John Quincy Adams' son,

I have a son as well. And I think it's amazing the relationship that they developed and how far they were able to go in their learning at such a young age. I mean, it actually is breathtaking to me when I compare it to the kind of, in comparison, the absolute fluff and noise and nonsense in social media and news and on most apps in comparison. You know, I'm not

saying it's all rubbish, but in comparison, it actually starts to feel that it is. And it wasn't as easy to get your hands on stuff back then. I mean, you really had to make an effort to go and find books and learn and read. It wasn't just like Google. No, publishing was a lot harder. And so people had to really think about whether it was worth doing. And then if you wanted to have it, you had to pay for it. And you, you know, yes, building up a library was hard work and expensive and they spent their years doing it. But I mean, we're talking John Adams is reading all of the original Greek in Greek. He's reading in Latin. He's studying the great philosophers. And so is his son, his son more so, because he had his dad constantly from the youngest age teaching him this and emphasizing this. And so his son is an ambassador to various countries within Europe by the time he's a very young man.

The level of their development, to me, is breathtaking. And so I certainly want to start my day with literature of this kind of quality. That's first half hour. Okay, so I like to get very specific. Are you laying in bed when you're reading, and is it a hardcover book? Or is it on your Kindle or your phone? I'm not lying in bed. I'm getting up. I will sometimes listen to audio books so that I can be getting ready while I'm doing it.

By the time I'm sort of 15 minutes into that, I'll be sitting on the couch. So this brings us up to about 7 o'clock. Okay. At 7 o'clock, our family gets together for sort of a morning connection. We'll read together every day, seven o'clock. You come in our home, certainly by seven o'clock, you know, we'll be together. Those conversations, and I don't mean every day. I mean, some days they'll just be 15 minutes long and there's not that much to them. But there have been extraordinary conversations that have been possible over the years. And so even my youngest, who's 10, will participate in really good, to be able to even hear your own voice, to be able to hear that sort of guidance for

the day, and to keep you in track, and to not be influenced immediately by all the noise. I mean, this is a bit of a tangent, but I think it's so nice and so smart and so important for parents to read to their children and to have their children read. I mean, my example growing up, my dad was always like a walking book, that guy. And I think that was the example. I grew up seeing it. And so for me, if I ever have children, I'm definitely going to make, not make them, but lead with that example, you know, because it's true.

I mean, there's so many people that just aren't picking up books and aren't reading anymore saying they don't have time for it. It's so important to develop the mind and become a conscious person. Yes. And again, the whys of the selection, right? To not just read out of any book, although that's a step forward, but to read out of the best books. The stuff that, again, for me, the stuff that maybe was written prior to the Industrial Revolution. So, it's before all this noise. So, that you go, well, what lasted for hundreds of years, for thousands of years? I find this, you know, very helpful.

So next in the schedule today was I played tennis with my son for probably the next hour or so after that. So he's done about 9 o'clock today with that. But that's a great experience. It's taken, you know, it's taken months to years to be able to get to the point. He's only 13, but he can play competitively with me. And he's really, actually, he's really good. But it's just, I mean, the point isn't for me to be good. The point is for us to have a lifelong thing that we do together, lifelong learning, lifelong exercise, lifelong health. You sound like such a good dad. Well, it's nice of you to say.

You do. I'm the one telling the story. They could come and tell a completely different story about how I'm doing. But that was the next part of the schedule. And then 9 o'clock, it's writing time. Until noon. Yeah. And then is the rest of your day calendared and time blocked out?

Or is it more of like a free-for-all? Well, it's not a free-for-all. I've done that. I've done plenty of that in my life, the free-for-all, the maximum flexibility model. And there are, of course, advantages. And I think there's advantage to pivoting at any moment, especially to the question what's important now. I find that a very useful question. Nevertheless, if all of life is just

pivoting, it's exhausting. I don't want to have every decision be remade every day. I can't do it. I mean, I'm too lazy for that for a start, but I'm just not even cognitively strong enough for that. So we're in a process right now of how can we keep working on routines until they really just work? Because once they work, they work for you. Are your routines mastering you or are they serving you? And we want them to be in service of the most essential activities of our life. And so, you know, I mean, today, of course, the schedule was to come and do this was next.

So there is some flexibility in that schedule. But weekly, my wife and I have a date. That's where I'm headed after this. Where's my weekly date? We have a weekly date. No, you haven't been that good at it. Oh, I got to make a routine. You're not making your routines working for you.

I got to routinize it again. You got to work on that. If one's wife tells you that you don't have a weekly date, it's just easier to yield. Yeah, no. Yeah, I've said this before. I asked my dad. I was like, listen, I love my mom. They're still married.

I was like, dad, how the hell have you been married? And he's like, son, I don't speak and I don't hear. I got a couple more questions before we wrap this thing up. So for people that are struggling to focus and take time to learn and take time to think, do you have practical tips or practical steps they could take to really kind of just lock it down, set some focus time, set some learning time, take a step back? Do you have any exercises or anything? Someone comes to you for coaching? I'm like, I'm like somehow fixated on getting through this weekly planning process because

it's part of the answer. So my first page is just these questions. But the second page, I wish I had a visual I could give to you right now or give to the listeners. Maybe you can email me this for my blog and I can put it on the blog so they have context. We'll do it. The second page is a carefully curated checklist. This is really important. Okay. Instead of, okay, there's three ways of managing tasks, basically. One is the worst, and that's to live in your inbox. Oh, I'm glad you just touched on this. Yeah. I was going to ask you, and I forgot, so I'm glad you brought it up.

Live in your inbox is like the worst. I have to pause because, not pause the podcast, but just like pause for a second because Taylor, our producer, got in trouble for not living in his inbox. So I'm sure Taylor's smiling behind the wall. No, no, no, no. He got in trouble because he left that inbox like a barren wasteland for about a week. There is definitely a difference. And so I'm no Luddite in any of this. I think tools can be helpful to us, including email. And I use email. But to live in it, to let it be the way that you prioritize your time and your day seems really poor to me. So that's level one. Level two is you make a to-do list. Okay, great. You look through email, you look through

stuff, you make a to-do list. Great. That's like level two. But there's a level three, and it's taken me a long time to even figure this out. It's the simplest idea, what could be more generic than a checklist. But if you carefully select your daily checklist items, then, and the way I have it, is half of the items, half per day, are to do with protect the asset. And the other half are to do with the key relationships in your life, the things that you're trying to invest in. And that can be personally and professionally, but is the key relationship to people you're trying to serve. And so every day, whatever I'm like, you know, just having a pause or feeling crazy,

either scenario, I'm taking out that paper plan, turning to it, and I'm checking off which ones have I done, which ones are working. And ideally over time, right now, probably something like about half of those items are also routinized. But where I'm working towards is to get all of them routinized so that you just know this is when I'm doing it. Now, you can always choose not to do it. It doesn't minimize your freedom. It maximizes your clarity. It maximizes the ease of executing the things that matter most. So I really think that this kind of this work and every week doing it, getting into that, you know, weekly process is absolutely vital design work so that you aren't living life by default. You think it's okay to not answer some emails?

Speaking of. Well, I mean, of course it is. Good. I'm glad you just validated me. There are ways to do email that are so efficient. What are the ways? Well, I'll tell you my best scenario. On my worst days, I worry that my tombstone is going to read, he checked email.

But I've mixed habits over the years. But we went on a holiday as a family and there was no Wi-Fi where we were going. We could have got Wi-Fi, but we had no interest in doing that. And so for two and a half weeks, there's no Wi-Fi. But it was so great. And my children still talk about that when we talk about holidays and we've tried to really prioritize this time together. But they still talk about that trip. And I think one reason was because just the connectedness. You're just not having that slice. So what I learned from that was actually an email strategy, which is not two and a half weeks. I get that. But what happened is that it took me two hours to go through all of the emails I missed for two and a half weeks. It was just nothing. It's so much easier than checking every two minutes. So yes, check, have set times. Fine.

Here are the times I check. And people are bound to check more than that because they're so addicted and so connected. And that's fine. But if you can say, okay, I'm going to check, you know, nine in the morning, fine. I'm going to check at noon. I'm going to check at three o'clock. You're not going to miss that much. And if people can reach you in other ways, I think you can find this to be a sustainable strategy,

even in the intense times. I typically do nine to 10 each morning, uninterrupted go through answer. I can knock out a hundred emails in that time because I'm just only focused on that. And then maybe at the end of the day, I'll take like 30 minutes. But between that, I'm just kind of doing my thing, working. If you time block it, it is so much more efficient than doing it, just checking and checking and coming back to it and coming back to it all the time. And also just some like, this kind of like relates to dating almost a little bit.

It looks a little desperate when someone sends an email and you pop right back right away. It's like, Hey, what's it, you got nothing going on. You're just waiting for an email to pop in. You got nothing going on. Sometimes I get an email and I'm like, listen, I don't want to look too eager. I better wait about eight hours to hit this guy back. Taylor, don't get any ideas. Taylor's loving. Taylor's strategy was leave the thing for three weeks. We thought the guy was dead. No, Taylor was sending messages in a bottle and smoke signals. What is a book, a podcast, or a resource that you would recommend to our audience that's provided you with immense value? Seneca on the Shortness of Life. Also, a terrific essay called Catastrophe of Success.

I've never heard that one. The Catastrophe of Success. Yeah. I want to read that one. The Catastrophe of Success. Yeah. I want to read that. Yeah, it's really superb. It's by Tennessee Williams. Oh. 1947.

And it's an essay. Yeah, so it's an essay that he wrote originally in the New York Times. And it was after his play The Glass Menagerie came out. And it's about that experience. What happened is that he had suddenly had success. He was notable, and that increased massively his notoriety and the number of options coming his way. And he's living in hotels, and everyone he meets, oh, I love The Glass Menagerie. It's amazing.

It's so fantastic and he said almost it was almost just like destroyed the things that have led to success in the first place for him the ability to be focused to do good work to be a writer he's suddenly not writing anymore and and he's he just started being more and more disconnected from the work that he was you know here to do i hear this story so many times from successful people. So I will have to read that. Let's say the same kind of story. Exactly. And so and so he learned that he had basically ruining the story now. But basically, he learned that he needed to be writing that the work itself was the cure. You had to get back to the work itself.

Get back to the slight edge. Do what made you popular in the first place. Don't ever give that up. It's so easy to give up. I mean, it's so easy. This goes to the heart of the matter, is that the reason that otherwise successful people don't continue to be successful is success. Success is a poor teacher. It breeds complacency. Complacency. And also, everybody says that, and it might be true, but I don't know. That's not what I actually see, if I'm being honest.

The example I think is when people, you know, they say, hey, when I make X amount of dollars, everything's going to be great. I think if you do that, I think you're fucked. Because you get there, and then you don't know what to do. But the goal, exactly. I agree with that. But then there's another goal. There's always more. And I think the more successful you get, the harder your comparison points are. And so I think it actually, in some ways, gets harder the more successful you are. It's an odd thing, but I think it's definitely true. You have to learn to compete with yourself. You have to learn how to become successful at success. And that's a different skill set than

got you there in the first place. And part of that path is that, I mean, I'll just give you a concrete example of this in my own work, in my own industry, right, as an author, is that the number of authors whose second book, after a successful book, is that nobody's interested, that they end up writing a book that nobody wants to read, is so normal. It's like known in the publishing industry. It's the second book problem. And why is that the case? So there's a few reasons for it. But one of the reasons, I think, is that people are so busy doing the work from the first book, their brains are so into that work, that the next book ends up being just a sort of weaker version of the first one.

And so everyone goes, I think I already read that. And so it's harder, so you have to be an essentialist about it. This is why I haven't written a book for five years already since Essentialism came out. The pressure to write a book has been immense. That's a good pressure to have, I suppose, but it's still a pressure to do it. The risk all through that time, and I want to write it, so it's not like, but I suddenly have to be the one to put the restraint on, because the agent's ready to do it, and the publisher's ready to do it. So the first time

around, you're dying to get an agent. You're dying to get a publisher that cares and wants to do this. The second time around, everyone's going, okay, let's go. You know, a year into it, 18 around you're dying to get an agent you're dying to get a publisher that cares and wants to do this the second time around everyone's going okay let's go you know a year into it 18 months at most everyone's going okay let's do the next one you have to almost slow down i have yeah had to do that i'm personally very excited for the second one that's i appreciate you saying that that's nice we're we're just early days on it still but i and'm not going to reveal it. No, wait. I think you should wait. But I just finally feel like I've had, and it's taken all these years of slowly working and thinking about it, finally have something I think is very interesting.

Greg McKeown, you're a bad man. Thank you for coming on the show. Guys, Essentialism, The Discipline Pursuit of Less. If you want to learn how to be an essentialist, you've got to check this thing out. It's been an immense help to both Lauren and I. Love the show. Guys, Essentialism, The Discipline Pursuit of Less. If you want to learn how to be an essentialist, you got to check this thing out. It's been an immense help to both Lauren and I. Love the book. Like I said, I'm sitting here with the copy, completely dog-eared, got it on my Kindle, got it on the phone, just in case I start to be a non-essentialist, got to slip back into it. Thank you again, man, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Where can everyone find you? Pimp yourself out, your Instagram, your website, everything. Come to gregmckeown.com,

get on the newsletter. And then I actually, not putting anything out right Instagram, your website, everything. Come to gregmckeown.com, get on the newsletter. And then I actually not putting anything out right now, but because I've got just, I'm not just trying to, you know, scam it. You're being an essentialist. Yeah, exactly. Check out the book, everybody. It's worth it. It's worth your time. Take some of that thinking time.

And it's at Gregory McKeown on Instagram, right? At Gregory McKeown on Twitter as well. On Twitter. Okay. All right. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. And you'll have to come back when your next book comes out.

Lovely. If you guys enjoyed this episode, tag a friend to be a part of the podcast community on my latest Instagram at The Skinny Confidential. And we're going to send out a bunch of fun TSC podcast stickers. So we have these stickers now that go on your phone case. They fit perfectly on the phone case. We have one that says cheeky, cheeky, cheeky. It's really fun. Mimi loves it. And then we also have another one that says meh, which is my personal favorite. It says,

hello, my name is meh. And Taylor, you definitely need one for your phone. So if you guys want one, tag a friend on my latest Instagram, like I said, at the skinny confidential, and we'll see you next time.