Book #25: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

Well, I hit 25 books before halfway through the year, so at least maybe I'll read 50 books this year! Haha. I don't know if I will ever make it up to 100 books again. But I feel like my reading less is perhaps an example of me living the "essentialist" lifestyle that McKeown is espousing in this book. Basically the book is promoting a lifestyle where we get rid of all the nonessential distractions that are making us too busy, and focus on living and working in a way towards our most important and beloved goals and purpose. McKeown spends some time detailing what being an "essentialist" really means, what are some of the things an essentialist must do/value, and what processes we can use to focus on only doing what we truly want. These are some of the most important points that stood out to me:

- Almost everything is nonessential. I think this is very true.
- If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will. He tells some excellent stories that exemplify this. You need to decide what your boundaries and priorities are, and stick to them.
- You cannot do it all. There are trade-offs for everything. If you want to add a new opportunity, something else will suffer.
- "If it isn't a clear yes, then it's a clear no." If you can't say with 100% certainty that you want to do something, then you shouldn't be doing it. Learn to say no gracefully if you're being asked to do something you don't want to do.

I read this book feeling the whole time like, "Yes, mmhmm, yep, I agree." They all seemed like great points, but none of it felt all that earth-shattering to me. Maybe that means I am already living a pretty essentialist lifestyle--which I think may be true. Being a parent of small children has meant that I have learned to remove the temptations to do things which sound like they may be fun (a day-long outing to downtown Dallas?) which would not make my life easier, and I have learned to consciously thrust aside many of the voices which say I should be doing lots of other things and trying to cause me mom-guilt. Like McKeown says, almost everything is nonessential. On any given day, I don't have to do anything other than keeping my boys happy and me sane. Of course, I have other things I want to do--projects for me, learning for the boys--but if they don't happen or if it's going to cause me stress, then we won't do it. I think there are probably lots of ways I could be more focused on prioritizing, and this book and How Will You Measure Your Life? have both made me want to actually verbalize those priorities and start taking steps to deliberately be working on them.