Essentialism
Takeaway:
The busyness in education never goes away, and the problem has only grown during a pandemic! By choosing to do less you can focus on what is more important. This leads not only to having a bigger impact on your students, but it can also help bring sanity to our own crazy lives.
Guiding Questions:
How does the pace of your work contribute to fatigue?
Are you feeling a sense of high value for your time?
How will saying no to others and projects free you to do better work?
Given the choice, what are the most important one or two things that you should do today?
Summary:
In racing there is this idea of slowing down to go fast. Not only does this apply to preparing for turns in the road, but also in decision making. Essentialism is all about slowing down to choose to do less and make less decisions, so we can focus on where we can make the biggest impact.
It is not uncommon for me to have ten or more meetings scheduled in a day. Sounds impossible, right? While I make it “work,” I really cannot contribute meaningfully in all ten meetings. Looking at the craziness of my daily schedule causes me to reflect on the best way to spend my time. It turns out, that many meetings leaves one drained and less useful and creative.
The Essentialist has learned to say no or carves out large blocks of time on their calendar. Making this shift for me has not only been a time saver, but has allowed me to be much more productive in my most important work. Of course, this provides the added benefit of also having a strong sense of accomplishment at the end of the work day knowing that I could tackle my biggest one or two items that really needed my attention.
While the term minimalism is not mentioned in the book (as far as I can remember), basically essentialism is minimalism for the mind and work. Minimalism has a very niche following of people who reduce their items to free them and then money for more important things. This provides almost a tinge of humanistic religiousness to the idea of essentialism. Nonetheless, it is a worthwhile pursuit.
Often when I look at my to do list I can see the lack of minimalism as routinely there a dozen major tasks hovering over my head. Keeping the Essentialist perspective in mind, I aim to tackle just one or two major items each day. No, this does not allow me to complete every task every day, but I do get to focus on the one’s that have more meaning or importance. This give me a sense of what I should be doing and some pride for tackling the big issues.
The majority of the book is full of tips and stories about choosing less. It is an enjoyable read and is even better as an audiobook. If you need a kick to get better sleep, spend time with your family, or how to dedicate your prescribed work time to have the biggest impact, then Essentialism is a worthy read.
Leadership Thoughts:
Leaders can have 1-40 people reporting to them directly, or more! Learning how to plan and design your time can literally be a lifesaver and permits you to be dedicated to the real top one or two priorities for each day. Model this behavior for your staff and help them to reduce the distracting tasks that they run in to. Show your teams that you can accomplish more by doing less.