The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

I’m a big fan of Matt D’Avella and I enjoy a lot of the content he creates on his YouTube channel. I found myself tremendously inspired by this recent interview he did with Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.

In this short video, McKeown explains that if you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will. I would even go so far to say that if you don’t prioritize your life, everyone else and everything else will. I know I’m finding it harder and harder to escape the state of busyness and overwhelm I seem to constantly find myself in. This certainly has a direct impact on my ability to find enough time for creative work.

The Trivial Many Versus the Vital Few

While I haven’t read McKeown’s book yet, watching this interview has reminded me that I need to force myself to step back from all of this busyness and overwhelm in order to try and identify the vital few areas that are truly important to me. Then I need to become more comfortable with saying no to everything else.

The justification for slowing down, becoming more deliberate, becoming more focused is single, and it’s this; if you really believe that a few things are exceptionally valuable and that most are things are noise, then you will automatically, naturally, start to change your behavior. It’s about what matters most to you in life. It’s not just about less, it’s about essential things, essential relationships, essential living. Most of the stuff that’s going on is not vital. It’s the trivial many versus the vital few.” – Greg McKeown

The Work of Life

Instead of waiting for milestones like New Years or my birthday to step back and take stock of my life, I’m now realizing that this is something that I need to be doing much more frequently in order to keep the vital few things I should be focusing on front and center. As McKeown states “it’s the work of life.”

I’m looking forward to reading Essentialism in the coming weeks as I dig deeper into making some major lifestyle changes that I hope will allow me to find more time and energy to focus on what’s truly important.

If you want to learn more about Greg McKeown and his book Essentialism, check out his website.

If you enjoyed Matt’s video and you’re into minimalism, I encourage you to check out his YouTube channel.