The Main Thing, If It Is the Main Thing, Is the Main Thing

A Reflection on Essentialism

“Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It’s about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”

— Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

The most interesting emotion I have felt in the last few weeks is increased contentedness and satisfaction- which I found absolutely bizarre. You would imagine that leaving one of the elite oil trading jobs in the world would leave a significant hole in the “satisfaction” measure. However, I have found myself feeling better about my contributions in general by investing significantly more resources into being a better Dad and Husband.

This realization has reminded me of a common thread I have found throughout my life- you generally have the most success and joy when you recognize the main thing and devote the vast majority (If not the entirety) of your time and resources to it. In this case, I have told myself for the last 5 years that my family was the main priority in my life, but now is the first time that I have seen the results of seeing all my best energy, judgement and enthusiasm being pointed in this area. For the first time in too long, the main thing is truly the main thing!

This focus on the “main thing” is at the heart of Essentialism- a philosophy espoused by Greg McKeown. I was introduced to Greg’s work through this Tim Ferris Podcast (Forgive the title of the podcast- I was in my deep thoughts era at work). Basically, Greg’s argument is we have a limited amount of energy/focus in the day, and we have to actively choose to focus on our priorities. If we don’t ruthlessly control how this energy is spent, the world/someone else will choose how our energy/focus is used.

This is a pretty easy concept to grasp in today’s world of technology. However, like all powerful concepts, it is also very difficult to practice. I think General Eisenhower said it best, “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” Our life is constantly filled with different alarm bells ringing, from random emails from bosses to Instagram ads that are all competing for our attention. In contrast, the most important things in our life run quietly in the background, a consistent hum- be it spending time playing with your kids or focusing on a new long-term product strategy. In today’s version of self-test, best-test, I find myself saying, “oh let me get this out of the way so I can then return to focus on this”. However, since these random alerts are ubiquitous in life these days, I never return to the important task at hand. instead, I am just washed away by the river of day to day problems and alerts. It is only when a problem strikes, or the timeline is prompt, for the important thing, that you find yourself unprepared and rushed. All that time you should have spent preparing and repairing that important thing has been wasted by the little knick-knacks of life- a true shame.

Let me give you a surprising example I have found from this principle in my own life. Take offensive football strategy- one of my true passions. Playing at Stanford, I had the fortune for playing for some great offensive football coaches- be it Mike Bloomgren, Pep Hamilton or Greg Roman. For them, coaching Stanford guys is an offensive coordinator’s dream come true. You are dealing with perhaps the highest IQ football room in any level of football (only the Ivy League and elite D3 schools can compare). These are players who can absorb complex concepts and adjust in real time. However, I found this also created a trap for coaches. Oftentimes, they would create gameplans that planned for everything that defenses would do, instead of ones focused on our strengths. They became reactive rather than proactive by losing focus on the main thing.

The best example I have is a game we played in Washington at Century Link stadium. We played against a Justin Wilcox defense in the 4th game of the year. We were clearly the better team talent wise, and Wilcox knew it, so he threw a Hail Mary and played a completely different defense than the one we saw on tape. At that point, because we had been so detailed and focused on a gameplan for beating that defense we prepared for, we did not have an identity for who we were as an offense, and we could not adjust real time.

I contrast this to my freshman year. We were a power running team. We knew it. The defense knew it. The crowd knew it. Even my grandma knew it. In our playbook, nearly every single play had a kill to a power concept that we were to run if we had any confusion about the look the defense was giving us at that moment. Our philosophy was this was who we are, and we will execute this play against every look under the sun. It may not be a great play, an explosive play, but it will be a positive play, and we will survive to the next down. This gave the offense an extreme amount of confidence in its ability to execute because the players always had a fallback to the main thing if everything went to hell.

Now, applying this back to my own life. The heart of essentialism to me is not focusing on solving every problem that life sends my way, it is instead focusing my energy on the right problems and avenues. It becomes a selection issue rather than a capability issue, which frankly, can be scary. What if I devote my time and energy by focusing on the wrong thing? This is a very fair critique and highlights why I don’t think approach is very suitable for those in their young 20s, who still have a lot of searching to do before finding those right things. However, in my case, I have the luxury of knowing that I do have a very clear priority, my family, so this framework becomes very useful to build on as I examine what other opportunities exist in my working life over the next year. As I look ahead to new possibilities, I’m more confident than ever that when the main thing truly stays the main thing, the rest of life falls into place.

Onwards and Upwards,

Conor

PS If you are interested in exploring Essentialism more, I highly recommend the podcast above. Surprisingly, I don’t necessarily recommend the book as I found it filled with a lot of non-essential stuff