Weekly Wisdom #339 - Less but better

Essentialism, Saying No, Hell Yeah or No & Cutting What Doesn't Matter

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Happy Sunday!

I had 14 things on my to-do list last Monday. By Wednesday I’d done three of them and felt behind.

So I went back to basics. I went through the list and asked the same question I always come back to: “If I couldn’t do anything else this week, would I pick this one?”

Eight of the fourteen didn’t survive the question. They were fine ideas. Useful, even. But they weren’t the thing that actually needed to happen.

Greg McKeown calls this the disciplined pursuit of less. His book Essentialism argues that most of us are spread across too many things that barely matter, and the cost isn’t just inefficiency — it’s that we never make real progress on anything.

The word “priority” used to be singular. It meant the one thing that comes first. We turned it into “priorities” somewhere along the way, which kind of defeats the point.

I struggle with this. There’s always another project that seems worth starting, another channel worth exploring, another idea that could work. And they probably could. But not all at once.

The uncomfortable truth is that saying no to good opportunities is harder than saying no to bad ones. Bad ones are obvious. Good ones feel like you’re leaving something on the table.

But you’re always leaving something on the table. The question is whether you’re choosing what stays or just letting everything pile up.

Derek Sivers has a useful filter: “If it’s not a hell yeah, it’s a no.” Sounds extreme. In practice it’s just honest. Most things that feel like a “maybe” or “I should” end up draining time without returning much.

I’m not great at this yet. But the weeks where I actually commit to fewer things are the weeks where things move.

What would you cut from your list if you could only keep three things?

Have a great week!

Graham

📚 Book Notes: Essentialism — Greg McKeown​

McKeown’s central argument: if you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.

The part that got me was his distinction between the “non-essentialist” and the “essentialist.” The non-essentialist says yes to everything to avoid missing out. The essentialist says no to almost everything to make space for what counts.

It’s not a productivity book in the usual sense. It’s more of a permission slip to do less. Which, for people who tend to overcommit (hi), turns out to be the most productive thing you can do.

📖 Article: Hell Yeah or No — Derek Sivers​

Short post, big idea. If you’re not excited about something, don’t do it.

Sivers wrote this about commitments and opportunities, but I’ve found it works for tasks too. That project you keep pushing to next week? Probably not a hell yeah. The meeting you’re dreading? Same.

The filter isn’t perfect. Some important things don’t feel exciting (taxes, dentist). But for discretionary work — the stuff you choose to take on — it cuts through the noise fast.

From the Blog

📝 How Stripe Turned 7 Lines of Code into $107 Billion — Stripe’s early bet was essentialism in action. They picked one problem — payments were too hard — and ignored everything else until they owned it.

📝 AI Farms Nobody Talks About — The temptation with AI tools is to automate everything. The better move is figuring out which few things are worth automating at all.

📣 Quote

“The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” — Lin Yutang

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