Have you ever felt lost and unsure what you should actually be focusing on? These 20 lessons from Essentialism really shifted how I think about my time and energy, and I think they might do the same for you.
1. Don’t Work Harder
Most of us are taught from an early age that working harder will give us more results, and for the most part, that’s worked to a certain level throughout our lives. But it’s not the most efficient way of doing things.
Think about it this way:
If you’re trading an hour of your life for ten dollars, grinding for more hours only gets you so far. But if you start building real skills, reading, hunting for better opportunities, and that hourly rate can climb fast.
Ten dollars becomes twenty, fifty, a hundred and beyond, to levels that seem unimaginable when you’re stuck in the grind.
None of that happens without pausing to ask, “Is this even what I should be doing right now?” Sometimes stepping back is the most productive thing you can make.
2. Choices Are Actions, Not Things
Most people think of a choice as something they have, like an object sitting in their hands. But a choice is actually something you do.
Options are a thing, and sometimes we don’t have control over what our options are. That’s going to depend on your circumstances, where you’re from, a million different things.
But something we do have control over and this is super liberating once you realize it that we have control over the choices we make, the actions we take from those options.
3. Trade-Offs Are Everywhere
Every time you say yes to one thing, by default you’re saying no to something else.
Like, if I choose to eat a bowl of ice cream, I’m probably not going to be hungry enough for an apple or some fruit. Every time I choose to eat something bad, I’m in turn saying I’m not going to eat something good.
So it’s not only one action you’ve to think about, what you’re missing out on, it’s kind of the idea of opportunity cost.
If you spend a thousand dollars on a new iPhone, that’s a thousand dollars that’s not being invested, not earning 10% a year for the next 30 years.
Every action has a reaction, and you have to ask yourself, every time you spend money, eat something, sit on the couch instead of going to the gym, say yes to an opportunity, what are you saying no to? Asking that question will completely change your life.
4. Become Unavailable (Sometimes)
We need breathing room, actual mental space to figure out what really matters versus what’s just noise.
Unfortunately, a lot of our lives are just packed to the gills with stuff. We have so much going on with work, we’re attached to phones 24/7, we come home and the TV’s on, the radio’s on, people are calling us, and a lot of times we can’t take a step back and ask if we’re even going in the right direction.
There’s a story in the book about an executive who stayed at a company five years longer than he should have because he was so constantly busy working in the business that he never stopped to think, “Should I even be at this business?”
When we don’t take time to shut off our phones and just sit with ourselves, whether it’s an hour or a week, and ask, “Why am I working so hard? Should I even be running this fast in this direction?”, we lose clarity.
And a lot of times you won’t get that clarity unless you take some time to be bored, to put the phone down, to go for a walk. Something a lot of us don’t feel like we even have time for.
5. You Can’t Have Multiple Priorities
If someone asked you “What are your top priorities right now?” you might list five, ten, maybe even twenty things.
But interestingly, the word “priority” came into the English language in the 1400s as a singular word, and it stayed singular for the next 500 years until the 1900s, when we turned it into “priorities.”
We thought by changing the word we could change reality.
But you can’t have multiple priorities. You have one. When you spread your energy across twenty different “priorities,” you make average progress on all of them instead of being amazing at one. If you have 20 priorities, you don’t have a priority.
6. Decision Fatigue Is Real
The more decisions we’re forced to make, the lower quality those decisions become. And in today’s world, we probably have more choices than at any point in history.
Our phones have a thousand things we could do at any moment, companies are spending billions to steal our attention, and we have so many options for what to wear, where to work, what to do that we end up exhausted and making poor choices.
This is why I love the idea of making life as automatic as possible through solid routines. A simple wardrobe means you don’t have to think about what to wear. A consistent morning routine means the first hour just handles itself. When we can put the small decisions on autopilot, we have more energy left for the big ones.
Even better: find the one decision that makes a thousand future decisions for you. Saying no to starting a new business, leading a new project, or taking on a new commitment that one no saves you from an infinite number of decisions down the road.
7. Ask Better Questions
Let’s say you’re cleaning out your closet. Most people ask, “Will I ever wear this again?” And the answer is almost always yes, so nothing gets tossed and the closet stays stuffed.
The same thing happens when we try to declutter our lives, tasks, obligations, and random commitments.
We need to switch the question. Instead ask: “Will this activity or effort make the highest possible contribution toward my goals?” And if not, should I even be doing it?
8. Don’t Fall for Sunk Cost Bias
Let’s say you’re going through that closet and you’ve got a pile of stuff you know you should get rid of, but you feel bad tossing it because you spent money on it.
Studies show people value things they own more than other people value those same things. There’s sentimental reasons, money spent, whatever it is. It’s really hard to let go.
A question that can help: “If I didn’t own this, how much would I pay to buy it?” That usually reveals how much you actually value something because if you haven’t used it in two years, you probably wouldn’t spend much to get it back. So just let it go, or sell it and make a few bucks.
9. Small Wins Build Momentum
Research has shown that the most powerful form of human motivation is progress. Because when you get a small win, it starts building confidence that you can actually achieve this thing.
Even if it’s tiny, you wake up, brush your teeth, read a page of a book, don’t check your phone for the first hour, you already feel like you’ve accomplished something.
That momentum sets up the rest of your day. So break things down, create small wins for whatever goal you’re chasing, and just let that thing snowball.
10. Three Questions to Find Your One Thing
Here are three questions to help find the thing you can really go all-in on:
- What deeply inspires you?
- What am I particularly talented at?
- What could make a significant contribution to the world?
You probably won’t be able to answer these right away and that’s fine, because it leads into the next point. We’re not looking for a million answers here. We’re looking for the one thing. So the criteria has to be narrow.
11. Exploration Comes Before Clarity
A lot of times, non-essentialists will just do whatever opportunity comes their way without really thinking about it.
But essentialists specifically go out and try new things with the intent of finding that one thing that’s theirs.
The path to that one thing rarely looks clean or direct. It usually involves trying a bunch of different jobs, side hustles, and ideas, some of which will clearly not be the right fit, and some of which will surprise you.
Working for someone else might teach you that you hate it. A random side project might turn into something you’re genuinely passionate about.
None of that clarity comes without actually trying things. All that stumbling around isn’t wasted time, it’s how most people eventually find the thing worth going all in on.
And if you want to speed up that process, here are some powerful learning principles that help you grow faster and smarter.
12. Understand the Power Law
Most of us assume there’s a straight line between effort and results.
But according to the power law, certain efforts lead to exponentially bigger results than others. A top engineer doesn’t just outperform an average one by a little, sometimes it’s 100x, sometimes more.
Every business and every life has a few things that drive an insane amount of results. This is basically the 80/20 rule taken to an extreme.
The goal is to find those high-leverage actions and focus on them, instead of staying buried in all the busy work that keeps most people from ever getting there.
13. How to Stick to a New Habit
Most people start a new habit by going all out. Full page of journaling on day one, full gym session on day two, totally burned out by day ten. New Year’s resolutions are basically a masterclass in this failure pattern.
The fix is simple: do less than you feel like. Instead of writing a page, write one sentence a day. You can do it in 15 seconds. Instead of destroying yourself at the gym, just commit to showing up for five minutes.
The whole idea of “less but better” is really the core of this entire book. When the bar is that low, you can always clear it, no matter how you feel.
And more often than not, once you walk through the gym doors, you end up staying way longer than five minutes anyway.
14. You’re Going to Die, So Choose Accordingly
One of the top regrets people have at the end of their lives is that they didn’t live true to themselves; they lived according to what other people expected of them.
In order to avoid that, you have to say no. And not just to obvious time-wasters, but sometimes to really good opportunities too.
It’s easy to think saying yes to everything is the safe play — more podcasts, more projects, more side ventures, more commitments. But every yes comes at a cost.
Saying yes to one thing always means saying no to something else, and if you’re not deliberate about it, the things that get crowded out tend to be the ones that matter most — family, health, work that actually feels meaningful. Saying no to good things is sometimes the only way to make room for the great ones.
15. Apply Zero-Based Budgeting to Your Life
The idea behind zero-based budgeting is that nothing is automatically justified. Every expense has to earn its place from scratch each period. We should apply that same thinking to our lives.
Just because your morning routine has always looked a certain way doesn’t mean it’s still the best way.
Just because you’ve always volunteered for extra projects or stayed in relationships that drain your energy and motivation, just because something is the status quo doesn’t mean it deserves to stay that way.
Every month or two, look honestly at how you’re spending your time. Ask whether it’s actually moving you toward your goals. And if it’s not, cut it, no matter how long it’s been around.
Final Thought
Essentialism isn’t about doing more.
It’s about doing the right things.
When you stop chasing everything and start focusing on what truly matters, life feels lighter, clearer, and more intentional.
And honestly? That shift alone is life-changing.
You might also want to read 23 lessons from Rich Dad Poor Dad that can help improve your finances and life.
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