From the Vault | A Chat With Greg McKeown
This episode of Books for Men features an edition of “From the Vault”—a new segment where I share an episode from my previous podcast, It's Not What It Seems. This is a great chat I had with Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism, a book featured on the pod earlier this month. So much gold here. Listen for more! (Original publish date: 10/7/18.)
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Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. And so this week I am introducing a brand new segment. It's something I'm calling from the Vault, which is aptly titled because that's exactly what it is. I go digging into crates to pull out an episode from my previous podcast. It's not what it seems. And I thought that this conversation with Greg McKeown is appropriate given the fact that I featured his book earlier this month. With that being said, you might have noticed that I pronounced his name wrong in the episode I did earlier in the month. So Greg, if you ever hear this, I'm sorry, I'm getting it right now. If you want more information on him, you could just go to his website, GregMcKeown.com. I've cut out all of the pre-amble from the original interview that I did with him.
(01:00)
So, it's going to jump right into the conversation. And I have to admit that I was a little cautious or a little wary listening to an interview that I did what is now close to five years ago. So the original publishing of this interview was ten seven 2018. So it's hard to believe, but I'm not one to really listen back on or read any of my old stuff because you know change and it's not something that's always easy to do. It feels right in the moment. I will say that this conversation not only surprised me, but I feel like it is extremely evergreen. We get to some really good places in this conversation and what's really remarkable to me is just how influential this line of thinking and potentially even this conversation could have been to me ultimately following the path that I have and changed and developed and grew into the person that I am today, for better or worse.
(02:07)
And so it was really interesting to go back and listen to it. I hope you find it as interesting to hear it for the first time. So just a couple of things of note before we jump in. One, the sound is going to be a little bit more polished. It was a completely different show. It was fully produced by my then-amazing producer, Dave Lishansky. And so it's just going to have a little bit of a different vibe. So just get ready for that. The other thing is at the end of the episode, Greg recommends an article called “The Tail End.” And then I chime in and say there's another article that's very similar called Life Weeks by Tim Urban. And upon this most recent listening, I realize that we're talking about the same article. We don't put two and two together in the conversation, but I figured I had the opportunity to clarify that.
(02:55)
So why not clarify it? And then lastly, before we jump in, I just wanted to reiterate that this is an interview that took place five years ago, although it is indeed older, and I'm using air quotes now. The content of the conversation is extremely evergreen. So, I hope you enjoy it because this is something that I planned to do more of with this brand-new segment on Books for Men called From the Vault. And with that being said, there isn't going to be any ending to this episode, so I just wanted to remind you here and now if you enjoy it, please share it with friends, family members, and other people who you think might like it. The goal of this podcast is to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. And by sharing the podcast, you are also increasing awareness around the mission, which is the most important thing.
(03:48)
Second, if you are a regular listener, I want to invite you to follow, subscribe, rate, review, and all that good stuff on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on. And of course, for more information, you can go to BooksforMen.org where you could sign up for the monthly newsletter, which is a roundup of all the books and authors, and episodes that you hear on this podcast. As well as top quotes, more book recommendations that are newsletter exclusive as well as book information and links in just a whole lot more. I'm constantly developing that. So, if you want to sign up for that, you can go to BooksforMen.org. Now, without further ado, here is my conversation from my previous podcast. It's not what it seems with none other than Greg McKeown.
Douglas Vigliotti (04:41)
Greg McKeown, welcome to the show.
Greg McKeown (04:42)
It's great to be with you.
Douglas Vigliotti (04:43)
I'm thrilled to have you on the show primarily because you authored one of my favorite books, Essentialism: The Discipline Pursuit of Less. And Personally, our chat couldn't have come at a better time for me because I just feel like I've been adding more and more to my plate lately. I'm writing my next book, I launched this podcast, then there's just a regular business hustle and bustle of life. So I decided to read the book again and I enjoyed it just as much the second time through. And I'm really, really excited to just go deeper with you.
Greg McKeown (05:12)
Oh, I'm just so pleased that it's relevant for you that you've come back to it. It's been one of the happiest things for me about writing Essentialism isn't just that people read the book more, much more than I expected them to, but how many people have come back to reading it? And I feel like that's not so much a compliment to me, but the idea that this really is such a relevant subject as something that we're all struggling, myself included.
Douglas Vigliotti (05:35)
Oh, totally. So I think that it's extremely relevant and you nailed it right on the head there. It's an ode, if you will, to the concept as a whole in how you just hit the nail right on the head. And it's extremely, extremely relevant. And I think that the listeners are really going to get a feel for why that is. So as we start our conversation, and with that being said, I thought a really good place to start the conversation would be with a question that I've heard you mention that has kept you awake and has driven you for the last 15 years of your life. And that question was, why is it that otherwise successful or capable people don't break through to the next level? So my question for you is, after all this time, have you finally figured it out?
Greg McKeown (06:21)
Well, I think it was a beautiful question because let's just back up for a second to give that question some context. I was working with Silicon Valley companies and noticed that there was a predictable pattern for why they didn't do what they ought to do. If I have a race with someone and they win that race by 50 yards and then we race a second time and they get to begin the second race with the full 50-yard advantage they had in the first place, so then they win again by another 50 yards, now they're a hundred yards ahead of me and we race a third time, the chance that they're going to win that third race with all that advantage is very high. I mean, when I ask people to give a statistic, they'll say a hundred percent. They're not even saying it's probably going to happen. They're saying there's no scenario that's going to happen. And that's what we believe should happen when people are successful and they continue to be successful. But what we find is that it isn't what happens as successful people and companies do not actually continue to succeed as they ought to. And so that's the context for why this question is so curious to me.
Douglas Vigliotti (07:34)
Yeah. So what you're saying is that at a point they just kind of level out, or it's not even about leveling out per se, but it's more they don't have the solution, they don't know where to go next.
Greg McKeown (07:46)
Well, they plateau or fail altogether. I mean, that's what happens to otherwise successful people in companies if you study them and you look at the data as I have done, that's the pattern. So why now? That was how you began the question. I want to address that, but I just wanted to begin with that context now, why? There are lots of reasons why. I'm not suggesting there is only one reason, but there's one reason that came to me that was counterintuitive and it was surprising to me cause it was hidden in plain sight. And that was why it was hard for me to see it at first. And what I found was this, this is the predictable pattern. In the early days of an organization, there would be a small group of people focused on a specific problem at the right time. So that's like phase one is clarity. They know who they are, what they're trying to do, who's doing what, and they can go after it. That clarity, I would argue, has a causal relationship to phase two, success. So clarity leads to success, and that makes sense. If you really know what you're to do, who you are, what you're not trying to do, clearly divine roles, and so on, you're going to start achieving success. And that is in fact what would happen to them. But success because success is just what people want to end. It leads to an increase in options and opportunities. Now that also sounds like the right problem to have more people want to work with these Silicon Valley companies. There was more money to invest in new opportunities and business ideas. You can hire more people, you have more partners that want to partner with you. There's this just an increase of options and opportunities, an exponential increase in some situations. Like I said, that sounds like the right problem to have, but it does in fact turn out to be a problem if it leads to what Jim Collins has called the undisciplined pursuit of more. And so the undisciplined pursuit of more, we had to find a new word for that. Let's chaos. It's greed. It's a series of things. And if you fall into that pattern instead of success, begetting success, success will start to beget. Plateauing success may even beget failure. And that's then the true but paradoxical conclusion is that success can become a catalyst for failure.
Douglas Vigliotti (10:17)
And you even make reference to that in the book as the paradox of success. The more success, the more requests, the more demands on your time, the higher susceptibility there is for static and decreased focus, right?
Greg McKeown (10:30)
Yes, that's exactly right. And so that's true at the organizational level where I first observed it. And that paradox for success is also true at the individual level. So it's a human phenomenon and not a business phenomenon. And so individuals listening to this right now may well have fallen into this pattern unintentionally.
Douglas Vigliotti (10:53)
So for the purpose of the conversation, how are we defining success? Because success is a relative word. So what is success to you?
Greg McKeown (11:01)
I'll answer that in just a second. But the first thing I would say is that actually almost any kind of success, almost any definition of success, still holds the paradox that we're describing. So whether somebody says success for me is winning an Olympic called medal, fine, okay? So you have clarity. Either way, success breeds options and opportunities. And suddenly that undermined the very things that led to success in the first place. So the paradox remains true regardless of the definition of success. So that's the first I think, important thing. I mean, success for me means living a life that really matters. It means completing my unique and essential mission in life. And so that means that the work of my life is to find, remove the other things that would take me away from that, and to complete that, that's the work. And that is also the work of being an essentialist. There are really three pieces to being an essentialist, to living and leading in a way that addresses the paradox of success. And that is to explore what is essential, eliminate what is not, and to build a system in your life to make it as effortless as possible to do the things that you've identified as mattering.
Douglas Vigliotti (12:25)
So that is great. I mean, I think you're leading perfectly right now into what the essence of essentialism is. And before we jump in, I think just for some context in the book, you tell a great story about how you were at a crossroads in your life and you were in England at law school and you were reading and writing in your spare time, and then all of a sudden you made a major turn and you moved to the states, you became an author, a speaker, a teacher. You wrote essentialism, right? I think that that journey or maybe an explanation of how you made that decision and how this all came to be would be a really good launching point to lead us into essentialism as a concept.
Greg McKeown (13:04)
So you sort of gave the overview, but I was in the United States, and I was visiting some friends. They put me in touch with someone who was in the world of education. He was an educator. When I met with him, he was an author as well. He just said something in passing. He said, “Look, if you do decide to stay in America, then you should join this consultation committee that I'm working on.” And I never did. I never even followed up with him about it really. It was just kind of a passing comment. But there was something in what he said that had a curious force about it. And it was really this. It was the assumption that one could do something completely different if you decided to stay in America, stay in America, I'm at law school and committed, oh, you can make a different choice. What if you didn't have to do what you're doing? What if you don't have to do any of the things that you're currently doing? What if you were liberated to make a new choice? And so I remember leaving his office and I grabbed a piece of paper and sat and brainstormed for 20 minutes, what would you do if you could do anything, if you didn't have to do this, if you were free and you could really explore broadly and boldly anything. And that's what I then did. And when I was finished, when I looked at the piece of paper, what I was struck by was not what I'd written down, but what I hadn't written down. And I hadn't written down law school, which as you said is a problem, is a problem because I was at law school. So suddenly there was this eureka moment of right, there's a disconnect here. There's a disconnect between what I am committed to doing, what I am currently pursuing and what I would pursue if I could really choose right now, fresh and here. And so really after that moment, there was no going back. But I remember along the way, I did think I better call my parents. I wasn’t quite sure.
Douglas Vigliotti (15:08)
I’m sure, this conversation went over well.
Greg McKeown (15:11)
It was interesting, really. My mother answered the phone fortunately, and she listened to what she said, I think you better talk to Dad. So he comes on the phone. I mean, what would you say, by the way? I mean if you'd been my dad and back then after all this time, all this money, what would you say?
Douglas Vigliotti (15:27)
Stay in law school.
Greg McKeown (15:29)
Stay in law school. That's what advice you to give me. Well, my father listened to me, which wasn't highly what I was expecting. And then at the end, he became quite Churchillian about the whole thing. Son, son, you know what we've always told you? By the way, what do you think that he thinks? He's always told me.
Douglas Vigliotti (15:54)
I know that if I got a call from my son, if I was father, and I got a call from my son telling me that I had an epiphany moment, but I sat down for 20 minutes. I did an exercise, and I came to this conclusion. I came to this conclusion and I don't want to spoil the story and told me that I'm moving to the States to become an author and a teacher. I don't know, I'd have a little bit of an unease about it.
Greg McKeown (16:22)
Yeah, for sure. He said, well, we've always told you, son … because all Englishmen quote Shakespeare over team crumpets breakfast in the morning. He pulls a line straight out of Hamlet till I own self be true. That's what we've always told you, son. He had never said that to me in his whole life, but he pulled it out at the right moment. So I mean, that was the beginning of a completely different life and direction and trajectory for my life. My life would've been materially different, directionally different, aspirationally different without that decision. So that's when I started teaching and writing. That's when I felt liberated to pursue this teach and write. That was the new mantra. Pursue interesting questions, want to write about them, want to make an impact, want to make a contribution. And it really has been a marvelous adventure. And it's not over yet. So I mean that led to who I married, my amazing wife. We just celebrated our 18th anniversary, if you can believe it. We children. It led to undergraduate at BYU and graduate work at Stanford. I mean, there's this whole adventure that comes out of it and eventually leads to these questions and this discovery, naming, coining Essentialism, and writing this book, it's gone on to do really well. It's this adventure now in being able to take this message to the world. And it's been translated into 25 languages thereabouts, travel all over the world, trying to work with senior leaders in every kind of industry and company. I mean, it's very interesting work. And the reason I say all of that, why I point to at least elements that for me have been key to my own mission in life and in a sense of being on that path is that there is a key in that story of trading off one thing for another thing. And every major breakthrough of my life and certainly of my career has been in key moments of trade-off where you don't just, okay, well how do I sort of fit in both here? How can I cram them all in? You make a trade-off. You do something different than you were expecting to do differently than other people are doing. And sometimes those are quite hard. Now, most of the time they're hard and because you are sacrificing something, you're killing one option in order to produce something else that you believe will be a greater contribution down the road. And so that was the first, but there's been more than one along the journey.
Douglas Vigliotti (18:54)
So I think that's one of the essential ways to look at life in general. And it's really encapsulated in a quote. There are no solutions that are only trade-offs, right? So I forget who says that. It's one of the great thinkers, and I don't want to misquote it, but I'll find it and link it up in the show notes. But it's really just the idea that no matter what path you choose, there is no definitive right or wrong. You're giving up something to get something else. And you articulated that beautifully in that story, and I'm surely, surely a supporter of that. Another thing that you had made mentioned and we started to allude to, I think most people would assume essentialism means choosing a life of close-mindedness, right? You're focusing on one thing and you're figuring it out and you're focusing on one thing and you're not doing anything else, which there are some elements of truth to that, but I think the first step in essentialism is exploration. So I would love for you to maybe speak a little bit about how exploration and open-mindedness really play into Essentialism.
Greg McKeown (19:56)
If you skip the exploration element of Essentialism, you're no longer living Essentialism. You're living some other philosophy, someone else's ideas. And you shouldn't call it essentialism. It turns into no. And I didn't write a book called, no, I wrote a book called Essentialism, and that makes all the difference. It's about pursuing what is most important. But unless people think that what's most important in their life is narrow and bland and colorless, I mean if that's what's really important to you find, you can create that life if you want. But I don't think that's what is most important to most people. Most people want a rich life full of meaningful relationships, a great contribution and a sense of satisfaction and peace in doing what we came here to do. That's what Essentialism is, that is the thrust of Essentialism. So how best to achieve that you must explore. You must be looking broadly and boldly. I mean, this is an unusual example, but…
Douglas Vigliotti (20:59)
We love it. We love unusual examples.
Greg McKeown (21:01)
Well, I was at a camp recently, Steve Harvey runs a camp in which he is trying to help basically fatherless boys. There are hundreds of these boys that he has come up to this camp and he invites their mothers as well. And so, I've been asked to come and speak on Essentialism. And one of the things he said that I thought was broad and bold as he said, he said, really what you need to do, he's talking to the mothers and he, he's being very open raw as well. But he said, he's said, listen here, the problem is that you are asking God for things that are too small. That's how he put it. You're saying things like he says you're praying and you're saying, help me pay the rent, and then he's going to help you pay the rent. Is he ever, did I help you pay the rent? Cause eventually you're going to be, he said, but you got to ask for something bigger, something different, something better, much bigger, much better. He went on to tell this story. He said, I was completely homeless for three years. I mean, I was living in a car on my own for three years. You can cut that anywhere you like, but if you on year two, you are feeling pretty rough. Yeah, that's a pretty rough way to go. I mean, it's fine. You hear the story now from now looking backward and oh well this has a happy ending and he is gone on to achieve a variety of things that were meaningful to him, but that was tough. So he says, I was here, I lived in this world. He says, here's what you've got to do. He says, you've got to make a list that thirst. He said 150 things. And then he said, really? I don't even mean 150, it's not supposed to be 150 things. You should write down a list of 400 things. And his criteria were that each one of them you couldn't accomplish without God's help. Oh, that was his challenge. That's how he framed it. That's how he puts it. That's what he put to the group. I thought that was a very essentialist suggestion. As soon as I had that thought, I realized most people hearing this would not think that I would think that this was essentialist, because they're so focused on the idea that essentialism is about only one thing and so on, but it is essentialist because it doesn't mean you commit to 400 things. Of course not. But explore that broadly. He said, the problem is he said all of you, he said, you guys try and do this. He says, you're going to run out of things at 25, thereabouts, all these big things, the biggest things you can think of. And at 25 you're like, okay, I'm out. And that's precisely why it's a great exercise. I've started doing it and I've already been surprised at how hard it is. Big, big goals. I've put big goals down up to like 50-something. Now, each one of these is huge, but it's pushing and stretching the fabric of your mind. It's helping you to break the bounds of what you've previously imagined doing. And you are thinking, of course, big now. You continue doing this. I will continue doing this until 400 things are on this list. I, I'm committed to this challenge. I believed in the process. There will be really interesting and exciting ideas that come. And then of course after that, I'm going to have to prioritize. I'm going to have to go through the elimination process, but don't eliminate before you've got the essential things there. You eliminate, before you even got great things on the page, you kind of end up with an essentialist life.
Douglas Vigliotti (24:26)
It's kind of hard to understand what those vital few things are if you don't have a big enough pool to pull from, like testing any kind of anything. If you're testing anything out, if the data set is too small, it's not statistically relevant. So in this regard, it's you're creating a data set of subject matters that you're interested in or things you want for your life that you're interested in. And then you're committed to exploring those and then slowly eliminating the ones that aren't the vital few that are most visceral to you. And I think that that elimination part is where things get pretty hard. I know it's hard for me and it's something that I tend to be a good explorer and a bad eliminator.
Greg McKeown (25:09)
But I still want to just push on it. Just to add more on that, because that may be true. What you're saying may be true, but I think you may not be as good an explorer as you think. That's a very presumptuous thing to say. You might be the world's best explorer for all I know. But in my experience, what I find is that people actually, they explore a lot. Yes. But that's not the same as being a great explorer. The great explorer. Eventually, the whole definition of a great explorer is that you find something so big and so interesting and so right, that you are willing to give up almost anything to achieve it. So elimination isn't as hard as you then think. Cause the yes is so clear, so big, so right, so vivid, so visionary, so wonderful. And that is precisely why when you say I'm good at exploring but not good at eliminating, I question it. When you find it, it's a 10 out of 10 on importance. It's 10 out of 10 on clarity. You are sure with every element of you deep into your cellular makeup, you go, this is right and this is what I am supposed to do, built to do, meant to do, and I'm willing therefore cause that's so clear. And so therefore, of course, I'd be willing to give up this thing or that thing. Of course, I'd be willing to put aside this project, this initiative, and that opportunity, because this one is such a game changer and so correct. And so, and that's happened to me, as I say, not once, but a few times. It takes work to find it. Yeah, it takes work. You got to keep exploring and you got to keep going. And for me, I mean imagine being married to somebody who explores this much in this, but that's what I'm doing until something comes that's so right, I can feel it's in me, it's obvious, it's clear, it's right, and then okay, then it becomes pursue that or bust. I mean for me, Stanford was one of these goals for me. So I don't normally talk about the Stanford journey, but for me, that was so big. There was no way it was on the edge of all possibility to me. It was impossible to me that I would ever get into Stanford. Graduate school business is the lowest acceptance rate of any business school in the world, or at least it was when I was looking into it as I recall. And not only did I feel like I was supposed to do it, I felt I should not apply anywhere else. So it was a true essentialist thing. Until then, I was exploring all the time, should I do this? Should I do that? Should I do that? Until finally that was the goal. It was so beyond what was possible. And it took me three years to get in and I applied twice, which means of course I didn't get in the first time and all the time never applied anywhere else because this was so right and so very much what I needed to do. I remember it was a Stanford or bus strategy. I wouldn't recommend that strategy to anyone else. That's like a bad idea other than I know you want to say something, I keep interrupting, but no, no, no, no. But other than it was that, right? And that's key. Essentialism isn't just about choosing one thing and going after it, just committing to something and going for it. It's finding the right thing and then of course committing to it and going for it. But if you choose the wrong thing, again, that is not Essentialism. That's a special form of non-essentialism to choose the wrong focus and commit to that deeply to go after it in some other philosophy.
Douglas Vigliotti (28:39)
So two things. One, I think one of the things that is coming really, really clear to me is you're going to spend a lot more time in the exploration phase than you are in the other two buckets, which is eliminate and execute, right? So correct me if I'm wrong, I know that this would change for every single person, but on average, or as you see Essentialism, when you look at Essentialism, are you spending significantly more time in the exploration phase than you would be in the elimination or execution phase?
Greg McKeown (29:07)
I don't know. It feels like it might be 50/50 between exploration and execution. There's a deep exploration in the way that we've been describing and discernment. You're not just exploring, exploring, exploring, and suddenly something's going to you sense in each one. What if I did that? Let's pause. What would that be like? Does that feel right? Is that the path? Okay, no, that doesn't quite feel like it. Okay, move on. Next thing you discern more, do less, discern more, commit to less, then obsess about a thing so that the 50% of execution is, then you must obsess about it. Then you must say stay on it. And that really is the adventure of life, right? There is the sensation. I'm on the right path, this is the right path, and it never gets old for me. And every time one of those big things has come to happen, come to fruition, there's another thing behind it. Something else will come forward if I go through and pay the price to find that clarity. So in my experience, clarity might be 10 times harder to get to 10 out of 10 clarity. But it's a hundred times more valuable once you have it. It has a mesmerized magical force about it to make itself manifest and happen.
Douglas Vigliotti (30:29)
Since we have a concrete example, you know provided a concrete example of something that you found through the exploration phase of Stanford. You knew at a certain point in your life at a very young guy that you found that you wanted to go to Stanford Business School, and that was through the exploration phase, I take it. What was the first thing that you did after you realized that was what you needed to do or that's what you wanted to do above everything else?
Greg McKeown (30:54)
I got to try and think. I was driving back home with my wife. I'd heard someone speak, actually, at a church, and that person was at Stanford Law School, I never met them or anything, but somehow I was just in exploration. What if I went to Stanford Business School, like an MBA and I could just feel it clear as anything? One of the next things I did, other than saying that out loud to Anna was write it down in my journal. Right? Okay, I had this experience today. This is the feeling I have. And then it's pausing again and going, okay, do I still feel it? Was that a temporary thing? Is this a persistent sensation of clarity? This is the right path, keep walking in it. And it kept on being, yes, this is the right path, this is the right path. So that was then the point I'd like to be able to pursue along the journey. I mean, I immediately following that started a reprioritization of everything that I was doing with this end in mind. So frankly, my GPA had to be higher. I had to look at all the criteria for getting into Stanford. Well, what GMAT score or is their average score? Well, a little unhelpfully. They have the highest average GMAT score in the country as I recall it again. And so what kind of experience are they looking for? What kind of essays do they want? And so out of this essential intent, everything else starts to be prioritized from it. And so this becomes your super criteria.
Douglas Vigliotti (32:23)
Were you ever nervous at any point that you were going to do all this work and realize that it wasn't something that you ultimately wanted to do?
Greg McKeown (32:29)
I was never worried. Ever worried about not wanting to do it? No, because I wanted to do it 10 out of 10, but it wasn't just a, Hey, I want this. It was deeper than that, but it was very aligned between the right thing and the thing I want to do. So no, I wasn't worried about that. I was worried about not getting in. There's no false modesty to say, oh yes, no, of course, I'd be able to do this, but even that worry isn't quite the right word. I mean it was worry in the sense of facing very clearly, I'm not qualified for this. So it wasn't like worry like, whoa, will it happen? Won't it happen? I'm not qualified. This isn't going to happen. I don't know how I, I'm going to need to do everything I can to try and get qualified. And even then, I don't know. But what kept me going and what I think can keep other people going is the clarity that they've got and the continual sense that comes, yes, this is the right part, so keep doing this thing.
Douglas Vigliotti (33:29)
How could somebody tell the difference between what's truly important and are there any strategies that you recommend, I know we talked about the list of 400 to do for exploration, but is there anything maybe a little more pointed that you find yourself going back to over and over again as you're teaching people about how they can discern between what's truly important and isn't?
Greg McKeown (33:51)
I mean there are a few things you can do, but one of them is to, I mean, I think one of them is just to think about importance like a continuum 1 to 10 is something that is absolutely unimportant to you, just totally trivia. And the other extreme, of course, a hundred percent would be something that was one of the most meaningful things, most important things in your life. Something that let's say you would give your life for. If you had to choose between the two, you would actually rather dive and give up that thing. So that would be the full spectrum. Now to do it at that extreme is, is already helpful. Most people, when I ask them to identify things they're currently doing that are clearly trivial to them, that would be on one to 10 on this scale, can say it can announce it, right?
Douglas Vigliotti (34:43)
Just straight away. Social media.
Greg McKeown (34:44)
Social media, definitely, is the first thing people mention. There are lots of other things that people will talk about, but that's the first thing. Yeah, they just know. I mean, you say you were already laughing before I barely finished the question. People know that they're wasting time on stuff. Yeah, spending too much time on that folks and isn't just what they're doing, it's just too much of it and they just know, look, it'd be fine to do a little bit. I've spent a bit too much time doing this thing. Well, that's on that side. Then I ask the second question and people, sometimes it takes a little longer thinking, but the question is, what is something that would be highly important, 90% or above important that you are not spending enough time doing? Okay, writing. There you go. So now we've identified the trade-off that needs to take place, and I don't know, how much time are you spending on social media total.
Douglas Vigliotti (35:28)
Right now? Not a lot.
Greg McKeown (35:29)
Honestly.
Douglas Vigliotti (35:30)
Honestly, not a Lot.
Greg McKeown (35:31)
How much? Honestly, give me your time.
Douglas Vigliotti (35:34)
I'd say cumulative because all the checks through the day, through the phone. I have Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Those are the only three. So I don't have Twitter checks throughout the day, honestly, I would say 90 minutes per day.
Greg McKeown (35:49)
So what would you like it to be? There could be things you are doing on there that really are highly important to you. Yeah, social media isn't one thing. So what would you ideally like it to be? If you could wave a magic wand, an essentialist wand, and you could trade off any number of minutes from social media to writing, how many would you trade off?
Douglas Vigliotti (36:12)
If I could trade, I would trade 'em all off if I could.
Greg McKeown (36:16)
Okay, so now we have established within 10 minutes or less, without being too complicated or too, I don't know, airy-fairy about it, we have now identified a strategic trade-off that is before you give up 90 minutes of social media for 90 minutes of writing. Well, that's actually, it's a fabulous example because 90 minutes is a great writing window, right? That's like three 30-minute bursts. If you could schedule 90 minutes of writing a day, you can make a lot of progress. I'm sure you are already writing, but with 90 minutes more, you can make a lot more progress. 90 minutes is not a bad amount of time to write. If someone writes 90 minutes every day, they're writing a lot of stuff.
Douglas Vigliotti (36:57)
Totally. I think what the lesson learned there is really a strategy in trade-offs. What I've just pulled from this immediately is if we can make a list of everything that we're doing throughout the day and then see how much time we're actually allocating to it, and then assigning this kind of percentage of importance to it, and then evaluating trade-offs with those percentages, I think that's like ingenious.
Greg McKeown (37:20)
Something I was going to suggest to you is that you can go on your phone, sure, you know this, but if you go and do your phone right now, we're going to do it right now. Go into your phone and then go under the battery. Under battery. It shows, you see there's a little button there last 24 hours, last seven days usage.
Douglas Vigliotti (37:40)
Yeah, so I have eight 18% Safari. 15% …
Greg McKeown (37:45)
Hold on. There's a little clock there. You see the clock? Press the clock next to where it says, it says last 20 hours, then last seven days. Then there's a little clock right there. Now it tells you exactly how much time you've spent on all those applications.
Douglas Vigliotti (37:58)
The majority of my time has been on … Wow … So, the majority of the, my time, the majority of my time has been on. I've spent 44 minutes on email, 51 minutes on Safari, and 45 minutes on Instagram.
Greg McKeown (38:14)
That surprises you.
Douglas Vigliotti (38:15)
Yeah, Instagram definitely surprised me. 13% of my time was spent on Instagram. Another 10% was spent on messages, and then another 33 minutes.
Greg McKeown (38:23)
This was over just your 24 hours, right?
Douglas Vigliotti (38:25)
Yeah, it was just 24 hours. Facebook, I've spent next to nothing. LinkedIn, I've spent next to nothing.
Greg McKeown (38:30)
Click on the last seven days.
Douglas Vigliotti (38:32)
Wow. Look at this. This is great for you. I'm sure you've, have you done, have you pulled this out on someone before that you've had to do this? This?
Greg McKeown (38:42)
It's the worst moment really, isn't it?
Douglas Vigliotti (38:44)
So bad. It's so bad.
Greg McKeown (38:46)
Hits where it hurts. Let's face it, what's your highest use?
Douglas Vigliotti (38:50)
My highest use in seven days is 16%. Email messages, another 13%. Safari another 12%, 12% Amazon music, another 12%, and Instagram 10%.
Greg McKeown (39:04)
How much does that add up to Instagram? How much does it add up to give me in times number in hours?
Douglas Vigliotti (39:09)
2.7 hours.
Greg McKeown (39:10)
Three hours? No, that's not really Three hours. Two, two and a half hours. Two and three-quarter hours. Yep. Okay, let's just take that one thing. That's a trade-off right there, right? I did this myself. I mean, I'm putting you through what I went through when my daughter showed this little thing to me and I realized, see, I love the news. I'm a journalist undergrad, and I still be journalism fascinating. But I suddenly said, well, okay. I said, how can I justify not reading Anna Karenina when I spend two or three hours a week on social media, on news, no, on news, on just news updates? I don't need to do that. So I said, okay, I'm going to stop. I, I'm going to at least reduce my time on these things instead. One of the things I decided I would do instead is read John Adams biography. John Adams biography is 850 pages long and I just finished it. Of course, I don't regret that trade-off, but because you don't regret that trade-off, you never regret trading off something that's zero to 10% important instead of something that's 90% and above important.
Douglas Vigliotti (40:18)
I love this exercise. I'm doing it this week, 100%. There's no question asked. I'm doing this time assessment percentage, how much do I value each one? And I'm going to assess the trade-offs. I love this exercise. I think that this is an amazing exercise for anybody to do.
Greg McKeown (40:34)
I appreciate you saying that and I think that the exercise you're about to do is a really good exercise. In addition to this, I think I might encourage you to spend your time and if you have to make a trade-off between these two exercises, I encourage you to do this, which is just solve for the trade-off we just identified specifically between social media usage and writing. Actually, solve for that. Write that down. I intend to give up social media and write instead. That becomes your intent is to make the trade-off. Not just, my intent isn't just writing. My intent is to give up this so that I can write and don't stop there because the intent is not enough. It's a very powerful beginning, but it's not enough. You then need to start saying, okay, well what are all the obstacles? What would stop me from making that trade-off? What are the challenges with doing that? Keep listing it. Don't be afraid of the obstacles. The obstacles aren't what you think they are. When you set a goal like this, set a trade-off goal. We're describing the obstacles that come to your mind. Feel like your brain going, well, you can't do that. Look at all these problems. But that's not what your brain is doing. Your brain is actually giving you the piece of information you need to achieve your intent to achieve this trade-off. But it's just the first piece of data that your brain is giving you as you write them all down, and respond to each one. So you're making a list. You're saying, okay, well I have my social media on my phone and my phone is always with me. That's the first object every time, it's all on my phone. The second barrier is, well, my phone is always with me. The third barrier is, well, I'm tired, so I go on social media. I don't want to write anymore. So it's easier to be on that. That's an obstacle. Keep writing as many obstacles so that you're finished with all the obstacles and then next to every single obstacle you write, what your response will be. How do you address this obstacle when you finish that? Once you have that on a piece of paper, write it all on one sheet. Now you have the beginnings of a real plan to be able to start implementing this shift and making the shift over. What I'm trying to encourage you to do is instead of burying yourself in 10 different trade-offs you would like to make, and then really not making any of them because go deep into one change to make, go deep into one, and I'm suggesting that the first one that you mentioned, now, it might not be the most non-essential activity and the most essential activity. We might not have identified that, but the fact that you said them so quickly, so easily suggests to me that they are.
Douglas Vigliotti (43:18)
Yeah, they definitely are definitely extremely relevant.
Greg McKeown (43:21)
So certainly a highly relevant trade-off that you could make. So I would just focus on that until you have really a thorough plan to address this. Then look at what your life is like a year from now. If you actually make this trade-off, if you can construct a system, which by the way is the third of the practices, right? The third part of the practice is how do we now construct a system that helps you to make this trade-off? So let's talk about that. Let's not assume that the people listening especially know how to do it or even that is really obvious to you, how to do it. I suppose if it was super obvious to you, you'd already done it. So let's talk about it. The first thing is to celebrate every success that you have, however small you celebrate it, and I mean in a visual fashion. So on a piece of paper, a big piece of paper, you could do this in many different ways, but I'm just giving you one. You put up on your office door where you will see it constantly and you put some visual representation of this trade-off. Maybe it's minutes spent writing and it's minutes spent on social media and every minute of it, it's like you remember in preschool, wherever elementary school you had someone doing some fundraiser. What did your fundraiser, what was the image fundraiser that they used in your elementary school?
Douglas Vigliotti (44:52)
I don't know. It's like a thermometer or something with red, but it fills up.
Greg McKeown (44:56)
Nobody's gone beyond the thermometer in the history of fundraisers, in the history of the world.
Douglas Vigliotti (45:03)
England, America, it doesn't matter. Everyone's using a thermometer!
Greg McKeown (45:06)
(Laughing.) A thermometer. The symbol for everyone. So, use it for a thermometer idea, and your idea is I have got to get up to 90 minutes a day and you celebrate it. You make the mark every minute that you achieve on the one versus the other, and that's a visual representation. Now at least we are in the ballpark. You could use some other symbol course, but this is a way to, I mean, we're all big kids. We love star shots. I love the star shot when I was young. Man, I love the idea. And now what's your reward? And give yourself a reward. If you get 90 minutes done tomorrow on writing and zero on social media tomorrow, what's the reward? What do you get to have?
Douglas Vigliotti (45:54)
Something external?
Greg McKeown (45:55)
Tell me, I don't know. Yeah, anything. Yes, yes.
Douglas Vigliotti (45:59)
I don't know. Let me think. I'd have to think about what would nice glass of bourbon maybe. I don't know.
Greg McKeown (46:04)
Is there something you particularly look forward to doing? Is there some sort of reward? I mean, you can play with it.
Douglas Vigliotti (46:09)
So I can't have a nice neat glass of bourbon? (Laughing.)
Greg McKeown (46:11)
Bourbon. Bourbon. (Laughing.) You're going to be drunk as a result of Essentialism. So you've chosen. You've chosen, you're going to, you have a drink of bourbon when you've done it. Okay, now what happens if you don't? What? Don't make the trade-off. What do you have to give up?
Douglas Vigliotti (46:26)
I have to pour out a glass full of bourbon out of one of my favorite bottles of bourbon.
Greg McKeown (46:30)
Down the sink.
Douglas Vigliotti (46:31)
Down the sink. That's amazing.
Greg McKeown (46:33)
Now we've got a reward and we've got a cost. The cost actually is considerably more powerful than the reward. The threat of having to pour bourbon down the sink, good bourbon that you have, that you value, and you're going to pour that down the sink if you don't do it, is actually a stronger motivator even than the ward of having it. Okay, so now we've got that. How do we get other people involved? Socially, you need to have a social support system now for this trade-off that you've identified.
Douglas Vigliotti (47:00)
Family, brothers.
Greg McKeown (47:02)
What are you going to do? What's the story? Are you going to announce it to them? Are you going to tell them what?
Douglas Vigliotti (47:06)
Well, they're going to know because they're going to listen to the podcast when it comes out. And so now I'm going to, I mean, we're going to have no choice now. The danger of doing anything publicly, right? I mean, it's a good thing, but now there's no getting off the hook. I'm going to be pouring out bottles of bourbon every day I don't write for 90 minutes.
Greg McKeown (47:27)
Is there anything you can do to make this easier? Is there anything that would make the writing itself more pleasant or pleasurable than it currently is for you? Do you have a distraction-free zone, an absolute place where you can go into monk mode? Of course. Is it special music you like to listen to?
Douglas Vigliotti (47:45)
I'm a silence-guy. I need silence.
Greg McKeown (47:47)
You want total silence. You got earplugs there.
Douglas Vigliotti (47:50)
I don't write or anything of that nature when I'm around a lot of people, I don't feel like writing is a social thing. I feel like it's …
Greg McKeown (47:58)
No, it's not. (Laughing.)
Douglas Vigliotti (47:59)
I feel like it's one of those things where I like peace and quiet. I prefer light. I don't know. I feel like natural daylight makes me feel more alive, more, keeps me more alert and focused.
Greg McKeown (48:11)
Better first thing in the morning?
Douglas Vigliotti (48:12)
I do write first thing in the morning. There's no question about it.
Greg McKeown (48:15)
So we have actually not a total plan here, but you can certainly sense the beginning of a plan. I would encourage you to go back and think of every obstacle for making this trade-off and then have a response to every one of them. And now we're talking. Now what we just did was we just applied Essentialism to your world. It's about exploring what is essential, getting rid of what's not, make a system for actually doing the thing you've identified as most important.
Douglas Vigliotti (48:44)
I love this. I think honestly, anyone who replays this and listens to this through is going to have an actionable exercise that they're going to be able to take away, and I don't know if that's always the case with any kind of podcast or interview or discussion or anything of that nature. I'm going to do this. So I think this has just been great, but I have to ask you, Greg, what is the most essential thing in your life right now?
Greg McKeown (49:09)
The most important relationship in my life is with Anna. And not just that that is true. The intent is very clear, which is that she knows and feels that she is the undisputed priority relationship in my life. That's different than saying it. It's even different than really believing it or feeling it. It's making trade-offs that actually make that the case. So that's the answer to that question. And we could answer it in different ways, in different areas of life, but in the interest of time, we should probably not.
Douglas Vigliotti (49:49)
Yeah, no, totally. So we're just about closing in on the hour here. We're going to wrap up. Before I ask you final ask for the audience or final ask, where people can connect with you. What's next for you? What's next for Greg McKeown? What's on the agenda?
Greg McKeown (50:01)
The big, big trade-off, scary next level, don't know that we'll be a successful thing. All of that. Is to try and work out, try, and design, build a television show based on Essentialism that takes Essentialism to a much broader audience, to explore the ideas in a much deeper way than I could in a book format. And it's really very much like, quite like, quitting law moment. It's very much like Stanford or bust. It's the next version.
Douglas Vigliotti (50:40)
If you need a test dummy, to run any experiments or any strategies on, I think bourbon trade-off the whole thing. We can make it work. We can make it work. We can call it the bourbon experiment.
Greg McKeown (50:50)
The bourbon experiment. You started the bourbon experiment, and as a person, a person who literally has never drunk any alcohol in his whole life, this fun irony. That is what I'm meant to get you to do, is to drink more bourbon. Although I don't, I'm not sure it's true that I got you to drink more bourbon, but we have not established how much bourbon drinking is going on …
Douglas Vigliotti (51:14)
In the sake of time for the sake of time. Let's keep it moving.
Greg McKeown (51:18)
Yeah. (Laughing)
Douglas Vigliotti (51:20)
Okay. So I'm going to ask you three final questions. They're going to be rapid-fire questions, but before I do, I just want to ask, do you have a final ask or can everyone connect with you online?
Greg McKeown (51:28)
It's taken me a while to really have a good answer to this, and because I don't like to, oh, come LinkedIn and Twitter and all of that. I mean, yes, I do have a presence in these places, but really the thing I want to suggest people do is read, or even if they have read, reread Essentialism, just come back to the book, come back to these ideas because it's in the coming back to them that people will most be on the journey with me anyway. I'm trying to live it in my life. They're living it in theirs. We're on this journey together. So that's really what I want people to do.
Douglas Vigliotti (52:01)
Excellent. I can definitely attest to that. So let's go right into the three final questions. What's one quote or motto you live your life by?
Greg McKeown (52:10)
If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will.
Douglas Vigliotti (52:12)
Love it. What's one book that's impacted the way you think?
Greg McKeown (52:19)
Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl.
Douglas Vigliotti (52:21)
Love that. I've also read it. Great book. What's one thing you want to tell the world, it's not what it seems?
Greg McKeown (52:29):
I think the amount of time we have left in life is not what it seems.
Douglas Vigliotti (52:35):
I love that.
Greg McKeown (52:36)
There's a great online, graphical essay called “The Tail End” that everybody should go and read right now. It's a very quick read because it's most of its graphics and I challenge anyone to not be impacted by that graphical essay and making you go, oh, wow, there's a lot less left.
Douglas Vigliotti (53:02)
Awesome. The Tail End. There's Tim Urban's Life Weeks is another good one to illustrate the number of weeks you have in your life, which I always think is pretty interesting. But “The Tail End” is a great way to end it. Definitely be linked up in the show notes. As with everything else that we talked about, Greg, this has been such a pleasure. Thank you for the free coaching consultation. I don't know how much I'm going to owe you for that, but no, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Essentialism is a great book. I definitely support it. I want everyone to get out there, and read it, because I've read it twice and it's definitely changed the way I think. So thanks for coming on.
Greg McKeown (53:34)
Thank you, ever so much, and bye for now.
