When time is tight, choosing what to leave out becomes part of doing anything well. In this episode, Jon Brooks reflects on Greg McKeown's Essentialism, the interests he couldn't pursue all at once, and a practical way to sort commitments into must, should, could and won't do this time.
Recorded in September 2023. The personal examples describe that period. They are not a current account of Jon's family arrangements, timetable or coaching work.
What survives a smaller day?
The difficult part of having lots of interests is that they can all be worthwhile. Reading is worthwhile. So is training. So is learning an instrument. A list of good things can still be too much for the time available.
The recording asks you to shrink the space in your imagination. Suppose your essential responsibilities were already covered and you had only a small amount of discretionary time. What would you keep?
Treat that as a question about priorities, not a timetable to obey. Your answer may expose something you keep calling important while giving it none of your attention. It may also show that a good idea can wait.
McKeown's argument is about accepting trade-offs. Choosing one thing well means allowing another thing to remain undone. There is a cost either way.
Give the won't-do list a real job
The episode borrows MoSCoW, a prioritisation method used in project work. Its four categories are Must Have, Should Have, Could Have and Won't Have this time. That final qualification matters. You can set something aside for this period without declaring that you will never care about it again.
Try it on the commitments you already have. Which really must happen? Which would be useful but can wait? Which are appealing extras? What are you deliberately leaving out?
If everything is a must, the sorting hasn't happened yet.
The recording includes an example of art moving higher on the list. That is a useful reminder that urgent tasks and valued activities are different things. The exercise is not a competition to eliminate enjoyment.
Limits can help, but exhaustion is still exhaustion
Jon describes becoming more focused when parenting reduced his available time. That is his account of his experience. Less time does not reliably make everyone more productive, and an overloaded person may need help or rest rather than a stricter list.
The same limit applies to the discussion of Steven Pressfield and turning professional. Keeping an appointment with your work can help with ordinary reluctance. It does not make illness, sleep or caring responsibilities irrelevant.
The useful question is concrete: what can you stop trying to fit into this period so that something you value has room?
For the practical shape of a work session, see Work Rituals. For the ethical question of competing responsibilities, read Stoic Role Ethics. Essentialism and MoSCoW are modern approaches, not ancient Stoic systems.
Sources: Greg McKeown's Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less; the Agile Business Consortium's MoSCoW definitions; Steven Pressfield's The War of Art and his discussion of turning pro. Alain de Botton and François de La Rochefoucauld's Maxims are also mentioned in the recording. Their lines below are retained as spoken recollections, not verified verbatim quotations.
Full transcript
Lightly edited for readability.
Names and British spelling have been corrected. The personal account, including the personality-test comparison, is self-report rather than evidence that parenting causes a particular psychological change. The claims about productivity, creativity and inspiration are reflections, not universal rules. The recording says “would” once while recapping MoSCoW; its C category is “could”. The attributed de Botton and La Rochefoucauld wording has not been established as an exact quotation in a named edition.
I'd like to talk today about a book that I read, but more importantly, a philosophy or a way of being. The book I'm referring to is Essentialism by Greg McKeown. And the subtitle says it all, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. In the Big Five Personality Test, I score very high for openness. I've always been interested in ideas. I rarely read one book at a time. I'm curious. I have many hobbies and I jump from thing to thing. I just really enjoy learning, whatever it is. Throughout my life, I've been interested in skateboarding and yo-yoing and chess and martial arts and boxing and jiu-jitsu and magic and guitar and piano. There are just so many different things that I've become interested in. I enjoy learning. I enjoy being a beginner and advancing my level of mastery. For the most part, this was fine because I've had quite a lot of free time throughout my life until around five years ago I had a child.
And I was thrust into a situation where I was looking after my son a lot. The year before my son was born, I was travelling to Costa Rica and going on retreats and hosting retreats and going to the Netherlands. And it was quite a free sort of digital nomad life. And then when he was born, I was at home and looking after him a lot. And I found that I didn't have much time. And there were all these new pressures on me. And it was a difficult process to adapt to. I grew a lot. My personality profile actually changed a year later. I became more conscientious, more industrious, less neurotic. There were lots of amazing benefits to having a child. You have no choice but to show up. You have a reason. You have a why. So there were a lot of amazing, meaningful rewards from looking after my child, even though it was challenging.
But one of the biggest challenges was that I just didn't have much time. So I had way less time, but just as many interests and just as many hobbies. I wanted to do weightlifting. I wanted to train jiu-jitsu. I wanted to train Muay Thai. I wanted to read lots of books. I wanted to do different courses. I wanted to create content. I wanted to do workshops, all of these things, and I just didn't have much time. And what happened was something quite crazy.
I actually became way more productive when I had less time. So my jiu-jitsu became much better. People were talking about it in the gym. Oh my gosh, he's gotten so much better. The types of content that I was creating was more on point, it was more meaningful, more impactful. And my parenting was amazing, spending a lot of quality time with my son.
The question is, how does this happen? Why would having less time make someone more productive or more successful in their desired area? And for me, it was because I didn't carry that childlike belief anymore after having a son that I could be and do anything I wanted to be. I understood that I would have to make trade-offs. And this is the way of the essentialist.
Alain de Botton says, in order to be successful at something, you have to recognise that you will be unsuccessful at other things. When you have all the time in the world, you tell yourself, I'm gonna do this, this, this, I'm gonna do 500 things, and then you end up not really doing any of them that well. You spread yourself thin. There's no urgency, right? It's sort of like why death meditation and death contemplation is so beneficial. When you keep bringing to mind the fact that life is finite, you have to make choices. You have to choose and select and cut and discard, you have to prioritise. Many of us feel like we're gonna live forever. I mean, you have all the time in the world. That's how I felt before I had a child. And so what I do now, every couple of months, is I sit down and I say to myself, if I only had two hours or three hours of time per day that I could do what I wanted with, just say, imagine that every other hour was dedicated to work or sleep, you know, something that was non-negotiable.
How would I want to spend those three hours? This is a way of clarifying what's most important to you. How important is exercise to you? Would it make the cut? What about meditation? What about reading? What about spending time in nature? What about watching TV? What about playing video games? What about working on your passion project? One of the things that being a dad has given me is that sometimes I'll sit down to record a course and I'll schedule it into my calendar at a time when I have a quiet space and everything I need.
No interruptions. When that time comes, I don't sit there going, oh, do I feel inspired to do this? Oh, I'm not really feeling it today. I say to myself, this is happening. I have an appointment with myself. I'm going to record my course right now. Because I have a limited time, I'm able to focus on what's essential. I'm able to execute when I need to.
Last night I was actually speaking to one of my coaching clients, and I'm showing him how he can create his own content, and he said he felt a bit tired or didn't feel inspired. And my response was, okay, I understand that, but we're here to work. So let's just work anyway. And he found that a little bit jarring because he's not used to it, not used to that mindset. But that's the professional mindset.
Another great book, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. He has this idea of turning pro. He says that the amateur artist waits for inspiration, whereas the pro shows up no matter how they feel. So I never even get thoughts like, oh, am I inspired today to create or am I feeling motivated? How are my energy levels? I've learned the skill of just executing, just doing. And that has been forced because of limited time. Because I don't have the luxury of postponing till tomorrow or till later or till next week. And this is the essentialist way. And if you look at art, a lot of the greatest art comes from limitations. Low budget films. You know, hey, we can't do anything we like. We can't get any actor we like. We don't have an unlimited budget. How can we create greatness within these limitations, within these confines?
There are always limitations in art. If you take a band, you know, the singer can only hit certain notes, the drummer can only drum their style, right? There are always limitations, and out of those limitations, music is created. You can always evolve and enhance, but there's always a limitation there. So I would say whether you have a lot of free time or not, to do this exercise where you really focus on what you would do if you only had three hours a day to do everything you wanted to do. What would be most important to you? You could even write down a calendar. Maybe there'll be like three or four things that are absolute non-negotiables, like musts. For me, meditation has to be there, jiu-jitsu has to be there, creating content has to be there. Another idea I've been playing around with lately is called the MoSCoW method.
This is often used in businesses. But if you take the O's out of the word MoSCoW, you have M, S, C W, and each one stands for something different. M stands for must, S stands for should, C stands for could, W stands for won't. So when I have my to-do lists, I'll take a very honest look over my tasks that I have scheduled. I always add my ideas and thoughts to my to-do list, and I'll ask myself, is this a must over the next three months or so? Does this have to get done?
Or is it a should, or is it a would? Or is it realistically a no, I'm not going to be doing this in three months? I used to fall into the trap of putting all of my tasks into the must category. I can do everything. But there's a lot of wisdom in choosing not to do everything, in choosing limitation, in being an essentialist, being disciplined to pursue less. This is quite closely related to the idea of minimalism. It's very freeing to let things go.
To tell yourself that you won't do everything, you won't achieve every dream. What are the one or two top things that you want to pursue, that you want to be good at? And remind yourself day after day that these are the important things in your life. I also recommend the practice of making space once a week, once every two weeks, of just sitting down and asking yourself, what is actually important? What have I not been doing that is important to me? What have I been sacrificing or missing? Art is also something that is very important to me. I don't need to do it every day, but it is something that I like to do frequently, you know, drawing, painting, just tapping into my artistic side. And it was never falling into the must category, right? Because it was never like, oh, you have to be doing this.
This is urgent or vital. So art has become more of a priority to me because I've moved it from should to must because I find it so therapeutic and beneficial. You can read all the productivity books in the world, but what it ultimately comes down to is just knowing the difference between what you should do and what you should let go of. The philosopher François de La Rochefoucauld wrote an amazing book called Maxims. And he said that true intelligence is knowing the real value of things that can be applied to interpersonal relationships, but also productivity in life. What are the real value of the things that you're aiming to do? What can you let go of? What tasks can you put on hold? What skills can you say no to over the next couple of months so you can be more free and open to the ones that count?
So I encourage you to become an essentialist, hypothetically play around with the idea that you don't have much time and figure out what is important to you. Even if you have enough time to do a four-hour self-care routine, ask yourself, what would you do if you had 30 minutes? What would you do if you had 10 minutes? This will help you refine what matters most. I hope this was helpful. And if you'd like to learn more about the ideas in essentialism, Greg McKeown has a bunch of videos and obviously his book where you can learn more. I hope you have fun with this idea and it frees you up to focus on what matters most.
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