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1-Page Summary of The Power of Less
Overview
In today’s world, we’re all bombarded with information and receive dozens of emails and phone calls each day. Many people don’t differentiate between what is important and what isn’t, so they end up doing a lot of unimportant things. Productivity techniques are designed to help you get more done in the same amount of time by helping you prioritize your tasks. However, having a lot to do doesn’t mean that you’ll actually be productive because most people can only handle one or two priorities at once before their productivity drops off drastically.
We have to set limits for ourselves and force ourselves to focus on the essential things. By limiting our focus, we can achieve great results with less effort. People who limit themselves learn to concentrate on what’s truly important in all areas of life. Limiting our attention will enable us to finish these few projects quickly and successfully because working on a smaller number of projects at once will take care of them faster.
By limiting ourselves, we can focus on the things that are most important.
Big Idea #1: If you want to concentrate on what’s necessary, get your priorities straight.
If you want to focus on the most important things, it’s essential to figure out what those are for yourself. Once you know that, you can start getting rid of all the things in your life that aren’t as important.
How do you know what’s important? By figuring out how things change your life and whether they match up with your long-term goals. When doing so, it’s helpful to ask yourself the right questions, for example: What are my values and goals? What’s important to me? What do I love? What has the biggest influence on my life? What things have the biggest influence in the long term? And what is just a desire that isn’t really necessary at all or won’t be that relevant in the future (i.e., don’t need)?
People should take a step back and observe their lives objectively. They can ask themselves what are the most important things in life, which obligations they really need to fulfill, how much email is enough for them, and so on. If people know their priorities well, then it’s easier for them to decide what tasks are more important than others.
Big Idea #2: Live your priorities: make and be clear about decisions.
If we don’t have limits, it’s like shopping with no credit limit. We can only focus on what matters when we’re forced to budget our time and money. Limiting ourselves will help us prioritize what really matters in life so that we stop wasting time and energy on things that aren’t important.
The point of this is to identify the important things in life and focus on them. We can do that by identifying our limits and sticking to them. By doing so, we’ll have more time for the people who matter most.
If you want to prioritize your family, then don’t waste time doing favors for random people. Instead, spend more time with them and make sure the people around you understand that they shouldn’t bother you about unimportant things.
People who learn to say no are less offensive than they think. People respect them more for saying no, and it’s easy to do: just don’t get distracted by every little thing or grant everyone’s wishes.
Therefore, we have to learn how to prioritize and say no. We also need to be clear with others about our limits.
Big Idea #3: If you want to change your life, change your habits.
If you want to change yourself, you have to form new habits.
When you’re trying to change your habits, it’s important to make sure that you only work on one at a time. If you manage to do just one new habit each day, they’ll become second nature. For example, if I want to get into the habit of running every morning or eating healthier food, I can’t try and tackle both at once because that would be too overwhelming. To help myself stay motivated with these goals, I should tell others about my plans so they can hold me accountable for achieving them. Ideally, I could join forces with other people who also want to work on their habits and support each other in this process. Once we have an audience (i.e., someone else) holding us accountable for our actions and progress reports from ourselves about our goals daily, it will be much harder for us not to achieve those goals.
