Discover how focusing on the vital few instead of the trivial many leads to extraordinary results
The Command That Changed How I See Everything
I’m a computational biologist, and early in my career, I faced a seemingly simple task: viewing the contents of a file using Linux command lines. My instructor told me there were three commands that could accomplish this—cat, more, and less.
The names seemed intuitive enough. The cat command dumps all the contents on your screen at once. The more command? Well, it sounds like it shows more content, right? And less clearly shows less content. Given that I was working with massive genomic datasets, I immediately chose more—after all, who wouldn’t want to see more information?
But here’s the twist that caught me off guard: as I gained experience, I discovered that the less command was actually more capable and powerful than the more command. Despite its humble name suggesting limitation, less offered superior functionality, more features, and better performance. It was the paradox that made zero sense until it made perfect sense.
This experience became a metaphor for something much bigger I was observing in my own life and career. We’re constantly bombarded with opportunities that promise to give us “more”—more connections, more projects, more responsibilities, more stuff. Yet these seemingly abundant options often leave us exhausted, scattered, and making minimal progress in any direction. Meanwhile, the things that appear small or limited—the focused choice, the single priority, the deliberate “no”—end up delivering exponentially greater rewards.
Sound familiar? If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by too many commitments, frustrated by your inability to make meaningful progress despite being constantly busy, or trapped in a cycle of saying yes to everything while accomplishing nothing significant, you’re experiencing what Greg McKeown calls the “paradox of success” in his transformative book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.
The Law of the Vital Few: Not All Efforts Are Created Equal
This paradox connects directly to a principle I’ve explored before on BullishBooks—the Law of the Vital Few, also known as the 80/20 Rule. The core insight is deceptively simple yet profoundly life-changing: approximately 80% of your results come from just 20% of your efforts.
Think about it:
- 20% of your clients likely generate 80% of your revenue
- 20% of your activities produce 80% of your happiness
- 20% of your relationships provide 80% of your support and fulfillment
- 20% of your possessions account for 80% of your actual use
McKeown takes this principle and builds an entire philosophy around it. Essentialism isn’t about cramming more into your already packed schedule or becoming a productivity machine. It’s about doing less but better—making the disciplined, systematic, and intentional pursuit of what truly matters the cornerstone of how you live and work.
Essentialist vs. Non-Essentialist: Two Fundamentally Different Ways of Living
Before we dive into the how-to, let’s understand the fundamental difference in mindset between an Essentialist and a Non-Essentialist. This distinction echoes the reactive vs. proactive mindsets I discussed when exploring Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
The Non-Essentialist believes:
- “I have to” → They feel they have no choice
- “It’s all important” → Everything seems equally urgent
- “How can I fit it all in?” → They’re trying to do everything for everyone
The Non-Essentialist lives in reaction mode. When someone asks for their time, they say yes almost automatically. When a new opportunity appears, they immediately think, “I can do both!” They’re constantly busy, always rushing from one meeting to another, perpetually exhausted yet feeling like they’re not making real progress. They’re what McKeown calls “majoring in minor activities.”
The Essentialist believes:
- “I choose to” → They take ownership of their choices
- “Only a few things really matter” → They distinguish the vital few from the trivial many
- “What are the trade-offs?” → They make deliberate decisions about what to pursue
The Essentialist operates by design, not by default. Consider the story of Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines. When Southwest launched, critics thought he was crazy. Instead of flying to every destination like competitors, he deliberately chose to offer only point-to-point flights. Instead of serving meals to boost revenue, he served none. Instead of assigned seating, passengers chose seats as they boarded. Instead of first-class service, only coach.
These weren’t oversights—they were strategic trade-offs made by design to keep costs low and create a low-cost airline. Competitors tried to copy Southwest’s success while keeping their existing business models intact (what Harvard professor Michael Porter calls “straddling”). Continental Airlines launched Continental Lite, adopting some of Southwest’s practices but hanging onto their traditional model. The result? They lost hundreds of millions of dollars, received thousands of complaints daily, and the CEO was eventually fired.
Southwest, meanwhile, consistently delivered exceptional financial results year after year, eventually providing the highest return on investment of any S&P 500 company between 1972 and 2002. All because Kelleher made deliberate trade-offs and stuck to his essential strategy.
How to Discern the Trivial Many from the Vital Few
So how do you identify what’s truly essential in your life? McKeown offers several powerful approaches:
Create Space to Escape and Think
Frank O’Brien, founder of a marketing services company in New York, does something radical: once a month, he gathers his entire fifty-person team for a full day with no phones, no email, and no agenda. The purpose? Simply to escape and think.
And he doesn’t schedule this on some random Friday when productivity might be low anyway. He holds it on the first Monday of the month. Even his clients know not to expect responses on “Do-Not-Call Monday.”
Why? Because O’Brien knows that without space to think, his team can’t figure out what’s essential. “I think it’s critical to set aside time to take a breath, look around, and think,” he explains. “You need that level of clarity in order to innovate and grow.”
Think about your own life. When was the last time you had truly uninterrupted time to think about what matters most? Not reacting to emails, not attending meetings, not putting out fires—just thinking. As Pablo Picasso observed, “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.”
Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravity during the plague years when Cambridge University closed and he retreated to his family farm. He spent his time thinking, walking in the gardens, observing. That space to escape led to one of history’s greatest scientific breakthroughs.
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner takes this seriously too—he schedules up to two hours of blank space on his calendar every day just to think. “I’d spend that time walking the parking lot, walking the campus, just… thinking,” he said.
Look for Patterns and Trends That Reveal True Problems
Nora Ephron, the famous screenwriter and director, shared a story about her journalism teacher that changed how she saw everything. On the first day of class, he asked students to write the lead for a story about a school event. The students came back with various versions focusing on typical details—who attended, what awards were given, when it happened.
The teacher looked at their work and said, “The lead to the story is: ‘There will be no school Thursday.'”
That was the essential information. Everything else was just noise.
In your own work and life, what’s the equivalent? What’s the signal hiding beneath all the noise? What pattern, if you noticed it, would reveal what actually matters?
McKeown tells another powerful story about a team at Stanford d.school that was tasked with making a safer baby warmer for premature infants in developing countries. The team initially focused on making the existing incubator technology cheaper and more reliable. But when they actually visited Nepal and observed the problem firsthand, they discovered something crucial: most babies weren’t even making it to hospitals that had incubators. The real problem wasn’t improving incubators—it was creating a low-cost solution that could work in villages without electricity.
This insight led them to invent the Embrace infant warmer, a sleeping-bag-like device that could maintain a baby’s temperature for up to six hours without electricity. It cost a fraction of traditional incubators and saved thousands of lives. They found the pattern that revealed the true problem.
Focus on What Brings You Joy, Not Just What’s Productive
Here’s something crucial that connects to what I wrote about in my article on breaking free from the productivity paradox: Essential work isn’t just about productivity—it’s about joy.
McKeown shares a profound insight about play. In our results-obsessed culture, play is often dismissed as frivolous, a waste of productive time. But research from Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, reveals that play is actually essential for innovation, creativity, and exploration.
When we play—whether it’s flying a kite, listening to music, or tinkering with ideas—we’re engaged in the purest expression of our humanity. Play broadens our perspective, helps us see possibilities we’d otherwise miss, and makes connections we wouldn’t normally make. Einstein himself said, “The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”
Even more fascinating: play is an antidote to stress. When we’re stressed, our amygdala (the emotional part of our brain) ramps up while our hippocampus (responsible for cognitive function) shuts down. We literally can’t think clearly. Play reverses this effect, allowing us to explore again.
Some innovative companies get this. Twitter’s CEO promotes comedy and improv classes. Google’s offices are filled with playful elements like a dinosaur covered in pink flamingos. Pixar’s artists decorate their offices like anything from western saloons to Star Wars shrines. These aren’t frivolous distractions—they’re investments in the creative exploration that drives innovation.
What brings you joy? What makes you lose track of time? Those activities aren’t distractions from your essential work—they might be pointing you toward it.
Build Sleep Into Your Schedule for High Performance
Geoff was a textbook overachiever. At thirty-six, he was CEO of a global microcredit organization reaching 12 million families, on the board of Kiva, named Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year, and recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
He was also traveling 60-70% of the time—London for meetings, then India for six days across five cities, Geneva for investor meetings, back to Seattle for a day and a half, then off again. He averaged four to six hours of sleep per night for three years straight.
Then his body started shutting down. It began with nighttime panic attacks—feeling like a bomb exploded in his head, sweating, disoriented. One by one, his organs began failing. His heart rate became erratic. Standing up straight was painful. His blood pressure dropped so low he blacked out. He ended up in the emergency room twice.
Still, he kept telling himself he’d slow down after the next deal. And the next. And the one after that. But of course, he didn’t. The truth? He was terrified of facing the trade-offs that scaling back would require.
Our culture glorifies sleep deprivation as a badge of honor. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” we say proudly, as if exhaustion proves our commitment. But research shows that after just seventeen hours without sleep, our performance equals someone legally drunk. A study of violin students found that elite performers averaged 8.6 hours of sleep per night, significantly more than average performers.
The Essentialist protects sleep as fiercely as they protect any other asset. Because without it, they can’t think clearly enough to discern what’s essential in the first place.
Apply Extreme Selection Criteria to Your Work
Derek Sivers, entrepreneur and founder of CD Baby, uses a simple but powerful decision-making filter: “If it’s not a hell yeah, it’s a no.”
This extreme selection criterion transforms how you evaluate opportunities. Instead of asking, “Is this a good opportunity?” ask, “Is this precisely what I’m looking for? Will this make my highest possible contribution?”
Think of it like this: if you evaluate opportunities on a scale of 1-100, most people say yes to anything scoring above 60 or 70. The Essentialist only says yes to opportunities scoring 90 or above.
One executive team McKeown worked with had once identified three criteria for projects but had become increasingly indiscriminate over time. Eventually, their only criterion seemed to be “a customer asked us to do it.” Team morale plummeted. Work felt meaningless. The company lost its unique market position.
Only by establishing extreme, explicit criteria did they regain focus. They eliminated the 70% and 80% opportunities draining their resources and concentrated on work that distinguished them in the marketplace. The quietest, most junior team member even felt empowered to challenge the senior executive: “Should we be taking on this account, given our criteria?”
Making criteria both selective and explicit gives you a systematic tool for filtering out the nonessential.
How to Cut the Trivial Many
Identifying what’s essential is only half the battle. You also need to actively eliminate what isn’t. Here’s how:
Define an Essential Intent by Making Your Purpose Clear
Vague goals like “get more done” or “be successful” don’t help you make decisions. Essential intent, by contrast, is both inspirational and concrete. It answers the question: “If I could only accomplish one thing with my time, what would it be?”
Enric Sala, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, spent years as a professor researching marine life. But something felt off. He was writing papers that only a handful of people would read while the oceans he studied were being destroyed.
He realized his essential intent wasn’t to study the ocean—it was to protect it. That clarity led him to leave his tenure-track position and focus on creating ocean sanctuaries, the equivalent of national parks for the last pristine places in the ocean. He now does work he loves that makes a vital contribution to the world.
What’s your essential intent? Not your job description or your to-do list, but your highest point of contribution?
Learn How to Say No to Non-Essentials
Saying no is hard. We’re wired to want to please people, to avoid disappointing others, to maintain relationships. But here’s the truth: when you say yes to something nonessential, you’re saying no to something essential by default.
Peter Drucker, the management guru, put it bluntly: “People are effective because they say ‘no,’ because they say, ‘this isn’t for me.'”
The good news? Saying no gets easier with practice. Here are approaches that work:
The Awkward Pause: When someone makes a request, pause. Count to three before responding. This simple technique prevents automatic yeses and creates space for thoughtful decisions.
The Soft No: “I can’t make it, but thank you for thinking of me.” You’re declining the specific request but preserving the relationship.
The “Let Me Check My Calendar” Approach: This buys you time to evaluate whether this truly aligns with your priorities.
The Trade-Off Question: When pressured to say yes, ask: “What should I deprioritize to make room for this?” This forces others to acknowledge the reality of trade-offs.
Remember: you can say no to the request while still saying yes to the person. One executive learned to say, “I’m honored by the offer, but I’m overcommitted right now. I wouldn’t be able to give it the attention it deserves.”
Learn to Avoid Sunk-Cost Bias, Endowment Effect, and Status Quo Bias
The Concorde jet was a stunning aeronautical achievement. It could fly from London to New York in under three hours—half the time of traditional planes. It was also a spectacular financial failure that lost money for over four decades.
Why did the British and French governments keep pouring money into it? Sunk-cost bias—the tendency to continue investing in something simply because we’ve already invested so much, even when we know it’s a losing proposition.
Henry Gribbohm recently spent his entire life savings—$2,600—at a carnival game trying to win an Xbox Kinect. “You just get caught up in the whole ‘I’ve got to win my money back,'” he explained. “But it didn’t turn out that way.”
We all do this in subtler ways. We stick with failing projects because we’ve already invested time. We stay in wrong-fit jobs because we’ve already put in years. We continue commitments simply because they exist.
Three powerful antidotes:
For Sunk-Cost Bias: Ask yourself, “If I wasn’t already invested in this, how much would I invest in it now?” Usually, the answer is “nothing” or “very little.”
For Endowment Effect (overvaluing things we own): Ask, “If I didn’t already own this, how much would I pay to obtain it?” Apply this to commitments and projects, not just physical possessions.
For Status Quo Bias (continuing something because we’ve always done it): Apply zero-based budgeting to your life. Assume all commitments are gone. Start from scratch. Which would you choose to add back? Only those should remain.
Learn the Principles of Editing: Cutting, Condensing, Correcting, and Editing Less
A good editor makes every word count. They ask: “Are you saying what you want to say? Are you saying it as clearly and concisely as possible?”
Stephen King put it perfectly: “To write is human, to edit is divine.”
Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, describes himself as a “chief editor” rather than a CEO. His role is to edit the company’s direction, cutting away the nonessential so the essential can shine through.
Apply editing principles to your life:
Cut: Remove activities and commitments that don’t serve your essential intent
Condense: Do more with less by lowering the ratio of effort to results
Correct: Fix what’s not working rather than endlessly trying to force it
Edit Less: Not everything needs changing—know when to leave well enough alone
Understand The Freedom of Setting Boundaries
Jin-Yung Chou worked at a prominent design firm that was notorious for demanding late nights and weekend work. One week, a project manager asked if she could work on a presentation that weekend.
She said no.
The project manager pushed back, citing how critical it was. Jin-Yung held firm: “No, I am not able to work this weekend.”
Why? Because Jin-Yung had set a clear boundary. Weekends were for church and family. These were her dealbreakers—the types of requests she simply refused to say yes to.
She didn’t get fired. In fact, she was eventually respected for it. Why? Because boundaries, when clearly communicated and consistently enforced, earn respect.
Think of a school located next to a busy road. Initially, children only played in a small area near the building where adults could watch them. But then someone built a fence around the entire playground. Suddenly, children played everywhere—their freedom more than doubled. The boundary actually increased their freedom.
Similarly, without clear boundaries in your life, you end up imprisoned by limits others set for you. With clear boundaries, you’re free to explore the full range of options you’ve deliberately chosen.
How to Make Doing the Vital Few Things Effortless
Identifying and eliminating is crucial, but execution is where Essentialism becomes a lifestyle. Here’s how to make the essential almost automatic:
Design a System That Makes Execution Effortless
The way of the Essentialist isn’t to force execution but to invest time saved into creating systems that make execution easy. Instead of asking, “How can I make this happen?” ask, “How can I make this easier?”
This reminds me of what I wrote about in my article on the compound effect of atomic habits—small systems compound over time.
Think about your morning routine. If you have to decide each morning whether to exercise, you’re relying on willpower. If you lay out your workout clothes the night before, set your alarm, and schedule gym time in your calendar, you’ve created a system that makes execution nearly effortless.
Remove Obstacles for the Vital Few and Increase Friction for the Trivial Many
The Theory of Constraints, developed by Israeli physicist Eliyahu Goldratt, suggests that in any system, there’s always one constraint limiting the entire system’s performance—like a slowest hiker holding up an entire trail group.
Essentialists don’t randomly fix problems. They systematically identify the biggest obstacle preventing execution of what’s essential, then remove it.
One startup was struggling to ship products on time. Instead of hiring more people or working longer hours, they identified the constraint: their quality assurance process had become a bottleneck. By redesigning just that one process, the entire system’s performance improved by 40%.
Simultaneously, increase friction for nonessential activities. If you want to reduce social media use, delete apps from your phone. If you want to avoid junk food, don’t keep it in your house. Make the trivial many harder to access and the vital few easier to execute.
Embrace the power of small wins to build momentum. As I detailed in my article on atomic habits, progress comes from consistent small steps in the essential direction.
Focus Your Full Energy on the Essential Task at Hand
In my article on deep focus, I explored how the ability to concentrate without distraction has become a rare and valuable skill.
Essentialists embrace what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow”—that state where you’re completely absorbed in an activity, losing track of time, producing your best work. You can’t achieve flow while multitasking or context-switching.
One simple but powerful question helps maintain focus: “What’s important now?” Not what was important yesterday or what might be important tomorrow. Right now, in this moment, what’s the one thing that deserves your full attention?
When you ask this question consistently, you stop responding to the urgent and start focusing on the essential.
Live a Fully Controlled and Meaningful Life
The ultimate promise of Essentialism isn’t just productivity or success (though you’ll likely achieve both). It’s living a life of meaning and purpose—a life where you look back without regret, knowing you invested your precious time and energy in what truly mattered.
McKeown shares his own essential choices:
- Choosing to wrestle with his children on the trampoline instead of going to networking events
- Choosing to say no to international client work for a year to write his book
- Choosing to set aside one day each week with no social media to be fully present at home
- Choosing to push back work deadlines to go camping with his family
These aren’t sacrifices—they’re deliberate choices about what matters most. Each choice reinforces his identity as an Essentialist, making the next choice easier.
When you become an Essentialist, you’ll find yourself swimming against the cultural current. When others say yes, you’ll say no. When others are doing, you’ll be thinking. When others are speaking, you’ll be listening. When others complain about how busy they are, you’ll just smile, unable to relate.
But here’s what you gain: control of your own choices, a life that actually matters, work that makes a real contribution, and the satisfying experience of making significant progress in the things that count.
Your Essentialism Action Plan: From Overwhelmed to In Control
Ready to become an Essentialist? Here’s your practical roadmap:
This Week:
- Create space to escape: Schedule two hours with no phone, no email, no agenda—just thinking time
- Identify your dealbreakers: Write down three types of requests you will no longer say yes to
- Ask the killer question: Look at your current commitments and ask, “If I didn’t already have this commitment, how hard would I work to get it?”
This Month:
- Define your essential intent: Write one sentence describing your highest point of contribution
- Practice selective criteria: For every new opportunity, ask “Is this a hell yeah?” If not, say no
- Design one system: Pick one essential activity and create a system that makes execution effortless
- Eliminate one major nonessential: Use zero-based budgeting on your time—start from scratch and only add back what’s truly essential
This Year:
- Protect your sleep: Build 7-8 hours of sleep into your schedule as non-negotiable
- Establish boundaries: Clearly communicate your essential priorities and the boundaries that protect them
- Create a play ritual: Schedule regular time for activities that bring you pure joy
- Review quarterly: Every three months, reassess what’s essential as circumstances change
Remember: Like my discovery of the less command, the path of doing less but better might seem counterintuitive at first. Our culture preaches more—more hustle, more opportunities, more connections, more everything.
But the Essentialists among us know differently. They understand that the vital few deliver exponentially more value than the trivial many. They’ve learned that the disciplined pursuit of less allows them to make their highest possible contribution.
The choice is yours. You can continue saying yes to everything and progressing a millimeter in a million directions. Or you can choose to become an Essentialist—focusing your energy on the few things that truly matter and making remarkable progress in the right direction.
What will it be?
If you found this article valuable, I’d love to hear your thoughts. What’s one nonessential commitment you’re ready to eliminate? What’s the essential work you’ll focus on instead? Share your journey in the comments—I read and respond to every one.
