YouSaid · the spoken record

Greg McKeown

lines on the record: 125
first: 2019-01-09
most recent: 2019-01-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That's his polite though. And the people that are best at it, I don't think are saying no. And I don't even think they have to be as Peter Drecker was kind of, I mean, that's a particularly explicit way of dealing with it, right? And I don't think that's necessary either. I think you could just be very quiet, happily, gently, you know, I just don't think I could add anything to that project. Thanks for thinking of me. I just don't think I'd be the right person for that. I just think, you know, I've done everything I can do on that. And it's so important. I mean, Mega Truck is not Warren Buffett.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's an interesting story. Tony Robbins tells his story in his book on finance about Warren Buffett, in which he basically failed to get Warren Buffett to ever be interviewed for his book. Now he's getting all the big top investors that he's priding himself on being able to access these people. And he's using all of those people and those relationships. Excuse me to go after Warren Buffett and to keep tapping him for an integral.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are going to come. Sometimes they do, but I think that we have to do reverse pilots sometimes where we try not doing something and saying no to something or just not doing it at all and seeing what the effects are and learning from it in our way. You know, in terms of a template, I've explored lots of templates and lots of things. An example that came up recently I really liked, which is illustrates one way to do this, is from Warren Buffett Warren Buffett, respected? Yes, right? Quoted all the time, arguably the most respected investor ever. He's constructed a system in his life that allows him to communicate and give back to people through his annual conference, for example. But that doesn't mean that he's saying yes to every request along the way.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On creativity. Positively saying this is one of the keys to creativity. I reached out to him and he showed me this and I learned something in the process, which is that highly creative people are willing to block out space to do the work that they are built to do and want to do and aren't just doing everything that everybody else is doing or everybody asks of them. What it helps us to identify is that there is such a situation as being able to push back, say no, and there to be a positive result come from it. I liked your email bounce back. This was positive to me. I learned things from it myself. This is, you know, there is such a thing. And often we're such novices at no. We just are so fearful of it. We don't learn how to do it and we don't do it. So we just assume that bad things.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's just pause for a second on that story. How do we have the text? Why do we know that that's how we responded? We know because it got published in the book”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so what would help do it? I mean, you've got masses of ideas yourself already, of hats and tools and tricks to be able to help people execute when they otherwise wouldn't. So you could definitely help co-design this, right? That's how we began, right, the design school at Stanford to help actually design a system that's weighted in your favor. And we know when we'll get there, we'll know when we've achieved it because on a day you don't want to make the trade-off, you'll still make it. On a day that you don't want to make the trade-offs, you'll still make it. That's when you've got a system working on your side.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The why this cannot simply be an easy yes, why this is a cost. And that's it. And I think what happens is that people default yes because they're so fearful of a rude no and its effects. And so they forget that there is a negotiate part of this. There is a educate part of this. And that's what I think this document can help with, is reminding yourself, getting yourself clear, and then you can educate other people too, because they just don't know. They don't understand what their request really means and what the cost really is. So that's one thing. But there's got to be more, and we ought to do something else that will actually help you make the shift. Let me just ask one more time Do you want to make this shift? You want to make this trade off.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we've identified only a little bit here of what building a system for you. And I don't want to shortchange this too much. We need to do a little more, which is you've identified now something that is essential to you. You've identified something that's non-essential, but all quid for you that's risky for you that you could give up. So there's a trade-off now. So we have an essential trade-off. But that's not enough because as soon as we finish this conversation, all of those dynamics that have been there before still are there. There is a system in place that keeps you away from getting on with this next book. It keeps you saying yes to requests and feeling really fearful about pushing back. We've identified one thing so far you can do to build a system which is writing this all out so that you have it there so that you can either say in person or put in email or express”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not throwing a tantrum. They're just lying on the floor, like legs spread out, arms spread out, they're just like, they have no energy to even get up off the floor. This is how much passion they feel for being in the supermarket on this day. They're just like, nothing here is interesting. Not one part of me wants to be getting up and doing this. That's how I feel in that business. It's just not. Is not what I'm supposed to be doing. And my poor assistant has had to hear me say that in one way or another so many times, okay, I know I should do this. Okay, let's do it. Make it happen. And finally, she's just like, look, there's no part of you that wants to do this. Why are you doing this? And so we managed, I think those are the three rules we got.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Giving the feedback, and I'm multiplying the effect of it. And then, you know, so that was number two. I think number three might have been something like either no new projects beyond what we'd identified, like we've already identified a couple of really big things I want to go after. It's like no new projects outside of that. It might have been specifically no workshop business, which is there's always a demand for it with essentialism. There's always been interest in it. I always feel an obligation because one, there's a need, people are interested, and two, you know, just I think, yeah, there's a full business here and it could easily be or have been successful business. And those things have keep pulling me into it. And I just, whenever I start working on it, I'm like, you know, you see those kids, you see a kid on the...”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so actually one was don't overcorrect based on a negative feedback. And that's a little more vulnerable to shout out one, but I think everybody suffers with that. That's why which is most personal is most universal. So we do an event, do a keynote conference, get good feedback. One of the people in the comments says X. And I think she's absolutely right. That is a valid criticism. Let's change it. Let's redo how we're doing this to address that concern. It's the same sort of thing. It's overreacting to it. And frankly, when you overreact to this kind of feedback, you're really cause a problem for other people giving feedback. And I, in hindsight, can see how that's been in my life, right? Somebody who's trying to be helpful, they're trying to be honest.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Keynotes, workshops, whatever. I'll listen, I'll understand what the company or the client at the conference needs. But I'm not going to redo, rethink, rechange. I'm not changing the slides. I'm not changing the subtle things you can do in the moment, but I'm not redoing stuff. Because if you personalize everything as I had a want to do, it's like you're rewriting a book every time. I mean, you have to rethink everything. And so that was one rule. And we had two other rules. Those are so helpful. And when I'm...”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The number of things I managed to commit to. I actually came back. Actually, she was gone for a month I'm remembering now. It's for her honeymoon. And when she comes back, and I was very positive, I wasn't saying, oh, I've messed everything up. I said, I said, let me tell you all the things that have happened in the month you've gone. And it was just kind of a little silence at the end of it all because she's like, she didn't say it, but this is what's in the silence. It's like, you know, what's wrong with you? How are you thinking that you can take on all of those projects and all of those ideas? You aren't thinking fully about the cost of doing all those things. And she was dead right and what grew out of that is we came up with three rules of things that I would and wouldn't do. And I'll give one of the rules was no personalization. I don't do any personalization. So if I'm doing...”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can change everything today to make that possible, and you go, hold on, let's go back to the document. My assistant was away for a little while, a couple of weeks, and the amount of damage I managed to do in those couple of weeks was ridiculous.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For yourself writing this all out, this is what I am trying to do and why it matters. I mean, in a way, it's having the conversation we've just had. Written out so that it can be expressed again and again and again. The why behind this answer, the why, is the thing that we miss out on. So let's in fact move to step three. So step one was what is essential? Step two is what is non-essential. And step three is how do you create a system that makes executing what's essential as effortless as possible? And it's a perfect way to get there at this point because having this written out document, I mean, how you'll use it is I'm not sure yet about that in my own head. But if you have it clearly written out, this is what I'm doing. This is why. This is the cost of disrupting that. This is what it does. This is who will lose out if I don't stay focused on this now. All of that becomes like a core communication core for yourself at the pivot, the place to pivot to when the request comes in and you go.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can I do this thing? And it's like they pretend there's nothing left, nothing else going on in their life. The request comes in and they go, can I do this? Well, yes, I can do this. I know how to do this. I can make this happen. And that's not life. That's non-essentialist junk. That's just rubbish. The question is, if I do this thing, what doesn't get done? What else gets pushed out? Now, I'm not saying don't be helpful to people that come requesting things. There can be absolutely ways of helping people. I want to help people. But if it's at the cost of something that's actually more important, that makes a higher contribution. We have an obligation not to do it. Now, there's one more piece here, which is important, which is that you don't want to hurt these relationships, and that's where the concern really comes from.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Warehouses for are going that way. And she had to get somehow, we assume she appeared to get to a level of peace with going, look, there's no way I can even touch any of that stuff. I've got to find to be truer to this voice within me of clarity about what my mission is and my essential mission and not all of this other stuff. It's not being unhelpful to the world. For you to say no to something that's less important is not being unhelpful or selfish in the world. I don't buy that. Your obligation is to the highest point of contribution you can make. And what I think happens a lot is that people get caught up in the idea that”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, because that would be violating the whole idea, which is essentialists embrace the reality of trade-offs. Of course there are trade-offs. Of course there will be people that are frustrated, right? That they want a peace. But just think about somebody, Oprah. How many requests are going that she can't possibly ask for? How many people sent her books? Can you imagine how many books were being sent to Oprah at the height of the Oprah show and everything? I mean, it's just insane the number of.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, now you're right. It doesn't make the problem go away that you suddenly feel bad and that there could be other hit jobs and there could be other misunderstandings and criticism. That's true. Now what we do is separate the decision from the relationship. You've got to think of the decisions in two separate buckets. We've just done that. You've made the decision. You understand the decision. And then, of course, you say, well, there is still going to be relationship impact. And that is true. And I don't think you should pretend that that isn't true. Somehow in some airy fairy essentialist land, oh, you can have it all.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You could still do something to be useful to them, provide them some helpful insights that you've gained. You can do that or you can keep helping the people that are asking for things that really disrupts that whole process. So which do you want? Which problem, Tim, do you want?”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's just got that inconvenience associated with it. You can't actually do everything. You can't actually get this next book that we've just identified, what it is, why it matters, deeply why it matters, launch living and out into the universe, and also do everything that people think is reasonable for you to do. You cannot do both of those things. Now, as soon as you come to terms with that, you say, okay, well, good, okay, that's not a solution I can have. That actually isn't, it's not, you say not sustainable. That means it can't be done. You can pretend you can be doing it for a little while and then the book doesn't get written. And so all those people, the ones that aren't probably asking anything from you, but they're still in pain.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, other than that, but you've just done for a favor, which is that you've helped us to understand the basic foundational error with nonessentialism. Like the problem with nonessentialism is that it happens, it's the only problem happens to be a lie.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but if something's not sustainable, that's like foundationally clear that it can't be right. Because by definition, it's something that's not sustainable will not continue. It cannot continue. So what you just said, which is awesome, is like, well, it's correct other than it's impossible.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that right there, is of course exactly the point. One can say, let's take the opposite argument for a moment. And I'll just play non-essentialist in the conversation, which is, yes, Tim, you're guessing it wrong. You're thinking about yourself too much. And every single request that someone from media or any friend or any acquaintance, anything that they want from you, you should be saying yes. Because what, you know, you got help by lots of people. Therefore, you're under total obligation to do it for everybody else. And you got this wrong. So is that argument right, Tim? Is it really right? It could be right. Is it right?”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your son has his problem. In a well intended, you've been well intended to try, but you got it all wrong. You've got to let him own it. If he doesn't have a problem, if everything's taken care of for him, he can't move. And so now, obviously, it's a bit strong to use that example with the examples that you've led this conversation with, but it is a similar principle is that there has to be a boundary and there has to be an education of going, you know, you've made this problem my problem right now. Let me just play this out so that you can own the problem so in the future we can do this perhaps in a better way.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He just described all the problems. He said, No, he says, listen. He says, if you look outside your window in the morning and your sprinkler head on your lawn is faulty and it's spraying on your neighbor's grass and your neighbor's grass is green and your grass is dying. Who has the problem? You've got the problem, right? Because your grass is dying. Your neighbor doesn't have a problem. Their grass is fine. Your son doesn't have a problem because he's comfortable at home with you. He gets to do whatever he wants. He's looked after life is fine. He doesn't have a problem. You have a problem. And your job now is to help your son to have a problem.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there's a story that I came across with a book that I really like on this principle, which is, I think it's a true story. I can't quite remember now, but Dr. Cloud, he's talking about meeting with a couple, a husband and wife, parents, and they come to see him and they say, look, our son, we have so many problems with our son. And, you know, he's on drugs, he's drinking all the time, he's living back at home with us now. I mean, he's just not got a job, everything. It's just such a mess for us. It's just so concerned. And he says, okay, well, I understand. Where is he, though? You have an appointment here to deal with this. Where is your son? And they said, well, you know, he doesn't really see that he has a problem. And Dr. Patter says, well, I think he's right. And they're shocked at that. What do you mean that he's right?”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are being thoughtless, maybe they don't think they're being thoughtless. They just think it's not a big deal for you and they don't understand the full range of impact. So I think writing this out, like almost like it's a recipe, this is the cost. And in that, I think in the helpful side of it, you could say, so in the future, if you want to be considered, this is the process you would need to go through. So again, what's happening is that you've got to help other people's problems be their problem.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And maybe there's even, once it's created, it could be used in a variety of ways. One is reactively right when the request comes in, okay, I needed to read this first. I need to understand. But maybe there's a proactive approach, which is like, look, I'm just putting this out there. This is what this actually costs. Because even what you just said, reputational cost, not that people aren't thinking about that. You know, they're just thinking about getting their thing achieved. And so being able to try and calculate all of that, the total cost of ownership. I mean, that's what you have to do with the planning fallacy is we have to consider the total cost so that we don't start projects that we don't complete. In fact, there's a New York Times just ran a piece about exactly this that I'm aware of because of because it's quoting essentialism in trying to address the problem. But of all these projects we start, we don't finish. This is just a version of that problem, that they're coming, they're not being, there may be.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's exactly so. So I think that there is something around this. Again, before we get to the relationship impact of, and maybe you already did it, but of actually creating one page, you've got the email bounce back document, having a page that says, look, this is the real cost, the total cost of ownership of me saying yes to this.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're saying in their head, they're going, this is a two minute favor, Tim. It's not hard. All you have to do is put out a tweet, how hard can it be or whatever. And so in their head, their ask is very small. But the reality is that their ask is much bigger.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definite fallacy is saying these things, we as humans underestimate almost all the time how long things will take. And we do that even with things we have done ourselves before, driving from point A to point B takes us 15 minutes. But if we're in the middle of writing an email, we will convince ourselves we can do it in five minutes this time. We'll get all green lights. Everything's going to work out somehow it'll be done in five minutes. Of course, it doesn't take that long. It takes 15 minutes and we're late for the meeting But we want ourselves into it. What you're describing, I think, has two pieces to it. The first is this piece and the second is the relationship impact of how to handle this. But what you're describing is a problem where somebody is really underestimating what their request is.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, let's just agree on the problem, first of all, because as a CEO friend of mine once told me, he said, I take every time and resource estimate that's given to me now, and I multiply it by pi. So he's saying I thought he was exaggerating at first, but he's saying that people so massively underestimate everything. And there is another heuristic for this, right? It's called the planning fallacy.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100% than it is to go 95 because what you're doing is you're taking out the decision process it's done we are not doing sugar now i don't have to think every time and by the way there's crazy amounts of sugar in this world i don't have to think about it every time the decision is already made so anyway i guess it so there's a lot of things you've cut out what”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nobody does moderation well. And that's my opinion about this subject. People don't do moderation well. I decided to go off sugar a year ago, almost a year ago. New Year's Eve. Talking to somebody, I've been thinking about doing it for a while. They've been off sugar for 12 years, and I'm like, okay, if you can do it 12 years, I can do a year. I'm going to make this decision. If I'd gone 95% of sugar, oh no, I'm out before I begin. Everything's an exception. Well, that's amazing cake. I got to eat that. I mean, that's a holiday. I've got to eat that is the weekend. I'm going out on date with my wife. I've got to eat it now. She's eating. Everything's an exception. So I think there's a variety of things in life that it's a much, much easier to go.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it is. And it lists them one after another after another. None of this stuff. If you are reaching out to me for any of this stuff, there is no point.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so on. No, your email bounced back is just like classic. No, it's classic. I never seen anybody that's done this ever. Your email bounce back has a word attachment to it. Am I making this up? I think this is what I seem to recall.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Weaknesses and awe, you know, what's an awe. So, okay, so that's it. That's phase one. Okay, so let's move down to phase two, which is what are you willing to give up to do this?”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the stuff going on, there's more traumas going on in a variety of ways, I think, that's fair to say, but also there's more openness to talking about traumas. So all these backlog of things not discussed is suddenly being able to be discussed. And there's just so much going on in the cloud of noise out there in social media and a variety of ways that I think people feel unsettled inside. And we've always known that there were things out there that could hurt us, right? We had the Cold War, there's always risks in the world. But recently, I feel like the risks feel more within people than they used to. And so I just think it's so relevant. And I think the way that you would approach it, there are obviously people that will need it just the way you do it.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At least one of them, yeah, and it just, I mean, I just still want to be on this just for a moment. I mean, I just want to support you with the process. I mean, the idea of a kind of tools for Titans, but applied to this pain point. Seems totally relevant It just seems as anxiety has become the number one. Diagnosed condition, beating out depression now, right? There's stuff going on.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, riskier to put it out there, riskier to be vulnerable, riskier to explore these things at that kind of a level, riskier to be criticized when it's something that's so personally vulnerable.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Before moving on to the trade-off phase, I think I can identify my core question before with the multiple choice. I don't feel like I gave the multiple choice properly. Pain, not of writing a book. That's its own kind of pain. Right, for sure. There's that, but there's just this particular subject, the very nature of it, is riskier.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so before we can move on, this is all everything we've done is really covering the first phase. They're not equal phases, but phase one of applying essentialism is what is essential. And that includes why does it matter? What does success look like? And what's the thing you want to shift to and so on? So it's, you know, and I always want to emphasize this small aside point, which is that sometimes when people, even when they read essentialism, or certainly if they've heard about just the peripheral level, they think I've written a book about sort of saying no. And that is part of it, but I didn't write a book called Noism. It's about essentialism. And so that's why the thrust of this conversation has to be there, because we've got to get clear what's essential, what do we actually need to make a change that is highly important to us. And that's what gives a drive to everything else. So just...”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. Of emotional traumas, where just, you know, it's a wild, wild West in comparison to what eventually we'll know and we'll learn about the subject. Okay, so. So let's say you are, this is too bombastic way of saying it, but let's say you've kind of been a little bit hiding behind this concern, this fear, and we're going to now shift towards phase two of the project, right? Where, okay, I don't have it all. Of course I don't have it all. There is no such thing as that 80% is going to be good enough. My mantra, 80% if it's 80% good, I'm going to be able to move forward. So let's say you do move to the second thing. You said you identify three to five hours. Is that additional three to five hours from where you've been before? Are you spending some time on an hour so now you have to add another two hours?”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You think it is No, but that's all right. That's all right. Yeah, but it feels like that is definitely an element. But the second element is, is it? Is it just the very subject itself? It's just like, oh, there's mass, I guess that is a form of perfectionism still, isn't it? It's just, it masses so much. It can really make a difference. But if I don't get it right, what? If you don't get it right, what? What happens then? Let's say you didn't get it right. What's the fear, really”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think you can sense, but I'm putting words in your mouth, but I think you can sense that that may be. Just an obstacle that's keeping you back, but it isn't really real. Like you're not going to write a rubbish book, but you worry that you are and that worry is holding you back. Does that sound right? What are your thoughts?”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I completely relate to that. I have just barely begun in this very early process of working on a book. And my mantra to myself for quite a while with this has been don't write a rubbish book. And actually, just recently, I think I say sharing that with my wife, and she's like, yeah, you might want to come up with another mantra. And she's right. I thought it was kind of funny. It kind of cubed me saying that I don't want to write rubbish book. It's not cute inside. It's a real fear. When something's important, and frankly, from my point of view, It's the easiest thing in the world to write a bad book. That's what happens, in fact. And often after a book that's been successful, the next book is very hard for people to write. So that alone is a fear, but then you've got this double.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or do I spend a gathering of research phase and then there's a, I'm going to consciously be applying it and writing about my applications. So there's sort of a two-phase process that you're following, overlapping but still distinct. And to answer my question about how much time you need to spend, you have to know which phase you're in.”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All the time Seinfeld was asked recently how many hours did he spend working on the recent one hour specially done for Netflix? How many hours did it take for him to do it? And he said, that's like asking God how long it takes for him to grow an oak tree. He's like all the time. That's what he's doing all the time. He's just growing trees, the world and everything. He said, that's what I'm doing. It's not five hours or 10 hours in my whole life. That's what I'm doing. So I understand that from what you're saying. Okay, so that's interesting. So, of the two, you just said two interesting things, though. You said, I don't know what it is that's really keeping me back from doing it. So there's a question mark here around, do I spend time on more research? Per day”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so let me ask you another question about this, which is what is success for you? And I don't mean success like the, okay, the book is this or that. That's not even necessarily the thing at this point. It's the, you know, you could go down this journey and conclude, okay, no, this isn't the right time for it and so on. But what is your daily amount of time that you would need to invest in this for you to say to me I now feel like I'm not under investing anymore? You know, I now feel, so what's the delta between where you are right now and a daily amount? Where you say, No, not perfect, it's not like I feel amazing about how much time I'm spending, but I feel good about it. It's not underinvested anymore”
2019-01-09 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #355: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT