<aside> ⭐ How strongly I recommend reading it: 5/5

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Essentialism is one of the most enlightening books that I have read. This book helped my understand why and how superhumans exist. It helped me realize we don't need to do more to achieve more. Most importantly, it gave me a practical roadmap on how to turn these principles into action in real life.

💠 The Book in 3 Sentences

<aside> 🎯 If I had to write three sentences that best describe what the book is mainly about.

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1. We all need a shift in mindset, to set the bar high on choosing what's important, and eliminating whatever else that is not important.
2. Tradeoffs are inevitable; A yes to an opportunity implies a no to many others. Say no to almost everything to be able to say yes to the opportunity you want to choose, when it comes to you.
3. Essentialism is a lifestyle. To live it, you have to make the process effortless; by preparing, creating routines, making elimination a habit, and all in all, systematizing your life in way that essentialism is the core philosophy.

☘️ Life Takeaways

<aside> 💡 How my life / behavior / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book. This is a list of actionable ideas, every item in this list can be put to action, like a method to use, or a shift in mindset, different way to think, etc.

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1. Priority instead of priorities

We often select a bunch of things and say there are my priorities. the hard truth is, it splits our focus, and there are times where we need to decide between them, but we don't know which one we value most. Even if you have multiple things to do, look at them like what you see when you take a peek at a pringles tube, you only see the top chip. Write down your list, and select the first item.

Instead of selecting multiple objectives, now I always try to sort my goals, and when you sort things, there is only one number 1 in the list. This will give you a clear vision on what you value most with every decision.

"If you could do only one thing with your life right now, what would that be?"

2. Edit your life, constantly, all the time

Think about editing as a process in which you select where you want direct the focus at. Editing is deliberately and consciously choosing the more important things over less important ones. You first have to accept you can't have it all.

We are good at adding, but very bad when it comes to subtracting, what was the last time you uninstalled an app, or unfollowed someone?

There is much higher value in subtracting, because it allows the most important stuff to shine. It is helpful for me in contexts of my habits, my talking, writing, work, and goal setting. Look at these examples:

• When talking, I now try to add just a small filter before my words, asking myself: "Do I really need to say it?". By the way the answer is usually no :)
• When writing my resume, I first added everything I did. Then I started looking at every sentence, thinking, what if this one was grabbing the attention of the recruiters instead of the most valuable thing that I did in that old job, would it still be worth it to keep this line? If no, then I'd remove that line. Or I would look at the sentence, and see if I could say the same thing with fewer words, and rewrite it multiple times.
• I create and break a lot of habits, I learned that I can't just add new habits to my life. At some point, they will take over all of my time. From time to time, I look back and see which habits don't seem to fulfill my current most important values, and don't do them anymore. This allows me to create new habits, for my current values.