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I’ve written before about Greg McKeown’s book, Essentialism and how it changed my mindset toward life goals and more. McKeown urges us to recognize time and energy as limited resources, and to be intentional about how we spend them. Just as minimalists recommend clearing physical clutter, McKeown endorses clearing the things that clutter our daily schedules and our minds. He delivers the harsh but powerful truth that we cannot do everything we want to do. Rather, we have to choose what we value most and consciously discard those things that don’t support our highest priorities.
I had already been dabbling in minimalism when I encountered this book. Its message that we benefit not only from decluttering not only our environments but also our commitments radically changed how I approached my life. I had previously spread my energy across several goals and projects and said “yes” to almost any request. And this mindset shift led me to eliminate the “noise” and funnel energy into what I value most. In the process, I shaped a much more intentional and mindful life.
If you also read this book and found it inspiring, you may be wondering what you should read next. Below I summarize five books you can read next to continue your journey towards a more intentional and fulfilling life.
1. Slow Productivity by Cal Newport
Newport’s Slow Productivity describes how knowledge workers can focus their energy to produce their most meaningful and high-quality work. Newport demonstrates how all the “noise” that McKeown references in Essentialism makes us very busy without producing much of value. Modern workplaces center around this “pseudo-productivity” – frenetic communication, nonstop meetings, and juggling many projects at once. All this activity ironically impedes true productivity. Have you ever pulled your focus from an important task to quickly reply to your boss’s e-mail and thus demonstrate that you are being productive? If so, this book is for you.
Like McKeown, Newport argues for being selective and “doing fewer things.” But he also provides insight into how to approach the few important projects that remain after you cut out the noise.
I read Slow Productivity as part of a book club at work, where everyone recognized the “pseudo-productivity” problem that Newport so brilliantly summarizes. The main critique that came up in our discussions is the same one I saw in online reviews: many people see Newport’s solution as impossible to implement. To do what he proposes, you would need to either work for yourself or completely upend your organizational culture. However, I found it valuable because it changed the way I thought about work. After reading, I changed certain behaviors that were leading to burnout. “Slow productivity” is also one of the ideas that led me to pursue income streams beyond traditional employment.
So even if you think, “Sounds great, but my boss would never go for it” – read it anyway. You may be able to implement small changes that alleviate burnout or start a conversation with your teammates. Or it may even be the nudge you need to shift your career.
2. Effortless by Greg McKeown
Effortless is the most natural follow-up to Essentialism. McKeown wrote it after Essentialism to build on some of the concepts he presented in his earlier work. While Essentialism explained the value of focusing energy on what matters most to you, this book aims to show you how to make doing what matters easier and, well, effortless.
I found this book valuable because, while the premise of Essentialism immediately resonated with me, I found it wasn’t so simple to cut out low-value activities and focus my time and energy on what I was most passionate about. Often, it’s easier to do quick, low-value tasks and feel productive than it is to tackle something truly important. Effortless shows how to make working on passion projects just as easy as those low-value activities.
Many of the books I’ve found insightful lately have a theme of upending certain “obvious” ways of looking at life. While our culture urges us to collect possessions, minimalism shows us how clutter is costly. While many people view perpetual busyness and burnout to be virtues, Essentialism demonstrates the value of doing less. And while many of us never question that anything worth doing has to be hard, Effortless presents the counterintuitive idea that important things can be easy and even enjoyable.
3. 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
I referenced Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks in another post about how essentialism can solve your time management woes. Burkeman starts the book explaining that he used to write about productivity tips and tricks. But he had an epiphany one day, realizing that we only have so much time on this earth, and no amount of productivity tricks will allow you to do every single thing you’d like to do.
This sounds grim and defeatist, but it’s actually quite liberating to realize there’s no way you can just push or discipline yourself into doing everything. Instead, you need to accept the limitations of time and be selective about what you aim for.
I read this book shortly after I read Essentialism and was struck by how similar the two authors’ outlooks are. It seems they independently came to the same conclusion: we need to accept the harsh truth that we cannot do everything. In fact, if we’re to produce anything of value, we need to be willing to part with things we’re “kind of” interested in and instead put our limited resources into what’s most important. And that involves being intentional about everything you do in life. And Burkeman actually provides realistic advice for how to implement that intentionality in your life.
4000 Weeks may sound pessimistic from a summary. In fact, the title is a reference to the average human lifespan. But I encourage you to read the book. You’ll be surprised by how you end up finding “embracing finitude” and contemplations of mortality to be liberating and even exhilarating.
4. Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
Digital Minimalism is another suggestion from Slow Productivity author Cal Newport. Like McKeown, Newport often explores themes of focusing on what one values most while eliminating other pursuits. You’ll find two of his principles similar to those of essentialism: 1) Clutter is costly, and 2) Intentionality is satisfying.
I think all of us can relate to having an unhealthy relationship with our technological devices. Newport explains why that is (spoiler alert: it’s intentional manipulation of human psychology – not your own lack of discipline). And he proposes a solution: digital minimalism, which he defines as…
A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.
Newport argues that small steps like disabling notifications don’t go far enough to fix the problem. He describes digital minimalists of varying extremes to show us possibilities for “choosing a focused life in a noisy world.”
Beyond practical advice, the book explores of how our collective relationship with technology came to be. It’s worth reading to see how we’ve been gradually subsumed into tech addiction without consciously choosing our relationship with technology. In Essentialism, McKeown shows how failing to intentionally define our priorities will lead to others prioritizing for you. And in Digital Minimalism, Newport shows how passively engaging with certain technologies leads us to being manipulated by them.
Whether you do a 30-day digital detox, ditch your smartphone, or simply delete a few apps, you’ll benefit from Newport’s way of thinking about intentionality when it comes to technology that seems ubiquitous but doesn’t have to be.
5. Goodbye Things by Fumio Sasaki
Goodbye Things may not seem like a natural follow-up to Essentialism, because it focuses on – as the title suggests – things. The books above center more on activities that take up your time than material possessions. But material possessions can also be a distraction. Decluttering your physical space is, in my opinion, the first step to decluttering your life and your mind. After feeling the peace of a minimalist space, the obvious next step is to declutter your schedule and to-do list.
Did you read Essentialism and see wisdom in the advice but haven’t really been able to implement it? This book is full of practical decluttering tips can help you take that preliminary step. So many of Sasaki’s insights about why we hang on to things are applicable to bigger things in life that we cling to, which waste our time and energy. There there are many books about decluttering, and I don’t follow Sasaki’s extreme approach to minimalism. However, I recommend this book because of those insights and because it’s just plain fun to read. Sasaki’s writing is full of humor, and he finds ways to make harsh truths like “you are never going to learn to play that guitar” or “you only collect books to convince others you’re an intellectual” go down easy with a laugh.
What Do You Think?
Have you read any of these books? If so, what did you think? Are there others you’d recommend to anyone who loved Essentialism? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
You May Also Like…
What Is Essentialism? This Simple Idea Can Level Up Your Life
What Does Essentialism Mean and How Does It Compare to Similar Movements?
Minimalist Mindset: How to Go Beyond Decluttering to Become a Minimalist
