Defining terms: Essentialism vs. Minimalism vs. Intentional Living
This blog includes “essentialism” in the title, but you’ll notice that I often write about minimalism and intentional living. This post defines these terms and demonstrates how they intersect in a purposeful and authentic approach to life.
What Is Essentialism?
The most succinct definition for this term is in subheading of the 2014 book, Essentialism, by Greg McKeown. That is, simply, “The disciplined pursuit of less.”
A longer explanation from the book goes like this:
Essentialism is not a way to do one more thing; it is a different way of doing everything. It is a way of thinking…. There are three deeply entrenched assumptions we must conquer to live the way of the Essentialist: “I have to,” “It’s all important,” and ‘I can do both.” … Essentialism requires we replace these false assumptions with three core truths: “I chose to,” “Only a few things really matter,” and “I can do anything but not everything.”
The term “essentialism” can have different meanings depending on context. However, when I write about it, I’m referring to McKeown’s definition as outlined in his book. The book was a gamechanger for me, completely shifting how I set goals and made decisions.
I incorporated that term into the title of this site because the book really spoke to me. The reality that I could not do everything, and instead had to choose just a few things, was a harsh truth that I needed to hear.
Rather than piling more and more things onto your plate, essentialism urges you to think in terms of trade-offs. Do you want this goal or that goal? It’s natural to resist that question and try to insist that you can have it all. In the same way, it’s easy to resist the soul searching required to decide what your few priorities are. But on the other side of that, making the decision and moving toward those few goals with more energy and time feels incredibly freeing and empowering.
What Is Minimalism?
Minimalism as a lifestyle involves being intentional about what possessions you own and clearing away things you don’t truly need. For some, this means paring down your possessions to the bare minimum you need to survive. For others, including me, it just means being intentional in your choices of what possessions you keep. These can include some that are not necessary, but which bring you joy or ease.
This lifestyle runs counter to the dominant consumerist culture, and it can therefore be extremely difficult to start. We’re bombarded daily with advertising convincing us we need to buy certain products, that these will finally make us happy. Often, we oblige but find that that product didn’t quite do the trick, and we need to try another one. To stay on this treadmill, we need money, and we spend most of our time working to support this habit.
The minimalist movement offers an alternative to this treadmill. It encourages people to cut out the excess and be purposeful in their choices of what to buy. Naturally, if you’re buying less, you need less income, and practicing this lifestyle can free you from overwork as well.
While minimalism focuses on possessions, you’ll usually see minimalists espouse a larger goal of intentionality in all areas of life.
How Does Minimalism Compare to Essentialism?
McKeown shows how essentialism and minimalism mirror each other in his book using the metaphor of a closet:
Think about what happens to your closet when you never organize it. Does it stay neat and tidy with just those few outfits you love to wear hanging on the rack? Of course not. When you make no conscious effort to keep it organized, the closet becomes cluttered and stuffed with clothes you rarely wear…. In the same way that our closets get cluttered as clothes we never wear accumulate, so do our lives get cluttered as well-intended commitments and activities we’ve said yes to pile up…. Unless we have a system for purging them, once adopted, they live on in perpetuity.
Similar to how there are now so many options for cheap junk to clutter your home with, there are also a multitude of things you could be doing at any given time – work, entertainment options, social commitments, social media apps with endless streams of content. Everything vies for your attention. It requires discipline to avoid spending money on junk and to avoid spending precious time on activities that aren’t valuable.
Before learning about minimalism, my attitude was, “How can I best organize the mountains of crap in my closet?” Minimalism shifted my mindset to, “Why do I have mountains of crap in my closet?” Similarly, before essentialism, I focused on how to manage my time to accomplish the million “priorities” I had each day. This was, of course, impossible, and I became demoralized as I failed again and again.
Essentialism pointed out that the problem was not my time management, energy, or organization. I simply had too many priorities. More than any one person could realistically put effort into. My focus then shifted to deciding what was most important and dedicating my time and energy to that. It was painful to consciously “kill” some of my goals. But it was also a relief to finally have item and energy for what matters. In the same way, it’s painful to part with objects you’ve kept for years, but it’s such a relief to have space to breathe again.
What Is Intentional Living?
Intentional living is a lifestyle in which a person explicitly names their most important values and priorities and then consciously shapes their decisions and commitments around those.
The term has become popular recently, in my opinion, because of the overabundance of choices available in modern life. If you don’t take the time to define your values and priorities – if you mindlessly say “yes” to everything – you’ll be pushed and pulled in all directions. And defining priorities is not something you do just once. Every day you’ll need to refocus and ensure that what you’re spending time and energy on supports those priorities. And there will be plenty of pressure from other people, and from the culture at large, to veer off course. Like all habits, though, this gets easier with practice.
How Does Intentional Living Compare to Essentialism?
I’ll again refer to McKeown’s book to show how his concept of essentialism intersects with the intentional living movement:
The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage.
The messages of these philosophies are similar. Intentional living encourages practitioners to decide what is important to them and then make decisions accordingly. In other words, to live on purpose rather than by fate. Essentialism also urges you to decide what’s important to you, but it takes it one step further: you need to pare down that list to just a few things that you can realistically accomplish in your life. Essentialism is a form of intentional living that asks you to get specific about what you want and then cut out the low-value distractions.
For both philosophies, this line from McKeown sums up the core message:
If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.
If you never consciously name your priorities, others – family, friends, employers, and advertisers – will be happy to step in to decide for you. If you’re not mindful about what’s happening, you’ll be blown in all directions by these competing forces. Then you’ll wonder why you don’t feel satisfied or fulfilled.
How Do These Approaches Tie Together?
I included all these terms in this blog’s description because I see them as reinforcing each other. All are focused on the same idea: to focus on what matters and cut out the BS.
As I mentioned in my About page, when I first explored minimalism, I told myself it was unhealthy to think so much about my stuff. If material possessions aren’t important, I shouldn’t be obsessing over paring them down, right? And yet something told me that I needed to do it. As it turns out, it was the best thing for me. There is an initial effort required to think about your stuff and declutter. Bu the end goal is to have what you need, stop shopping for new things, and let your obsession with stuff fade away. After the initial effort, you spend much less time thinking about stuff as a minimalist.
And this process of eliminating stuff from my environment, of facing reality and deciding which things were important and which were superfluous, naturally led me to consider other areas of life –commitments, hobbies, areas of study, career, relationships – everything, really. After practicing the skill of discernment through decluttering, I was able to face other areas of life with the same eye toward what was truly important to me at this stage in my life.
That naturally led me to explore ideas like essentialism and intentional living. I’ve combined these philosophies into an approach toward life that involves stepping back, evaluating my priorities, and making decisions consciously to support those priorities. And that requires actively cutting way anything that doesn’t support those priorities.
While this approach is challenging to start, eventually it becomes second nature, and you can start living in a way that is purposeful and authentic to you individually.