Book Summary: The Power Of Less
Leo Babauta’s The Power Of Less looks at what he calls productive minimalism. How to focus on changing your behaviors and habits to help ensure successful long term changes.
Related Book Summaries to The Power Of Less:
Digital Minimalism – Cal Newport
The More Of Less – Joshua Becker
Quotes:
The Power of Less is perfect for achieving goals: Limit yourself to fewer goals, and you’ll achieve more.
Doing a huge number of things doesn’t mean you’re getting anything meaningful done.
I advocate single-tasking, focusing on one task at a time and working as simply as possible to preserve your mental health and to improve your effectiveness.
The Power Of Less Big Ideas
Fix Your Priorities
To focus on the essentials you need to find out what is essential. It’s the first step, sorting through all the junk that clogs your time and figuring out what is really the most important.
The easiest way to figure this out is to ask yourself some questions, use a pen and paper so that you really work through your answers. What do you value? What are your goals? Which of your obligations are actually essential?
Once you have some answers, we can move on.
Make Clear Decisions
Now that we know what’s important it’s time to start to limit everything that’s not. Being more deliberate about the ways we choose to spend our money and time can have huge positive impacts on our lives. I’ve written before about conscious spending, that very much applies here as well. By taking the time and money we would have applied to areas that don’t actually align with our goals and spending it on the things and experiences that do, we can move much more quickly towards our goals.
We also need to be clear with others that our time is limited and our priorities are clear. Become more mindful of rejecting the things that don’t align with your personal priorities. Going out with your boss and work colleagues may not be as important to you as spending more time with your family, so it would be pointless to agree to meet with them at a bar after work.
Remember that priorities change over time and over the seasons of life. There will be a time when work will need higher priorities so you can climb the ladder, but also times when you have a young family and should spend more time with them and be content with where you are currently in your work life.
Your Life Is The Sum Of Your Habits
The only way to make real lasting change is through habit formation. The best way to make a new habit is to work on one at a time. You can use techniques such as anchoring, where you attach a new habit to the end of an old one. You can also try making yourself accountable to people to give you more motivation to work harder and not fail.
A few that the author recommends to get started include:
- Checking email only twice per day.
- Setting and accomplishing three important things each day.
- Doing at least five to ten minutes of exercise each day.
- Eating a piece of fruit every day.
The Power Of Less Book Summary Notes:
- Become more effective by limiting yourself to the essential.
- Setting limits is a great way to start to regain control over your life and where you spend your time.
- Without priorities, you won’t know what is essential. Without knowing what’s essential you’ll waste a lot of your money and time.
- Be clear about your decisions and priorities, especially with others.
- Restricting what we do isn’t supposed to be negative, it should be used as a way to free up more time for the things we want and prioritize.
- Use habits to change your everyday outcomes.
- When learning new habits focus on consistency. Start small and make it hard to fail by having as low a barrier of entry as possible.
- Use goal setting to focus on one goal at a time and make real meaningful progress.
- Multitasking is inefficient. Stay focused on one thing while your working on it. This will help to make faster gains as well.
- Write down your top three tasks to do the next day the night before. Focus on doing those tasks the next morning and get them checked off.
