Greg McKeown, in his masterpiece Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, writes:

  • “We live in a world where almost everything is worthless and a very few things are exceptionally valuable.”
  • “Anyone can talk about the importance of focusing on the things that matter most, and many people do, but to see people who dare to live it is rare.”
  • “[A]sk yourself, ‘Will this activity or effort make the highest possible contribution towards my goal?’”

The more I develop the skill of essentialism, the more rewarding and engaging my life becomes. I make significant improvements towards my most cherished life goals — improving laws to prevent animals from being tortured and killed; spending time with my loved ones; providing the best possible life for my two rescue dogs, Shiloh and Max.

There is a sneaky catch. If you dedicate yourself to just a few core life goals, whatever those goals might be for you, then this necessarily means that you aren’t dedicating yourself to being recognized for those goals. My goal is to prevent animals from being tortured and killed, not to be perceived by others as doing so. I’m working towards results, not social status. So far, my biggest wins — resulting in genuinely less suffering for animals in several countries — have been totally uncelebrated. My name has not been attached to those wins.

This is easier said than done! The human brain, trained by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution during which group membership was an essential ingredient for survival, is great at making you care about social status.

So, the essentialist approach — which, I emphasize, has enabled me to get significantly more value and joy out of life — comes with a special sort of loneliness or unseenness.

Brandon D. Crowe, in his book Every Day Matters: A Biblical Approach to Productivity, expresses this beautifully in a phrase that, to me, encapsulates a core truth of Christianity: “Sometimes failure in the eyes of the world is success in the eyes of God.”