Start thinking in the way of the essentialists and start prioritizing things.

“Essentialism”, The disciplined pursuit of less.  The book is written by Craig McKeown. The book is one of my most amazing reads since it speaks to me directly with the challenge I’m facing the challenge to prioritize what I want to do, when I want to do it and whether is important or not. For some time I have been one of those people who can not say no to anything; any project, any idea, any work, any family task and so on. The book helped me to start thinking in the way of the essentialists and start prioritizing things.

Essentialism it is a discipline you applied every time you are faced with a decision about whether to say yes or to politely decline.

— Jumanne Mtambalike (@J4Mtambalike) October 30, 2015

Ways of the essentialists require you to have as minimum as possible but as important as possible. It also includes you dropping some really important life opportunities for the pursuit of less. The book is trying to explain the importance of focusing on less and do it better and successful in short period of time rather than doing more on less quality and consume a lot of time. As easy as it might look humanly this is next to impossible due to our nature and the way we operate and think.

#TheEssentialists pic.twitter.com/hJ7ilhLVGr

— Jumanne Mtambalike (@J4Mtambalike) October 30, 2015

The was a question of being overworked but under utilised something that has been bothering me for some time. I have so many projects, I’m involved in many startups and I’m usually very busy at the office, but the output of all this has been very less compared to the effort I put. Whether is financial output, satisfaction output or even professional growth output sometimes.

The book explains about the challenge of having too many priorities, actually, there is a quote from the book which says “the word priorities didn’t exist on English dictionary up to 1900s” when people start to have so many things and life become very busy with a lot of things to do. With all the distractions around it is very easy to be carried away with what is happening around you. The internet, politics, culture, work, all these things might cause a number of distractions and make you lose the focus towards your main life goals.

According to the book living the life of the essentialist will give you the real meaning of life; you can have spare time and have great moment with family and friends, time to reflects and time to work on the things you like, but of course this comes at a greater price at some point of time you will have to drop the things that you love most, things that make sense to you, things that have promises to have a brighter future, real opportunities sometimes.

Most of the time things that are keeping us busy they are not even supposed to keep us busy. When I reflected my daily work at Buni, the number of emails I received and start to count the actual essential emails I’m supposed to reply and work on them are very few. The rest of them are distractions; favours, other people agenda (KPI) or missions I don’t want to be involved.

Where are you focusing your energy? Every where? You are not an essentialists pic.twitter.com/eBrHSru07I

— Jumanne Mtambalike (@J4Mtambalike) October 30, 2015

What is the practical way of becoming an essentialist? How can you protect yourself from being stretched too thin at home or at work, how can you be busy and productive. I don’t have the best solution, but this is what I practice right now.

Important & Urgent (Today) (list of tasks or assignments)	Not Important & Urgent (delegate) (list of tasks or assignments)
Important & Not Urgent (Reschedule) (list of tasks or assignments)	Not Urgent  & not Important (Drop) (list of tasks or assignments)

From the Eisenhower Box.

Currently, I have distributed my life tasks into four blocks using a tool called Trello and Eisenhower box. I have prioritized everything I do into those four blocks; Urgent and Important (do), Urgent & not important (delegate), Not Urgent & Important (Postpone) and Not Urgent not Important (Drop). This has helped a lot in terms of my time management and reducing stress and pressure on the things I do. It has also given me total control of my daily task and put my life into a more organized way. You can also start now, there is no such thing called "Priorities" we have only one priority.