a definite yes

 

If the answer isn't a definite yes then it should be a no.

Derek Sivers

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.103. See also No More Yes. It's Either HELL YEAH! Or No.

the lead to the story

Charlie O. Simms taught a journalism 101 class in Beverly Hills High School. He started the first day of the class Nora Ephron attended much the same way any journalism teacher would, by explaining the concept of a "lead." He explained that a lead contains the why, what, when, and who of the piece. It covers the essential information. Then he gave them their first assignment: write a lead to a story. 

Simms began by presenting the facts of the story: "Kenneth I. Peters, the principal of the Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead. college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California governor Edmund 'Pat' Brown."

The students hammered away on their manual typewriters trying to keep up with the teacher's pace. Then they handed in their rapidly written leads. Each attempted to summarize the who, what, where, and why as succinctly as possible: "Margaret Mead, Maynard Hutchins, and Governor Brown will address the faculty on...", "Next Thursday, the high school faculty will..." Simms reviewed the students' leads and put them aside. 

He then informed them that they were all wrong. The lead to the story, he said, was "There will be no school Thursday."

"In that instant," Ephron recalls, "I realized that journalism was not just about regurgitating the facts but about figuring out the point. It wasn't enough to know the who, what, when, and where: you had to understand what it meant. And why it mattered." Ephron added, "He taught me something that works just as well in life as it does in journalism."

Greg McKeown

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.73,74

only trade-offs

 

A Nonessentialist approaches every trade-off by asking, "How can I do both?" Essentialists ask the tougher but ultimately more liberating question, "Which problem do I want?" An Essentialist makes trade-offs deliberately. She acts for herself rather than waiting to be acted upon. As economist Tomas Sowell wrote: "There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs."

Greg McKeown

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.55

refusing to make trade-offs

 

I once worked with an executive team that needed help with their prioritization. They were struggling to identify the top five projects they wanted their IT department to complete over the next fiscal year, and one of the managers was having a particularly hard time with it. She insisted on naming eighteen "top priority" projects. I insisted that she choose five. She took her list back to her team, and two weeks later they returned with a list she had managed to shorten - by one single project! (I always wondered what it was about that one lone project that didn't make the cut.) By refusing to make trade-offs, she ended up spreading five projects' worth of time and effort across seventeen projects. Unsurprisingly, she did not get the results she wanted. Her logic had been: We can do it all. Obviously not. 

Greg McKeown

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.54, 55

they had the credo

How Johnson & Johnson bounced back from the tragic cyanide murder scandal in 1982. 

At the time Johnson & Johnson owned 37 percent of the market and Tylenol was their most profitable product. Then reports surfaced that seven people had died after taking Tylenol. It was later discovered that these bottles had been tampered with. How should Johnson & Johnson respond?

The question was a complicated one. Was their primary responsibility to ensure the safety of their customers by immediately pulling all Tylenol products off drugstore shelves? Was their first priority to do PR damage control to keep shareholders from dumping their stock? Or was it their duty to console and compensate the families of the victims first and foremost? 

Fortunately for them they had the Credo: a statement written in 1943 by then chairman Robert Wood Johnson that is literally carved in stone at Johnson & Johnson headquarters. Unlike most corporate mission statements, the Credo actually lists the constituents of the company in priority order. Customers are first; shareholders are last. 

As a result, Johnson & Johnson swiftly decided to recall all Tylenol, even though it would have a massive impact (to the tune of $100 million, according to some reports) on their bottom line. The safety of customers or $100 million? Not an easy decision. But the Credo enabled a clearer sense of what was most essential. It enabled the tough trade-off to be made.

Greg McKeown

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.53,54