I wanted to start a series on one of my personal favourite things to do… read!
I’ve been a book lover since I was gifted the first 3 Harry Potter books in a box set by my older siblings when I was 8 or so. I didn’t learn to read (in English) until I was 9 years old and of course it was Harry Potter that became my first love + obsession.
These days I still love reading fiction for fun of course. I love anything girly, light and fun. The more stitches I get from laughing out loud as I read – yes I am aware this makes me look crazy, and no, I don’t care – the better! Some of my favourite authors are Melanie LaBrooy, Samantha Young, Helen Hoang. I also used to LOVE reading heaps of action/crime books like the Alex Rider series & Dan Brown’s novels.
However as my passion and work-life revolves around business, naturally, I love business / self improvement books even more. I try to implement the things I’ve learned from each book and so I usually “water them down” with a fiction book in between to give my brain a bit of a break.
Anyway – on with book no. 1 of this series (I’m thinking of writing one of these blog posts a month, let me know what you think and if I should write these more often)…
I don’t think I had heard about this book before it came to me (I mean that literally) it got sent to my house as a gift from a business group I’d recently joined, alongside The E-Myth (that’s a book review for another day though).
If you’ve ever felt a bit frazzled, disorganised, or like you’re lacking a clear direction (or even being pulled in a million different directions) in your business or life in general… this book can totally help you with that.
See, the idea is that you need to need to become an “essentialist”. Doesn’t that sound oh-so poetic and spiritual, and perfect? Well, I’m human and I don’t ever dream of getting there (clearly a skeptic)… but I’ll try, ok, so I read it.
Key takeaways:
There are some really (really) great ideas in this book about how to run your business, and improve your life and basically simplify things a whole lot so that you actually end up getting more out of life. I’m all for it!
Worth the read score – YAS! 9/10
Favourite quotes / ideas (literally – from pages I’ve folded or paragraphs gone over with a highlighter):
“Motivation and cooperation deteriorate when there is a lack of purpose.”
The idea of an “Essential Intent”. “…is both inspirational and concrete, both meaningful and measurable. …an essential intent is one decision that settles one thousand later decisions.”
“It’s mind-bending to consider that in practical terms we only ever have now… Yet only here and now can we actually execute on the things that really matter”
Have you read this book? If you haven’t, I highly recommend that you do! If you have, what were your favourite parts and key takeaways? Let me know in the comments!
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So wonderful to see a fellow book lover. Thank you for your review. I love your takeaways from the Essentialism. Simplicity is one of my core values and your recommendation fits the bill. This is definitely my next read! 🙂
Oh wow, that’s great to hear Fatma. Let me know how you like it, I’d love to hear what you think.