Ambitious Millennials Need to Embrace Minimalism
It’s not just about decluttering your closet.
Minimalism has an image problem. Well, not a problem, but a one-dimensional message. It seems to necessitate sleeping on a yoga mat, stripping your walls of art, and owning about four pieces of clothing. I don’t think any of these actions or good or bad (although I’d probably lean more towards good), but the simple truth is that minimalism is so much more.
Popular minimalists like Joshua Fields Millburn and Leo Babauta espouse no longer setting goals, not working crazy hours, and living life at a much slower pace. That’s good and healthy. But what about those who thrives on the rush of working hard on ambitious goals? Who want to move up, get ahead, and meet their own criteria for success? Can minimalism be for them too?
I believe so. In fact, I believe minimalism is an unexplored tool that can help us accomplish our most stubborn work.
Approaching our work from a minimalist mindset is an exercise in separating the signal from the noise. It’s understanding the Parento Principle: That 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. As a lawyer, it’s processing every new legal matter through a theoretical machine composed of four sequential stages: define the successful outcome, identify each step in detail, decipher the most important tasks, and tackle those handful of tasks with laser focus.
1) Establish Your Game Plan
A common mistake we make is allowing our zeal for a new challenge to propel us straight into work. The problem is that enthusiasm is finite, and as soon as we start to face resistance we eventually gas out. Before we jump into the trenches, it’s imperative to pause and ask ourselves: what is the ideal outcome?
In a general sense, it’s probably completing a project to the best of our ability by a specific deadline. But I press you to flesh out your objective in greater detail. Is it to land a new account for the company? Win your case at trial? Secure a certain amount of money for your client? To make it more concrete, I prefer to take out a blank sheet of paper and write it at the top. That page has now become my outline. My guide star. From there, the entire strategy follows.
2) Plan Your Strategy
Below your desired outcome, you must now outline each step required in order to reach your goal. It could be five steps, ten steps, or fifty, but it isn’t one. Remember, the more detail the better. A trick that I use is to write each step out as if I was delegating these tasks to someone else. Is there enough detail so a colleague will know what to do?
3) Important vs. Not Important
As a lawyer, I’ve noticed the Parento Principle in action. Out of the hundreds of hours I’ve spent on a case, only a handful of them really affected the results. Often it’s as simple as a few hours of hearing preparation, where I’m asking my client the right questions in just the right way than hours spent remembering the most minute, and often inconsequential, details of the file.
In other words, after you’ve laid out every single step that connect Point A (the starting line) to Point B (the finish line), you must ascertain the most important tasks, a.k.a. the top 20%, that will move the needle the most.
The more that you do this, the easier this will be. To use another personal example,as a result of having participated in numerous mediations, I very quickly can recognize the two most important tasks to reach a settlement: 1) manage client expectations, and 2) leverage the financial costs the opposing party will incur should the matter proceed to a hearing. The other stuff: writing demand letters, compiling relevant documents, creating timelines of events, fleshing out arguments, rounding up witnesses, researching prior legal cases, are simply not essential or relevant for that specific goal.
Tackling Important Tasks with Laser-Focus
In reality, there are only a couple of tasks that truly influence the outcome. These tasks might seem simple in theory, but they require the expertise, perspective, and judgement that you have and others don’t. The unimportant tasks are tasks that you most likely can delegate without undue harm.
I can’t expect a law student to manage a client’s expectations well in their first shot. It’s not because they’re not smart, it’s just that it requires using skills that aren’t taught in law school. Whatever involves skills that are hard to replicate tends to be what you should devote most of your attention towards.
4) Time is a powerful equalizer. After all, we have the same amount of hours each day as Beyonce. It’s what you focus on during those hours that separates us from the pack. Someone is going to spend four hours practicing their guitar and they’re going to be a better musician than someone who instead spends four hours writing code. We can’t all be professional musicians and expert coders. Minimalists understand the reality of trade-offs, and that the key to achieving success, however one defines it for themselves, is having a fixed destination, followed by a comprehensive map on how to get there.
When you focus on less, you can do more. You can prepare better, move faster, and accomplish more in half the time it takes for everyone else.
As John Maxwell once emphasized, “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”
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