“The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless.”

~ Greg McKeown in Essentialism

It is easy in our rapidly changing environment to get caught up in what we should be doing day to day. Is it okay to go to the grocery store? What about a party with 8 people? What about a popular beach?

We could make decisions in each moment based on what we heard most recently.

Or, perhaps we could make decisions less often and stick with it.

In this discussion with Kate Bowler, someone potentially particularly susceptible to COVID-19, she shares that she decided to set a two-week schedule. Every two weeks she makes decisions for herself about what is okay and what’s not. Only two weeks later does she consider newly-available information to make her decision for the next two weeks. She also tracks the information available to avoid the trap of regret in thinking she should have made a decision. It is easy after the fact to think we should have known X, when really we didn’t actually have that piece of information or didn’t yet see it in the way we do now.