Anthony Burgess reviewed Essentialism by Greg McKeown
Not sure what to think of it
4 stars
This one felt a lot like a business self-help book, which it is, but also felt like it had a lot of truth to it. Like a true business self-help book though, it contains a lot of "look at this CEO, using our ideas and being successful"-type of paragraphs. I'm never convinced about how true those testimonials can be. You can't just break it down to a few managing techniques and that's it, now your company is successful.
The writing was rather good in most parts, can't deny that. The comparison of sentences describing nonessentialists and essentialists was a bit on the nose, they always rubbed me the wrong way. I get the idea, you don't have to dumb it down even more. Other than that, it's just the idea of minimalism + don't spread out too much, broken down a bit too granular. It's the thoughts that automatically come …
This one felt a lot like a business self-help book, which it is, but also felt like it had a lot of truth to it. Like a true business self-help book though, it contains a lot of "look at this CEO, using our ideas and being successful"-type of paragraphs. I'm never convinced about how true those testimonials can be. You can't just break it down to a few managing techniques and that's it, now your company is successful.
The writing was rather good in most parts, can't deny that. The comparison of sentences describing nonessentialists and essentialists was a bit on the nose, they always rubbed me the wrong way. I get the idea, you don't have to dumb it down even more. Other than that, it's just the idea of minimalism + don't spread out too much, broken down a bit too granular. It's the thoughts that automatically come to mind, when you think about sticking to the essentials, but much longer and in a book. Essentially, essentialism not essentially described.
I don't know if I would recommend this book, it was good, but know what you are getting yourself into.