Before discussing more lessons from Essentialism, I wanted to provide an example of finding Essential Intents. This is MY essential intent, valid for NOW (they can change over time, and that’s fine).
Since I spend a lot of time blogging, I thought this would be the perfect subject for finding essential intent. The more time you spend on an activity, the more important it is to find its Essential Intent.
So what’s my essential intent for blogging?
Write more.
This single intent encapsulates all my primary and secondary goals for blogging.
- Write more to Create!
- Write more to improve my writing skills.
- Write more to challenge my creativity in finding new ideas.
- Write more to embrace imperfection.
- Write more to think, self-improve and organize.
- Write more to help others.
Anytime a new idea appears in my blogging domain, I ask myself: “Will this help me to write more?”. I avoid it if it doesn’t help. For example, I dumped my urge to make YouTube videos since it would prevent me from writing more. Without Essential Intent, it could have been harder to make this trade-off.
Essential Intent helps with making meaningful progress by letting me judge if I am spending time doing the core work or fluff. In the last week, I spent too much time marketing on Threads. So even though it’s bringing more viewers, I am cutting it back to make more time for writing.
The essential intent keeps on coming back every time I make a decision. Do I spend more time on SEO? Should I create a new cover photo on Canva? How about polishing the post a bit more to make it sound natural? Whenever I make a decision, I have the thought “Write More” back in mind influencing me.
Note that I don’t sacrifice everything for the sake of writing more. I just try to ensure I never lose focus on it. It’s fine to occasionally do things that go against the intent, but such decisions must be deliberate.