Minimum Viable Workload (Strategic Essentialism)

What is Minimum Viable Workload (Strategic Essentialism)?

Greg McKeown's essentialism applied to workload recovery. When burned out, you can't add more self-care on top of an unsustainable workload — you need to cut first. Identify the absolute minimum work required to keep your job/business alive, do only that for 2-4 weeks, and rebuild deliberately from the reduced baseline.

Is there evidence for it?

How do you do Minimum Viable Workload (Strategic Essentialism)?

1. 1.List everything on your plate. Categorize each as: essential (business dies without it), important (meaningful but not urgent), and filler (exists because of inertia or people-pleasing)
2. 2.For the next 2-4 weeks, do ONLY the essential items. Delegate, postpone, or drop everything else. Tell stakeholders: 'I'm reprioritizing to focus on the highest-impact work'
3. 3.Track what actually breaks when you stop doing the 'important' and 'filler' items. Most of the time, nothing breaks — revealing that those tasks were never essential
4. 4.After the reset period, add back items one at a time. For each, ask: does this create value proportional to the energy it costs?
5. 5.Set a permanent workload ceiling: if adding a new commitment pushes you past it, something existing must be dropped first

How long does it take?

2-4 weeks of reduced workload, then permanent discipline.

Is it hard to start?

hard.

> how Shift handles burnout

This is one entry from the library Shift matches against. It is general information, not advice about you, and nothing on this page came from anyone's conversation.