4 Essentialist Behaviors to Learn from Taylor Swift
Hint: “Shake It Off” isn’t one of them
If you’re new here, Taylor Swift just released Fearless (Taylor’s Version) as her first re-recording of her catalog from her former label. After shooting to fame after the original album released in 2008, Taylor Swift has known worldwide success because of the critical choices she’s made.
After finishing the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown just before Fearless (Taylor’s Version) released, I noticed that some choices Taylor made were in line with Essentialism: Play, Escape, Trade-Off, and Choose. The way she lives models how we can apply these Essentialist principles to lead more authentic and joyous lives.
In the book written by Greg McKeown, Essentialism outlines simple yet powerful decisions to create a more fulfilling life. Lots of things demand our attention, and it seems like we’re encouraged to burn out. Essentialism is the opposite of that.
Here’s how Taylor Swift embodies four key Essentialist qualities and how we can incorporate them too.
Play
McKeown defines play as “anything we do simply for the joy of doing rather than as a means to an end,” and that is what Taylor does with her music. In behind-the-scenes videos she shares about creating songs, we see her playing around with different lyrics, production styles and sometimes goofing around simply enjoying herself.
Play allows our subconscious to create links and explore different possibilities, enabling us to a new perspective for an old issue, an unconventional yet effective solution, or a new album in a different genre. It allows us to be flexible and creative.
Play makes us more open to new ideas at the neurological level, challenging age-old assumptions and trying new things. Stuart Brown, the founder of the National Institute for Play, says that “Play leads to brain plasticity, adaptability, and creativity.”
Songwriting is Taylor’s profession, but it’s also her stress-reliever. When paparazzi were harassing her about weight gain, she used songwriting to release that constant stress (resulting in the song Dancing With Our Hands Tied). Play is essential for managing stress and can even provide temporary relief from pain.
However, our society views play as trivial, when in reality, it’s essential. It allows significant improvement in all aspects of our lives. Taylor Swift uses music as a form of creative exploration, fun, and stress relief. How else would one write two indie/alternative albums during a global pandemic?
How to Play
Pick something you enjoy — it can be related to your profession or an old hobby.
You do not have to be “good” at it or turn it into a side-hustle. Allow yourself to play by simply enjoying the activity and not expecting a secondary outcome from it. If you like painting, but are “bad” at it (like me), don’t paint to be the next Picasso — paint without judgment.
Play is essential in itself. You don't need to monetize it or make it “productive.” Counterintuitively, allowing yourself to play without making it productive is actually the most productive thing you can do.
Escape
In 2016, Taylor Swift was #canceled after rapper Kanye West tried to keep dragging her into drama. It was so bad that #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty was trending on Twitter and severely affected her mental health. She deleted all her social media and wasn’t in the public eye for nearly an entire year. During her year of solitude, she focused on her relationship and her music.
Escape provides us a critical component that Hustle Culture doesn’t address: time and space to reflect. If we’re too busy trying to keep up with life, we can’t live it. The purpose of escape is to provide time for clarity and reflection.
When Swift let herself escape from the press for an entire year, it allowed her to reflect on her career and relationship. She realized that the way she had been forced to act was not in line with her values. She acknowledged this in her documentary when she regretted not speaking out about former President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign when she was arguing with her team about the election of governor Marsha Blackburn for Tennessee. Furthermore, she decided to record and release her album Reputation during this time, after pouring all her reflections and feelings into it.
How to Escape
Maybe you can’t afford to live off-grid for an entire year to escape, but you can still build it into your schedule.
Look at your weekly schedule and determine how much time you can allocate to Escape at this point in your life. It doesn’t matter if it’s two weeks out of the year, one day every month, 30 mins on a Saturday, or 10 minutes daily with your morning coffee. Mentally remove yourself from everything and let your mind wander and reflect. Your insights might surprise you, but you will be better off because of it.
Trade-Off
According to McKeown, life is about trade-offs. You can’t avoid having problems, but you can control what kind of problems you have in your life.
Taylor Swift rerecording her albums is a major statement about trade-offs.
Swift’s previous record label told her she wasn’t able to use audio from her old catalog/masters for her Netflix documentary Miss Americana. Then record label heads actually sold the rights to her music for a price and had never told her, so she didn’t own her first six albums.
Rerecording an album, let alone six, take a lot of time, energy, and money, but that’s a problem Taylor Swift wants instead. So what’s the trade-off? To own her work and be in charge of its distribution. The rerecordings might not be as financially successful as the originals, but this is a problem Taylor Swift wouldn’t mind having if it meant that she gets to own her work. (However, I don’t think the rerecordings’ success will be an issue.)
How to Trade-Off
Problems are guaranteed no matter your job title or income level. The key is to ask yourself what kind of problems are you willing to have?
- Making a larger salary but coming home too tired to engage with your family or friends?
- Going back to school for a degree but giving up weekly dinners with your friends for a few months?
- Joining many college organizations to fluff your resume but leave your schedule too full to cook, clean, and sleep adequately?
- Spending more time with loved ones but taking a different job with a lower salary?
You have to figure out if you’re to trade one problem for another. Sometimes the answers aren’t always straightforward, and you need to plan to give yourself the problems you want.
How will you make time to escape? How will you make time to play? What are you willing to trade-off for these things that could make a big difference in your life?
Choose
While Taylor Swift is an exceptional entertainer and had TV and movie appearances, she’s as real as ever in the authentic way she chooses to live.
We see this in how she makes music in the past and present, initially well-known for her famous storytelling and personal lyrics. She genuinely enjoys interacting with her fans in person and on social media. Now, she chooses to stay away from celebrity media to protect her peace and wellbeing.
In the opening chapter of Essentialism, McKeown tells his own story of choosing. While he was in law school, he wrote down different things we wanted to do in life. He noticed that he didn’t write down law school or anything that required attending law school. So he left and started making changes to live more authentically.
Out of all the principles McKeown presents in his book, this is the first and most powerful. That’s because it permeates into every single Essentialist principle following it, including Play, Escape, and Trade-Off.
Sometimes we make choices that are not aligned with what we actually want to do. We might attend law school because that’s what our family wants us to do. We might pursue a particular career because that’s what we think we should do instead of wanting to do. We might keep making music in a single genre when we want to explore different ones.
How to Choose
Asking yourself the following questions:
- Am I doing what I really want to be doing?
- Are these choices something that makes me excited, or am I dreading them?
- Are my excitement and happiness forced, or are they real?
- What kind of person do people expect me to be, and do I want to be that kind of person?
Then the next step is to actually choose actions that draw you closer to your more authentic self.
- Making a plan to change careers in a way that makes sense financially
- Stop getting in relationships with people who you know you won’t be happy with
- Leaving the graduate program when you are halfway through
You must choose to make time for play when you’re feeling fine and when you’re feeling stressed; you must choose to escape and reflect; you must choose to make the list of trade-offs and then act on them;
Conclusion
While this is only a small fraction of Essentialist principles in McKeown’s book, what better example than to see some of them modeled than by Miss Americana herself?
Here are the four principles and their essences in summary:
- Play: Pursue a hobby you truly enjoy just for the sake of enjoyment.
- Escape: Carve out time to get away from the stressors of life to reflect.
- Trade-off: Decide what problems you want, and make choices accordingly.
- Choose: Make choices in line with your values to see positive change.
Even though Taylor Swift has exemplified these qualities on a very public, worldwide stage, we can apply these ourselves for a more fulfilled life.
