Introduction
Greg McKeown makes his comeback after his New York Times bestselling book, Essentialism: A Disciplined Pursuit of Less. In Essentialism, McKeown emphasized the importance of distinguishing the vital few from the trivial many, eliminating non-essentials. He highlighted that if you don’t take responsibility for the prioritization of your life, someone else will. As a follow-up, McKeown thoughtfully extends his script with Effortless: Make It Easier To Do What Matters Most , demonstrating that the more essential the task, the more effortless its completion should be.
While Essentialism was about doing the right things, Effortless is about doing them the right way.
Three Steps to An Effortless Life
First, get into an Effortless State
What is the effortless state? It is being physically rested, emotionally unburdened, and mentally energized is essential to be attentive and focused on what’s important.
Core question: How can we make it easier for ourselves to focus?
i. Invert: We are conditioned to believe that in order to overachieve we must also overdo. As a result, we make things harder than they need to be. Instead of asking ‘why is this so hard?’, invert the question by asking, ‘what if this could be easy’? To be extraordinary we don’t need to do things that are hard and complicated, instead look for opportunities that are highly valuable yet simple.
ii. Enjoy: Pair an essential activity with a reward to reduce the lag time between the action and satisfaction. Allow work and play to co-exist by turning tedious tasks into meaningful rituals or habits with a soul.
iii. Release: When we let go of our need to punish those who’ve hurt us, it’s not the culprit who is freed. We are freed. When you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. When you focus on what you have, you get what you lack.
iv. Rest: Studies show that peak physical and mental performance requires a rhythm of exerting and renewing energy. So, do not do more today than you can completely recover from by tomorrow.
v. Notice: We can achieve heightened awareness by simply being present. To see others more clearly, set aside your opinions, advice, and judgment, and put their truth above your own. When we are fully present with another person, we see them more clearly. And we help them see themselves more clearly as well.
Second, take Effortless Action
What is effortless action? It is accomplishing more by trying less. You make progress by pacing yourself rather than powering through.
Core question: How can we make it essential work easier to do?
i. Define: To get started on an essential project, first define what “done” looks like. Establish clear conditions for completion, get there, then stop.
ii. Start: We often get overwhelmed because we misjudge what the first step is: what we think is the first step is actually several steps. According to research, our psychological present, a.k.a our “now” lasts only 2.5 seconds. This 2.5 second is enough time to shift our focus: to put the phone down, close the browser, take a deep breath; and then start doing essential work.
iii. Simplify: To simplify the process, don’t simplify the steps: simply remove them. You then maximize the steps not taken so that you can focus on the steps that add value.
iv. Progress: Take the courage to be rubbish at the start as you only need to protect yourself is the harsh critic in your head. Otherwise, a life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
v. Pace: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. The costs of a boom-and-bust approach to getting important projects done are too high: we feel exhausted on the days we sprint hard, drained, and demoralized on the days we don’t. Reject the false economy of “powering through” and create the right range: I will never do less than X, never more than Y.
Third, achieve Effortless Results
What are effortless results? Having results to continue to flow to you continuously with as little additional effort as possible.
Core question: How can we get the highest return on the least effort?
i. Learn: Leverage the best of what other people know by learning through their experiences. Learn principles, not just facts and methods. And then develop your own unique knowledge because competitive advantage opens the doors to perpetual opportunity.
ii. Lift: Achieve far-reaching impact by teaching others to teach. Also, by living what you teach, you notice how much you learn.
iii. Automate: Free up space in your brain by automating essentials and de-automating non-essentials. Leverage technology and checklists to eliminate future decisions and reduce dependency on cognitive memory.
iv. Trust: Leverage trust as the engine oil of frictionless and high-functioning teams. Design high-trust environments to clarify results, roles, rules, resources, and rewards.
v. Prevent: The best way to conquer problems is to solve them before they happen. Invest two minutes of effort once to end recurring frustrations. Measure twice, so you only have to cut once.
Closing thoughts,
I often catch myself mindlessly “working hard” and then get exasperated because I fail to meet my desired outcomes. The reality is, I have been working under a falsely conditioned mindset of overperforming to prove my worth – which has only taxed me physically and mentally. Even if I had succeeded in anything, I was always too exhausted to enjoy the fruition.
Moreover, anxiety and worry induced by the pandemic have driven many of the most resilient people I know to states of burnout and helplessness. McKeown’s book has been absolutely timely if you’re feeling exasperated in these times. Supplementary to my personal anxiety management, Effortless has loosened a lot of my cognitive knots by reinforcing the importance of simplicity in my daily routines.
Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most is available on Amazon and Book Depository
You can also listen to Greg McKeown’s interview with Tim Ferris here
