Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

by Greg McKeown

Essentialism was about doing the right things; Effortless is about doing them in the right way.

Instead of trying to get better results by pushing ever harder, we can make the most essential activities the easiest ones.

What could happen in your life if the easy but pointless things became harder and the essential things became easier?

The Effortless State is one in which you are physically rested, emotionally unburdened, and mentally energized. You are completely present, attentive, and focused on what’s important in that moment.

When faced with a task that felt impossibly hard, she would ask, “Is there an easier way?”

When we feel overwhelmed, it may not be because the situation is inherently overwhelming. It may be because we are overcomplicating something in our own heads. Asking the question “What if this could be easy?” is a way to reset our thinking.

“If you can think about how hard it is to push a business uphill, particularly when you’re just getting started, one answer is to say: ‘Why don’t you just start a different business you can push downhill?’ ”

“I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.”

When a strategy is so complex that each step feels akin to pushing a boulder up a hill, you should pause. Invert the problem. Ask, “What’s the simplest way to achieve this result?”

regrets that continue to haunt us, grudges we can’t seem to let go of, expectations that were realistic at some point but are now getting in our way.

We live in a complaint culture that gets high on expressing outrage: especially on social media, which often seems like an endless stream of grumbling and whining about what is unsatisfactory or unacceptable.

Gratitude is a powerful, catalytic thing. It starves negative emotions of the oxygen they need to survive.

When we experience negative emotions our mindset narrows (think: fight, flight, or freeze). We are less open to new ideas and to other people. This weakens our personal physical, intellectual, and psychological resources. It depletes our reserves, making it harder to cope with the very challenges or frustrations that provoked our complaints in the first place.

to create a new habit we simply need to look for something we already do and then attach a new behavior to it.

Rest proved an antidote for both pre-existing and future stress. It kept him grounded in the Effortless State.

one study found that the best-performing athletes, musicians, chess players, and writers all honed their skills in the same way: by practicing in the morning, in three sessions of sixty to ninety minutes, with breaks in between.

Do not do more today than you can completely recover from today. Do not do more this week than you can completely recover from this week.

Dedicate mornings to essential work. Break down that work into three sessions of no more than ninety minutes each. Take a short break (ten to fifteen minutes) in between sessions to rest and recover.

Her entire life became about five things: training, recovery, nutrition, sleep, and mindset.

It’s not the noticing itself that’s hard. It’s ignoring all the noise in our environment that is hard.

An Effortless Summary

Part I: Effortless State

The Effortless State is an experience many of us have had when we are physically rested, emotionally unburdened, and mentally energized. You are completely aware, alert, present, attentive, and focused on what’s important in this moment. You are able to focus on what matters most with ease.

INVERT

ENJOY

Pair the most essential activities with the most enjoyable ones.

RELEASE

Remember: When you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. When you focus on what you have, you get what you lack.

REST

Discover the art of doing nothing. Do not do more today than you can completely recover from by tomorrow.

NOTICE

Achieve a state of heightened awareness by harnessing the power of presence.

But to get an important project done it’s absolutely necessary to define what “done” looks like.

As you write the list, one test is to imagine how you will feel once this work is completed. Ask yourself, “If I complete everything on this list, will it leave me feeling satisfied by the end of the day? Is there some other important task that will haunt me all night if I don’t get to it?” If your answer to the second question is yes, that is a task that should go on the Done for the Day list.

Often, when you name the first obvious step, you avoid spending too much mental energy thinking about the fifth, seventh, or twenty-third steps. It doesn’t matter if your project involves ten steps or a thousand.

Instead of procrastinating, wasting enormous amounts of time and effort planning for a million possible scenarios, or charging full steam ahead at the risk of traveling miles down the wrong path, we can opt for taking the minimum viable first action: the action that will allow us to gain the maximum learning from the least amount of effort.

There is rarely a need to go that second mile beyond what’s essential. It’s better to go just the first mile than to not go anywhere at all.

“Simplicity—the art of maximizing the steps not taken—is essential.” In other words, regardless of what our ultimate goal is, we should focus on only those steps that add value.

embrace the rubbish “no matter how ugly it is” so you can crash, repair, modify, and redesign fast. It’s a far easier path for learning, growing, and making progress on what’s essential.

“Pixar is set up to protect our director’s ugly baby.”

shift your focus to making as many mistakes as possible when you’re starting out.

There is no mastery without mistakes. And there is no learning later without the courage to be rubbish.

“If you’re not embarrassed by your first product release,” he says, “you released it too late.”

Whether it’s “miles per day” or “words per day” or “hours per day,” there are few better ways to achieve effortless pace than to set an upper bound.

“Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast”—meaning, when you go slow, things are smoother, and when things are smooth, you can move faster.

Part II: Effortless Action

Effortless Action means accomplishing more by trying less.

You make progress by pacing yourself rather than powering through. You overachieve without overexerting.

To get started on an essential project, first define what “done” looks like.