Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

by Greg McKeown

Producing a great result is good. Producing a great result with ease is better. Producing a great result with ease again and again is best.

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. You are able to do what matters most with ease.

What if the biggest thing keeping us from doing what matters is the false assumption that it has to take tremendous effort? What if, instead, we considered the possibility that the reason something feels hard is that we haven’t yet found the easier way to do it?

We are conditioned over the course of our lifetimes to believe that in order to overachieve we must also overdo. As a result, we make things harder for ourselves than they need to be.

Why would we simply endure essential activities when we can enjoy them instead?

essential work can be enjoyable once we put aside the Puritan notion that anything worth doing must entail backbreaking effort.

By pairing essential activities with enjoyable ones, we can make tackling even the most tedious and overwhelming tasks more effortless.

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

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.

We can do the following: 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.

People who sleep less than seven hours a night are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke, asthma, arthritis, depression, and diabetes and are almost eight times more likely to be overweight.

Getting more sleep may be the single greatest gift we can give our bodies, our minds, and even, it turns out, our bottom lines.

Wise took some simple steps. He went to bed at the same time every night, turned off digital devices an hour before bed, and before turning in, took a hot shower. He then tracked his sleep on his smartwatch for a month. He noted his heart rate, time in bed, time asleep, quality of sleep, and percentage of deep sleep.

After four weeks Wise’s deep sleep shot up to almost two hours a night, an 800 percent increase. His uninterrupted sleep went up 20 percent. He felt sharper, more creative, and more present.

Listening isn’t hard; it’s stopping our mind from wandering that’s hard. Being in the moment isn’t hard; not thinking about the past and future all the time is hard. It’s not the noticing itself that’s hard. It’s ignoring all the noise in our environment that is hard.

One study found that by training our attentional muscles we can improve our processing of complex information moving at great speed.

There is no such thing as an effortless relationship. But there are ways we can make it easier to keep a relationship strong. We don’t need to agree with the other person on everything. But we do need to be present with them, to really notice them, to give them our full attention—maybe not always, but as frequently as we can.

“Each of us has an inner teacher, a voice of truth, that offers the guidance and power we need to deal with our problems.”

1: Prepare Your Space (two minutes) Find a quiet place. Turn off your phone. Let people know you will be taking ten minutes. Take a moment to clear off your desk. To put things back in their proper place. 2: Rest Your Body (two minutes) Sit comfortably with your back straight. Close your eyes. Roll your shoulders. Move your head from side to side. Release tension in every part of your body. Breathe normally and naturally. 3: Relax Your Mind (two minutes) It’s natural for your mind to be full of thoughts. Just acknowledge them. Notice them. Let them come and let them go. 4: Release Your Heart (two minutes) If thoughts of someone who has wronged you arise, say, “I forgive you,” and imagine you are cutting a chain that tethers you to them. 5: Breathe in Gratitude (two minutes) Relive a moment in your life that you are really thankful for. Experience it again, using all of your senses. Remember where you were, how you felt, and who you were with. Really breathe the gratitude in. Repeat this step three times.

An Effortless Summary

Refer back to this page

To see others more clearly, set aside your opinions, advice, and judgment, and put their truth above your own.

Past a certain point, more effort doesn’t produce better performance. It sabotages our performance. Economists call this the law of diminishing returns:

If you want to make something hard, indeed truly impossible, to complete, all you have to do is make the end goal as vague as possible.

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

To avoid diminishing returns on your time and effort, establish clear conditions for what “done” looks like, get there, then stop.

Make a “Done for the Day” List

A Done for the Day list is not a list of everything we theoretically could do today, or a list of everything we would love to get done. These things will inevitably extend far beyond the limited time available. Instead, this is a list of what will constitute meaningful and essential progress.

In recent years neuroscientists and psychologists have found that the “now” we experience lasts only 2.5 seconds.

Looking at that first step or action through the lens of 2.5 seconds is the change that makes every other change possible. It is the habit of habits.

What are the minimum steps required for completion?

In order to succeed at something, you have to get it done.

Here is a rule I have found helpful: Being asked to do X isn’t a good enough reason to do Y.

“Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential.”

“Simplicity—the art of maximizing the steps not taken—is essential.”

Overachievers tend to struggle with the notion of starting with rubbish; they hold themselves to a high standard of perfection at every stage in the process. But the standard to which they hold themselves is neither realistic nor productive.

He teaches his language students to imagine they have a bag full of one thousand beads. Every time they make a mistake talking to someone else in the language they take out one bead. When the bag is empty they will have achieved level 1 mastery. The faster they make those mistakes, the faster they will progress.

great analogy

Holding back when you still have steam in you might seem like a counterintuitive approach to getting important things done, but in fact, this kind of restraint is key to breakthrough productivity.

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.