Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

by Greg McKeown

An alternative is offered by Fumio Sasaki in Goodbye, Things. He suggests that the first action be “Discard something right now.” He urges readers, “Don’t wait till you have finished this book. The best way to go about it is to hone your skills as you part with your possessions. Why not close this book this very moment and discard something?…This is the first step, right now.” When I read that, I did just as Sasaki suggested: I stopped reading and discarded an old dried-up marker. It was so doable. And it felt good, so I spent ten more minutes discarding other things: old business cards, too-short pencils, a pile of magazines I knew I’d never read, a tangled mess of charging cables I’d stashed away “just in case I ever need them.” In fact, while writing about this I was inspired to stop and discard the cardboard box that once held my not-so-new headphone set. And again I kept going, discarding even more things. Such is the power of taking the first, concrete, physical step: it ignites a subsequent surge of focused Effortless Action.