Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

by Greg McKeown

When you simply can’t try any harder, it’s time to find a different path.

What do you do if there are too many big rocks? What if the absolutely essential work simply does not fit within the limits of the container?

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.

Perfectionism makes essential projects hard to start, self-doubt makes them hard to finish, and trying to do too much, too fast, makes it hard to sustain momentum.

There are two types of results: linear and residual. Whenever your efforts yield a one-time benefit, you are getting a linear result. Every day you start from zero; if you don’t put in the effort today then you don’t get the result today. It’s a one-to-one ratio; the amount of effort you put in equals the results received. But what if those results could flow to us repeatedly, without further effort on our part? With residual results you put in the effort once and reap the benefits again and again. Results flow to you while you are sleeping. Results flow to you when you are taking the day off. Residual results can be virtually infinite.

Similarly, when your brain is filled with clutter—like outdated assumptions, negative emotions, and toxic thought patterns—you have less mental energy available to perform what’s most essential. A concept in cognitive psychology known as perceptual load theory explains why this is the case. Our brain’s processing capacity is large, but limited. It already processes over six thousand thoughts a day. So when we encounter new information, our brains have to make a choice about how to allocate the remaining cognitive resources. And because our brains are programmed to prioritize emotions with high “affective value”—like fear, resentment, or anger—these strong emotions will generally win out, leaving us with even fewer mental resources to devote to making progress on the things that matter.

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.

We don’t even pause to consider that something important and valuable could be made easy. 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?

Our brain is wired to resist what it perceives as hard and welcome what it perceives as easy. This bias is sometimes called the cognitive ease principle, or the principle of least effort. It’s our tendency to take the path of least resistance to achieve what we want.

Our survival as a species grows out of innate preference for taking the path of least effort. What if, rather than fighting our preprogrammed instinct to seek the easiest path, we could embrace it, even use it to our advantage? What if, instead of asking, “How can I tackle this really hard but essential project?,” we simply inverted the question and asked, “What if this essential project could be made easy?”

Here is what I learned: trying too hard makes it harder to get the results you want. Here is what I realized: behind almost every failure of my whole life I had made the same error. When I’d failed, it was rarely because I hadn’t tried hard enough, it was because I’d been trying too hard. 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.

Carl Jacobi, the nineteenth-century German mathematician, developed a reputation as someone who could solve especially hard and intractable problems. He learned that to do that most easily, Man muss immer umkehren, which translates to “One must invert, always invert.” To invert means to turn an assumption or approach upside down, to work backward, to ask, “What if the opposite were true?” Inversion can help you discover obvious insights you have missed because you’re looking at the problem from only one point of view. It can highlight errors in our thinking. It can open our minds to new ways of doing things.

Effortless Inversion means looking at problems from the opposite perspective. It means asking, “What if this could be easy?” It means learning to solve problems from a state of focus, clarity, and calm. It means getting good at getting things done by putting in less effort. There are two ways to achieve all the things that really matter. We can (a) gain superhuman powers so we can do all the impossibly hard but worthwhile work or (b) get better at making the impossibly hard but worthwhile work easier. Once we invert the question, even everyday tasks that seem too overwhelming to tackle become easier.

Marketing author Seth Godin once shared the following: “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?’ ” Reid Hoffman, the cofounder of LinkedIn, has said, “I have come to learn that part of the business strategy is to solve the simplest, easiest, and most valuable problem. And actually, in fact, part of doing strategy is to solve the easiest problem.”

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?”

We all have things we do consistently not because they are important but because we actively look forward to doing them. Maybe it’s listening to a particular podcast, watching a favorite TV show, singing karaoke, dancing to our favorite tunes, or playing games with friends. At the same time, we all have important activities we don’t do consistently because we actively dread doing them. Maybe it’s exercising, doing our finances, washing the dishes after dinner, returning emails or voicemails, attending meetings, or waking up our teenagers for school. Not every essential activity is inherently enjoyable. But we can make them so.

So often we separate important work from trivial play. People say, “I work hard and then I can play hard.” For many people there are essential things and then there are enjoyable things. But this false dichotomy works against us in two ways. Believing essential activities are, almost by definition, tedious, we are more likely to put them off or avoid them completely. At the same time, our nagging guilt about all the essential work we could be doing instead sucks all the joy out of otherwise enjoyable experiences. Fun becomes “the dark playground.” Separating important work from play makes life harder than it needs to be. But essential work can be enjoyable once we put aside the Puritan notion that anything worth doing must entail backbreaking effort.

It’s not just that work and play can co-exist, it’s that they can complement each other. Together they make it easier to tap into our creativity and come up with novel ideas and solutions. Take Ole Kirk Christiansen, who had the idea to turn his struggling carpentry business into a toy company while tinkering in his empty warehouse. He called his company LEGO, from the danish term leg godt, which means “play well.” When the Second World War disrupted the toy business, instead of giving up and shuttering his factories, he stayed curious as plastics entered mass production, eventually creating LEGO’s first “Automatic Binding Brick,” a breakthrough that led to a whole new suite of products. Later, Christiansen and his team invited children to their offices and in watching them play were inspired to develop entire “play systems”—towns complete with people, buildings, roads, and cars—which exponentially increased their business. Even to this day, LEGO’s offices bustle with activity and joy. And this culture of productive play continues to fuel their creativity, spawning everything from LEGOLAND theme parks around the world, to video games, to TV shows and blockbuster LEGO movies. In 2015 LEGO was named the “world’s most powerful brand.” It’s also a powerful example of how “playing hard” can make hard work feel effortless.

Rituals are similar to habits in the sense that “when I do X, I also do Y.” But they are different from habits because of one key component: the psychological satisfaction you experience when you do them. Habits explain “what” you do, but rituals are about “how” you do it. Rituals make essential habits easier to sustain by infusing the habits with meaning.

Have you ever found that the more you complain—and the more you read and hear other people complain—the easier it is to find things to complain about? On the other hand, have you ever found that the more grateful you are, the more you have to be grateful for?

Gratitude is a powerful, catalytic thing. It starves negative emotions of the oxygen they need to survive. It also generates a positive, self-sustaining system wherever and whenever it is applied. The broaden-and-build theory in psychology offers an explanation for why this is the case. Positive emotions open us to new perspectives and possibilities. Our openness encourages creative ideas and fosters social bonds. These things change us. They unlock new physical, intellectual, psychological, and social resources. They create “an upward spiral” that improves our odds of coping with the next challenge we face.

BJ Fogg, founder of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University, says that to create a new habit we simply need to look for something we already do and then attach a new behavior to it. He calls this a habit recipe, the simplest version of which is: “After [X] I will [Y].” We can apply this idea to make gratitude a habit, by using the following recipe: After I complain I will say something I am thankful for.

A good first step we can take is to ask this unusual question: What job have I hired this grudge to do? According to the late Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor who had been named the world’s top management thinker, people don’t really buy products or services. Rather, they “hire” them to do a job. In a similar way, we often hire a grudge to fulfill an emotional need that is not currently being met. But as we conduct a performance review, we discover grudges perform poorly. Grudges cost us resources but don’t deliver a satisfying return on our investment. So we must relieve a grudge of its duties. Sometimes we hire a grudge to make us feel in control. We try to prove to ourselves and others that we are right and they are wrong. At first this can make us feel superior, even powerful. It gives us a sense of control, but one that is fleeting and false, because in reality a grudge controls you.

There are times we hire a grudge to give us attention. When people hear our story of victimhood, we get their support and sympathy. We are thus incentivized to tell our story again and again.

We can hire a grudge to get us off the hook. As long as we have someone to blame, we don’t have to take responsibility for our anger.

We hire a grudge to protect ourselves. We think that by being wary of the person or people who hurt us once, we can protect ourselves from being hurt again.

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time,” said Maya Angelou.

“For after all,” as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, “the best thing one can do when it is raining, is to let it rain.”

Studies show that peak physical and mental performance requires a rhythm of exerting and renewing energy—and not just for athletes. In fact, 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. Meanwhile, those who took fewer or shorter breaks performed less well.

The easier way is to replenish our physical and mental energy continuously by taking short breaks. We can plan those breaks into our day. We can be like the peak performers who take advantage of their bodies’ natural rhythm. 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.

Dalí’s influences were the art of the impressionist period and the Renaissance. His formal education was in fine arts in Madrid. Given this background, we would expect Dalí to have painted accurate, lifelike depictions. How, then, did he break free from these classical techniques to create haunting juxtapositions between reality and dreams? He napped—at least the surrealist version of a nap. Dalí would sit in a chair, wrists dangling over the edges of the armrests. In one hand, he would grip a heavy metal key between his thumb and forefinger. On the floor, directly underneath the key, he would place an upside-down plate. Dalí would close his eyes and relax. The moment he drifted off to sleep, his grip on the key would release. Clang! Dalí’s eyes would snap open. And he would be filled with new inspiration for his next strange work. Dalí explained that in that “fugitive moment when you had barely lost consciousness and during which you cannot be assured of having really slept” he was “in equilibrium on the taut and invisible wire that separates sleep from waking.” Dalí called his technique “slumber with a key.”

Watson asks Holmes why his explanations seem so obvious, yet so out of reach until shared. “I believe that my eyes are as good as yours,” Watson says. “Quite so,” Holmes responds, throwing himself down into an armchair. “You see, but you do not observe.” Holmes then asks him how many steps there are leading up from the hall downstairs. Watson has traversed this staircase hundreds of times. Yet he has no answer. “You have not observed,” Holmes says, triumphant. “And yet you have seen.”

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.

John Gottman has spent forty years researching the science of relationships at what is officially called the Gottman Institute and is otherwise known as the Love Lab. He and his wife, Julie Schwartz Gottman, a respected psychologist in her own right, have written several books and are world-renowned experts on the topics of marriage and relationships. Together they may have gathered more data on the intricate workings of relationships and on the dynamics that predict divorce versus marital stability than anyone else in the field. According to the Gottmans, we all make small and large attempts to obtain affection, affirmation, and attention in our relationships. They call these bids for connection. There are three distinct ways a partner can respond to a bid for attention. We can liken these three approaches to playing a game of tennis. The first type of response is what they call “turning toward.” It’s when you come home, give your beloved a peck on the cheek, and say something like “It’s lovely weather today, isn’t it.” And your beloved might reply, “Oh, I agree. Isn’t it beautiful! Perhaps we should open some windows.” Here your partner is like the person on the other side of the court receiving your serve and hitting a solid ground stroke straight to where you are standing. It couldn’t be easier to hit the ball back, and so the volley continues. The second kind of response is “turning against.” This is where your partner might respond to your comment about the weather b...

When we are fully present with another person, we see them more clearly. And we help them see themselves more clearly as well.

First, when people fear being judged, it drowns out their inner voice. They are able to focus only on what they think we want to hear, rather than on what they actually see or feel. Second, the moment our judgments and opinions are voiced, they compete for the limited mental space others need to draw their own conclusions. Contrast this with a practice used by the Quakers called the Clearness Committee. When someone in the community (the “focus person”) is facing an important dilemma, they often ask a few people they trust (the “Elders”) to come together to form a committee. The purpose is not for the committee to tell them what to do. The purpose is to help them figure it out for themselves. And in order to do this, the committee must remove judgment from the equation. When they gather, the focus person begins by sharing what the dilemma is and why it matters. The committee listens silently. After the context is given, the Elders have a few choices: they can ask “honest questions,” which are clarifying questions they could not know the answer to. They can reflect or repeat back what they have heard. Opinions, advice, and judgment are out-of-bounds. As Parker Palmer, an expert in the Clearness Committee process, has written, “Each of us has an inner teacher, a voice of truth, that offers the guidance and power we need to deal with our problems.” The intent of the exercise is to help people amplify this inner voice and gain clarity on how to move forward. We can help people...

How can we call up this state of heightened perception and focus on demand? I recommend the following daily practice. 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.

Larry Silverberg is a “dynamicist” at North Carolina State University. That simply means he is an expert in the movement of physical things. For example, he has studied the movement of millions of free throws over twenty years. One thing he has found over the years is that the most important factor for successfully shooting a free throw is the speed at which you release the ball. To achieve the kinesthetic sweet spot takes practice and muscle memory. The goal is to get to the point where you try without trying—where your movement becomes smooth, natural, and instinctive. That is what is meant by Effortless Action. If you try too hard when shooting a free throw, you’ll tense up and move too fast. This is similar to what happens to many overachievers who have been conditioned to believe that more effort leads to better outcomes. When they invest a lot of effort and don’t see the results they want, they lean in harder. They work longer hours. They obsess over the situation more. They are trained to see the lack of progress as a sign that yet more effort is required. What they haven’t learned is that: Past a certain point, more effort doesn’t produce better performance. It sabotages our performance. Economists call this the law of diminishing returns: after a certain point, each extra unit of input produces a decreasing rate of output. For example, if I write for two hours I can produce two pages. But if I write for four hours I can produce three pages. The rate of output is s...

Negative returns: the point where we are not merely getting a smaller return on each additional investment, we are actually decreasing our overall output. For example, there is a point in writing where you start making a manuscript worse by working on it longer. The same can be said for composing a song, drafting a blueprint, preparing a legal argument, or writing computer code, along with many other endeavors. You are fatigued. Your judgment is impaired. Every ounce of extra effort you put in now is detrimental. It is an example of false economy to continue at this point.

Haven’t you found that when you do your very best work, the experience feels effortless? You act almost without thinking. You make things happen without even trying to make things happen. You are in the zone, in flow, in peak performance. This is the sweet spot for doing what matters. In Eastern philosophy the masters call this sweet spot wu wei (pronounced Oo-Way). Wu means “not have” or “without.” Wei means “do,” “act,” or “effort.” So wu wei, literally “without action” or “without effort,” means “trying without trying,” “action without action,” or “effortless doing.” The goal is to accomplish what matters by trying less, not more: to achieve our purpose with bridled intention, not overexertion. This is what is meant by Effortless Action.

Four hundred years ago, Gustav II, the king of Sweden, saw the vital need to upgrade his armada of ships. He wanted to protect his people from the growing naval powers that surrounded them. His attention was drawn to building a giant military warship. He found a shipbuilder, Henrik Hybertsson, and tasked him to build what became known as the Vasa.

And so the most expensive naval project in Sweden’s history sailed less than a mile before being buried in the sea—all because the king had made the project almost impossible to safely complete by constantly redefining what “done” looked like.

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. That’s because you cannot, by definition, complete a project without a clearly defined end point. You can spin your wheels working on it. You can tinker with it. You can (and likely will) abandon it. But to 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.

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. 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.

After a couple of weeks of this, I happened to be researching process simplification in complex organizations. Suddenly I could see it: we were making this process so much more complicated than it had to be. By adding so many steps—even if just mentally—we were making it harder for ourselves to take any steps at all. So we took a step back and asked, “What are the minimum steps required to complete this?”

Going the extra mile in ways that are essential is one thing: a surgeon taking the extra step to prevent infection at the site of an incision, for example. But adding unnecessary, superficial embellishments is quite another. Here is a rule I have found helpful: Being asked to do X isn’t a good enough reason to do Y.

If there are processes in your life that seem to involve an inordinate number of steps, try starting from zero. Then see if you can find your way back to those same results, only take fewer steps.

His most brilliant insight wasn’t some advanced breakthrough in the science of flight. It was simply that focusing on the elegance and sophistication of the aircraft was actually an impediment to progress. An ugly aircraft that could be crashed, repaired, and redesigned fast would make it much easier to make progress on what really mattered: building a plane that could, as MacCready put it, “turn left, turn right, go up high enough [at] the beginning and the end of the flight.” Similarly, in your own pursuit of what matters, if you want to “build a better airplane,” don’t try to get everything exactly right the first time. Instead, 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.