Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

by Greg McKeown

Complaining, too, creates a self-sustaining cycle. But instead of making it easier to do what matters, this system makes it harder. A “downward spiral.” 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. And so it goes.

Jim Collins uses the metaphor of a flywheel to illustrate how a self-sustaining system is created: “You’re pushing no harder than during the first rotation, but the flywheel goes faster and faster.”4 He adds, “Two turns … then four … then eight … the flywheel builds momentum … sixteen … thirty-two … moving faster … a thousand … ten thousand … a hundred thousand.5 Then at some point—breakthrough! The flywheel flies forward with almost unstoppable momentum.” Put simply, a system is self-sustaining if it requires less and less investment of energy over time. Once it’s set in motion, maintaining it becomes easier, then easy, then eventually effortless.

“After [X] I will [Y].”6 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. The moment I started applying this recipe, I was shocked to realize how much I was complaining. I think of myself as a positive, optimistic person. But once I started paying attention, I realized that I was actually complaining quite a lot, often without any awareness.

After a couple of days of using this rule, I noticed I would start to catch myself midcomplaint and quickly finish my sentence with words of gratitude. It wasn’t long before I would catch myself simply thinking about complaining—and I would think of something I was thankful for instead. At first this shift was deliberate and hard; then it was deliberate and easier; then, eventually, effortless.

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time,” said Maya Angelou.12

So Jonathan decided to start believing them. He let go of his unrealistic expectations for how he wished they would behave. He accepted reality as it was and would be.

Only then could he find true acceptance: the necessary first step toward a new ...

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

When we let go of our need to punish those who’ve hurt us, it’s not the culprit wh...

Learning to Relax It may seem odd that we need to learn how to take a break. But in our 24/7 always-on culture, some people simply don’t know how to relax. Ironically, for them, doing nothing is painfully hard. Joe Maddon, the manager of the Los Angeles Angels, has learned that professional baseball players tend to be among those people.1

Recent research in physiology supports Maddon’s counterintuitive response. Studies show that peak physical and mental performance requires a rhythm of exerting and renewing energy—and not just for athletes.

Relaxing is a responsibility. “To maximize gains from long-term practice,”

Have you ever pushed yourself so far past the point of exhaustion one day that you wake up the next morning utterly depleted and need the entire day to rest? To stop this vicious cycle in its tracks, try this simple rule: 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.

To try to maximize both deep sleep and sleep quality, 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.

Dreams are fertile ground for creative solutions to what burdens us all day. But we often wake up with only wisps of ideas that quickly vanish if we fail to capture them. If you are seeking inspiration, the easiest thing you can do is rest your eyes. Sit in your favorite chair. Whether you use an alarm or a key, keep a pencil handy and write down whatever comes to mind when your eyes snap open.

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.

Part I Effortless State What is the 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 Instead of asking, “Why is this so hard?,” invert the question by asking, “What if this could be easy?”

When faced with work that feels overwhelming, ask, “How am I making this harder than it needs to be?”

ENJOY Pair the most essential activities with the most enjoyable ones. Accept that work and play can co-exist. Turn tedious tasks into meaningful rituals. Allow laughter and fun to lighten more of your moments.

RELEASE Let go of emotional burdens you don’t need to keep carrying. 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. Use this habit recipe: “Each time I complain I will say something I am thankful for.”

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

Achieve a state of heightened awareness by harnessing the power of presence. Train your brain to focus on the important and ignore the irrelevant.

To see others more clearly, set aside your opinions, advice, and judgment, and put their truth above your own. Clear the clutter in your physical environment before clearing the clutter in your mind.

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 produce...

For example, if I write for two hours I can produce two pages. But if I write for four hours...

The rate of output is slowing down. More effort at this point should be questioned. But sometimes overac...

Trying too hard in a social setting makes it harder to connect authentically with someone else. Trying too hard for a promotion can reek of desperation and, therefore, make you seem less desirable. Trying too hard to get to sleep can make it almost impossible to wind down. Trying too hard to look intelligent rarely impresses the people you want to impress. Trying too hard to be cool, to relax, to feel good, all make it harder to be cool, relax, or feel good. That’s the trouble with overexertion.

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.

DEFINE What “Done” Looks 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.

This insight may sound obvious. But if you think of most of the essential projects you are working on, how clear is your ...

I define “done” as the point just before the effort invested begins to be greater than the output achieved. To avoid diminishing returns on your time and effort, establish clear conditions for what “done” looks like, get there, then stop.

Getting clear on what “done” looks like doesn’t just help you finish; it also helps you get started. All too often, we procrastinate or struggle to take the first steps on a project because we don’t have a clear finish line in mind.

It’s surprising how much clarity on this you can achieve in a one-minute burst of concentration. For example, when you have an important project to deliver, take sixty seconds to close your eyes and actually visualize what it would look like to cross it off as done:

Vague Goals What “Done” Looks Like “Lose weight.” I look down at the weighing scale and see the number 177 staring back at me. “Walk more.” Reach ten thousand steps a day on my Fitbit for fourteen days in a row.

Take the Minimum Viable Action You don’t have to be overwhelmed by essential projects.

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. When you adopt this strategy, all you have to focus on is the very first step.

We often get overwhelmed because we misjudge what the first step is: what we think is the first step is actually several steps. But once we break that step down into concrete, physical actions,...

The Magic of Microbursts A microburst is a meteorological surge that causes powerful winds and storms for a brief but intense period, often just ten to fifteen minutes.10 A column of wind drops from a rain cloud at speeds of up to sixty miles per hour, hitting the ground with such force that it can fell fully grown trees.

A microburst in April Perry’s vernacular is a ten-minute surge of focused activity that can have an immediate effect on our essential project.11 It’s the little burst of motivation and energy we get from taking that first obvious action. And from there your energy—and your confidence—only builds with every subsequent action. For example: Essential Project First Obvious Action Microburst Remove the clutter from the garage. Find the broom. Sweep out the shed and move the bikes into the shed.

Complete a large report. Pick up a pen and a piece of paper. Draft an outline for the report.

SIMPLIFY Start with Zero

The Simplest Steps Are the Ones You Don’t Take