Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

by Greg McKeown

It’s striking to me that Hartman spent months trying to make each step in the online ordering process simpler but never thought to try removing steps to make the process itself simpler. There is a huge difference between the two.

No matter how simple the step, it’s still easier to take no step.

What are the minimum steps required for completion?

To be clear, identifying the minimum number of steps is not the same as “phoning it in” or producing something you are not proud of. Unnecessary steps are just that: unnecessary. Eliminating them allows you to channel all your energy toward getting the important project done.

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

That’s what the goal for most presentations is supposed to be: to “just talk about your business.” So the next time you have to write a report, give a presentation, or make a sales pitch, resist the temptation to add unnecessary extras. They aren’t just a distraction for you; they’re also a distraction for your audience. That’s why, when I do presentations, I use six slides, with fewer than ten words total.

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.

“Here’s the new application. It’s got one window. You drag your video into the window. Then you click the button that says BURN.5 That’s it. That’s what we’re going to make.”

Evangelist told me that his biggest “aha” was that he and his team had been looking at their process the wrong way. They had started with an immensely complicated product and attempted to pare it down. But Jobs came at it from the opposite angle. He started at zero and tried to figure out the absolute minimum number of steps required to achieve the desired outcome.

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.

Start with Rubbish Many of us are kept back from producing something wonderful because we misunderstand the creative process. We see something exceptional or beautiful in its finished state and we imagine it started out as a beautiful, Baby Yoda version of what we are looking at. But exactly the opposite is true.

This is why Catmull has always worked hard to foster a culture that creates space for such “rubbish”: because he understands there would be no Buzz Lightyear without hundreds of awful ideas along the way.

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.

As an exceptional student himself (with a JD from Stanford Law School followed by a doctorate from Princeton as well), he has learned that when it comes to languages, embracing mistakes leads to accelerated learning.

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.

Is there something new you want to learn but feel overwhelmed by? Something that you know would add great value to you either personally or professionally but that you feel intimidated by because of the long road to mastery? Then try your own version of the “bag of beads” exercise and shift your focus to making as many mistakes as possible when you’re starting out. There...

Not surprisingly, Reid also advocates the same philosophy in entrepreneurship and business. “If you’re not embarrassed by your first product release,” he says, “you released it too late.”6 Or put another way, “When it comes to product launches, imperfect is perfect.”

Protect Your Rubbish from the Harsh Critic in Your Head Another way we can make failure as cheap as possible for ourselves is simply to protect our rubbish from the harsh critic in our heads. Instead of shaming yourself for hitting your serve into the net, celebrate the fact that you’re on the court to begin with.

Instead of belittling yourself for even the tiniest of errors, be proud of the fact that you are unlikely to make that same mistake ever again. Any time you feel like you’re on shaky ground with some meaningful challenge you’ve taken on, talk to yourself like you would talk to a toddler learning to walk: “You’ve taken the first step. You may feel wobbly now, but you’ve begun. You’re going to get there.”

Adopt a “Zero-Draft” Approach I have met many people who feel a calling to write a book. But they often give up before writing even the first draft of the first chapter.

Their belief that each sentence has to be perfect—or close to perfect—to be worthy of the page keeps them from even starting the process.

I recommend they adopt a “zero-draft” approach. That is, write a version of that first chapter that’s so rough it wouldn’t even qualify as a first draft. The idea with the zero draft is to write anything. The more rubbish the better. It doesn’t have to be seen by anyone. It never has to be judged. Don’t even think of it as a draft; it’s just words...

As American poet and memoirist Maya Angelou put it, “When I am writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced I’m serio...

Margaret Atwood, the prolific author of eighteen books of poetry, eighteen novels, eleven books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, and eight children’s books, once wrote, “A word after a word after a word is power.”8 Even rubbish words are more powerful than a blank page. In fact, they are much more p...

So if you are feeling overwhelmed by an essential project because you think you have to produce something flawless from the outset, simply lower the bar to start. Whether it’s writing a book, composing a song, painting a canvas, or any other creative pursuit that c...

By embracing imperfection, by having the courage to be rubbish, we can begin. And once we begin, we become a little less rubbish, and then a little less. And eventually, out of the rubbish come exception...

CHAPTER 10 PACE Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast

The False Economy of Powering Through When we try to make too much progress on a goal or project right out of the gate, we can get trapped in a vicious cycle: we get tired, so then we take a break, but then we think we have to make up for the time lost, so we sprint again.

For example, I had a friend who was desperate to finish writing her business plan. So one weekend, she decided to spend every waking minute on it. She powered through. But it burned her out to the point that she couldn’t bear to think about the plan, much less work on it again for weeks. She said, “When I tried, my brain just shut down.”

When we’re trying to achieve something that matters to us, it’s tempting to want to sprint out of the gate. The problem is that going too fast at the beginning will almost always slow us down the rest of the way.

The costs of this boom-and-bust approach to getting important projects done is too high: we feel exhausted on the days we sprint hard, drained and demoralized on the days we don’t, and more often than not we wind up like those British explorers, feeling battered and broken and still no closer to achieving our goal. Luckily, there is an alternative. We can find the effortless pace.

The Upside of Upper Bounds

She would write two stories a week, “so it was manageable,” she explained. And when those two stories were finished, she would stop work for the week, even if she had the energy and appetite to write more. Two stories a week was her upper bound. I was stunned to learn that within nine months her book was finished and sent to the publisher. Meanwhile, I was still working on mine intermittently.

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.

As Lisa Jewell, author of some eighteen bestselling novels, put it, “Pace yourself.3 If you write too much, too quickly, you’ll go off at tangents and lose your way and if y...

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.

Even when we want to make consistent, steady progress on a priority project, life often intervenes. We may have planned to spend the morning at our desk and instead find ourselves stuck in meetings. We may have blocked off hours on our calendar for important work and instead find ourselves dealing with a toddler meltdown. Then to compensate for our perceived lack of productivity, we work all the way through the weekend, in a mad rush for progress. We know this comes at a cost: low-quality work, increased guilt, and reduced confidence. There’s an easier alternative. We can establish upper and lower bounds. Simply use the following rule: Never less than X, never more than Y.

Essential Project Lower Bound Upper Bound Finish reading Les Misérables in six months Never less than five pages a day Never more than twenty-five pages a day Hit my sales numbers for the month Never less than five sales calls a day Never more than ten sales calls a day

Complete the first draft of a book Never less than five hundred words a day Never more than one thousand words a day

Finding the right range keeps us moving at a steady pace so we can make consistent progress. The lower bound should be high enough to keep us feeling motivated, and low enough that we can still achieve it even on days when we’re dealing with unexpected chaos. The upper bound should be high enough to constitute good progress, but not so high as to leave us feeling exhausted. Once we get into the rhythm, the progress begins to flow. We are able to take Effortless Action.

An Effortless Summary 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?” Challenge the assumption that the “right” way is, inevitably, the harder one.

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

Star - Exercise

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

Break down essential work into three sessions of no more than ninety minutes each. Take an effortless nap.

Yoga Nidra

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

Train your brain to focus on the important and ignor...

To see others more clearly, set aside your opinions, advice, and judgment, and put th...

Clear the clutter in your physical environment before clearing the clutter in your mind.

Exercise

Part II Effortless Action What is Effortless Action? Effortless Action means accomplishing more by trying less. You stop procrastinating and take the first obvious step. You arrive at the point of completion without overthinking and overthinking. You make progress by pacing yourself rather than powering through. You overachieve without overexerting.

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

Exercise - Do this for Instagram Project Do this for MOA Project Do this for The Joker Club - Phase 1