Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

by Greg McKeown

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.

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.

Netflix is today—but instead of mapping out a complex, detailed plan to get there, Hastings and Randolph looked for the ridiculously simple first step that would inform them whether they should take a second step or just walk away. Mailing that single disk turned out to be the simplest, most obvious way to set their immense idea in motion.

When we’re struggling to name the first obvious action, we need to either make it a little easier to get started on what’s important now or make it a little harder to do something trivial instead. 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.

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.

What are the minimum steps required for completion?

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.

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 is no mastery without mistakes. And there is no learning later without the courage to be rubbish.

“In order to move fast, I expect you’ll make some foot faults.5 I’m okay with an error rate of 10–20% … if it means you can move fast.” Ben recalls, “I felt empowered to make decisions with this ratio in mind, and it was incredibly liberating.” 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.”

This one simple difference between their approaches can explain why Amundsen’s team made it to the top while Scott’s team perished. Setting a steady, consistent, sustainable pace was ultimately what allowed the party from Norway to reach their destination “without particular effort,” as Roland Hunford, the author of a fascinating book on this race to the South Pole, explains.

“Pace yourself.3 If you write too much, too quickly, you’ll go off at tangents and lose your way and if you write infrequently you’ll lose your momentum. A thousand words a day is a good ticking over amount.”

Since the end of the Cold War, the military has used the acronym VUCA to describe our global environment: one that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.5 In response to this new normal, the military has developed several approaches we can apply to make it easier to do what matters on our own everyday battlegrounds.

“Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast”—meaning, when you go slow, things are smoother, and when things are smooth, you can move faster.6 This

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.

Linear results are limited: they can never exceed the amount of effort exerted. What many people don’t realize, however, is that there exists a far better alternative.

Does it sound like I’m exaggerating? I’m not. The thought of getting perpetual results might seem improbable if you are used to taking one action and getting one result. But there are tools we can use to turn our modest effort into Effortless Results, again and again.

Specific methods, in other words, produce only linear results. If it’s residual results we’re after, we must look to principles. In fact, the word principia means “first principles, fundamental beginnings or elements.”2 First principles are like the building blocks of knowledge: once you understand them correctly you can apply them hundreds of times.

Not all knowledge has lasting value. Some knowledge is useful just once.

Other knowledge is useful countless times. When you understand why something happened or how something works, you can apply that knowledge again and again.

A student who learns the fundamental principles of any discipline can then easily apply that understanding in a variety of ways over time. An entrepreneur who learns what their customers really want can apply that knowledge to any number of different products and services. A manager who learns how to unify their team can apply that approach with many future teams. A person who understands how to make a decision can make decisions forever.

In other words, when we have the solid fundamentals of knowledge, we have somewhere to hang the additional information we learn. We can anchor it in the mental models we already understand.

This is how Musk’s search for the fundamentals, the first principles, has allowed him to revolutionize the energy industry, launch broadband satellites into space, design a system for high-speed hyperloop travel, build a better solar battery, and send a spacecraft to Mars. He is living proof that by understanding things at their most fundamental level, we can apply them in new and surprising ways.

Often, the most useful knowledge comes from fields other than our own. As researchers from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management found in analyzing almost eighteen million scientific papers, the best new ideas usually come from combining existing knowledge in one field with an “intrusion of unusual combinations” from other disciplines.12 This is why Munger is wise to “believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out.” As he puts it, “I don’t believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody’s that smart.”

Reading a book is among the most high-leverage activities on earth.

Use the Lindy Effect.15 This law states that the life expectancy of a book is proportional to its current age—meaning, the older a book is, the higher the likelihood that it will survive into the future. So prioritize reading books that have lasted a long time. In other words, read the classics and the ancients.

Being good at what nobody is doing is better than being great at what everyone is doing. But being an expert in something nobody is doing is exponentially more valuable.

Whenever we want a far-reaching impact, teaching others to teach can be a high-leverage strategy.

If you try to teach people everything about everything, you run the risk of teaching them nothing. You will achieve residual results faster if you clearly identify—then simplify—the most important messages you want to teach others to teach.

the former CEO of Procter & Gamble, called this the “Sesame Street Simple” rule.3 Don’t go for the overly sophisticated message. Don’t go for the one that makes you sound smart. Go for the straightforward message that can be easily understood and repeated. Make the most essential things the easiest ones to teach and the easiest ones to learn.

An employee uses daily planning software to make it easy to prioritize their day. A manager creates an agenda for their weekly meeting to ensure they cover the most important topics. An entrepreneur brings a slide deck to each pitch meeting to make it easy to remember the most salient points to cover. A teacher gives his students a list of writing tips to make it easy to write a great essay. A parent creates a chore calendar that makes it easier for the kids to remember who is responsible for what each day.

A two-hour meeting and a handshake? With no due diligence! Think of the time, money, and effort saved, based on the simple fact that one party trusted the other to be true to their word.

The more people involved, the higher the coordination costs. Even easy decisions can become much harder than they need to be. There is an easier way to get the right things done together.

The key to getting Effortless Results in and across teams is to have systems in place to ensure that the engine is constantly well oiled.

Warren Buffett uses three criteria for determining who is trustworthy enough to hire or to do business with.3 He looks for people with integrity, intelligence, and initiative, though he adds that without the first, the other two can backfire. I call this “The Three I’s Rule.”

Who we hire is a disproportionately important decision that makes a thousand other decisions. Each new hire may well influence future hires, gradually shifting the norms and the culture over time.

Once we add up the cumulative costs of the time and frustration from today, plus tomorrow, plus hundreds of tomorrows after that, suddenly it makes sense to invest in solving the problem once and for all.

This is what I call the long tail of time management. When we invest our time in actions with a long tail, we continue to reap the benefits over a long period.

What is a problem that irritates me repeatedly? What is the total cost of managing that over several years? What is the next step I can take immediately, in a few minutes, to move toward solving it?

Just as you can find small actions to make your life easier in the future, you can look for small actions that will prevent your life from becoming more complicated. This principle applies in every type of endeavor.

Mistakes are dominoes: they have a cascading effect. When we strike at the root by catching our mistakes before they can do any damage, we don’t just prevent that first domino from toppling, we prevent the entire chain reaction.

What did I learn from this experience? Whatever has happened to you in life. Whatever hardship. Whatever pain. However significant those things are. They pale in comparison to the power you have to choose what to do now.

If you take away just one message from this book, I hope it is this: life doesn’t have to be as hard and complicated as we make it. Each of us has, as Robert Frost wrote, “promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep.”1 No matter what challenges, obstacles, or hardships we encounter along the way, we can always look for the easier, simpler path.