Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

by Greg McKeown

Relax Your Mind (two minutes)

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

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.

Repeat this step thr...

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

“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?”

Pair the most essential activities with the most enjoyable ones.

“Each time I complain I will say something I am thankful for.”

Discover the art of doing nothing.

focus on the important and ignore the irrelevant.

Past a certain point, more effort doesn’t produce better performance. It sabotages our performance. Economists call this the law of diminishing returns:

achieve our purpose with bridled intention, not overexertion. This is what is meant by Effortless Action.

it’s absolutely necessary to define what “done” looks like.

tinkering can improve things significantly—at first. But there comes a point where the law of diminishing returns sets in—

define “done” as the point just before the effort invested begins to be greater than the output achieved.

establish clear conditions for what “done” looks like, ge...

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:

A Done for the Day list is not a list of everything we theoretically could do today,

this is a list of what will constitute meaningful and essential progress.

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, that first obvious action begins to feel effortless.

Such is the power of taking the first, concrete, physical step: it ignites a subsequent surge of focused Effortless Action.

we can opt for taking the minimum viable first action: the action that will allow us to gain the maximum learning from the least amount of effort.

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.

the “now” we experience lasts only 2.5 seconds.12 This is our psychological present.

Two and a half seconds is enough time to shift our focus: to put the phone down, close the browser, take a deep breath.

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.

What are the minimum steps required for completion?

Being asked to do X isn’t a good enough reason to do Y.

resist the temptation to add unnecessary extras.

use six slides, with fewer than ten words total.

try starting from zero. Then see if you can find your way back to those same results, only take fewer steps.

regardless of what our ultimate goal is, we should focus on only those steps that add value.

embrace the rubbish “no matter how ugly it is” so you can crash, repair, modify, and redesign fast.

Overachievers tend to struggle with the notion of starting with rubbish;

letting go of the absurd pressure to always do everything perfectly.

Instead of shaming yourself for hitting your serve into the net, celebrate the fact that you’re on the court to begin with.

write a version of that first chapter that’s so rough it wouldn’t even qualify as a first draft.

“A word after a word after a word is power.”

lower the bar to start.

restraint is key to breakthrough productivity.

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.

set an upper bound.

when you go slow, things are smoother, and when things are smooth, you can move faster.

Never less than X, never more than Y.

Never less than five pages a day Never more than twenty-five pages a day

Never less than five hundred words a day Never more than one thousand words a day

Effortless State is an experience many of us have had when we are physically rested, emotionally unburdened, and mentally energized.

invert the question by asking, “What if this could be easy?”