Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

by Greg McKeown

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

work and play can co-exist.

When you focus on what you have, you get what you lack.

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

“What job have I hired this grudge to do?”

Discover the art of doing nothing.

focus on the important and ignore the irrelevant.

set aside your opinions, advice, and judgment, and put their truth above your own.

Clear the clutter in your physical environment

Effortless Action means accomplishing more by trying less.

define what “done” looks like.

Establish clear conditions for completion, get there, then stop.

Take sixty seconds to focus on your de...

Write a “Done for the ...

Start with a ten-minute microburst of focused activity

don’t simplify the steps: simply remove them.

not everything requires you to go the extra mile.

When you start a project, start with rubbish.

just put some words, any words, on the page.

Protect your progress from the harsh critic in your head.

slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

I will never do less than X, never more than Y.

reduce friction on or across teams up front, collaboration flows smoothly on project after project.

When you build a unified team where everybody knows who is doing what, it becomes easier to stay aligned on roles, responsibilities, regulations, rewards, and desired results.

Solving a problem before it happens can save you endless time

If it’s residual results we’re after, we must look to principles.

read the classics and the ancients.

absorbing yourself fully in a book changes who you are,

summarizing, of distilling ideas to their essential essence, helps us turn information into understanding,

To reap the residual results of knowledge, the first step is to leverage what others know.

identify knowledge that is unique to you, and build on it.

Don’t go for the overly sophisticated message. Don’t go for the one that makes you sound smart.

The limits of working memory breed avoidable errors. Extreme complexity only increases the cognitive load,

A cheat sheet is one of the most effective, albeit low-tech, tools we have at our disposal to automate almost anything that really matters. The checklist is one type.

Schedule an hour every quarter to review your personal career goals.

Block off five minutes every morning to read an article on an important topic not directly related to your job.

Block off one hour each day for something that brings you joy.

Consider taking the high-tech, low-effort path for the essential, and the low-tech, high-effort path for the nonessential.

When you have low trust on teams, everything is hard.

looks for people with integrity, intelligence, and initiative,

When you can say these four little words, “I trust your judgment”—and mean them—it’s like magic.

What results do we want?

Who is doing what?

What minimum viable standards must be kept?

What resources (people, money, tools) are available and needed?

How will progress be evaluated and rewarded?

Why do so many of us put up with problems—big and small—for so much longer than we have to? Because on any given day it usually takes less time to manage a problem than to solve it.

invest in solving the problem once and for all.

find the most annoying thing that can be solved in the least amount of time.

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”