Book Thoughts: “Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most” by Greg McKeown
In an interview with Greg McKeown earlier this month, he said:
“There are two types of people: those who are burnt out and admit it, and those who are burnt out.”
This all stemmed from us having a conversation around honestly answering the question, “How are you?” And isn’t it refreshing to hear that even productivity experts are frazzled and finding it hard to prioritize self-care and switch off these days?
Greg’s latest book, Effortless, is a guide, and in the case of us perfectionists, a permission slip, on how to make what is essential easier to do. It’s necessary reading for all of us, burning the candle at both ends, who need a nudge to choose the easier path. Because what if things that are worthwhile didn’t have to be so hard?
The Why Behind “Effortless”
Inevitably, with a book title like this one, Greg shared that there are people who will scoff or think that it’s a lofty ideal that would never apply to their life and their hardships, but that’s exactly the person that Greg wrote the book for. His motivation could be encapsulated by a beautiful quote from George Elliot:
“What do we live for if not to make life less difficult for each other.”
He wrote Effortless because he believes that we can search for an easier path, one that is lighter. By looking for that path, he believes we can achieve the results we want, and sometimes even breakthrough results, without burning out.
“A lot of people distrust the easy and think of it as being virtuous and hard or easy and immoral in some way. But there is a third way, there is a path that is both easier and lighter and yet still good and rightous.”
We are caught up in hustle culture. The employee that sends the email latest at night gets the praise. The more hours we work, the more money we are rewarded with on the harder path. We’ve grown to glorify hard work, all-nighters, challenges, and trudging on. But, as Greg points out, when we instead give up the ghost and search for something that feels lighter,
“It’s not laziness. It’s not sloth. It’s actually mastering life.”
Synopsis of Effortless
The book is divided into three sections:
Effortless State
Effortless Action
Effortless Results
Greg takes us through a myriad of stories to showcase simple ways we can all search for the easier path, in life, at work, and in relationships. These tips and suggestions at first seem trivial, but that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Finding ways to make life easier isn’t about monumental shifts, because that’s hard. It’s about small changes, tweaks, and process improvements.
To give you a taste for some of the topics covered in detail, these were a few of my favourites:
Limiting distractions
The false economy of powering through
Start with rubbish (similar to the concept of shitty first drafts, but an even lower bar)
In essence, the book provides the inspiration for you to constantly be asking yourself:
“Do I choose the heaver or the lighter path?”
Who This Book Will Speak to Most
Effortless really is for anyone feeling the effects of burnout, which would likely include the entire population of North America. And while most people will get something from this manual for choosing a better way forward, there are a few groups of people that I think this book will speak to most:
Working moms taking on the lion share of the childcare, education and household work
Leaders who are working more to try to support their teams through a tough time
Entrepreneurs/freelancers trading too much time for too little money
My Two Cents: How this book impacted me, personally
Productivity books are my jam, so I was reading through this new release at warp speed, taking notes and learning things. And then, the last chapter hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn’t expect a burnout prevention manual to show me a fundamental truth about myself, but it did.
I spoke to Greg about this in our interview, because I wanted to thank him for writing to the parents who are trying to do too much right now. I’m not sure that I communicated well enough just how impactful his writing was to me, but in a sense, it did two things:
I realized that I am burnt out, and not in the kind-of-tired way. I’m really, truly, in the dregs of full-blown, exhausting burnout, which is, of course, not sustainable.
There is no shame in choosing to make things easier on myself.
In a world where I’ve always taken the harder path (were two MSc degrees in engineering really necessary?), this advice was both difficult to swallow and exactly what I needed to hear. There is no medal at the end of life for having taken the torturous path. You might actually accelerate your journey to the end by constantly choosing the heavier burden to bear, being stressed out all the time, and trying to do more, more, more.
It’s April of 2021, we’ve been in the pandemic for over a year now, and today Ontario is releasing even harsher restrictions because the case numbers continue to climb. So, add to that baseline level of anxiety, me trying to run my business and work enough hours to support my family, while also being the primary caregiver for my 8-month-old who still doesn’t sleep through the night and, well, I’m tired of being tired and having to manage in this impossible situation.
I finished the book and immediately began writing down a list of things that I could do which would lighten my load. I’ll share a couple of them with you:
Setting a minimum monetary threshold for new client work
Create a blog template for book reviews to make it easier to do work I love
Cut down the number of social graphics I make every week for the podcast
Into the Weeds: The details, length and structure of the book
Greg starts each chapter with a story illustrating the concept he’s about to teach us, which truly makes the reading of this book effortless. (I had to do it). He explained in our interview that stories stick with us. We learn much better when we are engaged in a story.
To reinforce key concepts, Greg has a chart at the end of the three sections of the book summarizing and defining what he taught. Simple, though it may sound, this trick makes it easy to pick up his book at a later date and get a refresher in just a few moments.
Greg also made a concerted effort to keep Effortless concise. In fact, his goal was to make it shorter than his previous book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. I read his new book voraciously over the course of a week.
And on that note, if you haven’t read Essentialism yet, that is my recommendation for you. I read it once a year to remind myself that more is not better, nor does it get me further toward my true goals. Greg McKeown is the voice we all need, the one to replace our nagging conditioning telling us to just do more. He was so generous with his time and advice in my interview with him, and it’s a true testament to his mission with his books:
“When you’ve suffered in life, know that you’re not alone. If we can just make a study of how to live with a little less suffering, that to me seems like a noble pursuit.”
