Leading an Effortless life😄

Leading an effortless life is possible. All it takes is a little change in mindset. This is what I got to learn from the Book- Effortless written by Greg McKeown which I read last week.

And this book, helped me make positive changes in my life. By the means of this blog article, I'll present the key insights from the book concisely.

Without further ado. Let's get straight into it.

Who is this book for?

It’s for people who have figured out their life goals and want to get on the path to implement them. How can they achieve their goals and at the same time save themselves from mental and physical exhaustion, and burnout?

In a one-liner, this book is really about how to simplify essential tasks and achieve your goals effortlessly.

Going further, I would like to stress that this book is going to be pure gold for people who like to go that extra mile for everything they’d do- Perfectionists.

Why this book?

This book had a huge impact on me. This book teaches the method, the method to break down a problem into bite-sized pieces, and how to tackle them. However, at the same time being physically rested, emotionally unburdened, and mentally energized.

The value proposition of this book lies in the fact that it argues over a common observable character of humans- “Hard work (Overwork & Burnout) is the price which we must pay to succeed.”

The author argues that this is a false assumption. And as counterintuitive, as it may seem, I am sure you will agree with this by the end of this article.

When we shelve the false assumption that the easier path has to be the inferior path, obstacles fade away.

Down below I have summarized this 250 paged book into easy to grasp bullet points.

Summary & Key Insights

Effortless State:

• It’s our common misconception that trivial things are easy. Essential things are hard. A list of these essential things can vary from person to person; however, I am sure you would agree that the given items- Family, Work, and Health would broadly be able to describe your goals and aims. With that in our mind, let’s continue down the funnel.

• Is there an easy way to accomplish your goals? Just take a pause from whatever activity you are finding yourself stuck in. Take a minute or two and try to come up with easy solutions or better techniques for the same.

• Pair the tedious task with some activity you enjoy. Chances are that if you didn’t enjoy the journey, you probably are not going to achieve true salvation when you do complete your goals. Maybe listen to music or award yourself with your favorite snack or any fun activity you can think of that will pair well.

• Take adequate rest. There exist people who feel guilty about taking a rest. For some people doing nothing is painfully hard. And for those people, I have a single thing to say. What is the purpose of reducing your sleep time just for the sake of achieving more with your life, when in the long term you are shortening it? Now I am no expert in suggesting how much sleep you should get; however, I am leaving a link to this video by “TED” -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQUeDdaVoWo that I think you will find good.

• Focus on what is relevant to your life at the moment and ignore the other stuff or lay it aside for the future. You come across many a task a day. And you need to think at the end of the day when you take a look at your to-do’s, why hadn’t this been done already? And for me in general, it’s the lack of a little discipline. (No one is perfect. And that’s all right. We can strive to work on that).

Effortless Action

There is a common law in economics that can be applied to general productivity that states that beyond a certain point, more effort you put in doesn’t produce better performance. It sabotages our performance. This is the Law of Diminishing returns and the principle idea behind effortless action.

• Start by defining what done looks like. Do this with every item in your to-dos. When you have a clear picture of what you want to achieve, the efforts and the process become easy. You are not spending time, trying to achieve an ambiguous goal. You are striving towards something.

Take the most basic step towards attaining your goal. If you get distracted, remind yourself- It only takes 2.5 seconds to regain focus and start working again. However, taking the most basic steps are the method to just ignite the engine, but you of course need to put in the fuel- microbursts of action to start walking towards your goal. Remember- “Slow is Smooth. Smooth is fast.”

• Take the most basic step towards attaining your goal. And once you start, it is relatively easy to continue. If you get distracted, remind yourself- It only takes 2.5 seconds to regain focus and start working again. However, taking the most basic steps are the method to just ignite the engine, but you of course need to put in the fuel- microbursts of action to start walking towards your goal. Remember- “Slow is Smooth. Smooth is fast.”

• Don’t be your critic when something goes wrong. Learn from it and be happy that you won’t ever repeat that mistake.

• Maintain a steady pace. This is one of the best practical pieces of advice that I got from the book. Don’t exhaust yourself on productive days and don’t push through on lazy days. Maintain a steady pace on day-to-day basis. You can try to establish Upper and Lower Bounds for an essential project in a diary and keep track.

Effortless Result

We usually get results from whatever effort we put in once. However, what if we could put in the effort once and that gives us benefits continually, just like a ball rolling on a frictionless plan.

This is the idea behind effortless results. Put actions in once and enjoy long-term gains.

• Learn skills that will help you excel in life. Not only that, try connecting various skills to bring the efforts to glow. Unique knowledge always propels you further.

• Leverage technology to keep a tab on your schedules and to-do list. For a particular task, you want to accomplish, establish a checklist(subtasks). This would free your mind from the burden of keeping account of the tasks.

• Hire people that you would be able to trust. This advice would be relevant to people who are involved in some business themselves. It will relieve you from the strain of worrying about keeping a tab on them. It’s someone you don’t have to supervise or micromanage, someone who understands the team’s goals and who cares as much as you do about the quality of the essential work to be done. This will save your mental energy and make things effortless.

• The next and final piece of advice which in my opinion is a real game-changer is the long tail of time management. It says to take two minutes out of your schedule and fix things or solve a problem that will take minimal effort. This technique I have already tried and applied this in my life, and it works magic. It is the best advice in terms of managing time that has ever been given to me.

My thoughts!

This book got through to me and, rarely, do I say so. From changing mindset to practically applying techniques to achieve effortless results, this can all work coherently to make our lives easier.

We all want to live a happy and peaceful life surrounded by our family and friends. And following this system can improve your life and make it effortless to live and thrive in this world.

If you want to take away something from this article for life, let it be this, surround yourself with people you trust. If your environment is conducive to your growth, other pieces will automatically fit in. You would be able to take effortless actions with an effortless mindset.

There is a very popular belief in productivity that we should always do things that we enjoy and that we find passionate. However, I beg to differ. It is not always practical to follow your passions or do the thing that you find least work-like.

Reading a book can't make the tasks disappear, things do take efforts. It is up to you whether you want to approach the task the hard way or the smart way. The main agenda of this book has been to change your mind set in the way you approach things. How to make a seemingly difficult task, less difficult or effortless?

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If you have your own thoughts regarding this book that you would like to share, let me know in the forums.

This was my review of the book- Effortless by Greog Mckeown and some of own thoughts on the same.

If you want to read more of my content, head over to read my poem- Annihilation which is live rn.

Till then, Goodbye!