Effortless: Make It Easier To Do What Matters Most

Not everything has to be so hard.

Essentialism was about doing the right things; Effortless is doing them in the right way.

The marginal return of working harder is negative. Hard work can equal better results, but this is true only to a point: there is an upper limit to how much time and effort we can invest. And the more depleted we get, the more our return on that effort dwindles.

What does one do when they've stripped life down to the essentials and it's still too much?

What can we do? (1) Carry on and work ourselves to death; (2) Aim lower and give up on our goals or (3) find an easier way to achieve the success we want.

When you simply can't try any harder, it's time to find a different path.

Big rocks theory: they fit into a jar only if you put them first. But what do you do if there are too many big rocks? What id the absolutely essential work does not fit within the limits of the container? You can do all the right things for the right reasons, but do them in the wrong way.

Essentialism was about doing the right things; Effortless is doing them in the right way.

Instead of trying to get better results by pushing ever harder, we can make the most essential activities the easiest ones. What could happen in your life if easy but pointless things became harder and the essential things became easier?

Effortless is about a way to achieve more with ease - because we are at ease.

  • Effortless State: the first step toward making things more effortless is to clear the clutter in our heads and our hearts. Be rested, at peace, and focused.

  • Effortless Action: once we are in the Effortless State, it becomes easier to take Effortless Action. But perfectionism makes essential projects harder to start, self-doubt makes them hard to finish, and trying to doo too much, too fast, makes it hard to sustain momentum. Effortless Action is about simplifying the process to make the work itself easier to do.

  • Effortless Results: there are two types of results: linear and residual. Whenever your efforts yield a one-time benefit, you are getting a linear result. With residual results you put the effort once and reap the benefits again and again. Results flow to you while you're sleeping. Effortless Action alone produces linear results. But when we apply Effortless Action to high-leverage activities, the return on our efforts compounds. Effortless Results is about producing a great result with ease again and again.

You can't make everything in your life effortless. But you can make more of the right things less impossible - then easier, then easy, and ultimately effortless.

George Eliot: What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

Effortless State

Perceptual load: our brain processing capacity is large, but limited. When we encounter new information, our brains need to make choices about how to allocate the remaining cognitive resources. And because our brains are programmed to prioritize emotions with "high affective value" - fear, resentment, anger - these emotions win out.

The Effortless State is an experience when we are physically rested, emotionally unburdened, and mentally energized. We are completely aware, alert, present, attentive, and focused on what's important in this moment. You are able to focus on what matters most with ease.

INVERT: What If This Could Be Easy?

  • Instead of asking, "Why is this so hard?", invert the question by asking, "What if this could be easy?"

  • Challenge the assumption that the "right" way is, inevitably, the harder one. We believe in a false dichotomy between things that are "essential and hard" and "easy and trivial"

  • Make the impossible possible by finding an indirect approach.

    • Cognitive ease principle / principle of the least effort. Our brain is wired to resist what it perceives as hard and welcome what it perceives as easy

    • Story of the abolitionist James Stephen (attacking slave trade indirectly, by removing neutral flags on ships) - a "Trojan horse"

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

    • Trying too hard makes it harder to get the results you want.

  • Effortless Inversion means looking at problems from the opposite perspective. It means asking, " What if this could be easy?" It means to solve the problems from the state of focus, clarity, and calm. It means getting good at getting things done by putting in less effort.

  • When a strategy is so complex that each step feels akin to pushing a boulder up a hill, you should pause. Invert the problem. Ask, "What is the simplest way to achieve this result?"

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

ENJOY: What If This Could Be Fun?

  • Pair the most essential activities with the most enjoyable ones.

    • We all have things we do consistently not because they are important, but because we actively look forward to doing them.

    • At the same time, we all have important activities we don't do consistently because we actively dread doing them.

    • Why would we simply endure essential activities when we can enjoy them instead? Effortless = essential x enjoyable

    • Don't underestimate the power of the right soundtrack to ditch the drudgery and get into the groove

  • Accept that work and play can co-exist.

    • What are your building blocks of joy?

  • Turn tedious tasks into meaningful rituals.

    • Rituals are similar to habits in the sense that "when I do X, I also do Y". But the psychological satisfaction WHEN you do them is different. Habits explain WHAT you do, rituals are about HOW you do it, rituals infuse habits with meaning, they are habits with a soul.

  • Allow laughter and fun to lighten more of your moments.

RELEASE: The Power of Letting Go

  • Let go of the emotional burdens you don't need to keep carrying.

  • Remember: when you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. When you focus on what you have, you get what you lack.

  • Use this habit recipe: "Each time I complain I will say something I am thankful for."

    • Gratitude is a powerful thing: it starves negative emotions of the oxygen they need to survive. Positive emotions open us to new perspectives and possibilities.

  • Relieve a grudge of its duties by asking, "What job have I hired this grudge to do?"

  • Accept what you can't control

REST: The Art of Doing Nothing

  • Discover the art of doing nothing

    • Doing nothing can be painfully hard if you are used to 24/7 always-on culture

    • Relaxing is a responsibility

  • Do not do more today than you can completely recover from by tomorrow

  • Break down the essential work into three sessions of no more than ninety minutes each and take a short break in between sessions to rest and recover

  • Take an effortless nap

NOTICE: How to See Clearly

  • How often do we engage in the act of observing, of truly NOTICING?

  • There is no such thing as effortless relationship. But there are ways we can make it easier to keep a relationship strong. We don't need to agree with the other person on everything. But we do need to be present with them, to really notice them, to give them our full attention - maybe not always, but as frequently as we can.

  • Achieve a state of heightened awareness by harnessing the power of presence

    • When we are fully present with people, it has an impact.

    • The greatest gift we can offer to others is not our skill or our money or our effort. It is simply us.

  • Train your brain to focus on the important and ignore the irrelevant

  • To see others more clearly, set aside your opinions, advice, and judgement, and put their truth above your own.

  • Clear the clutter in your physical environment before clearing the clutter in your mind

Effortless Action

Past a certain point, more effort doesn't produce better performance. It sabotages our performance.

Wu Wei concept of Eastern Philosophy: trying without trying, action without action, effortless doing

Effortless Action means accomplishing more by trying less. You stop procrastinating and take the first obvious step. You arrive at the point of completion without overthinking. You make progress by pacing yourself rather than powering through. You overachieve without overexerting.

DEFINE: What "Done" Looks Like

  • To get started on an essential project, first define what "done" looks like

    • Story of Gustav II and his flagship

    • You can't complete a project without a clearly defined end point.

    • You can define "done" as the point before the effort invested begins to be greater than the output achieved.

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

  • Take sixty seconds to focus on your desired outcome

    • Make it clearer: instead of "lose weight", "go to 60kg"; instead of "walk more", "reach five thousand steps a day

  • Write a "Done for a Day" list. Limit it to items that would constitute meaningful progress.

  • Swedish Death Cleaning

START: The First Obvious Action

  • Make the first action the most obvious one. It may be too trivial, but it often provides momentum we need to take the next step. Define the first step, and take it right now.

  • Break the first obvious action down into the tiniest, concrete steps. Then name it.

  • Gain maximum learning from minimal viable effort.

  • Start with a ten-minute microburst of focused activity to boost motivation and energy.

SIMPLIFY: Start with Zero

  • To simplify the process, don't simplify the steps: simply remove them.

    • Story: one-click checkout process

    • No matter how simple the step is, it's still easier to take no step

    • What are the minimum steps required for completion?

  • Recognize that not everything requires you to go extra mile.

  • Maximize the steps not taken.

    • Agile Manifesto: Simplicity - the art of maximizing the amount of work not done - is essential

  • Measure progress in the tiniest of increments.

PROGRESS: The Courage to Be Rubbish

  • When you start a project, start with rubbish.

    • Story: Gossamer Condor aircraft

    • "Dare to Try" programme at Pfizer

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

  • Adopt a "zero-draft" approach and just put some words, any words, on the page.

    • The more rubbish, the better

  • Fail cheaply: make learning-size mistakes.

    • If you're not embarrassed by your first product release, you released it too late.

  • Protect your progress from the harsh critic in your head.

    • Every great achievement is rubbish in the beginning.

PACE: Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast

  • Set an effortless pace: slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

    • Story: One journey to the South Pole, two teams

  • Reject the false economy of "powering through"

    • Going too fast in the beginning will almost slow us down the rest of the day.

  • Create the right range: I will never do less than X, never more than Y.

  • Recognize that not all progress is created equal.

Effortless Results

Effortlessly achieve results again and again.

There are two types of results: linear and residual.

  • Whenever your efforts yield a one-time benefit, you are getting a linear result. An employee who works for an hour and gets paid for that hour has a linear income. An entrepreneur who makes money only when she is actively working to make it happen has a linear business model. A student who learns for the test and passes has acquired a linear knowledge.

  • With residual results you put the effort once and reap the benefits again and again. An author who writes a book and is paid royalties for years is getting residual income. An entrepreneur who sets up her business to work even when she's on vacation for 6 months has a residual business. A student who learns first principles and can then apply them in a variety of ways is acquiring residual knowledge. Residual results are like compound interest.

  • Look for leverage. It multiplies the impact of the effort we put in. Attention: there can be drawbacks to levers too: a bad reputation can cost you opportunities for years. A bad habit can compromise your health for decades. The direction the force will flow is entirely up to us.

LEARN: Leverage the Best of What Others Know

  • Learn principles, not just facts and methods.

    • As our lives become increasingly busy, it's tempting to seek out easy instructions or methods to solve a problem. But a method can be used once, while principles can be applied broadly and repeatedly. At their best, they are universal and timeless.

  • Understand first principles deeply then apply them again and again

    • Elon Musk: "It's important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree - make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves / details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.

  • Stand on the shoulders of giants and leverage the best of what they know.

    • Charlie Munger: Isolated facts are useless unless they "hang together on a latticework of theory".

    • The best new ideas usually come from combining the existing knowledge in one field with an "intrusion of unusual combinations" from other disciplines.

    • Take extreme novelty and embed it in deep conventionality.

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

  • Develop unique knowledge, and it will open the door to perpetual opportunity

    • Story: Fosbury flop.

    • Being good at what nobody is doing is better than being great at what everyone is doing. The first step is to leverage what others know. The ultimate goal is to identify knowledge that is unique to you, and build on it.

    • Reputation for a unique expertise: You gain an incredible leverage when you are among the only people with that precise expertise.

LIFT: Harness the Strength of Ten

  • Use teaching as a lever to harness the strength of ten

  • Achieve far-reaching impact by teaching others to teach. Clearly identify and them simplify the most important messages you want to teach others to teach.

  • Live what you teach, and notice how much you learn

  • Tell stories that are easily understood and repeated. "Sesame Street Simple". Make the most essential things the easiest ones to teach and the easiest ones to learn.

AUTOMATE: Do It Once and Never Again

  • Alfred North Whitehead: "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations we can perform without thinking about them."

  • Free up space in your brain by automating as many essential tasks as possible

  • Use checklists to get it right every time, without having to rely on memory

    • Atul Gawande: The Checklist Manifesto. The beauty of the checklist is that the thinking has been done ahead of time. It's been take out of the equation. Or rather, it's neem baked into the equation. So instead of getting these essential things right occasionally, we get them right every time.

  • Seek single choices that eliminate future decisions

  • Take the high-tech path for the essential and the low-tech path for the nonessential

    • Story: DoNotPay - automating appeals of traffic tickets - "the World's First Robot Lawyer"

    • Your Health: schedule annual physical as a recurring appointment; set your phone on nightlight 2 hours before bedtime

    • Relationships: regular calls and get-togethers of people that matter most; calendar reminders for friend's birthdays; preorder flowers and gifts

    • etc

  • Automation can work for you or against you. If non-essential activities get automated they too continue to happen without you thinking about it.

TRUST: The Engine for High-Leverage Teams

  • You can't have a high-performing teams without high levels of trust.

  • Leverage trust and the engine oil of frictionless and high-functioning teams

  • Make the right hire once, and it will continue to produce results again and again

  • Follow the Three I's Rule: hire people with integrity, intelligence and initiative

    • 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.

  • Design high-trust agreements to clarify results, roles, rules, resources, and rewards

    • There are three parties to every relationship: Person A, Person B, and the structure that governs them.

    • When trust becomes an issue, most people point at the other person. But we rarely think to blame the structure of the relationship itself.

      • A low-trust structure is one where expectations are unclear, where goals are incompatible or at odds, where people do not know who is doing what, where the rules are ambiguous and nobody knows what the standard for success are, and where the priorities are unclear and the incentives misaligned.

      • A high trust structure is one where expectations are clear. Goals are shared, roles are clearly defined, the rules and standards are articulated, and the right results are prioritized, incentivized, and rewarded - consistently, not just sometimes.

      • 5Rs of the High Trust Agreement:

        • Results: What results do we want?

        • Roles: Who is doing what?

        • Rules: What minimum viable standards must be kept?

        • Resources: what resources are available and needed?

        • Rewards: How will progress be evaluated and rewarded?

PREVENT: Solve the Problem Before It Happens

  • Don't just manage the problem. Solve it before it happens.

  • Seek simple actions today that can prevent complications tomorrow.

    • What is the 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?

    • Where to focus: High level of annoyance x High speed to solve

  • Invest two minutes of effort once to end recurring frustrations.

  • Catch mistakes before they happen; measure twice, so you only have to cut once.

    • SNCF story of trains larger than 1/3 of the platforms

    • first-, second- and third-order consequences of our actions

Now: What Happens Next Matters Most

  • Whatever has happened in your life. Whatever hardship. Whatever pain... They pale in comparison to the power you have to choose what to do right now.

  • Life does not have to be as hard and complicated as we make it. No matter what challenges, obstacles, or hardships we encounter along the way, we can always look for the easier, simpler path.

Arina Divo