Effortless

Key Concepts

Going downhill, not uphill

(p. 16)

Go for residual results, not linear results

“Whenever your efforts yield a one-time benefit, you are getting a linear result. Every day you start from zero; if you don’t put in the effort today then you don’t get the result today. It’s a one-to-one ratio; the amount of effort you put in equals the results received. But what if those results could flow to us repeatedly, without further effort on our part? With residual results you put in the effort once and reap the benefits again and again. Results flow to you while you are sleeping. Results flow to you when you are taking the day off. Residual results can be virtually infinite.” (p. 17)

Effortless Inversion

“Effortless Inversion means looking at problems from the opposite perspective. It means asking, “What if this could be easy?” It means learning to solve problems from a state of focus, clarity, and calm. It means getting good at getting things done by putting in less effort.” (p. 32)

“When we feel overwhelmed, it may not be because the situation is inherently overwhelming. It may be because we are overcomplicating something in our own heads. Asking the question ‘What if this could be easy?’ is a way to reset our thinking. It may seem almost impossibly simple. And that’s exactly why it works.” (p. 33)

Pair the essential with what’s enjoyable

“There is power in pairing our most enjoyable activities with our most essential ones. After all, you’re probably going to do the enjoyable things anyway.” (p. 47)

“Anna and I once made our own list of twenty building blocks of joy and shared them with each other. They included “tidying up a room, or drawer or cupboard that was a mess (i.e., creating order from chaos),” “listening to a particular song, on repeat, again and again,” and “eating dark chocolate covered almonds.” These lists were easy to create. And once we had them it became even easier to create signature experiences that were essential and enjoyable.” (p. 49)

“Our rituals are habits we have put our thumbprint on. Our rituals are habits with a soul. They have the power to transform a tedious task into an experience that creates joy.” (p. 51)

Focus on What You Have

“Have you ever found that the more you complain—and the more you read and hear other people complain—the easier it is to find things to complain about? On the other hand, have you ever found that the more grateful you are, the more you have to be grateful for?” (p. 55)

“When you focus on something you are thankful for, the effect is instant. It immediately shifts you from a lack state (regrets, worries about the future, the feeling of being behind) and puts you into a have state (what is going right, what progress you are making, what potential exists in this moment). It reminds you of all the resources, all the assets, all the skills you have at your disposal—so you can use them to more easily do what matters most.” (p. 56)

“When you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. When you focus on what you have, you get what you lack.” (pp. 58-9)

Staying with a sustainable range

“Many of us struggle with the tension between not doing enough and doing too much. Have you ever pushed yourself so far past the point of exhaustion one day that you wake up the next morning utterly depleted and need the entire day to rest? To stop this vicious cycle in its tracks, try this simple rule: Do not do more today than you can completely recover from today. Do not do more this week than you can completely recover from this week.” (p. 70)

“To make progress despite the complexity and uncertainty we encounter on a daily basis, we need to choose the right range and keep within it.” (p. 139)

“Finding the right range keeps us moving at a steady pace so we can make consistent progress. The lower bound should be high enough to keep us feeling motivated, and low enough that we can still achieve it even on days when we’re dealing with unexpected chaos. The upper bound should be high enough to constitute good progress, but not so high as to leave us feeling exhausted. Once we get into the rhythm, the progress begins to flow. We are able to take Effortless Action.” (p. 140)

Define what “done” looks like

“If you want to make something hard, indeed truly impossible, to complete, all you have to do is make the end goal as vague as possible. That’s because you cannot, by definition, complete a project without a clearly defined end point. You can spin your wheels working on it. You can tinker with it. You can (and likely will) abandon it. But to get an important project done it’s absolutely necessary to define what “done” looks like.” (p. 101)

“I define “done” as the point just before the effort invested begins to be greater than the output achieved. To avoid diminishing returns on your time and effort, establish clear conditions for what “done” looks like, get there, then stop.” (p. 101)

“A Done for the Day list is not a list of everything we theoretically could do today, or a list of everything we would love to get done. These things will inevitably extend far beyond the limited time available. Instead, this is a list of what will constitute meaningful and essential progress. As you write the list, one test is to imagine how you will feel once this work is completed. Ask yourself, “If I complete everything on this list, will it leave me feeling satisfied by the end of the day? Is there some other important task that will haunt me all night if I don’t get to it?” If your answer to the second question is yes, that is a task that should go on the Done for the Day list.” (p. 103)

Take the Minimum Viable Action

“Often, when you name the first obvious step, you avoid spending too much mental energy thinking about the fifth, seventh, or twenty-third steps. It doesn’t matter if your project involves ten steps or a thousand. When you adopt this strategy, 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.” (p. 109)

“Instead of procrastinating, wasting enormous amounts of time and effort planning for a million possible scenarios, or charging full steam ahead at the risk of traveling miles down the wrong path, 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.” (p. 111)

Use automation to simplify

“One caveat is important to make at this juncture: automation can work for you or against you. If nonessential activities are automated, they too continue to happen without you thinking about it.” (p. 183)

“Consider taking the high-tech, low-effort path for the essential, and the low-tech, high-effort path for the nonessential.” (p. 183)

Trust enables effortless action

“When you have trust in your relationships, they take less effort to maintain and manage. You can quickly split work between team members. People can talk about problems when they come up, openly and honestly. Members share valuable information rather than hoard it. Nobody minds asking questions when they don’t understand something. The speed and quality of decisions go up. Political infighting goes down. You may even enjoy the experience of working together. And you perform exponentially better, because you’re able to focus all your energy and attention on getting important things done, rather than on simply getting along.” (p. 187)

“There are three parties to every relationship: Person A, Person B, and the structure that governs them.” (p. 191)

“A high-trust structure is one where expectations are clear. Goals are shared, roles are clearly delineated, the rules and standards are articulated, and the right results are prioritized, incentivized, and rewarded—consistently, not just sometimes.” (p. 191)

Get rid of long-tail effort by asking yourself:

1. What is a problem that irritates me repeatedly? (p. 197)

2. What is the total cost of managing that over several years? (p. 197)

3. What is the next step I can take immediately, in a few minutes, to move toward solving it? (p. 197)

Quotables

“But now I found myself wondering: what does one do when they’ve stripped life down to the essentials and it’s still too much?” (p. 9)

“When you return to your Effortless State, you feel lighter, in the two senses of the word. First, you feel less heavy—unburdened. You aren’t as weighed down. Suddenly you have more energy. But lighter also means more full of light. When you remove the burdens in your heart and the distractions in your mind, you are able to see more clearly. You can discern the right action and light the right path.” (p. 26)

“We can apply this idea to make gratitude a habit, by using the following recipe: After I complain I will say something I am thankful for. The moment I started applying this recipe, I was shocked to realize how much I was complaining. I think of myself as a positive, optimistic person. But once I started paying attention, I realized that I was actually complaining quite a lot, often without any awareness. ...After a couple of days of using this rule, I noticed I would start to catch myself midcomplaint and quickly finish my sentence with words of gratitude. It wasn’t long before I would catch myself simply thinking about complaining—and I would think of something I was thankful for instead. At first this shift was deliberate and hard; then it was deliberate and easier; then, eventually, effortless.” (pp. 61-2)

“However, Maddon sees the advantage of a different approach. He said, ‘I didn’t have enough chance to do nothing last offseason. I want more of an opportunity to do nothing, and I mean that in a positive way. When you get this downtime, to be able to do nothing well, that’s my goal.’” (p. 69)

“When we end our war on our body’s natural rhythms, when we let others pass us in the unwinnable race for the most achieved with the least rest, our lives gain texture, clarity, and intention. We return to our Effortless State.” (p. 78)

“When we’re fully present with people, it has an impact. Not just in that moment either. The experience of feeling like the most important person in the world even for the briefest of moments can stay with us for a disproportionate time after the moment has passed. There is a curiously magical power of presence.” (p. 86)

“Past a certain point, more effort doesn’t produce better performance. It sabotages our performance.” (p. 96)

“Here is a rule I have found helpful: Being asked to do X isn’t a good enough reason to do Y.” (p. 120)

“That’s why, when I do presentations, I use six slides, with fewer than ten words total.” (p. 121)

“If there are processes in your life that seem to involve an inordinate number of steps, try starting from zero. Then see if you can find your way back to those same results, only take fewer steps.” (p. 123)