Effortless

I always sense it would be more easy to do boring stuff in a fun way, and I gather evidence on the effectiveness of my hypothesis. This book is part of my research. Not just that but even better: imagine you can start doing stuff effortless!

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Imagine that you could prioritise the effort you’re making instead of starting perfectly perfect. I have the tendency of getting stuck on stuff because I want to have stuff perfect the first time. Result is my articles and revision just for that website have at least 10 modifications in averages. Perfection is a myth, no one can do it everything the best first. Greg McKeown says, just start with anything. And eventually, step by step you get stuff done, without this pressure we all put ourselves. What’s the link with the fun element? The amount of effort you put in doing something.

Effortless shows that achieving more doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it out to be.

Arianna Huffington on Effortless book.

For instance, I have hard time doing sport. There’s nothing fun about it for me. My goal is finding a way to get a routine where sport, sweating and all that stuff that I don’t really praise, becomes natural and fun to me. Effortless, although mainly wrote as work methodology, is more than that. It’s a way of life. And with lot of example gives you ideas to transform boring into enjoyable things. Doing your tax with fun? I now add a cool vinyle record or listen to my favorite podcast when doing so.

Because the point that Greg McKeown does, which I found back in « Reality is Broken » from Jane McGonigal, is the need of doing something without it pain, as game for instance that are work you do, but with a constraint that make it fun. So to do stuff with ease as state in Greg McKeown’s Effortless book, you need to make stuff enjoyable. And he describe what’s the effortless state, as other would describe flow.

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“The effortless state is an experience […] [where we] are able to focus on what matter the most with ease.”

— Greg McKeown, Effortless

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From changing your assumptions, creating mindful habits (like « do not do more today than you can COMPLETELY recover from by tomorrow » – Genius!), take naps, use the success criteria in what a task should look like when finish like project managers or remind ourselves that not everything requires the extra miles, I enjoyed his path to effortless success and could put a lot of #toolboxworthly ideas, in my own tool box.

And after listening to his podcast where he do the case for the 4 days work week, I placed his previous book « Essentialism » into my future reading list.