Effortless Productivity with Greg Mckeown & Jim Kwik

Welcome back, Kwik Brain. Your question for today is this. This is a juicy one. How do you make things more effortless? How do you make things effortless? And I'm excited about a very special guest we have here on the show today, New York Times bestselling author Greg McKeown. He's the author of a book that I've probably bought more than most books because I give it out. It's called Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. And many of our clients, you've received this from me. And we're going to talk about his new book, which is called Effortless. And I love this title, Greg. Make it easier to do what matters most. Welcome to the show, Greg.

Jim, it's really an honor to be with you. Thank you.

Let's talk about, as a foundation, your first book, Essentialism. So for those people who haven't— the few people who haven't yet read it, how would you describe Essentialism and how does it relate to to being effortless.

Yeah. So if you had to summarize essentialism in one word, it's prioritization. And if you had to summarize effortless in one word, it's simplification. And I think that these are— you could read them separately and still gain something, but together it's like multiplication. It's better together. It's a little bit, although it's presumptuous to say it this way, a little like Paul McCartney and John Lennon. When Like they're great on their own, but together they really made something magical happen. And I think that's what happens in people's lives when they get really clear about what matters, what the priority is in their life. But then even then, people can still do it the hard way and get exhausted and maybe even give up on the things that matter most. And so this idea of doing what matters effortlessly is where suddenly you say, well, what if I could accomplish things that seemed impossible to me, but they were really important, but suddenly I see a whole different way, an easier path, a better way to go about it? And that's why I'm so excited to be able to have written and then brought Effortless forth.

You know, and I imagine some of the people who are listening to this that are familiar with your work, they experience this because especially now, things— people are working hard And harder and harder, but they're not necessarily— some people might identify with not getting the same results as they used to. Like maybe they're working harder and actually getting less results, or maybe they're doing like in your book, they're doing the right things for the right reasons, but as you talk about, maybe they're doing it, going about it the wrong way.

Yeah, look, the situation is that life is hard in all sorts of ways, 100 ways. And the complication is that I found that many people, including me, make them even harder than they need to be. And the implication of that is that we start to like burn out and still not get the results that really matter to us. So my position in this new book is that we can make a different choice, that by taking on a new mindset, by asking different questions, by taking on different practices, that we can find an easier path to do what matters. And if we do that, then we can get the results we really want and without burning out. That's like the value proposition. That's why I wrote the book, not because I think life is easy, but because I know it's hard. And like George Eliot put it, you know, what do we live for if not to make life Less difficult for each other.

Now, before we go into the actual practices of making things more effortless, was there an impetus? Like, was there some kind of spark that made you want to write this book?

Yeah, there was. And it goes to this, like, why you might need both of these approaches, because I was being as essentialist as I'd ever been, as selective, as thoughtful, I mean, I wasn't writing another book, even though there's a lot of pressure to do that, an opportunity to do it, and you want to do it. I wasn't— I'd put on hiatus the Stanford class I co-created. I wasn't doing the workshop business that would be a sort of natural extension. I was just being very focused on my family and on really just teaching essentialism. And still, the responsibilities had grown. And it's a bit like, you know, the old big rocks theory. We've all heard it, right? That if you have a container and you put in the big rocks, you know, first, then there's room for everything because the small rocks fit in between. But if you get the order wrong, then it doesn't work. If you put the small rocks in first, then the big rocks, then it's overwhelming. But I was in a situation where I felt like, well, Not perfectly, but pretty reasonably, I'm putting in the big rocks first. But what if you have too many rocks? What if there's just too many really important essential things? What do you do then? And that was already happening to me. But then in the midst of that, one of my daughters suddenly became really extremely and severely ill with a neurological disease. We didn't know what it was at first. And so there's just this— I'm literally traveling, teaching on essentialism, and I get a call from my son on my wife's phone, a video call, and my daughter's having this massive tonic-clonic seizure. And we're just like, okay, well, like, now you hit the wall.

Right.

Yes, yes, I, you know, we got through the adrenaline, gets you through the short-term red-eye flights and the changes and so on. but all your normal responsibilities still exist. You're actually even more— go ahead.

You have keynotes and you have all these things that are essential.

And you still have all the responsibilities of your other children and of your marriage. And so it's like life keeps going on, but now you have an even bigger rock also on that. What do you do? And I just found that it was Vitally important to— well, actually what happened is that I knew I couldn't just carry on with what I currently knew. I knew I had to learn something I didn't know, and what I learned from the experience is that it's not enough to know what the right things are. You've got to find the right ways to do them, and if you try and do them the wrong way, you'll burn out very quickly in your journey. So you need to find tactics, a mindset, new sets of questions that will ease life's inevitable burdens. And that's what really I learned personally. But it sent me off on this whole journey to like learn the best of what others know about this subject of the— not the lazy path in life, but still a more effortless way of living. an easier life of both sort of— it's still noble, you're still trying to go for a virtuous path, but it's also a better way of living, an easier path.

And I like that because sometimes we hear, whether it's on social media or through whatever the output happens to be coming from, that people are glorifying being busy. It's hustle this, you have to grind, even the words that we use. And no wonder if you're glorifying, it's a badge of honor that we design our life around being busy so we feel significant or successful. And we wonder why we feel burnt out, we feel exhausted, especially within this current environment. You've distilled this down into 3 steps. Maybe we could give people an overview of those 3 steps.

Yeah, there's just 3 concentric circles. It's a very inside-out approach to the challenge of being burned out. The first is state, the second is action, and the third as results. The context is, or the contrast is, you can sometimes live life where you're exhausted. Your state is exhausted. It's a state of suffering. Yes, you're burned out physically, but you're also sort of burned out mentally. You're full of negative thinking and criticism and self-criticism and so on. You're holding grudges emotionally. You're angry. And that's like a state a lot of people start to live in as if that's the only path. And it clouds their whole vision. So what happens then is your action tends to be exhausted action. It can often make things worse in your attempt to make them better. You overcomplicate. You overexert. And so what kind of results do you get? You tend to get these exhausted results. You don't get the optimal results. And then the cycle continues. So that's sort of the path we don't want. The effortless path is about finding an effortless state, which most people have experienced, but sometimes just sort of briefly, where you are physically rested, where you're emotionally at peace, where you've let go of those grudges, where you're just not carrying those burdens anymore. You live more in gratitude than in complaint. And because of that, it tends to make your action more effortless. Because you stop trying to overcompensate. You say, well, I don't need to be perfect. I don't have to try and prove anything all the time to everyone. I can take— I can have the courage to be rubbish and just learn as I go with this. I can have a more lightweight approach, a simpler approach to getting things done. And then this also makes it easier to get the results you're looking for to flow to you again and again. So you're not just chasing it and going after it and sometimes making it even harder to get the results you want because you're trying so hard. So that's kind of the contrast in the models.

So can we give people an example or an anecdote of where people went from that effortless state to effortless action to get these effortless, amazing results and rewards?

One of the stories that comes to mind as I think about this is a manager at a university. She's responsible for many groups, including a videography department. And I was talking to her and sort of doing a little coaching with her. And she's the kind of person who's like up at 4 AM in the morning Photoshopping for her, for the women's the young women's group at church the next day. Like, she's not— this is just volunteer work, but she's still, I've got to just do it perfectly. She's the type of person, she said it to me in fact, if I'm not exhausted, I'm not doing enough. She felt guilty if she ate lunch. Not take a break for lunch, just if she ate lunch, she felt guilty. And this is like her approach. She's trying to overachieve. but she's doing it in this like overexerting way, this perfectionist way. And I just said, look, there's one thing that I would recommend that you start with. Like, don't try and overwhelm yourself with changing. Don't try an effortful approach to living a more effortless way. Let's try one thing. And I said, let's just start with a new question. Invert the question. Instead of how can I overdeliver? How can I overachieve? How can I prove myself, my worthiness, and so on. Like just this, how can I make this effortless? Just the question. And the next request she got was from a professor who said, look, I'd like you to help get your videography team to video my class for the semester. And she just went into like instant jumping into like all the things she could do. She's imagining and about to explained to him all the things they can do. Well, we'll get a team there. We'll have multiple angles. We'll do all the editing for you. We'll add music, graphics, intros, outros. And she's like, we're just going to nail this for him. He's going to love us. And then she pauses. Okay, I'm supposed to, you know, ask how could this be effortless? So she does. And it turns out that this was just for one student who was going to miss a few of the classes because of an athletic commitment. And the solution they came up with together was that another student would just record it on an iPhone and send it to the student when he wasn't in class. The professor is delighted with this solution. He's not going, why, well, why aren't you doing all these other bells and whistles? He's like, yeah, of course, I hadn't thought of that. That would solve my problem. And she hangs up 10 minutes and she's like, what just happened? You're like, how did I save 4 months of time of my effort and a whole team's effort all for 10 minutes based on a single question? And what I've come to learn is I don't mean that everything in life can suddenly be easy. I'm not— I mean, that just— that'd be naive to suggest that. Some things are sort of pretty inherently hard. However, there's so many ways we make things more complicated than they need to be. And the reason is because we're asking questions but in an, you know, in an unaware sense. It's like the questions are in the back of our head and we're just living out the answers.

Hmm.

And if you just ask a new question, suddenly you are aware of answers you didn't know about before. They were always there, but you weren't asking that question. So I find the power of asking this question difficult to overstate. There's still many things in my life that are more complicated than I wish they were. And my wife is constantly saying this to me now, pretty much on a daily basis. If I say, well, this is— I'm working on this project, I'm trying to achieve this goal, I'm not sure how, she'll say, well, how do you make it effortless? And there's one time she asks it, I don't go That's right. That's what I should ask. And somehow an answer will come. Sometimes instantly, sometimes it's just a few minutes later, an answer will come. There's so many times you can apply that single question, that approach.

How do I make this effortless?

Yeah.

That's a magic dominant question. You know, we tell our students that questions really are the answer. You know, people ask and then they shall receive because it helps them to control their focus and look in directions that they wouldn't normally look in. You know, so it's a wonderful way to get out of a burnout or get out of your own way or a pattern that we're running that's unconscious in the back of our mind.

Yeah, questions are the answer. I mean, I love that. And finding out great questions to ask. There was a time when this whole book was based around questions, like literally every chapter was going to be a question. And I found it a little overwhelming. But I certainly believe it. Another question I think you can ask is like, just how can this be enjoyable? If something is essential, we often think— I didn't know this before I'd written Essentialism, but the people seem to have a belief that the more important a thing is, the harder it will be.

Right.

And so people say it without even questioning it. No one questions it actually. I was just in a new meeting and somebody said, well, this is a really important thing we're going to do. It's going to affect millions of people around the world. It's going to be a real blessing to youth. It's going to be really hard, but it's going to be worth it. And it was like that one line is like taken for granted. But what if it doesn't have to be hard? What if it could be enjoyable? At least let's ask the question. Let's see what comes of it. I just had a situation myself with the second question of enjoyable. We have a challenge after dinner. We have a pretty good ritual for dinner. We enjoy being together. But right afterwards, our children are like ninjas. They're just gone. And I'm like, my job, okay, come back. It's like cat and mouse. Get back here. We're going to help. We're going to do this. And it wasn't working for me. It's not working for them. So I say, okay, well, how can we make it effortless? And okay, so I said, well, we're going to have an agreement. We're going to come up with this agreement. We're going to write it down whose job is what. We're going to train people what's minimum standard, what's acceptable, what's too much. You don't have to worry about it. We do this whole thing. And I'm like, so here we go. This is going to be fantastic. Let's go start Thursday. We're going to do this. Thursday comes. What happens? Nothing. It's exactly as it was before. And everyone's suddenly gone again. Great excuses. Homework. Got to go to the bathroom, Dad. You know, it's hard to argue with these questions, these responses. And it wasn't until we added this extra question, like, how can it be enjoyable? And my eldest daughter came up with the idea. She just put on this like karaoke music.

Wow.

And we— it's like you can be grumpy, but if the music's loud, And it's fun enough music and someone starts singing to it, it actually changes the whole energy. And we're suddenly in so much better effortless state. It's a better state. So then the action becomes just less friction between us. And we now do this repeatedly. And I thought, man, people aren't even going to believe it because it's like a little party. And yet the other day, I wasn't even helping them, but they did it anyway. And it was like a little party in there. And I was like, Quick, get some video. And it's on Instagram now because I was like, really, it made the difference. And so, you know, there's— is it, you know, how can we make it effortless? But also, how can we make it enjoyable so that we can turn drudgery into a ritual that actually brings us joy? You can't do it with everything, right? But you can do it with a lot of things.

I love that because we talk a lot about the power of questions in our community and this idea of having dominant questions. Because we have anywhere from, what, 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day, and a lot of them come in the form of questions, but we're not conscious of them.

No.

We're directing our focus and shining a light on something, an answer, that new possibility. You know, even a lot of innovation comes from asking new questions, usually from somebody outside industry to look in and say, why aren't you doing it this way? But a lot of power in that. I have an interesting question I wasn't expecting to ask, but Through your research in Effortless, did you happen to come across some new insight or wisdom that you weren't expecting? Was there some kind of serendipity or something emerge out of this that took you by surprise in any way?

Yeah, I love that. And one of the answers to that question is, I mean, I learned so much when you're writing. I mean, you know this, that if you want to really learn something, you write a book and in the process, you you know what you don't know and you develop. The whole third section of the book, this whole idea of effortless results was such a— I mean, it was a slightly painful learning. And this is why. So effortless results is distinguishing 2 different things. Effortless— you have linear results. where you put in effort once and you get the result once, right? If you and I were just having a conversation right now, we would be putting in the effort in, you and I would be talking, we would have the benefit of that moment. But because you started a podcast, that same one-time effort is multiplied and you have results many, many times because of it. All the people, each person listening, that's a multiplication of, you know, the results. They can re-listen to it anytime they want. People are going to discover it 6 months from now, a year from now. I mean, you've turned something that could have been a linear result into a residual result. And the difference basically between those 2, it's not like a new thought. It wasn't a brand new thought for me. But as I went into studying like the different strategies you can use to doing this, the sort of painful discovery was, wow, the ratio isn't right in my life. I am spending too much of my energy on one-time rewards, one-time results. They're essential things to me. They matter to me. The outcome isn't even bad. I mean, it's often that I feel good about the outcome, but it's like one time and it's done. For example, keynotes, right? Like, that's part of— I've talked about this already. That's something I've spent time doing. I love doing it. But you do it once and it's done. That's it. Versus if you build, which I know you've done, but you build an academy, you digitize it all. Yes, there's a little more effort up front, but look at the effect of it. We built a, you know, this is literally why I started building the academy. We're just in phase 1 with it, but the Essentialism Academy was because of this discovery in Effortless. I'm like, What are you thinking not doing this? You build it once, it exists, could exist forever. It could exist many years in the future. Record it once, build a class you like, effectively do a keynote, workshops, everything. But you build it once, you do it the way you want it, and then it just lives on. And anyone— and people do. I mean, it is amazing. I know you've got people from literally the world over. But even in just a few months since we launched it, there's people from, I don't know, maybe it's 40 or 50 countries or something that have signed up already. And I'm just like, every day people are signing up all over the world. And I'm like, I'm not doing anything. It's just you built it, you designed it, you automated it, and so on. So I found that whole section of the book, probably the one section people will least get to, you know, because you read the first half of the book and they won't even get to this. But for me, that was the section that brought about the biggest change internally. Like, I am going to do this differently going forward. Like, this is where I want to put 80% of the effort I do put into is in residual results. And if it's not residual, why are we doing it?

Yeah. Well, I could tell you, our listeners, they like finishing books. They know that just buying a book and letting it sit on the shelf and becoming shelf help and not self-help. That's not the goal. Um, I would love to distill— there's so much, and I want to reiterate to our community to get this book because then we could go into the other 3, the 3 steps.

Yeah.

Go into the actual, you know, action and those results, uh, and go micro in that by having the book. And you really turn this into a studying tool. Um, can you distill, maybe pull out Just, I know there are many more than this, but let's say 3 quick tips, something that's practical that our listeners could implement later today or the next day that help them make their life a little bit more effortless.

Yeah, I think the first thing I would say is to use a done-for-the-day list. So instead of the endless to-do lists that we have that often leave us feeling at the end of the day maybe not so satisfied, but certainly just aware of all that we didn't do and we need to get to tomorrow, We've started working on making that list at the beginning. What is the list of things to do today that if I get these done, I will feel satisfied and I will be done? Not done with living, but done with the working part of life. And we will call each other out just gently, but like, okay, are you doing sneaky work now? Like, we're done.

Yeah.

We're in the hot tub. Are you on your phone doing emails in the hot tub? Because that's not really the idea. Or you're in the bath and you're still on Amazon ordering something. Like, no, we're done and we're going to have rituals around relaxation. And so I would just say a done-for-the-day list feels like one of those practical tips. I mean, I think a second thing has to do with the ritualization of relaxation.

Okay.

For a lot of overachievers, they don't know how to relax. People can say, oh, you got to relax. You got to recuperate. You got to— it's like the principle is relaxing is a responsibility. It's a competency as important and as necessary of learning as how to do the work in the first place. And so one of the things that I found helpful to do is to actually start keeping a list. You know, you could start with 10 items. I've got it to 20 now of things that are relaxing and rejuvenating for me. At first, I was like, I don't know anything. I don't know. I've got to think about this. I've got to observe myself. But my wife, Anna, has done it as well. Our lists are completely different. And that's good. No one has to justify what is relaxing and, you know, and rejuvenating for them. But it means that once you have it, it's almost like little blocks of joy, like Legos of joy or something that you can put together in various ways. So if you say, okay, well, we've got an afternoon or we're taking a weekend or— and it's just blank space, a lot of overachievers just go, okay, well, that's uncomfortable. I'd rather just be doing work. And they just get pulled back into this 24/7. work cycle where they're just endlessly eat, sleep, Zoom, repeat. It's just like, instead of that, you can say, okay, well, let's construct some time that's not just blank, it's purposeful, but the purpose is relax, rejuvenate, and so on. And so there are things for me, know, certain foods I like to eat. That's part of a relaxing ritual for me. Or I mean, I do like to journal. I actually do find that enjoyable. Certain music for me. I like to listen to certain tracks on repeat. I mean, these are— no one should do any of the things I just said.

Right.

These are specific to my list, my signature relaxing list. But I would encourage people to start a little list for themselves And if they can get the people that matter most to them to do the same thing, when it's somebody's birthday and you have their list, that's good. You can construct the most amazing day for them. That's a signature relax, rejuvenate, enjoyable time. So I mean, I think that would be, you know, I would say sort of that's maybe idea 2.

Okay.

And maybe as a 3rd thing, I would just maybe do a little bit of an assessment of— oh no, I know what I'm going to say. Third thing is to get yourself into an effortless state fast. And this is the habit recipe that I would recommend is after I complain, then I will say something I'm thankful for. That little combination doesn't sound very enlightened at first. You're like, well, that's still a lot of complaining. You know, you're only talking about a 50/50 ratio. But here's what I found when I did it myself is that I realized I complained so much more than I realized.

Interesting.

And I don't think of myself as a highly complaining or negative person. I feel quite optimistic, quite grateful in the world. But I just found how I'd slipped into the habit. I'd walk into a room and I would see the things that were wrong in there and just, oh well, why are you doing this? Let's get you over here. Let's get you back to work. with my children, for example, or just, oh, well, that meeting took longer than I thought. And you're just leading with the complaint. So attaching something I was thankful for to the complaint just immediately interrupted it. It sort of repaid the energy debt that I just created. And we've introduced it to the point now, I mean, we'll play the game with our children too. And I remember one time my son said to me, one of my kids said to me, that, okay, well, I'm really thankful that I'm playing this game. The dad wants to play this game where we say something we're thankful for, after we say something we complain. And he said it with that sort of sarcasm. It made us all laugh, including— my recollection, it was him. The other kids aren't sure if it was him.

Right.

But everyone laughed and it changed the state anyway. So I literally think it's a more powerful interrupt than you think. And it's so important because there's so much we can't control. There's so much uncertainty in life. But the one thing we can do about this is instead of complaining endlessly about it, that makes life even harder, more burdensome, we can look to something we're thankful for And what I've learned is that if you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. And if you focus on what you have, you gain what you lack. So there's a lot of upward cycles, literally, as we described, through state, action, and results that follow a kind of thankful state.

So again, for a quick review for everybody who's listening, those 3, and I would encourage everyone to try to recall them yourself. Because that practice helps you to be able to really ingrain it. These are powerful lessons. Number one, having— you could have a to-done list, you know, like when you're done.

Done for the day list. Yeah.

Yes. And then number 2, you could have the things, the list for relaxation, recovery, rejuvenation, you know, your go-to when you have something that time opened up. You don't have to fill it necessarily with your, with your work automatically. You could You could pick up a comic book like I would do. And then finally, when you complain, be able to match it with some form of gratitude. Now, is that gratitude around the context of the complaint? Is it something like, oh, I got to help my kids study today or pick them up? And then you say something you're grateful, like, oh, I get to pick them up today. Or is it around that or anything?

I don't think it matters. We've done it kind of both ways, but I think literally it could be irrelevant to what they've said. It has the effect— what I'm amazed by is the speed of the effect.

It is instant.

I mean, one of the metaphors I think you would relate to from a limitless point of view is that I think that we're like supercomputers, right? Like, our minds, just who we are, is so capable But it's like where the supercomputer has all of this just clutter in it, all of these cookies that are in it, all this. And so it just makes the system run slow. And there's a variety of tactics that can help you get out of that. But I think gratitude is about the fastest cleanser. It's like, let's get rid of all of these stored caches. Gratitude just does that. And it doesn't matter really what what you're grateful for, it just has that, you know, be back in this moment, look at this good thing, and then you're back in a state that you can start to be, you know, be at ease in.

Very aligned. We talk about how all learning is state-dependent, but I guess all life is state-dependent also as well. Gratitude really rewires your nervous system, you know, where if you— what you appreciate appreciates, you know, you don't have to wait for a greater life to be grateful. You can be grateful and Immediately you'll have a greater life. This is so tremendous. I encourage everybody actually to watch. This episode was actually longer. If you're listening to this on iTunes or Spotify, the— we actually put the full unedited, uh, version, the extended version on YouTube. So you could subscribe there, uh, to our YouTube channel so you could get those gems that Greg was sharing during this conversation also as well. Highly recommend the book. Obviously, it's called Effortless, which is amazing. Where can people go, Greg, to get their copy?

Oh, if— I mean, you can get the copy anywhere, but if you go to essentialism.com right now, then— and you, you know, if you order the book right now, then you'll also get access to a 21-day Essentialism/Effortless challenge where you'll have these small micro adjustments you can make every day for 21 days, little masterclasses that will help you to make it easier to do what matters. And that may be useful to some of your listeners and viewers. Yeah.

Including in those micro small simple steps, I would encourage everyone to take a screenshot of whatever you're listening to, whatever platform, and share. Well, first of all, tag Greg, tag myself so we see it. Um, what, what can we ask them to share? I believe that when people share something, they get to learn it even deeper. You know, when they teach it, they get to learn it twice.

I love the idea of just like, what is one thing that's essential for you that you wish was more effortless?

I like that a lot. So post that, tag us so we get to see it. I'll repost some of my favorites, and I'll actually gift a copy of Everlist to one person. As a thank you in our community, because I believe that learning is not a spectator sport. And it's, you know, even as my shirt— if you're watching this on video, it says knowledge times action equals power. So take that small micro, that small simple step, and develop some momentum in your life. And maybe that small simple step is just taking a screenshot, tagging us both, sharing that one thing that's essential to you that you like to have They become more effortless. And, uh, Greg, thank you so much for being on our show, and, uh, thank you for the amazing work that you do.

Jim, it's really been a pleasure. Thank you.

Hi, Kwik Brain.

It's your brain coach. I want to thank you so much for watching this video. 3 things to do. Number 1, make sure you share this, because when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Update your learning so you can update other people's learning as well. Number 2, make sure you subscribe To this channel, so you don't miss a thing. Because if you miss a video, you miss a lot. And finally, make sure you hit that bell so you're notified and you find out when we put out the latest and the greatest. One extra thing: if you want really close attention, then text me. Here is my phone number: 310-299-9362. Did you remember that number? Three. 310-299-9362. Shoot me a text and we'll stay in touch. Ask me your burning question. And I wish your days be full of lots of life, lots of love, lots of laughter, and always lots of learning. I'll see you in our next video.