Effortless

Chapter 1

INVERT

What If This Could Be Easy?

Four a.m. and I m up photoshopping pictures? Really?

Kim Jenkins wanted to do what really mattered. But it was hard not to feel overwhelmed. For one thing, the university where she worked was undergoing an immense expansion. The client base had doubled in the last few years, but they were operating with virtually the same staff and resources as before.

With the expansion of the organization had come an expansion of complexity everywhere. There were new and difficult-to-decipher internal policies. There was a tedious new system for handling compliance. Processes had grown cumbersome, and now all of their projects and programs took more energy and time. Well-intentioned people had added but never subtracted. They had taken work that used to be simple and made it maddeningly, unnecessarily complicated.

As a result, the effort required to get her work done had become Herculean. And Kim had a tendency to be really hard on herself. She said, I thought if I wasn t putting in tremendous effort, sacrificing any time for myself, then I was being incredibly selfish.

Then one day, it hit her. This was all so much harder than it ought to be. And with that realization, she said, I could see it all for what it was: layers and layers of unnecessary complexity. I could see how it was expanding all the time and how I was suffocating underneath all of it.

She decided it was time to make a change: When faced with a task that felt impossibly hard, she would ask, Is there an easier way?

She soon had the opportunity to put this method to the test when a faculty member called her and asked if she could have her videography team record a full semester of a class. In the past she would have jumped in with both feet, put her team to work for four months, and looked for ways to go above and beyond: adding music, intros and outros, and graphics. This time she wondered if there was an easier way to get the

Greg McKeown is a speaker, a bestselling author, and the host of the popular podcast What’s Essential. He has been covered by The New York Times, Fast Company, Fortune, Politico, and Inc., has been interviewed on NPR, NBC, Fox, and The Steve Harvey Show, and is among the most popular bloggers for LinkedIn. He is also a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum. McKeown’s New York Times bestselling book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less has sold more than a million copies worldwide. Originally from London, England, he now lives in California with his wife, Anna, and their four children.

An empowering guide to achieving your goals without wrecking your health, your sanity, or your relationships. Rodger Dean Duncan for Forbes
 
Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most . . . gives us the much-needed permission to take the path of least resistance. . . . In a society that expects hard work, but then rewards hard work with more hard work . . . Effortless is profound in its simplicity. Vice

Based on behavioral economics, philosophy, physics, and neuroscience, in his new book, Effortless, Greg McKeown unveils tips to working smarter, not harder. They are simple yet brilliant strategies, and therefore easy to apply. Ruth Gotian, PhD, for Forbes

If you re squandering energy on pointless tasks and struggling to complete what really matters, this book is your salvation. With brisk prose, great stories, and keen insights, it shows how to flip the script and make the trivial stuff harder and the crucial stuff easier. In a world beset by burnout, Greg McKeown s work is essential. Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author of When, Drive, and To Sell Is Human

As much as I loved Essentialism, I think Effortless is even better and just what the world (and at least I) desperately needs at this moment. Many will benefit from McKeown s wisdom and great storytelling. James M. Citrin, leader, CEO Practice | Board Practice, Spencer Stuart

Every once in a while, a new book comes along at just the right moment. At a time when fear, uncertainty, and our ever-growing list of responsibilities both at work and at home have come to feel like much too much to handle, Greg McKeown s new book couldn t be timelier, or more necessary. Eve Rodsky, New York Times bestselling author of Fair Play

We ve been taught that the more important the goal, the harder we must grind to achieve it, which leads to inevitable exhaustion and overwork.