What If Your Life Were Effortless?

Back in the 1990s, I learned a valuable lesson while on the national speaking circuit, living in Chicago. This was a period where I had been exerting a massive amount of energy and effort into building my speaking and organizational consulting practice. 

My life then was about attending as many networking and social events as I could fit into the week, running around with my hair on fire trying to attract new clients. Going from event to event, each week felt like a literal high wire trapeze act. 

One afternoon, having become weary from all of this activity, I looked at my metrics to see where the vast majority of my business was actually being derived. 

And the verdict………

To my surprise, 80% of my paid speaking engagements came from a small subset of clients, specifically 12 influencers who had been sending me an endless pipeline of referrals and repeat business. That’s when I began asking myself…

…..what if I could embrace the effortless part of my journey which involved building deeper relationships with the critical few influencers that yielded the vast majority of my business?” 

In Taoist philosophy, there is a concept called “wu-wei” which means “effortless action.” The mystery of wu-wei is that striving less — not trying harder to achieve at all costs — often yields more success. This thought system is well captured in a recent Psychology Today article entitled “The Wu-Wei Paradox: Striving Less Generates More Success.” 

“Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most” by Greg McKeown is a book that I recently read that follows this same narrative. In short, it’s about how to bring structure to your work in a way that makes your most essential activities the easiest ones to achieve. 

The Effortless State, according to McKeown, is “an experience many of us have had when we are physically rested, emotionally unburdened, and mentally energized. You are completely aware, alert, present, attentive, and focused on what’s important at this moment. You are able to focus on what matters most with ease. Flow and rhythm to your day, everything naturally unfolds in a perfect order.”

When unlocking this state of “Effortless Action” you often find that you achieve more by trying less. You let go of your propensity to procrastinate, effortlessly stepping into what it is that you need to do. You achieve your aim without overthinking it. You make progress by allowing each of the steps you need to take to effortlessly flow versus trying to forcefully grind through it. You achieve without overexerting yourself. 

McKeown goes on to say that creating a more simplified life shouldn’t involve simplifying the step. Rather, you should remove some of them. Be mindful of the fact that not everything requires pursuing that extra mile in hopes of perfection. The key is to maximize the few important steps while measuring progress in the tiniest of increments.  

It’s here where McKeown is a big advocate for automation. As he notes in his book:

“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. Seek single choices that eliminate future decisions. Take the high-tech path for the essential and the low-tech path for the nonessential.” 

For me in recent months, that has involved making better use of Structured App and Evernote, two tools that help bring a more effortless flow to my day. 

McKeown says that creating an effortless state involves continually navigating away from a mindset of “Why is this so hard?,” to one where it becomes “What if this could be easy?” 

“Challenge the assumption that the “right” way is, inevitably, the harder one. Make the impossible possible by finding an indirect approach. When faced with work that feels overwhelming, ask, “How am I making this harder than it needs to be?”

My 5 Favorite Quotes From The Book Effortless

“The Effortless State is one in which you are physically rested, emotionally unburdened, and mentally energized. You are completely present, attentive, and focused on what’s important in that moment. You are able to do what matters most with ease.” (p. 26).

“Trying too hard makes it harder to get the results you want. Here is what I realized: behind almost every failure of my whole life I had made the same error. When I’d failed, it was rarely because I hadn’t tried hard enough, it was because I’d been trying too hard. We are conditioned over the course of our lifetimes to believe that in order to overachieve we must also overdo. As a result, we make things harder for ourselves than they need to be.” (p. 32).

“Perfectionism makes essential projects hard to start, self-doubt makes them hard to finish, and trying to do too much, too fast, makes it hard to sustain momentum.” (pp. 16-17).

“When we feel overwhelmed, it may not be because the situation is inherently overwhelming. It may be because we are over-complicating 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).

“When you simply can’t try any harder, it’s time to find a different path.” (p. 5).

Other Books to Read Along a Similar “Effortless” Path

The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Tim Gallwey

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less by Richard Koch