Modern WisdomGreg McKeown - How To Make Life Effortless | Modern Wisdom Podcast 314
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
155 min read · 30,828 words- 0:00 – 15:00
I spent too much…
- GMGreg McKeown
I spent too much of my life trying to make it better, easier, simpler, to get a thing done myself, and not nearly enough time focused on how do you get results just to flow to you, whether you're sleeping or not, whether you're thinking about it or not. And that's the difference between being able to make a 2x contribution in your life and a 10x or 100x is, if you can construct systems, hire the right people, get the right teams in place, empower them in the right way, they can produce results while you're sleeping or not. Last time we were talking, you were in workout gear. Do you remember?
- CWChris Williamson
I kind of live in workout gear.
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, that's my, um, that's kind of my-
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah, but you were-
- CWChris Williamson
... my thing.
- GMGreg McKeown
... you were, you were, like, cut off at the shoulders.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, it was boiling hot. That's why. It was unbelievably hot. I couldn't bear the heat in Newcastle for the first time ever.
- GMGreg McKeown
And I was overdressed too. I was... It was in the pandemic, but I c- you know, you can take, you can take the Englishman out of England, but not... How do you say that? But not the Englishman out of the man. That's not really a great quip there, but, but, uh, but I was dressed like I had a jacket on. I was, like, overdressed for California, and for some reason, I was still in that mode of, of, of... So, we were... Anyway, it's great to be with you. That's what I'm trying to get to.
- CWChris Williamson
Good. Well, we're talking about a new book today, Effortless. Very, very excited for this to come out. I'm a huge fan of Essentialism. It's one of the foundational books that I give to people when they ask, "What... I want to get into personal development. What, what should I read?" And Essentialism's there. So, what's the story-
- GMGreg McKeown
Thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
... of how you came to realize that you needed to write this new book?
- GMGreg McKeown
Well, partially, it was Essentialism's fault. Um, you know, Essentialism changed everything for me. I'm traveling all over, I'm teaching all over the world, and I want to be doing that. I'm not just the father of Essentialism by that point, I'm father of four children with a lot of responsibilities. And, uh, and, and I really started finding myself with this question of, like, what do you do if there are just too many essentials? (laughs) If you've stripped away from your life the non-essentials... I mean, I had chosen not to write another book. I had chosen not to do a workshop business. I'd put on hiatus the, uh, the Stanford class that I'd co-created, all in the spirit of removing non-essentials. But what happens if what you're left with, in fact, is still more than you can do? And in the midst of thinking about that, I, uh, find out that my, one of my daughters is, um, was literally having a massive tonic-clonic seizure at home while I'm traveling. And that just pushed me over the edge, really, and, you know, felt really like I sort of hit a wall, or rather, the walls were closing in around me, and I, I found myself saying, "Well, now what?" Like, Essentialism takes you to a certain place. I think it's necessary, but I started to feel it was necessary but insufficient. And I set on a journey, really, first of all, just to maintain my own sanity and health, uh, and then the same for my own family, for what do you do when life is really hard? Life is hard for everyone and in hundreds of different ways. But what do you do in that situation? It's important. Life feels hard. How can you make progress in that situation? Do you just give up on the essentials? Like, a lot of people do that. Uh, that was a tempting thing for me in that environment. Or do you find an easier path? And if I use George Eliot's, you know, idea on that for a moment, what do we live for, if not to make life easier for each other? And so at first, it was for me, for my own family, for our business, but also now for other people. Uh, and, and it turns out that this book is coming out at a time that I think that may be especially timely, uh, because of the, uh, the pandemic. Um, and I just think people are burned out everywhere or on the edge of being burned out. And so, you know, this, this other path, this other way of doing things suddenly seems to have the power of relevancy. I felt like I was maybe before, like a, um, like a weightlifter who's lifting with their back, or a swimmer who's not breathing properly, or a baker who's kneading by hand. It's like, you can do the right things, but if you do them in the wrong way, things will be harder than they need to be. And so the, the positive way of saying that is that when you can't push any harder, you can find an easier path, a more effortless path. And, and there's practical principles and practices for how to do that, and that's what this book is all about.
- CWChris Williamson
It feels to me a little bit like Effortless is a delivery mechanism. So, if you had Essentialism as a philosophy, as something that was conceptual, perhaps you could call that, like, the virus, but the delivery mechanism still needed to be there, a way that allowed you to integrate this as easily as possible into the system. Um, yeah, it, it, it's, it's very interesting thinking about the challenges that you go through in Effortless, because so many of them are so common to people that live lives of productivity, talking about burnout, talking about this bizarre, um, preconception we have that things have to be hard. The right way is the hard way, this Puritan work ethic, so much stuff. So I want to, I want to get into that. You, you split the approach up into three sections. So, you've got Effortless State, Effortless Action, and Effortless Results. So, Effortless State first. What's that?
- GMGreg McKeown
Well, if you, you put it this way, some of the, the mystics would describe there being only two states in the world. You either have a state of suffering, uh, or what I'm calling here an effortless state. And really, those are your two options. Um, w- when the, the, the state of suffering is where you're exhausted mentally, uh, physically, emotionally, you're, you're carrying grudges, you're angry in the world, you're so tired you start to resent everyone and anything that's coming at you. And it's just such an ... That, that state produces a whole set of actions and results, um, and none of that is optimal. Uh, you, you, you end up for a lot of overachievers, they respond to those challenges by pushing even harder, and they just get to the idea that everything in life has to be hard. And if it's not hard, it can't be important. And y- you just get down this sort of hyperactivity path, and it doesn't produce the results that you want. So, that's, that's sort of option A. Um, option B is that an effortless state is when you are physically rested (laughs) , uh, you're emotionally free. Um, I, I was talking with, uh, Tim Ferriss on his podcast just recently, and I asked him, I said, "How much, what percentage of your mental and emotional energy have you used, like, have been used up by anger and grudges?" And he said from the age of 15 to 30, he estimates probably between 60 and 70% of his mental and emotional energy was used up on grudges and anger.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- GMGreg McKeown
Can you imagine? I mean, that's just, that is just mad. But w- but you, you, you can see that's why effortless state is the beginning of the model. That's wh- why, why this is so vital, is that you can't control all the hard things that happen to you, right? For sure not, right? I've, I've used one example for me in, in just summary, when my daughter suddenly has what turned out to be massive neurological problems over the, like a multi-year experience, um, that changed her personality, her physicality, everything, right? Like, you can't change that. At first, we couldn't do anything about it. So, what you can do is you can make it as easy as possible to handle it. You can make sure that you don't make it worse by the way you respond to it. And, and I think the first thing you do when those things happen in life, when the challenges come, is that, is that by getting into the right state about them, you can start to remain in a creative state, an open state, a grateful state. Um, a- and that will put you in a better position to be able to know the right action to take, uh, and, and therefore increase your chances of getting good results out of it.
- CWChris Williamson
The biggest identification, the one that really struck home with me, is the fact that people assume that the right way is inevitably the harder one. It's-
- GMGreg McKeown
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... such a common mindset, and I've seen this in myself so much throughout my, uh, uh, as my vintage has increased, uh, as an entrepreneur, um, I've managed to cast it off. But every young entrepreneur knows this. They, they realize that hard work can get you some success-
- GMGreg McKeown
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... then they associate-
- GMGreg McKeown
Which I agree with.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Then they associate the success with the hard work itself, then they get rid of the success and just leave the hard work there. I remember I used to-
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... I used to feel guilty if we'd had a successful event at one of our nights, if it had gone well, but I hadn't suffered. I used to feel guilty-
- GMGreg McKeown
Mm-hmm. Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... because I thought, "No, it, it, it should be more difficult than this if I haven't stayed up until 5:00 in the morning doing the accounts, if there hasn't been some sort of catastrophe that I've had to deal with." I think it, it must have felt like, um, "I've got headroom above me. I could have done more somewhere. I could have..." And it's like, h- are, are you telling me that you're complaining because things went well?
- GMGreg McKeown
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Looking back with perspective, that's what it was. But yes, so many people assume that the right way is inevitably the harder one.
- 15:00 – 30:00
How can people let…
- GMGreg McKeown
how does he approach it? Does he say, "Well, I want to, I want to be very, very successful, therefore I'm going to, you know, kill myself"? Is that his approach? Is that what he says? Is that what he's done? No. He says that their investment strategy borders on lethargy. That's an amazing statement, lethargy. What is, what is that? That's just another word for, like, laziness, for, for effortlessness. He said, "We are not interested in finding seven-foot poles to..." What was? No, not poles. To jump over, fences to jump over. "We're not looking for investment opportunities we have to jump seven feet in the air. We're looking for investment opportunities that are one foot high that we can step over." And that is, like, a huge key to their tremendous success, is that they're, they're looking for the things that are clear yeses, that are easy yeses, and that they can, that they can go big on because it's just right there in front of them. That's what they're looking for. They distrust the other stuff. There's a different way, and you must find it if you want to escape the level of success you're currently at. Y- y- if you can't w- push any harder, don't try to push any harder. (laughs) . L- open yourself to a new question. How can this be easier? How could this be effortless? What might... How could we make this more enjoyable? These questions open your mind to new answers and new possibilities.
- CWChris Williamson
How can people let go of the emotional tether that they have to their Puritan work ethic? It's all well and good, me and you sitting here and saying, "There's an easier way. You don't need to burn yourself out," but what if it's Chris from seven or eight years ago who has this emotional attachment? It's almost where he gets his sense of self-worth from.
- GMGreg McKeown
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
He has anxiety when he's not doing that.
- GMGreg McKeown
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
How do they let go?
- GMGreg McKeown
I was coaching somebody, um, Kim, who's a manager at a university. She's responsible for lots of different, uh, teams. And she was just like the type of person you're describing. If she... She felt guilty if she stopped to eat lunch. No, no. N- I don't mean stopped, I mean if she ate lunch, she felt guilty. She was the type of person who she's up at 4:00 AM in the morning Photoshopping for a young women's activity at church the next day. I mean, she's just like... If she's not exhausted, she feels guilty. And that's, that's who we're talking to here, but I think a lot of people are in that category, even if they're not quite as extreme as her or they don't do it quite the way she does. There is this deep mentality, and one of the things that I would say to you, and I said to her, is like, "Well, don't overcomplicate your way out of this. Don't assume that the way out of this deep mindset has to be painful, hard, wrenching, difficult, and all of that. That's just reapplying..."... the same logic that got you into this state? What if you- all you have to do is ask a different question? What if that's the, that's the difference? And that is what, that's what I asked her to do. I said, I said, "The next time somebody asks you to do something, just ask yourself. You can write it on a sticky note. You can put it on your... Some way to remember to ask yourself, look, what would this look like if it was easy? Is there an easy solution? Is there an effortless way of doing this?" So she gets a call from one of the professors at the university, and he says, "Look, I'd like you to get your videography team to come and record, um, my class this semester." And she just immediately goes into her overachiever, over-thinker, over-deliverer mentality. That's well-worn path for her. She, immediately she's thinking, "Okay, I'll get the whole team involved. They'll go down there. They can... We can get a couple of different angles. We'll edit it all together. We're going to add music. We'll add intros, outros, graphics. We're gonna wow him. He's gonna love us. He's gonna be so impressed." You know, that's what he's go- she's going for. And then she remembers the one interrupt, the one question. "Well, how... Is there an effortless way to do this? Might, might there be an easier way?" And so she put that to him. "Well, what, what might be an easy solution?" Well, as they talk about it, it turns out that it's just one student who has some athletic commitments, which mean they won't be able to be in every class, but they need this class to graduate, and he's just trying to accommodate this one student for some of the classes. And so the solution they come up with on the phone is that another student will just record it on an iPhone and send it afterwards whenever he misses, and that totally solves it. It hadn't occurred to him, wouldn't have occurred to her, hadn't at that point. She hangs up and she's just like, "What just happened? In 10 minutes, we have solved a problem that would have been four months of work, with all those extra bells and whistles." So I actually do think that just inverting the question from, "Why does this have to be so hard?" Or, "How can I over-deliver?" Or, "How can I..." If you just say, "Well, how can it be easier? What would it look like if it was easy? What, what, what, what is an effortless solution to this?" And what I will say from my own life, my own life feels way more complicated still than it ought to be. It... Loads of stuff feels harder than it ought to be. Uh, that's why I wrote the book. I wrote it for me, I wrote it for other people in that situation. That is our life right now. But I also think, the other side of it is that every day I'm using these questions now, and I personally find them almost magical. I, I can't, just can't believe how often, if I pause and ask the question, something will come forward that just is... would, was always there as an option, but I didn't see it. Um, silly example is, uh, I had a printer on my desk. I, uh... Not on their desk, on the floor of my office over here. Been there two weeks. I like to keep things organized and, and every time I'd see it, it was just enough complication in my mind about, "Oh, do you sell it? Do you, do you, do you throw it away? If I throw it away, I have to find a recycling center. I don't know where that is." So, and there's this whole... That, that all, like, took two seconds in my head, but it was enough to go, "Oh, yeah. I'm coming back to that later." For two weeks I'd done that, because again, all the, all the extra stuff in my head, all that noise. And, uh, I asked the question, "Is there an effortless way?" I look outside, there happened to be a couple of workers out there. Uh, I don't know them, but they're just out there, and I'm like, "Oh, I wonder if they want it." So I walk outside, "Hey, I've got this printer, it's working, but it's been replaced. Do you want it?" "Yes." I walk inside, get it, give it to them. Within literally two minutes of asking the question, I don't just have the solution, that solution is, is executed, done. And that, that, you can say it's a silly example, but... A small example, but that is life, is made up of those things that are just harder than they ought to be. And we make them harder than they need to be, and it's because we're asking the wrong questions. And if we can change the question, if we can invert it, you'll be amazed at what is possible that isn't possible if you're doing it the hard way.
- CWChris Williamson
Trying to just bookend what was said there and give people a scalable takeaway from that section. Each of the different solutions that you need are because each situation is different. The, the guys that you need to give the printer to aren't the solution to the lady that needs to film the video stuff.
- GMGreg McKeown
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
But the, the scalable solution is inverting the question. Instead of saying-
- GMGreg McKeown
That's right.
- CWChris Williamson
... "Why is this so hard? Why is this so uncomfortable?" "What would it look like if this was easier?" What would this situation look like-
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... if it wasn't so hard, if it wasn't gonna be painful, if it wasn't going to be a slog? What would this situation look like?
- GMGreg McKeown
Yes. It is simply, in many instances in your life, when something, when you have something that's expensive, that you weren't expecting something to be expensive for something. Some- somebody gives you some proposal for something, so it's much more than you were hoping it would be. Just ask the question, "Well, is there an effortless solution? What might be an effortless solution to this problem?" That happened at Southwest Airlines. Uh, they're, they're, they're, they're a low-cost carrier. They're trying to be careful on how they spend money. Everyone else, at the time, is using a, a, a complex, expensive ticketing system, and it's gonna cost them $2 million to install it. They don't want to spend that $2 million, but they're worried that they're gonna go out of business if they can't be competitive in, in... And then, so suddenly, somebody says, "Hey now, what is, what's an easy solution?" We said, "Well, I guess the effortless solution would be, we don't care what anyone else thinks a ticket is. We don't care what Continental thinks a ticket is." And they're like, "Yeah, we don't care. We're not interested in that." And so, they got rid of that complexity, that un- that clutter, by asking that question. And what they came up with is they said, "Well, we already give people receipts, so we'll just print on the receipt, 'This is your ticket.'" And we'll skip the whole $2 million system, all that complexity, all that time, all that effort, just resolved. It's just done. So the question, yes, the takeaway is ask a better question.... ask an effortless question, and you open yourself up to possibilities and solutions that will come to you that won't otherwise come to you. That, that is the takeaway, yes.
- CWChris Williamson
If you roll it forward over time, if you spend too much time doing effortful, living effortfully, uh, as opposed to effortlessly-
- GMGreg McKeown
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... you end up with burnout. And you have a quote in the book that's, "Burnout is not a badge of honor." And that is an absolute bar. That's so correct when I think about some of the young entrepreneurs that I know who see it as a rite of passage, who see the late nights and the early starts as a rite of passage. And it takes time to get... I don't know whether it... (laughs) I don't know whether it's a byproduct of the fact that when you get towards your 30s, you become chronically aware of your own mortality and the late nights just annihilate you.
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, (laughs) but, um, there is a, a, an awakening, like a, uh, a mano-pause for the men, um, that-
- GMGreg McKeown
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... occurs around that time and you think, "God, like, this sucks." And I've had s- those periods. I've had those burnout periods. Um, for the type A go-getters, or the people that like to overwork, how can you deliver them the red pill on burnout? And also, what are some of the signals, the early signals of burnout and the warning signs that you notice and take heed of?
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah, so first of all, that last point, one of the, one of the trickiest things about burnout is that the closer we get to it, the worse we are at discerning it. And because, because the problem with burnout is it's affecting your own ability to think. It changes the way you are experiencing your life. So you're, y- that, that's what the research shows. The closer you are to burnout, (laughs) the less likely you are to actually notice it. Um, so this is, (clears throat) so this is one of the reasons that, that you sort of need to develop a heightened awareness. Um, things that you can do, I mean, I mean, one test that I like is, am I use- did I use up more energy today than I can recuperate today? Uh, similar question, can I, did I use up more physical/emotional energy this week than I can recuperate this week? Because some days, you are going to, and even some weeks you're going to. You know, there are rhythms to life. Of course there are times that there is a sort of big push moment. But you don't want to live your life in that place, because then you won't be, you won't get to choose when you have to stop. It will eventually be chosen for you. But you'll also be choosing the highest-cost path. By the time you stop, you just look at what your relationships look like with the people that matter most to you. Y- you look, like, look at what your overall health is. You look at what your overall life ex- life quality is. You won't be happy with the results of that by the time you're forced to stop. So, I think that's one test about it. I think a second test that I like for burnout is, like, when you start to resent people, when any request that comes to you just, just irritates you, bothers you. "My goodness, just another thing, another thing." That's a good signal that you are burned out. Uh, y- once, once, you know, when, when somebody's moved something in your, in your home or, and y- you can't find the thing that you wanted to find and that just drives you... you just can't believe you're so frustrated about this. You feel impatient and so on. This is a pretty good sign that you're, that you're burned out. If you feel like you're using, um, a lot of nervous energy, you know, that's the fuel that you're using is nervous, sort of anxious energy, uh, stress energy. You know, again, that can help to get you through certain things, but you don't want to be running on that fuel all the time, 'cause that has all sorts of, um, negative externalities. So, uh, so yeah, those are maybe two or three tests that I think you can u- use to kind of start to assess, you know, "Am I, am I, you know, am, am I, am I on the edge of burnout, or even way past it?"
- CWChris Williamson
Have you got any strategies for how people can bounce back from burnout quickly?
- GMGreg McKeown
Well, I think the, the, the principle is we should start with is that relaxing is a responsibility. So that's a different frame. It's not like a nice thing to do after the fact, or... It, it's, like, real relaxation is, is as important a responsibility as any other venture that you have in your life. Um, w- what I would recommend that people do on this is that I think that they should start a little list, somewhere between 10 and 20 items. And at first, your average overachiever might not even be able to put one thing on that list. But the list is, what things relax me? What are, what is relaxing for me? Uh, my wife and I have both done this, and it's, our lists are completely different. Was very helpful for us to have for ourselves, but also for each other, so that if I'm trying to support her, same, you could do it with the members of your team, so that if you're trying to create an environment that is, uh, that supports a proper balance between, uh, between work and, and relaxation, that you actually can have signature experiences created for them. So I know, so my wife's birthday, for example, or if I'm just saying, "Hey, you know, I can see she's starting to get a bit burned out," I can look at the list and actually construct an
- 30:00 – 45:00
(laughs) …
- GMGreg McKeown
evening or a day or try and, you know, instead of just going, "Oh, you know, you should take the day off, you should relax." Well, that's quite stressful for overachievers. They don't know what to do with that space. It's not, it's not... That doesn't, that's not going to... You don't want blank space. A lot of people don't. So you actually have to learn relaxa- r- relaxing as its own capability.... and as they say, for overachievers, they're, they're more comfortable setting a goal to run a marathon than they are to take a nap.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
Right? Take a nap is a much, this is like, "What? I don't know about that. I don't know if I can do that. I don't know how." Yeah, that's the, that's the mission impossible, um, and, and in fact is, is one specific thing I think people, you know, if people understood the actual research around the value, the, the return of investment on taking an effortless nap, I think it would be, they would lean into it more, more easily. Uh, I, I'm not always great at getting the number of hours of sleep I need at night, but I am like a champion napper. And I'm, I, I don't, I don't even... Honestly, for a long time, I didn't even know that people thought of that as a bit childish. "Oh, take a nap." And I think that was a, I think that's a, that was like sleep time for my three-year-old. It's like I, I, I don't know where I picked it up, but I just 100% believe in it. As soon as I feel, uh, that sleep pressure building as it does through the day naturally, um, somewhere in the afternoon, oh, I'm so happy to go take a nap. I recognize I will be twice as productive in the rest of my day. Discernment, way better. My state can be restored e- even just literally half an hour of lying down. Yeah, I was just talking to somebody the other day and they, they said, "Oh, yeah. If I ever work from home, I..." I used to say, "If I ever work from home, I'm going to take a nap every day." And in one year of working from home from pandemic, they've never done it. The opportunity is there now, but the mindset is still, is still built around some other, I would say, industrial age view of productivity where we treat ourselves like a, like, you, you know, a, a, a mill or a factory. W- we're neither of those things. We're not a factory. We're, we're, we're humans with biology and, and, and the system needs times of concentration and times of relaxation, and that is optimal performance when you can get those two together.
- CWChris Williamson
Moving on to the next section, which is effortless action. What's that?
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
How does that, how does that integrate with where we're at so far?
- GMGreg McKeown
Um, effortless state is just, you know, always come back to, so that when you're out of that state, you, you, as we most of us are most of the time, we just need to keep coming back to it phys- Oh, I need to, I need to take a nap or physically check in. Oh, I need to, I need to eat something. I haven't eaten anything. Eat something healthy. Um, d- you know, that's, that's about the sort of constant adjustment. But as we get into that effortless state, what we want to do is, is to simplify the action itself. So I see, I see a lot of the times that the action itself is not really the problem. The, the problem is getting to it. Got all these assumptions that it has to be hard. You're, you're over-complicating, you're overthinking and so on. But then when you get to the task itself, people still can approach that in a way that the action is, is, is harder and more overwhelming than it needs to be. So there's a few things here I think that you can do. You can say, you can say... Well, let's do it with you. Are you game? Are you game to do, game to play?
- CWChris Williamson
You loved it, you loved doing this. You did it to me last time. Let's do it again.
- GMGreg McKeown
I did, but I wanted to do it a little differently today. So, so, you know, back to this question I asked at the beginning. Okay, what now, starting now in your life, uh, what is something, yep, important, game-changer, something that you, you know, you want to get done? You, you, you know if you did it, especially if you did it consistently, it would, it would make a big impact. Could be business, personal, anything. What's the first thing?
- CWChris Williamson
Let me think. Uh, write a new lead magnet for my email newsletter.
- GMGreg McKeown
(gasps)
- CWChris Williamson
I know that... I know that if I do that, that it will massively bump the number of subs that I have on my newsletter. I'm already doing the newsletter, so I'm already doing part of the work, and there is a bottleneck. There's a, a rate-limiting step on the number of subscribers that I've got. If I release a new lead magnet, then... And I, I know what I want to do, I just haven't started, because I just think, "Oh, it seems like a really big task. It's gonna take ages."
- GMGreg McKeown
Okay. Lead, a, a lead magnet for what, (clears throat) what you're describing is literally a particular type of article?
- CWChris Williamson
It will be a PDF.
- GMGreg McKeown
An offer?
- CWChris Williamson
PDF, just a free PDF, downloadable PDF. Sign up to the newsletter-
- GMGreg McKeown
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... and get your PDF.
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah. Got it. Uh, and so now that's it. We've already identified that. Now the question is, everything else is about effortless. So, the big question is, I've already mentioned, is how could we make this effortless for you? Um, you know, the, some of the questions that could help us answer that question, um, well, what does done look like?
- CWChris Williamson
PDF completed, edited, finalized, and uploaded onto landing page, integrated with email client, ready to go.
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah, okay. So it's, it's, it's, it's uploaded and scheduled on your email client. Yep. Um, what is the first physi- or physical obvious action you can take? The very first one towards that goal?
- CWChris Williamson
Open the note in Apple Notes or Notion, which I'm going to create the outline of the content of the lead magnet.
- GMGreg McKeown
Okay, so it's, it's just opening the app. That's the first step. What can you achieve in a 10-minute micro burst on that?
- CWChris Williamson
The-
- GMGreg McKeown
If you spent 10 minutes, the next 10 minutes, you're in there, you've got 10 minutes, what could you achieve?
- CWChris Williamson
The lead magnet is going to be 100 books that I think everybody should read. And I could r- go through my existing Amazon shopping list, which is already on the internet, and I could run through that and take off the highlights from there. I've already done some of this work.
- GMGreg McKeown
... yep. Um, so within 10 minutes, you're not going to get all 100 in there probably, but you're gonna get, you know, you're gonna get-
- CWChris Williamson
Some.
- GMGreg McKeown
... what number?
- CWChris Williamson
20.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
That would require me…
- GMGreg McKeown
effortless action in the book is really about how you take one project, one activity, and you make it as easy as possible to complete. There's a very practical section in the book. The third section of the book is about how can you use effort in a certain way to make the results you want flow again and again and again? So, that's the difference between linear results, that is one effort equals one reward, versus residual results, which is you, you maybe even put in a little more effort at the beginning, takes a little more to set it up, but it flows to you again and again and again after that. And so I'm like gonna give you the challenge, because I've just started to learn this myself, of a one-click solution for what you gave to me, this lead magnet article. Right now, we've talked about how to make it simpler for you to do it. But what I want to know is could you construct it to the point, you already got members of your team, you already talked about that, but could you construct it to the point where all you have to do is one click? It's a huge cha- uh, it's a h- it's way beyond where you are right now with it. So, it's not like you're going to be able to do that immediately. But that you construct the right people in your team and you empower them in the right way, that when you say, "Listen, I want to do a lead magnet article on the top 100 books," that they have access to your Amazon page yourself, themselves. That they can go through and curate all of that yourself and bring to you 120 books. And, and or even they, even they look at your podcast, who you've had on, what they know about you, they've done all of that evaluation for you. They bring you 100 books. They've already written a few thoughts about each of them based on what you've said on your podcasts. They've done all of that work so that they bring it to you. Now, e- based on my own experience with this, y- y- you probably have to do this a few times on a few projects before they know your voice, know what you're doing, know how you... so that... but again there could be a point where in the future you have the lead magnet and it's a one-click solution. They send it to you, and all you're doing is approve or not. And the whole thing has been done. So that's, that's the difference between effortless action and what I'm describing as effortl- effortless results. And that is the, for me personally, the hugest thing in this book. It's like I spent too much of my life trying to make it better, easier, simpler to get a thing done myself. And not nearly enough time focused on how do you get results just to flow to you, whether you're sleeping or not, whether you're thinking about it or not. And tha- tha- that's the difference between being able to make a 2X contribution in your life and a 10X or 100X, is if you can construct systems, hire the right people, get the right teams in place, empower them in the right way, they can produce results while you're sleeping or not. Uh, y- y- you know whether, whether you're focused on it today or not, whether you're taking the day off, whether you're relaxing today, stuff still happens. Amazing things can happen. A- and so I, I, I just put that to you. How can you get to a one-click solution?
- CWChris Williamson
That would require me to finally make the decision to hire an assistant, a full-time EA, which I haven't done yet. I don't think it's too ridiculous. All of the structures are there, the root content that the team would need is there. Um, one thing that you maybe...... proud of me for is I've now outsourced the production of pretty much all of my social media content.
- GMGreg McKeown
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So, we have these beautiful trailers that are being made by social media guy, Joe, uh, who has come on full-time now, and he's, he's just phenomenal. He listened to the show for, for ages, so he understands my voice. He's doing recreationally what he needs to do for his research for work in any case. So today, he listened to the-
- GMGreg McKeown
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... Jordan Peterson episode on the route down to London to go see his girlfriend. And while he's driving down, I'm getting voice notes from him saying, "Dude, like this bit at 13 minutes and 45 seconds," like, "I, I know what I'm going to do with that and do this." And it's just, I don't need to... it's just hands off. He just makes this beautiful content from all of the stuff that I already do. Then, he takes my newsletter, because he gets delivered the newsletter every week, and then he repurposes that into tweet storms for the following week, because he knows that it's timely and he knows that it is in my voice, and then he, every time he reads the newsletter. So, that is, um, that's my equivalent. I probably would have said to you a year ago, "I want to be able to scale my exposure on social media." And you would have said, "What would have been a one-click solution?" For me now, it's, it's maybe a voice note in a WhatsApp chat solution, so technically one, it is one, one click. There's maybe some words but, "Hey, mate. Got this new episode coming out with Greg. Um, really think that we can, like, dig some great content out of this. Just put it on your list for next week." Beep. Done. And it'll appear, and then it, it'll appear on the internet. Um, so that is one of the things. Something that-
- GMGreg McKeown
It's a great... No, go, go, carry on.
- CWChris Williamson
Just something that is probably lurking in the back of some people's minds is they don't, they don't have a team, or maybe they're a one-man band, or maybe the tasks that they have to do, they can't outsource to other people. What's the effortless results solution for someone that can't outsource?
- GMGreg McKeown
Well, effortless results is, you know, the, you can, you can apply it in any situation that you're in. Um, it, it, it's really just to do with the mindset, um, I mean, in your particular instance, uh, you know, what would a, (sighs) what would a one-click solution look like for you without hiring people? Is that the question you're asking me?
- CWChris Williamson
No, for other people, not for me particularly. Um-
- GMGreg McKeown
So, you just mean in general, how can a person achieve eff-, residual effortless results if they don't just have a team that they can hire? That's what you're asking. Yeah, I mean, I would say that no matter what somebody's situation is economically, they ought to lean into the idea of, you know, of network. Uh, I, I know when I first came to the United States, I mean, I literally had no money at all. So, it wasn't like I could have solutions that looked like, "Oh, I'll hire that person." So, e- e- exactly as you're saying, that definitely wouldn't have been an option. But I did reach out to... I, I built, started building a, you know, just, I would knock on people's doors, so to speak. I would call them up and just network and tell people, "This is what I'm trying to achieve. I want to teach. I want to write." And so by, by getting to know people beyond your normal group, you are, you know, to, to say it this way, I had, um, Benjamin Hardy on the What's Essential? Podcast, and he said he just wrote a book called Who Not How.
- CWChris Williamson
Awesome episode.
- GMGreg McKeown
And that's true.
- CWChris Williamson
I really enjoyed that.
- GMGreg McKeown
Thank you, Chris. I, I really liked that, too. I walked away kind of changed by that myself, and again, aware of how often I was doing, you know, making my own action easier rather than, "Oh, let's find somebody." There, there, there is a huge network of people now. You certainly don't have to be hiring someone full time. But taking networking seriously, uh, so that you can start to think about how you can serve them. Y- maybe the way that you will serve other people and create value for them is in- is introducing them to someone else in your network, and so you, you are still serving them. You're, you're still creating exchange of value. And that's all money is, is an exchange of value. So even if you don't actually have pounds or dollars and so on, you still can create value for people. You can still make yourself wealthier. You can still, uh, connect with, through other value creation. And, and as you're doing that, I think you are still looking for people who follow what, um, Warren Buffett, he has these three, these three words, uh, they all start with I, so I call it the three Is test now, it's like who you're looking to work with, is people that have high integrity, high intelligence, and high initiative. And I wish I had had that test 20 years ago. That, that, that's such a simple, clear test. And so I just look now for people that are high, high in all three Is. And when I find them, I, I just, it's just so, such a pleasure to work with them, because you don't have to worry, and, uh, you're not, "Well, you know, integrity issues, I don't know if they're gonna be honest with me. They're gonna say one thing and do something else." I mean, that's exhausting if you're working with somebody in that capacity. I- if you find somebody that's high intelligence, that means they can figure things out. It means that there's high processing abilities. Uh, I don't, I don't mean what their resume says they went to school on. I mean, can they do stuff? Are they capable? Uh, and then the third, in some ways it's the thing I most long for, is high initiative, because that's, that's so much more effortless if you're working with somebody that's got high initiative, because effort, really what effort is, is mental exertion. It's having to think about something. With your article, it's that you have to think, um, you know, think about which articles to get, think about what you want to say about each of these books. Think about... you know, all of that is, that's the effort, it's mental exertion. If you've had someone with high initiative, they're doing the thinking for you.So, I mean, I suppose I've just given a list of, of how to find people that you want to work with, but I, I'm just wanting to distinguish that you don't have to pay the person. You certainly don't have to hire them full-time, and that's a, that's a more unusual step for people, especially as they're starting out. Uh, but there's so many services available now that weren't before. You can go on Fiverr, you can go somewhere else. Somebody that ... or very low price point, you can test, you can see that is this a good fit, uh, as l- as you're, as you're starting, you know, launching your business. Um, I suppose the only other thing I wanted to say about effortless results is that, um, is that y- you can apply it. I mean, I'll give you another entrepreneurial application, is a way you learn. Uh, if you learn as ... Like, there's two different ways of learning. One way of learning is what, what you were almost, almost all of us have been taught in school, which is, here's the content, there's going to be a test. You're going to be tested on approximately this stuff, so review that stuff, try and memorize that stuff, try and re-, you know, reproduce that for a moment. That's not... I'm not, like, all negative about that. You are gonna learn if you do that. But it is limited value, because you are really learning something once, to apply it once. You know, you memorize the stuff, you go take the test. That is th- your reward for having learned it, and then you forget it because it's served its purpose. That is linear learning. Um, residual learning is completely different. I remember Elon Musk was once interviewed and asked, I mean, it was a bit of a leading question, but he was basically asked, "Look, how have you learned so much, so fast?" Because what people don't know about Musk is that he, you know, before he started SpaceX and Tesla, he had no background in, in mechanical engineering. Just think of that. Uh, he had no background in, in, you know, in, in rocket science. So, people don't know that. They assumed that was his background, that he didn't know anything about those subjects, well, exactly. He certainly didn't have degrees in them. And so he has to... he is, he has managed to upgrade his thinking, you know, enormously, uh, in order to be able to then not just be in those fields, but, in fact, you know, push the limits and expand the knowledge within those fields. And he was asked, "Well, how have you, how have you managed to do that so fast and so..." And he said, he said, "Well, I like to think about this as a semantic tree." He says, he says, "Knowledge is a semantic tree." And he means by that, that the trunk of the tree are the first principles, the things, the core principles of this new industry. He says, "You've got to get really clear on that. If you can get the trunk of the, the understanding, of, of the, the ... if you can get the principles clear once, you have a structure to add all the other learning to." Now, that's where he's saying it's a tree. You've got the trunk and then the branches and the leaves. You can add little new things you learn onto a structure you have learned and are confident in. But what I want to add to his answer is that, what it really does, if you can get to the principles that you ... like, if you can understand the principles of whatever you're trying to do, you can apply it hundreds and hundreds of times into the future. And so that's an example of, like, you invest once to understand it deeply, but then you can apply it in a thousand other situations. You don't need money to do that. You can achieve that result simply by saying, "Okay, I'm going to study this, but I'm looking for the, the core principles so that I can adopt them, absorb them into my mindset, uh, and then have, have, you know ... " Same as Munger, you talked about, maybe it was before we started the interview, but the idea that you've got to get worldly wisdom that you get if you've understood the principle deeply, you can apply it in smart ways, in whatever entrepreneurial venture you're pursuing.
- CWChris Williamson
What are some of the most important principles that you use?
- GMGreg McKeown
Oh, that's a good question. Um, one principle for me is, um ... Well, the principle is that if you want to be a hundred times more successful in life, you need to be a hundred times more grateful. Um, as soon as you say the word gratitude, I think people go, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I think I've heard that before." And it's like th- they say that because they haven't even scratched the surface of it, if they react that way. They think, "Oh, yeah, I mean, I've done a little gratitude in my life, and it makes me feel a little better." And it's like, yeah, that isn't it at all. If you can be grateful in everything, in everything that happens to you, uh, you will get 100X return of like the results you want in life. I- I- I don't even hesitate to say that. Gratitude is, gratitude
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
(laughs) …
- GMGreg McKeown
will make... Gratitude probably is one of the key themes that runs like a golden thread through effortless state, action, and results. Um, if you can be ... One of the tactics for this, um, developed after getting to know BJ Fogg of Tiny Habits, um, and he, he develops these habit recipes for the Stanford Design Behavior Lab. And a habit recipe in its simple- simplest format is, after I X then I will Y. And for this practice, uh, I have said, "Okay, after I complain, I will say something I'm thankful for."... and what I noticed when I first started that is I complained a lot more than I realized.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
Like, I really couldn't believe it, 'cause I think of myself as being quite positive and being quite grateful and, and optimistic and those things. But I just was amazed. I just, I just was, like, all day long, just complaining about things. Walk into the room, "Oh, you know, children, why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? What are you..." You know, just check, ch- chat with Anna. "Well, this meeting took longer than I thought, and this thing happened, and..." This is what I'm leading with. As soon as you add on... Like, I wasn't, I didn't say, "Okay, I'm gonna eliminate all complaining in my life." That seemed overwhelming. But every time you complain, you just say something you're thankful for, say something positive afterwards. And, and we started then, after, after just... It had an amazing force about it. It just immediately had an impact on everyone I would talk to, just their, their, their life was better. They would be, they would be more energized. They would talking, enjoy talking to me a bit more, because it's not... You know, no one wants to talk to someone who's complaining, y- y- you know. They, they wanna talk to someone who's got, who's grateful and grateful for them. And it just started this whole positive, self-fulfilling, like, cycle of good. Um, and so even, even with our children, sometimes we'll play the game, and, and they'll say... I remember my son one time saying, after he'd complained, "Okay, something you're grateful for."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
He said, "Oh, I'm so grateful that my dad is making us play this game," you know, just like that, like sarcastic gratitude. And, uh, well, that's the thing about gratitude, is you can't beat it, is that we all laughed. It immediately changed the feeling, and we, we were already, we were already in the positive state. And so it just made it easier to then carry on with everything else in life that we wanted to do. Uh, yeah, I mean, I, I could really go a long time on this, but, like, you can't overdo this principle. It's good. It's the right... It's the... It's the state to be in, in good times and bad. If things are really, really hard right now, somebody listening to this is really hard, gratitude will help you. If somebody is in a state of amazing success, right, which definitely these seasons come for people that can have more good happening to them, there's a huge risk when those things start to be good. You start to become arrogant. You start to be full of yourself. You start... You're still compar- massively comparative, 'cause there's always someone to look to. So always someone who's got more followers, more, bigger podcast, and b- b- bigger book, more money, more... There's always something. So, so being more successful doesn't suddenly make you more happy. Um, it's a great threat, in fact, success. So being grat- grea- grateful in times of success is a great antidote to the, to the sort of the pride cycle of life, where we get too full of ourselves. So in good times and bad, gratitude is like the, the optimal state. And, and if I had to really say simply what I think the effortless state is, I think this is it. It's a state of gratitude. And, and it's, uh... There's a whole theory by B- Barbara Fredrickson called the broaden and build theory, where she's identified that basically state produces better relationships and better results, rather than the other way around. People think, "If I have great results and I have great relationships, then I'll, then I'll be in a good, positive state." And it's exactly opposite. You change the state, and it starts to change the relationships and the results you're producing around you. And this is why I think it's just come back to it again and again. And I can summarize this principle. I should have s- started with this, 'cause this is the best way of saying it. This is the principle: if you focus on what, on what you lack, you'll lose what you have. And if you focus on what you have, then you'll get what you lack. That's the principle.
- CWChris Williamson
I love it. I think it was you that told me the last time that we spoke, uh, about an example that was very similar to that. And it stuck with me for so long, just thinking about the effect that being grateful has on us, thinking about just how much of a... It- it's so polarized to so much bad thinking. So much of the malaise and the ambient anxiety and the external comparison game, and the "I could be here," and all of it goes away. It's... Every time that I learn a little bit more about it, and you said it before, it's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, gratitude. Yeah, journals. On the morning pages. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard it."
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, and every time that someone else comes back up... I had Susanna Hallinan on the podcast, The Happyologist, positive psychology expert.
- GMGreg McKeown
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
She was on episode 32, so she was 10% deep into this journey, and she said, "Happiness is built upon a foundation of gratitude. Without gratitude, you cannot have happiness." And-
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... still now, episode 32, coming back to, to bite me in the arse. Um, before you go, I want to go back to something that we actually spoke about before we started recording. You talked about the courage to be rubbish.
- GMGreg McKeown
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And, uh, particularly why I love it is that rubbish is a word only British people are going to understand.
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
So every American that reads this is gonna go, "What's rubbish?"
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
"Does he mean trash?" (laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs) Yeah, I love it for that reason too, that it's a, that it's a... S- such a, such a nice British word.
- CWChris Williamson
Anglicized, yeah.
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah. I love it for that reason, too. Yeah, so... But I got to comment on what you just said, though, about, like, there just reminds me of a, of a, of another phrase that Benjamin Hardy used when, when he was on the podcast, and he said... It was based on a book I think he hasn't... He's co-authoring, but it isn't out yet. But it's, it's on this principle of...
- CWChris Williamson
It's the have gap, isn't it?
- GMGreg McKeown
Are you, are you in... Yeah, he says, "Are you in the, the gap or the gain?"
- CWChris Williamson
That's it. I can't wait. Ben-
- GMGreg McKeown
Are you in the gap or the gain?
- CWChris Williamson
Ben, if you're listening, I listened to that episode, and it's one of those things where an author drops a book that they're going to bring out, and this concept was so interesting. And the book's still not here. So me and you are on the same team here. We're both pissed off that Ben hasn't hurried up and written a book.
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs) Exactly. Get on with it now, Ben.... so, so this, just on that, his, his point about it, so it just supports what you were just saying entirely, is that like, if you want to be happy, you need to be in the game. You have to look at, "What progress have I made? What's gone right? What, who have I become that I've grown?" It's like you look at the progress if you want to be happy. If you want to be unhappy, you just look at the gap, and that's it. You can probably be successful either way, but you definitely will not be happy if you're looking at the gap all the time. And so it's about a ratio question. What percentage of your life are you in the gap, what I haven't achieved yet, what I haven't accomplished, what I haven't become, and how much of you, uh, uh, time are you looking at what you have achieved and have succeeded and, and so on? The gain or the gap I think is a great summary of what, you know, what we're trying to talk about here. But the good news is, about what we're saying about state today, is that the moment you get into an effortless state, the moment you are in a grateful state, for example, you immediately are not in a fearful, angry, grudging, comparative state. It's instant. You can only be in one state in a moment. So, so the moment you're grateful, even where my son is sort of, yeah, sarcastically grateful, it's already happened. It's al- already moved. And of course, any, in any moment, you could go back to complaining and so on, but, but we, we, we just, we've been emphasizing it just as a family, just this last, this last couple of days, this week, uh, spring break for us. And, uh, and so I, we've upped the ante. It's like, yeah, you can criticize, complain, but after three things you're thankful for.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
And it's amazing to me, it's amazing to me that, that it works. It just works. Then start getting into arguing about anything. I mean, you can argue about anything in life, can't you? It doesn't... The most ridiculous things, you get all focused on. And it's, what does, is it brings the whole state of the, the culture that you're in, the environment you're in gets bring down. You've got some of these toxic on your team, it just brings everybody down. It's every... But as soon as you have that person starting to say something they're thankful for, it reenergizes the room. People just start smiling and laughing. It's an amazingly fast fix. Now-
- CWChris Williamson
You know what? J- Sorry, I'm gonna, I, I'm gonna Go on. Yeah, go on. Yeah, well, riff on this. Keep riffing on this. ... interject now. So, I started doing gratitude journaling probably about four years ago, something like that. Three or four years ago. And what I found was, my natural state wasn't massively grateful. I think if you haven't done formal gratitude practice, it's actually quite weird. Like, to do it, if you're not naturally, if that's not your inclination, and if you're a, a, you know, a bloke from the, the north of the UK, then that perhaps-
- 1:15:00 – 1:22:52
Mm-hmm. …
- CWChris Williamson
principle, um, for things like this, but I actually don't think that that's necessarily perfectly correct. I actually think that this feels a lot... Not softer, it feels more fluid than that. And a good (laughs) example of this actually is what's happening, what will be happening right now as we're recording this. So, um, I had Jordan Peterson on the show last night. Earlier on this week, Marvel Comics featured someone that looks suspiciously like his philosophy as the, um, principles beneath Red Skull, the magical super Nazi that's the enemy of Captain America.
- GMGreg McKeown
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So basically, Ta-Nehisi Coates, that was the, the particular author of the, the comic book, was saying Jordan Peterson is... Uh, he has some analogies between his philo- his philosophy and that. Um, so today, Jordan has released a bunch of Hail Hydra, which was the, the thing from Captain America which looks like the Hydra head from above, but he's changed it into a lobster and put Hail Lobster. He's released them on posters and T-shirts that are limited edition, and all the proceeds go to charity. And he put a tweet out yesterday that had 40,000 likes on it, something like that. So, what he's done is he's taken something which has happened and said, "Okay. Well, how... Not only how can I perhaps deal with this, but how can I find gratitude that this is now an opportunity for me to do it?" And yeah, there's some particulars with regards to his platform that permit him to b- uh, have more degrees of freedom with things like this. But presumably, if somebody lower down the, the status hierarchy or the, um, the clout hierarchy, their challenge would similarly be downregulated in kind. So yeah, seeing stuff like that, when people take something that ostensibly should be quite a bad day, being called out by the biggest comic on the planet for being the underlying philosophy behind a magical super Nazi probably doesn't rank on every author's, like, "This is a, this is a good day."
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah. Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
But now, it seems really charming, the, the... Based on what I'm seeing online, it looks like the public opinion's massively in his, uh, in his favor, and whatever his chosen charity, some homeless, homeless children in Canada something, they're gonna get just s- some insane amount of, of donations. So yeah, that's a, for a tacit example there. Right, courage to be rubbish. What does the courage to be rubbish mean?
- GMGreg McKeown
Yeah. Courage to be rubbish is, um... Well, I, I've gotta share a story about it. The, the, there's a British industrialist, Henry Kramers, 1959, he wants to support and accelerate progress on ma- um, human-powered flight. So, this is like 50 years after the, the Wright Brothers have, have actually successfully flown in a, a, you know, in an engine-powered, uh, plane. But no one's done human-powered flight, so basically a bike inside of a, of a plane.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
And he thinks, he thinks this is gonna be doable. I mean, this is only like 10 years before, uh, y- you know, Neil Armstrong is on the moon. So, it doesn't seem crazy to him that they can do this. So he sets this thing, £50,000, which is quite a lot of money even now, but is of course a lot in 1959. Go. Uh, all sorts of teams get involved, well-funded, uh, you know, impressive brains, all this. And for 17 years, they fail. Just no, just nothing. Enter Paul MacCready, who comes in, he's in debt, he doesn't have money for a team. Uh, he has just basically his friends and family. In fact, he has his young son become his test pilot.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- GMGreg McKeown
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
"Dad, what am I doing today? No, don't worry, don't worry, son. Just keep your helmet on."
- GMGreg McKeown
"You know, it's gonna, it's gonna be all right. It's gonna be all right, son." So, he's staring at the problem, "Why have not people been able to make more progress on this?" And he suddenly realizes everyone's been trying to solve the wrong problem. They're all trying to build these really beautiful machines. Elegant, you know, wooden ribs, plastic casings, all this just, just beautiful things. Great teams, great minds, all this, in order to...... you know, they have to, they have to do this half a mile flight or two-mile flight, something around these two pylons without stopping and... Th- that's what they're focused on. And he goes, "No, it's exactly opposite. What you need is an ugly-as-they-come thing that can crash and be rebuilt cheap and fast. That's, that's the real problem to be solved. If we can solve that, then we'll be able to learn so much faster and then be able to figure out how to do this." So, they built this thing, totally ugly, looks, looks amateurish. Uh, it was really light. Uh, it would... They, they'd go, they, they tried to fly it, it would crash. They'd just grab some broom handle, uh, you know, stick it back on, and, uh, within five minutes, they'd be back up in the air. He said that the, the, the competitive teams would take six months from that sort of setback. They'd try to fly the plane, it would crash. "Okay, ship it back. We'll take it back to the university, take it back to the institute. Let's rebuild what we're doing." Six months of, of, of downtime between their learning cycle, uh, compared to him with five minutes. They, they, they would maybe have more crashes in one day than some of their competitors would have in the lifetime of the machine. And so, it was on their 223rd attempt that they succeeded. They won the first Kremer Prize and went on to win, two years later, the Cross the English Channel, uh, and won the second Kremer Prize for £100,000. I mean, this is like this huge breakthrough, but the breakthrough wasn't an aeronautics breakthrough, primarily. The primary breakthrough was that you've got to make failure as cheap as possible. And, and, and there's a whole variety of ways that you can do that. I mean, you can make, you can make failure cheaper by protecting it from the critic in your head. It's just the way you talk about your own performance when you make a mistake. Um, y- y-... When, when... If you can... I have a, a friend, super, you know, high-capability, high-intelligence person. He did his JD, uh, maybe JD MBA, I can't remember now, at Stanford. Went on and did another PhD at Princeton. I mean, he's super smart, teaches Spanish to other people. And he just says, "Listen, you, you get..." He's like, "You gotta imagine you have a thousand beads, and every time you make a mistake trying to speak Spanish, you get to take a bead out. And once you've done a... Once you've got a thousand beads out, you're gonna be f- you're gonna be level one mastery in Spanish. You just gotta go out there and make mistakes." Whereas in some people, "Oh, I've gotta learn it, get really good before I ever use the, what I know." The courage to be rubbish is where... it's in that that you learn. Everything starts rubbish. Every masterpiece started rubbish. They just started. They had the courage to do, you know, the bad version of the article. And so many people, I meet so many people who say, "Oh, I want..." But this idea they have in their heads, I think, th- that they're s- trying to do, do the wrong thing. They're trying to solve the wrong puzzle. They're trying to be perfect out the gate, is like perfect, beautiful machines, or th- they, they think, "Oh, everything I do needs to be, uh, I call like baby yo- baby Yoda perfect right from the beginning. It's all, it's just all cute and polished and so on." But actually, like at Pixar, for example, to play a little on that, that metaphor, th- they, they believe in and a- articulate ugly babies.
Episode duration: 1:32:08
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