Greg McKeown - How To Make Life Effortless | Modern Wisdom Podcast 314

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?

I kind of live in workout gear.

(laughs)

Yeah, that's my, um, that's kind of my-

Yeah, but you were-

... my thing.

... you were, you were, like, cut off at the shoulders.

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.

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.

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-

Thank you.

... of how you came to realize that you needed to write this new book?

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.