How To QUICKLY Get Out Of A Rut & AVOID BURNOUT! | Greg Mckeown & Rangan Chatterjee

people just believe the essential stuff is the hard stuff the trivial stuff is the easy stuff and those are your options what would it mean if you could find a way to make the most essential things in your life the easiest things [Music] so greg i thought we'd start with a tweet i saw on your timeline just a few weeks ago there are two types of people in the world those who were burnt out and those who don't know they're burnt out yeah i mean really this is it you want to be in the category of knowing about it because one of the interesting things i came across in my research for the new book um is that as people approach burnout they become less aware of it because the things that burnout leads you to being a bit cluttered a bit foggy in your thinking across your whole life well it includes your thinking about your self-awareness so as people get close to burnout they often double down on the things that have led to burnout in the first place they think well things aren't going the way i want them to go i i better double down i better work even harder even longer even more zoom meetings even more relentlessly and so it just produces more and more of the same and right now i mean everywhere i go everywhere i'm talk everyone i'm talking to uh this is what the underlying message is everyone's burned out of course over the last 12 to 14 months or so there have been some quite unique pressures on us a lot of restrictions uh have been placed upon us you know fact is outside our control so lots of those natural release mechanisms that we typically would have you know seeing friends going out for meals going to concerts you know they've not been there and clearly this has played into more of us feeling burnt out but there's also something about this societal narrative that we grow up with that it that just sort of infuses our culture which is we always need to do more so that if we if we ever stop if we want to you know smell the roses listen to the birds and the garden it's almost as if there's a monkey on our back telling us that no we can't stop we've got to do more be more productive and i think you sort of beautifully um summarize this on page seven of your book which if you don't mind i'd love to read out strangely some of us respond to feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by vowing to work even harder and longer it doesn't help that our culture glorifies burnout as a measure of success and self-worth the implicit message is that if we aren't perpetually exhausted we must not be doing enough i mean if you set succinctly burnout is um you know not a badge of honor uh it's it's something we have got to maybe we can't take responsibility for the whole society but individually we can say look i'm done playing that game uh we've been sold a bill of goods and it's time to take responsibility for this and to recognize that we can protect the asset that we need to protect the asset that is us that we need to be careful not to just um thoughtlessly get into these zoom eat sleep repeat cycles where people barely know even what day it is uh where they just you know it is literally endless days just seem to flow into each other and there's there's no sense of of boundaries whatever boundaries existed before the pandemic and i don't think there were many boundaries there dividing work and personal life and health but whatever they were you know now i think they're completely obliterated and this is why people say well i'm not working from home i'm living at work that tells you where things were where the balance of power was before uh and it and it's just accelerated now so we have to do some things to try to avoid this just burn out as a lifestyle that we can reclaim our life take our life back and say let's say for example let's start with having a done for the day list where you say i'm not just going to have an endless to-do list and i'm not going to have my inbox be my default to-do list so that again it just is perpetually flowing to us i'm actually going to make a list at the beginning of the day these are the things that really matter today when i'm done with them i'm done that i'm not going to carry on after that i'm going to create space after it to relax to recuperate so that i can slingshot into the next day and feel that energy because we've got a good rhythm of life going on yeah the done for the day list is you know it's like many of the tips in the books it's very very simple very very practical but you know like a lot of these truths there's that deceptive simplicity with them you know they're they're sort of obvious afterwards but beforehand you don't really get just how powerful it can be so is this something you do on a daily basis and if so what impact has it had on your life yeah i want to do it every day but i don't do it every day yet and i notice there's a real difference in my experience when i do and when i don't so when i do it first of all you have to be thoughtful about your day if force is there's a forcing function because you say well there's so many things i'd like to achieve this isn't this the list cannot be everything you wish could be done today uh so you have to really be thoughtful and say well which of the things that would be most satisfying so if i get even three of these things of my my bigger list done i would go yeah that was three important things got done today uh you know that's the first difference is that i'm being more intentional and design for going into the day the second thing i noticed that's different is the experience of the day is different so yes you still have all the same inputs coming in but instead of just reacting to all of it you do feel i feel uh calmer as i'm going through it it's easier for me a little easier for me to navigate all of those different responsibilities when i don't do it you know the default is uh is is living in the inbox the the default is just reacting to all these things going on and so the experience of life uh gets it deteriorates it becomes more frenetic and frantic uh and so and so i'm you know i'm i'm on my way i'm definitely a work in progress this everything in essentialism and effort everything in effortless that i violate you know sometimes and plenty of times so i feel like i am on this ongoing journey i'm in it with everyone else to just try and figure out how to how to make life uh a little easier especially how to make the the things that matter most a little easier yeah i think one of the reasons a done for the day list is so important is because these days our to-do lists are never done but there's always something else to do you could be completing your last task of the day at work and another email could come in from somewhere on the planet from someone else on a different time zone and you've got something else to attend to so unless you define the end you know there will not be an end which is clearly one of the main problems these days we don't have those boundaries we don't have those endpoints so our work bleeds into our evenings our weekends and into our relationships greg i really want to go from the beginning with you because actually i think a lot of my community a lot of my listeners may not be familiar with your work i think your two books are beautiful companions of each other i've got to say when i read your first book a few years ago i thought it was a complete work i didn't think it needed a companion but i think effortless is a beautiful companion to it um i'm now as we speak in my brand new podcast studio and i hope very soon to have a lot more face-to-face conversations in here now the reason i'm sharing that is because in here i'm going to have two quotes up on the wall one is a victor frankel quote that i love but the other one and it arrives on friday is one of your quotes if you don't prioritize your life someone else will every time i read that quote every time i see it written down it really speaks to me deep within my core and i think in many ways that quote sums up all of your work well it's a high compliment uh that you're putting on the on the wall and uh and of course i'm i'm seeking to live that myself as well and struggling along with the with the rest of us uh you know that that lesson grew out of um you know one of my many uh errors in this journey i received an email from my boss at the time that said friday between 1 and 2 p.m would be a very bad time for your wife to have a baby um because i need to be at this client meeting and i go to the you know we go to the hospital we're in the my daughter is born in the early hours of friday morning and instead of being focused on what was the most essential thing that was happening that day the clear priority i was feeling torn i had my laptop out i had my phone out and i'm i'm trying to keep everybody happy and all these different requests and to my shame i went to the meeting um i was picked up you know from the hospital uh by my manager and taken to the meeting so you know like uh get get there um go through the meeting afterwards they said look the client will respect you for the choice you just made and the look on their faces didn't convince that sort of respect but even if they had you know it's clear that i made a fool's bargain that i violated something much more important for something much less important and that's where that simple lesson came from as you said it if you don't prioritize your life someone else will and and that really set me off on on a quest to understand better why is it that we make the decisions we do and i have found uh even before the pandemic found that people were feeling stretched too thin at work or at home that they felt busy but not necessarily productive and that they lived in this sense of [Music] the day being hijacked by other people's agenda for them yeah and so essentialism grew out of this research and if you had to summarize it in one word it's prioritization yeah is taking responsibility for that and then effortless grew out of other experiences and if you had to summarize that in one word it's simplification and so i think you can read either book separately yeah and have some value in it i hope but and this is a very presumptuous metaphor to use but it's a little like sort of paul mccartney and john lennon it's like yeah they both made made music separately but the magic was when they made music together in the beatles and and and i hope at least there's some kind of multiplication effect uh between these two books that as people people you know prioritize and simplify uh that they can create a different kind of experience a different way of living uh and and that's that's that's certainly what i'm personally striving for in my life if we go back to that moment on that friday right um you know it's many years ago now but on that day look i didn't know you back then but i imagine that you were loving husbands who dearly loved his wife as you do now i imagine that you were a conscientious colleague worker in your job like many of us feel yet on that day despite your love for your wife despite your desire to be in the hospital you made a different decision you know what's going on there what is the trap that you fell into that so many of us also fall into i i think um yeah i don't think it's a primarily like a motivation problem you know yes i'm anna's like the most amazing person to be loved being married and love her of course want to prioritize her um you know it's the moment of our daughter's birth you know you can't that moment is itself um sort of unparalleled experience uh you know your love for that child is is you know you have that instant sensation of like i would do you know you wouldn't even think twice of giving up your life for their life i mean that's those are all real the challenge i think is is to treat competing priorities as somehow equally valuable it's where you start to say it's all essential it's all important it's all a priority i mean this is one of my favorite little tidbits of research but the word priority came into the english language in the 1400s and according to peter drucker it stayed singular for the next 500 years so it wasn't until the industrial revolution where people started speaking with you know no sense of irony at all saying here are my 34 priorities and they all have to be done now or even yesterday and so that shift in our language i think uh illustrates a weakness in our thinking and our logic that says look if i can just fit it all in somehow i can have it or you know if everything is if i treat everything as important then it will all work out and and in fact life isn't even close to you know that doesn't approximate reality at all what is far closer to reality is that a few things are essential and almost everything is trivial noise and so it's more like uh waking up you know you you've spent your whole life thinking you were in a um and i don't say this in any way disparaging but you're in a you think you're in a coal mine uh and and and you've lived your life in that way it's just productivity get more stuff done and then you wake up and you say i've never been in a coal miners all the time it's been a diamond mine as actually my whole job is different than i thought it was my the whole job of life is different it is to actually explore what is essential find those diamonds that's the most important thing all the rest doesn't matter find those things invest in them protect those things and and and we know that this approximates reality because when people you know look from anything like a long-term perspective they recognize that only a few things mattered at the very end of people's lives when they're looking at the totality of their life they don't say oh my goodness i wish i'd spent more time on email oh i wish i'd spent more time you know on social media and so on and no one no one thinks that no one says that they they can see you with a bit more perspective a few things mattered and and i lost that perspective in that moment and uh in an attempt to try and just sort of keep everyone happy and deal with all those pressures so it's that the job of life is to figure out the essential few uh to eliminate the non-essential and then to make it and design it so that the essential things happen as automatically and as easily as possible so that you don't have to use extraordinary or superhuman effort to make sure you remember the essential things and do them you want the default to be the essential things as i think about your work and you know i see where do i see people commenting on this on social media a lot of it has been people in the business world or the productivity world but i actually think your work goes far beyond that because what you're asking what you're writing about are fundamentally existential human questions and actually i think there's almost a spiritual undertone i think that on one way you need self-awareness to be able to apply the principles in your books but at the same time i think simply by applying those principles in your life is going to give you a lot of self-awareness so i think it works both ways and you know i can't help shake the feeling that these principles are going to be just as relevant for i don't know let's say a single mum in her life trying to bring up her children trying to make ends meet maybe there's a lot of struggle in her life i think these principles could really help her as well so you know i'd love to understand your perspective on this well i don't feel like either books i'm asking a business question i'm asking a human question and i also think it those human questions are relevant to businesses because all businesses are just humans uh trying to figure out how to serve other humans so you know it it applies there as well um but i i think it really is human first questions as you say and i actually do think that uh that a deeper reading of of essentialism and effortless is about your spiritual life and about what is guiding you as a friend of mine put it are you trying are you being led by your scared self or your sacred self uh you know the scared self will tend to operate in a certain way endlessly the fear of missing out and what other people are doing and competing and comparing and and living in that state uh but the the sacred self will guide you differently and so asking better questions um will help reveal better answers i'm thinking now of somebody um of a working uh mum in england uh who reached out to tell me her story so she after reading you know some of the stuff i had written i started asking this question every day what is the most important thing i need to do today that's a simple question but she asked it every day she wrote it up and she asked it every day at first the answers she got were to do with the business that she was trying to run you know which key client to work with what project was due and so on but over time the answers evolved as she evolved and it became well self-care you know you actually you need to sleep better because you're not sleeping enough you're not protecting yourself you you are burning yourself out but then one day she gets a call from her dad and he said he said look nothing to alarm you here mum's in the hospital again you know it's nothing serious just wanted to keep you in the loop and she said in that moment she asked the question that day she knew exactly what the answer was it was so clear to her it was almost like time stood still and she remembers the weather and the room she was in and she just knew she had to go to the hospital that day that was the priority yeah and so she did now that's like a two-hour drive so she's really committing the rest of the day to this it's not completely trivial i'll just go across the street for 10 minutes thing and she goes and she sees her mum she says mom i love you i'm glad to be here mother says oh you know i love you too um an hour after that conversation her mother falls into a coma uh and very unfortunately uh never recovers from that you know a year uh i mean a week later excuse me um joe has the unfortunate job of turning off the life support machine and she reached out to me just wrote to me to tell the story because she said if i had not been an essentialist that day how differently things would have worked out i wouldn't have had that moment i would have missed that and for something inane and so so that was to me a very encouraging moment because you know i felt like well you know i can't change the hospital moment but for her she was able to make a better trade-off and so as people ask better questions as they change and evolve the answers will change and evolve and so i do think that essentialism and now effortless can help people go in in different levels uh when they're ready as they're ready uh and that's what i'm going for is beyond just business it's i guess it's like a any skill the more you do it especially if you're intentional each time you do it you're getting better at it so the question you may ask yourself on monday off i don't know the first monday of 2020 the first monday of 2021 you are going to be a much better skilled person at answering that same question if you've been practicing it so i mean obviously greg you have written these these two wonderful books what is the most essential thing for you to do in any given day yeah i mean that that does change from day to day because what matters is what's important now and that's a nice acronym i think you know the acronym is win you know what you've got to win this day and that means getting clear each day and it does change it depending on the circumstances um i mean today in this conversation uh the most important thing today is my relationship with my wife anna uh you know like that and and maybe that should be true every day but it feels true today there's lots of things going on and making sure that today i actually create enough space for us to uh to go on a walk we don't do that every day sometimes through the pandemic we got to the point where it was pretty much every day and it really mattered no agenda just listening sharing talking and that became a really important practice but when that isn't happening every day it it doesn't work as well uh and so and so to me that would be the priority today so that again doesn't mean that it's the only thing you do today or the only thing i need to do it's not my only responsibility but knowing that at the beginning of the day means that i can try to you know design the day differently when the trade-offs come up i can make the trade-offs differently uh and and so that would be you know that would be my answer today it's not that isn't the answer every day but it is today what i love about that answer greg is there there's a there's a flexibility within it that there's not this kind of rigidity that we can then be feel chained to that answer oh i said the most essential thing was for me to meditate for 20 minutes every day but today i don't have time and i can't do it you know it's i think sometimes when we are trying to better our lives and better ourselves we can go to these extremes i certainly know i've been guilty of that in the past and it's something i feel i'm i'm sort of evolving in my own practice of prioritization of essentialism of self-care is actually you know what i i i feel i can change things from day to day depending on what my needs are on any given day so i really like that flexibility that's sort of built into the way you answered that well i've been on this seven year listening tour it's been the most extraordinary opportunity to listen to people you know literally the world over talk to me about what is essential for them and what the challenges are for them to live that in practice and one of the things that has has been like a an endless theme is the assumption that the essential things have like not even have to be the essential things are the very hardest things to do and and i've i've found that a little confusing at times especially when i've heard it so often because what it feels like people are doing is they're taking essentialism and they're saying well i need to be a perfectionist about it and i'm like well that doesn't sound like a very essentialist way to become an essentialist but in it's like they've got this new language this new relatively new idea to them and then they're bringing a bunch of old ideas to how to change to it yeah in fact one person told me one day they said they said i loved essentialism but it should come with a warning this will be the hardest thing that you will ever do and it really especially in hindsight i listen to that and i think that's just that just means we're going about it wrong you know there's a different way to do this so even after somebody says i'm really committed now to pursue what matters most in my life you've got to it's literally now i see it as equally important to say well what's the right way to do it yeah if you try to do the essential things the right things but do them in the wrong way you'll still be burned out you in fact you you still be discouraged and maybe even more discouraged than before because you're so aware of all the gap between where you are where you want to be and what's essential and what's not essential and so when i now think about essentialism i'm thinking it of it as a lifestyle a way of living a way of being and so the way we do it really matters and and and being careful not to beat ourselves up because we haven't achieved some idealistic state that we've identified for ourselves immediately it is is important the courage to be rubbish for example is something that i now hold as quite as quite sacred in its own right the idea of like oh i'm going to be an essentialist in some mistake-free way i'm going to just be perfect at this what what a nonsense one unhelpful idea what a way to to exhaust yourself depress yourself even in the act of trying to be better and so if you can if you can get out of that and say how can how could it be easier is there a gentler way to pursue the things that are essential what if i could get out of the no pain no gain mantra that idea that you've prioritized what's important in your life but you're going about it the wrong way i think it's very novel it's very fresh it's i mean it's one of the core ideas i think that certainly i gleaned from your new book effortless is that oh the way you do it is is just as important as the prioritization do you hear that this gets misunderstood and have you got any examples of people who have prioritized but they've gone around they've got about their priority in the wrong way yeah i mean absolutely this is it when when i say it's what i hear from people i don't mean like oh every so often i hear it from people i hear it all the time absolutely all the time but not in the way it might sound like i'm saying it's not like people explicitly just say um yes i tried to prioritize but i'm doing it the wrong way or i prioritize it it's just so hard it's it's it's not even that it's like this it's like i just was uh just started a new uh us to be on a committee and the person who was initiating this group uh said is that of concluding speech as they were launching this thing they just said now this is so important what we're doing this could help millions of youth around the world this could just be so beneficial it's going to be hard i mean it's going to be really hard but it's going to be worth it and that no one challenged it nobody said anything about it i i've heard those speeches and conversations like it everywhere it's everywhere it's it's like embedded as a dominant assumption that's just invisible to people people just believe the essential stuff is the hard stuff the trivial stuff is the easy stuff and those are your options just talking to somebody who's trained in the military i mean this yesterday or day before and when he was being trained in the military one of his you know leaders said to him uh listen you know you can either do it the easy way which is the wrong way or you can do it the hard way and that's the right way it's it was like these two options where it's a false dichotomy of course there are times that the right way is the hard way the easy way is that is the wrong way of course that can be true but is it not possible there's a third alternative what would it mean what would it mean if you could find a way to make the most essential things in your life the easiest things yeah or at least just so much more doable than they were in the past the consequence would change everything it does change everything because suddenly you can suddenly you'll do it and you'll do it consistently because it isn't so it isn't so costly to take that path yeah i mean not not only is it going to be more enjoyable to experience life on a day-to-day basis if it feels easy or effortless but it's also going to be more effective i know we have a mutual friend in bj fox and nobody was on your podcast recently um and you know me and bj have had multiple conversations about this about you know you make something easy people will do it so in terms of habit change we want to make things that we want to do easy and you're kind of saying a very similar thing in a kind of a slightly different arena that whatever the essential thing is in your life if you can make it easier and feel effortless it's much more likely that you're going to do the thing that you've already identified is the priority thing for you to do totally what happens is that people identify what is essential they know most people have a sense at least even if they haven't been very clear about it and maybe they ought to be but they have a sense of the things that are really important that they're not getting to uh and and they just are in this endless loop they just think about that essential thing they feel guilty about it it overwhelms them so then they just jump into the dark playground of social media of tv of something else that's trivial and appears easy to them and they just jump back and forth between those two things they intermittently do the thing that's essential it's too hard it's too much it just exhausts them it overwhelms them and then they jump back into something else and this can happen sometimes multiple times on the same day but but often what i find is that people just they start and it reinforces by the way the sensation the belief rather that the essential thing must be incredibly hard because why else aren't i doing it it must exercise must be hard how many people have i talked to about exercise who who like i tried to take it running and every so often i go back to it well do you love running no i hate running i hate it but i have to do it well why don't we just find a different way what if there's something else that you you like to do you like swimming i look i like to well let's do that then like let's find a you know let's not distrust the easy yo you this idea of effortless and that the things that we love the things that we want to do can feel easy and effortless really it's a narrative that is swimming against the tides of the common popular i was going to say western narrative but i think it's everywhere that narrative that anything good has to be hard what what is it you know um nothing good comes easy you'll never get anywhere in life if you don't work hard right we're we're sort of surrounded by this i mean you've got kids your kids are a bit older than my kids uh monochromatically sort of ten and eight but even at that age you see this kind of narrative being um i think i don't think with any malice it's you know i think i think everyone feels that that's the way to succeed in life you have to work hard and i'm not sure you're not saying you don't need to work hard in fact what are you saying for people who might sort of misinterpret that what are you saying because you're not saying never work hard are you well i believe in work and i have four children uh aged 18 to 12 and and of course we want them to work uh we want them to be productive we want them to take initiative uh we we value that we don't we we we don't want them to be spoiled all of those things are real and our children have many responsibilities in our home um but let's give an example so um you know we have a whole series of rituals around eating together uh not maybe every night but most nights and so we'll we'll like you know we'll we'll raise a glass to each other kind of experience we'll we'll cheer each other on uh a lot of fun in those conversations but our trouble happens afterwards uh which is the the dinner cleanup what do you do now that my children are just like like silent ninjas they're just gone i turn around all four of them have like quietly slipped off to a room to whatever and then my job is cat and mouse trying to get them back to do the cleanup uh and uh and so basically this is a chore now how do you handle that what do you do you can say well look you know life is hard and you just have to do the hard things and that's one approach and that is a speech that i have definitely had but what if you could what if you could change the experience what if you could uh turn it into a ritual a ritual is a little different than a habit a ritual is like a habit with a soul a habit is like what you do uh a ritual is how you do it and so so we said okay first i said well we'll try and make it effortless by dividing up responsibilities really clearly what does done look like for our for for the cleanup of the kitchen okay that that matters dividing at roles and responsibilities who is doing what that mattered but really it wasn't until one of my uh children my eldest daughter um added music she just put on like basically karaoke music loud in the kitchen and that just was like the tipping point moment so as soon as we and even now if we forget that ingredient it just is back to drudgery it's back to like yeah well you know it's important but it's hard and now if as soon as someone puts on the right music it just changes it you start someone starts singing someone starts and and the feeling changes and people want to be there and they want to be part of the little party and and the work gets done that to me is an illustration of the of the the difference here so what if you didn't just have to endure the essentials oh it's just harder just push and so on and relentless what if you could enjoy it what if you can make it into something that the experience of life is better then the important things get done and you you you've built relationships rather than burn them down a bit yeah it reminds me of um one of the things i love to do on sunday afternoons at the moment which is make butternut squash soup now it's just it's something my my wife taught me her recipe a few months ago i love making it i love the process but what happens on a sunday afternoon is that i'm like okay cool this is going to take a couple of hours from start to finish and so i will put on one of my favorite cds i'm still pretty old-school i've got a cd player i choose an album that i really want to listen to i love it i put it on i clean up the kitchen i you know i sort of go through the very stages put the butternut squash in the oven get everything and i i i i love those two hours those two hours on a sunday have been transformed now i could have looked to that oh man i've got to cook this so the family have got to prepare it what a what what a hassle but actually oh i get to actually enjoy one of my favorite albums every sunday afternoon in peace and i get to and it it's the same thing it's like you guys clearing up after dinner it's the same you know technical thing that you're doing but the flavor of that experience is completely different if listening to you share that the way that your like your body language the energy talking about it you are literally describing a ritual like i could i know that you get it in that experience you you it it's it's it's not duty yeah there's a duty to it you're you're you know you're cooking for your family you're cookie you're cooking something healthy for them like of course it's essential in that sense but the experience has changed it's something you look forward to doing it's something you want to do now it's part of a routine that actually you know the experience of doing it gives to you it's not just the output the experience itself is better you you reduce the space between the lag indicator the thing you want and the experience itself if you can reduce that space then you then you're just you're going you're far more likely to continue doing it yeah you know week in and week out and what a difference that is if you could be consistent in it what a difference that makes to the family culture you know once you've done it 10 times 100 times this becomes part of their experience the children growing up seeing you doing it seeing you enjoying it and and learning that lesson too i love it as a medical doctor i think about your work greg and i feel it has incredible relevance to health even though that may not be explicitly obvious from the outside to some people i think there is such relevance to health because there is no question in my mind that stress is the number one factor that drives people in to see me in some ways stress is related to a good 90 80 to 90 of what i see you can make a case that stress is impacting uh people's health their well-being so they end up at my door whether that's you know anxiety mood problems insomnia feeling low about their life relationship problems i actually genuinely believe and have seen that if people can apply these principles to prioritize their life you know i think the benefits are incredible yes for their productivity yes for their relationships but also for their health is this something that you've been asked about a lot have you seen the impact on people's health um and you know i'm just interested is this has this been reported back to you as well because this this is not just about productivity no way yeah it i i actually don't even think about what i do as productivity at all um i sometimes it's put in that category you know amazon will put it in that category and i have no control over that and it's not like i lose a lot of sleep over that or anything but i just don't think about this work that way you know essentialism is about not doing more things that's productivity it's about doing more of the right things and effortless is about doing them in the right way so that you can create a an experience in life a lifestyle that that really works for you um i got um a note from someone who'd read my stuff and she sent a photograph of herself before and after i've actually never seen anyone do this because again you know it's not like a weight loss book or a you know that's not you know it's not that kind of approach but this was it in the first picture she looked like on death's door i can't really even do this justice without just having it shown maybe maybe you put it in the show notes or something like well we can do for sure yeah perfect we'll do it the before and after of her like it's like a different person and and so that's you know i'm writing for her yeah i'm writing for somebody um who who's just you know they're highly engaged they're motivated they want to work it's not those aren't the issues it's just that they've they've thought that life has to be in a certain done a certain way um another story uh um who a woman who is a manager at a university at brigham young university and she is um she is the type of person who's up till four a.m in the morning uh photo shopping for the for her youth class at church the next day she feels guilty if she eats lunch not if she takes time away for lunch if she even eats it she feels guilty but she definitely believes and wrote to me to say so that she feels if she's not exhausted she is not doing enough uh and and so i was trying to work out like how to help her what can i do what what's the path forward because again you don't want to give a prescription that's so overwhelming that you add to the problem as i say look what i want you to do is basically invert your whole life using one question when you just forget don't worry about all the hundreds of things you could do or maybe do just one thing a question a new question i said just ask the next time someone asks you to do something the next time you take on a project just say how could this be effortless what is the simplest way to do this wha what what what if i stripped away any sort of extra expectations i'm putting on it what would it look like so she gets a call from a university professor says i'd love you to get your videography team to come here and and record my class for the semester um and she is just ready to jump in i mean she is such a well-oiled machine with this she's ready to overachieve over engineer it to make it happen i'm gonna wow him that's his so what she's thinking i'm gonna get my a whole team of people there we'll have multiple camera angles we'll edit the whole thing together we'll have music we'll have graphics into you know spliced into the whole video every time we'll have intros outros all of it and then she remembers okay the coaching invert always invert let's have a new question okay how could this be effortless so she starts talking to about it uh well what's the easiest solution to this it turns out it's for one student who's going to miss a few classes for athletic commitments so the solution they come up with together is that another student in the class will just video it on their phone and just send it to them on whatever class they happen to miss the professor had not thought of that solution was delighted to come up with something that was so easy for him to have to navigate he didn't want to have to coordinate with a whole videography team he doesn't he just wants to solve this problem yeah and so he's happy and she gets off the phone it's been a 10 minute conversation that saved her four months of headache and that was like a game changer for her she said what what if i've just if it's not a motive problem what if it's not a work ethic problem why is this just a mindset problem yeah i'm just i'm just over complicating overthinking being too much of a perfectionist and this is producing stress to a level that is affecting the whole experience and you know and health of my life that question you know what would it look like if it was effortless but also it's that earlier question about you know what does done look like right because by by really intentionally understanding well what is the goal of this project what actually does what what problem does it need to solve then you find that actually to solve that problem actually doesn't need five camera angles and multiple edits it's just an iphone recording it you you you've told a similar story or similar principles about i think was it your son and scouts i wonder if you could share that story because i think again just just hearing these different examples in different settings really just highlights the point that i would love to get across in this conversation that this material is essential for everybody it doesn't matter who you are what you do in your life what you do in your job these principles that you write so beautifully about will absolutely help you the the story of my son is that he'd set a big goal uh 12 years old he came to me said he wants to to do scouting he wants to get his eagle scout by the time he turns 14 uh which is you know normally your goal is by the time you turn 18 you have to do it literally by your 18th birthday or they won't it's just like 100 but no no zero tolerance after that that time but he set the goal and so we started working on it together uh you know the whole experience was pretty good positive experience um and good excuse to spend time together everything was going pretty much according to plan including the final big project that you do he he got a whole group of people to help him build 180 foot fence paint it do it into one big day together it was like fun experience there was one final thing to do and that is to write up the report about the final project and that doesn't sound like such a big thing but i personally know of someone who did everything but that final report and eventually years after they'd completed it the the the you know everything else in the program tried to hand it in a day after their 18th birthday and they didn't get their eagle so they didn't get the eagle scout they didn't complete it because they didn't get that final thing over the over the line and we started being like those people i mean it's like first it's days where we're just going to get this little you know this report done and then it became you know weeks and we start moving into months and i got got them together i said okay listen what what why is this taking us so long why is it taking you so long why is it taking me you know long to help you what's going on and we just realized that we just we're just over complicating it all we had seen ourselves other other examples of people who had built the most spectacular final reports you know in wooden boxes carved and and beautifully designed and you know i might say it this way sort of parent projects rather than the scout projects uh it seemed seemed at play but there's like 100 hours of work some of these things and they you know they're amazing yes um but we said well what what what if we what does done look like for us well it just means we've taken this to the scout office and they have stamped approval well what are the minimum steps to completion what what's the minimum we need to do to get this job done we need to a small three-page essay it doesn't have to be 20 pages it's three pages that is what the requirement is to do the requirement okay we need to put a few photographs in there and write down we don't need an essay about all of them just a little one-liner from him for every picture get what's the very first obvious step we can take instead of worrying about the hundredth step what's the very first one get a binder i mean drive to the shops and buy a binder that is the first thing we can do and as soon as we started asking these different questions the action uh just became it's like a physical change in you when's it when when when you know what the next action is and it's doable your whole body changes it's like yeah i can do that we can do that we can go to the shops right now and we can buy that and we did okay what's the very next step well we can we can select a few photographs that were taken on the on the day on the phone and and so it got done after that really fast within the next week handed off and completed and he was able to uh get his eagle you know one week before uh before his 14th birthday so it worked but it didn't work because we tried to go the second mile on everything we just said we're just going to do the first mile and we're going to do it and and that my life has been so many of the mistakes i've made in my life have been not because i didn't try but because i was trying too hard because i was trying to go the second mile and i hadn't gone the first and so that's where i think perfectionism really can can hinder our ability to start projects and our ability to finish them because we're just adding on stuff that that no one is actually asking for that nobody needs us to do that's kind of the key there greg isn't it it's not that you're saying never go the extra mile i'm what i hear is you're saying go the extra mile when it matters when you've identified that it really matters to you for what you're trying to do but when it doesn't matter don't waste your energy your cognitive loads um you know because i think people could misinterpret this potentially and say well it's i'm not going to work hard anymore i'm only going to do the minimum that i ever need to do which is of course not how we want to bring up our children it's not how we want it the message we want to give a society so how do you how do you help people find that sort of middle lane between those two extremes well i think that again this is about making the essential things easier that alone gets you closer to the middle lane it's not just about living an easy life it's not about just being lazy it's about saying what is the the right and best way to do the work that you came here to do because you don't want to get to the end of your life and realize that you you know you you you were so focused on on going the extra mile on the stuff that didn't matter or or you i'll give you i give you actually i i've got to do this i've got to put all of this i probably should have said it earlier but just the the sort of the core story behind why effortless how i came into this um we had moved a family and i'd moved into an idyllic new community and um it was just lovely right it's like white picket fences it's horse you know lots of horse waves more horse ways than roads there's no street lamps i mean it's all just this lovely place and our children were just thriving uh just very happy uh playing for hours outside with the you know with our dog [Music] go play tennis together we're making memories go on walks and we're just really like great and one of my daughters eve especially seemed to thrive uh so she is she's always up trees she's out naming the chickens um you know yep we have chickens uh she is um she's reading voluminously you know literally you know scores of books probably hundreds uh by this point and and just so talkative as well we i took her on a trip with me one time and after like an hour uh i texted my wife i was like she has not stopped talking for an hour she cannot stay crossed if she's if she just she even tries to just burst out laughing this is eve until she turned 14 and she when she turned 14 she just sort of seemed to take longer doing you know the work that she was assigned to do uh she would maybe talk she was talking less towards you know fewer words when we asked her questions a little physically awkward and we just thought well it sort of sounds pretty age-appropriate behavior like you know no no big deal and then on a routine physical therapy appointment the physical therapist uh rod shorey just pulled my wife aside and said i don't mean to alarm you but she failed a reflex test and so you you may want to go see a neurologist because this this really shouldn't have happened and so we didn't have to be worn twice i mean the moment he said it both of us anna called me and she was already upset like yeah we got it we're like this behavior we've seen could easily be part of a more serious condition and and as soon as we saw it through that lens we were like yeah okay we're taking this very seriously right now so we went you know went to see a neurologist and and what followed was not only were we seeing it differently she was changing her behavior was changing and there was like a free fall in human capability like her ability to speak uh she would now literally speak in just one word answers to anything her emotions kind of just disappeared so personality um as was gone uh it takes her two full minutes to write her own name uh i remember literally videoing it as she tried to write the last three letters of macewan and it took a 45 seconds hand side of her body is going far slower than the left and we just watched as uh as her release of her light just dims and then goes out all together we are meanwhile visiting with various neurologists and i remember one of them 35 years in urology he just like shrugs his shoulders he's like i have no idea i just nothing to tell you uh every test is coming back within the normal range just don't know and in the midst of this uh which i can say is that is a recipe for human suffering we suddenly became aware that we didn't just have one path ahead of us like the path of suffering there were two there was an alternative path and i just didn't even know that that existed it it did that surprised me the the path of suffering is of course where you're just completely focused on this this disease where you are you know start getting so fearful that that consumes your emotion uh that you get into resentment anger frustration why me why her why us i mean all of this and plus plus of course there's this there's this desire in you to say well i'm not gonna sleep literally i'm not gonna sleep until we figured this thing out and so there's all of that on top of it so all of that's what i would now just describe as the heavier path the second path as the second path involved it's like there's a lighter path there's a different way to deal with this uh of course it doesn't mean ignoring the problem it doesn't mean pretending it's not there but we found that there was a there was this other path where we said uh what can we be grateful for in this moment what anything that we can be thankful for what can we do to make sure that we stay in a in a good state so that we can handle this situation for however long it goes on we have no idea how long it's going to go on and being completely discouraged depressed frustrated angry isn't going to help us in the long and the what could be a very long journey here and we'd be very grateful relentlessly grateful uh it was it was getting around the piano and singing together it was being having fun together playing together going on walk still together you know praying together it was and what happened as we did that as we got into this other state this other path is that things just started happening you started to the little little insights would come little spiritual promptings would come not that neurologists go with this one this is the person to go talk to uh alternative medicines and and we are generally really open to and and we we really love the ideas that that can bring about this sort of holistic health we just felt like yeah that's that's going to be that's going to be like a it's going to take you down a path that isn't isn't useful isn't helpful right now so that whole set of work and expense and time just felt like we don't need to do it it was like the simplification followed being in this better state and it was because of that that we started seeing results that actually did start to help eve uh and and so you know cutting the story short i mean this is like two and a half years ago since we started dealing with this as of this conversation she is back uh you know like she's psychologically back physically back she graduated high school early uh she's doing you know basically university courses locally now even a couple of years younger than she would normally be doing it and she's just like she's loving life again there's a whole journey in there there's ups and downs in that story as you could imagine if we'd taken the heavier path i just don't know what would have happened at all i literally think if we'd taken the heavier path she may not have made it she was fully on path to going you know falling into a coma and dying and it without so like to me now this subject mass is like life and death yeah there really is an easier better way and it's absolutely vital that we find it so that we can fulfill the most important missions of our lives uh and so this yeah this is where you know what gave me fire for the deed to pursue this subject matter to codify it and then to teach it and and the model that grew out of all of this now is is really you know effortless state produces effort effortless action which produces effortless results and that idea of be do have that getting to state right is that's really the that is the highest priority that as you get the state right it will put you into the right mode so that you'll do the right things and let the other things fall out of your life that don't matter and that this is a way to produce results that start to flow to you i mean we experienced that in the most essential thing that we've dealt with perhaps in our lives but certainly in the last few years of our lives i mean first of all greg thank you for sharing such a personal story i'm delighted your daughter um is doing so well and thriving at the moment that's lovely to hear what did that lighter path like look like on a day-to-day basis because to many people i'm sure um you know what i have had experiences with uh illness serious illness in in children so i i certainly i can't claim to know what you have been through at all i certainly know how life-changing how it sort of forces you to question everything about your life in those moments but for many people it's one of those situations well of course well you you know you you have every right to be worried at that moment and to be stressed out about it and to you know not to sleep and to row with your wife because you're both stressed out about the care of your daughter right that a lot of people say oh that's completely understandable but what i'm hearing you say is that there was another path there was another option available to you that you didn't even realize was available until that point yes and then there's power in that choice so i love that that heaviness versus the lights take the lights away wherever you can i love that but what did that look like as a family with a daughter who were worried about her health what does that look like on a day-to-day basis yeah let me just speak to this the first point you made about is it understandable of course it's understandable uh that people would respond with anger frustration people people i i don't feel harsh judgment to people that it ruins their marriage breaks their family it i'd like i understand it uh that that that the problem is that response just isn't helpful it takes a thing that's hard and makes it harder than it needs to be now that that's really the thing and it's a good time to make the point that you know i wrote effortless because life is hard it's it's hard and hard in a hundred ways and because we make it harder than it needs to be the consequences we burn out and we still haven't achieved the results that are essential and matter most to us so my position in writing effortless is that we can make a different choice that we can search for an enlightened but easier path a a different way of being and doing and that if we can do that then we can achieve even sometimes breakthrough results but without burning out and so to me that seems so important that what did it look like i mean first what did it not look like we were things we would not do that we could not do that that was the first part of making it a little less complicated right we wouldn't complain that the doctors didn't have all the answers that's tempting to do it but we wouldn't do it we wouldn't try to force the timetable well we just want this to happen right now everything has to happen right now this second we wouldn't ask why us we wouldn't over analyze every article from every medical journal the well-intentioned people sent to us because people with no medical background at all would send all sorts of articles uh about everything and they though some of those were like really heart-wrenching things to receive because what they're saying even though they mean well intended is or maybe she's going to die of this thing or die of that thing or this so we wouldn't just get consumed in those things um what we did instead what did it look like uh i mean we would i mean i don't want to imply that we didn't do anything on the medical side we we did you know we we you know anna would would would write down every meeting we had she kept a record of it that made things easier because you didn't have to try and repeat everything from memory and get it wrong you just kept an account so every new neurologist you could just literally send it to them this is all the information that we have so far um there were things we were doing on the medical side itself but but in terms of getting into this state i mean we would literally get around the piano and sing together uh we would go on walks together we would read books together we would play games together uh we would look for the positive in in anything uh we would we ate dinner together still we still toasted each other we still did that ritual we told stories we laughed we were grateful here's a specific thing that i did the practice that grew up in this moment was every time i complained i would say something i was thankful for and here's what i learned first of all and it wasn't just because of eve but i just learned i complained so much more than i realized before and i think of myself as quite a positive person quite a grateful person i mean actually to be honest i i have kept a gratitude journal now for like 10 years and i pretty much don't think i've missed a day in 10 years so like that practice is sort of there and yet i realized that just because it was a practice a ritual i did like once a day is not the same as it being part of the experience of my life and so that little habit that habit recipe to use bj fox be a great term for it after i complain i will say something i'm thankful for change the ratio and so doing these things at first seems like well that doesn't that doesn't change the medical situation no that's true but what it did is it got us in a state that wasn't a state of suffering a state of suffering is is understandable but so unhelpful but what does it produce it produces fight fight freeze like narrowing of options you feel stuck the state produces a way of acting that is unhelpful and that action will produce results that are not helpful and so it's a downward spiral uh the upward spiral is what we started to experience we we saw it firsthand i didn't have language for a codification for it at the time but for example barbara fredrickson's work uh she calls it the broaden and build theory basically what she's saying is is the same model i'm just describing about state then action then results she says it's not what people think they think that if you have the results you want then you're going to be in a great state she says it's exactly opposite if you can get the right state then it will produce a set of options a set of actions that are that that are better selection to choose from you'll be in a better position to be able to select them and she says that it increases all your sense of creativity your relationships improve why does all that matter this is the the broaden and build part of it is that your capability is being built your personal resilience is increasing your relationship network is advancing and getting stronger and so it means whatever tomorrow's challenge is you're better able to deal with it now that to me is why you know this this this model this state action f you know results is such an important order you always start on the stake let me summarize it this way if you focus on what you lack you will lose what you have and if you focus on what you have you will gain what you lack that that is something i can sort of i don't know testify to in the most in the crucible experience in my life by being by being in a better state as a family by protecting that culture it created clarity of action yeah and clarity of action produced results that that that to me is is what i can say and and and it meant it meant that by the time the pandemic hit where we're dealing suddenly with a pandemic and still a family crisis because we still have eve still going through treatments in the midst of the pandemic it was like how do i describe it really it's like the family just the culture of the family just knew what to do it was like this this worker just prepared it was just like yeah we know what to do we know how to respond to this it was it was sort of intuitive and in the culture and so this broad and build theory it actually happened and taken you know we were we were better able to deal with that than we otherwise would have been when you focus on what you don't have you lose what you do have that was i mean yeah let me see i'm going to say it again because it's is such an important line here if you focus on what you lack you lose what you have thank you for repeating it that's what the first time you said it and i have heard you say this before but first we said in this conversation again i felt it deep inside me you know i felt that tingle around my heart because there is such deep truth in that and actually that phrase helped me this this morning um there was you know as i shared before we we we were we started recording uh i i sort of exerted myself a lot yesterday and didn't sleep well last night and i've been pretty exhausted for most of today yes and you know when we haven't slept well you know we're a bit more emotionally reactive less resilient and something you know something bothering me and work that i haven't done yet or hadn't managed to do and i was focusing on that and then i thought and it's great because i was researching this conversation yes that phrase shaped everything i thought well wrong and you know what you kind of do a lot you're getting a lot done you've you know you know you're sort of you've not missed a wednesday with this podcast since the first week of last september you know through christmas and new year it's kind of like you're doing a lot already you're doing you know you don't need to worry about not doing the extra one or two percent so first of all thank you because that phrase was very helpful this morning it instantaneously instantaneously changed my perspective because a lot of what you're talking about is is perspective right you're talking about the same situation but just a different experience of that same situation um so i think that quote might be going up on the wall as well i love this and at the point of being irritating i want to just take the whole quote again because it's not one line it's two lines it's if you focus on what you lack you lose what you have if you focus on what you have you gain what you lack sorry to interrupt if you're enjoying this conversation there's loads more like it on my channel please do press subscribe and hit that bell now back to the conversation so it's the combination that to me is such a for me personally was such a game changer and i love that it was useful to you today it's useful to me many times but of course what you're saying is right if if you focus on what you have suddenly it all floods to you oh my goodness i've got all the books i've got all the podcasts i've been doing i've got all this preparation in life i've got the whole you know but doctor i've got all all of my life's experience is at my disposal in this moment yeah and suddenly it it puts you it hopefully at a better state of like i can handle this yeah you know i don't have to worry about every possible degree of preparation for this pet has just talked to a to a to a friend who says that one of his effortless hacks is on his team he'll just say look let's just be light in prep like let's just do our prep lightly so that we can sort of show up either with sometimes no preparation now again that is a dangerous message if someone is not someone who's a high achieving challenging person who's trying to achieve a lot that's who this book is for it's for highly engaged capable people who are on the edge of exhaustion but if someone is in that category as you just described you feeling just today at least that the message needs to be different you then the message is like hey it's completely fine you can have this conversation because you've been preparing it for years you've got all that you need all you have to do is show up you know what today was preparation light because of my um my state right because of my state which was a bit foggy in my head tired um and i i'm a morning person right so because you are west coast we're recording this conversation you know at 4 p.m uk time you know i i'm i'm i typically will go to bed at 8 30 9 o'clock i'm sort of winding down i get up at 4 4 30 and writes before the kids get up right so today i thought and it's something i've discussed with um my my sort of close team around the podcast before say well you know what i do it's sometimes almost uh an old relic of how i used to cram for exams that i will artificially create stress on myself before i'm on the mic um but i realized a few months ago i thought well i'm gonna hold on a minute you kind of you've never been short of things to say as my wife definitely testify to you um i've been having conversations my entire life as a doctor for 20 years i have conversations every day that is what i do i listen my goal when i'm with a patient is to listen really make sure that person feels heard uh good body language be connected and then respond appropriately to actually what has been said to me and i've realized over the last few months that that's kind of the approach i take on the podcast i kind of feel that's sort of like my gp consultations just expanded out on a microphone with people who are not coming to me for health uh help do you know what i mean so yes it was helpful in the sense of actually i don't need to make this hard i've read his work before i'm familiar with it you know and again focusing on what not what we lack what we have i'm like ronan this is a guy who has sold a gazillion books he hit the zeitgeist six or seven years ago i have the luxury of two hours with him to pick his brain and discuss things that i'm passionate about what are you complaining about what is wrong with your life that sounds like a pretty good day to me you know same situation but but gone into it with a different intention yeah i love what you're saying because because that that the extra the okay i've got to push i've got to do i've got to cram for the exam mentality like you don't want to be cramming all the time i mean i'm not even sure it's great to be cramming ever but certainly as a lifestyle it is counterproductive for people who are high achievers who are on the edge of exhaustion if they try to cram it in their life if they're trying to push it into force it then they won't just get to diminishing returns where every extra unit of effort produces less result than the last unit of effort it actually gets to negative returns where every unit of effort is actually making everything worse you know you'd be if you stop you will definitely be getting a better return on investment than trying an extra unit and and i just think that this is kind of part of the great discovery yeah don't push yourself past a point that is helpful overexertion makes it harder to achieve the results that you want i remember a time listen to this i remember when i was i had a client um come to me and say i want you to do three leadership presentations for our tech company a global brand but one that was in a high growth state they say well we want you to come uh we saw a presentation that you you'd created and we just want you to come and do this three times for us and then really what we want is a two-year engagement with you where you help us to scale and so on is this a fantastic opportunity and so everything is set like i all i have to do i've already sent them the materials i've already sent them the work i've already done this presentation for a different client all over the world like it is set it is done it is agreed it is good money it is everything is right and then the day before i go it's like cramming mode i'm like yeah but what if i could do a really something special for them what if i could just push it you know and i go well you know i've been doing this new thinking maybe i could just do it on the new thinking and i get going into this mode and it's like this is all like after hours so this is when i should be done for the day but i'm like okay well let me just let me just fiddle with these slides maybe i'll do the slides and then let's do a different handout and i spent hours and hours on that i i didn't do an all-nighter but it was that sort of a feeling it was just went hours and hours later and later i i am the next morning i wake up i am foggy i'm like literally driving to this appointment i'm emailing them right before i'm driving saying oh new slide new slides here they are can you print these these documents out at the you know at the facility all of that's unprofessional so now it's already worse and i go to the to the presentation i start giving the presentation and i keep having to turn around to look at the slides because i'm not familiar with them and i'm foggy and then somebody challenges me on one of them that i don't understand i don't really buy that and i'm so unprepared there's just new content and and i'm stressed because i'm tired and i don't handle that well either the whole thing is it is like seriously a disaster one of the worst experiences i've had teaching ever and they cancelled the other two presentations and of course there's no two-year experience i mean like that is that is a of course that doesn't happen every day to us but that is an example to me of how like over exertion and doing that the pushing beyond the healthy helpful you know sweet spot can cost us a lot uh you're doing the right things and even for the right reasons but the over-exertion makes it harder to achieve the result that was already there for for for the taking were you a a crammer as a kid at school yeah i i think i probably was a bit of a crammer but i was but let me tell you about my experience uh in education my parents didn't um didn't go to university and so they emphasized education but they didn't teach me the skills of it you know like this is how to write an essay or this is how to go to the teacher and talk about what's going on and what you're you know if you're missing something so i just had i just hit education with like motivation and work my best friend growing up sam bridgestock he questions this story but but i remember it very distinctly is that he would always do better than me in education but i always felt like i was trying harder than him and it wasn't until years later like so he got you know sort of two a's and a b and his a levels at the time and and uh and and i'm like okay how what what are you doing differently to me and he said it it took him years to actually figure it out the simplest answer he said just you just do exactly what the teacher asked you to do nothing more nothing less you just do exactly you just do what they ask you to do and that was like news to me from that point on i just i just did ex i would just read exactly what they wanted and not go above and beyond it i would just do what they asked and that was actually sufficient from then i got ace i literally hardly ever had not had an a ever since then all right that was true in undergraduate i went to graduate school with the stanford right is and same thing there just do what you're asked to do not more if you don't know how to do what they are asking go and ask how to do what they are asking it's like that is was was the breakthrough it's like education in a sense is a bit of a game and if you i was the kind of guy that would go and get other books that weren't even on the curriculum oh i just want to learn so much about this that's a good principle if you want to become deeply educated in subjects fine but in terms of just actually getting the results in an educational system that's dependent on the social approval of that teacher you're just gonna learn that the to do what they ask and nothing else yeah it's it's so fascinating because if you just did what was asked of you with your two books right okay i don't know how does that apply to you writing these unique books that have struck a chord with millions of people around the world i mean let's apply let's just talk about how to apply effortless to the writing of efforts some ways i succeeded some ways i didn't in applying it but like ways first of all let's talk about how i made it harder than it needed to be first my fails i i worried to the point of fear and i don't see literally any upside to fear with it i can see taking responsibility i can see wanting not to fall into some um some bad habits that not habits but but typical paths that happen uh in the publishing world it's quite typical that after a book that's been successful the next book just dies on the vine um the so i wanted to avoid that my mantra um i thought actually a fairly helpful mantra was like don't write a rubbish book you know like just don't don't don't just you know take responsibility for it that seemed to be healthy but when it gets into fear that's not making anything better when you're fearful about what you're doing you're just you're just you can make it worse in your attempt to make it better here here's another sort of success and fail with the book um i found that if i wrote two hours in a day first thing in the morning similar to what you described i could write two average pages which by the way is you know for for most writers for those listening or watching this is is actually pretty fast if i wrote three or four hours i couldn't write three or four pages of the same quality i could write you know maybe i would get sort of two and a half or three if i go five or six hours or more i'm making the whole manuscript worse than if i hadn't started writing it at all that day like there is a point at which i am going back to stuff i've written that is perfectly fine or even is like well edited and i'm just oh well but what if i did it this way and i'm just poor judgment is just pouring all over the manuscript at this point you've got to stop and so i learned that i needed to have a pace that had not just a lower bound okay every day right on the book at least five days a week write on you know open the google doc and write something uh the upper bound was uh was like don't write more than two pages you know like you have an upper bound where you say look don't push yourself beyond what is actually optimal for that day and so that pace helped me to keep enjoying it and to keep making progress going forward that's something that worked um something else that worked that made it made the experience a bit more effortless was just having a great team have the same editor i had before uh brought in jonathan cullen who was a great researcher and helped with the book bringing in things and there were moments that the experience felt magic because i mean i actually described it sort of almost a harry potter type experience because we go into this google doc and you can see other people writing my editor going through something i've written i'd see uh jonathan bringing in a story i'd asked him to to gather and put together and he'd bring something in and i could watch it all happening while i'm working and i thought that was just so enjoyable that when we were done um we literally all of us have said to each other that we miss doing that going into the dock every day and just working together and seeing this progress and so so having the right people you know having having people that have you know um the three eyes uh which is uh is warren buffett uses three were you know three criteria to select who he works with high integrity uh high intelligence high initiative integrity intelligence and initiative and if you don't have integrity then the other two hurt you uh so those are the those are what i'm looking for in the little team that i had working on this together are so high in those three areas it just was a pleasure to work together so those are things that that i have you know those are examples there mixed together of ways i made it harder than it needed to be uh but also ways that that were that were more effortless and and so i think it's about some self-awareness where you keep on going a final thought on this with with in terms of the book itself is you have to have the courage to be rubbish to even begin uh you know i i came yeah we started using the term zero draft not even first draft zero draft like this is rubbish but i'm starting yeah this is a rubbish version of this story this is a rubbish version of this account it's okay it's a zero is draft zero and sometimes i might write that and not even put it into the google doc just to get something out then you work on it and so in a consistent pace you make it less rubbish and less rubbish and less rubbish and eventually it becomes good and then a little better and hopefully it gets the point where it's great and it's polished so it's just but none of that happens in one crammed experience you aren't going to make something great in one fell swoop and when we try to do that what happens is that you get so burned out you spend a whole weekend a whole nothing but this it's like you can't even think about it after that for a while and so it's about this to me it's about an effortless pace yes you still want it to be excellent your standards haven't changed high standard people don't just suddenly lose their standards you are not going to suddenly lose your standards the question is can we construct a life that allows us to get that high standard work done in a way that continues to be sustainable enjoyable so that we can do it for the next 10 20 30 40 50 years yeah rather than just kind of all at one moment and then we get burned out and then the next book is rubbish because we were so burned out and we felt rushed and so on so i think the the effortless pace is a big part of being able to still try to achieve excellence but in a way that isn't so costly and i think that's the key point for me it's we can all do a lot in certain ways if we want to now and again we can we can burn the candle if we need to but what's the cost of doing that sort of the cost of success many people who people look up to who are successful aren't necessarily happy maybe they're never seeing their kids or their partner um and and you know something i'm deep in writing at the moment is the difference between success and happiness and you know that when we conflate the two that's where sometimes the problem starts to arise there's an amazing essay written by uh tennessee williams who is the playwright behind the glass menagerie and others and the essay was published in the new york times and it's called the catastrophe of success and it's a really beautifully written piece just about what his experience was on the other side of having put glass menagerie out it's a big hit everyone he's meeting oh this was so impactful to me wow you've done something so beautiful and it sent him on a path that took him away from the work itself from the from the simple pacing of writing you know every day right the next thing you know don't overdo it but don't just stop doing it and he talks about what followed in his life and how unhappy that existence was so so that's that's that's on this like success can be a catalyst for failure if we're not careful uh it will it will undermine the very things that led to success in the first place it will eat up and consume all sorts of more important relationships without even thinking about it so success you you know can be as bill gates put it a very poor teacher uh and so we so so you know success makes a good servant but not a great master so that's sort of on the the we've got to be careful to make sure that we do things that will help us to get to the next level of success and that doesn't mean just more of the stuff that got us to this level the second point here is now now on on what to do once you are successful right once things and actually everybody watching this and listening this is successful if you take anything like a proper perspective about it you know the fact that they're that they they you know are alive today in the world the chances are you know they are in far better position than the vast majority of the people that have ever lived so you know they're going to be more uh more educated they're going to be have a better chance of of of a healthy life and so on right like of course there's loads of problems but we're successful if they're listening to this that they've got the time to listen to this if they have the technology to listen to this they're successful so they have to figure out what to do now that they are and the i think the thing that was most personally challenging and eureka for me as i was researching effortless was the the final section of the book this idea of effortless results the diff effortless results is about creating systems that produce results for you rather than producing results through your own direct individual effort a linear result is one that you achieve yourself you do a thing you get paid for doing that thing uh residual results are you build the thing that produces a result again and again for you and the difference isn't small it is it is it's absolutely massive think about a friend of mine jessica jackley who had gone to a presentation by uh by muhammad yunus at the chrismian bank and she was starting to think more like systems and then she was on a trip in africa she meets this this woman she's an entrepreneur she is selling produce she's selling vegetables on the side of the road and every day she has to uh she has to be there to survive this is how she gets just enough to survive for her for her children and to buy you know this produce from from what turns out to be a middleman and so jessica says well why don't you go to the original you know to the to the you know to the farmers to the people that actually you know sell this originally you'd make a far better profit yeah absolutely i just cannot afford to leave my post to go do that and so jessica's looking at this and she said well how much would it cost for you to to make the transition she said 500 which of course isn't a huge amount uh in in the developing world developed world and she said she said she had that thought she's like well i could just get 500 and give it to her and i would help her and that would matter but instead she built what eventually became she and others built what eventually became kiva kiva.org where that money wasn't just a micro loan once it wasn't just a loan or a gift it was a micro loan that didn't just get paid back once but gets reinvested and then other people could start it as well she built a system that produced residual results to the order of like 1.3 billion dollars now of loans which are still being reloaded that people repay it about 97 of these loans are repaid she could have given 500 she built something that produced results that flowed to the other people she wanted to help and now 1.3 billion dollars later that's the difference between a linear result and a residual result and to me it's an absolutely massive opportunity and and my test in my life and for you too is where are the systems of my life developed and where is it just me doing it again and again like how much of the results are you getting is just you pushing making it happen versus i have built a system that produces results for me and i use a little harshly but i used the death test for this which is like okay so if i die today which things continue yeah which things could continue without me and to start having a vision i just had a conversation with a friend yesterday he's just i don't even think he's fully human this guy the way he talks the way he thinks and the systems he's created uh uh like blown my mind he talks like this just this is like in one sentence he's like yeah i'm just trying to build um i'm trying to invest for like the next 500 years that's really my vision point and i've created a family bank that can be in existence for the next 500 years so that and in the documents he sent me he sent me this 50-page document called the rhythm of experience that's his system for how he's trying to he he makes sure that his life is in flow all the time and it just puts me to shame watching listening to all this and learning all this i think so much of what i'm doing is still one ounce of effort to get one result instead of thinking and building stuff that just continually perennially perpetually almost eternally could be producing results coming back and back so this to me is actually probably the most single most exciting idea in effortless and and how powerful it can become yeah it's um i think that death idea i don't think it's not extreme at all actually i think it's it's you playing out something to its extreme and going does this still work you know you've sort of stress tested it and going actually yeah it still works even in that situation then you know you're on to something and something my wife and i spoke about recently because she uh produces and edits the podcast and you know last weekend because you know i'm deep in this book at the moment with my other commitments so we kind of we don't have the bank in the back catalogue as we normally do and so i recorded late on a friday with gretchen rubin and then yes so at the weekends she had to work all weekend so that we could meet um tuesday midnight which is when we published so i had the kids and then i was you know it was just and i said listen this is great we're capable people we can do this but there must be a better way than this right that and we should be looking and it's one of these questions you know that you uh you have in the book you know what would this look like if it was easy um and it's you know on on the subject of podcast i know you have a a wonderful podcast yourself um i don't know what your process is like but you know sitting in the room with me at the moment is gareth who's my videographer and when gareth came to the podcast the show was already successful it all been going for about a year and a half but it was audio only so we had a workflow that worked for audio only now gareth comes in with cameras and like so he keeps saying well it doesn't kind of make sense the way we're doing things and it was easier and it you know in my head like i don't know what time to sort of change it like it's kind of working but i'm it's very clear that it's like you're saying it's kind of don't just do it that way because you can because at some point you may not be able to or what happens if i don't know someone in the family gets sick and you don't have as much you know it's like why not build a better system that gives you the effortless results so i i think it applies to health i know you've shed a beautiful example of someone who wanted to if perhaps she could you know he wanted to eat better um and i think he had to automate some sort of delivery was that what it was this is this was just somebody that just was talking to just recently about effortless and i said i asked him this question what is something that's essential for you that you are under investing in and he just said eating healthy and i said okay so let's ask a few these questions from the book um what does done look like for you he said well you know food would be delivered to me at about noon every day he said because what happens right now is that noon comes i'm not that hungry and then one two three comes and then finally i am hungry and then like my judgment's gone i just go and get fast food because you know now i just need to have anything he said so that was that's what dumb would look like it would just be here and uh and i said okay well what's the what's the first obvious step you could take to make that happen he said well i could just search on google for one of these food delivery apps um i said great i said what's the what's the um you know the 10 minute micro burst like if you set a timer for 10 minutes and that was your first step and then you worked on it for 10 minutes what could you achieve in just a 10 minute micro burst a small thing he said he paused and he's like it was a little awkward but he's like i think i could do everything i mean i think i could put in i think i could find it select it put in my credit card put in my address put when i wanted it delivered i think i could do the whole thing in 10 minutes i said how long have you been stressing and frustrated by this uh he said 20 years is it i said it has 10 minutes versus 20 years that's that's effortless the the a principle behind this is to look for the things that have repeatedly it's like it's like the other side of the of effortless results is like what are the friction-filled results you are already getting what are the frustrating results you are repeatedly getting residually getting that irritating annoying they don't work for you and see if you can prevent those from happening in the future you know if you can prevent in just a few minutes in this case 10 minutes the same frustration that you've been having for 20 years and shift the system that that's that's and make it automated now they say this my friend i was just telling you about he he used he came up with this word he says he says greg i am an automationist he'd read essentialism and effortless and he's like that is he's like i can't believe that is what i'm doing that is how i've done it this guy is unreal uh so anyway i'm all inspired by him but it's like he he's built this 10 minute change he's now you know how he eats healthy every day for a 10-minute investment because he didn't think in terms of just how do i get a healthy meal right now i've got to go and make a healthy meal right now and that was just too much this automated the whole thing and that problem solved after 20 years that's the power of changing the system yeah and the thing is that whatever we want in our life there'll be things sitting right in right under our noses that we we're not looking at through through the right lens and actually i think your book both of them will really help people shift their perspective and things that they've repeatedly done for years they'll just start to do slightly differently i i've shared my sort of morning workout we've seen many times on the show before but essentially i do a five minute workout every morning i haven't missed a day for about three years because it's it i don't i make it easy i don't get changed doing my pajamas while my coffee's brewing for five minutes i never miss my coffee at the moment so while that brews i do a workout whilst it's brewing you know there's a kettlebell or a dumbbell in my kitchen that i almost have to trip over to get to the kettle so i've created a system whereby i don't even have to think about making time in my day i just five minute workout day in day out just like brushing my teeth and so the point is there there are there are multiple ways and multiple things that people can do oh greg we've nearly been for two hours and i don't feel i've even scratched the surface i wanted to talk about steve jobs number one design principle micro burst the power of the one minute pause but they're all in the book i want to be super respectful of your time just to sort of wrap this up greg then um one question i had um maybe the penultimate question is that you set the state it's the effortless states that leads to the effortless action and the effortless results so what do you do on a daily basis or what do you try and do on a daily basis to get you into that effortless state the most important thing i need to do personally is take a nap now be really for real about that like i'm not that great at getting enough sleep at night or at least i wake up naturally uh and and then i don't feel like going back to sleep so i'm up but it means that the way that the balance works for me is if i can if i can get a napping and people often think it's like quite a childish thing but but like for me it's like so valuable uh and and when i when i do this i remember driving home from an appointment a few weeks ago and i was like okay i've got the state are you in the air for the state what state you're in and i was like no you are not you know you are definitely tired what's the easiest thing you can do to get back in the effort of the state and i was like yeah but as soon as i get home i've got to just go sleep for a bit and and i just noticed that over the last week or two as i've been sort of in this mode of launching the book i've basically cut that out and the consequence of that is that on sunday i was just i wasn't grumpy all day but i was a couple of times i basically lost it with the children i remember one of them just turned around she was like well that was two you know two for two for you down today you know and i'm not normally like that but it was just i was like why why are you why is this suddenly getting to you i don't think everything's changing around you then your state is off and i was like yeah i'm not getting this i'm not getting that little napping so for me it's a real reset uh and so that's like that is one thing i do um the research is very strong about this that for some some things you know and that is almost the equivalent of a full night's sleep in terms of its your upgrading of your ability to learn remember uh compute information and so for me it's it's just like this this slingshot experience i i do i don't sleep very long but it just keeps everything in in a sharp state i love that and it also beautifully sort of echoes what we said right at the start is that often when we're feeling that way we think we have to just plow through and keep going right but you've learned that actually no if i stop and take a nap i become a better person afterwards final question now greg is that this podcast is called feel better live more when we feel better in ourselves we get more out of our lives and i think your work is really testament to that when we prioritize better when we simplify better we absolutely are going to get more out of our lives whether that's work life home life relationships sporting life whatever it is so i wonder for people right at the end of this conversation have you got any sort of final wisdom to share any practical tips maybe some questions they can ask themselves so they can actually get started on this journey immediately there's a story that i came across in the researching of effortless that didn't make it into the book uh is might be my one regret of what didn't get in it's the story of a woman a mother who is in hospital with her very ill son and he's on his deathbed everybody knows this is the end and she knows it and so she gets up and actually lies in the bed next to him at the very end because she just knows and and of course you know and i've been there with people at the very end and you sometimes you do know this this is gonna be it you don't know if it's a minute or if it's an hour but you know it's here and so that was the situation so she gets in just to be close to him and then right at the end right in between you know that in between place where somebody isn't fully here but they're not fully there he opens his eyes and he just suddenly says oh mama it's so simple it's all so simple and those were uh his final words to her uh then he died and that offers us this soundtrack for our lives it's all so simple and a question to go with it to ask ourselves how am i making life more complicated then it needs to be and as we get the answer to that question we have something really valuable we will know what to do next and what to do next is so important because in every next moment in every new moment we have a choice do we take the heavier path or the lighter path and whatever's happened to us in the past whatever is even happening to us right now they pale in comparison to that choice so that really is to me the question to leave people on how am i making life more complicated than it needs to be yeah such a profoundly simple question with the potential for huge transformations in people's lives greg thank you for coming on to the podcast today thank you for writing two quite wonderful books that are helping and are going to help so many more millions around the world and i hope we get the chance to meet at some point face to face me too rangan it's been a real pleasure thank you if you enjoyed that conversation i really think you're going to enjoy the one i had with professor b.j fogg from stanford all about habits it's right there so give it a click and let me know what you think the feeling of success is what wires in the habit emotions create habits and specifically in tiny habits what we focus on is

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 16,635

Rating: 4.8934627 out of 5

Keywords: the4pillarplan, thestresssolution, feelbetterin5, wellness, drchatterjee, feelbetterlivemore, ranganchatterjee, 4pillars, drchatterjee podcast, greg mckeown, greg mckeown interview, greg mckeown lewis howes, self help, self development, perosnal development, inspiration, motivation, why you're lazy, why you're burnt out, how to quickly get out of a rut, void burnout, become a productivity master, happiness, never be lazy again

Id: JoNboHeIreM

Length: 111min 35sec (6695 seconds)

Published: Wed May 19 2021