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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
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Effortless summary
Make It Easy to Get the Right Things Done
19 mins
Brief summary
Effortless by Greg McKeown is a self-help book that explores how to achieve more by doing less. It provides practical tips for simplifying our lives, minimizing distractions, and focusing on what really matters to achieve greater success with less stress.
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Effortless
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Key idea 1 of 6
Making things effortless starts with getting into the Effortless State, and ends in Effortless Results.
Have you ever marveled at how top athletes make everything look easy? Think of basketball players taking shots, for example. They dribble the ball for a few seconds, bend their knees, and then flick the ball straight into the net. They make this shot over and over again, and it seems completely effortless.
Now, there’s definitely a lot of practice involved in perfecting basketball shots. But something else that helps is getting into the right state of mind. With this approach, anything you do can look and feel effortless, too.
The key message here is: Making things effortless starts with getting into the Effortless State, and ends in Effortless Results.
To perform as effortlessly as a seasoned basketball player, you first need to get into the Effortless State. Here, your mind is focused and free of limiting assumptions, and your body is well-rested and full of energy. In this state, anything you attempt is a breeze.
Achieving the Effortless State requires you to overcome mental clutter. In the same way that a powerful computer slows down when the hard drive is full, your mind also slows down when it’s packed with unhelpful patterns and assumptions. And, just as clearing the hard drive speeds up the computer, freeing your mind of negative thoughts puts you in the Effortless State.
In the Effortless State you can take Effortless Action. This means doing less, but achieving more. Many believe that putting in more work leads to better results – but this isn’t true. After a certain point, working harder actually reduces performance, making the additional effort pointless.
For instance, the author writes two pages in two hours – so you’d assume that doubling the time would double the output. However, a four-hour-long session results in only three pages. Economists call this phenomenon the law of diminishing returns, and, in addition to producing disappointing results, it leads to exhaustion. But with Effortless Action, you reach your goal without doing more work than necessary.
And when you apply Effortless Action to the right activities, the results will keep rolling in. This is what it means to achieve Effortless Results, and it’s how Kiva, a crowdfunding platform, helps millions of entrepreneurs. Kiva allows anyone to lend money to entrepreneurs, and once the money is repaid, it’s lent to other entrepreneurs. So a single action produces results over and over again.
Through the Effortless State, Effortless Actions, and Effortless Results, you can make anything easy to accomplish.
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What is Effortless about?
Effortless (2021) challenges the idea that achieving anything worthwhile means overexerting ourselves. This easy-to-follow guide breaks down how to make tasks and projects feel easy, actions we can take to maximize our efforts, and techniques for increasing outputs while keeping our inputs low.
Effortless Review
Effortless (2021) by Greg McKeown is a book that reveals a fresh approach to success and productivity, focusing on doing less but achieving more. Here's why this book is worth reading:
- It presents practical strategies to simplify our lives and eliminate unnecessary stress, helping us achieve effortless success.
- By combining research findings, personal anecdotes, and real-life examples, the book offers actionable insights that can be applied immediately.
- With its engaging storytelling and easy-to-understand concepts, it keeps readers engaged, making the journey towards increased efficiency and fulfillment enjoyable.
Best quote from Effortless
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
—Greg McKeown
Who should read Effortless?
- Workaholics looking for a better way
- Leaders who want their teams to work smarter
- Students under pressure to overachieve
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Effortless FAQs
What is the main message of Effortless?
Effortless shows us how to achieve more by doing less.
How long does it take to read Effortless?
Reading Effortless takes a few hours, but the Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.
Is Effortless a good book? Is it worth reading?
Effortless is a valuable read with practical strategies for making life easier.
Who is the author of Effortless?
Greg McKeown is the author of Effortless.
What to read after Effortless?
If you're wondering what to read next after Effortless, here are some recommendations we suggest:
- The Power of Less by Leo Babauta
- Essentialism by Greg McKeown
- Love People, Use Things by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus
- Time and How to Spend It by James Wallman
- The 12 Week Year by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington
- (Article) Why can't the world's greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness? by Oliver Burkeman
- The More of Less by Joshua Becker
- Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
- The Art of Explanation by Ros Atkins
- Ikigai by Hector Garcia Puigcerver & Francesc Miralles