Deep Questions with Cal Newport - Ep. 91: GREG MCKEOWN on Making Essential Work Effortless

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

I'm joined in today's episode by Greg McKeown, author of the mega-bestseller Essentialism, and his new book, Effortless.We talk about the massive success of Essentialism, decoding why it did so well and discussing how it changed his life. We then get into the origin of the ideas that became Effortless, and use some of my own attempts to make essential work easier as a case study.Thanks to Jay Kerstens for the intro music. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions. Episode 91. Today we're doing an interview with my friend, the author Greg McEwen. Greg has a new book coming out this week, a follow-up to his massive international bestseller essentialism that is titled, Effortless. Make it easier to do what matters most. The idea behind this book really resonated with me. I gave an enthusiastic blurb for the book and thought it would be great to have Greg on the show

so that we could dive into some of the details about ideas that I think really connect well to some of the things we have been discussing on this show. Now, a quick summary of what this book is about is you have to go back to essentialism to understand it. So essentialism, this is a book that Greg published in 2014, argued that we should do less, that if we focus our attention in our professional and personal lives

on the things that matter most and ignore the things to maybe bring value but don't matter the most, the things that aren't essential, we'll end up happier, we'll also end up more successful. This should sound familiar. It was obviously a influential idea in my own thinking and writing. The issue, there's what happened to Greg in his life. We talk about this a little bit in the interview.

He talks about this in the book, is that even after he drastically essentialized his life, even after he got to a place where he was saying no at a rate that he had never said no before, as all these different opportunities came out of him after essentialism was successfully. No, no, no. I want to focus on just the things that matter in my writing life and in my life outside of work. He found that he still couldn't fit it. And there was an actual family health issue that forced the point finally, forced this realization upon him that even though he had whittled things down to what mattered, he still couldn't find time for the small number of things that mattered. Thus enter effortless. So the idea behind effortless is how do you

take the things that are important and make them easier to do? Make them something that can fit into your life, something that you actually enjoy doing. How do you make them an effortless part of your life? I think it's a really smart idea. I give it my own framework in the interview, which I'll briefly summarize now because if I'm not coming up with arbitrary first, frameworks than I'm not happy. So here's my arbitrary framework for understanding effortless. You have some objective, something you think is important. There's two things here that still matters, right? What elements go into achieving that objective and then two, how you actually schedule those elements? That latter thing, like how do you actually find time and schedule those

elements? That's the world of standard productivity thinking. You keep track of things, systems, how do you have calendars, time block planning, etc., right? What Greg is saying is we neglect the first thing, what the actual elements are that we're executing to accomplish our objective. And there we can often really simplify. So we're used to thinking about productivity. Okay, this objective is important. We kind of take for granted what it means to accomplish that objective.

Now let's get really productive about scheduling those things need to be done. And Greg says not so fast. You might be doing way more things than you need to to accomplish the objective. There might be a much simpler way of accomplishing this objective. For a way that gets you 80% there with 20% of the actual effort required, so that this thing that's important to you gets your attention, but it's not getting 20 hours a week of your time. This simplicity before you get to the scheduling-minded productivity mindset is really important.

I think it was a really great insight. There's a lot of examples about that in the book. Then he brings in this other element, even after you figured out what you want to do to accomplish an objective, the state in which you actually go after these actions matters too. Little things, the habits, the rituals, what you connect these actions to in your life can take important actions that seem like a chore and make them into something that is enjoyable. We talk about in the interview of the example about how I long ago built this nice evening ritual

around my weekly blog post writing. It's after work. I used to do it in the big leather chair in the old house. would put on a record. The old house had the record player right next to the chair. Maybe we would pour a drink. It was like a really enjoyable thing I looked forward to writing that weekly essay. And you can take that specific example and generalize that to lots of different important things in our life. You connect them to rituals, locations, rhythms that puts you into a state of mind that you actually don't dislike doing the work. Greg does not like the term hard work

because it implies that the work itself is hard. It's something that you have to get through. And he thinks much more of the important things in their life could be made to be not so hard. I am doing a very high-level summary of this book. It has a lot of great examples and a lot more specificity. Greg and I get into some of those in the podcast, but we don't even scratch the surface of what's in the book,

but I just want to give you a sense of this is what that book's about. I thought both those ideas were pretty original. I love the clarity and simplicity with which Greg likes to articulate things. All right, so that's this book. That's what we're going to talk about. a lot of time this interview up front before effortless, talking about his life before that, essentialism, where that came from what it was like when that became a huge success, why it became a success. I'm very interested in those topics. Also, I figure he's doing a ton of interviews,

including four podcasts that many of you probably also listened to, like Tim Ferriss's show or Ryan Holiday Show. So I wanted to have some angles here that he might not have covered as much in other interviews. So that's why we get a little bit in the book marketing, virality, and what life is like after you have a million copy seller. All right, big preamble. Let us get ready now to actually do our interview with Greg. But before we get there, we should first briefly say thanks to one of the sponsors that makes this show possible. Optimize. Now, as you know, Optimize is a subscription online network run by my longtime friend, Brian Johnson, target of my ongoing feud about who has the better office.

It's my Deep Work H.Q Library versus his outdoor in the woods wallless, Austin, Texas office. So we have a bit of a debate going on about that. But the reason I know, Brian, is because of Optimize the network he started. Here's how it works. It's a subscription service. And what you get access to when you join Optimize is over 600 philosopher notes. These are six-page summaries of some of the best non-fiction.

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And if anyone asks, tell them you admire CEO Brian Johnson's efforts to get his office up and running, but it will never be superior to the Deep Work HQ. All right. let's get on with our interview with Greg McEwen. Greg McEwen, welcome to the podcast. Oh, Cal, it's so great to be back with you. It was so good to hear your voice when we just were chatting just a minute ago. It's always a pleasure.

Now, technically, you've been on the podcast before, but it was actually me playing an interview that we did earlier where you were interviewing me. So this is actually the first time that I get to take the driver's seat. I didn't remember that. I didn't remember that because, of course, you've been on the Watson Central podcast with me and somehow I thought that we had done it. So, well, it's great to be on this podcast for the first time officially. Yeah. So my, my listeners know of you well, but it gives me a chance to jump back a little bit here into your story. I mean, the goal of the show is to talk about your

new book, effortless, which I loved and I blurbed. And then I have sent since you basically private blurbs as well, expressing my enthusiasm because it's actually touching on some points in my own life at a very timely manner. So I want to get into all of that, but I don't think we can really understand effortless without having the, the backstory of Greg that leads us up to this book being written because it has really interesting connections to actually what was going on in your life. So if you'll, if you'll excuse a little nostalgia, I want to, I want to go back pre-essentialism. I want to go back, let's say, when multipliers is published, your first book co-authored, this was what,

2010? What were you set the stage here? What were you up to in the world of the professional world when that very first book of yours came out? Well, I mean, it was really a privilege to work on multipliers and to be able to help with the research and the writing of it and so on. And that sort of took my experience and life to a certain level. I'm working with Silicon Valley companies.

I'm doing training. I'm doing workshops. And that was the level. And they were good opportunities. But it really was essentialism that was just a game changer. Right. So multipliers was, it was like the expected type of book you would write being someone who ran workshops, a consultant, someone who was in the tech world, someone who was in Silicon Valley. It was putting some of those ideas down. And so it was expected. But then essentialism came along. So essentialism feels very different. Whereas multiplier seems like leadership, business standard. I don't know what category you use. used to describe essentialism, but somehow it is mixing business with deeply held human aspiration. How do we get from like post multipliers running workshops, giving talks, consulting to this

very sort of different and interesting type of book? Where's the idea come from to do that? Well, I mean, one of the things that happened for me is that a colleague of mine at the times said, look, they emailed me and said, look, Friday between one and two. would be a very bad time for your wife to have a baby because I'd like you to be at this client meeting. And Friday comes along and we are in the hospital. A daughter's been born. And we're trying to, you know, well, I'm trying to do it all. I've got my laptop out. I've got my phone out. And I'm just trying to keep everybody happy. And to my shame, I do. go to that meeting.

And afterwards, I remember my colleague saying, well, look, the client will respect you for the choice you just made to be here. And I don't remember the look on their faces evincing that sort of respect. But even if I had, it's clear I made a fool's bargain. And so I came out of that experience with this idea of just the insight. Like, if you don't prioritize your life, someone else will. And so it sent me down a journey of really trying to understand not just a business question, but a human question.

Why is it that we make the decisions the way that we do? And I found that I wasn't the only person that struggled with noticing what the tradeoffs are that they're really making in their life and making the right tradeoffs. And so this sort of took me on this journey that became essentialism. So how long were you working on these type of ideas just in your life before you thought, why don't I actually think about putting this into a book that could affect other people? When did it jump from? Let's Get My Life Back in Order into Let's Write About It.

Well, that was, there's years in there. And actually the idea. years that grew into essentialism, I didn't have that language and those words, was something that ironically I had been thinking about and doing research on, you know, for years and years even before this experience. So, so despite that attention, I'd still made this error, made this error of judgment, but I still wanted to first get my house in order and then go on what ended up being, you know, a year's journey of actually doing the official writing and research before handing in that manuscript. And so that's, you know, I think that's my answer.

So my listeners are very familiar with what's in that book since I talk about it all the time. Well, thank you. Yeah. But I thought it might be interesting then to hear what it's actually like when a book actually becomes a giant hit. Because I think people assume on the outside what happens is, is like the book comes out and that first week, it's like the publisher clearing's house check. Someone comes to the door and it's like, you've done it.

Your book is a hit, but it's often for people a much more interesting and bumpy path. What was it like from an author's perspective? What were the first signals you began to pick up after this book came out that it wasn't just another, okay, a good book, it'll be out there and something I can maybe give talks on. What was your first signals that something special was happening? I mean, it hit the New York Times best seller list itself the first week. So that was definitely a big moment.

I hadn't written anything that had hit the list before. And so that was, you know, that was a hope and intent for a long time. And so that itself was quite a big symbolic moment. And it's been on the list since a few times. But it still, that was a game-changing moment. I would say that, I mean, another moment that hit me was when I was, I mean, of course, there were more requests for speaking at conferences all the time. I had to become really selective.

I mean, I know of people who, and I'm not saying they're doing the wrong thing, but I didn't want to do it where you just get on a plane speak, get another plane, speak, and your whole life is there. And you're doing two, three hundred days of the year, a traveling. And I had four young children by this point. So that was just like not even an option. And so I was really selective about what I would do. But it's still even being more selective, you know, there's all of that.

And I remember going to an event where there's, there's 300 people in a line around the corner and the store runs out of books so they'd never done that before and you know that was one of those moments for sure where I'm like well this is this has just changed everything this is this is not like it was before right so you and just as a quick insider baseball thing since we get into this sometimes on the show You know, today, when you think about the bestseller list, there's often pre-order campaigns and email list involves. But 2014 was a different time. Just out of curiosity, what are the drivers back then?

Was it publicity? Or was it platform back then? This is kind of pre-platform. So just from an insider baseball perspective. No, that's interesting. There was, first of all, I didn't have a publicity, like an outside publicity team. that I didn't hire a team or anything like that. The publisher, as a general rule, publishers don't really do marketing and PR.

Like they do, but not enough to make something a hit. And I did have a great team. They actually really were, they said, look, this is a priority book for the spring. I mean, there was a different sort of feeling about it, you know, than maybe I should have had as a, as a first time solo author. But even with that, I mean, I think the thing that really was the driver was that at the time LinkedIn was so new. And I was one of their first 200 influencers or something.

And so I would write things. I mean, the first thing I wrote and almost everything from that article is in essentialism. So it was one of those early indicators as well. But I wrote this article at like, I don't know, 10 o'clock at night. I just thought, oh, you know, they've given me permission to write for them. You know, I should write something. And I just wrote something like very off the cuff. And the next morning, like the 60,000 views.

And actually quite a few of them were saying, man, did you not even spell check this? And I clearly hadn't because there was some, like, like pretty glaring errors in it. And so I'm like quickly going in there and like just starting to, you know, edited and make it like a just a comprehensible article. And that just went on just, that was like one of the top one or two articles on LinkedIn for months and months, like maybe even longer than that.

And so there was a sort of viral quality on LinkedIn at that time that's harder to produce now just because of how they would organize it. You would choose your own title. You could launch it. People, you could see what the top articles were based upon clicks and reads. And so I remember right around the time, excuse me, I remember that right around the time that the, that essentialism came out within that sort of week or two before and the week or two afterwards, there were just viral article after viral article. And I, I, I was really amazed by that, actually. I don't really recall it ever being viral like that again.

And I would say now it's just different. You just don't see articles on there that are having 1, 2 million views. That's just not what the platform does now. So that was, we did a few different things, but to me that was the thing that actually moved the needle. Yeah. I mean, this sort of feeds into my my theory of sort of virality like water, that when there's a topic, especially in books, that is just right. I mean, it's the right topic for the right time and it's handled properly.

Like water, finding its way downhill, it will find its way into whatever the available viral vectors are of that technological moment. And then we all make the mistake afterwards of looking back. It's like, okay, let me deconstruct. You know, let me deconstruct what Greg did with essentialism so we can do it again. And it's like, no, that's, it's kind of missing the point. The important point was the book because, yeah, like LinkedIn, early LinkedIn influencers. Okay, that happened to be a vector available at that moment. But if this book had been a year earlier, it might have been something different or year later.

I mean, I remember people doing this with like Tim Ferriss's four-hour work week when that first came back came out and there's these real deconstruction type postmortems. I remember reading all of them and we had some friends in common at the time. So I'd really followed that book. And in the end, it was, oh, there's no generalized lesson about publicity to take out of there. The book was perfect for the moment. And okay, like these bloggers were big at the time and they were pushing it.

But no, there's nothing to take out of here. Like, let me systematically hit bloggers. So I don't know. I don't know if you agree with it. that theory, but this seems like a great notion of it, is that this type of virality is not something you deconstruct and replicate. It's something that you try to instigate. I really like this virality as water. I've never heard that before, but it feels so right, because if you try to deconstruct a technological past and fit ideas into that mountain,

like, well, let's say you're successful in deconstructing it. Well, that mountain doesn't exist anymore. So good luck. Now you've got a great 3D construct of a technological mountain that isn't here. And so I think it's one of the things that makes it a little scary as an author, or I suppose with any business what you're trying to get out to the masses, is that nobody knows quite what the mountain looks like. It's moving so fast that someone who was an expert six months ago,

even two months ago, may not actually be able to help you now. I mean, you think about the rise of clubhouse, and I was just introduced to somebody who's really connected there and knows all about that world. And it's like, yeah, that person's expertise can't be more than like a, few weeks old. That's what the mountain looks like now. And so it's, you know, likewise, I mean, podcasts, they did exist.

I mean, essentialism came out seven years ago, right? So that's, I, that's like a long time in the publishing world to not write into the book. But like seven years ago, podcasts, they existed, but they weren't what they are now. They weren't ubiquitous. They weren't as large as they are now. And so that alone has completely changed. Instagram seven years ago is a completely different platform of completely different dynamic. And so I love the idea that what I need to do and what anyone needs to do is create the best that you can.

Create something that you feel has relevance and is, you know, has. some substance to it and as well written as you can, but then you've got to allow for where that will flow on the technology mountain that you have today. Yeah. I like it. Yeah. And not the tangent too far, but the other aspect of that I've been thinking about recently is, okay, so you can't control what's going to induce virality. You can't, you can't hack that. But energy is still needed. And I don't know in this metaphor, if it's make sure you're pouring enough water or something like that. And it's just weird. Like, if you write a book and just put it out there and do nothing, you know, like my book should stand for itself.

It, it just can't spread for the most part. Like it's no one's even going to see it for the viral spread to happen. It's, you know, it's COVID where the patient zero is on an island. Right. There's just no one to, no one to infect. But on the other hand, you can't force it to be a viral runaway hit. If it's not whatever, I don't want to push this metaphor. And so this is like weird in between where basically you got to work on the book,

but also there's nothing specifically that's going to be the killer thing to focus on. And you don't know if it's going to work. And that's sort of the curse of the writer, I guess, is you have to try without knowing what you're trying is going to end up working or not. But it's not really about are you trying to write things? It's just like, are you putting enough energy that if this idea is right, this highly infested, this is a terrible metaphor

for the current moment, but this highly infected virus. Like you're pushing it out enough that if it is really contagious, it will spread. Yes. And I mean, I like the idea of, of like water,

back to this metaphor of the virality of water, is like it can, what you want, what you hope for, is that it will find just that right pocket as it's going down the mountain. I was talking to, Someone who was, they had been the PR person behind my favorite book about Steve Jobs, which is.

Walter's one, the Isaacson's one? No, no, that's why I suddenly come under the name. I'm looking for it on my shelf right now. I may have, I've read, I went through a jobs period, so it's likely I've read this as well, whatever it turns out, Come on. Yes, yeah, yeah. It's just called Becoming Steve Jobs. I love that book. And so do the top senior people at Apple who actually participated in this biography, whereas some of them didn't in other biographies. And I was talking to the PR person, and they said that that book didn't hit number one New York Times bestseller on the first. And I was talking to the PR person, and they said that that book didn't hit number one New York Times bestseller on the first. first week, but on the second week. And it wasn't until this blogger in Silicon Valley picked it up that suddenly everybody in Silicon Valley knew about it. And I just, I love that story, because that fits with what you're saying. What's trickier in what you're saying is,

what to do about this problem. Yes. And, you know, what you're saying is, well, maybe the therefore, what is energy, you know, make sure you're pouring enough, you know, energy into it that it can get to where it's supposed to get to. But I do think that part of what you need to do, I've not been great at this, but I think part of it is like knowing what you control and what you don't and really being clear about that. I just listened to Anna, my wife shared this video with me today

of an actor making the distinction that when you go for an audience, audition. You're not, I mean, in a sense, you're trying to get a job. But the problem with that is that if you go in trying to get a job, then you, basically, you look needy. You feel needy because your orientation is, I've got to get this job. And you don't control whether you get the job. And so he's, he tried to say, he said basically that everything changed from me, became this really successful actor. Once he stopped trying to get the job and just focus on do the job. I'm here to do this job. And he said, it's not like you come over super arrogant. Hey, listen, I've got this great thing for you and you're lucky to have it. He said, but in a sense, you do go from this wanting someone to give you something to feeling like your job is to give

something. And that's your job. It's not waiting, like you go and do your job. And I think that that's, there is something about that here, which is like you do your job. You reach out to the, you reach out to the different various area, the podcasts, the media, the, you know, you do, you write your articles, there's a series of things that sort of go with the job of being an author and sharing ideas, but not be overly anxious about it. Yeah. because you just don't control that other side of it. And so you just, if you try to take responsibility for what you can't control,

then I think you just add a lot of stress. And I have at times done that where I just, because all it produces is worry and fear. And none of that is actually very helpful in getting the ideas out. Yeah. You start obsessing about. are the things I can't control happening, which case in point, case and point being sales numbers.

Like, it's not helpful actually. Actually, it's interesting. Like, it's not actually helpful when launching a book to look at how well it is selling.

He's like, I can't control that. What I can control is making sure that the people I have access to telling about the book, hear about it. You know, I want people to know it exists.

I want them to know about. I want them to hear a good pitch for it. But then it's the book. Yeah, then it's the book. The book actually rolling. So, Did that change, so once essentialism takes off, was that a radical change in terms of the topics that you were dealing with?

I know your consulting company obviously rolled on. You were doing, continuing to do speaking. How radical of a change was your now day to day in terms of the topics? So everything's essentialism now. Yeah. You're like, once it's like is that you are on a, you're on a train. and well, I don't know if that metaphor matters but everyone you're talking to

is talking to you about this. Like you'd hardly go anywhere where this isn't the subject. And what's funny about it is having written multipliers and got off that train to work on essentialism, I suddenly realized,

well actually there aren't that many people talking about like, aren't talking about multipliers, but everywhere I'd gone before, everyone was. And it's the same with essentialism. I mean, essentialism is a different scale, but it's still the same thing.

If I ever completely got off the essentialism train, if I could, I'd find, well, yeah, of course, like most people haven't even still haven't even heard of it. You know, you're still just at the beginning of a journey in terms of getting the, you know, anything like the whole of the US or the whole world to know about it. You know, you're really closer to the beginning of that journey than you are to the end of it. and and so that's how that's what the experience is and it's it's a great experience it was the problems I wanted to have um because you you're going to rooms full of people who want to become essentialists you're meeting people who are saying routinely um yeah this book has changed my

life. I mean, you're having a disproportionate number of those conversations. And actually, there's a, there's a great essay called, I think we, did we talk about this last time? Maybe somebody else, but it's called the catastrophe of success. Yes. And a great New York Times essay. And in that, he says something. I haven't experienced quite what he said, but I, I know what he's talking about. But he just said when people would come to him, this is the playwright of the glass menagerie. And he's saying, he said when people would say, oh, I love your player. It's so amazing. It changed my life. He said he just couldn't absorb a consume any of it. It just lost its impact, its substance for him. And it was only the work itself that got him grounded again. It was like when he just said, look, my. job is to write. That is my job. Like, yeah, I can't live in this world of, of the, of the, of, of the, of, of the, of, of the, that's, that's not going to cut it for me. That's going to live, lead me to like a not great life. And so it's, it's the, it's the, it's the work

itself. And that's where this, you know, this acting video that I was watching, it's like, do the job. Do your job. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't worry about getting the job. Do the job. And so I think that's, I think that's true even now where I say, you know, it's just, well, what's the next article you need to write? What's the next book you need to write? Like it's just, it just get back to the work itself. And I can hear you resonating. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I have tried to do. Yeah. Ship. All right. What's the next thing you're going to ship? What's the next thing you're going to right, make the next thing better. That's my, that's my anxiety hack is I'm not going to be too anxious about this thing I'm

putting out there now because where I really want to put my energies and thinking about how, well, the next thing, the next thing is going to be better, right? So instead of worrying about perfectionism on the thing that's out there, like, oh, I'm not sure if this was right. And what if it's not quite there? What if people don't like it? You're like, well, they might not. But I'm putting my energy now into thinking about how to improve my craft for the next

thing. You know, thinking about improving, stretching, growing, that's all very exciting. And it's all looking at things that are coming to the future. And I guess it's all an autonomy thing. And when you're looking at what's already out there and what's going to happen, things you can't control, the look as a control becomes external, suddenly it's a lot of anxiety, right? I can't, I can't control. What if this gets a bad review?

What if people hate it? What if it doesn't sell any copies? You know, so that's been my hack. And I like the terminology that you gave to it. Like, do your job. keep doing your job and the results will be what they'll be and it might be a little bit uneven

and you might be happy and so I'm surprised happy here and disappointed over here but it'll even out it'll probably even out in the end but so you stayed yeah well just just I think this is this is part

of the rightest thing is that you you you put as much love and care into each thing but then there's this very strange experience and I don't think there's much else like it where it the thing is finished and there's nothing you can do about it and all of that before it goes to one person.

I mean I had this moment the other day that the actual physical book just barely arrived and and I actually I videoed it because at the first we were just like well we just have a video of this for our family and then and then we ended up posting a clip of it and I was just watching a clip of it yesterday we put it out and and I look really awkward at this one moment when I'm opening the box thinking we weren't sure if it was even the books but we because we previously thought it was and it wasn't I was doing a live event I was like, well, the books have arrived and it wasn't. And so I thought this could happen again. But I have this moment of awkwardness just as I'm like opening it.

And I know that feeling, even as I look at it again now, I'm like, if I don't like it, you know, if somehow between the last thing, they didn't, they didn't do the color that we thought they would or some error was made or something, anything, it doesn't matter. You can't do a thing about it. And so I really thought I might not like it. And I'd just be stuck with it, of course. and I picked it up and I was pleasantly pleased. In fact, I could barely put the thing down now.

It has like a really nice vibe about it for me. And I sort of like, I can't believe I'm saying all this. I just like having it and holding it. Yeah. But there's all sorts of moments like that. There's the getting the book. It's all the same thing. It's just different versions of the same thing.

Then there's like sending it out to the world. I mean, right now, yes. people are at the time of our conversation, people can pre-order the book, but they're not reading it. You know, there's a few people getting advanced copies. And you're sort of waiting to hear what they think of it really. You know, are they, are they warm? Are they, this is great? Are they really, like, strong in their feedback?

And all of it is the same experience we've lived again and again because it's like, I can't do, I've done my job. I can't do anything about this job. of wait to see what it is. But really, like, my job is done. And I, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, it's already comforting to me. So I, I, and, and, and, and I, I, I know the sensation you're describing. It's already comforting to me to just be thinking about the next book. Yeah. To be going, okay, let's just, what's next? What could the next thing be? It's all, it's all, it's all, I've been, doing since my book launch a couple months ago is just, and what would the fore? And let me try it.

Let me extend my craft here. And what if I try a different form? And what, you know, I, good. So, yeah, you, you and I were speaking, or we're speaking the same language. But so, okay, so building the effortless, though. Well, I, I know. And I'm cutting us off now and I shouldn't be. But, but I, but like, the end of email.

I've said, wrong isn't it? World without email. A world without email, yeah. World without email is, I mean, first of all, as I've already said before, I think it's superb. But also, I add to this that it's going to have its own particular flow down the mountain. Yes. Like this book is going to be quoted from for a very long time. That's what I think.

It's going to exist for a long time because that's one of the things you've done with it. That's what you did boldly as you said, okay, I'm going to look, try to look into the, future to imagine something that right now at time of writing we're like a million miles from. Everybody's using email. I have to get more emails today than I did a year ago than I did five years ago. Like the patterns going the other way still, or at least it is my own experience. And I think that in a way that's part of, will be part of fulfilling what it is that you've envisioned because it's just like it's just going to get more and more unpleasant, more and more more unmanageable until, you know, this thing just breaks to pieces inevitably into something

better. And now I'm bracing me again, but by the way, I just got an email from someone, maybe ironically, but that talked about Stephen Covey, their father, Stephen Covey, who didn't have email. Yeah. He didn't have email. Think of that. Yeah. And, and, I mean, it's a little bit.

I mean, he had, he had people that had email for him. So he solved it by outsourcing it. But the very fact that he didn't have it, you know, just, just sort of speak somehow to this, to this subject that we're talking about. And I, getting that email today made me think, yeah, I think I want that. Like, how can we get to the point? where I don't have to do any email. That feels like something I might like. I mean, well, this is where our work really intertwines because I, you are hitting at the core from a different angle of a lot of these same issues. Like my equivalent of Covey is I think about my grandfather,

who like me, was an academic. It was an incredibly productive academic. And he didn't own a computer until after he retired. I mean, I helped them go by his first computer after he retired, Right. So he didn't have access to any of those tools, no email, no internet, no word processors even, right? And yet he was more productive than I am as an academic. And academia is an interesting case study here because it's a job that hasn't really changed, right? Like the core deliverable is the same. Writing is the same way, right? When Stephen Covey was writing seven habits, it's writing a book about these type of topics. The deliverables are really the same. And he did an age without email. It didn't seem to hold him back from being successful. But, but, essentialism and effortless, this might help explain what's going on, right? Well, if you're focusing on the things that really matter and you set up how you do this work and like, okay, how can I make the stuff that really matters effortless, right? How can I make it? My grandfather built a library in his office.

He had thousands of books and you had this routine. He had an assistant. He would write on legal pads and she would take them and type them up. And he just figured out like, how do I take this core thing I want to do, write academic books in this case? and how do I figure out how to make it into something that I enjoy doing? I can do it. The friction that gets in the way is out of the way. And he's a very successful academic, you know, and somehow you get to the core of do the right things, set up the right ways to do them.

And I want to elaborate on that second piece here in a second. And technology just confuses all that. It could help it, but it doesn't. And I just, it's oddly confounding. And I'm a computer scientist, but it's oddly confounding that, like, you know, Like, that's what we need to do. And technology somehow seems to be completely antagonistic to those two things that seem so fundamental. What should I be doing and what's the best way to do it?

I don't know why a computer or the internet or a phone makes that harder, but somehow it makes it impossibly harder. Well, I mean, there's a lot to agree with what you just said. you think about writers in time who have had an enormous impact. My son was just reading To Kill a Mockingbird. He just finished it yesterday. And you just think about the achievement of that book and its impact all over the world, still read, appreciated by critics and just the popular press as well. And on and on it goes, it's endlessly in the top of the top of the time. It's endlessly in the 100 bestsellers on Amazon. You know, the author has passed away and still the impact goes on.

I mean, this is, none of this is because of the technology. Yes. The technology plays a role, you know, in distributing the information, making it easy to buy it, you can share it easier. I mean, there's various ways that technology has played a role, but not in the writing of it and not in it. having, you know, the first and number of waves of impact. And so it really does make one go back to like the craft itself and say, look,

I've got to create space to do the job. You know, and and taught having this conversation today really makes me again to remember to, to put, you know, to schedule that time. I mean, right now it's in a book launch moment. So you sort of say, okay, it's imbalanced to be long-term balanced. But how soon can I get back to just two hours of writing, writing two pages a day, just get back to that life? Because that's the job. I want to take a quick moment to talk about another one of the sponsors that makes this show possible.

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And now back to our interview with Greg McEwen. Yes. And in fact, I think you're the person I first heard the term monk mode from. So I know, I know you have thought about that. But what, so what I remember,

we talked years ago, I don't know what the context was. This must have been a podcast or something. And I remember at the time, you know, I was surprised and impressed by how you were saying, I'm not rushing to write another book right now. I mean,

essentialism is an important topic. And I want to keep developing this. topic, but then you talk about in the front of early on in your new book, Effortless, why that some things happened looking at your life, there's some acute things, but just some more general overload. What is the, what is the origin story here that pushed you from, I'm just with essentialism to I'm missing a piece here that I get out? Well, let's just use the metaphor that we've probably all heard before for a second. The,

the big rocks theory. if you have a container, if you put in the sand first and then the small rocks and then the big rocks, it doesn't fit. The geometry doesn't work. But if you take the same container and you put in the big rocks first and then the small rocks and then the sand, then it all fits. And this is all symbolism, right? The big rocks are the most important things in your life, the essential things. It's your health.

It's your most important relationships. It's the projects that you feel will make the greatest impact. And I suddenly just found myself in a situation where despite being more selective than I'd ever been, in the sense that I was saying no to more things than I'd ever said no to before, and saying no to things that I would have absolutely loved. to say yes to a year or two before. Like, I'm not writing the next book and I'm not doing a workshop business and I put on hiatus the class I'd co-designed at Stanford.

I mean, all of those things were like, you know, really exciting things to me. No to all of that. I still had more, like, what do you do if you have too many big rocks? These are important relationships. I mean, these are important responsibilities, I mean to say. I've got four children now. We're going to put one of those down while that big rock. We just won't worry about that today. Do you, I was already being really selective about what work to go and do so that,

and I wanted to be doing the work I was doing. I was saying yes intentionally. Yeah. But with all of that, it still felt like, you know, I am, I have, I am running out or have run out of space. and then in the midst of that, then have a family crisis come up. And that just pushes it over the edge.

It's just the cracks in the theory, the Big Rock's theory, just to get bigger. And it's like I need out of necessity for my own circumstance, I need to learn, if it can be learned, a new

way of doing. So there's, you know, if you had to summarize it, essentialism in one word is prioritization and effortless in one word is simplification.

How can you make it simpler to do the thing that is essential? And, you know, we can get to what the crisis is and so when I'd, but, But this is what the crisis helped me to learn.

Well, challenged me, gave me a forcing function to go and see if there might be an alternative way to do, an alternative way to execute. And what started as a personal need, a necessity for my family, grew into research, grew into what has now, grown up into a book effortless. And yeah. Well, I love this concept because it, it of course really resonated. I went through a semi-similar experience with Deep Work, you know, same idea where it took off and

it brought in lots of opportunities and really whittle things down to what's most important. But you're right, big rocks, even a small number of a very important big rocks. are big. And to be able to make those rocks fit, you have to change it. The productive difference I want to push on here, because I think is really interesting and important, is that there's a difference between the simplicity that you talk about in this book and what people would normally think of as productivity, right? Because typically what would people throw at this issue is like, well, yeah,

now that you've got to just be more productive now about the things that you've chosen to do, let's get Omnifocus going. Let's get, you know, let's, let's, whatever, let's get Cal's time block planner. Let's get our GTD system. Now it's just a matter of being more productive so you can fit more in type of thing, which doesn't, it's not really resonating with people now. Effortless felt very different than that. So how do we best articulate the difference between the simplicity of making something effortless

versus more mechanical notion of like, okay, well, now I just need to be more productive with what's on my plate. Yeah, I really like that, that observation, and I'm glad that you felt that it was different. Strangely, I mean, I often will be sort of put in a productivity category, but I never think of essentialism or effortless as being about that at all, really. And so I love that you felt that it was saying something different, and it is. And it is.

And excuse me. And it is one story in the book that I, you know, of what this looks like in practice was with a manager working at a university who is the kind of person who is already driven, engaged, highly engaged, motivated. But she also is making. Is this a videographer? Yes. Yes. Ooh, that resonated. Okay, go on.

So she's the type of person who feels guilty if she eats lunch. That if she's not exhausted, she must not be doing enough. She's up at 4 a.m. in the morning photoshopping for a volunteer youth group at her church the next day. No one's asking her to do that. No one's expecting it. and yet that's sort of become her norm. And so I said to her, I mean, the traditional productivity thing, to your point, I suppose might be, well, let's see if we can time manage your life better.

Let's try and it's sort of an incremental improvement. Let's try, maybe you can have 30 minute meetings instead of an hour long meetings. You know, it's just like slicing a bit more. And instead I said, look, I don't want you to be overwhelmed trying to change. So I'm just going to give you one specific thing you can do. And it's just ask a new question. And don't even worry about whatever questions you've been asking the past. Just focus on this new question.

The next time you start a project or someone asks you to do a project, just ask this question. And the question is, it's intentionally to invert her thinking is how could this be effortless? So she gets this call from a professor who asks her to get her videography department, well, team, to come and record his class for the next four months for the semester. And she just immediately goes into mode. She's like, okay, we're going to do the, we'll do, we'll over deliver for him. He's going to love us. He's going to be so impressed by what we do.

We'll do graphics. We'll do music. we'll take multiple angles, so we'll have multiple people in the room, we'll edit the whole thing, we'll have intros and outroes, and he's just going to be wowed by this. And then she remembers, okay, she's got this coaching, how could this be effortless? Before you jump into all the execution, could there be an easier path? And so she has a little more discovery with him about this question. and it turns out that this whole thing is really only for one student who's going to miss

some of the classes because he's going to have an athletic commitment. And so the solution they come up with together is that one of the other students will just record it on their phone and, you know, text or email it to him after the class. Like, that's it. The professor's just delighted he hadn't thought about that as a simple solution either. And so he goes away delighted. She has spent 10 minutes on the phone with him. And she just hangs up and she's like, okay, that was magic.

Because I've saved four months of work for me and my team. And he's already happy and it only took 10 minutes. And so I like that story as a contrast of like productivity and just doing more and powering through, even more efficiently powering through versus like if you get into this new mindset, It's just unbelievable what you can do because you're not going through the same channels, you know, that you've been, you know, the same mental channels you've been processing in the past. You're opening up a completely different, fresh and by definition, easier path. I mean, the way I was explaining this to my wife earlier, because I was talking about the interview. I was going to do today.

I often apply way too systematic frameworks to everything. That's the way I think. But if we think about productivity and objectives, you kind of figure out what you want to do. These things are really made up of what's the objective? And then behind the objective is like what are the different parts we have in place to execute that objective? And then productivity can come in and say, when do we schedule those parts? And essentialism helped figure out there should be less of these things. right. There's less of these focus on the important objectives. Don't do too many of these things. And there's a lot of productivity work. I'm like, okay, how do you make sense to organize and schedule, make time for the things you need to do? And the piece we were missing is that once you have the objective, the parts that are behind it, like the things you need to achieve that objective, that's way more flexible and way more variable. And there's huge wins there looking for simplicity. And I had been doing some of this in my own life, sort of important.

infamously, like around my department without knowing the terminology. Like I had always done this on a small scale with classroom management. And this is why the videographer example really resonated with me. Because there was always things I would do when I was teaching a class about, you know, I want you to learn this material. But there's a lot of different ways we might do assignments. Like a lot of different formats for the assignments and what type of assignments they are and how you hand them in and how my TAs get them.

And thinking about that latter end could actually make the goal. of helping you learn by giving you assignments and grading them, there's ways to do this that significantly simplifies the moving parts on my, on my end, without changing at all the objective of, I want to make sure that you, yep, you get a practice material and learn it as a student. And I'd look around and see other professors who, if you didn't think about that piece, of like, what are the actual moving parts I'm using to accomplish this objective? You end up with classes that are taking 3x more time. Students aren't learning more.

It's just, you never thought to optimize. like, well, what are the different ways I might actually want to implement or make progress on that objective? And then it just, it seems to scale to all scales from very small things, like my students' assignments, to, you know, the very nature of how you're doing your job. Like, what do I really, do I really need to have this job anymore as a writer? Do I need to be doing a pot? Like, there's all sorts of like major decisions that can make as well. So that's my overly detailed probably structure for understanding what you're doing. I love it.

I love that analysis. And I think it's right on the money. And I mean, having a few thoughts based on our conversation, but one of them is one of the little case studies that came across in researching effortless. And I came across two that were similar. enough in two tech companies that I thought it was valuable to include them both. You could technically as a writer just have chosen one to make the point, but I thought it was significant that two of the great tech pioneers had taken the same approach to two different tech situations. So the first, and the people they were working with had made the same error. So this is Amazon and Apple dealing with

two different things. I won't try and tell the stories together, but I think they deserve to be told maybe back to back to extrapolate the main point. So the first is at Amazon. There's a technician has been assigned to simplify the checkout process on Amazon.com. And this is like years back. and at the time, people are really wary of buying anything online. So even if you found a book on Amazon that you would actually like to have, you're just a bit, it just all seems a bit sketchier. And then the process for checkout gave you lots of opportunities to back out instead of checkout.

One was, okay, put in your name. you type in your name click okay now put in the first line of your address type that click now the second line click now your zip code click yeah yeah and and and and every single every click is a new page yep so just checking out you you might you might check out it might be 20 pages well every one of those clicks every page is such a chance to go okay forget it it's just too much i mean even now i experienced the same thing if i suddenly you know yes i wanted i'm ready to go And I just have to fill out all that information. It's plenty of times.

I'm like, oh, no, that's just too much. Especially if it's on my phone. I'm just like, oh, no, just not worth it if I have to do an extra few steps. You know, a little more friction has a lot of downside. And so he has been working on this project for two months to simplify it. And he's going to go and meet with the first employer of Amazon and also with Jeff Bezos. He goes to go to lunch at this brewery. And somewhere in that meeting, Jeff just says, look.

look, I'm not talking about, I'm not, I don't mean what you're doing. Like, I mean one click. And we all know, because we've used it, that one click became a thing. They patented it. And, you know, one could even be critical, as many people have been of like, well, how do you, you know, how do you patent that? How do you have access to that? I mean, this we're talking like 20 years of a patent of being protected of, from their competitors. But the thing is, whether someone should be able to have that much advantage for that long,

that's for somebody else to think about. But it is worth acknowledging that nobody else at the time was thinking that way about the problem. Everyone else was thinking about it the same way as this technician was, which is take every step of the existing process and simplify it. Rather than, well, let's just, and here's the principle, start from zero. Can we do this in one click? Can we construct this? So a single step will be, it will, we'll guess as the result we want. And the second story, you can see the illustration, right? At the time, this is, this is when DVD burning is brand new. There's a company, I mean,

really, the only people who had DVD burners at the time are, you know, professionals. They're working in, you know, sound studios, recording studios. And these are like, we're talking $60,000 for a DVD burning system. Well, Apple comes to this company. They're one of the leaders in the field, and they say, look, we'd like to buy your technology, your software, and you know, come and work with us. And then they're given two weeks to come up with a vastly simpler software interface,

so it can be put on the Mac as standard. Well, I talk to the, the technician behind this is Mike Evangelist, real name. And he told me they had a 5,000 page manual for how to use this, which is itself almost unthinkable. But they said, well, we've got to simplify this. So they vastly simplified everything. They just started taking whole functionality out that they didn't think really was necessary.

And they're very proud of what they did. They spend two weeks preparing for this meeting with Steve Jobs after they've been bought and they have this on the calendar. And they are proud to show the slides, everything. Steve walks in and within like two minutes of the meeting, they are embarrassed about what they've brought to the table. They don't want to show the slides and they never do. Because he just comes in and he says, look, this is the app we need to be.

And people may be familiar with this story, this part of the story. He just goes to the whiteboard, he just draws it up. He says, we're going to have one button, right? It's just you drag from where you have the recording and you're going to go to where it says burn, drop it there and you click burn. He says, that's the app we're going to build. Go do that. And again, the principle is start with zero. He said that.

That was the eureka for him. He said the thing is, is not when you say simplify, don't start with all your complexity and chisel away at it. Start with nothing and say, how can I accomplish what I want in a single step? And so to me, this is, it was profound to me to hear these two, two people that have went on to revolutionize technology, revolutionized the world through simplicity, through effortless experiences. Like they got this principle. They were doing it. Don't, don't try to start with everything you've got, start from zero, go from there. Because it doesn't matter how simple you make a step. It's always easier to not have the principle. step at all. Right. I love that. It's like looking at a universal remote, you know, where it's crazy. And don't think, how do we take some of these buttons away? Right. You do what you do what Apple did with the Apple TV. What if we just, you know, had three buttons and the things you need to do can be in the

software. Yeah, don't, because you're just going to get a slightly less crowded universal remote. It's still going to have the same issues. I love that. I mean, and I have to save the listeners. I have been putting a lot of these ideas in the practice since I read the book. I had been doing this without the terminology before, but I think this has helped clarify. And I know our time is short, so I want to just briefly bring up one other point that I thought gave me, gave me on permission. So what did you do? What are you doing? I'm still, I'm just so curious about that. Oh, so there's a lot of different things I've been working on. So, for example, I'm trying to overhaul riding. in my life, right? Because putting books aside, I write articles. I like to write, I, it's important for me to, to, I write all the time. I write articles for magazines. I write articles for newspapers. And I wanted that to be more effortless, but I didn't have the terminology. To me, I wanted to be a better background piece of my life. And actually reading the first part of the book about the effortless state, which was the thing I wanted to mention anyways, which was, were you really giving permission people to say, sometimes it's not just a

about simplifying what goes into executing something, but making the circumstances actually more enjoyable, you know, like that. And I had always done that with my blog post, right? I've written a blog post every week since 2007. And it's never been a problem for me because long ago, I just, I figured out this way I do it. I do it at night. It's once a week. It's after the kids go to bed. And I, and I, and I have a location and maybe I'll have a drink and I'll put on a record. And it's, It's an enjoyable habit. I'd feel weird missing. I love this.

It's not that hard. And so I've been trying to re-engineer much more interesting writing routines, times, times, and places, this day, this time, this place. And to make it more of a background hum of just, that's just these times, these places, this coffee shop, there's a place in a park I go now. And that's very much trying to make it simpler and more enjoyable. So like part two and part one. So it's, it's, I'm just always writing on these times every week.

So the writing piles up effortlessly, right? It's not, there's a deadline. Okay, now I got to scramble and make this happen. And two, I'm trying to make the experiences like aesthetically and psychologically more interesting. So that it's, it's, I enjoy doing it. I look forward to it. There's no effort required to say, ooh, I got to force myself to hit the keyboard.

You know, like it's time to, it's time to do my exercises, you know, type thinking. So that's like one example of many, but that, that effortless state piece of that was a big permission for me, that I should be thinking about that more for the other parts of my life is even after you simplify, how do you set up the rituals, locations, the aesthetics, the actions so that it's easier to do it. I love the example. It breathes life into what I was trying to express in that part of the book. And because what you did, so let's just deconstruct what you did with the. blog. There you are. You're saying 2007, so we're talking 14 years now, which is, you know, like almost a generation of you doing this. And the way you describe it is effortless. Because you, okay, we should, we should back up further to say that there is a seemingly

endless flow of quotes and ideas from writers about how terrible writing is. You know, the old one, well, writing is easy. All you have to do is get to your typewriter and bleed. Stuff like that. There's all over the place, right? And that's sort of like a, that's like a soundtrack to use John Acuff's term for this in his new book of the same name. That's one way of thinking about writing. But he's chosen a new soundtrack. So he uses the word soundtrack for just the, you know, a repetitive thought that you have. And there are all these bad, broken soundtracks that are just like on repeat sometimes. Oh, writing is hard. Writing is miserable. You know, it's hard, but it's worth it. These are soundtracks that we have. And so he realized,

where his wife came to him and said, you're miserable for the two years, to be around for the two years to write a book. And then you're miserable for the two years afterwards while you're marketing it. Which as an author who's going back to back writing books, it means he must be miserable to be around all the time. I mean, that's sort of what he's, that's what the feedback was. And so he said, okay, this time when I'm writing, I'm not going to do it. He chose a new soundtrack.

And the soundtrack he chose was light and easy. Yeah. Which is one of the reasons I like the book because it's just so aligned to, you know, that section on effortless. So now you designed, you went from the chore of writing, writing a blog for plenty of people, that is drudgery, as stressful, it's burdensome, it's hard. And you said, either deliberately or not, you created the space, the time, you're there. I love that description of putting on the record. I mean, it's very, that's a ritual.

And that's the difference. There's a difference between these three terms. There's a chore. That's just miserable routine. There's a habit. Well, it might not even be a routine, right? A chore. It's just a thing to be done and we don't want to do it.

There's a habit where, okay, you've taken that chore and now there is, at least it gets done. There's a routine to it. And then there's a ritual. And that's really different. A ritual is a habit with a soul. It's distinctive quality, its distinction between a habit is that a ritual is something that the doing of it itself is enjoyable. You're not just pleased when the thing is done. You're not just afterwards going, well, thank goodness I exercise that feels good now.

The ritual itself is, you know, somehow delicious to you. It's somehow, you know, rejuvenating. Doing itself becomes good. And that's what you've described, I think. Yeah. Even if it's hard. And it can be hard. That's what's the work can be hard, but it can be enjoyable.

And those two things going, I used to use the distinction of my writing, hard work versus hard to do work. Something is, it could be hard, but incredibly enjoyable to do. And that's very different than work that is hard to do in the sense that like you're dragging yourself and you don't enjoy it. Well, and the, and, you know, I'm not against. I mean, the term is actually. quite an imprecise term, hard work. But I'm not against the positive connotations of that. I mean, I want my children to know how to work hard. Of course I do. It will make a big difference in their life. But I don't want all the toxic stuff that says, well, you have to be burned out

all the time. You have to be exhausted. And nor do I think it is helpful to anyone to simply make the idea that effort itself must be grinding, that doing, that the doing important things must be dreadful. Like, how does suffering serve us? How do, what if you could, what if the important work that's going to take your concentration could also be enjoyable, something you look forward to? Yeah. And it's something you've constructed that works. I mean, Go ahead. And I was that I'm with you because I remember that from your book that yeah, hard is pejorative.

And I'm just remembering before I coined a term deep work, I was using the phrase hard focus. And I didn't like it for exactly that reason, right? I was like it sounds like hard work. It sounds like hard to do. I was talking about hard. It's not hard to do. It's just hard. And then deep, deep work.

I was like that gets much more accurately what I'm trying to say. it's work that is important and demanding, but all the pejoratives are gone. So anyways, I love that, though. I'm with you. My soul is with you here. Yeah, and I love deep work for that. I love that you managed to find that right phrase because it is different, right? Hard focus does not produce the same image as deep work. And can we make deep work enjoyable? Well, in some ways, to do deep work at all. You must make it enjoyable in some sense because at least you've got to create the space for it. But we can do, we can layer on better solutions to ritualize it than even just, okay, it's time-blocked on the calendar and we have now space and we've protected it. I think that's a necessary

condition. But what if you could then, you know, in exactly the ways that you've been describing, I mean, even what you just said about the coffee shop thing and like, okay, well, maybe I can construct a habit around writing these kinds of articles or writing even the next book and make it so that you get into a ritual that works. There's lots of things I did that made writing effortless, not effortless. There were plenty of things as I look back. I think, well, that wasn't, that wasn't helpful, like worrying. But there were other things that really worked and were rituals that I miss now. How bad can something be if you miss it if you want to do more of it? And one of those things was, it was almost, I described it almost sort of Harry Potter-esque because

I had my talented editor, Talia Crone. We had one Google Doc, so we avoided all the endless version control that you normally have. One Google Doc, so that was easy. And then I would just text her, hey, I'm going to go in there if you want to come in. And so she would turn up. We hardly had any phone calls. We did have some, but not many. I had Jonathan Cullen helped me to do research for the book as well. And he was part of the effortless team. And there would be so many times we would just all go in there at the same time. And I would see, you know, okay, this story I'd asked him to find suddenly is appearing. You know, she'd be editing something I'd written the day before. I'd be working on the next section. And it was like you could see it all

appearing and being improved in front of your eyes. And I remember how often I would work on that. It just, it just felt so great to work on a team that was, in fact, I mean, the team element was as seamless as anything I've done. And I don't mean that there weren't things we could improve even in that. There are plenty of things that we could have done. And we will, you know, next time in the future, but, but the experience wasn't, it was just, was, was, was effortless. It felt effortless. Yeah. And, and, and, and that's, you know, most people have experienced this. So they know it's not just made up. It's not just like, you know, good in, good for you. Everyone's experienced it sometimes, but the question is, you've already put it so well is like, well, I've got it working

in one area. Could I now apply that? same thing to take something else that feels hard and make it feel effortless and enjoyable. And that is what this book helps you do, which, which of course, I could, talking with you about this is effortless. So I could talk with you for hours, but I've already blown past our schedule here. And I want to be respectful of your time. But let me just say to the people listening, if you're an essentialism fan, you have to read effortless. If you haven't read essentialism, you have to read them both. It is a great back-to-back pairing. They complement each other well. I use these ideas all the time. They're easy to find in the bookstore because alphabetically

they'll be near each other. I know they don't actually sort by a title. But Greg, this is great. And I'm, I am really appreciative that you came on the show. I think this was a chance to really talk about what I think is a huge idea, just like essentialism was. And I know the book is going to be, the book's going to be a big success. You don't have to have that anxiety. But in the meantime, we'll just effortlessly work on what's next. Cal, it's always such a pleasure for me to talk with you. I love, I love that I have a podcast and you have a podcast. If for no other reason, then it has given us an excuse to have these conversations and to be in each other's world. Thank you very much for having me today.

Great. Thanks, Greg. Well, that was great. It's always a pleasure to talk with Greg. Check out its new book, Effortless. Available everywhere. I'll be back on Thursday with our next listener calls mini episode. And until then, as always, stay deep.