The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 416: Greg McKeown - How To Make It Easier To Do What Matters Most

Episode Date: April 25, 2021

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12  https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Greg McKeown wrote the New York Times best-seller, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.  As well as frequently being the #1 Time Management book on Amazon, this book challenges core assumptions about achievement to get to the essence of what really drives success. His latest book is titled, Effortless: Make It Easier To Do What Matters Most. Notes: Essentialism was about doing the right things; Effortless is about doing them in the right way... The best free throw shooter ever is not Michael Jordan or Steph Curry… It's Elena Delle Donne. 93.4%. "If you keep it simple, less can go wrong." The word NOW comes from the Latin phrase, novus homo, which means "a new man" or "man newly ennobled." The spirit of this is clear: each new moment is a chance to start over. A chance to make a new choice." "Whatever has happened to you in life. Whatever hardship. Whatever pain. They pale in comparison to the power you have to choose what to do now." The question to ask yourself: "What's something essential that you're under investing in?" The second question is: How can you make that effortless? Life changes the day you discover residual results How to make it effortless? Create a routine so you don't have to think about it. The competition to the South Pole -- The difference between Amundsen versus Scott Amundsen -- 15 miles per day, no matter what. The "15 mile march." Scott -- Push to exhaustion every day. Amundsen and four others arrived at the pole on December 14, 1911. Five weeks ahead of a British party led by Robert Falcon Scott as part of the Terra Nova Expedition. Scott and his four companions died on the return journey. Amundsen made it to the South Pole and back to base camp without suffering a death in the party. Consistency day in and day out help Amundsen "achieve the goal without particular effort." Effortless is about simplification. Ask, "what if it could be easy?" Ask: "Is there an effortless way to do this? Highland High School Rugby - Won 19 national championships: Systems were put in place Consistent systems are the key How to deal with the guilt when we don't work as hard? Give your best to what you're doing, but have an open mind to finding a better way to do something This book for Greg grew out of agony... His daughter was living an ideal life... And then had health issues that completely changed their family. They had two possible paths to help her: The harder, heavier path of 24/7 always on work... OR Easier path of being grateful. Sharing optimism, and live in the state to help re-wire the brain. "Be grateful for every thing possible." They chose the latter and Eve got better... How they chose to respond was everything...

And I found that there are two or three questions that just get people right to the point and help them to start applying essentialism instantly. You know, don't worry about all the things you can't control. What's something essential that you are doing something about that you're underinvesting in? Do you have team members asking you the same questions over and over again and you wish there was one place they could go to find all the information they need to do their work? Well, there is. Sweet Process is software that enables companies to have a central place for all their procedures, processes, and policies. It makes it easy for management and employees to collaborate together to create procedures, processes, and policies. Sweet Process becomes the one source of truth, the one place where every employee, regardless of their role or place in the company, can go to find information on how work is done.

And our listeners will receive a special extended 28-day free trial. Go to sweetprocess.com slash learning leader to sign up now. No credit card required. Sweetprocess.com slash learning leader. Welcome to the learning leader show presented by Rixie and Meyer. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, learners to 4422, to become part of Mindful Monday. You along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me, 9 o'clock Eastern, with the latest ideas, articles, books, podcast, videos to help you start your week with

excellence. You'll also receive more details about how my book, Welcome to Management, will help you become a more effective leader. Text learners to 4-4-222. Now on tonight's feature leader, a great one. It's Greg McEwen. He's back, New York Times, bestselling author of Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. That book was voted by Goodreads as the number one leadership and success book to read in a lifetime.

And his latest work is titled Effortless. Make it easier to do what matters most. And Greg told me essentialism was about doing the right things. Effortless is about doing them in the right way. A few of the other topics we discussed. The one question you need to ask yourself every single day. Then how to create a root. to receive feedback from your friends.

And then the two possible paths you can take as a leader and how to know which one is right for you. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a great one. It's Greg McEwen. Greg, you've done something new since last time we talked. So you wrote this book Essentialism, which I think you sold a few million copies. Is that right? I know millions of people have read it all over the world. certainly more than my mother really understands.

It's pretty awesome. Pretty awesome. But the new thing I wanted to hit on because it's kind of more in my world is that you started your own podcast a few months ago. And that is kind of off the backs of essentialism. And I'm curious kind of the way you feel now as someone who's regularly on the microphone outside of just the world of writing and you got your own podcast going now. Yeah. I mean, launching the What's Essential. podcast has been one of the really educational experiences of my life, really. And one of the things

that I've enjoyed the most is having conversations just like normal. I'm having these conversations all the time, but normally you don't share them with anyone. And actually, that's really enjoyable, but it's also a bit surreal because I'll be talking to people now or sometimes on other people's podcast and they'll say, oh, well, you know, how is so and so in your family or how is this thing? And I don't know how they know until, oh, yes, of course, because we've been talking about it openly and honestly in the podcast all the time. But it is a strange new world once you're into, once you're into the great world of podcasting. And it's been great also to meet some of the people that you just have an excuse to meet them, a BJ Fogg. People I respect. We just had

Matthew McConaughey's on, they haven't broadcast that yet, but we'll soon, And it's been it's been great to just have a chance to talk with people you otherwise wouldn't have the chance to. So for all of that, I found podcasting to be a really great experience. I've found it to be one of the coolest aspects just of living in general because you get a chance to have these documented conversations and basically ask whatever you want to, in a lot of cases, your heroes, or I guess in my case for sure, where normally I would read your book, I would take note. I would spread the spread the word, tell my friends, but now I get to take the extra, extra fun step of actually talking to the dude who wrote the book. And that part is so neat. And then to actually form real relationships that are meaningful and go beyond just the first

conversation is, I couldn't have anticipated that. I'm sure you're feeling the same. Yeah, I love it. I mean, I think podcasting is its own thing, right? Like it's not, it's not like speaking. It's not like teaching. Of course, it's not like writing. It's its own genre.

You have to learn about it. I'm in that learning process. Still, I feel like a beginner. But I love that it really celebrates the conversation. You know, that that's what it is. I remember Seinfeld talking about this. Basically, why are we not as humans, exhausted from the idea of listening and watching two other humans talk. He's like everything's

that. That's what the news is. That's what most TV shows are. That's what podcasting is. That's what comedians and cars getting coffee is. And yet we do love this. It's such a foundational part of what it means to be human. And I feel like podcasting is a chance. It's the craft of conversation. and just to be able to listen. And as you say, I mean, ask questions that you wouldn't normally ask. I've really enjoyed doing that, you know, turning the tables. Yeah, and as the host, too, when you do see someone out in the wild who is a listener and they bring up episode 138 with you and you're like,

they're reminding you of what you said and maybe a personal story you shared, that that sense of the listener getting to know you is very real it's hard as you know long form conversations you can't fake it you can't really be in character if you want to do it for for long it's just too hard and so i i find i have this really intimate relationship as weird as that is to say with a listener because they truly do get to know you over the course if they've listened to your deep conversations for years. They really do get a sense of who you are and a weird kind of a love for you and you them as you can then have more conversations because of that. I find that part to be awesome about it. I completely agree. And it also puts you, I mean, I just was on Chris Evans,

who's a big deal like everybody knows him in the UK. radio broadcaster. And I listened to him when I was growing up on his radio show. And he read Essentialism. And so that's how I got to know him being on his show a year ago or so. Anyway, I was just on it again. But one of the things that was different, he said, oh, I'm so glad.

One of the reasons I'm glad you wrote this new book is that I discovered you had this podcast. And then he started talking to me about one of the episodes. And it was so like, it was so meta to be talking to him about the book, but then the new book, but then about this conversation I'd had. And the thing about podcasting, I mean, again, it was BJ Fogg, for some reason I'm now talking about multiple times in the podcast. But, I mean, he wrote tiny habits.

And so he's a terrific source of knowledge, but we did it in an unusual way where the first half of the conversation, I said, okay, I'm not going to ask you about your book. I want to know about you. What is something essential for you that you're underinvesting in? And he identified that really what he wants is a three-day one. weekend. He works all through the weekends. He works too much. He doesn't need to. He doesn't have to. He's really established. He's a successful author. He's created this, this whole habits academy, basically, at

Stanford. So he doesn't need to do this, but he still does. And so we got to why that matters to him and identified it, got specific. And then the second half of the conversation, I said, okay, well, you're the expert on how to do this now. You know, you're the guy who knows how to do this. You're the expert. So now you help us coach you on how to apply your ideas to you. And it really was sort of magical to do that. And I think that's why Chris raised it in the conversation I just had with him, but it was still so surreal to go, how does he even know about that? Because that conversation felt so personal. It just felt like a one-on-one conversation. Well, it was. That's what podcasting is, is a one-on-one conversation that a ton of people end up getting to listen to. But that's, I think,

I'm still new enough to it that I find it. I don't know what they've listened to. I don't know what they're going to raise. Whereas in previous to podcasting, someone would read your book and the things they're going to ask you are pretty framed. They're going to ask you about this story or that story, this chapter or that chapter.

It's pretty clear bounds as to what they're likely to ask you. As soon as you have podcasting, that's just out the window. You know, it's a far less edited process. It's more raw, which is what, of course, I like about it and why I think listeners like podcasting. But it's, you know, so anyway, I'm just, I'm trying to learn from the greats like you. I'm just trying to figure this out. Well, I want to pinpoint a question there.

So let me see if I wrote this down right. What's something essential that you're under investing in? Is that what you asked them? Yeah, that's right. So to elaborate on this question, because I think this could be, certainly it ties back to you an essentialism and that's what you're first known for with your first book. But, but, but, but I think this could be a useful question for all of us. Yeah. So if, if, if, if we're going to do that now, see, you've set yourself up here. Now you have to

answer the question. As how, I had a feeling you might do that because now we're going to get into. What's your first answer to it? Okay. Central for you as as you're, I'm going to put, I'm going to put, I'm going to put, I'm going to put the ball up for you to hit and for you to talk. And I'm going to be thinking as you're talking just, just just to be very meta here. I'm going to be thinking about my answer as you're explaining the purpose of this question. Okay. The purpose of the question is that it just cuts through all of the sometimes philosophy of essentialism where people go, oh, I get the idea, but I don't necessarily. And I found that there are two or three questions that just get people right to the point and help them to start applying essentialism instantly.

you know what really you know don't worry about all the things you can't control what's something it could be personal could be professional it doesn't matter but normally the rule is so you you have unintentionally violated the unwritten rule which is that you have to say the first thing you think about oh not not the thing that you have thought about what's safe what's not safe whatever okay first thing i i did can i i i'll answer because i and this is and i promise this is the first thing i thought of And it's because it's top of mind. So because of the way the world is, I haven't got to see as many people as I used to. And so just yesterday, Greg, I met up with three guys.

They're all high school coaches, one football and two basketball. And one of them just won a state championship. And so it was a kind of a celebratory thing. And the other one, the football coach, I mean, I could use their names. Brooke Cups is a basketball coach, Eli Liker, his assistant. And Garron Stokes is a friend. friend of Brooks, who's become a friend of mine. Anyway, Garon just got a big time job at Division 1 school in Columbus, Ohio here. And we were just talking through, like getting a new program

started, starting over. And the purpose was, was for us to get together to kind of walk through starting a program at a new place. And so a good reason to get together. And I think we had really good dialogue. But what I realized in that moment, I went home and talked to my wife for an hour last night about this was I loved that. I just loved the four of us hanging out together, talking through leadership topics, starting something new, the challenges we face, the people dynamics, and us coming together. And we all kind of had these texts afterwards are like, why don't we do this more often? And so if the question is, what's something that's essential that I'm underinvesting in.

And I can blame part of it on the pandemic, I guess. But I actually think it's being together in person with a small group of friends talking about important topics. Like I would say I'm underinvesting in that right now. And I, as my wife, Miranda and I talked about last night, that's a change that I'm going to be intentional about. And that's why I said to each of those guys this morning, we're all up early working out at various places.

I said, look, let's just, let's make sure this becomes a habit. This becomes something that we regularly do because we all just loved it. And we realized that we didn't, we don't do that enough. And I think that's something I'm underinvesting and that is absolutely essential. Yeah, okay. Let me tell you what I heard. You, I mean, I definitely see there's a pandemic thread to this, which is that whatever someone's appetite for sociality and camaraderie is, right, there's a whole range. extrovert, introvert, the whole continuum, no matter what level you're at, you didn't get your needs met in the last year. Yep.

Pretty across the board. And for many of us, we only understand what we value in its violation. And so what I hear you saying is, wow, I didn't know how much I missed this. I didn't know how much I needed it. Before it was about satisfied, I've suddenly had a particularly positive example of it. I just, it met a need. And so now I want to formalize that so that it doesn't just happen when I think about it deliberately, explicitly, randomly, but that consistently without putting in extra cycles of thought and effort, this is going to happen. That's what you want.

Yes. How does that play with what you're hearing when you ask that question? What it says to me, I mean, I just think you've identified something that is essential, that's doable, that's achievable. And really, that's like question one of two questions that I think together are surprisingly powerful. The second question is, is how can you make that effortless? Tell me more. How can I make this effortless? Well, you know, effort is, is when you have to think about something. It's mental exertion. And really what we want is to do as little of that as possible. And that doesn't mean we shouldn't think. I'm like sort of a professional thinker.

So it's not like I think thinking is bad. It's just limited. And you don't want the essential things to be dependent on how much effort. you put in today. So if you have to put in effort today to achieve a certain result, you have a linear result. You're going to, you have to put the effort in once, and you're going to get paid once. And then tomorrow you've got to do it again to get paid again. And there's like a before and after that I've, I think life changes the day you discover

residual results. The day you discover that there's a way to do things that you can put in effort one time and get the result a hundred times in the future, you suddenly have what you need to be able to start moving up in the world in terms of your contribution. You want to take the things that are most essential

and make them effortless. You want to make them automated. You want to... So you found the group right now, and you've texted them, And so the intent is there. But just what do we need to do? What's the effortless way to make that happen now?

So I'm going to pause and just actually put it to you just for your own brainstorm for a second. I mean, how do you make this so that this happens now, whether you think about it or not, when you try or not, it just feels effortless. I think part of the answer might come from your book when I was reading it, preparing. Maybe you can help me here because I'm not sure I have it, but there was a section on automation. So in a way, is there a way I could, we could do the hard work up front from like a, let's say, a logistics and scheduling perspective to automate that saying, look, we're going to choose to meet on these days of each month or whatever at this place, at this time. We establish up front that this works for all of us so that we don't really have to think about it.

And then maybe before each meeting, we assign a leader and that person can, if there's a topic or two, that we, We want to be the theme of that meeting that that person then owns that. So once every four meetings, I would own that. I mean, I'm just kind of spitballing off the top of my head. But that could be a way that this is automated where there's not a ton of effort, but we still get all of the output because really what we want is the togetherness, is the dialogue, is the learning that comes through like just posing questions and not even being certain if we have the right answers, but just talking through it.

that's what I think we realize that we've missed and that we really like. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you've identified, I think, as reasonable path as any. And it's just, let's not overcomplicate this. So one thing you said is, okay, we can routinize it. You have a set time. So you don't have to think about that every time. I know that there are people that I want to speak to regularly, and sometimes I don't.

But I spend as much time trying to coordinate getting together, calling them randomly, but then they're not available. And then they call me and I'm not available and so on as the actual conversation itself. So you're wasting your effort. You're just making it hard. There's the same goal. So you have the essential intent, but sometimes you go about the right thing in the wrong way. And by wrong way, I just mean the hard way, the way that it makes it more difficult to start and to sustain.

So routine, routinizing, it's, I think, one good strategy for this. I think the second that I think you did mention it is just the same place. Or it's resolved what the place is. Maybe it's at each person's house every, or maybe it's, here are our four favorite restaurants and we're going to just go between them because we still like variety.

But you've made the decisions one time. It's on the calendar. It's, you know, it's set up. I think the next thing I would say was one of the, One of the strategies that I came across as I was writing and researching effortless is just the importance of pacing it. So, you know, it's easy when we're excited about something, when we're motivated about something to overcommit to it. Yep. You know, so you say, okay, I feel really great today.

I'm going to go do, you know, a huge workout today. I feel the energy. I'm feeling it today. But you overdo it. Well, what's the cost of overdoing it? you know, the powering through can have a cost because then the next day, oh, just too much. And maybe even sometimes the psychological effect of it is like, oh, I'm done for the week. And so what in the moment felt good is just short-lived. And it could be the same with this as well.

If you say, oh, let's meet again next week. Let's go. It's just, it's unsustainable. So I think figuring out what the pace is for this, you know, for what you're wanting to do. So you say, I feel like every week, every two weeks. Well, maybe not. Let's do it once a month. Because what you want is a year from now still to be doing it. And so what's the pace to achieve it? And the rule here, the principle is to set not just a lower bound on any goal you set. The minimum workouts I want to do per week is this. The minimum times I want to meet with this team, this tribe friends, is this.

But you also have an upper bound. we all sort of would assume the lower bound, but the upper bound is just as important that you don't, even though you feel like doing more, you say, no, I'm done. When I hit, you know, that could include even how long you speak for. Yep. You say, hey, we feel like four hours, but we're going to do, two hours, we're going to be done. Whatever the force restraint can can be like Twitter kind of, it was one of the reasons, like people complained about it, but it was one of the reasons it probably took off because there's force restraint. It forced you to get to the point quicker. And I think with meetings in general, making them shorter. And I always like, I run these leadership circles, Greg. And one of the things that we do is there's 75 minutes in length. And that's a weird number. And I like that. That they're not an hour.

They're not at 90 minutes. They're 75 because nobody has 75 minute meetings. In every meeting, we run out of time. And I would rather run out of time and have to cut it. And then I try to honor the actual time on the calendar. I'd rather run out of time than just kind of slowly walk our way to get to the 90 minutes or whatever the end it is. Because we end it like on a high. And I think that that then gets you excited for the next one and the next one.

And when you talk about sustainability and being able to be consistent, which is key, that is one way to do that. So I love the thought of pacing because right now when everyone's like, oh, excited and we're amped up, we're like, yeah, let's do it weekly. When in reality, it's like, let's chill out a little bit. If we do it weekly, we might burn out in like four weeks and then we won't do it at all. And that's exactly the idea is what can you do to avoid burnout? It's a really important element for otherwise hardworking, intelligent, talented people, what my brother Justin calls the hit squad, is that you tend to overdo it. You've learned that pushing hard gets you results.

That's true. And I believe that. But we also then over-apply that strategy to the point that it's produced. is diminishing returns or actually often negative returns, which is that for every ounce of effort we put in now, we'll actually get worse results than if we simply stopped. And so I think this can apply to everything. One of my favorite stories that I came across in my research was there was this great

competition to get to the South Pole. And no one had ever achieved this, not in, you know, not in all of human recorded history, not in all the centuries of the Vikings dominance, not in the British Empire. Like no one had ever done this. And so it became like it was sort of the get to the moon challenge of the day of adventure. This was the unreachable and impossible goal. And two teams set off at almost exactly the same time as British explorer, Captain Scott,

and then Amundsen, Rode Emerson, who's sort of named the last Viking. And so they set off at the same times. The way that they approached the pacing of their, you know, adventure is instructive. Captain Scott, on the good weather days, pushed his team to exhaustion. They would try and go 50 miles. And they could do it. I mean, physically it was possible. So it was easy to justify.

But on the bad weather days, because the team was so exhausted physically, They didn't have what it would take to be able to handle those days. So they would sort of just hunker down in the tents. And they became very negative about the whole experience. He wrote in his journals all sorts of entries. We have the worst weather of anyone who's ever tried this. I can't believe it. And they're just complaining about the bad weather days.

And they'd just be sort of depressed in the tents on those days. I don't believe anyone could make progress in this, he would say. But one team could. And that's his competitor team, the last vice. what they were doing, he set a standard early on in this adventure. He said 15 miles a day. No more, no less. There's a general entry there. Terrible weather today preceded 13 miles. Yeah, beautiful weather today, 15 miles. And the plot thickens when that same team, the team that's been so pacing themselves through this journey says they are 45 miles from the equator, not from the equator,

they're 45 miles from the point of the South Pole they're trying to get to. And they have perfect weather conditions. And they have no idea where Captain Scott and his team are. So they don't know whether they're neck and neck at this point. They don't know if the other team's ahead. And they know that one huge push they'll get there in one. one day. Well, what do you do in that moment? I mean, the temptation is enormous, isn't it? Just push through. We're going to do the thing that's never been done. And he's still,

even in that mode, is like, they did that 45 miles in three days. They average 15 miles per day. For the entire journey there, they average 15.5 miles per day. They achieve it. They get there. They're the first team to ever do it. And they safely get home. So they have been successful. and they are safe. The other team gets there 30 days later because being uneven in your work, going big and then doing nothing and then going big and doing nothing actually doesn't equal the same as being consistent. And what happens is they get there. They see that they're last. They're exhausted by this point. They're actually more burned out than the other team was. And they're so exhausted on the way home, it gets even worse. And they all die on them.

they all die. So they freeze to the in their tense and they've written all these messages knowing that that's what's going to happen. That's the, I mean, you know, it's amazing, but one of the biographers of Roll Emerson says that they achieved this goal, and this is their phrase, and it's just breathtaking to me, without particular effort. Right. So that's just like crazy thing to say. Because on the one hand, it's so obvious there was effort. But of course there is, I mean, of course. You're doing something that's never been done before. You're doing something that's going to push you to the limit.

But still, that was the phrase they chose to describe the experience after reading all their journals and capturing this story without particular effort. That's what we're talking about. That's the power of pace. And now we're going deep on this one particular principle. But I think it's so important for high achievers because what people typically think is in order to, you've got to overdo and over-a- exert if you want to overachieve. But actually, there's a total false economy in that. There's total fallacy in that. What you want if you want to do achieve extraordinary things is find a small and simple thing that you can sustain and you're far more likely to break through to the next

level on the stuff that really messes most. Greg, how would you relate this to someone who's currently leading a team within a big corporation and they love the, that reminds, is that also from Jim Collins, 20 Mile March and Great by Choice. I think it is. It is, but one of the things I like about that just as a small thing is it wasn't 20 miles. It was 15. It just isn't. It is 15. The 20, I guess sounds better.

The original research. Yeah, I think that's what it is. I think that might be part of it. And also, it's also Jim, I think, I think that his research team had already already been using the term 20 mile march. Oh, so they just kind of. And so I think that it kind of fit into that. But I was surprised when I found that it really is 15.

15. Yeah. Okay. I was waiting for you to say 20 and like 15, huh. Maybe. You're like, hold on, wait a second. You're deep in this. So how would you relate that to a person who's not necessarily doing something physical or marching or playing a sport?

But they work within a company and they're trying to achieve and exceed their goals that are set forth by the company for them. What are some ways that this 15-mile march could be used for them? Yeah. I mean, I think that if you're in a sales team, no fewer than, no fewer than this number of sales calls, but no more than this number. There's no fewer than three, but it's no more than 10 per day. That would be an example of applying the upper bounds and lower bounds. It could simply be hours of work. I just had on the What's Central podcast had a Benitez, Benitez, who's.

the CEO of Uncharted, and they, after reading Essentialism, they took on the challenge, basically at upper bound. They said, okay, could we achieve in 32 hours of work what we used to do in 40? And so they set up a whole experiment for this, and he outlines all of this. I thought it was one of the most interesting conversations to see it really validated so much of what I've been trying to teach. And they, after six months of doing this, where they actually gathered the data,

get an external company to come in and show what their output was before, did it assess them again at three months, and then again at six months, they found that they could do it. And so they've moved down to a four-day work week as a company. They get paid 40 hours. They do 32 hours, but they produce 40 hours worth of output. I mean, that is what has happened.

Wow. So having an up about even on hours, I think is a reasonable thing to do. There's many industries that have the assumption that, well, in this, in this field, if you want to be successful, you just have to do the 80 hours. That's just what it takes. And they'll even pass it down like intergenerationalally. Well, you know, that's how it was in my day. And that doesn't make it scientifically true. That doesn't make it that you can actually support that.

It's just a paradigm. And of course, people keep doing it because that's what they were doing, and that's what the social expectation obligation is. But the research is, there's very, very little research to suggest that doing 80 hours of anything will get you better results than doing 40 hours of that thing. Because it's not the same quality production. It's like me trying to write for 80 hours in a week. I will produce worse work in 80 hours than I will in doing a couple of hours of focused work when I'm rested at the beginning of the day. That is the optimal performance I'm going to have. And if I do 80 hours, yes, I can point to it like a badge of honors.

I'm working eight hours. Look how much I'm doing. Look how output won't be better. It'll be worse. And so I think that even that, having an upper bound a number of hours worked would be, but would be an achievement. But then someone can do it personally too. They can say, what anything that's essential to them,

they can put an upper and lower bound on it. You say, I'm going to, I just took on this big study. project myself, personal study project is a major thing. And I said, okay, I think it'll take me six months to do this. And I had an upper and lower bound. And so on some days, I don't feel like doing it at all, but I knew, well, it's only going to take a few minutes. As soon as I've done these 20 references, I'll be done with that for the day. And that's what kept me going through. And now I have completed it, did it within the six months. The upper bound is what helps you keep going. when you don't feel like it, it makes the whole experience start to feel and you get into a pace and you start to just go, yeah, this isn't, this isn't hard. You definitely don't feel like it's hard. Whereas I think what normally happens, you shoot out the gate fast and you're burned out by day four. And then it feels really hard. And then the fact you're not doing it signals to your brain. It must be hard. I'm not doing it because it's so hard. And all of this just gets in the way of actually making progress on the things that matter.

You said that essentialism was about doing the right things. Effortless is about doing them in the right way. This is how effortless your next book builds upon essentialism. Initially, Greg, when your team reached out and I saw the title of the book, I said, well, I'm going to get into it before I make any judgment. However, it did make me think like essentialism. I'm like, okay, yeah, that's intriguing. Effortless is like, what do you mean effortless? I give great effort.

I give huge effort. I have to. It's the key to whatever. So I'm curious how it came to be because you have to know it's obviously going to make people like turn their head just like I'm doing you right now. Because the key to success is giving great effort consistently over time. And so what is it about that word that made you want that to be the title of your next book? Oh, yeah.

I love that word. Effortless. It flies in the face of so much. It's so counterintuitive about what we have been taught. If you want to overachieve, you've got to overdo. That's what it is. That's what it takes. I was just talking to a general manager in the NFL.

And I asked him, okay, of all the times that you yourself have given your team the big speech on getting better results. How often have you said, therefore, you have to work harder or some variant of that versus, therefore, we're going to find an easier way to do it? And he just laughed. He's like, literally, that's 100 to 0. I have literally never given the second speech. Now, that is not always true, all leaders, of course, but he was saying this from the point of view of like of an error in his in his thinking it's not that it's not that working hard at something doesn't produce results i've already said i think that's true it's that there's this alternative path and i think it's so timely right now because after i was just talking to a CEO who said he said

we've just achieved results over the last year they have been phenomenal but they have come at such a cost to do it through the pandemic like this he said that people are burned out well basically he's said, we've had a higher turnover rate than I would have liked to see, especially in the top leadership. A lot of them have just like, no, it's just not worth it to me. I'm out. He said, those that have stayed have stayed through grinding effort. He says, if we continue to do it that way for the next year, I think we'll have damaged our culture, damaged our people, will have a higher turnover rate again. And now it's like mission critical to do this in a different way. He's exactly right. The whole world has learned has been doing it a certain

way and it's led to people being on the edge of burnout or way past it. And so the different way really matters. So essentialism is about prioritization, rethinking that. Effortless is about simplification, about removing all the ways we're making things harder than they need to be. There's so many things we add on that make our lives and our work more burdened. them than is useful. And that to me is a highly moral thing to figure this out. You have an obligation to figure out a better way, an easier path to achieve what matters most, to not simply say, as many people truly believe that the more important the thing is, the harder it's going to be. I mean, people talk like that. It's actually amazing how consistently they talk like that with not a

single person challenging the thought. I hear it all the time now. Of course I do now because I've gone down this path. But in almost every speech where somebody says, well, listen, team, we're going to do this incredible thing. It's going to be hard. It's going to be worth it. And I'm like, now I'm like, does it have to be hard? Is there, what if it's effortless? What if we could just be a little creative and find a different way to approach this that would be a little easier? I worked with a manager on a team. She works. in a university setting, she is the kind of person who still somehow finds herself at 4 a.m. in the morning photoshopping for some activity the next day.

She doesn't need to be. It's not urgent, but it is not necessary, but that's how she is currently wired. That's what she's been taught to do. She doesn't take lunch because even that feels selfish. If you're not exhausted, you're not doing enough. So I said, well, what have you just, experiment with the new question, right? You know, what if this could be effortless? What if there's a really simple solution to this?

What if it could be easy? So the next call she gets is from a professor at the university. He says, look, I want you and get your team that you're responsible for, videography team to come and, you know, video the whole semester for me. And she's just ready to jump into gear because she's an overachiever. She's going to add music. They're going to edit the whole thing. They'll add graphics where they can, have an intro and outro, have the whole team there to make this.

So we're going to wow them. And instead she just remembers again, little coaching, she pauses, she says, well, you know, is there an effortless way to do this? Let's ask a couple of questions. It turns out this was for one student who's going to be in an athletic commitment, still needs this class to graduate.

And so they came up with the solution that one of the other students will record the classes that he'll miss on an iPhone and send it to him. It took him 10 minutes to come up for the solution. She hangs up the phone and she's like, what just happened? he's totally happy the professor is totally happy with the solution i've saved four months of my time

and my whole team's time for a tiny conversation you see that's the low-hanging fruit underneath this question is this we we just have so much scar tissue in the times of complexity that we've added and we've made it harder and harder than it needs to be and very often there is this alternative many alternative paths we just aren't even considering so to me it has the power of relevancy right now There's so many people who need an alternative path. And right now, they just don't know what to do because they don't want to give up on the things that are essential. But they do generally, that's the ultimate thing. Let go of their health.

Let go of their relationship with their family. Let go of some dream that they had that they wanted to pursue. It's just too much. It's too hard. And I just am like, well, maybe there's an effortless path. Maybe there's an easier approach. Maybe there's a simplification path that might make this doable. And suddenly, what could happen if everyone would be?

really suddenly saw that the essential things, the most essential things could be the easiest things, but just a breakthrough opportunity is immense. So I think back to big moments in my life, Greg, and times when it went well. And I often go to sports because that's my upbringing. And on the best teams that I've been on, the ones that won the most, our our work in the off season, preseason practices were, were way harder than on the teams when I lost. And so this is where to me, it gets, this is tough for me because when I think back to big moments and times where I've been very happy because we've won and we've done well

and I have this shared experiences with teammates, we've just worked insanely hard leading up to those big moments. We've prepared like crazy. It's been a ton of effort. And I've also experienced losing. And I, if I'm honest with myself, was not giving as much effort leading up to that. My coaching staff probably wasn't as good too. So how do you juxtaposed effortless with with that world where there's winning and losing and experiences of winning and like people can can point to the effort and the hard work they had to put into something in order to achieve high levels that maybe they wouldn't have if they if they didn't go as hard. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a few thoughts I have about this, but one of them,

I think about the Highland High School rugby team. This is the winningest team in American history, right? They've won 326 games, played. 336 games. I'm getting the number slightly wrong, but basically they've lost four times in the last decade, 10 times in, you know, all these years. They've won 19 national championships. When you talk to the teams, which I have done, going back generations in that team, there's a whole set of systems that they've put in place to help, well, actually,

Here's how this whole fascination with this team began is that I was watching the movie about them called Forever Strong. And there's a scene in that movie that just hit me so hard. I was like, okay, as soon as this movie's over, I'm going to find the actual coach this is about and talk to him. And the scene is where he is sitting on a deck chair talking to a player again and again, just like he sits there literally on a deck chair everyone else is out playing on the field and he is on a

deck chair uh one-on-one with these different players relaxed laughing like there isn't a care in the world and i'm like okay how if that's for real how at the time i was teaching an early morning a class of teenagers before uh before they go off to high school um kind of um kind of um Bible study kind of thing, you know, a good, good uplift every day. And it was just so hard. It was like I was trying to make it life change for every student every day. And every day, because I was falling short of that expectation. And I was just, it was just killing me. And I see this movie and I'm like, okay, that's like miles apart. What, what is he doing that I'm not doing? How is it working that way? How is he getting such extraordinary results in this

representation? Now, it's a movie, fine. But that was the tipping point. How can you construct systems that work, whether you're forcing and pushing them or not? How can you create a culture on your team where people are supporting each other and helping each other? And it starts to feel, you know, united, high trust starts to feel effortless. And that is what he'd constructed. I mean, he'd built the five different teams. He had, I think, 35 people that would come and volunteer. And the whole system did the work.

He wasn't having to push this boulder up the hill every day like I was. He'd constructed a system that was more like, you know, Seth Godin asked the question, can you push a boulder downhill? kill? Can you construct a system that it works whether you yourself are physically forcing and pushing it or not? So I think that one of the answers to your question is illustrated in Larry Galwick's story, which is you build a system that works for you and it keeps producing results year in year out, game in, game out. There's an alternative way of thinking about what you did, what you've said, and that is, can anyone listening to this, think of a time when they

worked hard on a team, killed themselves on a team, and didn't get the results they wanted? For sure. The opposite is also true. For sure. So that makes us at least question the idea that the altar we should bow down to is just more unrelenting effort, that that is the distinctive quality. Well, I guess if your primary or sole goal is winning, then some could say, well, the work didn't end up helping us achieve our goal, where I would say what I think we won a lot, but what I got more out of it was I think I developed resilience. I developed the ability to get up when I got knocked down.

I developed preparation skills. I developed camaraderie and being there for another person. And that the wins and losses, you know, don't really matter. They pale in comparison to all of those skills that I felt were developed. And a lot of that was because we did a lot of hard things together. And so I'm purposely, you know, making this hard on you. I realize that, Greg. But I think that's that's because I've talked to a lot of people that have had similar experiences to me, whether they are Navy SEALs or have an athletic background or they're in a environment with heavy training where they try to make their sales organization makes it really hard

from a training perspective so that I guess it could become effortless when it's real. Maybe that's part of this. But that's the one part for me that's hard is because I love this book and I love the way that you talk about it. And there's literally like five pages of notes that we haven't even touched yet. And we're almost kind of out of time. But that that's the one part for me where I treasure the fact that that I've gone through the things that were really hard. So I personally feel the value of it. And in a way, I have to tell you, like, when I feel like I'm not grinding myself into the ground every day, I almost feel guilty.

And I have to believe there are other people listening. And you probably even feel this way, times. I feel like, wait a second, am I not working hard enough? Am I not doing enough because I took a break or I watched, you know, a YouTube video or whatever? You know what I mean? Like, what do you think of that aspect of people feeling like almost? guilty to themselves if they if they relax for a little bit yeah i think that illustrates what the

what the enemy of the story is yeah um i mean what i think you're describing is is something that you value that you've experienced personally that that you that you have pride in you know the times that you've given a loss as a team the times that you've worked together and achieved together and you feel like that that matters and what you're describing I think is real and it's a paradigm and so I think you have to be careful to not overextend the paradigm there's a lot of people who do that start what's a what's a paradigm how would you define that well the paradigm is you know a way of thinking about the world okay and one way of thinking about the world is if I'm not exhausted I'm not doing enough. If I, if I, if I don't work myself to the bone, if I don't grinding effort,

then I should feel guilty. That is a paradigm. Yeah. And there's some truth in every paradigm, or most paradigms, there is some truth to it. That's what keeps us sort of stuck in the paradigm is because you can find evidence to support the paradigm. And I know that in, in trying to talk about effortless, you are, you're really challenging that paradigm. So it's going to feel, you're uncomfortable. Well, hold on, hold on. You're trying to tell me that all this stuff that I did really wasn't necessary. Is this really what this is about? Because that's, that's uncomfortable. It ought to be uncomfortable. What's the point in writing a book that isn't at least challenging something we've taken for granted? But I just had a conversation just yesterday with Special

Ops, a soldier. He was in the military for years and years, awarded, successful. And we were talking about this. And one of the examples he gave. of effortless in action is that they would be in Iraq or Afghanistan, and they would be given the assignment to open a door and find somebody inside, right? That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to arrest someone. They're trying to capture someone high-value operative. And what they normally would do if they're up against a metal door or something

is they'll put explosives on hinges, blow them. that's effective, but the problem is it's so loud, it's a very high-risk thing to do because then everyone in the neighborhood knows you're there. If anybody wants to come and mess with what you're doing, they can now. It makes your entry complicated in a whole variety of other ways. And he said on one of the teams he was on, one of the other members of the team was the son of a carpenter. And so he's like, you know what, I think if you can just get me like a, even a really small hydraulic drill, I can get these. hinges off, like basically silently, a lot easier with a lot less damage to everyone and everything

involved. That's effortless. I'm not saying don't give your best to something. I'm saying that giving your best to something also includes asking this different question, at least entertaining the possibility that there's a different paradigm that you can sync together with existing truths to make you more worldly wise that you can actually do better without grinding effort. Think of what it means if you suddenly say, well, hold on, my marriage could be, I could make my marriage great in an effortless way. Who doesn't want that? That's a great idea.

We want that. If you can, and there are ways to do this because I'm now riffing on marriage for some reason, but it's like the same problem is that you could work incredibly hard at marriage and not be successful at it because you're working on the wrong things you think they value x they really value y you're just working on the wrong stuff and so actually you're giving everything but but they're like ah it's like giving a gift that is that shows you don't understand them it can create problems if you can understand them that's just an easier path a wiser path and and this this whole book and all the principles and practices in it grew out of agony for me right

or at least an experience that should, should have been agony for me. And I don't know if we have time for it, but I could share that because I think that helped. Sorry about your daughter? Yeah. Yeah, I'd love for you to share. So, I mean, it started, it started off well. We'd moved into a beautiful new area and white picket fences, you know, no street lamps.

It's like 1950s area. no one had told anyone that the world had moved on. And all of our children were thriving, just loving, just going on long walks, you know, playing tennis together, horse riding, all of this. And one of my daughters, especially, Eve, just thrived especially. She's up trees all the time. She's articulate.

She's funny. She can't stay cross. See this slim, brown-eyed, blonde-haired, you know, young woman. and just everything's going right for her until she turns 14 when she starts slowing down a bit. Meaning like her chores take a bit longer. She, instead of talking endlessly with her, she just sort of more more like one word answers to stuff and a little physically awkward maybe. And we're like, well, it's pretty age appropriate.

You know, sometimes people just go through these phases. It's nothing for us to be too alarmed about. And then she went to a physical therapy appointment routine, nothing special, but the therapist noticed that she failed a reflex test. And one of the reasons they do that is because no one fails that. It's a way of just making sure that things neurologically are fine. And he said that that shouldn't have happened. You might want to just go, I don't want to alarm you, but you might want to see a neurologist

and you don't have to be warned twice. And so, you know, my wife goes with Eve. And now with a new paradigm of the situation, we start evaluating the experiences differently and start to notice, oh, there may be something much worse going on here than we've noticed originally. And that is what was happening. We could now observe, you know, really, unfortunately, this free fall of capability. And so it takes her two minutes to write her own name. You know, it's just incredibly slow. She loses movement in one half of a body.

personality changes just just no emotion or emotion gone literally nothing more than one word answers to anything hours to eat a meal and it's just constant free fall for like four months and no not one neurologist can even give us the beginning of a diagnosis and okay well these this is these are the facts right this is this is what it is and we just suddenly became aware that there were two paths ahead of us, two possible parts, I'll say. And it sounds obvious which one you would take, but actually it wasn't at all obvious. So the two paths are like this. One path is the harder path, the heavier part. That looks like 24-7 focus. You know, you pull all nice as if you need to. You're going to read everything you can read on any condition related to this.

Every email you get sent from well-intended people, you're going to study it, research, and maybe it's this problem. You're going to look for every possible expert. You're going to look at alternative medicines. You're going to do everything. You're going to let this consume your whole life. So it's so important we should kill ourselves over it. And that, in fact, was the tempting path. That was probably the paradigm that we were, you know, operating out of. If you want better results, you've got to give more. If you could do the hard, the hardest stuff will get you the best results. And very fortunately, mercifully, there was a second path,

and the second path was this like, well, the easier path. What if we could just be grateful through this experience? There was literally an asker I'd once read. I read it just one time in my life, as I recall.

But I just came back to my mind, like, you should just read that every day, and it was about optimism and Thanksgiving and how to live in that state. And so I started reading that. I felt like I really felt like I needed to do that. I listened to it almost every day for months and months. And I felt like what was happening is it was like my brain was being rewired in a new,

in a new paradigm. And what it looks like behaviorally was being grateful for every possible thing we could. Instead of saying, why are the neurologists no use to us right now? Why can't they help us? I mean, or why is this happening to our poor Eve? How unfair is this? or getting negative with each other because we're stressed and intense. And so you start ruining your marriage and destroying the culture and your family.

Instead of that, we're laughing together. We're singing around the piano together. We're playing together. We are grateful for every neurologist that is willing to meet with us and to talk to us and to gain even another test that says, okay, normal range. This doesn't explain it. But grateful that we can at least do that. Grateful that friends care enough to be sending us things.

and so on. And it was like a magical force about it all that just seemed to buoy us up and give us a sense of, and I don't use this word likely, a sense of joy in the midst of the test, in the midst of this challenge. And if it was a Disney movie, I'd say, okay, well, after four months, it was all, you know, she got treated, which she did. And it was all better. And that was the end of the story. But after a period of improvement, the symptoms return. and if we'd taken the hard part the first time, we wouldn't have even had what it took to even go through the second round of this

and all the uncertainty of it. So the way that we were responding mattered as much as even as the goal itself, which was self-explanatory. We want her to be completely healed. That's the goal. But how you go about it matters enormously. It's been two years now of this experience.

And as of this conversation, I would say for the first time, I would describe her as being fully back mentally, emotionally, physically, psychologically, everything. I would just say back. But not only that, we came back with a new set of assets, a new set of principles and practices that I've gone away and deliberately researched now to give names to.

Like, there is an easier path to do life. So whatever challenge someone's going through, whatever difficulty, whatever mistake they've made, whatever hardship of life, you have in this moment two choices. You can do it the hard. way or you can find this easier, lighter path. And that really matters that you can even have the option, that you even discover that there's this alternative path, because life starts to feel

much lighter experience. It doesn't have to be drudgery. It doesn't have to be pain in every step. It can be joy in the journey. It can be celebration in the progress. You make the tough times easier to sustain. Well, then you can do tougher things. You can do things that seemed impossible before, suddenly seem possible, doable, and you keep applying these practices. They start to be effortless. Imagine if the biggest, greatest visions and goals you had for your whole life could be made significantly easier. What could you achieve? Far more than before. That's the answer, because you're not suddenly overwhelmed by the current limits of your imagination. Wow. I'm so glad to hear she's doing better. It was painful. In fact, to read part of it,

and I just was hopeful to hear. I was going to ask you about her to make sure everything's good. It's really good to hear. I think that one of the takeaways is, you know, force yourself to pause and to reflect and to pose questions. And I think one of the good things about reading effortless that you'll find is it is a great book to help you pose the right questions to yourself to rethink how you approach situations. Because all of us are going to face challenges. All of us are going to mess up. I think the people who I found that tend to sustain excellence are really good at reflecting, posing questions to themselves and rethink. thinking how they go about things. And that's why, Greg, I really wanted to talk to you again and why I know you're the type of guy that I can keep pushing on and challenge a bit because that's how I learn. I think that's how a lot of people learn is we're willing to rethink what we believe, what we think

and try to find better ways to approach it. And that's that's one of the challenges that I think you try to tackle on this book, effortless, make it easier to do what matters most. I think it's a book that much like essentialism is going to catch fire again. So thank you. Thank you for putting it out, man. And thank you for joining me today. Ryan, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me. And I certainly would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress because I learn

a lot every time I come across. Every since we talked the first time, I still stayed in contact with you without you even realizing it through watching videos and paying attention and rereading essentialism and now preparing for this one today. I learned a lot. So thank you again, man. And I'm looking forward to the next one already. Ryan, thank you.

All right. Thanks so much. Greg is definitely one of those people that makes you think and rethink what you believe and has paradigm shifting effects on you. And I love conversations like this one that really at times fly into the face of what I think and what I believe. as I've learned from a number of people who are far more intelligent than me, our goal is to try to be a little bit less wrong every day. And I think when you have a conversation or read the work of someone like Greg McEwen, that happens. A few of my takeaways from my notes, the question that he asked me at the beginning that I think you should ask yourself, what's something essential, you're under and investing in right now. That is a great journal entry question for you to reflect, think about, write your answer, and then do something about it. Put a plan in place in order to over-invest

in something that's essential. And then how about the 15 miles per day average, regardless of the weather, regardless of how good you feel that you could keep going, the consistency is key, Consistency is underrated and think about how you could apply this 15-mile march mentality to your work, to your life in order to show up and do the necessary work each day on a consistent basis. And then like I mentioned before, I appreciate the back and forth on my stories about how the greatest moments of my life have been preceded by really hard work, especially when I've been a part of teams. and I think what Greg is making me do, and I think you should do on a regular basis, is to pause and reflect and to think about what you think, what you believe, and the stories you tell yourself. And also to ask the question, how could we make this effortless?

And maybe you'll have a paradigm shift like we discussed during this conversation. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message, telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to the Learning Leader Show, this episode with Greg McEwen will really make you think. Because you continue to spread the message and because you continue to write a review on Apple podcast and rate the show, hopefully five stars, you continue to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful.

Thank you so much. Talk to the soon. Can't wait.